IN LAMBETH POLICE COURT
It was one Monday morning in May that I first saw the inside of
a London police court. It is fifteen years ago, but that day is
still fresh in my memory; nay, rather, it is burned into my very
consciousness. There was I, up from the country, with great hopes of
doing good, and not altogether ignorant of the world or the vices and
sorrows of our large cities; but a revelation awaited me. I spent that
day in a horrible wonderland, and although dazed and afraid to speak
to anyone, I noticed everything and everybody, and I have a mental
photograph of it all now.
Even as I sit and write, it is all before me and around. I hear again
the horrible speech and diverse tongues. I hear the accents of sorrow
and the burst of angry sound. I hear the devil-may-care laugh and
the contemptuous expression. I hear the sighs and groans and bitter
plaints. I see men shorn of all glory. I see womanhood clothed in
shame. I see Vice rampant. I see Misery crawling. I see the long
procession of the drink- or vice-stricken as they tramped down to
the place of wrecked lives and slain souls. I see some going cursing
to destruction. I see some going jesting to destruction. I see some
going down with open eyes and passive will. I see some that long to
be delivered from their body of death. I hear the unuttered cry, ‘The
waters have gone over me! The waters have gone over me! Out of the
black depths do I cry to be delivered.’ And _I_ was there to deliver
them!
But I see and hear more. I see women with bruised and battered faces,
I see their cuts and wounds and putrefying sores, I hear stories of
devilish cruelty, and I hear the poor bruised women pleading that
their husbands may not be punished for their cruelty. ‘Don’t send him
to prison! Don’t send him to prison! He is a good husband when he is
sober!’ I hear the words again and again. I see more women with poor,
thin clothing. I look into their faces, and I see sorrow writ large and
rings of care around their eyes, and in their hearts a weight of agony
that makes them ready to curse God and die. My God! and _I_ was there
to comfort them.
I see more. I see the children old before their time, looking up with
pale and piteous faces. I see some with blighted bodies, and I know
that rounded limbs and happy hearts are not for them. Still more do I
see: matronly women, charged with being drunk, holding in their arms
little bits of mortality. Puling cries are heard, but soon hushed, for
I see the little ones draw from their mothers that leprous distilment
that shall blast their lives and wither their bodies. I see more: young
men to whom obscenity is the breath of life and immorality the highest
good. I see some young in years who have already come to the wayside
of life, for their bones are full of their sin. I see young women,
sometimes fair and sometimes foul to look upon, but whether fair or
foul, half beast and half human. I hear stories of lust, drunkenness,
and theft. I see the smartly-dressed harpies who farm them waiting to
pay their fines. I see the most despicable of all mankind, the fellows
who live upon them, hovering by like beasts of prey. I see old men of
threescore and ten and old women of equal age, whose tottering limbs
have borne them from the workhouse to the public-house, that they might
drink and forget their misery once more before they die.
I see them all; they are around me now. I breathe again the sickening
whiff of stale debauch; I am faint with the unspeakable atmosphere; the
chloride of lime is again in my throat, and my nostrils tingle with
it. But I see more: I see the matter-of-fact way in which all this
was received. I see that no one wonders at it. I see that all this
is looked upon as perfectly natural, for I see no look of wonder, no
divine pity, no burning indignation--all, all received as a perfect
matter of course, and all, all quite as it should be.
Now, what I saw, dear reader, on that particular Monday in that
particular court you may see on any Monday in any of our Metropolitan
police courts, and on any other day, only in a less degree. Year in and
year out the procession of the sinning and sorrowing passes through
all our courts. Prison and death thin the ranks of the procession; but
the public-house is a grand recruiting agency, and neither police nor
magistrates are likely to be idle, neither is the procession likely
to dwindle, or the ‘yell of the trampled wife’ to cease, while the
public-house holds its triumphant sway.
But while you may see what I have described almost any day, there is
much that you cannot see, and which, please God, I shall never see
again. So come with me in imagination into the prisoners’ waiting-room
on that particular Monday morning, for it is well you should know
that some changes for the better have taken place in London police
courts. Out of a long corridor thronged with policemen we turn into the
waiting-room, where the prisoners, excepting some few who are in the
cells, wait for their turn to appear before the magistrate. There is
a long list on the wall, with the name of each prisoner and number of
the officer who has charge of each case, and showing the order in which
they will have to appear. Scan the list, and you will see the part
drink plays in it. ‘Drunk and disorderly,’ or drunk and something else,
is appended to fifty out of the sixty names on the list.
