A WINNER OF THE VICTORIA CROSS
I have found that it is not easy to get into the casual ward of the
workhouse. I have made two attempts now, and I shall shortly make a
third. The first time I started out at seven o’clock in the evening
with four shillings in my pocket. Herein I committed two errors. In the
first place, the applicant for admission to the casual ward must be
destitute, and as he is subjected to a rigorous search, he must really
be destitute; and fourpence, much less four shillings, is sufficient
affluence to disqualify him. In the second place, I made the mistake of
tardiness. Seven o’clock in the evening is too late in the day for a
pauper to get a pauper’s bed.
For the benefit of gently nurtured and innocent folk, let me explain
what a ward is. It is a building where the homeless, bedless, penniless
man, if he be lucky, may _casually_ rest his weary bones, and then work
like a navvy next day to pay for it.
My second attempt to break into the casual ward began more
auspiciously. I started in the middle of the afternoon, accompanied by
the burning young socialist and another friend, and all I had in my
pocket was thru’pence. They piloted me to the Whitechapel Workhouse, at
which I peered from around a friendly corner. It was a few minutes past
five in the afternoon but already a long and melancholy line was
formed, which strung out around the corner of the building and out of
sight.
It was a most woeful picture, men and women waiting in the cold grey
end of the day for a pauper’s shelter from the night, and I confess it
almost unnerved me. Like the boy before the dentist’s door, I suddenly
discovered a multitude of reasons for being elsewhere. Some hints of
the struggle going on within must have shown in my face, for one of my
companions said, “Don’t funk; you can do it.”
Of course I could do it, but I became aware that even thru’pence in my
pocket was too lordly a treasure for such a throng; and, in order that
all invidious distinctions might be removed, I emptied out the coppers.
Then I bade good-bye to my friends, and with my heart going pit-a-pat,
slouched down the street and took my place at the end of the line.
Woeful it looked, this line of poor folk tottering on the steep pitch
to death; how woeful it was I did not dream.
Next to me stood a short, stout man. Hale and hearty, though aged,
strong-featured, with the tough and leathery skin produced by long
years of sunbeat and weatherbeat, his was the unmistakable sea face and
eyes; and at once there came to me a bit of Kipling’s “Galley Slave”:—
“By the brand upon my shoulder, by the gall of clinging steel;
By the welt the whips have left me, by the scars that never heal;
By eyes grown old with staring through the sun-wash on the brine,
I am paid in full for service . . . ”
How correct I was in my surmise, and how peculiarly appropriate the
verse was, you shall learn.
“I won’t stand it much longer, I won’t,” he was complaining to the man
on the other side of him. “I’ll smash a windy, a big ’un, an’ get run
in for fourteen days. Then I’ll have a good place to sleep, never fear,
an’ better grub than you get here. Though I’d miss my bit of
baccy”—this as an after-thought, and said regretfully and resignedly.
“I’ve been out two nights now,” he went on; “wet to the skin night
before last, an’ I can’t stand it much longer. I’m gettin’ old, an’
some mornin’ they’ll pick me up dead.”
He whirled with fierce passion on me: “Don’t you ever let yourself grow
old, lad. Die when you’re young, or you’ll come to this. I’m tellin’
you sure. Seven an’ eighty years am I, an’ served my country like a
man. Three good-conduct stripes and the Victoria Cross, an’ this is
what I get for it. I wish I was dead, I wish I was dead. Can’t come any
too quick for me, I tell you.”
The moisture rushed into his eyes, but, before the other man could
comfort him, he began to hum a lilting sea song as though there was no
such thing as heartbreak in the world.
Given encouragement, this is the story he told while waiting in line at
the workhouse after two nights of exposure in the streets.
As a boy he had enlisted in the British navy, and for two score years
and more served faithfully and well. Names, dates, commanders, ports,
ships, engagements, and battles, rolled from his lips in a steady
stream, but it is beyond me to remember them all, for it is not quite
in keeping to take notes at the poorhouse door. He had been through the
“First War in China,” as he termed it; had enlisted with the East India
Company and served ten years in India; was back in India again, in the
English navy, at the time of the Mutiny; had served in the Burmese War
and in the Crimea; and all this in addition to having fought and toiled
for the English flag pretty well over the rest of the globe.
