THE CARTER AND THE CARPENTER
The Carter, with his clean-cut face, chin beard, and shaved upper lip,
I should have taken in the United States for anything from a master
workman to a well-to-do farmer. The Carpenter—well, I should have taken
him for a carpenter. He looked it, lean and wiry, with shrewd,
observant eyes, and hands that had grown twisted to the handles of
tools through forty-seven years’ work at the trade. The chief
difficulty with these men was that they were old, and that their
children, instead of growing up to take care of them, had died. Their
years had told on them, and they had been forced out of the whirl of
industry by the younger and stronger competitors who had taken their
places.
These two men, turned away from the casual ward of Whitechapel
Workhouse, were bound with me for Poplar Workhouse. Not much of a show,
they thought, but to chance it was all that remained to us. It was
Poplar, or the streets and night. Both men were anxious for a bed, for
they were “about gone,” as they phrased it. The Carter, fifty-eight
years of age, had spent the last three nights without shelter or sleep,
while the Carpenter, sixty-five years of age, had been out five nights.
But, O dear, soft people, full of meat and blood, with white beds and
airy rooms waiting you each night, how can I make you know what it is
to suffer as you would suffer if you spent a weary night on London’s
streets! Believe me, you would think a thousand centuries had come and
gone before the east paled into dawn; you would shiver till you were
ready to cry aloud with the pain of each aching muscle; and you would
marvel that you could endure so much and live. Should you rest upon a
bench, and your tired eyes close, depend upon it the policeman would
rouse you and gruffly order you to “move on.” You may rest upon the
bench, and benches are few and far between; but if rest means sleep, on
you must go, dragging your tired body through the endless streets.
Should you, in desperate slyness, seek some forlorn alley or dark
passageway and lie down, the omnipresent policeman will rout you out
just the same. It is his business to rout you out. It is a law of the
powers that be that you shall be routed out.
But when the dawn came, the nightmare over, you would hale you home to
refresh yourself, and until you died you would tell the story of your
adventure to groups of admiring friends. It would grow into a mighty
story. Your little eight-hour night would become an Odyssey and you a
Homer.
Not so with these homeless ones who walked to Poplar Workhouse with me.
And there are thirty-five thousand of them, men and women, in London
Town this night. Please don’t remember it as you go to bed; if you are
as soft as you ought to be you may not rest so well as usual. But for
old men of sixty, seventy, and eighty, ill-fed, with neither meat nor
blood, to greet the dawn unrefreshed, and to stagger through the day in
mad search for crusts, with relentless night rushing down upon them
again, and to do this five nights and days—O dear, soft people, full of
meat and blood, how can you ever understand?
I walked up Mile End Road between the Carter and the Carpenter. Mile
End Road is a wide thoroughfare, cutting the heart of East London, and
there were tens of thousands of people abroad on it. I tell you this so
that you may fully appreciate what I shall describe in the next
paragraph. As I say, we walked along, and when they grew bitter and
cursed the land, I cursed with them, cursed as an American waif would
curse, stranded in a strange and terrible land. And, as I tried to lead
them to believe, and succeeded in making them believe, they took me for
a “seafaring man,” who had spent his money in riotous living, lost his
clothes (no unusual occurrence with seafaring men ashore), and was
temporarily broke while looking for a ship. This accounted for my
ignorance of English ways in general and casual wards in particular,
and my curiosity concerning the same.
The Carter was hard put to keep the pace at which we walked (he told me
that he had eaten nothing that day), but the Carpenter, lean and
hungry, his grey and ragged overcoat flapping mournfully in the breeze,
swung on in a long and tireless stride which reminded me strongly of
the plains wolf or coyote. Both kept their eyes upon the pavement as
they walked and talked, and every now and then one or the other would
stoop and pick something up, never missing the stride the while. I
thought it was cigar and cigarette stumps they were collecting, and for
some time took no notice. Then I did notice.
_From the slimy, spittle-drenched, sidewalk, they were picking up bits
of orange peel, apple skin, and grape stems, and, they were eating
them. The pits of greengage plums they cracked between their teeth for
the kernels inside. They picked up stray bits of bread the size of
peas, apple cores so black and dirty one would not take them to be
apple cores, and these things these two men took into their mouths, and
chewed them, and swallowed them; and this, between six and seven
o’clock in the evening of August 20, year of our Lord 1902, in the
heart of the greatest, wealthiest, and most powerful empire the world
has ever seen_.
These two men talked. They were not fools, they were merely old. And,
naturally, their guts a-reek with pavement offal, they talked of bloody
revolution. They talked as anarchists, fanatics, and madmen would talk.
