RECORD-BREAKERS: KATE HENESSEY
Kate was an Irish girl, and there was no beauty about her. I met with
her the first day I entered a London police court, and was afraid of
her. I met with her many times afterwards, and the fear and disgust
wore off.
There was nothing of the Cakebread type about her; she loved not
the precincts of a police court, and could never take her month
philosophically. She would scream like a wild beast, curse the
magistrate, and defy the police. Sometimes it required several officers
to remove her from the dock to the cells, where her boots, if she
happened to be possessed of any, had to be taken from her to prevent
the noise she would make. Time after time she came, so we became
friendly. In the depth of winter, with very little clothing on her, I
have seen her sent to Millbank prison, where I have met her with warm
clothing on her discharge. Two days later I have seen her again in the
dock with the clothing all torn to rags. Again I have clothed her, and
a similar result has followed. I became too familiar with her, for I
looked upon her as a matter of course and as one of those for whom
there was no hope, as time went on.
One morning she was in her usual place, curled up in the corner of
the prisoners’ waiting-room, when I merely bade her good-morning, and
passing on, turned to speak to a middle-aged man who, by his looks,
was possessed of a history, and of whom I shall have something to
tell later on. He cursed me, and called me a canting hypocrite. So I
promptly left him alone. I had no sooner turned away from him than
I heard the sound of a resounding smack, evidently with an open
hand, upon someone’s face. Turning round, I saw the fellow who had
insulted me, and who, by the way, had held a commission in a crack
regiment, lying on the floor, and Kate, with flaming eyes and bristling
hair, standing over him. She would have kicked him if she had been
in possession of boots, but that morning she was not, so she was
proceeding to punch him; she might even have bitten him, but I pulled
her away, and she went back to her corner. The man got up muttering
curses, and said to me: ‘That’s the effect of your teaching, I reckon.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I don’t think she made a bad job of it.’
The fact was that I felt exceedingly glad that a blackguard had got his
desserts, but I felt more glad, nay, even touched, that the Ishmaelite
had some respect and regard for me. So I walked over to her corner
and, taking her hand, said: ‘Kate, it was very good of you to take my
part. I am very much obliged to you.’ She looked up--for the first time
I saw a softened look in her face and a tear in her eye--and said:
‘Mr. Holmes, after all your kindness to me, if I get locked up again,
I will kill myself.’ But of course she did get locked up again. As
two officers were taking her up the Old Kent Road, almost destitute
of clothing, she broke from them when crossing the Surrey Canal, and
in an instant was over the wall of the bridge, and down she went. She
fell half in the water and half on the bank, but, never heeding her
broken arm or cut head, she rolled over into the canal, whence with
difficulty she was rescued and was afterwards charged with attempted
suicide. This was the last time but one that she stood in the dock at
Lambeth Police Court, and I wish that I had a picture of her as she
stood there, barefooted, poor, thin, short dress, her head enveloped
in surgical bandages, her right arm bound up in splints. Two hundred
and fifty times she had stood there, two hundred and fifty times she
had been sent to the refining influences of prison, to be redeemed and
regenerated by the delightful task of oakum-picking, sack-making or
scrubbing floors. Two hundred and fifty times the law had said to her,
‘You shall not.’ Two hundred and fifty times she had defied the law,
had hugged her vices, and said, ‘I will.’
But this time she was quiet and said not a word, and the magistrate,
a wise and big-hearted man, did not send her to prison. He remanded
her on her own bail, and she went to a place other than prison. It was
summer-time, and there were flowers to smile at her; she could look
through her window, and the birds sang to her; kind nurses waited on
her; her heart became tender, and the scream of the wild beast died
away. She had again to come before the court, when the days of her
remand had expired, and she stood there clothed in her right mind. How
long will it be before we as a nation learn that the human heart is
like a bar of iron? Hammer, hammer, hammer it cold, and you can make
nothing of it; closer and harder, closer and harder does it become.
Only under the softening influences of warmth can it be shaped to a
thing of beauty and utility. So the law may punish, punish, punish its
Kate Henesseys, but the more and still more do its Kate Henesseys defy
the law, the harder and still harder do their hearts become.
