THE SLUM-DWELLER.
It cannot be said of Toronto, as it can be of some other cities, that
whole districts are in such a condition as to be aptly designated slums.
Portions of streets are inhabited by people whose manner of living is
so degraded, and whose homes are so comfortless and filthy, as to merit
such a term, but this cannot be said of any one whole district or street.
Even Lombard street, which has rather an unenviable notoriety, has homes
in it where the peace and satisfaction which crown industry and sobriety
are to be found. St. John’s ward, which is often alluded to slightingly,
contains within its borders some of the handsomest streets in the city.
Our merchant princes dwell there. Hundreds of mechanics make their happy
homes in the Noble Ward. The slum portion is very small compared with the
acres and acres where the domestic virtues go hand in hand with industry
and plenty. Our city is of such a composite character that next door
neighbors are often as far apart in their manner of living as is the
east from the west. Strangers who read about the doings of the denizens
of York street two years ago were surprised to find on visiting the city
that there were many bright, busy stores, two fine hotels and plenty of
respectable houses on the street. Any remarks in the following interviews
regarding localities will therefore be understood to mean only certain
portions of those localities.
INTERVIEWS WITH CLERGYMEN.
For the purpose of getting the views of a class of gentlemen whose
profession brings them frequently in contact with the vicious classes of
our city, NEWS reporters waited on several clergymen. Those selected were
men who were known not to be shirkers from this unpleasant portion of a
pastor’s duties. The result will be found below.
A CITY MISSIONARY’S EXPERIENCES.
An evangelist and city missionary of some years experience in Toronto
was interviewed. “You cannot,” he said “tell what the Toronto slums are
like, seeing them by day light. You enter a tenement house on Duchess
or Lombard streets in the forenoon or at noon. All looks quiet enough.
The women, generally of middle age, are standing at the door exchanging
gossip with their neighbors. Some appearance of household work has
been going on, and as noon approaches there is an odor of onion stew
or fried pork. We enter. You are always safe in these regions when
accompanied by a policeman or a reporter or a city missionary, but
your visit would be much more favorably received if your escort be of
either of the two latter classes. The furniture of the living room is of
the cheapest and simplest description of second-hand ware, the tables
are battered and sodden with the smear of innumerable drinking bouts.
The chairs are evidently more often used as missiles propelled through
the air by hostile hands than for the peaceful purpose of resting the
human body. The crazy old windows are grimy with dirt; grimy are the
floors, the ceilings, the ricketty stairways leading to unknown dens
above. Almost all of these tenement houses are a perfect baby-burrow of
children, untaught, unwashed, unkempt, enfants perdus of the gutter,
the protoplasm out of which the great Sin and the yet greater Misery
of our city is certain to shape itself in the future! Presently,
three or four able-bodied young men come in from what they call work.
A sinister-looking young woman in frowsy dress, the cut across her
whisky-sodden face telling its tale of last night’s revel, joins the
group. The eldest child is sent with a cracked jug for beer to the corner
saloon. As a rule, these people fare considerably better than the poorer
ones among the respectable sober working people; they live from hand to
mouth; the only text in the gospel which they obey implicitly being “Let
the morrow take thought for itself.” When they are not starving they are
generally well supplied with bread, meat, tea and vegetables; nor are
such luxuries as pies and cake unknown to them, to say nothing of malt or
spirituous liquor, though, as a rule, the drinking sets in most heavily
at night. At about 10 p.m. on Saturday or Sunday to see one of these
establishments at full blast! Then
DRINK REIGNS UNCONTROLLED.
Of other immorality there is comparatively little; the scorching breath
of the rum king will tolerate no rival! Money has been procured, if in no
other way by pawning dress or tools to the people of the house, for every
one of these tenement dens is, as a rule, an unlicensed groggery and
pawnbroker’s shop! The debauch which ensues nearly always ends in a free
fight, in which the most furious combatants are often the women.”
“Have you ever recognized in the night life of the city slums any man or
woman you have known in better circumstances in this city?”