Then the thing happened. A little thing, it could only be traced back
to first causes: perhaps the lieutenant’s breakfast had not agreed with
him; or he had been up late the night before; or his debts were
pressing; or the commander had spoken brusquely to him. The point is,
that on this particular day the lieutenant was irritable. The sailor,
with others, was “setting up” the fore rigging.
Now, mark you, the sailor had been over forty years in the navy, had
three good-conduct stripes, and possessed the Victoria Cross for
distinguished service in battle; so he could not have been such an
altogether bad sort of a sailorman. The lieutenant was irritable; the
lieutenant called him a name—well, not a nice sort of name. It referred
to his mother. When I was a boy it was our boys’ code to fight like
little demons should such an insult be given our mothers; and many men
have died in my part of the world for calling other men this name.
However, the lieutenant called the sailor this name. At that moment it
chanced the sailor had an iron lever or bar in his hands. He promptly
struck the lieutenant over the head with it, knocking him out of the
rigging and overboard.
And then, in the man’s own words: “I saw what I had done. I knew the
Regulations, and I said to myself, ‘It’s all up with you, Jack, my boy;
so here goes.’ An’ I jumped over after him, my mind made up to drown us
both. An’ I’d ha’ done it, too, only the pinnace from the flagship was
just comin’ alongside. Up we came to the top, me a hold of him an’
punchin’ him. This was what settled for me. If I hadn’t ben strikin’
him, I could have claimed that, seein’ what I had done, I jumped over
to save him.”
Then came the court-martial, or whatever name a sea trial goes by. He
recited his sentence, word for word, as though memorised and gone over
in bitterness many times. And here it is, for the sake of discipline
and respect to officers not always gentlemen, the punishment of a man
who was guilty of manhood. To be reduced to the rank of ordinary
seaman; to be debarred all prize-money due him; to forfeit all rights
to pension; to resign the Victoria Cross; to be discharged from the
navy with a good character (this being his first offence); to receive
fifty lashes; and to serve two years in prison.
“I wish I had drowned that day, I wish to God I had,” he concluded, as
the line moved up and we passed around the corner.
At last the door came in sight, through which the paupers were being
admitted in bunches. And here I learned a surprising thing: _this being
Wednesday, none of us would be released till Friday morning_.
Furthermore, and oh, you tobacco users, take heed: _we would not be
permitted to take in any tobacco_. This we would have to surrender as
we entered. Sometimes, I was told, it was returned on leaving and
sometimes it was destroyed.
The old man-of-war’s man gave me a lesson. Opening his pouch, he
emptied the tobacco (a pitiful quantity) into a piece of paper. This,
snugly and flatly wrapped, went down his sock inside his shoe. Down
went my piece of tobacco inside my sock, for forty hours without
tobacco is a hardship all tobacco users will understand.
Again and again the line moved up, and we were slowly but surely
approaching the wicket. At the moment we happened to be standing on an
iron grating, and a man appearing underneath, the old sailor called
down to him,—
“How many more do they want?”
“Twenty-four,” came the answer.
We looked ahead anxiously and counted. Thirty-four were ahead of us.
Disappointment and consternation dawned upon the faces about me. It is
not a nice thing, hungry and penniless, to face a sleepless night in
the streets. But we hoped against hope, till, when ten stood outside
the wicket, the porter turned us away.
“Full up,” was what he said, as he banged the door.
Like a flash, for all his eighty-seven years, the old sailor was
speeding away on the desperate chance of finding shelter elsewhere. I
stood and debated with two other men, wise in the knowledge of casual
wards, as to where we should go. They decided on the Poplar Workhouse,
three miles away, and we started off.
As we rounded the corner, one of them said, “I could a’ got in ’ere
to-day. I come by at one o’clock, an’ the line was beginnin’ to form
then—pets, that’s what they are. They let ’m in, the same ones, night
upon night.”