_A sham funeral to hide shame--Moneylenders who discount forged bills
--Was she responsible?--Haunted by a living spectre--At the mercy of a
spendthrift--Where the father is the black sheep_
|NOT very long ago a high dignitary of the Church stood in the
witness-box while his brother stood in the dock. Human endurance had
come to an end, and the well-known divine had given his brother in
charge to protect himself from violence and his family from insult.
This high dignitary of the Church was a man beloved and admired. No one
who listened to his sermons, no one who saw him in his delightful home
in the midst of his family, imagined that for years his life had been
made miserable by the conduct of his own brother.
But at last the torture passed endurance, and the aid of the law was
invoked. Then the skeleton in the family cupboard was dragged out into
the light of day. But thousands of men and women in good positions set
their teeth and bear the strain and the pain. They endure in silence and
keep a smiling face before the world. The blacker the black sheep of
the family is, the more earnestly they strive to avoid doing or saying
anything which will draw public attention to the evil-doer.
It has happened in more than one case that the members of a noble
family, stung to the quick by the infamy of one bearing their name, have
connived at a false death and sham burial.
Such a case occurred some years ago, when, death being the only way to
avoid a criminal trial, the relatives of the offender, who had fled to
avoid arrest, gave out that he was dead, procured a body, and buried a
stranger in the family vault.
With the supposed death of So-and-so the action which the outraged law
had commenced against him ceased. The black sheep lay, so the world was
informed, among his noble ancestors, beyond all human retribution. When
the coffin that bore his name upon the plate was being lowered into
the grave the black sheep was on his way to the East. There, under
an assumed name, he lived for some years. It was not until his noble
relatives received the news of his actual death through a faithful
servant who had accompanied him into exile that they felt easy in their
minds about him. They had always been haunted by the terror that in a
fit of mad recklessness he would come back to England. He had threatened
to do so more than once when the remittances were not as generous as he
thought they should be.
There lay some little time back in the condemned cell of a London gaol a
man who had committed a brutal murder for gain. The man was tried under
a false name, and in that false name executed. For years he had been the
black sheep of the family, sinking at last so low in his criminal career
that his relatives refused to have anything more to do with him.
This man's real name was a well-known one in the world of philanthropy
and the world of commerce. His friends, when they heard of his arrest
for murder, were haunted by the fear that he might reveal his identity
and put a public shame upon them.
But the murderer put their minds at ease in that regard. While awaiting
trial he wrote to the head of the family informing him that he need be
under no apprehension. Whatever the result of the trial might be, he,
the prisoner, would retain the false name he had assumed when he first
took to criminal courses. So perfectly was the secret of this murderer's
identity kept that his mother, who died quite recently, never knew that
her son had been tried for his life, found guilty, and executed.
But it is not often that the black sheep shows any consideration for
the honour of his house. On the contrary, he trades upon the fear his
kinsmen have of being injured by the exposure of his infamies. It is
the knowledge of what the family will sacrifice to save the good name
imperilled by one of its members that makes the money-lender discount
without a word the acceptance that he knows to be a forgery.
A. Z. was the son of a retired colonel. He was a trouble to his people
from his boyhood. Soon after he came of age a position was found for
him in a City office. He led a fast life and gambled, got hold of his
father's cheque-book, forged his father's signature, and obtained five
hundred pounds. Then he confessed what he had done, and the father had
to suffer the loss or allow his son to be criminally prosecuted by the
bank.
He naturally made no communication to the bank, and the paid forged
cheque was debited to his account.
Encouraged by his first success, A. Z., failing to get hold of his
father's cheque-book again, forged the name of an acquaintance,
a wealthy young man, to a bill and discounted it with a West End
money-lender. The amount was a thousand pounds.
A week before the bill came due he left home and wrote his father a
letter--apparently a broken-hearted, penitent letter--in which again he
confessed his crime.
He entreated his father to see the young man whose signature had been
forged and arrange the matter. The young man was the son of a brother
officer of the old colonel's. He was horrified at the discovery of young
Z.'s treachery, but he consented to receive the thousand pounds and take
the bill up with it.
The colonel, in despair, told his daughters--he was a widower--what
had happened. If their brother persisted in his evil courses there was
nothing in front of the family but ruin and shame and humiliation. The
little household was reduced to despair. Night and day they were haunted
by the terror of what the black sheep would do next.
