IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE.
To the London mind nothing is more certain than that Trafalgar Square,
which may be regarded as the real focus of the city, is unrivalled in
situation and surroundings. "The finest site in Europe," one hears on
every side, and there is reason for the faith. In spite of the fact that
the National Gallery which it fronts is a singularly defective and
unimpressive piece of architecture, it hardly weakens the impression,
though the traveller facing it recalls inevitably a criticism made many
years ago: "This unhappy structure may be said to have everything it
ought not to have, and nothing which it ought to have. It possesses
windows without glass, a cupola without size, a portico without height,
pepper boxes without pepper, and the finest site in Europe without
anything to show upon it."
In spite of all this, to which the pilgrim must at once agree, the
Square itself, with the Nelson Pillar and the noble lions at its base,
nobler for their very simplicity; its fountains and its outlook on the
beautiful portico of St. Martin's, the busy Strand and the great
buildings rising all about, is all that is claimed for it, and the
traveller welcomes any chance that takes him through it. Treasures of
art are at its back, and within short radius, every possibility of
business or pleasure, embodied in magnificent hotels, theatres,
warehouses, is for the throng that flows unceasingly through these main
arteries of the city's life.
This is one phase of what may be seen in Trafalgar Square. But with
early autumn and the shortening days and the steadily increasing
pressure of that undercurrent of want and misery through which strange
flotsam and jetsam come to the surface, one saw, on the long benches or
crouched on the asphalt pavement, lines of men and women sitting
silently, making no appeal to passers-by, but, as night fell, crouching
lower in their thin garments or wrapping old placards or any sack or
semblance of covering about them, losing memory in fitful sleep and
waking with dawn to a hopeless day. This was the sight that Trafalgar
Square had for those who passed through it, and who at last began to
question, "Why is it? Who are they? They don't seem to beg. What does it
mean?"
The Square presently overflowed, and in any and every sheltered spot the
same silent lines lay down at night along the Thames Embankment, in any
covered court or passage, men rushing with early dawn to fight for
places at the dock gates, breaking arms or dislocating shoulders often
in the struggle, and turning away with pale faces, as they saw the
hoped-for chance given to a neighbor, to carry their tale to the hungry
women whose office was to wait. The beggars pursued their usual course,
but it was quite plain that these men and women had no affinity with
them save in rags. Day by day the numbers swelled. "Who are they? What
does it mean?" still sounded, and at last the right phrase was found,
and the answer came: "They are the 'unemployed.' There is no longer any
work to be had, and these people can neither get away nor find any
means of living here."
For a time London would not believe its ears. There must be work, and so
food for whoever was willing to work; but presently this cry silenced,
and it became plain that somebody must do something.
Food was the first thought; and from the Limehouse district, and a
refuge known as the Outcasts' Home, a great van loaded with loaves of
bread came in two or three times a week, taking back to the refuge in
the empty cart such few as could be induced to try its mercies. Coffee
was also provided on a few occasions; and as the news spread by means of
that mysterious telegraphy current in the begging fraternity, suddenly
the Square overflowed with their kind; and who wanted to work and could
not, and who wanted no work on any consideration, no man could
determine.
With the story of this tangle, of the bewilderment and dismay for all
alike, and the increasing despair of the unemployed, this chronicle has
but indirectly to do. Trafalgar Square was emptied at last by means
already familiar to all. Beggars skulked back to their hiding-places
like wharf-rats to the rotten piles that shelter them; the unemployed
dispersed also, showing themselves once more in the files that
registered when the census of the unemployed was decided upon; and then,
for the most part, were lost to public sight in the mass of general,
every-day, to-be-expected wretchedness which makes up London below the
surface.
Scores of wretched figures crouched on the icy asphalt of the Square on
a pouring night early in November, before its clearing had been ordered.
The great van was expected, but had not appeared, and men huddled in the
most sheltered corners of this most unsheltered spot, cowering under any
rag of covering they had been able to secure. In a corner by the lions a
pair had taken refuge,--a boy of ten or so, wrapped in two newspaper
placards, and his bare feet tucked into a horse's nose-bag, too old and
rotten for any further service in its own line of duty; over him
crouched a girl, whose bent figure might have belonged to eighty, but
whose face as she looked up showed youth which even her misery could not
wipe out. She had no beauty, save soft dark eyes and a delicate face,
both filled with terror as she put one arm over the boy, who sprung to
his feet. "I'll not go where Nell can't," he said, the heavy sleep still
in his eyes; "we're goin' to keep together, me an' Nell is."
"'Tain't the van," the girl said, still holding him; "they tried to take
him back to the Refuge the other night, and he's afraid of 'em. They
don't take any over sixteen, and so I can't go, an' he's afraid somehow
they'll take him in spite of me. I'd be willin' enough, for there's no
more I can do for him, and he's too little for this sort of life; but he
won't go."
The girl's thin clothing was soaked with rain; she shivered as she
spoke, but sat there with the strange patience in look and manner that
marks the better class of English poor. "But is there nobody to give you
a shelter on such a night? You must have somebody. What does it mean?"