So Kate did not go back to prison, but in the country, many miles from
London, she found a resting-place. Twelve months she stayed there,
and those who had charge of her speak well of her; but they needed
patience, for the passage from evil to good, from drink and lust to
sobriety and cleanliness, is not an easy one; the old instincts will
not die at once, and as a tiger lusts for blood or a caged beast for
liberty, even so it must have been with Kate. Among my treasured
possessions is a letter written upon a leaf from a copy-book. It is a
strange document, but it speaks volumes to me, for it is from Kate,
and God shall put that letter to her credit, for she learned to write.
What it cost her to do so He only knows. But her twenty-five years
could not be given back to her. Nature’s debt must ever be paid, for
Nature knows no pity. So Kate’s health failed, and, before I knew about
it, she was back in London, broken and almost dying.
It was an ill-advised thing to send her to London, to step out of
the station and no one to meet her or speak kindly to her, but so it
happened. With an irresistible power the old instincts awoke. One wild
night of debauch, one more conveyance to the police station, one more
charge in a police court, once more to prison, once more homeless in
the streets, once more to the infirmary ward, and death mercifully put
an end to all, for Kate passed into the undiscovered country.
And poor Kate is a type of many. For years I have hoped and planned for
such; disappointment after disappointment has been my lot, and though
here and there among them I have been permitted to see in restored
character and happiness some results for my hopes, yet oftener still,
when I have apparently been on the verge of success, and have been
encouraged because of someone whom I hoped to save, God has stepped up
and taken them out of my hands--I never doubt to make a much better job
of it than ever I could.
‘For in a world of larger scope
What here is faithfully begun
Shall be completed, not undone.’
These wild, homeless women have always had an interest for me; their
very hopelessness commended them to me. No one had pity upon them,
therefore _I_ must; no door was open to them, _mine_ must not be closed
against them. So some of the most notorious women of London have formed
part and parcel of my family circle. I am glad it has been so, for my
conscience is easy. I was there to try to save them, and I have tried;
my wife has tried, and my family have always treated them with courtesy
and kindly respect. For the beginning of good in many a vice-cursed
woman has come from a knowledge of the fact that someone respected her.
It was a direct challenge from one of these women that led to my
offering them the shelter and protection of my own house. Susan Hurley
was her name; they called her ‘Glass-eyed Sue,’ from which I infer
that at some time she had been possessed of an artificial eye, but she
lost the eye, if not the name, long before I met with her. She was a
wild, untamed Irish woman, and would fight with man or woman, police or
civilian. I believe she lost the sight of one eye in a drunken fight. I
noticed, too, that a good-sized piece of her left ear had disappeared,
most likely in a similar struggle. I was visiting at a different court
from the one I usually attended, and Hurley had been charged and
sentenced to two months’ imprisonment; she was in the cells, and I was
asked to see her.
She did not present a nice appearance; she had been badly knocked
about, and blood had flowed freely. Her dress all torn, no bonnet
or hat, her hair anyhow, minus one eye, and half an ear, she looked
bad enough for anything. I spoke kindly to her, but she pulled me up
sharply with, ‘Who are you?’ I told her that I was a police-court
missionary. ‘Bosh!’ she said. ‘Go away; what can you do? Say a prayer
for me! Give me a tract! Tell me you are sorry for me! I know all
you can say, and can say it better than you can yourself. I know all
you can do, and that is--nothing.’ I kept quiet whilst she let off
the steam, and then we had some conversation. I found that she was a
Roman Catholic, and had been in prison scores of times, and even so
notorious that no home would take her in, and that when last she made
an application a policeman was sent for, as a disturbance was feared
when she was refused. She seemed a clever woman, but was very bitter
and sarcastic.
I was bound to admit the truth of her words, for even prayers and
sympathy are of little use to homeless, vice-stricken women. So I wrote
a letter, and addressed it to my wife. This I gave to Hurley, and
asked that when released from prison she should bring it herself, and
Mrs. Holmes would take her in even if I was not at home. She took the
letter, but did not look at it. She looked at me and said, ‘You must be
the missionary from North London.’ I never felt so proud in my life,
and now think those words the greatest compliment ever paid me.
Her two months passed; she came to my house, but she came drunk. When I
got home she sat there blinking and stupid. I am inclined to think she
took drink in order to brace herself up, and that probably she would
not have come without the courage it gave to her. Anyhow, my wife took
that view of the matter, so we lifted her on to a sofa, spread a rug
over her, and let her sleep it off.
