I have given briefly the particulars of this gruesome affair because they lead up to the mental conditions of the murderess. It will be noticed that the murder was skilfully contrived beforehand; that the object to be gained was indulgence with a young man but little more than half her age; that within a few hours of killing her own boy she smilingly met the young man as if nothing had happened. All these things are extraordinary, but when to these some particulars regarding the murderess are added, the character of the whole affair becomes more extraordinary still. She was a governess, clever and exceedingly well educated, with scientific accomplishments. She was about thirty-six years of age, by no means soft or voluptuous in appearance, but with a hard, strong cast of face. She was doing well in a pecuniary sense, and her friends were also in good circumstances.
In considering the case, the first thing that strikes me is that when a woman of her character, standing and appearance gives birth to an illegitimate child, at an age when girlhood has long passed, there is an absolute departure from the normal, there is something wrong. I need not give any details of her trial, only to say the facts I have given were fully proved, and to add that she was found guilty, sentenced, and hanged.
It is of her bearing and demeanour that I wish to speak. Of course, she protested her innocence; any other person might be guilty, but it was absurd to hint that she was guilty. Yet she betrayed no indignation. To her it was Euclid over again, with quod erat faciendum, as the result of the problem. She was cool, alert, and fearless; she showed no emotion, no anxiety, no feeling. The killing of a sheep could not have been a matter of less importance to her than was the murder of her own child. Such was her demeanour at the inquest and at the police-court proceedings, and this attitude she maintained to the end.
In her private conversation with me she was clear, animated, and apparently calm and frank. I never saw the least symptoms of nervousness, and her eyes met mine as naturally and unconcernedly as if the charge she had to meet had not the remotest connection with herself. Her last words to me were: "When I am discharged, I shall invite myself to tea with Mrs. Holmes and yourself, for I am supported by the thought that you firmly believe in my innocence." I had never told her this, for I had not discussed her guilt or innocence. She had talked to me, and I had listened, putting a question occasionally to her. I could believe no other than that she was verily guilty, but I did not tell her so—I had no right to tell her so—but I listened and waited for an admission that would throw some little light upon the state of her mind, and give me a faint idea of the cause that led her to plan and execute the terrible deed. This she did, and I am persuaded that she took away the boy to furnish her with some excuse for spending the week-end at Brighton. I leave it to others to decide upon her sanity, though personally I am charitable enough to think she was insane. It is certain that she was animated with fierce passion; it is also certain that in other respects she was cold as an iceberg. For the death of her beautiful boy, whether she was guilty or innocent of it, never troubled her for a moment. Does a lust for blood accompany an excess of the other passion in a woman of her temperament and characteristics? This I do not know, but I have no doubt that wiser people do know. At any rate, with hands that had cruelly battered the life out of her own child, and while the blood of that child was still hot upon them, she welcomed her male friend. I profess that I find some comfort in the belief that she was insane. Had her insanity been just a little more obvious, she might have escaped the death penalty and ended her days in a criminal lunatic asylum.
But I do not think the question of her sanity was ever raised. He would have been a bold man that raised it, in the face of her accomplishments and self-control. Some day we shall, perhaps, apply different methods to test sanity than those now employed, and we shall look for other symptoms in diagnosis than those we look for now. The most dangerous madness is not that which is patent to everybody—the wild or vacant eyes, the inconsequent or violent speech, the manifest delusions, and the inability to conduct one's own affairs. These are simple enough; but the possessors of these characteristics are often harmless to the community. But when the madness is half madness, and is covered with a show of reason, it is then that danger is to be feared.
In the case I am now about to give insanity was just a little more apparent, though I do not think it was more real. But its manifestation was of sufficient magnitude to prevent capital punishment.
A young woman whose character was beyond reproach, and whose ability and business aptitude gave the greatest pleasure to her employer and his wife, was engaged as the manageress of a department in a drapery and millinery shop in North London. She had been in the situation for some months, and perfect confidence existed between the different parties. One hot Sunday afternoon she suddenly awoke from an afternoon nap with the conviction that she had been criminally assaulted by her employer. The fact that she was in her own room with the door fastened did not weigh with her at all. She declared that her employer was the guilty person. The fact that he and his wife spent the afternoon out of doors was nothing to her. Possessed with this extraordinary idea, she left London at once for a town on the South Coast, where her brother lived. Her brother appears to have accepted her statement without question or demur, and to him the delusion became as real as to his sister. He armed her with an exquisitely made and very formidable dagger, and provided himself with an equally dangerous pistol and cartridges. Thus armed, they came to London—he to take vengeance upon the man who had dishonoured his sister, she to point out the man, and to be ready with the dagger if the pistol failed to take effect. The brother did not fail, for he shot the man dead. Now that vengeance was satisfied, the couple were again harmless, for neither brother nor sister attempted to do any more injury. They were arrested, and gave up their arms willingly enough. They declared that they had done the deed, and that they intended to kill the man; that they procured the weapons and came to London for the express purpose. They claimed to be perfectly justified in their joint action. This attitude they maintained before the court, for when asked if they wished to put any questions to the witnesses, "Oh no!" was the reply. "Of what use would they be? We did it; we are glad that we did it. The consequences do not matter." There was quite a little dispute between the sister and brother. He declared that as he killed the man he alone was entitled to the glory and the punishment; but the sister declared that it was done at her request, and also that she was prepared to kill if her brother had failed. Both were found guilty, and both were committed to a criminal lunatic asylum. Yet they had every appearance of being thoroughly sane; their manner, their speech, their reasoning powers, and everything appertaining to them, savoured of clear reason, their delusion alone excepted. If that delusion had not been so manifest, undoubtedly they would have been hanged. There seems to me to be no point from which a line can be drawn to divide insanity from sanity. At present we have but clumsy, uncertain, and very speculative methods of deciding upon a prisoner's sanity—methods that must often result in the punishment, if not the death, of the prisoners who suffer from some kind of mental disease. I am inclined to believe that the more all traces of madness are hidden by clever murderers, the stronger is the probability of that madness existing, for the very essence of cunning is employed in hiding it. They will cheerfully contemplate the executioner's rope rather than be considered mad. The brother and sister to whom I have referred would have cheerfully accepted the death penalty in preference to committal to a lunatic asylum. In one of my conversations with the brother, I suddenly asked him: "Have any of your relations been detained in lunatic asylums?" He was quite ready for me, and he replied: "I am as sane as you are; and if you are ever placed in a similar situation to mine, I hope you will prove as sane as I have."