"I had a bit of a place till last Wednesday, but the rent was far behind
and they turned me out. I was home then a day or two, but it's worse
there than the streets. There was no work, and father drunk, and beating
mother and all of us, and Billy worst of all; so the streets were
better. I've tried for work, but there's none to be had, and now I'm
waiting. Perhaps I shall die pretty soon, and then they can take Billy
into the Refuge. I'm waiting for that."
"But there must be work for any one as young and strong as you."
The girl shook her head. "I've walked the soles off me shoes to find it.
There's no work in all London. I can go on the streets, but I'd rather
do this. My mother did her best for us all, but she's been knocked round
till she's as near death as we. There's no work for man nor woman in all
London."
The boy had settled down at her feet again, satisfied that no attempt
was to be made to separate them, and fell asleep instantly, one hand
holding her dress. To leave the pair was impossible. Other cases might
be as desperate, but this was nearest; and presently a bargain had been
made with an old woman who sells roasted chestnuts in St. Martin's Lane,
close by, and the two were led away to her shelter in some rookery in
the Seven Dials. A day or two later the full story was told, and has
its place as the first and strongest illustration of the state of things
in this great city of London, where, as the year 1888 opens, official
registers hold the names of over seventeen thousand men who wish to work
at any rate that may be paid, but for whom there is no work, their names
representing a total of over fifty thousand who are slowly starving; and
this mass known to be but a part of that which is still unregistered,
and likely to remain so, unless private enterprise seeks it out in lane
and alley where it hides.
The father was a "coal whipper" on the docks near Tower Hill, this
meaning that he spent his days in the hold of a collier or on the deck,
guiding the coal basket which ascends from the hold through a "way" made
of broken oars lashed together, and by means of a wheel and rope is sent
on and emptied. Whether in hold or on deck it is one of the most
exhausting forms of labor, and the men, whose throats are lined with
coal dust, wash them out with floods of beer. Naturally they are all
intemperate, and the wages taken home are small in proportion to their
thirst. And as an evening solace, the father, who had once been footman
in a good family, and married the lady's maid (which fact accounted for
the unusual quality of Nelly's English), beat them all around, weeping
maudlin tears over them in the morning, and returning at night to
duplicate the occasion for more.
The mother had made constant fight for respectability. She did such
dressmaking as the neighborhood offered, but they moved constantly as
fortunes grew lower and lower, sheltering at last in two rooms in a
rookery in Tower Hamlets.
Here came the final disablement. The father, a little drunker than
usual, pushed the wife downstairs and their Billy after her, the result
being a broken hip for the first and a broken arm for the last. Nelly,
who had begun to stitch sacks not long before, filled her place as she
could, and cared for the other seven, all not much more than babies, and
most of them in time mercifully removed by death. She was but twelve
when her responsibility began, and it did not end when the mother came
home, to be chiefly bedridden for such days as remained. The three
little boys were all "mud-larks," that is, prowled along the river
shore, picking up any odds and ends that could be sold to the rag-shop
or for firewood, and their backs were scored with the strap which the
father carried in his pocket and took out for his evening's occupation
when he came.
The mother, sitting up in bed and knitting or crocheting for a small
shop near by, fared no better than the rest, for Billy, who tried to
stand between them, only infuriated the brute the more. The crisis came
when he one night stole the strap from his father's pocket and cut it
into pieces. Nelly, who was now earning fair wages, had long thought
that her mother's life would be easier without them; and now, as Billy
announced that he had done for himself and must run, she decided to run
too.
"I told mother I'd have a bit of a room not far off," she said, "only
where father wouldn't be likely to search us out, and I'd do for Billy
and for her too what I could. She cried, but she saw it was best. Billy
was just a bag of bones and all over strap marks. He'd have to mud-lark
just the same, but he'd have more to eat and no beatings, and he'd
always hung to me from the time he was born. So that is the way I did,
and, bit by bit, I got a comfortable place, and had Billy in school, and
kept us both, and did well. But then the wages began to go down, and
every week they got lower till, where I'd earned twelve shillings a week
sometimes, I was down to half and less than half that. I tried stitching
for the sweaters a while, but I'd no machine, and they had more hands
than they wanted everywhere, and I went back to the sacks. And at last
they dismissed a lot too, and I went here and there and everywhere for
another chance, and not one,--not one anywhere. I pawned everything, bit
by bit, till we'd nothing left but some rags and straw to sleep upon,
and the rent far behind; and then I went home when we were turned out,
and that father took for his chance, and was worse than ever.
"And so, when there was no work anywhere, though I was ready for
anything, I didn't care what, and I saw we were just taking the bread
from mother's mouth (though it's little enough she wanted), then I told
Billy to stay with her, and I went out and to the Square and sat down
with the rest, and wondered if I ought to sit there and wait to be dead,
or if I hadn't the right to do it quicker and just try the river. But I
saw all those I was with just as bad off and worse, and some with
babies, and so I didn't know what to do, but just to wait there. What
can we do? They say the Queen is going to order work so that the men can
get wages; but they don't say if she is going to do anything for the
women. She's a woman; but then I suppose a Queen couldn't any way know,
except by hearsay, that women really starve; and women do for men first
anyhow. But I will work any way at anything, if only you'll find it for
me to do--if only you will."
For one of the fifty-three thousand work and place have been found. For
the rest is still the cry: "I will work any way at anything, if only
you'll find it for me to do; if only you will."