What he did, having squandered the whole of the money he had obtained
by his last forgery, was to swindle tradespeople by giving worthless
cheques.
In every instance he had stated who he was, and the colonel, being
well known, was appealed to by the tradespeople, who did not want to
prosecute if they could get their money.
Again the colonel paid, but his little capital had begun to be seriously
diminished by these continued drains upon it.
"Father," said the eldest girl, as he described the terrible position
in which her brother's conduct had placed them, "Arthur will ruin us. He
will bring us to the gutter. So long as you have a farthing left in the
world he will continue to rob you."
She brooded on it. She began to hate her brother, the cause of all their
misery. She wished that he was dead.
A few months later the young man, as the result of the evil life he was
living, was taken seriously ill. He was suffering from alcoholism, and a
trained nurse was engaged, as it was not safe to leave him.
His sisters went to see him occasionally. One afternoon the elder sister
called. The nurse wanted to go out for half an hour, and the sister
offered to stay with the patient.
A quarter of an hour later the sister rushed suddenly downstairs calling
for help. Her brother had suddenly jumped out of bed, rushed to the
window, flung it open, and leapt out. The window was on the third floor.
The young man was picked up dead.
At the inquest the nurse declared that such an accident ought not to
have happened. Miss ---------- knew that her brother was likely to make
for the window if not restrained--that was a common thing with cases of
the kind. There was a bell in the room, and in the adjoining room was
the sick man's male servant. There should not have been the slightest
difficulty in restraining the would-be suicide, seeing that the window
was fastened and assistance could have been secured in a moment.
The sister explained that she was so horrified when she saw her brother
leap out of bed and make for the window she could do nothing. She nearly
fainted. When she recovered herself her brother was through the window,
and then she rushed out of the room calling for help.
But the fate of the black sheep saved the family. The relatives, who
knew the story, have their own view of what happened. That which was
a mystery to the hired nurse was no mystery to them. The sister
deliberately let her brother go to his death.
It is not always the younger members of a family who are the black
sheep. Sometimes it is the father--the mother--the husband--the wife.
In the days when a great music-hall star was at the height of his fame,
and had fortune at his feet, I saw him in his charming home with his boy
and his two little girls. The star had been an actor, and was a man
of culture and education. He had been separated from his wife for some
years. She had left him in circumstances which entirely released him
from any moral responsibility with regard to her.
His early married life had been wrecked by this woman, who had become
a dipsomaniac. After she left him he devoted himself to his three
children. His delight was in them and in his home.
One night I was passing the music hall at which he was starring. His
brougham was waiting for him at the stage door, and a little crowd had
gathered to see him come out. He came, and there was a cheer, and at
that moment a dissipated-looking woman, with a battered bonnet on her
untidy hair, with tom dress and bedraggled skirts, reeled forward and
caught him by the arm.
"Hulloa!" she shouted. "It's you, is it?"
The "star" went very white as he looked into the drunken woman's face.
He shook himself free from her clutch and stepped hurriedly into the
brougham.
The drunken woman yelled a volley of abuse after him as he drove away.
Then she turned to the crowd and exclaimed--
"I'm his wife--his lawful wife--curse him!--and that's how he treats
me."
For ten years the terror of meeting this woman embittered the life of
a great popular favourite. It was useless for him to give her money.
It went in drink. He had once after she left him given her a home for
herself. In six weeks she had sold every stick, and during that time
she had twice been locked up and fined for being drank and creating a
disturbance in the street.
She would meet him outside a hall, then disappear for months, to turn up
again and publicly claim him as her husband before a crowd of people.
The woman died some years ago in a workhouse infirmary. In her last
illness she said who she was, and the great music-hall star was
communicated with. He bought a grave for her, and on the tombstone above
it he had these words placed:
"Sacred to the memory of ------ -----------, wife of ----------
-----------."
Dead, he could acknowledge her. Living, his haunting terror was that he
might meet her, and she might call him husband.
In France, when the family fortune and the family honour are being
imperilled by a member, a family council can be called, and can invoke
the aid of the law to limit the powers of the offending individual. Here
no such system exists. A man who has lost all moral control over himself
may squander his substance and leave his children beggars. A young
man succeeding to a considerable estate may get rid of it in insane
extravagance in a year or two. A widow left with the control of her dead
husband's fortune may embark on foolish speculations or become the
dupe of swindlers and leave the sons and daughters of her dead husband
without a farthing in the world.