And who shall blame them? In spite of my three good meals that day, and
the snug bed I could occupy if I wished, and my social philosophy, and
my evolutionary belief in the slow development and metamorphosis of
things—in spite of all this, I say, I felt impelled to talk rot with
them or hold my tongue. Poor fools! Not of their sort are revolutions
bred. And when they are dead and dust, which will be shortly, other
fools will talk bloody revolution as they gather offal from the
spittle-drenched sidewalk along Mile End Road to Poplar Workhouse.
Being a foreigner, and a young man, the Carter and the Carpenter
explained things to me and advised me. Their advice, by the way, was
brief, and to the point; it was to get out of the country. “As fast as
God’ll let me,” I assured them; “I’ll hit only the high places, till
you won’t be able to see my trail for smoke.” They felt the force of my
figures, rather than understood them, and they nodded their heads
approvingly.
“Actually make a man a criminal against ’is will,” said the Carpenter.
“’Ere I am, old, younger men takin’ my place, my clothes gettin’
shabbier an’ shabbier, an’ makin’ it ’arder every day to get a job. I
go to the casual ward for a bed. Must be there by two or three in the
afternoon or I won’t get in. You saw what happened to-day. What chance
does that give me to look for work? S’pose I do get into the casual
ward? Keep me in all day to-morrow, let me out mornin’ o’ next day.
What then? The law sez I can’t get in another casual ward that night
less’n ten miles distant. Have to hurry an’ walk to be there in time
that day. What chance does that give me to look for a job? S’pose I
don’t walk. S’pose I look for a job? In no time there’s night come, an’
no bed. No sleep all night, nothin’ to eat, what shape am I in in the
mornin’ to look for work? Got to make up my sleep in the park somehow”
(the vision of Christ’s Church, Spitalfield, was strong on me) “an’ get
something to eat. An’ there I am! Old, down, an’ no chance to get up.”
“Used to be a toll-gate ’ere,” said the Carter. “Many’s the time I’ve
paid my toll ’ere in my cartin’ days.”
“I’ve ’ad three ’a’penny rolls in two days,” the Carpenter announced,
after a long pause in the conversation. “Two of them I ate yesterday,
an’ the third to-day,” he concluded, after another long pause.
“I ain’t ’ad anything to-day,” said the Carter. “An’ I’m fagged out. My
legs is hurtin’ me something fearful.”
“The roll you get in the ‘spike’ is that ’ard you can’t eat it nicely
with less’n a pint of water,” said the Carpenter, for my benefit. And,
on asking him what the “spike” was, he answered, “The casual ward. It’s
a cant word, you know.”
But what surprised me was that he should have the word “cant” in his
vocabulary, a vocabulary that I found was no mean one before we parted.
I asked them what I might expect in the way of treatment, if we
succeeded in getting into the Poplar Workhouse, and between them I was
supplied with much information. Having taken a cold bath on entering, I
would be given for supper six ounces of bread and “three parts of
skilly.” “Three parts” means three-quarters of a pint, and “skilly” is
a fluid concoction of three quarts of oatmeal stirred into three
buckets and a half of hot water.
“Milk and sugar, I suppose, and a silver spoon?” I queried.
“No fear. Salt’s what you’ll get, an’ I’ve seen some places where you’d
not get any spoon. ’Old ’er up an’ let ’er run down, that’s ’ow they do
it.”
“You do get good skilly at ’Ackney,” said the Carter.
“Oh, wonderful skilly, that,” praised the Carpenter, and each looked
eloquently at the other.
“Flour an’ water at St. George’s in the East,” said the Carter.
The Carpenter nodded. He had tried them all.
“Then what?” I demanded
And I was informed that I was sent directly to bed. “Call you at half
after five in the mornin’, an’ you get up an’ take a ‘sluice’—if
there’s any soap. Then breakfast, same as supper, three parts o’ skilly
an’ a six-ounce loaf.”
“’Tisn’t always six ounces,” corrected the Carter.
“’Tisn’t, no; an’ often that sour you can ’ardly eat it. When first I
started I couldn’t eat the skilly nor the bread, but now I can eat my
own an’ another man’s portion.”
“I could eat three other men’s portions,” said the Carter. “I ’aven’t
’ad a bit this blessed day.”
“Then what?”
“Then you’ve got to do your task, pick four pounds of oakum, or clean
an’ scrub, or break ten to eleven hundredweight o’ stones. I don’t ’ave
to break stones; I’m past sixty, you see. They’ll make you do it,
though. You’re young an’ strong.”
“What I don’t like,” grumbled the Carter, “is to be locked up in a cell
to pick oakum. It’s too much like prison.”
