Slums in the gilded West—"It's the place! It's ruin to us all"—Where the children earn and the mothers drink—How the "till sneak" works—Lynch law in London—A slump depression in the burglary trade
IN all great cities there are certain areas which bear an evil reputation. On the principle that birds of a feather dock together, the vicious and the criminal have a habit of seeking each other's society. But though crime and vice are frequently associated, there is often a sharp distinction to be drawn so far as certain quarters of London are concerned.
In the heart of the West End, in the Royal Borough of Kensington itself, there are whole streets in which the inhabitants are vicious, as we understand the word as a label. Here the police are busy, but the bulk of the charges brought against the women and the men are for drunkenness, for disorderly conduct, for fighting and brawling. They are principally night charges, for during the day you may wander the neighbourhood and see little life in the streets that are notoriously ill-famed.
There is one street that from end to end has not a single house in it where there is not a broken window. These houses are packed with a low type of humanity. Every house is a lodging-house, and many of them are lodging-houses for women only.
In the daytime drunken, dissipated-looking women loll in the doorways or thrust their tousled heads out of the upper windows. If you enter these houses and go down into the common kitchen you will find scores of women, young and middle-aged, sitting round the coke fires, listless, often morose. Among them you will see now and again women with traces of refinement, some whose features still bear the lingering traces of youth and good looks.
But they are lost souls every one of them. There is not one among the hundreds who crowd the notorious lodging-houses of this terrible guilt garden of the West who is still making an effort to earn an honest livelihood. Most of them are thieves when opportunity offers. They are not professional thieves, but many of them are in league with rascals of the worst type, loafers and hooligans, who are not ashamed to beat and maltreat women and force money from them.
This district is a district of despair to the philanthropist, the social reformer, and the Christian worker. It has been called the Avenue of the West. It is a cesspool to which all that is worst in the squalid vice of the capital flows. And the pity of it is that the stream is constantly fed by tributaries from the cleaner, greener land beyond. It is here that hundreds of our rural immigrants drift in ignorance or in despair of London's vastness and inhospitality, and here they rapidly deteriorate, and become in time as evil as their environment.
There is no mystery about the character of the people in these streets of shame. And yet the element of mystery greets you at every turn, whether you wander these byways of wickedness by day or by night.
If you would explore the mysteries of the Avemus, it is not in the houses or the streets that you will see the veil lifted.
But stand with me in this room in the school where the mentally and physically feeble offspring of degenerate parents are cared for and taught. Listen to the cry of a woman, who pours her heart out to the sympathetic teacher who has sent for her to give her advice about her little boy.
"It's the place, miss," wails the woman. "It's ruin to us all to be in it. It's ruined his father—it's ruined me, and it's ruining the children. If I could only get out of it! But I can't—I never shall now."
Ten years ago this woman and her husband came from the country to try their luck in London. The man failed to get work, fell in with evil companions, and they drifted to the Avemus. The husband is a loafer—the wife does a little work at a laundry when she can get it. They live in a vile street, where oaths and foul language and brutal deeds are all they hear and see. The house they live in is filled with bad characters. The eldest boy—he came a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked child from the country with his parents—is in prison; the girl, who was bom after they came to the Avemus, is in an idiot asylum; the boy at the school is developing criminal tendencies. The mother sees with despair the min of her family, but she is helpless to avert it. Her husband is a drunkard. She herself has fallen into the slough at last.
Her case is typical of hundreds in the neighbourhood. So terrible is the effect of the environment on the children that day and night the Industrial School officers are searching for girls and boys, whose only hope of salvation is to be separated from their parents.
If you were to spend one night in the Avemus your face would be crimson with righteous indignation that little children should live open-eared and open-eyed in constant contact with such horrors.
Do you see a broad-shouldered, burly, kindly-looking man walking quietly along the street? As he comes into sight a group of lads and lasses disperse as if by magic. There is a sudden bolt up a narrow passage that through a back street leads into the open thoroughfare.
The big man smiles good-humouredly. He has seen the group, and the girl he wants was in it. He will find her before the night is over, because he will enter every house she is likely to have taken refuge in. He is the Industrial School's officer. Three years ago he rescued a girl from evil surroundings and she was sent to Canada. She has managed in some mysterious way to get back again across the sea, and has headed straight for the Avemus, where she has a bad mother, and a father who is worse.
There is nothing brings the shame and degradation of one phase of London life so acutely home to you as a day and a night with the officers whose duty it is to remove the young from the homes and haunts of vice. In one street in the Avemus there are two hundred children growing up. There is not one house in the whole of that street that does not harbour women of the most degraded type.
Many of these children are already busy as money-makers. Some of them are sent out into the streets to beg; to play their carefully planned tricks and dodges on the humanity of the passers-by. There are women who wash their faces, smooth their hair, and dress in seedy black as widows, and take little children out with them to beg. These "poor widows" starve the children and spend the money in drink. Sometimes they don't take their own children; they hire a deformed child or a cripple of a mother who is willing to let it out. There are hundreds of little children now in industrial homes who were forced into the streets to ply the trade of mendicity and mendacity, and who were treated with the most brutal violence by their parents if they came home empty-handed. Many a child, failing to get money by begging, would steal rather than go home to be received with foul words and brutal blows.
This Avernus of the West is an area of vice. The most typical area of crime lies nearer to the City's heart. It has been said, "Wall off Hoxton, and nine-tenths of the criminals of London would be walled off." That is, perhaps, a too sweeping statement, but that there are whole areas in Hoxton inhabited entirely by criminals is a fact beyond dispute. Those criminals are principally thieves and burglars. The majority are of the lowest order, but there are among them several superior "artists"—men who plan and carry out big jobs. The "fences," or receivers of stolen goods, have made quite a little colony here, and the modern trainer of thieves, the Fagin of the twentieth century, has his daily and nightly classes in the neighbourhood.
Look at this row of neat-looking houses. There are blinds and well-arranged curtains at the windows, the handle of the bell is polished, the steps are clean. The signs without bespeak comfort within. These houses are largely occupied by the superior craftsmen in crime. One or two receivers also reside here, and the cleverest trainer of young thieves in London occupies the upper portion of the house that has the best show of flowers in the home-made window-boxes.
It has been my privilege to converse with some of these trainers and to get an insight into their methods. I am not betraying any confidence in publishing what I have learnt of their system, because it is perfectly well known to the police and to the Christian workers who labour among the pupils of the modern Fagin. The boy who is "trained" is, as a rule, taught one branch of the art of robbery only. For instance, a thief who wants to be an expert abstracter of ladies' watches never steals watches from men. If he "mixes his pockets" he loses his delicacy of touch. The fingers must be employed in one way in taking a watch from a man's pocket, and in quite another way in taking a watch from a lady. To steal from the person adroitly and with little fear of detection the fingers must be in constant practice in one particular way. Many a thief who has stolen from women for years with impunity has come to instant grief when, tempted by the apparent carelessness of the owner in a crowd, he has tried to take a watch from a man.
The most difficult branch of the "profession" for the young thief to learn is "counter creeping." To enter a shop on your hands and knees, crawl round behind the counter, and secure the till unnoticed by the shopkeeper requires the most skilful use, not only of the hands, but of the knees. The slightest sound as you crawl along the floor might attract attention. Yet, in spite of its difficulties, this branch of the business has many apprentices, who practise in a room in which an imitation counter is fitted up.
The "till sneak" occasionally acts with an accomplice, sometimes with two. When the favourable shop has been fixed upon, the habits of its owners studied, and the propitious moment chosen, one of the confederates enters as a pretended customer and engages the attention of the shopkeeper—frequently a woman. Another confederate keeps observation outside, and is ready to facilitate the exit of his "pals." The trained till thief creeps in and secures the haul noiselessly.
It often happens that the shopkeeper does not discover the loss until another customer has been served, and he or she goes to the till to put money in it and finds it empty.
But with all their cleverness, with all the risks they run in following their dishonest occupations, these professional thieves seem to make a very poor living.
If you would see how they live, let us go boldly into one of the criminal areas and enter the houses.
Here is the most notorious criminal street in London. The inhabitants are frankly thieves and of a very rough class. In the centre of the street is a lodging-house in which some two hundred thieves are accommodated nightly, and there is hardly a house from end to end in which the weekly rent is gained by honest industry.
Look at this "notice" chalked up in big letters on a wall: "Coppers wanted. Three killed last night."
That is a playful exaggeration. A policeman killed in this street a month or two ago, but only one. The whistle of a hooligan captain sounded, and scores of young roughs poured out of the houses to obey the summons. A "nark," or a lad who was suspected of "marking"—i.e. betraying a comrade by giving information to the police—had ventured into the neighbourhood, and the gang were called forth to administer lynch law. There was a big fight, for the suspected "nark" had pals too. In the course of the combat an unfortunate policeman so far forgot the first law of nature as to enter the street with a view of restoring order. He was so badly knocked about and injured that he died shortly afterwards.
If you enter the houses, which are mostly let at 12s. 6d. a week and taken by one person, who lets off the rooms and lives rent free in the process, you will find the most terrible squalor and apparent misery.
Most of the families live in one room. Occasionally, when one of the girls is old enough to do factory-work and bring home a regular wage, the luxury of two rooms is indulged in.
Here is a criminal family living in one room. There is a broken-down bedstead in the corner, and on it a dirty mattress and a patchwork quilt, originally of many colours, but now of one prevailing hue, that of greasy brown. There is not a chair or a table in the place. There are only a few broken and battered pails and tubs, which serve the purpose of chairs. In one of these tubs a baby is wedged in with rags, and in this position carried out and placed on the pavement. That is because the mother, who is alone, is going out, and there is a fire burning in the battered grate. The baby might play with the fire and burn the bed, and that would be a loss to the family. So the baby is deposited in the tub outside the front door, and left there for the hours that its mother has arranged to be absent.
If you were to enter this room in the small hours you would find it occupied by the grandmother, the mother and her husband, two young girls, and a lad of fifteen. There are two older lads in the family, but they are more comfortably lodged in one of His Majesty's prisons.
Here is the home of a professional burglar. He has only one room at present for himself, his wife, a lad of seventeen, two girls of fourteen and eight, and a baby. Presumably the burglary trade has shared in the general depression, for the family are at dinner when we enter, and it consists of nothing more appetizing than bread and cheese.
In one day I visited the homes of over fifty professional thieves in this district. This burglar was the only one who did not reciprocate my friendly advances. He was surly, and, but for the fact that circumstances compelled him to be civil to the friend who accompanied me, he would, I am sure, have given me a very unpleasant interview. In twenty of the houses I visited, a member was temporarily absent from the family circle. Some were away for six months, some for five years. There was no concealment as to their present address. "In prison," was the frank reply, sometimes made with a smile.
In only one instance was there any trepidation shown at the entry of unexpected visitors. That was when we went downstairs into a kitchen occupied by a middle-aged lady. Hearing strange footsteps, she had hastily attempted to conceal a bulky-looking sack under the bed. She explained her "palpitations" by assuring us that she suffered from heart disease.
As the lady was the wife of a gentleman who receives stolen goods, and has another kitchen at the back in which gold and silver articles are subjected to certain "transforming processes," we quite understood the nervousness which the lady betrayed, and her relief when we bade her good-bye and mounted the stairs again.
There are a dozen streets in this area, every one of them packed with criminals. But everywhere is the sign of squalor and penury. Walk through the streets, and you will see the children ragged, dirty, and barefooted. Nowhere in London is the note of misery so emphasized.
Crime, so far as these areas are concerned, must be a far less profitable occupation than the worst-paid class of honest labour.
And yet these people look solely to crime for their rent, their clothing, and their food, and wouldn't do an honest day's work if it were offered to them.
A sham funeral to hide shame—Moneylenders who discount forged bills —Was she responsible?—Haunted by a living spectre—At the mercy of a spendthrift—Where the father is the black sheep
NOT very long ago a high dignitary of the Church stood in the witness-box while his brother stood in the dock. Human endurance had come to an end, and the well-known divine had given his brother in charge to protect himself from violence and his family from insult.
This high dignitary of the Church was a man beloved and admired. No one who listened to his sermons, no one who saw him in his delightful home in the midst of his family, imagined that for years his life had been made miserable by the conduct of his own brother.
But at last the torture passed endurance, and the aid of the law was invoked. Then the skeleton in the family cupboard was dragged out into the light of day. But thousands of men and women in good positions set their teeth and bear the strain and the pain. They endure in silence and keep a smiling face before the world. The blacker the black sheep of the family is, the more earnestly they strive to avoid doing or saying anything which will draw public attention to the evil-doer.
It has happened in more than one case that the members of a noble family, stung to the quick by the infamy of one bearing their name, have connived at a false death and sham burial.
Such a case occurred some years ago, when, death being the only way to avoid a criminal trial, the relatives of the offender, who had fled to avoid arrest, gave out that he was dead, procured a body, and buried a stranger in the family vault.
With the supposed death of So-and-so the action which the outraged law had commenced against him ceased. The black sheep lay, so the world was informed, among his noble ancestors, beyond all human retribution. When the coffin that bore his name upon the plate was being lowered into the grave the black sheep was on his way to the East. There, under an assumed name, he lived for some years. It was not until his noble relatives received the news of his actual death through a faithful servant who had accompanied him into exile that they felt easy in their minds about him. They had always been haunted by the terror that in a fit of mad recklessness he would come back to England. He had threatened to do so more than once when the remittances were not as generous as he thought they should be.
There lay some little time back in the condemned cell of a London gaol a man who had committed a brutal murder for gain. The man was tried under a false name, and in that false name executed. For years he had been the black sheep of the family, sinking at last so low in his criminal career that his relatives refused to have anything more to do with him.
This man's real name was a well-known one in the world of philanthropy and the world of commerce. His friends, when they heard of his arrest for murder, were haunted by the fear that he might reveal his identity and put a public shame upon them.
But the murderer put their minds at ease in that regard. While awaiting trial he wrote to the head of the family informing him that he need be under no apprehension. Whatever the result of the trial might be, he, the prisoner, would retain the false name he had assumed when he first took to criminal courses. So perfectly was the secret of this murderer's identity kept that his mother, who died quite recently, never knew that her son had been tried for his life, found guilty, and executed.
But it is not often that the black sheep shows any consideration for the honour of his house. On the contrary, he trades upon the fear his kinsmen have of being injured by the exposure of his infamies. It is the knowledge of what the family will sacrifice to save the good name imperilled by one of its members that makes the money-lender discount without a word the acceptance that he knows to be a forgery.
A. Z. was the son of a retired colonel. He was a trouble to his people from his boyhood. Soon after he came of age a position was found for him in a City office. He led a fast life and gambled, got hold of his father's cheque-book, forged his father's signature, and obtained five hundred pounds. Then he confessed what he had done, and the father had to suffer the loss or allow his son to be criminally prosecuted by the bank.
He naturally made no communication to the bank, and the paid forged cheque was debited to his account.
Encouraged by his first success, A. Z., failing to get hold of his father's cheque-book again, forged the name of an acquaintance, a wealthy young man, to a bill and discounted it with a West End money-lender. The amount was a thousand pounds.
A week before the bill came due he left home and wrote his father a letter—apparently a broken-hearted, penitent letter—in which again he confessed his crime.
He entreated his father to see the young man whose signature had been forged and arrange the matter. The young man was the son of a brother officer of the old colonel's. He was horrified at the discovery of young Z.'s treachery, but he consented to receive the thousand pounds and take the bill up with it.
The colonel, in despair, told his daughters—he was a widower—what had happened. If their brother persisted in his evil courses there was nothing in front of the family but ruin and shame and humiliation. The little household was reduced to despair. Night and day they were haunted by the terror of what the black sheep would do next.
What he did, having squandered the whole of the money he had obtained by his last forgery, was to swindle tradespeople by giving worthless cheques.
In every instance he had stated who he was, and the colonel, being well known, was appealed to by the tradespeople, who did not want to prosecute if they could get their money.
Again the colonel paid, but his little capital had begun to be seriously diminished by these continued drains upon it.
"Father," said the eldest girl, as he described the terrible position in which her brother's conduct had placed them, "Arthur will ruin us. He will bring us to the gutter. So long as you have a farthing left in the world he will continue to rob you."
She brooded on it. She began to hate her brother, the cause of all their misery. She wished that he was dead.
A few months later the young man, as the result of the evil life he was living, was taken seriously ill. He was suffering from alcoholism, and a trained nurse was engaged, as it was not safe to leave him.
His sisters went to see him occasionally. One afternoon the elder sister called. The nurse wanted to go out for half an hour, and the sister offered to stay with the patient.
A quarter of an hour later the sister rushed suddenly downstairs calling for help. Her brother had suddenly jumped out of bed, rushed to the window, flung it open, and leapt out. The window was on the third floor. The young man was picked up dead.
At the inquest the nurse declared that such an accident ought not to have happened. Miss ————— knew that her brother was likely to make for the window if not restrained—that was a common thing with cases of the kind. There was a bell in the room, and in the adjoining room was the sick man's male servant. There should not have been the slightest difficulty in restraining the would-be suicide, seeing that the window was fastened and assistance could have been secured in a moment.
The sister explained that she was so horrified when she saw her brother leap out of bed and make for the window she could do nothing. She nearly fainted. When she recovered herself her brother was through the window, and then she rushed out of the room calling for help.
But the fate of the black sheep saved the family. The relatives, who knew the story, have their own view of what happened. That which was a mystery to the hired nurse was no mystery to them. The sister deliberately let her brother go to his death.
It is not always the younger members of a family who are the black sheep. Sometimes it is the father—the mother—the husband—the wife.
In the days when a great music-hall star was at the height of his fame, and had fortune at his feet, I saw him in his charming home with his boy and his two little girls. The star had been an actor, and was a man of culture and education. He had been separated from his wife for some years. She had left him in circumstances which entirely released him from any moral responsibility with regard to her.
His early married life had been wrecked by this woman, who had become a dipsomaniac. After she left him he devoted himself to his three children. His delight was in them and in his home.
One night I was passing the music hall at which he was starring. His brougham was waiting for him at the stage door, and a little crowd had gathered to see him come out. He came, and there was a cheer, and at that moment a dissipated-looking woman, with a battered bonnet on her untidy hair, with tom dress and bedraggled skirts, reeled forward and caught him by the arm.
"Hulloa!" she shouted. "It's you, is it?"
The "star" went very white as he looked into the drunken woman's face. He shook himself free from her clutch and stepped hurriedly into the brougham.
The drunken woman yelled a volley of abuse after him as he drove away.
Then she turned to the crowd and exclaimed—
"I'm his wife—his lawful wife—curse him!—and that's how he treats me."
For ten years the terror of meeting this woman embittered the life of a great popular favourite. It was useless for him to give her money. It went in drink. He had once after she left him given her a home for herself. In six weeks she had sold every stick, and during that time she had twice been locked up and fined for being drank and creating a disturbance in the street.
She would meet him outside a hall, then disappear for months, to turn up again and publicly claim him as her husband before a crowd of people.
The woman died some years ago in a workhouse infirmary. In her last illness she said who she was, and the great music-hall star was communicated with. He bought a grave for her, and on the tombstone above it he had these words placed:
"Sacred to the memory of ——— —————-, wife of ————— —————-."
Dead, he could acknowledge her. Living, his haunting terror was that he might meet her, and she might call him husband.
In France, when the family fortune and the family honour are being imperilled by a member, a family council can be called, and can invoke the aid of the law to limit the powers of the offending individual. Here no such system exists. A man who has lost all moral control over himself may squander his substance and leave his children beggars. A young man succeeding to a considerable estate may get rid of it in insane extravagance in a year or two. A widow left with the control of her dead husband's fortune may embark on foolish speculations or become the dupe of swindlers and leave the sons and daughters of her dead husband without a farthing in the world.
Mr. B————, who had a high financial position in the City, died and left a widow and four children, all girls. Fortunately, he settled a small sum on each of the girls, but the bulk of his fortune went to the widow.
She was forty-two when her husband died; the eldest girl was nineteen and the youngest fourteen.
Soon after her widowhood Mrs. B———— took to drink. Now began a purgatory for the daughters. The mother would go out every morning and be absent all day. At night she would return staggering, helpless, hopelessly intoxicated.
Sometimes she would be brought home by a policeman. One night a constable found her just before midnight lying on her own doorstep with a black bag in her hand. The black bag, which was half open, contained £700 in notes and gold. The unhappy woman had been to the bank in the afternoon and cashed a cheque for £800. A hundred pounds was missing. What had become of it she herself when she became sober was unable to say. She couldn't remember.
So things went on for two years. Night after night these young girls sat in their home listening to every footstep, waiting for their mother to return.
One night she did not come home at all. The next morning they heard she had been locked up. The police had found her lying in the street with a large sum of money on her, and had locked her up for her own safety.
In her home her presence was often more terrible than her absence. In her delirium she would threaten to kill her daughters. The terrified girls would lock themselves in a bedroom and remain there sometimes for days together, fearing their mother's violence.
In her right senses she loved her children tenderly, and then she was the best of mothers. But as time went on her intervals of sanity became rarer and rarer.
The first day of peace these poor young ladies knew was that on which they followed their mother to her grave.
Mr. H——— has two sons, one a well-known barrister, the other a physician. Both have won for themselves a position in the world. But both have one great and constant terror. Their father is the black sheep of the family.
Up to the age of fifty Mr. H——— was a merchant of repute in the City. He had apparently an ample fortune, and he brought his children up in luxury. His wife died when he was fifty-one, and a year after he became involved in a long and expensive lawsuit.
Soon afterwards a remarkable change came over him. He neglected his business, made questionable acquaintances, and began to drink heavily. Then his affairs became involved. The business was given up. He sold his house and went to live in chambers. All his children had previously left him; the girls had married, the sons were established—one, as I have said, being a barrister, the other a doctor.
One day, calling at his father's chambers, the barrister was astonished to learn that he had given them up and gone away.
The family were alarmed, knowing something of their
The missing merchant was discovered living in a low-class foreign hotel in Soho.
He gave no explanation of his conduct, but allowed himself to be taken to his son's house—the doctor's.
Some time afterwards the doctor was astonished on returning home to find a man in possession of his home. The man had been put in for a debt of £600 which the merchant had contracted, stating that the house—the doctor's—was his residence.
The doctor, with the aid of a solicitor, got rid of the bailiff, and eventually to avoid a scandal he and the barrister paid the £600 between them.
A month later the doctor found another man in possession, this time for £100. His father had borrowed a hundred of a money-lender, giving his son's address as his own.
An investigation made showed that the once prosperous merchant had so hopelessly involved his affairs that he was practically without resources, and it was impossible to ascertain what liabilities he was incurring.
In five yean the sons between them paid over £10,000 to avoid the scandal which would have arisen had their father's peculiar business transactions come into court.
For both of them life had become a constant harass and strain. They could not prevent their father getting credit by publicly advertising that he had no resources. Such a course would have brought about the very publicity they were anxious to avoid.
And the father, finding that the sons eventually paid on every occasion, however much they protested at first, continued to incur liabilities. Many of his transactions were morally insane if not legally so.
One of his last feats was to sign an acceptance for £500 and give it to a man he met in the smoking-room of an hotel to get discounted for him. He and this man divided the proceeds between them. He was introduced to his new financial agent one Monday afternoon by somebody whose name he forgot, and on Tuesday he handed him the bill.
This time, when proceedings were taken on the bill, the sons father's newly-developed habits, and inquiries were made.
But certain allegations were made, and, to avoid "unpleasantness," they compounded and paid £300 to get the bill back.
When I last heard of the black sheep father he had been "converted," and was thinking of joining the Salvation Army.
The sons are nervous. They have an idea that they will one day meet their father in a scarlet uniform beating a big drum.
But even that would be a relief, if he devotes himself to music and abandons finance.
In the lives of the people lie the Mysteries of modern London, and the Black Sheep go to the making of many of them.
The hereditary taint—Cain, as a child of fifteen—Because he wouldn't give her a toy—Playing with fire—A heartless lie for a threepenny-bit—Suicide among children
THERE is one phase in the mystery of life in the great City which I would gladly pass. But it is one of the strangest, one of the least known, and it is impossible to ignore it.
Only those whose duties or whose studies bring them into contact with the saddest phase of child-life in London know how terrible is the picture that could be painted by an artist who, in his desire for realism, did not shrink from the most painful details.
It is not my desire, nor is it the purpose of these chapters, to take the darkest view of the sins and sorrows of the City.
The truth—the appalling truth—concerning the phase to which I am now referring is written in the records of the schools in which the feeble-minded children of London are specially cared for and dealt with. In these volumes the family history of the parents of every child is written, the doctor's view of the child's mental and physical condition is given, and nothing that can be ascertained for the guidance of the teachers is left unrecorded.
The authorities have decided—and very wisely decided—that these volumes shall be bound with metal clasps and locked from the eyes of all save those who have by their official position the right of access to them.
There are some terrible family histories in those guarded volumes. The sins of the parents are there, and the children on whom the sins have been visited are in the schools for the mentally and physically unfit.
Not always is it sin that has set its mark upon the offspring. Drink has much to answer for in the deterioration of a race; but here there is affliction as well—degenerate parents have married and given the world degenerate children.
Insanity, epilepsy, all the forms of mental instability contribute to the legion of the lost little ones.
If you could see the record of the parents you would find again and again that suicide and insanity had occurred in the family. You would find weak-minded parents with six and seven children—sometimes with ten. Out of one family of ten that I know only two of the children are normal. Through the generations the taint has been handed down, and that is the reason that lunacy is advancing by leaps and bounds, and the number of the insane is now so great that even the unthinking are beginning to be alarmed.
I am not going to point a moral here or to urge a reform. This is not the place. But I have been compelled to state the truth that the reason for the existence in our midst of a class of children who are dangerous to the community may be understood.
Here is a lad of fifteen. A few months ago the law decided that the time had come when the freedom of the home and the streets shall be denied him, and that he shall be kept where the commission of further crimes by him will be guarded against.
This lad of fifteen attempted to murder a little boy of six. He met the boy in the streets, took him to a lonely place, and there savagely attacked him. The child succeeded in escaping from the homicidal maniac of fifteen, who later on was arrested and charged at the police-court.
There, when it became a question of the boy's sanity, a circumstance was narrated to the magistrate which threw a lurid light on the case.
A year previously the boy had taken his little sister of four for a walk. Two hours later he returned to his home saying that the child had fallen into the canal and was drowned.
Search was made, and the body of the child was found in the water. But to get there she had had to force her body through some broken palings, and portions of her clothing were found on this side of them.
The tragedy passed at the time as an accident. It was supposed the child in childish heedlessness had got through the palings and fallen in.
There is no doubt in the minds of those who knew the children that the little girl was deliberately thrust into the canal by her then fourteen-year-old brother. The boy was a homicidal maniac. His one idea was to take life. After he had been taken to an asylum many things came to light. Other children came forward and told how he had suddenly seized them in quiet places, and how, terrified by his strange look and his violent actions, they had struggled and escaped, and fled from him in terror.
The piano is being played in this big schoolroom, and some fifty little girls are taking part in the musical drill, which is part of their course of instruction. Many of them are pretty and neatly dressed, but there is a strange, uncanny look in some of the faces. Yet they are dangerous, requiring on the part of their teachers the utmost vigilance. Some of them become furiously angry in a moment, and if a schoolfellow is the cause of their anger will burst into fits of uncontrollable rage and threaten vengeance. Others are cunning and wait for their opportunity.
One of these girls, annoyed at having to mind a baby sister in what she considered her playtime, took it out with her, went some distance from home, and left the mite under a dark railway arch near a piece of waste ground. Then she came back and said that while she was out walking a big woman had snatched the baby and run away with it.
Fortunately, some one passing the arch soon afterwards heard a child cry, went in and found the baby, and was taking it to the police-station when she met the mother, who had gone in search of it.
The girl had stated that it was on the waste ground that the woman had attacked her, and this led the mother to search in that direction.
Another of these girls—a pretty little maid of twelve—invented a blood-curdling story which caused the utmost consternation in the neighbourhood. She declared that she had seen a man kill two children and throw them into the canal. She described the man, and declared that it was a half-witted, inoffensive hawker known as "Jim," who sometimes came about the neighbourhood selling little halfpenney home-made toys to the children.
The next time "Jim" was seen he had a very bad quarter of an hour, and might have been lynched if a policeman passing by had not come to the rescue and heard the story. The child was then cross-examined, and, apparently frightened by the policeman, said it wasn't "Jim," but somebody very like him.
Some time afterwards it was ascertained that the girl had invented the story for the deliberate purpose of getting "Jim" set upon and "hurt." He had refused to let her have a toy that she fancied for nothing.
Here in a mean street in the neighbourhood of the old "Nichol," immortalized by Mr. Arthur Morrison, is a small four-roomed house. It is occupied by one family who, in this neighbourhood, would be considered well off.
The head of the family is a man of forty-five. He is of weak intellect and has epileptic fits. He has an income of a week, derived from property left him by a relative. The sum is paid to him weekly by a solicitor. His wife is older. She married him "for his money," and spends as much as she can get in drink. There are five children at home. There were seven. The two absent are little boys—one of four and one of six. The little boy of four is dead. He went out for a walk with the boy of six one morning and never came back. The elder boy said that his little brother had run away. The next day a woman, going to her dustbin, which stood in her little bit of front garden, was horrified, on lifting the lid, to find the dead body of a little boy. The elder boy had throttled the younger and put the body in the dustbin. When the tragedy was inquired into the child said that "something told him to do it." This Cain of six is now in an asylum for idiots. When he gets his liberty he will, if he refrains from further criminal violence, grow up and marry and have a family.
There is no sadder sight than—with a knowledge of this terrible phase of child-life—to watch these poor little degenerates come trooping out of the schools where a brave endeavour is being made to save them from the consequences of their own mental and moral deficiency.
Yes, there is one thing more painful still—that is, to listen to the prayers of their unhappy parents that the children of whom they are afraid—yes, literally afraid—may be taken from them and "put away."
"I never know a moment's peace," wailed one unhappy mother. "That boy has threatened to kill his little sister—and I'm sure that sooner or later he will do it."
Among these unfortunate children arson is a favourite amusement. Most children have a desire to play with fire, but here the object is distinctly mischievous. There is an intention to destroy property heedless of consequences, heedless even of the risk to human life.
"We shall be burned in our beds by him," said a poor woman one day to the schoolmistress. "He's set the place afire times when my back was turned, and the other day he got a lot of paper and shavings together and lighted 'em under the cradle."
The hatred or jealousy of the baby is a painful feature in many of these cases. It is the jealousy of a mind that is feeble. This jealousy led a young girl of gentle birth to commit a murder which attained world-wide notoriety.
Constance Kent killed her baby brother because she was jealous of him. There are several Constance Kents among these mentally deficient children, and many a baby meets with a fate which is supposed to be accidental, but the accident was materially contributed to by a brother or a sister.
For some of these children certain objects have an irresistible fascination.
There is no story more remarkable than that of the boy of fourteen in Paris who had murdered first an old woman and then an old man, solely in older to get possession of the cheap watches they wore.
After the boy's arrest several watches were found concealed in his home. They had no money value to him. He was simply collecting watches, and did not hesitate to kill in order to add to the number.
To get possession of some trifling and valueless ornament, a string of beads, a penny brooch, a toy, a few marbles, young children of the unfortunate class I am dealing with have laid the most elaborate plans. One youthful desperado noticed that a little girl on Sundays wore a string of beads to which was attached a lucky threepenny-bit—a threepenny-bit with a hole in it.
The child was always with an elder sister on Sundays, and there was no chance of a highway robbery. Moreover, the children knew the boy, and if he snatched the necklace they would tell their parents who did it.
He wormed himself into the confidence of the children, and ascertained that on week-days the necklace was kept put away in a drawer in the bedroom with the Sunday clothes.
On that information he acted. One day, when only the mother was at home, the sisters being out playing in another street near the school, the young hopeful suddenly rushed into her room. "Oh, Mrs. Jones," he exclaimed, "there's a little girl been run over in the next street, and I think it's your Annie!"
Off went Mrs. Jones, and the boy instantly made his way into the bedroom, found the drawer, opened it, and abstracted the necklace with the lucky threepenny-bit on it.
In all the cases that I know of childish criminality of the insane type—none of these children are of normal intellect—there is a family history which accounts for everything.
In the case of a little lad who broke into a house for the sole purpose of killing a canary—and he killed it cruelly—the mother and father were "afflicted," and the eight children of the family were all of violent temper and a source of constant annoyance to the neighbours. Six of them had been certified for "special instruction"—i.e., to be sent to the schools specially arranged for the feeble-minded.
It was for a long time a widely entertained idea that for a great deal of juvenile crime the sensational stories called "Penny Dreadfuls" were largely responsible.
In the worst cases of juvenile crime—or, it would be fairer to say, of juvenile insanity with a criminal tendency—of which I have had personal knowledge, there has been no fiction reading at all. The appeal to the imagination has been wholly lacking. The children have acted on their own initiative or the suggestion of a companion suffering from a similar lack of moral sense.
Here are two boys who broke into a church—one is fourteen, the other fifteen. Their object was to get at the offertory box in which they had seen money placed. On the younger boy when he was caught was found a common table-knife which he had taken from his home.
Asked what he had taken the knife with him for, he said without the slightest hesitation, "To stick into anybody that tried to nab me."
It was fortunate for the policeman who caught the lad as he came out of the church that he seized his quarry by both arms; otherwise he might have had practical proof of what the knife was carried for.
Suicide among children is officially announced to be on the increase. Suicide among children—the idea is terrible! One can hardly connect childhood with deliberate self-destruction. How, one asks oneself, can a child have become so melancholy, so depressed, so weary of life as to seek that which for all normal children has an element of terror in it—death?
The answer is that a large number of attempts at suicide by children are not caused by melancholia, but by insane malice or ungovernable temper. The dominant idea is the idea of causing trouble and pain to others. A little girl who attempted to commit suicide by throwing herself into a canal explained after she had been rescued that she did it to upset her mother.
I have dwelt reluctantly on this feature of our modern life—this outcome of the stress of civilization. I have made no mention of one phase of it with which the police-courts are, unfortunately, only too familiar. For its details you must turn to the records of rescue homes in which the cases are set out of girls of tender years who have been "rescued." But it is impossible to ignore the feature itself in dealing with the mysteries, or little-known phases, of London life.
The extent of the evil is not appreciated by the great public, for they see little of it. Even if they were to see a hundred of these children learning in the schools or romping in the playground, ordinary observers would not suspect the tragedy that lies below the surface.
For each of these children is a human document—a document which the genius of a Zola could extend into a world-shocking realistic romance like "L'Assommoir," or "Nana."
In the locked and guarded volumes where the family histories of these children are recorded lie more horrors than ever the great French novelist dared to blacken his pages with. There are the first and the second chapters of life-stories that ere they are closed will add many a strange romance of passion and crime, of madness and murder, to the mysteries of the town.