“Yes unquestionably, and in more cases than people would think who
do not look below the surface for the three sorriest sins that enter
hell, drunkenness, laziness and dishonesty, have the same effect on the
educated and the uneducated. Take a recent case. Early last month I was
called on to visit, not for the first time, a young married woman whom I
had known in days when she had every right to the title of lady. I found
her occupying a room on the rear ground floor of a house on Teraulay
street. Her only baby, fortunately for herself and for it, lay dead. The
father had more than once thrown it at the mother in a fit of drunken
passion. I gave her money enough to provide decently for the funeral and
promised to return two days afterwards, in order to conduct some simple
sort of funeral ceremony.
“When I first knew this woman, then a girl years ago, her father was
still living a prosperous hotel-keeper on Yonge street, a prominent
church member, and an affectionate father who spared no pains on his
daughter’s education. Aggie grew up to be a bright engaging girl, with
a charming figure, expressive hazel eyes, and long curling dark brown
hair that reached to her waist. She was especially clever at ciphering,
and acted for some time as book-keeper for a well known Toronto firm.
She became an accomplished pianist, and sang for some years in one of
our best church choirs. Her next misfortune after her birth in this
evil world eighteen years before was her father’s death. Her mother was
left in fairly good circumstances, and the owner of a respectable house
on George street. She was a good-natured but weak minded woman, the
instincts of hotel-life were strong upon her, and as a matter of course,
she took to keeping boarders. She kept a good house, and good table, for
little Aggie was smart and looked after all that, and there were gay
times when
AGGIE WOULD SING
and play for the young gentlemen in the evenings! But one set after
another of young men came and went, and Aggie was unmarried at
twenty-six, for bless you Sir, you know boarding-house flirts, as a
rule, don’t marry. Meanwhile drinking habits had grown on the mother, an
inferior class of boarders came to the house. In an evil hour for herself
Aggie became engaged to marry a handsome well-bred and well educated
cadet of a rich Lancashire family, cotton manufacturers, whose trade
brand is known through the world. Horace B⸺ had been at Oxford for a few
terms. A subaltern in a militia regiment which he had to leave, a clerk
in the Civil Service, finally he was shipped off to Canada. He married
Aggie and was a shiftless, reckless, drunken husband! Through him Aggie
became addicted to drink, and her mother lost house and home. After many
migrations they sought refuge in the Teraulay street tenement, where
I found the dead baby. Two days later I renewed my visit. All trace of
Aggie and her husband was lost, on a pine table the sole article of
furniture in the room, lay the dead baby, purple with decomposition
partly covered by a scanty rag! I learned from the people of the next
house that a drinking debauch had taken place, the participants in which
after hurling the furniture at each others’ heads, threw the baby out
of the rear window into the yard! I at once procured decent christian
sepulture for this child of sin and misery.
IDLENESS AND DRINK.
The Rev. William H. Laird, pastor of Elm street Methodist church,
stated that but a small part of his congregation, so small as to be
inappreciable, came from the poorest part of St. John’s ward, on whose
northern verge this church is situated. Still he had visited among this
very class a good deal, being led to do so by having particular cases
brought under his notice by a young people’s association in connection
with his church, who had undertaken this duty. He was very frequently
appealed to for monetary aid and to visit the sick and distressed. When
asked if he had seen many cases in which reform had been effected through
the influence of religious agencies, Mr. Laird said: “Yes, but only in
isolated cases.” He considered that the two great causes of pauperism
were shiftless idleness and drink. The cases in which pauperism was the
result of inevitable misfortune were, in his opinion, very few. The
tramp, the beggar, the slum-dweller, owed his unhappy condition to one,
generally to both, of the above causes.
RELEASED CONVICTS.
Among other clergyman of this city the writer was able to obtain the
opinion of one who had been for some time acting chaplain of the
Provincial penitentiary at Kingston. In reply to my question, “Have you
seen anything of the Toronto ex-members of your convict congregation
since your residence in Toronto?” this gentleman made the following
statement: “I am glad to tell you that to my certain knowledge there
are now living in Toronto no small number of reformed criminals whom I
have known in the Provincial penitentiary during my term of office as
chaplain. One of them is a tradesman in a small way living in St. John’s
ward. He has married happily, and is the father of several children. He
is a most steady, sober, industrious man. I think great influence for
good was exerted over this man by the introduction of church music into
the penitentiary chapel, which, previously to my term of office, was
not permitted by the authorities. The man referred to had a good voice,
and was much interested in our singing classes, and since his release
he has been a steady attendant at a Toronto church, of whose choir he
is a valued member. Another one is that of a Scotch young lady, who had
been decoyed to Canada by a faithless lover, and, as too often happens
to girls not naturally vicious, had found her only refuge in a “fast
house,” having quarreled with the mistress of which, she was accused
of larceny and sent for a short term to Kingston. Since her release
benevolent ladies in Toronto received her and provided for her return
home. She is the daughter of a missionary on the west coast of Africa, I
also knew of several young men in quite respectable positions who have
accomplished the difficult task of retrieving character and habits, even
after touching the lowest depths of a convict prison. Certain forms of
crime seem to me to be acute, like the most dangerous fevers which may
kill, but recovered from do not recur. It is the smaller chronic types of
crime, lying, thieving, drinking, which once contracted, hardly ever are
eradicated.