Mr. B--------, who had a high financial position in the City, died and
left a widow and four children, all girls. Fortunately, he settled a
small sum on each of the girls, but the bulk of his fortune went to the
widow.
She was forty-two when her husband died; the eldest girl was nineteen
and the youngest fourteen.
Soon after her widowhood Mrs. B-------- took to drink. Now began a
purgatory for the daughters. The mother would go out every morning
and be absent all day. At night she would return staggering, helpless,
hopelessly intoxicated.
Sometimes she would be brought home by a policeman. One night a
constable found her just before midnight lying on her own doorstep with
a black bag in her hand. The black bag, which was half open, contained
£700 in notes and gold. The unhappy woman had been to the bank in the
afternoon and cashed a cheque for £800. A hundred pounds was missing.
What had become of it she herself when she became sober was unable to
say. She couldn't remember.
So things went on for two years. Night after night these young girls sat
in their home listening to every footstep, waiting for their mother to
return.
One night she did not come home at all. The next morning they heard she
had been locked up. The police had found her lying in the street with a
large sum of money on her, and had locked her up for her own safety.
In her home her presence was often more terrible than her absence. In
her delirium she would threaten to kill her daughters. The terrified
girls would lock themselves in a bedroom and remain there sometimes for
days together, fearing their mother's violence.
In her right senses she loved her children tenderly, and then she was
the best of mothers. But as time went on her intervals of sanity became
rarer and rarer.
The first day of peace these poor young ladies knew was that on which
they followed their mother to her grave.
Mr. H------ has two sons, one a well-known barrister, the other a
physician. Both have won for themselves a position in the world. But
both have one great and constant terror. Their father is the black sheep
of the family.
Up to the age of fifty Mr. H------ was a merchant of repute in the City.
He had apparently an ample fortune, and he brought his children up in
luxury. His wife died when he was fifty-one, and a year after he became
involved in a long and expensive lawsuit.
Soon afterwards a remarkable change came over him. He neglected his
business, made questionable acquaintances, and began to drink heavily.
Then his affairs became involved. The business was given up. He sold his
house and went to live in chambers. All his children had previously left
him; the girls had married, the sons were established--one, as I have
said, being a barrister, the other a doctor.
One day, calling at his father's chambers, the barrister was astonished
to learn that he had given them up and gone away.
The family were alarmed, knowing something of their
The missing merchant was discovered living in a low-class foreign hotel
in Soho.
He gave no explanation of his conduct, but allowed himself to be taken
to his son's house--the doctor's.
Some time afterwards the doctor was astonished on returning home to find
a man in possession of his home. The man had been put in for a debt
of £600 which the merchant had contracted, stating that the house--the
doctor's--was his residence.
The doctor, with the aid of a solicitor, got rid of the bailiff, and
eventually to avoid a scandal he and the barrister paid the £600 between
them.
A month later the doctor found another man in possession, this time for
£100. His father had borrowed a hundred of a money-lender, giving his
son's address as his own.
An investigation made showed that the once prosperous merchant had
so hopelessly involved his affairs that he was practically without
resources, and it was impossible to ascertain what liabilities he was
incurring.
In five yean the sons between them paid over £10,000 to avoid the
scandal which would have arisen had their father's peculiar business
transactions come into court.
For both of them life had become a constant harass and strain. They
could not prevent their father getting credit by publicly advertising
that he had no resources. Such a course would have brought about the
very publicity they were anxious to avoid.
And the father, finding that the sons eventually paid on every occasion,
however much they protested at first, continued to incur liabilities.
Many of his transactions were morally insane if not legally so.
One of his last feats was to sign an acceptance for £500 and give it to
a man he met in the smoking-room of an hotel to get discounted for him.
He and this man divided the proceeds between them. He was introduced to
his new financial agent one Monday afternoon by somebody whose name he
forgot, and on Tuesday he handed him the bill.
This time, when proceedings were taken on the bill, the sons father's
newly-developed habits, and inquiries were made.
But certain allegations were made, and, to avoid "unpleasantness," they
compounded and paid £300 to get the bill back.
When I last heard of the black sheep father he had been "converted," and
was thinking of joining the Salvation Army.
The sons are nervous. They have an idea that they will one day meet
their father in a scarlet uniform beating a big drum.
But even that would be a relief, if he devotes himself to music and
abandons finance.
In the lives of the people lie the Mysteries of modern London, and the
Black Sheep go to the making of many of them.