Some who have tried and failed—A disgrace to the family—A tragedy of mirth—Living and dead as room-mates—A strange kind of kleptomania—A pathetic story of fidelity
WHEN the interior of a house is set upon the stage, the offers harbourage to the fair frail craft that almost at the outset show signs of the storm through which they have passed before they made the harbour. About a third of them are London born, the others came from the quiet country to the city paved with gold, and in its glitter and glamour were lost.
The fourth wall is always down in order that the audience may see what is going on. In real life the dramas within the domestic interior are played with the fourth wall up. Sometimes through the windows we may catch a passing glance of domestic comedy, but when it comes to drama, care is taken that no passer-by shall have a free entertainment.
I am going to take the fourth wall down to-day, not only of a private house here and there, but of certain public and philanthropic institutions. The Londoner out and about passes scores of such buildings in an ordinary day's walk and hardly notices them. He has no thought of the strange romances, of the dramatic mysteries, which lie behind the dull brick walls.
Here in a busy thoroughfare is an excellent institution which of life's voyage have been driven on the rocks of sin and shame, or have drifted perilously near to them.
Though it is known by another name, I will call it a Rescue Home, for its work is the rescue of young women in peril of evil, and the sheltering of those who, having fallen, need a friendly and protecting hand to save them from being engulfed in the depths.
It is an ordinary-looking house. There is nothing about it to attract attention; nothing to suggest the mighty war between the evil and the good that is being waged behind its dull brick walls.
If we enter we shall find young girls and young women going about the work and occupation of the day silently and soberly. All are young, some are pretty, some are haggard and wan.
A large number are of the servant class. Of 106 who were inmates of this home during one year, 74 had been in domestic service, and of these 65 had been "generals." The predominance of this class is accounted for by the fact that 99 of the 106 had "wandered and lost their way" between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one. Of the remainder, 5 were factory hands, 8 laundry workers, 2 sempstresses, and 2 girls still at school.
Many of the girls had tried to regain the right path, and failed because of their friendlessness. Some of them had homes, but the doors were closed against them.
Look at this frail, pale girl of eighteen. There is a look in the sad brown eyes raised to yours as you pass her at her work which goes straight to your heart. She is a girl who, penitent and broken-hearted, wrote to her father, imploring him to let her return to her home. Here is the letter she received in reply to her despairing appeal:—
"Bessie,—We are surprised to think that you should ever have the cheek to write to us again and to think we should give you another chance. I think you have had a good chance, and we do not intend to give you any more—in fact, if you dare to come and see us we will shut the door in your face, for you are a disgrace to the family..., You said that you wanted to go your own way; now you can go your own way.... You need not take the trouble ever to write to us again, for if you do it will be sent hack unopened; at the same time you know if ever I should meet you it won't be good for you."
But all the inmates are not of the ordinary class. With regard to some of them there is a mystery that is never penetrated. That they are of superior birth and education they cannot conceal, but for the rest they are silent.
Not long since in this Home, at the hour when the Ladies' Committee was sitting, a visitor came who particularly wished to see them.
Shown in, she handed to the Committee a bank-note for £20, and to the surprise of every one explained that it was a thank-offering. A few years previously this charming and beautifully dressed lady had been herself an inmate of the Institution. She told her story frankly.
In a moment of temptation she had quitted her home, leaving no word behind which would enable her parents to trace her.
Her wilful course led her down step by step until she found herself an outcast from decent society, and she was then ashamed to let her friends know of her whereabouts.
One night she came to the Refuge and applied for admission. She was taken in, and after eighteen months' training she was placed in domestic service. Shortly afterwards, in quite a remarkable way, her father discovered her and took her home. Her father was a man of wealth, holding a high position in Society.
When the "rescued" woman left the institution she was seen to enter a carriage, which had been waiting a few doors lower down. The coachman and footman were in aristocratic liveries, and had powdered hair.
What writer of fiction would have placed in a refuge for fallen women a girl who, while she was training there for domestic service, had a father whose men-servants wore powdered hair?
But behind the brick walls that strange romance was being worked out, and the mystery of the girl's identity remains unsolved to this day.
Here is a house that looks like a private residence, standing in its own grounds. There is a wall in front of it, and the door in this wall is solid and shuts out a view of the garden.
It stands in a broad, busy thoroughfare, and thousands of people pass it daily on foot or by 'bus and tram. They glance at the house carelessly, perhaps, but very few of them know what lies behind the hiding walls.
Here not long ago, in the shady garden, sat a monarch of merriment, a lord of laughterland, a bright comedian who had won world-wide fame, and whose quips and cranks had made the nation gay. He was beloved by all who love honest mirth. He was the idol of the people. And behind the high wall he sat day after day, haunted by morbid fancies, a prey to strange delusions, now singing a snatch of some old song of his that had echoed round the world, now imagining that once again he was travelling with a little show, and had to wheel his "props" and his baggage on a truck from the station to the little hall in which the evening show was to take place. Sometimes he would be patronizing, and generously bestow a knighthood or a baronetcy on an attendant. One day he would raise the kindly doctor who had charge of him to the peerage, and the next, forgetting that he had thousands at the bank, he would worry about some imaginary financial difficulty involving a few pounds.
He left this retreat after a time, cured, it was supposed, and once more the public thronged to see him, and to laugh at his jokes and antics, and to cheer him frantically. Alas! it was but a temporary lifting of the cloud. There was a relapse, and then the end came swiftly and mercifully.
I never see the pleasant retreat and look at the sheltering wall but I think of the delightful droll whom I knew and loved, and who passed the months of his madness here, his presence unsuspected by the thousands who passed by. They little thought what a train of mirth lay hidden away behind the few yards of brick.
Here, in a mean street in a poor district, is a house let out in rooms. In the lower front room the ragged dirty blind is down. From this house you will see in a couple of hours, if you wait and watch, a grand funeral procession start. There will be an open car drawn by a pair of horses, and on it will be a wreath-laden coffin. Funeral coaches and four-wheel cabs will follow with many mourners, and the street will be filled with a crowd of women and children assembled to see the grand funeral of Widow Wilson's eldest son.
While you are waiting for the funeral car and carriages to arrive, I will take down the fourth wall. Now you can see inside the room with the drawn blind.
It is a poverty-stricken, squalid room. In the centre is a rickety table, round which the widow and her three remaining children are gathered, making a scanty meal before they put on their black to follow the dead lad to the cemetery. The thin stew has been taken from the fire, and is being served out on chipped and cracked plates to the children, and in the centre of the table at which the family are dining lies the corpse.
I am not inventing the details to paint a picture of life among the poor—I am giving the actual facts as discovered by the School Board officer of the district, who called to inquire why one of the children had not attended school the previous day.
No one seeing the elaborate and expensive funeral that started a couple of hours later from the house could have imagined the scene there was to be witnessed behind the brick wall. The living and the dead had been together in that one room for over a week.
There are many reasons why funerals are not hurried in the poorer districts. Here is a case in which one was delayed for three weeks.
Mrs. Jones's baby died just as it was completing its first year's experience of life. Mr. Jones drew the money from the burial club and gave an order to the undertaker. But before the day fixed for the funeral arrived Mr. Jones had lost half the money by backing horses that didn't win. In his distress he spent the balance at the public-house. "No money, no funeral," was the undertaker's motto, so the baby uncoffined, but shrouded in a sheet, was left in the cupboard.
Mrs. Jones, when the disaster was made known to her, told her story to her poor neighbours. They generously clubbed together, and in a few days they handed her the needed amount.
In her gratitude Mrs. Jones invited a few of her neighbours, who had not subscribed, to drink the health of those who had.
The health-drinking affected Mrs. Jones so much that returning home she was absent-minded, and the balance of the funeral money was stolen from her by a thief who had followed her out of the public-house.
The body lay in the cupboard for another week, and the news of the delayed funeral reaching the authorities, an official called, and baby was at last taken away and buried by the parish.
That was the greatest punishment that could have been inflicted on the parents.
If a modern Asmodeus, instead of lifting the roof, would take us around London and remove the fourth walls, we should be astonished at the tragedy, or moved to laughter by the farcical comedy, that would be suddenly revealed.
If, for instance, the wall were down to-night in front of this "desirable residence" in a West End square, we should see into the bedroom of the son of the house.
The family have retired for the night. Up in his own room the son, a good-looking, elegant, and cultured young man of five-and-twenty, is gloating over his treasures.
He has locked his door, and now he is contemplating with the most intense satisfaction several sets of false teeth which he has arranged on a little table in front of him.
His own teeth are sound and white. He has no need for false ones. Why, then, has he bought twenty sets?
He has not purchased them. He has stolen them.
His peculiar form of kleptomania is appropriating false teeth. He steals them whenever he has a chance. He abstracts them from the door-cases of dentists, from the shops in which they are displayed. He would not dream of being dishonest in any other way, but false teeth have an irresistible fascination for him.
If we were to take down the wall of a still more aristocratic residence we might see a lady of title opening a drawer and carefully counting her large store of serviettes. The astonishing thing about her collection is that the monograms are all different.
Wherever this lady lunches or dines she secures a serviette, puts it in her pocket, and takes it home to add to her vast assortment.
The young man could afford to buy the false teeth he fancies so much; the titled lady could buy serviettes all day long without feeling the outlay. But both prefer to steal the article that they have a strange desire to possess.
We will look through one more brick wall before we finish our present trip.
Once more it is a "Rescue Home" in front of which we pause. The wall is down, and we see into a well-ordered house, in which a number of young women are engaged in various occupations.
Look well at that short, pale-faced girl, whose features bear traces of the life she has lived, the sorrow she has known.
She is going about her work quietly, silently, mechanically. You would think to look at her that she had been a general servant of the "slavey" type in some poor household. As a matter of fact she described herself, when the police demanded her occupation, as a "charwoman."
But the girl is only twenty-one now, and probably never did a day's "charring" in her life, unless she would so describe the occasional tidying up of the room in which she once lived as the companion of a young professional burglar.
A short time ago I saw this girl at the Old Bailey trying to save the life of her lover by committing perjury. I have never witnessed a more pathetic scene.
The great beads of agony stood on the girl's brow as she looked at the youth on his trial for murder, and endeavoured to retract the damning admissions she had previously made to the police—admissions which led to her lover's arrest, and practically put the rope round his neck.
The law has laid the man in a murderer's grave within the prison walls. The girl a few days before his execution bore a dead child.
In two months of her young life she sounded the deepest depths of human tragedy. She has known a torture and a despair which few women of her age have been fated to endure.
But in this quiet home she is being cared for and tended, and noble-hearted women are waiting and hoping for the moment when she can be given the chance of a better life.
In the pocket of the dress she wears there are two letters carefully wrapped up in thick paper to preserve them. They are the last letters her murderer lover wrote her. She will treasure them all her life.
If in the early days of the trial we could have removed the wall of the prison in which the man was confined we should have seen him scratching the girl's portrait on the door of his cell with the point of a common pin, and labelling her with a word that expressed his anger against her for telling the truth about him when she fell into the hands of the police.
He is dead, but behind the grey walls upon which we are gazing to-day is the life tragedy of the girl he left behind him.
Masks with a purpose—For the sake of their daughter—A murderer's smiling mask—Waiting for the convict son—A secret from his wife—Beaten in a fight with fate
THERE is a mask that most of us wear occasionally. It is not always politic to show ourselves to the world exactly as we are. People of the highest respectability, of the most irreproachable honour, find the same difficulty in avoiding the occasional use of the social mask that the good bishop found in systematically avoiding the evasive answer.
The smile with which you greet an acquaintance who calls upon you when his visit is most inconvenient is a social mask; so is the admiration you express for the "dear little children" of your hostess when they are worrying you to death.
But that is not quite the social mask that I have in mind at the present time. I propose to deal rather with the men and women who wear the social mask to conceal from the world something of far greater importance than dislike, contempt, or weariness.
The social mask of wealth is often worn to conceal poverty; of extravagance to conceal bankruptcy; of love to conceal hatred; of gaiety to conceal grief; of innocence to conceal guilt.
If something happened which compelled the social mask to be laid aside by all our acquaintances, the revelation would astonish us; for it is worn in every rank of life and by all sorts and conditions of men and women.
Only in the home—sometimes only when the door of the room in which the wearer can be alone is locked—is the mask laid aside.
The husband may wear it for years in the presence of his wife; the wife may wear it in the presence of the husband.
Both wear a mask unsuspected by the other until the day that death dissolves their union.
There died not long ago a man who was universally esteemed and respected. He was looked upon as a model husband and father. His married life had been unclouded by a domestic care. His widow in her time of grief spoke of him as the truest, kindest husband that ever a woman had.
But for years he had worn a mask. He had not been in his grave a fortnight before the startling discovery was made that the man without reproach had another wife and another family and another home, and the two homes were not half a mile apart.
This man had worn the mask with both wives and both families. He had appeared to both to be all that was noble and good and constant in his affection. His profession being one that must necessarily take him from home pretty frequently to various parts of the country, he had been able to carry on the deception without arousing suspicion on either side. A clever arrangement of sending letters into the country to be posted back to his wives had got over the difficulties of correspondence during the intervals.
Husbands and wives who have long ceased to find pleasure in each other's society often wear the mask for the children's sake. Before the world and before their guests they are still a happy, united couple, but the marriage tie is a prison fetter to them both.
In a fashionable church the other day an aristocratic crowd assembled to witness the marriage of a beautiful girl, the only daughter of a couple well known in Society. No word of scandal had ever been whispered against husband or wife. At the wedding reception hopes were fervently expressed by old friends of the family that the married life of the fair young bride might be as happy as that of her parents. The young husband and wife drove away, and then one by one the guests bade the smiling father and mother good-bye.
The next day the smiling parents separated, each to make a separate home. The tragedy of their lives was over—or, if you will, the farce was finished. For ten years they had not spoken a kindly word to each other except in public. But that nothing might spoil or interfere with the matrimonial chances of their daughter they had worn the mask of a loyal and loving union.
A young man of fashion, elegant, good-looking, admired, and credited with the enjoyment of everything that goes to make life worth living! It was my privilege to know him, and I never saw him without a smile. One afternoon he came into the club, looked round the room, saw a friend, and invited him to play billiards.
The friend was not that way inclined, so the young man of fashion joined a little group and presently he was making us all merry. He was the embodiment of the joy of life, and more than one of us envied him his perennial flow of animal spirits.
He left the club and went home to his chambers, put a pistol to his head and blew his brains out, leaving behind him a note to say that he was unable any longer to endure the torture his life had become to him.
It was not until some months afterwards that we knew what had induced him to commit suicide. The woman he loved had married another man. The marriage took place in June, the suicide in September, so that for three months this young man had worn the mask of gaiety while his heart was slowly breaking.
The murderer and the murderess do not as a rule go about allowing their features to express their guilt. There are many crimes yet to be discovered; many which never, perhaps, will be discovered, the authors of which are going about among their fellow-citizens, keeping up appearances, and passing for very amiable and worthy people.
Wainwright, who murdered Harriett Lane, had the reputation of being "a good fellow." He had excellent social qualities, and was always welcomed by his acquaintances because of his good spirits and cheery views of life.
All the time that the body of the woman he had murdered was lying under the floor of his warehouse in Whitechapel, Henry Wainwright was earning golden opinions of all sorts of people. He was highly appreciated as a temperance lecturer, and of many a family gathering or festival he was the life and soul. And all the time the terror of discovery was gnawing at his heart. Shortly after his arrest I met a man who had been his intimate friend for years. He told me that on the last occasion they spent an evening together he had asked Wainwright how he managed always to look so supremely happy. Wainwright did not tell him that the smile was a mask he wore to impose on society. He said instead that he was happy because he had a good digestion and a clear conscience.
A friend and confrère of mine had a cook-housekeeper—a middle-aged woman whose smiling good humour made her a general favourite.
One day a man of fifty-five was arrested for the murder of the woman with whom he lived, and who was supposed to be his wife.
This man was tried, convicted, and executed.
On the morning of the execution the housemaid came to my confrère's room in a state of great excitement and told him that the housekeeper had fallen down "suddenly all of a heap," and was in a dead faint.
When the master went downstairs he found the poor woman had recovered and was sitting in a chair. She was very white and ill, and when he spoke kindly to her she began to cry.
He sent the other servants out of the room and asked her what was the matter.
Then, feeling probably that she must confide in some one, she told him the truth. The man who had that morning been hanged was her husband. He had deserted her for the other woman six years previously, and she had not seen him since.
She had read of the murder, the arrest, and the conviction, and with a great effort had concealed the agony the tragedy had caused her.
She had gone about her work smiling and amiable as ever, and it was only on the day that she knew her husband was dying on the gallows that the tension proved too much for her heart-strings and she broke down and let the mask fall.
A sweet-faced, white-haired old lady came to me a few weeks ago and asked me to sign a petition to the Home Secretary for the release of her son, who, many years ago, murdered a woman who had driven him to desperation. The young man was condemned to death, but the capital sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life.
I knew the young man, I knew his father and mother.
The father died. The old lady took her son's children, moved into a new neighbourhood, and brought them up in ignorance of the tragedy that had shadowed their lives.
I have seen the children, now grown up, happy in the home that granny has made for them. They have never read in that gentle, loving face the story of the sorrow that shattered her happiness for ever. To them granny is the embodiment of great happiness. She has set herself the task of brightening their lives and keeping the shadows away.
I hope and believe that the petition for her son's release will presently be granted. Then the father, whom the children believe to be far away engaged in business on the other side of the world and unable to leave it, will suddenly appear among them. He will have come home at last. But the secret so carefully guarded will be kept to the end. The children will never know that all these years their gentle, smiling, loving granny has worn a mask before them and before the world, and that night after night, when they could not see her, she has wept bitter tears for the son who was sentenced to death, and spared to work out a life sentence within the walls of a convict gaol.
The Humbert case startled the world. A family on the brink of a volcano of shame and humiliation lived gaily and grandly, imposing upon the cleverest and shrewdest men in Europe. In their case suspicion was aroused before the final crash came, and the famous safe was found to be empty.
But we have our Humberts here in London, concerning whom not the slightest suspicion exists. We see them living in luxury, indulging in the most lavish hospitality, and fêted everywhere in return.
Less fortunate people envy them, perhaps, for their wealth. No one guesses that they are hopelessly involved, and that their life is a perpetual stress and harass because they are compelled to scheme from morning to night in order to continue the imposture and postpone the fatal day of discovery, which is rapidly approaching.
When that day comes the head of the family will have his choice between the pistol or poison of the suicide and the dock of the Old Bailey.
The hero, or, rather, I should say the villain, of one of the most sensational frauds of modern times was princely in his hospitality. His wife, to celebrate their little boy's birthday, which was at Christmas time, gave a children's party, and there was a Christmas tree. I was a child at the time, and one of my playmates, a little boy who lived a few doors from me, was invited. He brought home a beautiful little gold watch, which he said had been given him from the Christmas tree. His mother, concluding that some mistake must have been made, took the watch back. With considerable haughtiness the hostess explained that no mistake had been made. "There was nothing on our Christmas tree worth less than five pounds," she said; "that was the lowest." Three months afterwards the haughty lady's husband was sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude for a series of frauds in which nearly half a million of money was involved. For years he had worn the mask of generosity over the face of a rascal.
He confessed after his conviction that for months before his arrest he had been in hourly dread of discovery, and there were times when he contemplated suicide. Yet not even his wife had the shadow of a suspicion that he had not legitimately acquired the wealth he spent so ostentatiously.
A genial and widely respected solicitor has just retired into convict life for a period of years. Up to the day of his arrest he was looked upon as the most charming of men, and was a welcome guest at some of the best country houses. His manners were delightful and his light-hearted gaiety infectious. It was known that he was backing an enterprise that had failed, and lost large sums of money in it. But everybody said, "What does it matter to him? He is so rich. It evidently hasn't upset him—he's as jolly as ever."
But the genial and gentlemanly solicitor had been using trust money. He wore the mask until sentence was pronounced. It was much more severe than he anticipated. When he heard it he buried his face in his hands and wept in the dock.
It is a May meeting at Exeter Hall. All the people crowded together to listen to the speeches from the platform love their fellow-men. There are clergymen and philanthropists, bright old ladies and serious young ones all listening with rapt attention to the genial eloquence of a gentleman honoured for his good works and his philanthropy.
It is a beautiful speech, and the face of the speaker beams with benevolence.
You would not think to look at that kindly, smiling face, that the speaker had a care in the world. But follow him home. See him when, his doors closed against the outside world, he drops the mask.
He could smile at others. He cannot smile to himself. The terror of the future is an abiding skeleton at the family feast. He has juggled with figures for years to hide the first fraud that he committed when things began to go wrong with him financially in the business of which he is the chief. Securities intrusted to him have been disposed of, but the payment of the interest regularly has lulled suspicion.
But now the crisis is at hand. Unless to-morrow he can get a large sum of money placed to his credit he will have to throw up the sponge and acknowledge that in the fight with Fate he has been beaten at last.
He has worn the mask for years in Society. It would not do for him to drop it and appear anxious and careworn.
But if the worst should happen, and he finds it advisable to start hurriedly for Spain to-morrow night, you will see a very different face under the travelling-cap drawn down over the eyes of the philanthropist as he paces the deck of the Dover to Calais packet.
It is her ladyship's reception, and the beautiful rooms in the family mansion are crowded with brave men and lovely women.
One of the most beautiful of all the beautiful women present stands wreathed in smiles, the centre of a little group of admirers.
Her husband is not at the reception. He very rarely accompanies her. He does not care for the gaieties of Society. One or two of the little group ask about him casually, and the bright, happy wife tells them smilingly, in the slang of the day, that he is "awfully fit," but absorbed in one of his agriculture schemes.
To the eyes that look upon her smiling face that beautiful Society dame is one of the happiest wives in the world. As a matter of fact she has not seen her husband for six months. He went away "by agreement" to one of his seats in the country, leaving her in the town house. That afternoon she received the document which informed her that an action for divorce had been entered against her. In due course the paragraphs will appear in the newspapers, and another Society scandal will be the talk of the town.
The social mask to-day is an adjunct of civilization. The mystery is as to who is wearing it and who is not.
The children never know—A reprieve at the last moment—A chapter from a life drama—When father comes home from prison—Living down a notorious name
IN the whirl of the world's news, the hurricane of happenings, the rush of events, the impression made upon the public mind by the dramas and tragedies of everyday life is bound to be transient.
All England may be thrilled on Monday by a horror that causes the Press to bristle with headlines, but after the Sunday papers have reproduced the details—perhaps with portraits by way of illustration—the horror loses its grip on the public imagination. A dozen new sensations have come to the front and forced the old one into the background.
There is always a large section of the public that retains its interest in a condemned murderer or murderess right up to the morning of execution. In the years when exciting news was scarcer, "hanging mornings" were quite national events. Special editions of the morning papers came out at ten o'clock with a full account of the painful proceedings, and the last dying speech and confession, if any, of the condemned. The halfpenny evening papers were rushed out at the same time, and the sale was huge. Not long since two halfpenny evening papers quarrelled about their statistics of circulation, and one reproached the other with quoting the figures of its "hanging editions" as those of its everyday sale.
With the execution chapter the story of a murderer ends so far as the general reader is concerned. The interest has been keenly maintained through all the chapters that have gone before relating to the crime, the arrest, the police-court proceedings, the trial, the verdict, scenes in the condemned cell, and, perhaps, the efforts made to obtain a reprieve have kept the story at a high level of interest. But with the last scene of all the details cease to be lovingly dwelt upon in the Press. The curtain falls with the disappearance of the central figure into the pit below the scaffold. The drama is considered—from the point of view of public interest—to be at an end.
Many sympathetic people, especially women, give a passing thought on the day of doom to the innocent relatives of the men and women whose throat the hands of Justice have clutched in the death grip; but the sun rises on another mom, and the tragedy and all concerned in it are lost in the mists of yesterday.
What becomes of the family of a murderer or murderess, of the women and children, the husbands and wives, the brothers and sisters, who bear the name that is branded with infamy for evermore?
Long before the fatal bolt has been withdrawn the children of criminals of fair or good position have disappeared from their old surroundings. They could not stay in their home or walk abroad in the neighbourhood in which they are known. Imagine a group of little ones in the park with their nurse, and a hundred eyes turned upon them pityingly as the children of a man or a woman lying under sentence of death.
The situation, of course, is too terrible to be risked. So from the hour that the tragedy of a great crime becomes public, the near relatives of the criminal try in every way to avoid being identified with it. If they can afford it, they seek a new home, and often arrange to live the remainder of their lives under another name. It happens sometimes that children grow up to manhood and womanhood ignorant of the fact that the name they bear is an assumed one. The ghastly thing that made their own a brand of shame beyond the bearing has mercifully been kept from them.
Even among the poor, when the shadow of the gallows has fallen across the little home, there is an effort to escape from that shadow and all that it means. It is not often that the children remain in the house of tragedy or the street where all their little playmates know their story.
Yet it happens sometimes. Last Christmas morning, wandering in the East End, I entered a house in a little side street packed with a people speaking an alien tongue.
On the staircase a little boy of five and his baby sister of three were playing. Some one had given them a penny box of toys, and they were setting the things out on the stairs.
Not six months previously the body of a murdered woman lay on these stairs. It was there that her husband killed her. The man was hanged. The man was the father, the murdered woman was the mother of the children whom I saw playing last Christmas day on the stairs that had been stained with their mother's blood.
To a boarding-school in the north-west of London there came one day a lady dressed in deep mourning. With evident hesitation she told the head mistress that she wanted to place her two little girls at the school, as she had been ordered to a Continental Bad to undergo a course of treatment.
"But before I send my little girls," said the lady, "I shall have to reveal something to you which I must ask you to regard as in the strictest confidence."
Then the unhappy lady, nervous and ill at ease, stammered out her story. She was the widow of a man who had committed suicide at the very moment he was about to be arrested for a murder which was one of the most sensational cases of recent years.
The two children she wished to place at the boarding-school were this man's daughters. The name she and her children bore was a false one. Would the school-mistress, knowing the facts, take the children? The lady felt it would not be right to send them without letting the mistress know the truth.
The head mistress was greatly affected by the tears and the evident distress of her visitor, and when she had satisfied herself on certain points she took the little girls, who knew nothing of the tragedy, and did her best to make them happy in their new surroundings.
If you watch the young ladies of Miss —————'s well-known boarding-school in the big garden attached to the house, you will see two pretty, fair-haired girls playing gaily with their companions, and you will hear their childish laughter ring out again and again.
The pretty little fair-haired girls are the daughters of the murderer who committed suicide to avoid arrest.
On the bright autumn day that their mother was sentenced to death, three children dressed in deep mourning sat in the sunshine with their governess. They knew that their papa was dead, and that was why they were in black. They were told that their mamma was very, very ill—too ill for her children to be with her—and that she "might die." But the little ones had not the slightest idea that the mother who "might die" was accused of having killed their father. When the verdict had been given, and the sentence pronounced, the children were taken away by a relative and brought up under another name. The law did not in this instance "take its course." At the last moment there was a reprieve, and the death sentence was commuted to one of penal servitude for life.
A curious circumstance has stamped the day of that reprieve on my memory.
On the morning that the Home Secretary's decision was announced I was at Madame Tussaud's Exhibition. The effigy of the condemned woman had, in deference to public opinion, which was divided, been put in a separate room, instead of in the Chamber of Horrors—the usual department for condemned criminals.
On the day of the reprieve a number of people were standing in front of the figure, which was naturally a special attraction. "Ah!" said a man standing near me, "they'll have to take her out of this place altogether some day."
Fifteen years later this woman was released on license, or, as those who cling to old forms of expression say, "ticket-of-leave." That very day her effigy was removed from the premises, and it no longer forms part of the exhibition.
This convict came out into the world. The fact was duly recorded in the Press with considerable emotional comment, and the old dispute as to her guilt or innocence was temporarily revived.
But to how many people did the most dramatic feature of the tragedy present itself? Few of those who re-discussed the celebrated case in all its points remembered that the children of the "murderess" had lived their lives and grown up in ignorance of their mother's fate.
When the unhappy woman was free once more, did she seek her children and reveal herself, or did she mercifully leave their lives unshadowed by the knowledge that the celebrated convict about whose release all the world was talking was their mother?
That is a matter with which the public has no concern, and one into which the Press has very rightly made no attempt to pry. But if the truth were not revealed, if the unhappy mother denied herself the supreme reward of the long years of patient endurance in the silent world, it may have happened that the young people one day as they walked abroad saw a lady looking at them with strange, pathetic intentness, and passed on their way little dreaming that the sad-looking lady was their mother, who had been condemned to death as a murderess long years ago, and had yet lived to see her children grown-up and happy.
No dramatist has given us a situation more intensely human and pathetic than that.
Without the sensational surroundings, strange meetings and reunions are constantly taking place in this great soul-absorbing London of ours. It is a feature of the human drama that is most completely ignored, one that is rarely dwelt upon even by the writers who probe deep down into the mysteries of life in the great City. But the fathers and mothers come home from the prisons and the convict gaols to those who love them.
In the class where no effort is made to conceal the nature of the family misfortune from kinsfolk or neighbours, the absence of the wife and mother is often sympathetically alluded to, and there is joy in the household—a criminal household, possibly—when mother, having paid the penalty of acquiring property without payment, comes back to get father's tea ready and put the children to bed.
Mr. Holmes, the veteran police-court missionary, made the other day what was described as the "startling" statement that he had found some most lovable characters among the wickedest people.
But the confession did not startle those who are in constant touch with the criminal and the vicious.
Society visits the sins of the fathers upon the children, but in the slums and alleys where the criminals congregate the child left temporarily motherless by the action of the law is "everybody's baby."
The poor woman, whose position with regard to children is very much like that of the old lady who resided in a shoe, will take in the child of the woman sent to prison and house it with her own brood, tend it, and feed it.
The home-coming of father, who has done a "length" or a "stretch," is sometimes quite a local event. I went into a little Hoxton house the other day and found great preparations in progress. The eldest girl was scrubbing the floor, the younger children were helping to tidy up. Mother had been out marketing, and on the fire was a saucepan giving forth a savoury smell. The little family seemed so excitedly happy that I ventured to ask the cause of the jubilant bustling.
"Father's coming out of prison to-day," said a little girl, smiling sweetly.
I did not like to ask to be permitted to stay and witness the home-coming of the gentleman, who had frequently returned to the bosom of his family under similar circumstances, but I knew exactly what would happen. The little domestic reunion would be delightful, and all would go well till evening. Then the welcome would be of a more public character, and the hero of the occasion would have considerably more drink offered him than was wise after a long period of enforced abstinence.
Here the home-coming is shorn of its pathos, for it takes place among a class who are openly at war with Society. The criminal's welcome to his home is that of a released prisoner of war—one who fell into the hands of the enemy and is now set free.
The painful home-coming is that of the amateur criminal—the man or woman who has taken a fatal step and endured the shame of imprisonment. Then the return of the father or the son to the home to which he has been a stranger so long is often a poignant little domestic drama. I have seen a decent man come out of prison—a man who was innocent, and whom I knew to be innocent—and even in his case the first meeting with friends and acquaintances was a painful trial.
In the respectable family the joy of a relative's return is damped by the knowledge that the prison taint clings, that nothing ever wholly removes it. The man from gaol—the woman from gaol—may be loyally determined never again to deviate by a hair's-breadth from the straight path, but the world does not take the future into consideration when it reckons up the moral worth of a man or woman. The previous conviction is not mentioned in a Court of Justice till the accused has been found guilty. In the world the previous conviction stands against a man throughout his life, though he may never sin again.
That is the burthen that the discharged prisoner of the better class brings with him into the home where his dear ones are waiting to welcome him. He has come back with his shame upon him, and in the shadow of that shame those who bear his name will have to live.
It is to escape the shame that a new name, a new environment, sometimes a new sky, is sought. Far away from the land of their birth there are to-day hundreds of families expatriated by the sin of one member of it. In the Continental cities there are to be met with Englishmen and Englishwomen with whose doings at one time all England rang. They have come abroad, sometimes to hide themselves, but frequently that their children may be educated in Continental schools where the name they bear will carry no scandal with it to the ears of their classmates.
Hidden away under assumed names there are tragedies which at one time have been the talk of the town. The stage affords greater facilities for a sudden change of identity than any other profession, and for that reason many young men and women who have a desire to be known by a new name do their best to get on to it as a means of livelihood.
In commercial life, before a young man or a young woman can secure an appointment of any kind a reference must be given, and the giving necessitates the revelation of the real name, and probably the family story the applicant is most anxious to conceal.
But for the chorus of a musical comedy, for a small part in a play on tour, the applicant can give any name he or she may choose. There are no such things as references. All that the manager wants is appearance, voice, and the possession of a certain amount of ability.
There happened once in the rehearsals of a drama of mine an incident far more dramatic than any I had put in the piece itself.
One of the scenes was laid in Millbank, in those days a gaol for female convicts. Anxious to have the details correct, I invited a friend of mine who had held a high official position in the gaol to come to the dress rehearsal. He sat by me in the stalls. When the curtain rose on the prison scene a number of female convicts were standing on the stage in charge of a warderess.
My friend eyed them critically to see that the dress was worn correctly and the cap put on properly. At one of the convicts he gazed intently. When he had passed the scene as correct in detail he turned to me and said—
"I couldn't help staring at that young lady—the fourth in the row. She is the living image of a woman who was in my charge ten years ago—Mrs. —————; you remember the case?"
I did remember it. Mrs. ————— was a lady for whom there was considerable sympathy. Maddened by her husband's neglect and ill-treatment, she shot him with a revolver one night after a fierce quarrel. The wound was nearly fatal, and the unfortunate woman was awarded a term of penal servitude. "I never saw such an extraordinary resemblance to Mrs. ————— in her convict dress," said the official; "but, of course, it is a coincidence. Mrs. ————— was old enough to be this young lady's mother."
After the act was over I went behind the scenes to make a few alterations, and I told the young actress "convict" that the gentleman in front was a prison official, and I added jokingly, "He says you are the living image of Mrs. —————, who was at Millbank for the attempted murder of her husband."
I expected the young lady to laugh, but, to my astonishment, the colour faded from her face and she became visibly distressed.
"What a dreadful idea!" she gasped. "It frightens me—I—I wish you hadn't told me."
She walked quickly away, and I thought no more of the incident. Long afterwards I learnt the truth.
The young actress who had attracted the attention of the prison official was the daughter of Mrs. —————. Under another name she had gone upon the stage. It was a strange coincidence that the daughter of a female convict should be called upon to represent a female convict in Millbank before an official who had been at Millbank when her mother was there.