The more I think over the two cases—one woman found sane and hanged, the other declared insane and sent to a lunatic asylum—the more I am convinced that equal justice has not been done. Probably the madness in both women proceeded from the same cause, and it is clear that neither of them had the slightest compunction about shedding blood.
I will deal briefly with my next case, and of a truth there is not much to be said. He was a clerk about twenty-six years of age. He had married a decent young woman, for whom he had made no provision other than a loaded pistol. He had no home and no money, excepting a few pounds that he had embezzled, and with this he had paid the marriage expenses. With his last few shillings he hired a cab; drove, accompanied by his wife, from place to place, in pretence of finding a home for her; and, finally, while still in the cab, he did the deed for which he had prepared—he shot her. He made no attempt to escape; he offered no reason for his deed; he was quite satisfied with his action; and when before the court he was absolutely unconcerned. I had several conversations with him, and as he had publicly owned to the deed, there was no harm in my assumption of his guilt. I said to him: "Tell me why you did this cruel deed?" He said: "I don't consider it a cruel deed. What else could I do? You would have done the same." Argument, of course, was out of the question, but I did venture to express the hope that I might not have done what he had done, when he again replied: "You think so now; but if you had to do it, you would do it!" And this frame of mind he maintained to the end—for he was hanged.
I do not say that he ought not to have been hanged, for it is difficult to point out in what other way he could have been dealt with; but so long as insanity is considered a sufficient reason for preventing the death penalty, I do say that every possible means should be taken to test a prisoner's sanity before a final decision is arrived at; and, further, that the appearance of positive sanity is under such circumstances an indication of insanity. Every criminal, in addition to murderers, ought to be subjected to a careful and prolonged scrutiny and mental examination by experts. The cost would not be great, and I am fully sure the results would compensate if the expense was great. Prisons ought to become psychological observatories, and be made to furnish us with a vast amount of useful information. There are so many things we ought to know, and might know if we would only take pains to know. It might be that the information obtained would make us sad and excite our fear; it might be that our pity would be deeply stirred, and that we should have a whole army of human beings upon our hands, for whom we might feel hopeless and helpless. But we have these even now, and for them imprisonment or hanging is a ready and simple plan that suffices us! But ought they to suffice in these enlightened days? I think not. At any rate, we ought to gather knowledge. With knowledge will come power, and with power better methods of dealing with erring or afflicted humanity. For the days will surely come when the hangman's rope will be seldom in requisition; when all the unhealthy and demoralizing publicity attaching to a murder trial will be a thing of the past; when criminals will not be made into public heroes, because of the speculative and perhaps equal chances of life or death; when morbid and widespread sentiment will not be created by public appeals to the Home Secretary; and, perhaps best of all, when diseased minds will be no longer influenced by the unhealthy publicity of the details pertaining to a death sentence to commit the other crimes for which no motives have been apparent.
Since writing the above chapter, the following appeared in the daily papers of August 5, 1908:
"Thomas Siddle, a bricklayer, was yesterday executed at Hull for the murder of his wife in June last. The crime was a particularly callous one. Siddle was to have gone to prison for not paying his wife's maintenance under a separation order. On the day, however, he visited her, and after some conversation savagely attacked her with a razor. Before his execution the prisoner ate a hearty breakfast, and smiled at the warders as he walked firmly to the scaffold."
And now, so far as this book is concerned, I have done with prisoners and criminals, so I turn right gladly to the other side of my life. For my life is dual, one half being given to sinners and the other to saints. I have spoken freely about the difficulties of prisoners and with prisoners; let me now tell of the struggles, difficulties, and virtues of the industrious poor. I will draw a veil over the ignorance, the drunkenness, the wastefulness, and the cupidity of the very poor. Other people may find these matters congenial, and may dilate upon them, but such a task is not for me. I know these things exist—I do not wonder at their existence—but other things exist also—things that warm my heart and stir my blood—and of them I want to tell. And I have some right to speak, for I know the very poor as few can know them. From personal touch and friendly communion my experience has been acquired, and I am proud to think that at least twelve hundred of London's poorest but most industrious women look upon me as their friend and adviser.
When I gave up police-court work, I thought to devote the remainder of my days absolutely to the London home-workers; but Providence willed it otherwise, so only one-half of a very busy life is at their service. Of what that half reveals I cannot be silent, though I would that some far abler pen than mine would essay the task of describing the difficulties and perils that environ the lives of the industrious poor. I want and mean to be a faithful witness, so I will tell of nothing that I have not seen, I will describe no person that does not exist, and no narrative shall sully my pages that is not true in fact and detail. Imagination is of no service to me. I am as zealous for mere facts as was Mr. Gradgrind himself, and my facts shall be real, self-sufficing facts, out-vying imagination, and conveying their own lesson. If I carry my readers with me, we shall go into strange places and see strange sights and hear piteous stories; but I shall ask my readers to be heedless of all that is unpleasant, not to be alarmed at forbidding neighbourhoods or disgusted with frowzy women, but to contemplate with me the difficulties and the virtues of the industrious poor, and then, if they will, to worship with me at the shrine of poor humanity.