Is it a lazar-house we are in? Oh no; it is part of an English court
of justice in the Metropolis of all civilization. Never mind the
sickening atmosphere, heavily laden as it is with the fumes of beer
and spirits. Look around you. You feel sick and faint? You must bear
up, for we want to see the prisoners. What is that lying on the floor?
That is a woman; she has had a fit, and there she lies with a bag of
straw under her head, and not a single woman in the place whose duty it
is to attend to her. What is that cowering in the corner? Well, that
has been a woman, driven years ago by the devil of sensuality into
the wilderness of sin, where she took to herself other devils. But
only one has her in his grip now, and he will not let her go. ‘Drink!
drink! drink!’ the devil says to her, and she is a dying piece of flesh
whose only capability is the absorption of alcohol. That in the other
corner is reported to be a woman. She has got men’s boots on, no hat
or bonnet, no jacket or mantle; her arms are bare; her dress, what
there is of it, is short; her forehead is low, her broad face is cut
and bruised, her eyes are inflamed, and her hair hangs loosely down.
Twenty-four years of age, they say, and she has been in that corner
one hundred and fifty times, and there’s another hundred to follow.
Poor Kate Henessey! an Irish girl of the slum, a mother at fifteen; an
Ishmaelite indeed, every man’s hand is against her, and verily hers is
against every man.
But we hear voices all around us. Listen! Fast young men are exchanging
coarse obscenities with that group of ‘unfortunates,’ and no one says
them nay; Listen! Business men are cursing the delay of the magistrate
and the impertinence of the police, for they want to pay their fines
and be gone. Listen! You hear a girl of tender years bitterly crying;
you hear a doddering old woman talking to herself; you hear knowing men
proclaiming the iniquities of the police; you hear the loud laugh that
tells the life-history of the laugher. You hear someone faintly ask for
water. Look at him, a well-dressed, middle-aged man, shaking in every
limb as with palsy; he is nearly in delirium tremens. How the water
gurgles down his hot throat! He does not know his name, he cannot tell
whence he comes, and when put into the cells the furies will be with
him and upon him.
You hear someone crooning snatches of good music. She has been here
fifty times, a woman from a home of culture. She is half drunk now,
and the old songs come back to her, although she has got to the lowest
depth and rolls with pleasure in her sensual sty.
‘Anybody got a smelling bottle?’ They might as well ask for the moon,
and so the decent-looking woman faints, and well she may. It is her
first appearance here. She has been picked up drunk. Shame and fear,
horror and sickness, take hold of her. No female attendant, so the
unfortunates take off her bonnet, unfasten the front of her dress, and
rub her hands till she slowly recovers her dreadful consciousness.
Here is a group of boys charged with gambling; here a couple of
fourteen-year-old girls with being disorderly; here a mother and her
babe; here a young clerk charged with embezzlement; here the old couple
from the workhouse whose every returning holiday from ‘the house’ finds
them in the public-house.
Mix them up, old and young, pure and impure, male and female, drunk and
sober, cleanly and verminous. Dante ought to have seen that room, have
tasted that atmosphere, have listened to the various sounds in major
and in minor keys. All the social problems of the day were in that
room, all the vices and sorrows of life were personified in it.
This is no exaggerated picture, not in the least is it overdrawn; I
do not wish to give fuller particulars, I dare not if I would. No
publisher would publish, no printer would print, an exactly faithful
account of a prisoners’ waiting-room of even twelve years ago.
‘Rescue them,’ said my employers, ‘and the last day of every month a
small cheque shall be your reward.’ ‘How am I to do it?’ ‘Here’s a
temperance pledge-book; take pledges.’ ‘But there are others.’ ‘Give
them tracts.’ ‘But there are the hungry and homeless to feed.’ ‘Give
them tracts.’ ‘There are the poor wantons.’ ‘Take them to rescue homes,
and let them work out their own salvation at the wash-tubs.’
Verily, if temperance pledges, tracts, and wash-tubs could save
humanity, we had had the millennium long ago. Good, religious and
well-meaning people talk very serenely, and with rare unction, about
engaging in ‘rescue work.’ I doubt much if they know what they talk
about. Have they ever thrown themselves into the very existence of a
drink or vice-possessed man or woman? Have they ever stood in front of
such a one, and said, ‘Hold! You shall not go to destruction’? Have
they ever taken women possessed of an unclean spirit into their own
homes to try what human sympathy and timely help would do for such? If
not, let them do it, and I venture to say they will hold their peace
or speak with less assurance. I was afraid of my work that first day;
neither did I require the phrenologist to tell me that I had made a
mistake.