After a couple of hours’ sleep Hurley woke up. She knew where she was,
and said to me, ‘You see, I have come. What are you going to do with
me?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘when you have had a wash we are going to give
you some tea. Take her upstairs, mamma.’ And she was taken to her own
room. She gave my wife the letter, which had been carefully preserved
for two months in her stocking, from which safe hiding-place she took
it. A complete change of clothing was given her, and she came down to
tea. She had no airs or graces like Cakebread, so the tea passed off
quietly; but I could see plainly that my wife felt a little bit afraid
of her. In appearance Hurley was enough to frighten a delicate woman,
but in reality she was most tractable, exceedingly well-behaved, and
one of the best workers I ever knew; there was no holding her back:
work was her glory and her joy. For the first time in our married life
my wife began to have an easy time, for Hurley anticipated everything,
and left but the lightest work undone. She was almost too industrious,
for while standing on some steps cleaning a window, she slipped and
fell, and all at once the house rang with horrid imprecations. My wife
rushed to see what was the matter. Hurley was just gathering herself
up, cursing as only such a woman can curse, and between times calling
out: ‘It’s out again! it’s out again!’ The matter was that her right
arm had been dislocated so often in her struggles with the police and
others, that it did not take much to put it out of joint, and, as
she had fallen on it, this result had ensued. Fortunately, Tottenham
Hospital was close at hand, and there my wife took her, Hurley using
bad language all the way. After a few hours’ detention she came back to
us, with her arm and shoulder so tightly bandaged that she could not
use it in the least. Being her right arm, it prevented her doing much
work, and this rather upset her.
Next morning, however, I heard her about the house at five o’clock, and
when I got down everything was tidy and the breakfast nicely laid, but
Hurley sat there crying. I told her that I was afraid she had passed a
bad night and was suffering a great deal of pain. She said she did not
mind the pain, but she could not with one hand black the boots. I told
her not to mind the boots, and that I would black them till her arm got
right again. ‘You won’t black boots while I am here,’ she said, and off
she went, and somehow with her one hand she managed it. They were not
very well done, but we all praised them, and she was the happier for
having accomplished the job. That was the only time during her seven
months’ stay with us that Hurley used bad language. We never had the
slightest trouble with her, and as we got used to her one eye and her
scars of old wounds, we had nothing but pleasure in her company. Of my
little boy, a four-year-old, she was passionately fond, and, ugly as
she was, he was fond of her. It would not have been well for anyone to
molest him if she were by; she would have gloried in a fight for him,
and even when she lay dying in Whitechapel Infirmary, nothing brought
such a smile to her face as a sight of the little boy; for, by her own
request, we took him with us when we visited her.
I don’t know whether or not it was our imagination, but her face
and voice seemed to change, and certainly she became more human. I
was looking forward to her having the home of her own which I had
promised her if she stayed with us twelve months, when all at once
she told us that she must leave us. On being pressed to stay and her
reason for leaving being asked, she said that she felt she was going
to be ill, and did not want to be a burden to us. We told her it was
nonsense, and that she must not go away on that account. She then said
that she wanted to go to the hospital and get a glass eye, and when
she had obtained it she would return to us. No persuasion had any
effect; the glass eye she must have. As we never turned the key upon
her, or, indeed, on any other woman, she went, and Henessey’s history
was repeated. A wild night of debauch, a fight with the police, one
more committal to prison, thence to Whitechapel Infirmary, a pauper’s
funeral, and the world had seen the last of Susan Hurley.
Of her past history other than police court I know nothing. I never
inquired of her, preferring always to shut it out, and to fix her mind
and hopes on the future. She was intelligent, and fairly well educated,
but where she came from and where her friends lived she never told us.
Neither did we seek to win her from the Roman Catholic faith, and a
card hanging at the head of her bed told us that while dying she had
been ministered to by a priest of her own Church. She was a generous
soul, coarse and wild though she had become. It was her generosity that
led her to leave us. She had premonitions of the coming end, and wished
to put us to no trouble or expense, and doubtless her heart went back
to the faith of her youth and happier days. And so she passed from us,
but not from our memory, for of none that we have known and cared for
have we such kindly recollections as we have of the wild Irishwoman
Susan Hurley.
But we have had women living with us whose presence did not conduce
to our happiness, but rather to anxiety, not unmingled with fear, for
whose departure we fervently hoped and hoped for a long time in vain,
for we have never said ‘Begone!’ to the worst of them.