Quite recently I was invited to take sixty of my poor industrious women to spend a day at Sevenoaks. Among the party was a widow aged sixty and her daughter of thirty-five. They were makers of women's costumes, and had worked till half-past four that very morning in order to have the day's outing. I had known them for years, and many times had I been in their poor home watching them as, side by side, they sat at their machines. Happy were they in recent years when their united earnings amounted to twenty-one shillings for a week's work of eighty hours. "Tell me," I said to the widow, "how long have you lived in your present house?" "Forty years," said the widow. "Emmy was born in it, and my husband was buried from it. I have been reckoning up, and find that I have paid more than twelve hundred pounds in rent, besides the rates." "Impossible," I said, "out of your earnings!" She said: "We let off part of the house, and that pays the rates and a little over, but we always have to find ten shillings a week for rent." Ten shillings out of twenty-one shillings, when twenty-one was forthcoming, which was by no means the case every week. "We cannot do with less than three rooms—one to work in, one to sleep in, and the little kitchen. I cannot get anything cheaper in the neighbourhood."
Here we come at once upon one of the greatest difficulties of the industrious poor. If they wish to live in any way decently, one-half their earnings disappears in rent.
"We have nowhere to go." The difficulties the poor have in finding suitable—or, indeed, any—rooms that may serve as a shelter for themselves and their children, and be dignified by the name of "home," are almost past belief. All sorts of subterfuges are resorted to, and it is no uncommon thing for a woman, when applying for one or more rooms, to state the number of her children to be less than half what it is in reality. Sometimes, it must be confessed, the people who obtain rooms by such means are not desirable tenants; but it is also true that even decent people have to resort to some kind of deception if they are to find shelter at all.
Day after day in London police-courts the difficulty is made manifest. Houses altogether unfit for human habitation have to be closed by order of the authorities; but, wretched and insanitary as those dwellings are, dangerous to the health and well-being of the community as they may be, they are full to overflowing of poor humanity seeking some cover. But they must "clear out." Their landlords say so, the sanitary authorities say so, and the magistrate confirms the landlord and the sanitary authorities. The one cry, the one plea of all the poor who are to be ejected is: "Where are we to go? We can't get another place." The kindly magistrate generally allows a few weeks' grace, and tells them to do their best meanwhile to procure other rooms. For some this is a possibility, but for others the period of grace will pass, and on an appointed day an officer of the court will be in Paradise Row or Angel Court, as the case may be, to see that the tenants are ejected without undue violence, and that their miserable belongings are deposited safely in the street.
On dark November days, with the rain coming steadily down, I have frequently seen the débris of such homes, the children keeping watch, and shivering as they watched. I have spoken to the children, asked them about their mother, and their reply has been: "Mother has gone with the baby to look for another place."
Heaven help that mother in her forlorn hope and desperate search! I can imagine her clutching the babe tightly to her, holding in her closed hand the shilling that is to act as a deposit for binding a tenancy, her last rent-book in her bosom to show her bona fides, going from street to street, from house to house, climbing staircase after staircase, exploring and appealing time after time. She will stoutly declare that she has but two children, when she has six; she will declare that her husband is a good, sober man, and in regular work, neither of which will be true. Ultimately, she will promise to pay an impossible rent, and tremulously hand over the shilling to bind the contract; then she will return to the "things," and tell the children of their new home. This is no imaginary picture. It is so very true, so very common, that it does not strike our imagination. The cry of the very poor is ever sounding in our ears: "We have nowhere to live! We don't know where to go!"
This fear of being homeless, of not being allowed to live in such wretched places as they now inhabit, haunts the very poor through life, and pursues them to the grave. And this worry, anxiety, and trouble falls upon the woman, adding untold suffering to her onerous life; for it is the woman that has to meet the rent-collector, whose visits come round all too quickly; she has to mollify him when a few shillings remain unpaid. The wife has to procure other rooms when her husband has fallen out of work, and she receives the inevitable notice to quit when there appears to be a possibility of the family becoming still more numerous. If sickness, contagious or otherwise, comes upon any of the children, and the shadow of death enters the home, upon the wife comes the heart-breaking task of seeking a new home and conveying her children and "things" to another place. This is no light task. The expense is a consideration, and the old home, bad as it was, had become in many ways dear to her. What more pitiful sight can be imagined than the removal? No pantechnicon is required—a hired barrow is sufficient; and when night has well advanced the goods are conveyed in semi-darkness from the old home to the new.
Think for a moment what a life she lives, to what shifts she is reduced, what privations she endures! Is it any wonder that the children born of her have poor bodies and strange minds?
Tennyson makes King Arthur to say. In many respects these words are true of poor mothers in London. The houses in which they live, the conditions under which they exist, the ceaseless worries and nameless fears they endure, make it absolutely certain that many of the children born will be strange creatures.
And right up to the verge of eternity the fear of being homeless haunts the poor. Let one instance suffice. I was visiting a young married woman whose husband had been sent to prison for some months. She lived in one room, for which she paid, or should have paid, four shillings and sixpence weekly. The street was a very poor street, and the house a very small house. It stood, without any forecourt, close up to the street pavement. While I was speaking to the young woman a message came that the landlady, who lived downstairs, wanted to speak to me; so down the narrow stairs I went. There being only one room below, I rapped at the door, and a very queer voice told me to "Come in." I went in, and found a very small room, occupied chiefly by a bed, a small table, and several broken chairs. On the bed lay an old woman. Her face was puckered with age, her forehead was deeply furrowed, her eyes were dim, and the hands lying on the quilt were more like claws than human hands. As I stood over her, she looked up and said: "Are you Mr. Holmes? I want my rent." Her voice was so strange and thin that I had some difficulty in understanding her, but I found that the tenant upstairs owed her five weeks' rent, and that, now her husband was in prison, the poor old woman was afraid of losing it. As the matter seemed to trouble her greatly, I told her that I would pay the arrears of her rent. "But I want it now," she went on. "The collector is coming to-morrow, and I shall be put out—I shall be put out." I stroked her thin hair, and told her that I would call early the next morning and give her the money. But the poor woman looked worried and doubtful. I called early the next morning, and found the old woman expecting me. "Have you brought my rent?" were the first words I heard on entering the room. I took up one of her thin hands and opened it, and put a sovereign in it. "That is a sovereign," I said. She held it up, and tried to look at it; but she was not satisfied, for she said to her daughter, who was standing by: "Jane, is this a sovereign?" When Jane assured her that it was, the old hand closed convulsively upon it. "Hold out your other hand," I said. She held it open, and I counted five shillings into it. Then that hand closed, and the old head lay a bit closer to the pillow, and an expression of restful satisfaction passed over her withered face. A week later I called at the same house, but the old woman was not there, neither had she been "put out." She had paid the rent-collector when he called, and her rent-book was duly signed; but the Great Collector had not forgotten her, for He also had called and given her a receipt in full. Her worries were ended.