But there are other parts of the police court to explore. Come to the
cells. Down the corridor, past the gaoler’s office, turn to the right.
There they are, all in a row. It is afternoon, and they are pretty
full. The prisoners have been reeled off by the magistrate, and some
are going to prison and some are hoping for the coming of friends
to bring the money for their fines. The prisoners’ van has not yet
arrived, so we have time to see the prisoners. Come along. Do you feel
bad already? You see the little trap-doors about 9 inches square in the
doors of the cells; they are open, lying at a right angle outward. Put
your face to one and look in. Ah! now you have got the full flavour
of a London police court. One gulp is enough. How would you like to
swallow some of that every day? You shudder. What! not for a small
cheque once a month?
Look again; it won’t be so bad next time. You look and hold your
breath; while you gaze you get used to the semi-darkness and find you
are looking into a woman’s cell, for they do divide the sexes after
they have been before the magistrate. There is Kate in the corner, but
her blucher boots are gone; the gaoler has taken them away because of
her persistent kicking at the door. There is the festering piece of
humanity in the other corner. There is the young girl who has stolen.
There is the mother with her babe, for her fine has not yet been paid;
and there are others in that low, square, dark cell, with its sanitary
arrangements in the corner, and no female attendant on the premises.
Shall we look into the men’s cells? No? You have had enough? So have I.
And here comes ‘Black Maria.’ A door at the bottom of the cell-passage
is opened, and there stands the prisoners’ van with its steps let
down, its back-door open, and its cupboards unfastened, yawning like
the grave for their prey. The gaoler hands a list of prisoners to
the sergeant in charge of the van, the cell doors one by one are
unlocked, from their cells to their cupboards the prisoners go, the
cupboard-doors are fastened, the back-door is locked, the whip cracks,
and away with its human freight of vice, misery and despair goes the
prisoners’ van. And _I_ was there to save them! I went into Kennington
Park, sat down, and cried like a child. Thus ended my first day in a
London police court.
Kind reader, do not say I am talking cant; strictly religious friend,
do not say I am impious: but that night I was ‘a man of sorrow, and
acquainted with grief’--ay, and for days and months afterwards, for my
sleep broke from me; and I wonder how many times in the small hours
of the morning my wife has said to me: ‘Now, you are not asleep. You
are bothering your head again.’ Why, they were looking at me, mowing
and gibing at me, mocking at me, with outstretched hands appealing to
me--the people whom I was paid to save and didn’t! If I dozed a little,
I then began to talk nonsense, and my wife declares that I repeated
‘Hosey-tosey! Hosey-tosey!’ hundreds of times. I wouldn’t like to go
again through my first year’s experience.
What a pitiful position mine was! No friends in London; to go day after
day to meet with abject poverty, hopeless misery, and unspeakable
sorrows; to have a full heart and empty hands. I have said many a time
to myself: ‘Thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.’ It
_was_ deep--too deep. I wonder how it is that folk undoubtedly good
think that poor humanity can be warmed, fed, and comforted with tracts,
or be saved with goody stories. Poor humanity doesn’t much care for
advice gratis, though some folk seem sent into the world on purpose to
bestow it. Just about my darkest days in my police court experience
a well-known lady invited me to her house to meet a famous religious
philanthropist. She wished me to tell him about my work. This gentleman
gave very large sums in aid of revivals, etc. I could not tell him of
the souls I had saved, or of very much good I had done. But I told him
of my opportunities, of the humanity that I loved, of the wants of the
poor, of their temptations and sufferings, and of their patience and
self-denial. I think I was just getting a bit eloquent, when he burst
in, and, in a knockdown manner, said: ‘Do you give them Christ?’ I am
afraid that I was vexed, for I replied: ‘Sir, I cannot carry Christ
in parcels and distribute Him. I can only do as I think He would have
done.’ ‘How’s that?’ ‘I give them myself.’ That closed the interview,
for neither lady nor gentleman wanted to hear more. I am sure they
would agree with the phrenologist.
Yes, I had to give them myself, for I had nothing else to give them
in those days. And no one can say that I spared myself; but it meant
something, for it nearly proved too much for me.