A frightful tragedy is compressed into the life of any man or woman
who earnestly and sincerely strives to do right and yet is impelled by
some strange inward power--a power that they never understand--to do
absolutely wrong. Bordering for years on the verge of insanity, they
form a more dangerous class and an infinitely more pitiful spectacle
than those altogether mad. Clever, generous, and high-spirited, they
are subject to fits of depression, unjust suspicions and violent
paroxysms of rage, and woe be to anyone that offends them! When the
period of unrest comes upon such, the least drop of alcohol sends them
raging mad, and they become possessed of the ferocity of tigers.
Such was Annie Drayton. At thirty-six years of age she had been charged
repeatedly, and in many of our courts. Her honesty was undoubted, her
industry was phenomenal, not the slightest taint of immorality about
her, with positively no passion or desire for drink, yet repeatedly
charged with drunkenness, she constituted a problem in herself. She had
never known parents, brothers, sisters, or any friends, for she was
brought up in a school for foundlings, was fairly well educated, and
had held very good situations. Tall in stature, and exceedingly genteel
in appearance, she never had, although so often charged, the least
appearance of the police court habitué. Her hair, prematurely gray in
front, told of repeated pains in the head. Some wrongs, or fancied
wrongs, that she had suffered had converted her into an Ishmaelite.
Generally she was charged in the western districts, where she was well
known to some of my colleagues. Several times she was charged in North
London, and then I met with her. She had been in many rescue homes,
where they gladly got rid of her; she had been sent to Duxhurst to be
cured of inebriety; she assaulted poor Cakebread, and had to be sent
away. She had been in Mrs. Bramwell Booth’s home, and they had to call
in the police and charge her with violence and wilful damage. She had
been sent by the prison chaplain to the Elizabeth Fry refuge, where
she terrorized them, and the police had again to be called in. When
in the cells she tried to hang herself, when in the dock she stood
defiant, her eyes full of fury, her hair hanging down, her dress all
torn and bespattered with blood.
So she stood one Christmas Eve, and the policeman who had charge of her
told a terrible story of her violence. To my surprise and dismay the
magistrate said: ‘I am not inclined to send you to prison again; you
have but just come out, and it does not appear to have done you any
good. I shall leave the missionary to make some provision for you. You
are discharged. Mr. Holmes will see after you.’
I was in a difficult position. What was I to do with her? No home in
London or out of London would have her; to the workhouse she would not
go. Private lodgings were out of the question, as she might half murder
someone. There was only the choice of my own house or the streets, and
it took me two hours to decide which. Ultimately I took her with me,
trusting to my wife’s gentleness and sympathy to exercise a beneficial
influence upon her, though I had the consciousness that I was exposing
my wife to anxiety and danger that she ought not to undergo. But a
surprise awaited me. For the first two months she proved a treasure
and a help. She was a handy woman, and could do anything in the house
or with her needle. She was a woman of taste, and I had to get plenty
of fresh flowers with which she would decorate the table, etc.; for
she loved to arrange them. She liked to wait on my sons and to study
their appetites; she was always making something nice for this one
and something nice for the other. It was all right for the lads, but
the housekeeping expenses went up considerably. After two months I
noticed that she had quiet and moody times occasionally, at others an
increase in animal spirits. Sometimes I saw the old flash of temper,
and I began to be afraid. By degrees she began to speak insolently
to my wife, and I was vexed. She went out twice and got drunk, and I
had to carry her to bed. Still, I saw how hard she was trying to do
right and to acquire self-mastery. She had nowhere to go, and my wife
would not hear of her being sent away. One day, however, I heard her
grossly insult my wife, so I fetched her into my room, and this is what
happened. ‘Annie,’ I said, ‘I heard you insult my wife.’ ‘Well, what of
it?’ ‘Don’t do it again, or it will be the worse for you.’ ‘I am going
to do it now. I want to see what you will do,’ she said. ‘What do you
think I will do?’ ‘Send for a policeman, give me into custody, charge
me, charge me. You are no better than the others. I should like you to
do it.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I shall want no policeman for you. I can settle
you myself, and this is how I shall do it.’ I took her by the throat
and gave her a good shaking. When I let go of her, she looked at me and
I looked at her. I don’t think she was the least bit afraid of me, but
to say that she was surprised is to put it mildly. She was completely
astonished, and presently she said, ‘I did not think you could have
done that.’ ‘Oh, that’s not much,’ I said, ‘for I can do a great deal
more if there’s any necessity.’