“Do you ever recognize members of your former convict congregation who
have not reformed?”
“But too frequently. Under the glare of Toronto lamps I see but too many
faces once familiar to me in that unhappy flock of black sheep. I have
recognized them among the loafers at the street corners, among
THE INCORRIGIBLES
half-thief and wholly drunkard, whom I have met when summoned to visit
some case of illness or destitution in the city slums, I have seen the
faces of women far more imbruted than when I had known them as convicts,
and these not amongst the ranks of fallen women, strange to say, but
chiefly as wives or housekeepers in rooms or tenement dwellings, in
Duchess street or St. John’s ward.
Once, shortly after I had ceased to act as chaplain at Kingston, I had
left behind me still a convict, but under a promise of release for her
good conduct, a Toronto girl named Annie ⸺. Annie had been for some years
a nurse in the prison hospital. She was singularly neat, good-humored,
and devoted to her duties, and I was glad to hear she had been released.
One evening in the July of that year, returning home with my wife to our
house on G⸺ avenue, what was my astonishment to see what appeared to be a
bundle of rags huddled together on the porch by the door. With the dress
of a scarecrow, with every appearance of exposure to wind and weather,
with unkempt hair and all the appearance of a human wild beast, was the
once comely and gentle Annie. We gave her a trifle to get a bed, and told
her to come again next morning for breakfast and help, but she wandered
away in the night and we saw her no more. There are many such women and
men in this city who are never so happy as when in prison; the prison is
to such a monastery, with its three-fold rule of poverty, obedience and
temperance.
Of the criminal class in Toronto there are two grades; the first of these
consists of those who commit the great crimes, such as murder, forgery
and the like; such crimes result in many cases from motives which may
occur but once in a lifetime; such cases of reform as I have seen have
come mainly from these classes. But the crimes which depend on lying,
dishonest, laziness, and unchastity are ineradicable, humanly speaking.
The intenser forms of crime are like the deadliest diseases which attack
but once in a lifetime; the other class of crime clings to the character
like itch or leprosy.
Among the more famous Toronto criminals under my care was the famous
GRACE MARKS, THE GIRL MURDERESS.
She was a singularly beautiful girl, fourteen, with dark eyes, graceful
figure, and a transparent olive complexion, when she and her paramour
committed the crime, for which he was hanged. Grace had pleasing manners
and though considerably past forty when under my care, still retained the
remains of her girlish beauty. She told me that for many years she never
slept without seeing the face of the murdered man in her dreams. She
has been for some years a free woman, and is now a respectably settled
married woman in an American city. There is one class of women who trade
in human life, who are but too seldom brought within the grasp of the
law, and when the guilt of murder is most clearly proven, are too often
allowed to escape with comparative impunity. Perhaps the worst case of
this class known in Toronto was that of the wife of an American quack
doctor, to whom, and to her husband, was clearly brought home the death,
by malpractice in their den, of a young girl, daughter of a minister of
the gospel. I saw this woman-fiend in the workroom at penitentiary, pert,
cheerful, and confident of the speedy relief she afterwards obtained.
FROM THE EAST END.