If we would but think—think of the effect that such anxieties must have upon the present and future generations—I believe that we should realize that first and foremost of all questions affecting the health and happiness of the nation stands the one great question of "housing the very poor"; for the chivalry of our men, the womanliness of our women, the sweetness of our daughters, and the brave hearts of our lads depend upon it.
But if the fear of being "put out" has its terrors, none the less has the continuous occupation of one room its attendant evils. It is so easy for humanity to get used to wretched homes and vile environments, so easy to get accustomed to dirt, thick air, and insanitary conditions, that one does not wonder that poor people who have lived for years under such conditions prefer those conditions to any other. And this holds true even with those who have known the bracing effect of cold water on their bodies, and have felt the breath of God in their lungs. The return path to dirt is always alluring to the human body. Time and again I have gone into places where I hardly dared to breathe, and in which I could only with the greatest difficulty stay for a few minutes; and when I have sometimes ventured to open a window a look of astonishment crossed the faces of those I had called on, for even the thick atmosphere had become natural.
And other results follow—mental as well as physical. To become, through bad but frightfully dear housing, gradually used to dirt and bad air, till these are looked upon as natural, carries along with it, as part and parcel of itself, another deadening influence. Filth raises no feeling of disgust; high rents produce no sense of injustice, no feelings of resentment: for the poor become absolutely passive. Yes, and passive in more ways than one; for they, without question or demur, accept any payment that may be given them for such services as they can render. Inevitably, they become the prey of the sweater, and work for endless hours at three halfpence per hour; and if the payment for the work they do should, without their permission, be reduced, it only means that a couple of hours more must be added to the long day already worked.
It is this passivity of the poor that appals me. Their negative virtues astonish me, for I find in them no bitterness, no sense of wrong, no idea of rebellion, no burning resentment—not even the feeling that something is wrong, though they know not what. Their only ambition is to live their little lives in their very little homes; to be ready weekly with their four shillings for their wretched room in a wretched house; to have plenty of poorly-paid work, though they sit up all night to do it; and to sit in poverty and hunger when sufficient work is not to hand, to suffer silently, to bear with passive heroism, and to die unburied by the parish.
Such is the life of many London home-workers, of whom some are my personal friends. But what becomes of this life? The death of aspiration. A machine-like perseverance and endurance is gradually developed; but the hope of better things dies: hope cannot exist where oxygen is absent. Then comes the desire to be let alone, and alone to die.
I have met women who had become so used to the terrible conditions under which they lived that no amount of persuasion could induce them to move out of those conditions. Again I draw upon my experience.
One cold day in February a young married man was charged with stealing a piece of pork. I had some conversation with him, and he told me that he was out of work, that his wife and children were starving, and that his widowed mother, who lived in the same house, was in much the same condition. He gave me their address—a poor street in Haggerston—so I visited the family. It was a terrible street even for Haggerston, but it was crowded with humanity. I found the house, and went up the rotten staircase to the first-floor back. There I found the prisoner's wife, sitting at a machine making babies' boots. In the room was an old broken perambulator, in which were two children, one asleep and the other with that everlasting deceit, a "baby's comforter," in its mouth. As the child fed on the thick air it looked at me with wondering eyes, and the mother kept on working. Presently she stopped and answered my questions. Yes, it was true her husband was out of work. He was good to her, and a sober, industrious man. They paid three and sixpence weekly for their room, when they could. Would I excuse her? She must get on with her work; she wanted to take it in. I excused her, and, leaving her a few shillings, went in search of the older woman.
I found her in another small room; but, small as the room was, there were two beds in it, which were covered with match-boxes. A small table and two old chairs completed the furniture. She was seated making match-boxes as I entered, and I saw her hands moving with that dreadfully automatic movement that has so often made me shudder.
She looked up at me, but on she went. I spoke to her of her son, told her my business, and ultimately sat down and watched her. Poor old woman! She was fifty-six, she told me. She might have been any age over seventy. She was a widow. She had lived in that room thirteen years, having come to it soon after her husband's death. Whilst I was speaking to her she got up from her boxes, took a small saucepan off the miserable fire, and out of it took some boiled rice, put it in an old saucer, sat down, and ate it. It was her dinner.
Afterwards she put the remaining rice in a saucer, covered it with another, and placed it in front of the fire. I soon saw why. A lanky boy of nearly fourteen came in from school, and she pointed to the saucer. He took it, and swallowed the rice, and looked at me. I looked at the boy, and read the history of his life in his face and body. He had been born in that room; that was his bed in the corner covered with match-boxes. The old woman was his mother. Three and sixpence every week had she paid for that room. Nearly three days of the week she had worked for interminable hours to earn the money that paid for the shelter for herself and the boy.
I will not describe the boy. Was he a boy at all? All his life he had lived, moved, and had his being in that room; had fed as I saw him feed, and had breathed the air I was breathing.