I think that was the best turn I ever did for her. Of course, I had no
intention of hurting her, but as I looked into her eyes I saw that she
had mistaken my kindness for weakness. I thought the exhibition of a
little strength might do good. It was the inspiration of the moment,
and it succeeded, but I don’t suppose it would often come off. But
Annie behaved in a better fashion after that little affair, and she
seemed to possess a growing power of self-control. Six months went by,
and she left, hopeful and happy, to take a good situation in service.
She was a most valuable servant, and could command the best of wages.
She had applied for the place and got it, the lady taking her with full
knowledge of her past life and present peculiarities, which I felt it
my duty to furnish.
But Annie lives no longer in the borderland between sanity and
insanity; for she writes to me from a lunatic asylum, expecting
that somehow I shall accomplish her deliverance. One short year in
service--a year full of hopes and struggles, of desires to do right,
and compulsion to do wrong; a year marked by increasing violence and
strange delusions--then Nature had its way, and the gates of a lunatic
asylum closed upon her. But the magistrate never knew what a task he
set me when he asked me to minister to the diseased mind of that poor
woman.
I could with ease write a volume about these unfortunate women, for
their name is legion. As I sit and write I see them all--young women,
middle-aged women, and old women. If I were an artist, I could paint
their portraits, so real are they to me. I dare not give reins to my
memory; I cannot unfold my knowledge. A great deal of it will not bear
repetition; but I have learned to be pitiful and patient with them, for
I have seen much that is good among them, and have found that in bodies
given over to gross sensuality pitiful and tender hearts sometimes
exists. Even they feel the dint of pity; to the touch of Nature they
are by no means strangers. Self-denial, patience, kindness, and
fortitude are by no means unknown qualities among them.
Some of the grossest women I have met with, who have been sent to
prison time after time, and whose conduct and bearing was unspeakable,
have had little children--one or more--whom they love with a passion
that ordinary people cannot understand--children for whom they would
die. Knowing the law and loving their children, they do not keep
those children with them, but provide a decent home for them miles
from the streets they themselves ‘walk.’ One woman that I know well,
who had been fined many times, and had been sent to prison on several
occasions, was a long time ago in a cell waiting to be conveyed to
Holloway Prison for a month. I had known her for years, but did not
know that she had a daughter of twelve. This time the woman was in
great distress, and sent for me. She told me her trouble. She paid
eight shillings a week for her child’s board and lodging, and was a
month in arrears, and the landlady had been pressing for the money,
and while in prison another month’s arrears would accrue, and she was
afraid that, not hearing from her, the woman would take her child to
the workhouse. She wept bitterly, and begged earnestly of me to call
and pay one month’s money, that the girl might remain with the woman,
promising that she would pay me every penny back. She was so concerned
that I promised to call and see the woman, and ascertain what had
better be done about the child. I went and found a beautiful girl,
exceedingly well cared for. The woman seemed decent and motherly, the
house was tidy and clean. I had a long talk with the girl, who was
going regularly to school, and had not the slightest idea of the life
her mother was leading. I suspect the woman knew, but she professed
ignorance to me, and, at any rate, she had never hinted to the girl
that there was anything wrong with her mother. The woman was poor, and
the money must be paid, for I saw at once that it might be fatal to
the girl’s future if she had to be taken to the workhouse. So I paid
the arrears, and, moreover, bought the girl a pair of boots, the only
things she required, for of clothing she had plenty. I never expected
to be repaid, neither did I trouble much about it.
Six weeks passed, and the mother came to see me at the court. She had
brought me the money I had paid, and the price of the boots, too. I did
not like taking it, for I knew she had obtained it by selling herself,
and possibly by stealing; but she was insistent, so with much misgiving
I took it, promising myself that when the time came for the girl to
start in life it should be devoted to her use. Two years passed, during
which time I saw little of the mother, as her appearances at the court
became much less frequent, and finally ceased altogether. I called to
see the girl, hoping to give her the start I had provided for. The
difficulty was to find the mother. They did not know where she lived;
they could only tell me the address to which her letters were sent. I
wrote to her, and the letter reached her. She met me, and agreed to
the girl going to the lady I had arranged with. I provided her outfit,
for the mother had got older and coarser, and consequently poorer.