The Rev. Mr. Taylor, rector of St. Bartholemew’s church, at the east end
of Wilton avenue gave much interesting information with regard to the
condition of the poorer classes at the east end of the city. “With us,”
he said, “there is more poverty than pauperism. What pauperism there is,
unlike that screened from public view by the alleys of St. John’s ward,
can be seen from the public thoroughfares. The lowest district, Regent
street, can be seen from Wilton avenue. It is wide and well-drained, but
the humble hovels which line its sides make a hideous comment on its
ambitious title. Little better than this is St. David’s street, which
crosses Regent street, east and west. Sumach street was poverty-stricken
a few years ago, but is now improving, but Sackville, Sydenham,
Parliament, and all the streets in this region are to a great degree
peopled by the poorer classes of our citizens.” As far as many years
intimate acquaintance with the poor of this district has entitled him
to form an opinion, there is little or no public immorality among those
people, who thus form an entirely different class from the inhabitants
of the St. John’s ward slums. The great evil is a certain shiftlessness,
a tendency to hope for support anywhere or from any one rather than to
their own exertions. This I have noticed especially among immigrants from
London and other parts of England. Mr. A. called on me several years ago
with an introduction from one of the best known and most hardworking
clergymen in a well-known London parish. He was respectably dressed, and
though he lived in one of the poorest shanties in a lane off Sackville
street, the place when I called there was clean, even neat, and decorated
with a few good engravings and other survivals of his former English
home. He had a wife, a neat, well-dressed person, three fine girls,
and two as nice boys as I have ever seen. The girls had already found
employment as dressmakers, a business to which they had been apprenticed
at Camberwell, London. The father sought a genteel situation, something
in the line of a clerk, bookkeeper or secretary; he could write a good
hand, and was a competent arithmetician. But as you know, our city is
already overstocked with applicants for such positions. I soon found
that Mr. A. looked to the church for some slight monetary assistance,
which, as our poor fund, small enough for legitimate uses, was already
over-drained, I was obliged to withhold. The result was that Mr. A.
KEPT AWAY FROM CHURCH
for about a year. But the evil righted itself, as the boys grew up
and found employment. They and their sisters supported the family by
their earnings, an act of self-denial which, I have no doubt, was of
the greatest possible moral benefit to themselves. After a time Mr. A.
found occupation not wholly incompatible with his dignity, as caretaker
in a furniture factory, became a most regular attendant at church and
a communicant. This is the history of many of these English arrivals
in Toronto, more especially of those who come from London. They are
generally fairly well-educated, are respectably connected, and in most
cases, I believe, are “assisted” to this country by relations anxious
to shift from their shoulders the burdens of directing or aiding their
course. The parents are people trained to earn money, if at all, in a
single groove, seldom in one available in Canada. They cannot, like
our people, turn their hand to anything that presents itself. But for
all that they form a valuable element in our city population, for
their children soon get Canadianized, imbibe the Canadian idea of
being self-dependent and form the best possible addition to our vastly
increasing numbers. One of the greatest evils I have to contend against
in dealing with this class is an absurd and bastard pride and love of
keeping up appearances. A woman living in a rented room on Sackville
street lost a child by death. I provided her out of the poor fund with a
plain black coffin as the means of conveyance to the place of interment.
Soon afterwards another woman lodging in the same house lost a child. I
offered to do the same for her that I had done in the former case. The
woman indignantly refused, but begged me to give her money to get a more
expensive coffin. Now, I had in my pocket a small sum of money from the
poor fund, which I had intended to give her, but which I felt compelled
to withhold when I found it would but be spent superfluously on “the
trappings and the suits of woe.” Still I felt sorry for the poor mother,
in her desire to give a handsome funeral to her dead darling, though
I could not conscientiously gratify her at the expense of those of my
poor who needed food, not sentimental gratification. But when I came to
officiate at the funeral I found she had provided a rosewood casket with
white metal plate, a hearse and a carriage. Among my saddest experiences
here are my visits to
THE NUMEROUS BABY FARMS,
which drive a more or less thriving trade in this part of the city. Some
of them are situate on St. David street, several of them in a healthier
position north of the General hospital. I have frequently visited these
places; each dwelling will accommodate from three or four to as many
as eight or ten infants, who are in almost all cases the children of
shame, for whom their mothers, often persons in respectable positions,
pay a small sum monthly. I do not think that they are neglected by the
women who undertake the charge of them; in fact it is, of course, their
interest that the babies should thrive, as on their living depends the
monthly pay; but the circumstances of the birth and rearing of these poor
infants, and, above all, the deprivation of the mother’s milk, the often
sour milk in the feeding-bottle, and the unavoidable crowding together,
make these places nothing less than nurseries of death—the babies all
die!”