He went back to school, and I talked to his mother. She owed no rent; she had received no parish help. She never went to church or chapel. She wanted nothing from anybody. That little room had become her world, and her only recreation was taking her boxes to the factory. Grimy and yellow were the old hands that kept on with the boxes. I offered her a holiday and rest. There was the rent to be paid. I would pay the rent. She had no clothes suitable. Mrs. Holmes would send her the clothes. There was the boy to be seen to. I would arrange for him. No; she would not go. Her last word was that she did not wish or care to leave her home. Neither did she. And though years have passed since my first visit to that one-roomed house, out of it the old woman has not passed, excepting on her usual errand. And fresh air, clean sheets, and relaxation meant nothing to her.
I sat in the dark, damp kitchen of a house in one of the narrow streets of Hoxton. Over my head some very poor clothing was hanging to dry. It was winter-time, and the gloom outside only added to the gloom within, and through a small window the horrors of a London back-yard were suggested rather than revealed.
As I sat watching the widow at her work, and wondered much at the mechanical accuracy of her movements, I felt something touch my leg, and, looking down, found a silent child, about three years of age, on the floor at my feet. I had been in the room some few minutes, and had not previously seen or heard the child, it was so horribly quiet. I picked it up, and placed it on my knee, but it was passive and open-eyed as a big doll. The child had been born in that kitchen on a little substitute for a bed that half-filled the room. Its father was dead, and the widowed mother got a "living" for herself and her children by attaching bits of string to luggage labels, for which interesting work she got fourpence per thousand. In her spare time she took in washing, and the clothes over my head belonged to neighbours.
Fifteen years she had lived in that house. It was her first home after marriage. Till his death, which occurred three years before, her husband had been tenant of the whole house, but always "let off" the upper part, which consisted of two rooms, it being a two-storied house.
He died of consumption in the other room on the ground-floor, which abutted the street pavement. Her child was born in the kitchen as her husband lay dying a few feet away in the front-room. So that wretched house was dear to her, for love, death, and life had been among its visitants, and it became to her a sacred and a solemn place. She became tenant of the house, and continued to let off the two upper rooms; and with her children round her she continued her life in the lower rooms. The rent was 13s. weekly. She received 7s. 6d. weekly for the two upper rooms, leaving 5s. 6d. weekly to be the burden and anxiety of her life; so she tied knots and took in washing. The very sight of the knot-tying soon tired me, and the dark, damp atmosphere soon satisfied me. As I rose to leave, the widow invited me to "look at her boy in the other room." We went into the room in front. It was now quite dark, and the only light in the room came through the window from a street-lamp. The widow spoke to someone, but no answer came. I struck a wax match and held it aloft. A glance was enough. I asked the widow to get a lamp, and one of those cheap, dangerous abominations provided for the poor was brought to me.
On the bed lay a strange-looking boy of nine, twisted and deformed in body, wizened in features, suffering writ all over him, yet apathetically and unconcernedly waiting for the end. With the lamp in my hand, I bent over him and spoke kindly to him. He looked at me, then turned away from me; he would not speak to me. Poor little fellow! He had suffered so long and so much that he expected nothing else. He knew that he was dying. What did it matter? The mothers in London streets are not squeamish, and their young children are very soon made acquainted with the mysteries of life and death.
"He has been in two hospitals, and I have fetched him home to die," said the widow to me. "How long has he lain like this?" I asked. "Three months." "Who sleeps in that bed with him?" "I do, and the little boy you saw in the kitchen." "Who sleeps in the kitchen?" "Only George: he is fourteen."
On inquiry, I was told that the dying boy had always been weak and ailing, and also that, when five years of age, he had been knocked down in the street by a cyclist, and that he had been crippled and twisted ever since.
Nearly five years of suffering, and now he had "come home to die." Poor little fellow! What a life for him! What a death for him! Born in a dark kitchen while his father lay dying; four years of joyless poverty in a London street; five years of suffering, in and out of hospitals; and now "home to die." And he knew it, and waited for the end with contemptuous indifference. But he had not much longer to wait, for in three weeks' time the blessed end came.
But the widow still takes in washing, damp clothes still hang in her dark kitchen, and by the faint light of her evil-smelling lamp she continues to "tie her knots"; and the silent child is now acquiring some power of expression in the gutter.
Slum property sometimes gets into queer hands. Sometimes it is almost impossible to find the real owners, and the fixing of responsibility becomes a great difficulty.
A Slum Property Holder.
An old woman, dressed in greasy black silk, with a bonnet of ancient date, often appeared in one of our courts for process against some of her many tenants. Her hair, plastered with grease, hung round her head in long ringlets; her face never showed any signs of having been washed; a long black veil hung from her old bonnet, and black cotton gloves covered her hands. She was the widow of a well-to-do jeweller, and owned some rows of cottage property in one of our poorest neighbourhoods. After her husband's death, she decided to live in one of her cottages and collect her own rents. She brought with her much jewellery, etc., that had not been sold, and there in the slums, with her wealth around her, and all alone, lived the quaint old creature. Week by week she appeared at the court for "orders" against tenants who had not paid their rent. Though seventy-three, she would have no agent; she could manage her own business. Suddenly she appeared as an applicant for advice. She had married: her husband was a carpenter, aged twenty-one. They had been married but a few days, and her husband refused to go to work—so she told the magistrate. "Well, you know, madam, that you have plenty for both," said the magistrate. "That's what he says, but I tell him that I did not marry him that I might keep him." She got neither help nor comfort from the magistrate, so she tottered out of the court, grumbling as she went. In a few days she appeared again. "My husband has stolen some of my jewellery." Again she got no comfort. Still again she complained. "My husband has been collecting my rents." "Send a notice to your tenants warning them not to pay your husband." She did so; the husband did the same, warning the tenants not to pay his wife. This suited the tenants admirably: they paid neither. Never were such times till the old woman applied for ejectment orders wholesale. While these things were going on the youthful husband wasted her substance in riotous living, and showed a decided preference for younger women. This aroused the old woman's jealousy; she couldn't put up with it. Packing her jewels and valuables in a portmanteau, she left her house. When her husband returned at night the wife of his bosom was gone; neither did she return. He was disconsolate, and sought her sorrowing. Some miles away she had a poor widowed sister, and there the old woman found shelter.