The girl, now a young woman, has remained in her situation, is
doing well, and is much respected; the mother has developed into an
habitual inebriate, and gets charged at other courts; but she never
goes near her daughter, for her work is done, because her daughter is
self-supporting. For fourteen long years she had lived her life, and
kept the girl, whom she still loves. It is her love that keeps her
away, for she would not have her child see her as she now is. Down to
a lonely grave she will go, her only joy to know that her daughter is
respected, and will never know the life her mother lived. Can love do
more than this? Men will readily die to save others, but to live for
long years a daily death, to be content to dwell in shame that a child
may have a chance of purity, and, when that child has grown to early
womanhood, to crush a mother’s longings, and forego a mother’s joy
lest her child should be in some way harmed, is love almost passing
knowledge, and it will be placed on the credit side of her great
account.
Annie Adams was another of these perpetually convicted women, whose
only hopes were centred in the life of her child; but while the mother
was in prison that child had been taken away and was being cared for
and trained many miles away from London. To think of that child was
heaven to her, and the hope of seeing it was ecstasy, but to realize
that henceforward their lives must be apart, and that probably she
would never see her child again, was hell indeed, deeps below deeps,
and down she went. ‘Evil, be thou my good’ seemed to be her resolve,
and it was pitiful to see her: out of prison in the morning, the same
night in the hands of the police, haunting the same neighbourhood,
getting locked up invariably in the same place.
The years went on, and she got older; no rescue home would have her,
for I tried them all. No corner of the world would have her, for I
tried the various emigration societies in London, and though the
necessary money would have been forthcoming to pay for her outfit,
voyage, etc., no one would have her; so I clothed her decently and
brought her home. Three days she stayed with us, and the thought of her
child maddened her; the lust for liberty and drink came upon her, and
about ten o’clock at night away she sped, on and on, for the devil lent
her wings, till down in the old neighbourhood she found herself. A wild
joy and a fierce fight followed. The next morning, when I went into the
female prisoners’ waiting-room, she lay on the floor with cut head and
bruised face, her bonnet all smashed, her clothes all torn.
Now, Adams was naturally a kind and timid woman. When in the cells
she was quiet, when before the magistrate respectful, when in prison
well-behaved; but the devils of sensuality, drink, and despair had made
their abode within her, and they led her whereso’er they would. The
years went on and she still kept it up; bronchitis seemed to get fast
hold upon her, and it was wonderful to me how she lived. Probably it
was the frequent detentions in prison that kept her alive, for her name
became notorious, and her record was next only to that of Cakebread.
Again Lady Henry Somerset wrote me, ‘Bring her down to Duxhurst.’ Many
might have considered that the residue of her days were not worth
saving; yet I took her, and though Lady Henry knew that to receive her
was to receive a broken, almost dying, piece of humanity, she received
her. Two years she stayed there, and they were two years of peace.
She proved docile, obedient, kind, and trustworthy. But again Nature
had its own. She manifested symptoms of a disease that could only be
treated in a London hospital, and she was sent for treatment. It did
not succeed, and she soon passed away.
In one of the rooms at Duxhurst is a tablet kindly placed there to
her memory, and it tells of her goodness whilst an inmate of that
institution. Somewhere in one of our great London cemeteries, deep
down she lies--I know not where. Somewhere out in the world is her
child, now a man. He knows the life of shame and notoriety his mother
lived. For years, her hope was to see him, and to her doom she went
with that hope unfulfilled. If he is ‘respectable,’ I at least hope he
is not hard or bitter, and that he lets the knowledge that she had a
passionate love for him draw a thick veil over the main part of her sad
life.
But it is not only for their own flesh and blood that these poor
outcasts care. ‘Unfortunates’ as they are, a divine pity for those who
are more unfortunate still is ever one of their distinguishing traits,
though it may be a comparative stranger that calls it into play. They
have their own way of doing things; to better people it may not seem a
nice way, it may not even be a good way, but nevertheless they do ‘good
things.’ I have known very much better people do much worse things
than some of these outcasts do. On one of the bitterest winter days I
remember a number of women sat in the female prisoners’ waiting-room in
one of our police courts. It was a makeshift sort of a place, and only
intended for temporary use. There sat two of these women, who were by
no means strangers to the place. Fairly well dressed, but coarse and
repulsive in appearance, they were equally ready to drink, fight, or
steal, while to decent ears their language was not nice. Beside them
sat a young woman of very different stamp, but of the same occupation.
