It is easy to understand the pitiful appeal of 500 women out of Holloway
Prison who begged the Duchess of Bedford to help to close all
public-houses during the war. They know in their hearts of tragedies
such as these, in which mothers and children die while the fathers fight
and the Drink Trade goes on merrily.
A soldier’s wife in Sunderland drew £12 arrears of Army pay, and she
and her mother began to drink it away. She drew her pay on Friday,
was carried home drunk on Saturday, gave birth to twins on Sunday
morning, and died on Sunday night. The twins died a week or two
after, and a week or two after that the soldier came home from the
trenches to find his family in the grave.
_Facts in Sunderland papers, 1917_
Two women went drinking in Chester on a Sunday night, a soldier’s
mother and a soldier’s wife. They had five whiskies each, and fell
drunk in the street. One slept all night on a sofa, and the other
lay on the floor, shouting and swearing. Her husband propped her up
with a mat, and for hours she lay shrieking. In the morning she was
dead. The publican was fined £5.
_Facts in “Chester Chronicle,” February 17, 1917_
The wife of a Yorkshire soldier was drowned while drunk at
Sheffield. She started drinking with another soldier’s wife
disappeared with a drunken man, and her death was a mystery.
_Facts in “Sheffield Independent,” April 26, 1916_
At an inquest on the bodies of a soldier’s twin children, both dead
from chronic wasting, it was stated that the mother had 34_s._ a
week, and both she and her husband drank. The mother had had four
children in fifteen months, and all were dead.
_Records of Battersea Coroner, October 1915_
In one street in London where there were one day four convictions
for drunkenness, a woman carried a sick baby into a public house. As
she stood at the bar the little baby died, but the mother went on
drinking, with the dead child in her arms.
_Records of Charity Organisation Society_
The wife of a highly-esteemed sergeant-major fighting in France was
found lying drunk. Her four children, shockingly neglected, were put
in a home, but she took them out, went on drinking, and received
soldiers at her house. In a few weeks her husband heard in the
trenches that his wife had died from drinking.
_Records of West Surrey Coroner, March 1917_
A soldier left three children at home. He had been earning £1 a
week, but his wife received 32_s._ 6_d._ a week. She drank it away,
neglected the children, and died in an asylum while her husband was
in France.
_Records of Claybury Asylum_
The little child of a soldier in France died in Guy’s Hospital from
burns. The mother said she could not buy a fireguard. While she was
absent the baby was burned, and the mother, returning in a drunken
state carrying a can of beer, said, “A good job!”
_Records of Southwark Coroner, December 1915_
A soldier’s widow with six children, an Army pension of 30_s._ a
week, and her eldest boy’s wages of 30_s._, drinks every night with
a married man who has a respectable, clean, and sober wife with
eight children and a ninth lately born—born prematurely as a result
of her husband’s beating her. The child bore the marks of his
violence, and died in two months.
_Records of Shaftesbury Society_
The young wife of a soldier was brought from prison to be tried for
manslaughter of her baby, who had died in the infirmary from
neglect. She spent her time in the publichouses, and laughed when
the children were taken to the infirmary. She went out one day to
fetch a bottle of whisky and as she drank with a neighbour she said
she knew the baby would die. The doctor said the child’s skin was
hanging in folds on the bones.
_Facts in the “Observer,” January 23, 1916_
A soldier’s wife drank continuously while her child wasted away,
left the tiny baby alone in the house while she went for beer, and a
policeman found her lying drunk across the dead child’s body.
_Records of Barnsley Coroner, November, 1916_
The mother of two children whose father was fighting in France gave
way to drink in his absence, neglected her children and left them in
grave moral danger, and committed suicide.
_Records of an Orphan Home_
A soldier’s baby starved slowly to death as the mother drank away
his pay, and while the child lay in its coffin the mother was out
drinking.
_West Bromwich Police Records, June 1915_
A munition worker at Newcastle was grievously upset by the drinking
habits of his wife. The police left a summons for her and she
disappeared. Two days later her body was found in the Tyne. The man
broke down at the inquest, saying, between his sobs: “She was such a
good wife to me for 20 years, and reared a good family before she
took to drink.”
_Records of Newcastle Coroner, Summer 1916_
The wife of a corporation workman at Sheffield, home from the
trenches with six gunshot wounds and three pieces of shell in his
body, found that his wife had given way to drink and starved her
five children. She was sent to prison for six months.
_Police Records of Sheffield, November 3, 1915_
A soldier’s wife who had spent the greater part of £100 Army money
in drink was sent to prison for neglecting her children. Almost
everything in the house was pawned, including the children’s
clothes; and the woman began to drink at five o’clock in the
morning, and went on drinking all day.
_Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 10, 1915_
A soldier’s wife in Monmouthshire, with £3 9_s._ a week, was found
sodden with drink, while the soldier’s eight children were in rags
starving by day and huddling up in one bed by night.
_Facts in “Westminster Gazette,” July 22, 1916_
A smart tidy woman in a London suburb, whose husband is fighting in
Mesopotamia, has £2 10_s._ 6_d._ a week. She used to love her
children and had a happy home, but she drinks away her Army pay,
lives with a married man who has six children, and has become a
drunken slattern. The other wife is beaten and neglected, and the
soldier’s children have gone to the workhouse.
_Records of Shaftesbury Society_
The four children of a soldier in Dublin were found hungry and
shivering with cold while the mother was drinking. Several times she
had let her baby fall while reeling with it in the street.
_Facts in “Dublin Evening Herald,” October 20, 1916_
At the trial of a soldier’s wife for drinking and neglecting seven
children, it was stated that a child of eleven was left in charge of
a baby a fortnight old while the mother was drinking. At night all
the children were heard screaming. The house was in utter darkness,
and there was an escape of gas. Some men went in and turned off the
gas, and at last the mother came stumbling out of a publichouse
across the road.
_Facts in “Sheffield Star,” November 25, 1915_
“Your husband is fighting for his country, and his children have the
right to be protected,” said the Chairman of the Chesterfield Bench
to a soldier’s wife. Her children were found starving while she was
drinking, and one day the little boy of three was found crouching
naked inside the fender, trying to get warm. The police described
the house as foul from top to bottom, with a heap of horrible rags
for a bed, and a food cupboard that made the house unendurable when
the door was opened.
_Facts in “Yorkshire Telegraph,” March 24, 1916_
The wife of a missing soldier was sent to prison at Chesterfield for
neglecting three children between 13 years and 16 weeks old. She had
gone astray through drink, and the youngest child, born under
terrible conditions, was not her husband’s. It was found lying on a
filthy bed, and its drunken mother, to satisfy its pangs of hunger,
had given it pennyworths of laudanum. Eleven people slept in two
foul bedrooms.
_Chesterfield Police Records, October 9, 1916_
Five hundred children of soldiers are being cared for in the great
Homes founded by Mr. Quarrier in Scotland, and most of them are
there because of drinking mothers.
_Facts in Reports_
A soldier’s wife at Biggleswade spent her allowance on drink and
left her three children locked up in the house for days at a time.
_Police Court Records of Biggleswade, September 1915_
A soldier’s wife was found reeling in the streets of Dublin with a
baby in her arms. At her home were found four other children,
cruelly neglected.
_Facts in “Dublin Mail,” August 16, 1916_
Nineteen hundred children of soldiers have come into the care of the
N.S.P.C.C., mainly through drink, since the war began.
_Records of the N.S.P.C.C._