But there paralysis seized her, and a doctor had to be called in. He acted in the double capacity of doctor and lawyer, for he drew up a will, put a pen into her hands, and guided her gently while she signed it. "All her worldly goods were left to her sister." Ultimately the husband found out where she was located, and frequently called at the house, but the door was barred against him. It was winter-time, and the snow lay on the ground. At midnight a cab drew softly up to the house where the old woman lay. Suddenly there was a loud knock at the door, and the sister came down to answer. Thoughtlessly she opened the door, when she was seized by two men, who locked her in the front parlour while they ran upstairs, rolled the old woman in warm blankets, carried her to the cab, and away they went. A nice room and another doctor were awaiting her. Another will was drawn up, which the old woman signed. "All her worldly goods were left to her dear husband." Next morning the sister applied for a summons against the young husband, but the magistrate decided that the man had a right to run away with his own wife. All might have gone merrily for the husband, but the old lady died. The sister went to the police, who arrested him for causing his wife's death. For many days the case was before the court, half a dozen doctors on each side expressing very decided opinions. Ultimately he was committed for trial. Doctors and counsel galore were concerned, but the jury acquitted him at last. And then came another trial. Counsel and doctors were again concerned. Which will was to stand? I don't know how they settled it, but one thing I am sure about—when the doctors and lawyers had got their share, and the counsel had had a good picking, there was not much left for the loving husband and the dear sister.
Since writing the above, the following paragraphs have appeared in the daily press:
"Widower's Pathetic Plight.
"'My wife is lying dead in the house, and the landlord threatens to eject me at twelve o'clock if I am not out. What can I do?' Thus asked a respectable-looking working man of Mr. d'Eyncourt at Clerkenwell Police-Court. 'Has he given you notice?' 'Yes; but how can I go just now? The funeral is to-morrow, and I have offered to go on Wednesday, but he says he will put me in the street to-day.' 'Well, he's legally entitled to do so, I am afraid. I can do nothing.' 'I thought that perhaps you might ask him to let me stay for a day or two.' 'No, that is a matter for you. I cannot interfere,' the magistrate observed in conclusion."
"London Land without an Owner.
"Mr. H. Sherwin White requested Mr. Marsham at Bow Street Police-Court to appoint someone under the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act to determine the value of the forecourts of five houses in Coldharbour Lane, Brixton, which had been required for tramway purposes. He added that the owner of the houses could not be found. Mr. Marsham appointed Mr. A. L. Guy to be valuer."
Present-day excitements have killed the "hooligan" scare. Good nervous people now sleep comfortably in their beds, for the cry of "The hooligans! the hooligans!" is no longer heard in our land. Yet, truth to tell, the evil is greater now than when sensational writers boomed it. It grows, and will continue to grow, until the conditions that produce it are seriously tackled by the State. I must confine myself to the hooliganism of the poor. Of the hooliganism of undergraduates, medical students, stockbrockers, and politicians I say nothing. Of Tommy Atkins on furlough or of Jack ashore I wish to be equally silent. But of the class, born and bred in London slums, who do no regular work, but who seem to live on idleness and disorder, I desire to speak plainly—plainly, too, as to the conditions that are largely responsible for the disorderly conduct of the rising youth.
A large number of undoubtedly good people think it is easy to cure by punitive methods. I do not. "A policeman behind every lamp-post and the lash—the lash!" cried a notable divine during a never-to-be-forgotten week when he edited an evening paper. Such was his recipe! For months the cat with nine tails was a favourite theme, and all sorts of people caught the infection, and there was a great cry and commotion raised and sustained by a sensational but altogether inaccurate press. Every assault committed by a labouring man, every bit of disorder in the streets, if caused by the poor and ignorant, was a signal for the cry "The hooligan again!" Rubbish! But the people believed it, and so to some extent our level-headed and kind-hearted magistrates caught the spirit of the thing, and proceeded to impose heavier sentences on boys charged with disorderly conduct in the streets. But this was not enough, for the Home Secretary (Mr. Ritchie) in the House of Commons, in reply to a question about youthful hooligans, said it was thought that the magistrates had been too lenient with them, and stated that the police had orders to charge those young gentlemen on indictment, so that they might not be dealt with summarily, but committed for trial. In other words, they were to take from the magistrates the power of so-called lenient punishment, and have them tried by judge and jury. Very good, but what good longer terms of imprisonment would do, the Home Secretary did not say; and as to the magistrates, they can be severe enough, though they do know when to be lenient, and in aggravated cases they already commit for trial.
Profoundly I wish that all Home Secretaries would exercise their minds on the causes that lead to youthful hooliganism, and do something to remove them. It were better far than taking steps to secure more severe punishment. Such talk to me seems callous and cruel, for punitive methods will never eradicate the instincts that lead to disorderly conduct in the streets among the "young gentry" of the poor. I must confess to a feeling of discomfort when I see a boy of sixteen sent to a month's imprisonment for disorderly conduct in the streets. It is true that he has been a nuisance to his elders, and has bumped against them in running after his pals. Equally true that he uses language repulsive to ears polite; but to him it is ordinary language, to which he has been accustomed his life through. But I am afraid it is equally true that similar offences committed by others in a better position would be more leniently dealt with. Would anyone suggest that a public-school boy, or a soldier on furlough, or a young doctor, or an enthusiastic patriot, should be committed for trial on a like charge? I trow not. Allowances are made, and it is right they should be made. I claim these allowances for the poor and the children of the poor.