Her eyes were closed, her head was leaning against the wall, and it
was patent to anyone that the hand of Death was upon her. She was
nicely dressed and of refined appearance, evidently not a slum girl.
Opposite to them sat a fearsome thing that had been a woman, now a
piece of humanity--all disease and dirt--whose only joy was to absorb
alcohol. She had been found dead-drunk in the streets, and taken on an
ambulance to the police station. The other three had been found drunk
and disorderly at 1 a.m.
‘Look at that, lassies!’ I said to the strong girls. They looked and
shuddered as I pointed to the ‘ghoul.’ ‘Look at this!’ and I pointed to
their dying companion. ‘Which will you be?’ They looked uncomfortable,
but did not answer. ‘Come!’ said I, ‘let me send you away from London,
and you shall begin a new life.’ ‘And what is to become of her?’ I was
asked. ‘I will take her to the infirmary.’ ‘No, thank you. We can look
after her ourselves.’
I could not persuade them, and one by one, before the magistrate, they
were fined ten shillings or seven days. The two coarse girls paid
their fines and went into the wintry streets, but the ‘ghoul’ and
the delicate one had no money, and were placed in a cell. Now, this
particular wooden cell had a charm for me that the rest of the cells
lacked. A street artist, who had been one of its occupants but a short
time before, had whiled away some of his time with the help of his
crayons, and had placed on the whitened boards the good old motto _Nil
desperandum_. There, in good-sized Old English capitals and startling
colours, it smiled upon everyone that entered. When I went to the cell
to speak to the sick woman I found underneath the motto two words
freshly written--_Deus misereatur_. They were written in a woman’s
hand, with pencil, so I knew who had written them. ‘Tell me where your
friends live, and I will go and see them,’ I said. ‘It is no use your
going, sir. I know I am very ill, and I saw my mother last week, but
she won’t have me home again.’ But while I was speaking to her the
gaoler came for her; her fine had been paid. There in the gaoler’s
office stood the two coarse girls. Cold as it was, they were without
their jackets, for they had left them at the nearest pawnshop to raise
their friend’s fine. I took them into a refreshment-house, gave them
a warm breakfast, and told them that they had done a deed of heavenly
charity and made the angels smile. I earnestly renewed my attempt to
care for the sickly one, and send them away; but no, they meant to see
the last of her. I watched them in the street that cold wintry morning
as the snow fell about them, two jacketless girls, one on each side of
a dying one, supporting her. I saw them pass into a haunt of vice, and
I knew they would be faithful unto death. In less than a month’s time
there was a funeral from that house, and though it was not the time
of flowers, there was a good display; and in a cab behind the hearse
rode the two girls, each holding a wreath, and each newly dressed in
mourning. How had they got their new clothing? Five shillings down
and half a crown a week to a ‘tallyman.’ How had they paid for the
funeral, kept their friend, and paid the doctor? By selling themselves,
by hunting drunken men and possibly by robbing them, by the help of
other ‘unfortunates,’ and by getting into debt. And I had no word of
condemnation as I saw them pass along, not though the girls courted
public attention; nay, I had a lump in my throat, a dimness in my
eyes, and a thankfulness in my heart. For I had visited at a house
of refinement, I had seen a well-dressed, respectable mother, I had
pleaded for an erring but dying girl; but respectability said, ‘I must
consider her sisters,’ and that was the only reply I got. True, money
was offered for the girl’s needs, but as motherly love and sisterly
sympathy were denied, I declined it, and left it to the outcasts to
tend the dying and bury the dead.
The two are older and coarser. They are often before the court, when
the police tell of their bad language and worse conduct, and sometimes
they go to prison. Their mourning has long since been worn out or been
torn to shreds, but the tallyman has been paid in full, and the doctor
was not defrauded. _Deus misereatur._ No, the devil does not have it
all his own way even with these women, not till the evening of their
lives, not till they have become ghouls, not till they are left with
but one passion to satisfy, not till King Alcohol has claimed them
for his own--not till then does all goodness die within them. _Deus
misereatur_, for it is a frightful power that impels these women to the
streets of London.
Drunkenness with them is but the symptom of a deeper cause, and this
cause is not alone the possession of the poor; women of middle age,
wives of well-to-do and cultured husbands, mothers of many children,
leave those homes, husbands, and children to roll in the sensual sties
of London. ‘My punishment is greater than I can bear. It is my eldest
son’s twenty-first birthday, and I am two hundred miles away. I must
come back, if only to look once more through the window.’ So wrote the
mother of eight children to me. She had left them and her beautiful
home for the wild and gross degradation of the streets; she had become
one of the most notorious of our police-court habitués; she revelled in
impurity, and down to the lowest depths she sank. So I sent her away,
not hoping to reform her, but hoping that she might, at any rate, live
a less scandalous life. To look once more through the windows of her
once happy home she came back to London, came back to die in one of our
workhouses. Their punishment is greater than they can bear, and the
punishment that the law inflicts is but a small portion of it.
‘Take away the drink, and they will be all right.’ I yield to no man in
my detestation of drink. I know its power and effects as but very few
can; but with the great majority of these women it is not a question of
drink at all. Mentally diseased, or sensually possessed, they present
a hopeless problem, and unless science, in conjunction with human
sympathy, can find some method of treating them as patients as well as
sinners, the problem will go unsolved.
Such are the women who come within the provisions of the Habitual
Inebriates Act of 1898. These are the women who come before our
magistrates four times in one year. These are the women of whom the
State says to philanthropic societies of private individuals: ‘Take
them off our hands. Cure them of inebriety. Keep them for one, two,
or three years, and you shall have ten and sixpence per week for each
of them.’ And local bodies say: ‘Take them, treat them for the drink
craze, and we will supplement the State payments by six and sixpence
per week for each.’ Seventeen shillings per week paid by the community,
plus the labour of the individual, for sensually possessed or demented
women to be cured of drunkenness! To such wisdom have we attained!
Deliberately and emphatically I say, and I say it with some knowledge
and great experience of these women, that drink is not the root
cause of their condition. They drink because they must drink; their
hunting-ground is the public-house, their prey the drink-excited male.
A friend of mine took a young woman of this class, who had been to
prison a hundred times, into his service. There, with good wages and
a comfortable home, shielded from the temptation to drink, with no
possibility of indulging grosser passions, she tried to hang herself
and was taken to an asylum. After three months’ detention I brought
her away and cared for her. She stayed with us a few days and left us
suddenly, not to drink, but to revel in impurity. Sadly but earnestly
I say that philanthropic societies cannot restrain, discipline, and
control these women. The State, and the State alone, can deal with
them with any hope of success, and medical men who have made a study
of sensuality and dementia should have charge of them in institutions
where they can be properly classified, studied, and treated, for the
hopeless scandal of their present lives ought not to continue. But to
commit such women to ‘inebriate reformatories’ for one year or two,
and then send them back to their old haunts and old vices, is not
only supremely ridiculous but stupidly cruel--ridiculous, because the
community has to pay about fifty pounds for a penniless and homeless
woman to be conveyed to and kept at a reformatory for one year where
her condition is not diagnosed; cruel, because these women come back
to the same old conditions from which they were taken away. The Act
is but eighteen months old, and they are coming back, back to their
sensuality, back to the wild and fierce grossness of the street,
back to the police courts and to prison--for this has been the case
with several. Can it be right? Is it just to the community or to the
individual directly concerned that a woman should be taken from her
horrible life for a year, and at the end of that year be again launched
into the abyss of uncleanness? The community, having borne the cost,
has a right to demand, and I hope it will demand, that before any woman
is discharged from any inebriate reformatory some provision is made for
her, and that at least a chance of living a clean life is presented to
her. If she accepts the opportunity, well; if not, the State ought to
know how to deal with her.
The managers of philanthropic inebriate homes have a difficult task,
for they must consider ways and means, and are bound to look at the
financial aspect. They naturally want strong, healthy, and industrious
women, for the labour of these must be an important factor. The
conduct of each woman must have an important bearing on the morale of
the institution; and there must be, I feel sure, the temptation to
‘license’ out the inferior and badly-behaved women, and keep for longer
periods such as are decently behaved and fairly industrious. With the
State these things can have no weight, for the State only can afford to
disregard the conditions I have named. But the State, having the care
of these women during their detention, might easily have an arrangement
with philanthropic societies for the after care of their patients, and
so prevent their discharge until suitable arrangements are made for
their future.