“But suppose, after you’ve had your night’s sleep, you refuse to pick
oakum, or break stones, or do any work at all?” I asked.
“No fear you’ll refuse the second time; they’ll run you in,” answered
the Carpenter. “Wouldn’t advise you to try it on, my lad.”
“Then comes dinner,” he went on. “Eight ounces of bread, one and a arf
ounces of cheese, an’ cold water. Then you finish your task an’ ’ave
supper, same as before, three parts o’ skilly an’ six ounces o’ bread.
Then to bed, six o’clock, an’ next mornin’ you’re turned loose,
provided you’ve finished your task.”
We had long since left Mile End Road, and after traversing a gloomy
maze of narrow, winding streets, we came to Poplar Workhouse. On a low
stone wall we spread our handkerchiefs, and each in his handkerchief
put all his worldly possessions, with the exception of the “bit o’
baccy” down his sock. And then, as the last light was fading from the
drab-coloured sky, the wind blowing cheerless and cold, we stood, with
our pitiful little bundles in our hands, a forlorn group at the
workhouse door.
Three working girls came along, and one looked pityingly at me; as she
passed I followed her with my eyes, and she still looked pityingly back
at me. The old men she did not notice. Dear Christ, she pitied me,
young and vigorous and strong, but she had no pity for the two old men
who stood by my side! She was a young woman, and I was a young man, and
what vague sex promptings impelled her to pity me put her sentiment on
the lowest plane. Pity for old men is an altruistic feeling, and
besides, the workhouse door is the accustomed place for old men. So she
showed no pity for them, only for me, who deserved it least or not at
all. Not in honour do grey hairs go down to the grave in London Town.
On one side the door was a bell handle, on the other side a press
button.
“Ring the bell,” said the Carter to me.
And just as I ordinarily would at anybody’s door, I pulled out the
handle and rang a peal.
“Oh! Oh!” they cried in one terrified voice. “Not so ’ard!”
I let go, and they looked reproachfully at me, as though I had
imperilled their chance for a bed and three parts of skilly. Nobody
came. Luckily it was the wrong bell, and I felt better.
“Press the button,” I said to the Carpenter.
“No, no, wait a bit,” the Carter hurriedly interposed.
From all of which I drew the conclusion that a poorhouse porter, who
commonly draws a yearly salary of from seven to nine pounds, is a very
finicky and important personage, and cannot be treated too fastidiously
by—paupers.
So we waited, ten times a decent interval, when the Carter stealthily
advanced a timid forefinger to the button, and gave it the faintest,
shortest possible push. I have looked at waiting men where life or
death was in the issue; but anxious suspense showed less plainly on
their faces than it showed on the faces of these two men as they waited
on the coming of the porter.
He came. He barely looked at us. “Full up,” he said and shut the door.
“Another night of it,” groaned the Carpenter. In the dim light the
Carter looked wan and grey.
Indiscriminate charity is vicious, say the professional
philanthropists. Well, I resolved to be vicious.
“Come on; get your knife out and come here,” I said to the Carter,
drawing him into a dark alley.
He glared at me in a frightened manner, and tried to draw back.
Possibly he took me for a latter-day Jack-the-Ripper, with a penchant
for elderly male paupers. Or he may have thought I was inveigling him
into the commission of some desperate crime. Anyway, he was frightened.
It will be remembered, at the outset, that I sewed a pound inside my
stoker’s singlet under the armpit. This was my emergency fund, and I
was now called upon to use it for the first time.
Not until I had gone through the acts of a contortionist, and shown the
round coin sewed in, did I succeed in getting the Carter’s help. Even
then his hand was trembling so that I was afraid he would cut me
instead of the stitches, and I was forced to take the knife away and do
it myself. Out rolled the gold piece, a fortune in their hungry eyes;
and away we stampeded for the nearest coffee-house.
Of course I had to explain to them that I was merely an investigator, a
social student, seeking to find out how the other half lived. And at
once they shut up like clams. I was not of their kind; my speech had
changed, the tones of my voice were different, in short, I was a
superior, and they were superbly class conscious.
“What will you have?” I asked, as the waiter came for the order.
“Two slices an’ a cup of tea,” meekly said the Carter.
“Two slices an’ a cup of tea,” meekly said the Carpenter.
Stop a moment, and consider the situation. Here were two men, invited
by me into the coffee-house. They had seen my gold piece, and they
could understand that I was no pauper. One had eaten a ha’penny roll
that day, the other had eaten nothing. And they called for “two slices
an’ a cup of tea!” Each man had given a tu’penny order. “Two slices,”
by the way, means two slices of bread and butter.
This was the same degraded humility that had characterised their
attitude toward the poorhouse porter. But I wouldn’t have it. Step by
step I increased their order—eggs, rashers of bacon, more eggs, more
bacon, more tea, more slices and so forth—they denying wistfully all
the while that they cared for anything more, and devouring it
ravenously as fast as it arrived.
“First cup o’ tea I’ve ’ad in a fortnight,” said the Carter.
“Wonderful tea, that,” said the Carpenter.
They each drank two pints of it, and I assure you that it was slops. It
resembled tea less than lager beer resembles champagne. Nay, it was
“water-bewitched,” and did not resemble tea at all.
It was curious, after the first shock, to notice the effect the food
had on them. At first they were melancholy, and talked of the divers
times they had contemplated suicide. The Carter, not a week before, had
stood on the bridge and looked at the water, and pondered the question.
Water, the Carpenter insisted with heat, was a bad route. He, for one,
he knew, would struggle. A bullet was “’andier,” but how under the sun
was he to get hold of a revolver? That was the rub.
They grew more cheerful as the hot “tea” soaked in, and talked more
about themselves. The Carter had buried his wife and children, with the
exception of one son, who grew to manhood and helped him in his little
business. Then the thing happened. The son, a man of thirty-one, died
of the smallpox. No sooner was this over than the father came down with
fever and went to the hospital for three months. Then he was done for.
He came out weak, debilitated, no strong young son to stand by him, his
little business gone glimmering, and not a farthing. The thing had
happened, and the game was up. No chance for an old man to start again.
Friends all poor and unable to help. He had tried for work when they
were putting up the stands for the first Coronation parade. “An’ I got
fair sick of the answer: ‘No! no! no!’ It rang in my ears at night when
I tried to sleep, always the same, ‘No! no! no!’” Only the past week he
had answered an advertisement in Hackney, and on giving his age was
told, “Oh, too old, too old by far.”
The Carpenter had been born in the army, where his father had served
twenty-two years. Likewise, his two brothers had gone into the army;
one, troop sergeant-major of the Seventh Hussars, dying in India after
the Mutiny; the other, after nine years under Roberts in the East, had
been lost in Egypt. The Carpenter had not gone into the army, so here
he was, still on the planet.
“But ’ere, give me your ’and,” he said, ripping open his ragged shirt.
“I’m fit for the anatomist, that’s all. I’m wastin’ away, sir, actually
wastin’ away for want of food. Feel my ribs an’ you’ll see.”
I put my hand under his shirt and felt. The skin was stretched like
parchment over the bones, and the sensation produced was for all the
world like running one’s hand over a washboard.
“Seven years o’ bliss I ’ad,” he said. “A good missus and three bonnie
lassies. But they all died. Scarlet fever took the girls inside a
fortnight.”
“After this, sir,” said the Carter, indicating the spread, and desiring
to turn the conversation into more cheerful channels; “after this, I
wouldn’t be able to eat a workhouse breakfast in the morning.”
“Nor I,” agreed the Carpenter, and they fell to discussing belly
delights and the fine dishes their respective wives had cooked in the
old days.
“I’ve gone three days and never broke my fast,” said the Carter.
“And I, five,” his companion added, turning gloomy with the memory of
it. “Five days once, with nothing on my stomach but a bit of orange
peel, an’ outraged nature wouldn’t stand it, sir, an’ I near died.
Sometimes, walkin’ the streets at night, I’ve ben that desperate I’ve
made up my mind to win the horse or lose the saddle. You know what I
mean, sir—to commit some big robbery. But when mornin’ come, there was
I, too weak from ’unger an’ cold to ’arm a mouse.”
As their poor vitals warmed to the food, they began to expand and wax
boastful, and to talk politics. I can only say that they talked
politics as well as the average middle-class man, and a great deal
better than some of the middle-class men I have heard. What surprised
me was the hold they had on the world, its geography and peoples, and
on recent and contemporaneous history. As I say, they were not fools,
these two men. They were merely old, and their children had undutifully
failed to grow up and give them a place by the fire.
One last incident, as I bade them good-bye on the corner, happy with a
couple of shillings in their pockets and the certain prospect of a bed
for the night. Lighting a cigarette, I was about to throw away the
burning match when the Carter reached for it. I proffered him the box,
but he said, “Never mind, won’t waste it, sir.” And while he lighted
the cigarette I had given him, the Carpenter hurried with the filling
of his pipe in order to have a go at the same match.
“It’s wrong to waste,” said he.
“Yes,” I said, but I was thinking of the wash-board ribs over which I
had run my hand.