Moreover, if these "young gentry" are to be consigned in wholesale fashion to prison, will it lessen the evil? I think not. On the contrary, it will largely increase it. Some of them will have lost the moderate respectability that stood for them in place of character; many of them will lose their work, and will join the increasing army of loafers; but all of them will lose their fear of prison, that fear of the unknown that is the greatest deterrent from crime and disorder. Familiarize these "young gentry" with prison, and it is all over with them. The sense of fear will depart, and to a dead certainty more serious disorder and grosser crime will follow. Undoubtedly many of them will find prison quarters preferable to their own homes, and though they may resent the loss of liberty, they will find some comfort in the fact that they do not have to share with four others an apology for a bed, fixed in an apology for a room, of which the door cannot be opened fully because the bedstead prevents it.
If our law-makers, our notable divines, and our good but nervous people had to live under such conditions, I venture to say they would rush into the streets for change of air; and if any steam were left in them, who can doubt but that they would let it off somehow? Under present conditions, the "young gentry" have the choice of two evils—either to stay in their insufferable homes or to kick up their heels in the streets. But this includes two other contingencies—either to become dull-eyed, weak-chested, slow-witted degenerates, or hooligans. Of the two, I prefer the latter. The streets are the playgrounds of the poor, and the State has need to be thankful, in spite of the drawback in disorder and crime, for the strength and manhood developed in them. It will be a sorry day for England when the children of the poor, after being dragooned to school, are dragooned from the streets into the overcrowded tenements called home. Multiply large towns, run the "blocks" for the poor up to the skies, increase the pains and penalties for youthful disorder, and omit to make provision for healthy, vigorous, competitive play: then we may write "Ichabod" over England, for its glory and strength will be doomed. Wealth may accumulate, but men will decay. Robust play, even though it be rough, is an absolute condition of physical and moral health.
Consider briefly how the poor live. Thousands of families with three small rooms for each family, tens of thousands with two small rooms, a hundred thousand with one room. And such rooms! Better call them boxes. Dining-room and bedroom, kitchen and scullery, coal-house and drawing-room, workshop and wash-house, all in one. Here, one after another, the children are born; here, one after another, many of them die. I went into one of these "combines," and saw an infant but a few days old with its mother on a little bed; in another corner, in a box, lay the body of another child of less than two years, cold and still. I felt ill, but I also felt hot. I protest it is no wonder that our boys and girls seek the excitement of the streets, or that they find comfort in "dustbins." What can big lads of this description do in such surroundings? Curl up and die, or go out and kick somebody. The pity of it is that they always kick the wrong person, but that's no wonder. Tread our narrow streets, where two-storied houses stand flush with the pavements; explore our courts, alleys, and places; climb skyward in our much-belauded dwellings; or come even into our streets that look snugly respectable. You will find them teeming with juvenile life that has learned its first steps in the streets, got its first idea of play in the gutter, and picked up its knowledge of the vulgar tongue from those who have graduated in a gutter school. Is it any wonder that young people developed under these conditions look upon the streets as their natural right, and become oblivious to the rights of others? They are but paying back what they have received. Neither is it to be wondered at that as they grow older they grow more disorderly and violent, but altogether less scrupulous. It is absurd to suppose that boys who have grown into young men under these conditions will, on reaching manhood, develop staid and orderly ways, and equally absurd to suppose that by sending them for "trial" they will be made orderly.
Let us have less talk of punishment and more of remedy; and the remedy lies, not with private individuals, but with the community. The community must bear the cost or pay the penalty. Oxford and Cambridge contend in healthy rivalry on the river, and the world is excited. Eton plays Harrow at cricket, and society is greatly moved. A few horses race at Epsom, and the people generally go wild. But when the Hackney boys contend with the boys of Bethnal Green, why, that's another tale. But they cannot go to Lord's or to Putney, so perforce they meet in the places natural to them—the streets. "But they use belts!" Well, they have no boxing-gloves, and it may comfort some folks to know that generally they use the belts upon each other. The major part of so-called youthful hooliganism is but the natural instinct of English boys finding for itself an outlet—a bad outlet it may be, but, mind you, the only outlet possible, though it is bound to grow into lawlessness if suitable provision is not made for its legitimate exercise.
At the close of one of my prison lectures, among the prisoners that asked for a private interview was an undersized youth of nineteen, a typical Cockney, sharp and cheeky as a London sparrow. He put out his hand and said, "How do you do, Mr. Holmes?" looking up at me. I shook hands with him, and said: "What are you doing here?" "Burglary, Mr. Holmes," he said. "Burglary?" I said—"burglary? I am sure God never intended you for a burglar." Looking up sharply, he said: "No, He would have made me bigger, wouldn't He? But I have had enough of prison," he said—"I've had enough. I'm going straight when I get out, and I shall be out in three weeks. It is very good of you to come and talk to us, and I am glad to know about all those men you have told us of; but I've come to see you because I want you to tell me how I am to spend my spare time when I am out. I am going back home to live. I've got a job to go to—not much wages, though. I shall live in Hoxton, and I want to go straight. If I get some books and read about those fellows you talked of, I can't read at home—there's no room. If I go to the library I feel a bit sleepy when I've been in a bit, and the caretaker comes along and he gives me a nudge, and he says: 'Waken up! This ain't a lodging-house.' We have no cricket or football. There's the streets for me in my spare time, and then I'm in mischief. Now, you tell me what to do, and I'll do it."
Municipal playgrounds are absolutely necessary if our young people are to be healthy and law-abiding. Of parks we have enough at present. Our so-called recreation-grounds are a delusion and a snare, though to some they are doubtless a boon, with their asphalted walks, a few seats, and a drinking-fountain. They are very good for the very old and the very young; but if Tom, Dick, and Harry essayed a game of rounders, tip-cat, leap-frog, or skittles, why, then they would soon find themselves before the magistrate, and be the cause of many paragraphs on youthful hooliganism in the next day's papers. Now, private philanthropy and individual effort is not equal to the task—and, in spite of increasing effort and enlarged funds, never will be equal to the task—of finding suitable recreation for our growing youth. I know well the great good done by our public-school and other missions, with their boys' clubs, etc.; but they scarcely touch the evil, and they certainly have not the means of providing winter and summer outdoor competitive games. Every parish must have its public playground, under proper supervision, lit up with electric light in the evening, and open till 10 p.m. Here such inexpensive games as rounders, skittles, tip-cat, tug-of-war, might be organized, and Hackney might have a series of competitions with Bethnal Green, for the competitive element must be provided for. A series of contests of this sort would soon empty our streets of the lads who are now so troublesome. I venture to say that a tournament, even at "coddem" or "shove-ha'penny" alone, would attract hundreds of them, and certainly an organized competition of "pitch-and-toss" would attract thousands. Counters might be used instead of coins, and they would last for ever. The fact is, that these youths are easily pleased, if we go the right way to work; but we must take them as they are, and must not expect them all to play chess, billiards, and cricket. Football, I think, I would certainly add, for it is a game which any healthy boy can play, and it gives him robust exercise. Give the lads of our slums and congested dwellings a chance of healthy rivalry and vigorous competition, and, my word for it, they won't want to crack the heads either of their companions or the public. The public are not aware of the intense longing of the slum youth for active, robust play. During last year more than fifty boys were summoned at one court for playing football in the streets and fined, though in some cases their footballs were old newspapers tied round with string. Hundreds of youths are charged every year at each of our London police-courts with gambling by playing a game with bronze coins called "pitch-and-toss." Now, these youths do not want and long for each other's coins, but they do want a game, and if they could play all day and win nothing they would consider it an ideal game. Organized games in public playgrounds, creating local and friendly rivalry, are absolutely essential. The same feeling, developed but a trifle further, becomes national, and we call it patriotism. Play they must, or become loafers; and the round-shouldered, dull-eyed loafer is altogether more hopeless than the hooligan.
It will be an inestimable blessing to the country, and will inaugurate quite a new era for us, when the minimum age for leaving school is raised to sixteen. The increase of intelligence, physique and morality, and order arising from such a course would astonish the nation. Supposing this were done, and for boys and girls of over twelve two hours in the afternoon were set apart for games—in separate playgrounds, of course—and that the evenings were devoted to school-work. The younger children going to school in the afternoon might easily have their turn in the public playgrounds from five to seven. This would allow the youths over sixteen to have the playgrounds for the rest of the evening. But, having provided for play, I would go one step further, and not allow any boy to leave school till he produced satisfactory evidence that he was really commencing work. Hundreds of boys leave school having no immediate prospect of regular work. A few weeks' idleness and the enjoyment of the streets follow, and they are then in that state of mind and body that renders them completely indifferent to work of any kind. For good or for evil, the old system of apprenticing boys has gone. It had many faults, but it had some virtues, for, at any rate, it ensured a boy's continuity of work in those years when undisciplined idleness is certain to be demoralizing. Once let boys from the homes I have described—or, indeed, from working men's homes generally—be released from the discipline of school, and the discipline of reasonable and continuous work not be substituted, and it is all over with them and honest aspirations. Now, this difficulty of finding decent and prospective employment for boys is another great factor in the production of youthful hooligans, but a factor that would be largely eliminated if the age for leaving school were raised to sixteen. The work of errand-boys, van-boys, or "cock-horse" boys is not progressive; neither is it good training for growing boys. To the boys of fourteen such work has its allurements, and the wages offered seem fairly good; but when the boy of fourteen has become the youth of sixteen or seventeen, the work seems childish, and the pay becomes mean. When he requires better wages, his services are dispensed with, and another lad of fourteen is taken on. This procedure alone accounts for thousands of youths being idle upon the streets of London. What can such youths do? Too big for their previous occupation, no skilled training or aptitude for better work, not big or strong enough for ordinary labouring, they become the despair of their parents and pests to society. Very soon the door of the parental home is closed upon them; the cheap lodging-houses become their shelter, and the rest can easily be imagined—but it lasts for life. By raising the school age, the great bulk of this demoralization would be prevented. Technical training in their school years would give these youths a certain amount of aptitude and taste that would enable them to commence life under more favourable conditions, and though many of them would necessarily become errand-boys or van-boys, still, the age at which they would leave those occupations would find them nearer manhood, and in possession of greater strength and more judgment than they can claim at the present age of leaving such work. The step I am advocating would also remove another great cause of lifelong misery and its accompanying hooliganism. Look again, if you please, at the homes of the poor. Is it any wonder that when a youth finds himself earning twelve shillings a week, and has arrived at the mature age of eighteen, he enters into a certain relationship with a girl of seventeen, who has a weekly income of six shillings? This relationship may or may not be sanctioned by the law and blessed by the Church; in either case it is equally immoral, and the effects are equally blighting. How can healthy, virtuous, and orderly children come from such unions?
Give the youth of our large towns a lengthened school-training, but at the same time remember that athletic and technical training must form part of that life; let healthy rivalry have a chance of animating them and a feeling of manly joy sometimes pervade them, and these horrible, wicked juvenile unions will be heard of no more; for at present their only chances of enjoyment are the streets, sexuality, or the public-house.
This last word leads me to another cause of hooliganism. The public-house is bound up with the lives of the poor. To many it stands, doubtless, for enjoyment and relaxation, for forgetfulness of misery and discomfort, and for sociability. To many others it stands for poverty, suffering, unspeakable sorrow, and gross neglect. Where our streets are the narrowest, where the sanitary arrangements are of the most execrable description, there the public-house thrives, and thrives with disastrous effects. The home-life of the poor and the public-house act and react on each other. The more miserable the home and the greater the dirt, the more the public-house attracts; the more it attracts, the viler the home-life and the greater misery and dirt. It is no marvel that people who live thus demand fiery drinks; nor is it any great marvel that all the tricks of science and all the resources of civilization are brought to bear in manufacturing drinks for them. No wonder, when "the vitriol madness flushes in the ruffian's head," that "the filthy by-lane rings with the yell of the trampled wife." But the State shares the profits and the State shares the guilt. Long ago Cowper wrote: