Twenty-one years before the desire of her eyes, the partner of her life, was taken away. After following the body of her husband to the cemetery, she returned home and looked upon her only boy in the cradle, and, like one of old, she said: ‘This same shall comfort me.’ And so she loved him as only a bereaved mother can love, and she worked for him as only a widowed woman can work. The years went on, and the boy was sent regularly to school. No half-time for the widow; her boy must have the full advantage the school could give, and he made good use of his time. Fourteen years rolled by, fourteen years of washing and charing for her, but now he must have a trade. No errand-boy’s place for him. She placed him as an apprentice with a saddler. She could pay no premium, so he must work for very little wage till his twenty-first birthday should come round. This meant seven more years of drudgery to her, but bravely she faced it, and the boy went through his apprenticeship. Many a time during those seven years he said to her, ‘Mother, you shan’t work so hard as this when I’m a man’; but they were years of happiness, for the widow’s heart was full of hope, and the seven years went by.
Another year has gone by, but it has been a year of continued hard work, of unrealized expectations, of unfulfilled hopes. The climax is reached now, and she stands in the witness-box to bear unwilling evidence against him. The public-house, the fell destroyer of children’s prospects, had proved the destruction of her maternal hopes. It is an old story, but a common one. His twenty-first birthday had arrived at last, and the men in the workshop had asked him to stand treat; he had not much money, but his little was added to theirs,and drink was sent for and the lad forgot his mother. The day’s work being over, they all adjourned to a public-house, and on his twenty-first birthday, late at night, the lad reeled home—drunk. The widow had prepared a nice little supper, but it was untasted; he lay on the hearthrug the night through. The widow sat on her chair, and her feet supported the boy’s head. This was the beginning of a year of misery, for in the delights of drink and the fascination of the public-house he forgot his boyish aspirations and his chivalrous intentions. His wages were not given to relieve his mother’s toil and to gladden his mother’s heart, for drunkenness became a common occurrence.
Last night he came home very late and very drunk, but the widow was waiting up for him. A knife and some bread and cheese were on the little table in their small room. He did not want any supper, he wanted more drink. There was none in the house; he would go out and get some. Placing her back to the door, the widow endeavoured to prevent him. He did not know what he was doing, and took hold of the knife. There was a struggle, and the widow’s arm was badly cut. She screamed, and a policeman and others came in. Seeing the mother covered with blood and the son in a stupid, dazed way holding the knife, he was taken into custody and charged with wounding his mother.
In giving her evidence the widow palpably perjured herself; it was transparent. She declared it was an accident, and happened as she tried to take the knife from him. The magistrate saw through it, but there was no other evidence. When the widow had given her evidence she came out of the witness-box and threw herself before the magistrate, calling out: ‘Don’t send him to prison! Don’t send him to prison! He’s a good lad, only for the drink.’ Her testimony of her boy was true, but alas! it is true of many. Home after home I have visited; parent after parent I have tried to comfort; again and again I have heard the wail: ‘A good lad! a good lad,only for the drink!’ The public-house is the limbo of unrealized parental hopes and the execution-ground of filial chivalry.
But the magistrate did not send him to prison. The widow, the son, and myself rode in a cab to their little home, where the mother and myself carried him to bed. In that little bed for some weeks he lay, not knowing what had occurred, but conscious that something unusual had happened. When the delirium had passed and he lay in bed weak and ill, I showed him the cut on his mother’s arm, and told him what had happened; but he could not believe it till I appealed to his mother. ‘But you would not have done it, Will, you would not have done it but for the drink.’ Then he believed it, and, looking very strange, he got out of bed and kneeling down, he said: ‘I call God to witness that I’ll never take another drop.’ No other pledge was needed. Years have gone by, and it has been kept; the widow’s heart sings for joy, for she is cheered, sustained, and comforted by her son, and the full fruition of her hopes and his hopes has come. He has a small shop of his own, that does for him and his mother. He has taken to himself no wife, but mother and son hand in hand and heart to heart go gently through life. But it might have been different.
But it is not only the poor widow who is despoiled of her hopes and robbed of her joy through the instrumentality of drink. Time and space would fail me to tell of the shamed and sorrowing fathers I have seen in homes of refinement and luxury who have looked pitifully to me to exercise some magic power and give them back their lads. ‘Good lads, only for the drink.’ If the young men of our land could only see, as I have seen, the parental anguish, could only take some measure, as I have taken some measure, of proud fathers, loving mothers and admiring sisters, it were enough to make them dash the sparkling beverage to the earth in all the pride of its mantling temptation.
There is yet another cause that leads to much evil among boys, and to a great deal of trouble for parents, and that is the neglect of many parents to provide situations or work for their boys before they leave school. Scores of lads become criminals from this one cause. The day arrives when these lads can legally leave school, and they do it. There is nothing at home to entertain them, so they seek entertainment in the street. A few weeks’ idleness, coupled with the undisciplined liberty of the street, is sufficient for the ruin of many lads. Once let boys whose only discipline has been the discipline of school be released from that discipline and no other substituted, and they will be in mischief, or, worse still, acquiring idle and shiftless habits that will stick to them through life. They become thieves or drones, and, personally, I have more hope of the thief. The number of lads that get into the hands of the police from this one cause is a very large one, and I more than suspect that every Metropolitan police court magistrate has commented upon the matter till he is tired. A large part of my time has been taken up in finding employment for such boys while they have been under remand or under sentence. Numbers of such lads are discharged by the various magistrates on the police court missionaries promising to find them employment. No one knows better than the magistrate that undisciplined idleness is the ruin of growing boys. Of course these situations ought to be procured by the fathers of the boys, and would be if such fathers had only the common-sense to know that financially it would pay them to see that the day after their boys leave school they are decently at work, not to be made into little slaves, but to acquire the habit of regular industry, without which their lives must be burdensome.
For good or evil, the old system of apprenticeship is dead and gone. It had its faults, but it had many virtues, for at any rate it insured a boy continuity of work during those years when idleness is fatal. Nor have we anything to take its place, for parental control and interest have to a great extent disappearedalso. It ought naturally to have become more keen and active, but who can deny that the reverse is the case? Everything nowadays is to be done for the parents, and but little by them. So it comes that agencies and organizations innumerable are in existence for the purpose of doing work that ought to have been done cheerfully by the parents, or for undoing the evil that has been done by them. But can they undo it? Can anyone undo it? Boys from fourteen to sixteen may be sent to reformatories till they are nineteen years of age. But does such a course undo it? No; for if he behaves badly enough he is sent away, and if he behaves well enough he is sent out on license when he has been there two years. Many such boys get charged again and again, and many detectives tell me that the worst thieves in their districts are men who have spent a time in a reformatory.
Parental influence cannot be exercised by proxy. Standing as God’s vicegerents towards their children, parents have committed to them a sacred duty and a trust; they have given to them an influence that no one can exert on their behalf. Reformatories undoubtedly do a great amount of good; unfortunately, they are absolutely necessary, they cannot be dispensed with. To take a vicious lad from his surroundings is the only wise, and frequently the only possible, course; but having taken him, he ought at any rate to be kept a sufficient length of time to allow of his acquiring industrious habits and useful skill which will fit him for becoming a decent and self-supporting citizen. An idle, dishonest boy of fifteen cannot by any process be converted into an upright and aspiring youth in two years; nor can he in two years acquire technical skill sufficient to be of service to him. But it is too late an age for him to commence to learn a trade; if he is kept the full time, till nineteen, he is then released at a time when he is neither man nor boy, and it is difficult for him to begin life other than as a casual labourer. When a boy has been proved unfit for freedom, and the magistrate commits him to a reformatorytill nineteen, he ought to remain till nineteen, unless special circumstances are brought to the magistrate’s knowledge and he endorses a license for the boy; for he, having adjudicated on the boy’s guilt, and having knowledge of all the circumstances, is surely the best judge as to whether in committing the boy he meant one year or three, two years or four. It sometimes happens that bad boys, who have been sent to reformatories and whom the magistrate thinks are in safe custody and good keeping, come in a short time again before him on some other charge; they have been let out on license. Fewer boys should be sent to reformatories—it should be the last resource; but having been sent, they ought to be detained for the specified time to allow them to grow out of their evil habits.
Probably it would be better still if the law were altered to allow of their detention till twenty-one. There would then be a sufficiency of time to allow of their learning some useful occupation. If this were done, and a start were also given them on their discharge, I feel persuaded a greater amount of success would ensue. Better still would it be if all reformatories—adult as well as juvenile—were entirely in the hands of the State, for then a greater length of time could be allowed for reforming purposes. In the eradication of criminal instincts, or for the cultivation of good habits, time is an important factor, for good qualities are not like mushrooms—they do not spring up in a night. Another great difficulty, too, would disappear if reformatories were State institutions. Before a boy can be received at either industrial school or reformatory, he must be declared by a medical officer to be of sound health and constitution, and free from physical or mental defect. It by no means follows because a boy is weakly, has bad eyesight, or has some mental peculiarity, that he cannot become a criminal; the reverse is true, for just because he possesses one or more of these defects he is the more likely to become a criminal. Reformatories and industrial schoolshave the right of refusing any boy, and being philanthropic societies, they are quite in the right when they exercise their own judgment. But it happens that boys with defects go uncared for, with this result, that their defects become more emphasized and their instincts more and more criminal, and ultimately the workhouse or prison has to receive them. A State reformatory, to which our magistrates can commit any boy, as a matter of right and not of favour, with the positive knowledge that such boys, even with their defects, would be kept, taught and trained till twenty-one years of age, would be an inestimable boon, and would confer lasting good on the community.
A strange being was Jane, or, rather, ‘Miss Cakebread,’ as she loved to call herself. Helpless, homeless, and penniless as she was, I question whether any lady other than the Queen attracted the attention of the public so long, or had so many paragraphs written about her as poor demented Jane Cakebread. For years all England laughed and grew merry over Jane, heedless of the tragedy that attended her, and of the cruel farce, so long drawn out, that was enacted with regard to her.
Queen of her domain, she held the field against all comers. Many were her challengers for notoriety, but they came and went, the grave closed over them, yet she held on. Her movements were regular as the motions of the planets. From police court to prison, from prison to the streets, thence again to the court, was the regular order of her life. Her quips and cranks, ready wit, and cool assurance, made her dear to reporters, and Jane became national property.
Vain to an extraordinary extent, she dearly prized the notoriety that a police court afforded her. To her the hum of amused wonder and scarcely suppressed laughter when ‘No. 12, Jane Cakebread, your worship,’ was announced by the gaoler was the very breath of life, and proved ample compensation for the discomfort of the cells. But by no means did she make herself miserable in the cells, for times and again have I seenher in those cells with her little hymn-book, singing softly her old favourite hymns, or repeating aloud choice portions of the Bible; for she had a capital memory. Many a time has she repeated to me two chapters from the Book of Job which she had learned forty years before. Again and again I have seen her on her knees in the cells, repeating her little prayers; yet there was not the faintest suspicion of the hypocrite about her. I have seen her rise from her knees and pour out floods of blasphemy and obscenity if she had been in the least disturbed in her devotions. That was Jane all over; from Job to foul obscenity, from hymns to coarse blasphemy, from prayer to violent temper, were to her natural transitions, occupying but one moment of time. The changes in her facial expression, even when sober and at liberty, were most extraordinary. One had only to look into that face, with its little, twinkling eyes, its square-set, powerful jaw, and its determined mouth, to see in rapid succession all the passions and powers that dwelt in her strange body and mysterious mind reflected in it. Put a little child before her, and that hard mouth would soften, and the whole face would brighten up. ‘Bless its dear little heart!’ she would say. ‘Shall I sing it a little hymn?’ And she would begin in her thin old voice to sing to the child. In the middle of a verse she would leave off abruptly to pour out the vials of wrath upon some imaginary offender—and her wrath was something to be remembered.
Five minutes’ conversation with Jane was quite sufficient to prove to me, at any rate, that she was an absolutely irresponsible creature, of unsound mind; not insane in the ordinary acceptation of the term, yet insane beyond a doubt. Her language in conversation would vary, sometimes choice, grammatical, and well-expressed, the next moment drivel, the next idiotic. I have seen her eyes light up with keen intelligence one moment, and the next moment be dulled with vacancy. When before the magistrate she was always at her best, and the knowledge that she was sure to be the cause of manyparagraphs next day seemed to brace her up for a special effort; and oh the dear delight if she could but make the majesty of the law to unbend, and cause a smile to appear on the magistrate’s face! For that smile she would cheerfully ‘do’ her month. ‘Mr. Holmes,’ she has said to me many times, ‘did you see me make the magistrate laugh?’ And in the cells she would hug herself, and fall to her hymns and prayers with rare enjoyment.
Pitiful though her condition was, there was still an irrepressible gaiety about her, and a power of saying ridiculous things in a humorous way, that everyone who heard and saw was bound to smile at. The smiles would not only be visible, but audible, and having seen and heard, Jane would step jauntily out of the dock, bestowing her benediction on the magistrate, and assuring the police that she ‘loved the very ground they walked upon.’ ‘Save me a paper till I come out,’ she would say to me. I never did, but somehow she did get one, and carefully she treasured the little bits about herself.
Everything was for the best with Jane, and just as it should be. Everyone else might be all wrong; she was all right, though once or twice I have perceived a strangely pathetic look in her face, as if there was a glimmering consciousness that perhaps, after all, everything was not quite for the best with her; but on the whole there was a tone of confidence about her that admitted of no argument—indeed, ‘argufying’ was an abhorrence to her; she would have none of it, and I soon found that my only plan was to agree with her and pander to her vanity.
Jane was not an idle woman, but she had not the slightest wish or intention to do anything toward earning her own living. She believed herself to be a ‘lady,’ and prided herself on that belief. Very funny it was to see the poor creature pounding up pieces of brick to a fine powder. I came across her one day on Clapton Common while she was thus engaged. I asked her what she was making the powder for, and found she used itfor tooth-powder. She was proud of her teeth, and cleaned them regularly with her brick-dust; and, indeed, she had a set to be proud of, for they were beautifully regular and perfectly sound. I believe that on one occasion, when Jane was in trouble and was not behaving nicely, the attendants, believing her teeth to be false ones, tried to take them out, fearing she might get choked with them. She bit right and left, and they soon came to the conclusion that her teeth were best let alone. She told me several times about the affair, but she was always angry about it, considering it the greatest indignity ever offered to her.
She was a strange mixture of good and evil, sense and nonsense, sanity and insanity. Her physical powers were as strange as her mental, for she bade defiance to the elements, and laughed disease to scorn. If out of gaol for a month, she spent that month out of doors night and day unless I provided shelter for her, and toward the last I found this difficult to do, for no one would have her, even if paid well. During the great frost of 1895, for nine weeks she lay out of doors, her lodging the bare ground, her bed a bundle of sticks, her dressing-room the banks of the Lea, where morning by morning she broke the ice that she might wash. ‘Ladies always wash in cold water,’ she was fond of saying, and not in the depths of winter would she consent to have even the chill taken off; and when at length in the asylum, she told me with tears that they compelled her to bathe in warm water. Time after time I have at midnight made some provision for her lodging. I have found her in the early morning at other times lying wet through on a bed of shavings shivering with cold, yet hot with fever. When I have suggested the workhouse, she has got up and cursed me, and staggered away. Next day she would smilingly accost me in the police court, where she cheerfully awaited her month.
She had given herself into custody—a not infrequent occurrence. Jane was not a drunkard; she had no drink crave atall, and when she chose could do without it. But the smallest amount of drink roused the worst elements within her; a pennyworth of four ale was quite sufficient, and after the nearest policeman she would go. The police often fled at the sight of her; they did not want to take her into custody. Many an officer has bribed her to go away when she approached him. I have seen policemen running away and ‘old Jane’ after them to be taken into custody. When she could not catch them, she would lie down on her back, screaming ‘Murder!’ and ‘Police!’ when of course they had to return and arrest her; but not an inch would she budge then till they had fetched the ‘perambulator,’ as she called the ambulance; and fetched it had to be, and Jane strapped on it, before they got her to the station.
During the nine weeks she lay out of doors she touched no drink, and no one could persuade her to take any, but the romantic heart of the old lady had been touched. A gentleman living in the neighbourhood left a shilling weekly at a coffee stall on Stamford Hill, that Cakebread might be supplied with two cups of hot coffee daily. That shilling a week loomed large in her eye, and became a pound a day; that kind act of pity on the gentleman’s part she construed into a declaration of love, and she built many hopes upon it. She became a nuisance to the stall-keeper, declaring that she was being robbed, and not getting value for her pound a day. She waited and waited on Stamford Hill for the lover that never came, but fancying every well-dressed man that passed to be her love. Hope deferred made her heart, hopeful as it was, sick at last, so she got her pennyworth of drink and gave herself into custody.
That was characteristic of Jane. No one could do her an act of kindness but she built tremendous hopes upon it, and made herself a perfect nuisance to the one who befriended her. Some years before the prison doctor had found her insane—and here let me say that many times have our magistratesremanded her to prison, that a medical opinion might be obtained as to her sanity—feeling sorry for her, I tried an experiment. By dint of much pressure and substantial payment I got a poor woman to let Cakebread have a furnished room, also arranging that she was to order her own food, for which I was to pay. I provided her with a complete change of clothes, and took her to her room. I naturally thought that, having been used to meagre prison fare so long, and being withal an old woman, it would not cost much to keep her. I was mistaken. Jane rose splendidly to her position. She was a ‘lady,’ and asserted herself. French rolls, new-laid eggs, prime cuts of ham, etc., for breakfast, were only the prelude to nice dinners and snug teas. She cost me over thirty shillings for food, etc., in a few days, but it culminated rather suddenly. I got a note from her in her own queer writing and spelling; I could scarcely read it, but with the aid of friends we at length made it out to be an invitation to take tea with her. I went. An expensive tea was nicely arranged, all at my expense, and there sat the poor creature in fine style. Her thin gray hair was plastered with pomade, and the whole room was redolent of eau-de-Cologne. She rose and bade me welcome, and I saw that she was nervous with suppressed excitement. During the meal she upset several things, and behaved most awkwardly.
I saw there was something exciting her, so after the tray was removed, I asked her what it was. It soon came out. Jane had fallen in love with me, and proposed that I should share with her the immense fortune which she believed had come to her. It was a delicate situation, and an alarming prospect, but I got out of it very well, and did not scorn her. I told her that I thought she had better go into the country for a few weeks while she thought the matter over, and that I must have time to consider her proposal, which had come so suddenly.
I got a cab, took her to the railway-station, and saw her safely into the train off to her brother who, I knew, wouldnot be pleased to see her, for he was as helpless with her as myself. Six months she stayed in the country, and many were the letters she wrote to me, all couched in the most endearing language—they lie before me as I write, and bring it all back to me. She got tired of writing letters, and her brother got tired of her; so one night at eleven o’clock I found her on my doorstep, and all her worldly goods with her—three brown-paper parcels of good dimensions. She always had them with her. Few people saw her at liberty without those brown-paper parcels. Many people have asked me what she carried tied up in brown-paper. Every piece of clothing I had given her for ten years was tied carefully up in those parcels. When her clothing got too bad, I gave her some better; but all the old pieces were carefully treasured and jealously guarded; on no account would she part with any.
In two days’ time she bade a cheerful ‘Good-morning’ to the magistrate at North London, who promptly discharged her, because she looked so nice and had been away so long; and before she could well speak she was ushered out of court. But that did not suit Jane, so next day she appeared again, and this time more evidence had to be given by the police—she had taken care of that—so time was given her to get in her usual string of interruptions, and Jane was happy.
For over thirty years this farce had gone on, and all this time a demented woman had been looked upon and treated as a confirmed inebriate. Of course she took drink, and plenty of fools were always ready to treat her, nay, even to entice her into a public-house for the purpose of hearing her talk and seeing the fireworks. It has always seemed to me an extraordinary thing that publicans who knew her so well, and knew what would happen, should allow her to be served on their premises; but so it was.
Cakebread became a great nuisance, not only to the public, but especially to my family. As soon as she was discharged from prison she would make her way to the street in which Ilived; but she never could remember which was the right house, and as there was a number of houses exactly alike, she invariably began at the first and inquired at every one till she arrived at mine. After calling at one house, and being told that I lived farther on, sometimes she would insist that I did live there, and would make herself comfortable on the doorstep, where she would remain till taken away by a policeman. The neighbours began to look coolly at me; they did not want any of Jane’s glory reflected on them.
Her appearances before the magistrate became more numerous and her vagaries more pronounced, till Lady Henry Somerset went to visit her in Holloway. I do not think that her ladyship expected to do Cakebread much good, but she did, I know, hope to put an end to the perpetual scandal, so an offer was made to Jane to live in one of the cottage homes that were being prepared for habitual inebriates at Duxhurst, and I was commissioned to convey her thither. TheDaily Chroniclehad for some time given special attention to her case, and on the morning of her release from prison, the morning I was to convey her to Duxhurst, Mr. Milne of that paper, together with Mr. Phil May, came to my house to meet with Jane and see her off. My wife had prepared an entirely new outfit for her, and taking a mantle that was intended for her use on my arm, I went to meet her at Holloway. This mantle did its work too well, for while it brought her readily to my house, it also made her more certain than ever that at last her long-looked-for fortune had come to her, and this made her intractable. My wife performed the duties of lady’s-maid, and, I understand, did not have an easy task. Jane came down at length dressed for her journey, excepting boots. I told her that we had not bought boots yet, for we did not know her exact size. It was worth something to see the sixty-six-year-old woman pull up the front of her dress and look admiringly at her advanced foot and say, ‘Haven’t I a nice foot! Isn’t mine a high instep! I take threes.’ I looked at herfoot, and sent out for a pair of sixes, which she could scarcely get on. I introduced her to Mr. Milne and Phil May as friends of mine, and a curious time followed, for she became aware of the notebooks and pencils, and wanted to know what they ‘were getting at.’
I was afraid of a storm, but Mr. Milne handled her with considerable tact, telling her that it was usual for ladies of quality and means to be interviewed and sketched, so at last she agreed to sit still. But that poor old face could not keep still. Change after change passed over it; all the emotions of her queer mind rang in quick succession their never-ending changes upon it, and Mr. Phil May had a hopeless task. Mr. Milne could get her to talk, and talk she did fast enough, but what a jumble that talk was! from one thing suddenly to another; sensible talk and silly talk; half laughing and half crying; sometimes pleased like a little child, at others raging with passion; tales of her own girlhood; bits of romance and love. She was just beginning to get coarse when I asked her to recite something for the gentlemen. Out came a long string of verses descriptive of the books of the Old and New Testament. Some hymns followed, and then on to her favourite Job, from whom she recited one chapter perfectly. As soon as it was finished she turned to Mr. Phil May and said: ‘Didn’t I say that correctly?’ I have it on the authority of Mr. Milne that Mr. May looked very confused, and blushed when this question was put to him. I am bound to confess that I did not see that blush, but I am inclined to think that Mr. Milne wished us to infer that he knew all about Job. Jane talked about those ‘nice young gentlemen’ to me many times afterwards, even when nearing her end in the asylum.
I had bought a new trunk for Jane—an iron one—and my wife had packed it ready for the journey to Duxhurst. I called her attention to it, and told her it was time we were going. She indignantly refused a ‘tin box,’ as she termed it, and declared she would have a leathern travelling trunk, with‘J. C.’ painted on it. Argument and promises were of no avail. For a ‘lady possessed of £17,000 to visit Lady Henry Somerset with a tin box! No, indeed, not Miss Cakebread!’ To end the matter, she gathered up her brown-paper parcels, went straight to Tottenham Station, and, with some money that Mr. Phil May and Mr. Milne had given her, paid her fare to Sawbridgeworth, where, in less than an hour after her arrival, she was deposited in the local ‘lock-up,’ and was next day sentenced to a month’s imprisonment in Cambridge Gaol.
I suppose the governor thought I had proprietary rights in the half-blind old woman, for at the expiration of her sentence, he kindly paid her fare to Tottenham, and once again she found her way to my house. But the month in Cambridge Gaol had not agreed with her. She had evidently been treated with more severity than in Holloway. She seemed weak and ill, and was quite prepared to go to Lady Henry Somerset, and even to accept the ‘tin box.’ So we went, but go without her parcels of old rags she would not, and they had to go with us. At Cannon Street she was quite willing that her box, which contained good new clothing, should be put into the luggage-van, but not so with the bundles; into the carriage with us they must come, and they did. It was a memorable ride to me—poor demented Jane on one side and three bundles of rags on the other. She nestled close up to me, and all the time spoke of her money, and what we should do with it, for she really believed that at last she was eloping. She grew more vivacious, and her broken health of the morning seemed to disappear by magic. She had renewed her youth.
I left her at Duxhurst, knowing that she would get every kindness and be treated with great patience. I knew also that I had by no means seen the last of her, for I felt sure that in an institution of that character they would not for long be able to put up with her whims and oddities, temper and violence. I wonder how Lady Henry Somerset and the matron stood it for three months; they went through something inthe time, I am sure. So I was not surprised when I got a telegram asking me to meet Jane at Cannon Street, as they were obliged to send her away. Even Lady Henry seemed to acknowledge my vested interests in Jane, so I met her, and once more found her on my hands. I had to pay a fancy price for her lodgings in Tottenham that night, but for that night only. The next day she was conveyed on the ‘perambulator’ to the police station, and the day after she stood in her old familiar place—the dock at North London Police Court.
Her sojourn at Duxhurst had not been altogether in vain. Lady Henry discovered what the magistrates and myself knew years before—that she was mad. The medical officer at Duxhurst, too, found that Jane was mad. I acquainted Mr. Paul Taylor, the sitting magistrate, with these discoveries, and he promptly remanded her to Holloway, once more asking the prison doctor’s opinion on her state of mind. This is what happened on the remand:
‘At North London, Jane Cakebread, sixty-seven, was brought up on remand, before Mr. Paul Taylor, to answer the charge of being drunk and disorderly in Stoke Newington on the evening of the 20th instant. The appearance of the accused last week marked the two hundred and eightieth occasion on which she has been charged with drunkenness. Every effort to reclaim her has failed, and during the last few years, Mr. T. Holmes, the police court missionary, has constantly asserted that she was insane. Nevertheless, no doctors could be induced to agree upon the point, and the woman has been treated as an habitual drunkard. Last week a remand was ordered, for the state of the prisoner’s mind to be again inquired into, and the following report was now handed to the magistrate: “H.M. Prison, Holloway, January 27, 1896. Registered No. 17,706, Jane Cakebread, is well known to me. I have always considered her to be of impaired intellect. Her mental condition has, however, so much deteriorated of latethat I am of opinion that she is now not responsible for her actions, and that she should be sent to an asylum.—Geo. E. Walker, Medical Officer.” Mr. Paul Taylor said, in the face of this certificate, he should order an officer to conduct the woman to the Hackney Workhouse. The gaolers endeavoured to remove the prisoner from the dock, but she clung to the rails and refused to go. “What have I got?” she screamed. “I did not hear. I will know!” Sergeant Baker, the gaoler, said he would tell her all about it outside. The prisoner was induced to go to the gaoler’s office, but as she left the court she screamed: “Tell Mr. Holmes to mind my box.” Directly she heard that she was going to the workhouse, she cried and said she would not go. Mr. Holmes told her that it would be better for her to go quietly, and she replied: “Yes, you want to get my property—my £17,000—but you will not. I have got my proper senses, though they say I have not.” Ultimately, after a struggle, during which she tried to bite the gaoler, she was secured on the police ambulance, and taken to the Hackney Workhouse.’
And so poor old half-blind Jane passed. She had grown old in the service of the State, and at length the State rewarded her with something other than prison—the lunatic asylum. But for the manner of that ‘passing’ Jane never forgave the police, for when very near her death, in Claybury Asylum, she referred to it, and said: ‘Mr. Holmes, if I was mad, why did they take me strapped on the perambulator to the workhouse? Why did they not take me in a cab, like they would have taken any other lady?’ And there was reason in her query. Sane enough to realize her misery in being surrounded by the insane—too insane to be fit for liberty or to control her actions. Nature had its pound of flesh, and her strange life ebbed out. I went several times to see her, and the last bit of needlework she ever did she saved for me, and I keep it for her sake; the tin box that she so much despised is in my possession, and the clothes that my wife so gladly arranged for her are stillin it, neatly folded, mementos of the most ill-used woman it was ever my lot to meet with. Once again I went to see her, and death was upon her. She lay in a half-comatose condition, and as I bent over her and spoke to her, for a time I got no response. But I thought I would try again for some little sign of recognition; so I touched her, and said: ‘Jane, don’t you know me? I am Mr. Holmes.’ She half opened her eyes for a moment, and said: ‘You are a liar. Mr. Holmes wouldn’t leave me here.’ Even in death she had some kind of faith in me, and I am glad to remember it.
I had one other duty to perform, and on December 9, 1898, I performed it in Chingford Mount Cemetery. It was a very quiet funeral; the conveyance from the asylum drove up, two men lifted the remains of our ‘dear sister’ into the prepared grave; the clergyman read the beautiful service, and into the safe keeping of Mother Earth, and to the mercy of God, poor old Jane went, a solitary representative of the press and myself being the only witnesses. I have before me now an old letter, bearing the date 1890. It is one of Jane’s. A few wildflowers are inside that letter. She tells of living in a cottage surrounded by fields, where the birds are singing, the flowers blooming, and the ‘breases is beautiful.’ And it was meet and right, poor old demented Jane, that the birds should sing when thou wert laid to rest. For on that December day the sun shone gloriously, and the birds sang merrily in the trees around her, and as we laid her gently down the breath of the forest came about her, and the breezes were beautiful.Requiescat in pace.
A few words will suffice for the history of Jane Cakebread. Born of humble parents in Hertfordshire, she had some schooling, but not much. After leaving school she went into domestic service, and ultimately became what she called ‘a single-handed parlour-maid.’ To commemorate the sudden death of some connection of the family she lived with, she committed to memory certain chapters of the Bible, the one from Jobhaving to do with the uncertainty of life. While in service someone left her a legacy of £100. That was her undoing, as she did no work again. She seems to have carried the money about with her and wasted it, or got robbed of it. Then began her life of so-called inebriety; the rest is public knowledge.
Kate was an Irish girl, and there was no beauty about her. I met with her the first day I entered a London police court, and was afraid of her. I met with her many times afterwards, and the fear and disgust wore off.
There was nothing of the Cakebread type about her; she loved not the precincts of a police court, and could never take her month philosophically. She would scream like a wild beast, curse the magistrate, and defy the police. Sometimes it required several officers to remove her from the dock to the cells, where her boots, if she happened to be possessed of any, had to be taken from her to prevent the noise she would make. Time after time she came, so we became friendly. In the depth of winter, with very little clothing on her, I have seen her sent to Millbank prison, where I have met her with warm clothing on her discharge. Two days later I have seen her again in the dock with the clothing all torn to rags. Again I have clothed her, and a similar result has followed. I became too familiar with her, for I looked upon her as a matter of course and as one of those for whom there was no hope, as time went on.
One morning she was in her usual place, curled up in the corner of the prisoners’ waiting-room, when I merely bade her good-morning, and passing on, turned to speak to a middle-aged man who, by his looks, was possessed of a history, andof whom I shall have something to tell later on. He cursed me, and called me a canting hypocrite. So I promptly left him alone. I had no sooner turned away from him than I heard the sound of a resounding smack, evidently with an open hand, upon someone’s face. Turning round, I saw the fellow who had insulted me, and who, by the way, had held a commission in a crack regiment, lying on the floor, and Kate, with flaming eyes and bristling hair, standing over him. She would have kicked him if she had been in possession of boots, but that morning she was not, so she was proceeding to punch him; she might even have bitten him, but I pulled her away, and she went back to her corner. The man got up muttering curses, and said to me: ‘That’s the effect of your teaching, I reckon.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I don’t think she made a bad job of it.’
The fact was that I felt exceedingly glad that a blackguard had got his desserts, but I felt more glad, nay, even touched, that the Ishmaelite had some respect and regard for me. So I walked over to her corner and, taking her hand, said: ‘Kate, it was very good of you to take my part. I am very much obliged to you.’ She looked up—for the first time I saw a softened look in her face and a tear in her eye—and said: ‘Mr. Holmes, after all your kindness to me, if I get locked up again, I will kill myself.’ But of course she did get locked up again. As two officers were taking her up the Old Kent Road, almost destitute of clothing, she broke from them when crossing the Surrey Canal, and in an instant was over the wall of the bridge, and down she went. She fell half in the water and half on the bank, but, never heeding her broken arm or cut head, she rolled over into the canal, whence with difficulty she was rescued and was afterwards charged with attempted suicide. This was the last time but one that she stood in the dock at Lambeth Police Court, and I wish that I had a picture of her as she stood there, barefooted, poor, thin, short dress, her head enveloped in surgical bandages, her right arm boundup in splints. Two hundred and fifty times she had stood there, two hundred and fifty times she had been sent to the refining influences of prison, to be redeemed and regenerated by the delightful task of oakum-picking, sack-making or scrubbing floors. Two hundred and fifty times the law had said to her, ‘You shall not.’ Two hundred and fifty times she had defied the law, had hugged her vices, and said, ‘I will.’
But this time she was quiet and said not a word, and the magistrate, a wise and big-hearted man, did not send her to prison. He remanded her on her own bail, and she went to a place other than prison. It was summer-time, and there were flowers to smile at her; she could look through her window, and the birds sang to her; kind nurses waited on her; her heart became tender, and the scream of the wild beast died away. She had again to come before the court, when the days of her remand had expired, and she stood there clothed in her right mind. How long will it be before we as a nation learn that the human heart is like a bar of iron? Hammer, hammer, hammer it cold, and you can make nothing of it; closer and harder, closer and harder does it become. Only under the softening influences of warmth can it be shaped to a thing of beauty and utility. So the law may punish, punish, punish its Kate Henesseys, but the more and still more do its Kate Henesseys defy the law, the harder and still harder do their hearts become.
So Kate did not go back to prison, but in the country, many miles from London, she found a resting-place. Twelve months she stayed there, and those who had charge of her speak well of her; but they needed patience, for the passage from evil to good, from drink and lust to sobriety and cleanliness, is not an easy one; the old instincts will not die at once, and as a tiger lusts for blood or a caged beast for liberty, even so it must have been with Kate. Among my treasured possessions is a letter written upon a leaf from a copy-book. It is a strange document, but it speaks volumes to me, for it is from Kate,and God shall put that letter to her credit, for she learned to write. What it cost her to do so He only knows. But her twenty-five years could not be given back to her. Nature’s debt must ever be paid, for Nature knows no pity. So Kate’s health failed, and, before I knew about it, she was back in London, broken and almost dying.
It was an ill-advised thing to send her to London, to step out of the station and no one to meet her or speak kindly to her, but so it happened. With an irresistible power the old instincts awoke. One wild night of debauch, one more conveyance to the police station, one more charge in a police court, once more to prison, once more homeless in the streets, once more to the infirmary ward, and death mercifully put an end to all, for Kate passed into the undiscovered country.
And poor Kate is a type of many. For years I have hoped and planned for such; disappointment after disappointment has been my lot, and though here and there among them I have been permitted to see in restored character and happiness some results for my hopes, yet oftener still, when I have apparently been on the verge of success, and have been encouraged because of someone whom I hoped to save, God has stepped up and taken them out of my hands—I never doubt to make a much better job of it than ever I could.
‘For in a world of larger scopeWhat here is faithfully begunShall be completed, not undone.’
‘For in a world of larger scopeWhat here is faithfully begunShall be completed, not undone.’
These wild, homeless women have always had an interest for me; their very hopelessness commended them to me. No one had pity upon them, thereforeImust; no door was open to them,minemust not be closed against them. So some of the most notorious women of London have formed part and parcel of my family circle. I am glad it has been so, for my conscience is easy. I was there to try to save them, and I have tried; my wife has tried, and my family have always treated them with courtesy and kindly respect. For the beginningof good in many a vice-cursed woman has come from a knowledge of the fact that someone respected her.
It was a direct challenge from one of these women that led to my offering them the shelter and protection of my own house. Susan Hurley was her name; they called her ‘Glass-eyed Sue,’ from which I infer that at some time she had been possessed of an artificial eye, but she lost the eye, if not the name, long before I met with her. She was a wild, untamed Irish woman, and would fight with man or woman, police or civilian. I believe she lost the sight of one eye in a drunken fight. I noticed, too, that a good-sized piece of her left ear had disappeared, most likely in a similar struggle. I was visiting at a different court from the one I usually attended, and Hurley had been charged and sentenced to two months’ imprisonment; she was in the cells, and I was asked to see her.
She did not present a nice appearance; she had been badly knocked about, and blood had flowed freely. Her dress all torn, no bonnet or hat, her hair anyhow, minus one eye, and half an ear, she looked bad enough for anything. I spoke kindly to her, but she pulled me up sharply with, ‘Who are you?’ I told her that I was a police-court missionary. ‘Bosh!’ she said. ‘Go away; what can you do? Say a prayer for me! Give me a tract! Tell me you are sorry for me! I know all you can say, and can say it better than you can yourself. I know all you can do, and that is—nothing.’ I kept quiet whilst she let off the steam, and then we had some conversation. I found that she was a Roman Catholic, and had been in prison scores of times, and even so notorious that no home would take her in, and that when last she made an application a policeman was sent for, as a disturbance was feared when she was refused. She seemed a clever woman, but was very bitter and sarcastic.
I was bound to admit the truth of her words, for even prayers and sympathy are of little use to homeless, vice-stricken women. So I wrote a letter, and addressed it to my wife. This I gaveto Hurley, and asked that when released from prison she should bring it herself, and Mrs. Holmes would take her in even if I was not at home. She took the letter, but did not look at it. She looked at me and said, ‘You must be the missionary from North London.’ I never felt so proud in my life, and now think those words the greatest compliment ever paid me.
Her two months passed; she came to my house, but she came drunk. When I got home she sat there blinking and stupid. I am inclined to think she took drink in order to brace herself up, and that probably she would not have come without the courage it gave to her. Anyhow, my wife took that view of the matter, so we lifted her on to a sofa, spread a rug over her, and let her sleep it off.
After a couple of hours’ sleep Hurley woke up. She knew where she was, and said to me, ‘You see, I have come. What are you going to do with me?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘when you have had a wash we are going to give you some tea. Take her upstairs, mamma.’ And she was taken to her own room. She gave my wife the letter, which had been carefully preserved for two months in her stocking, from which safe hiding-place she took it. A complete change of clothing was given her, and she came down to tea. She had no airs or graces like Cakebread, so the tea passed off quietly; but I could see plainly that my wife felt a little bit afraid of her. In appearance Hurley was enough to frighten a delicate woman, but in reality she was most tractable, exceedingly well-behaved, and one of the best workers I ever knew; there was no holding her back: work was her glory and her joy. For the first time in our married life my wife began to have an easy time, for Hurley anticipated everything, and left but the lightest work undone. She was almost too industrious, for while standing on some steps cleaning a window, she slipped and fell, and all at once the house rang with horrid imprecations. My wife rushed to see what was the matter. Hurley was just gathering herself up, cursing as only such a woman can curse, and between timescalling out: ‘It’s out again! it’s out again!’ The matter was that her right arm had been dislocated so often in her struggles with the police and others, that it did not take much to put it out of joint, and, as she had fallen on it, this result had ensued. Fortunately, Tottenham Hospital was close at hand, and there my wife took her, Hurley using bad language all the way. After a few hours’ detention she came back to us, with her arm and shoulder so tightly bandaged that she could not use it in the least. Being her right arm, it prevented her doing much work, and this rather upset her.
Next morning, however, I heard her about the house at five o’clock, and when I got down everything was tidy and the breakfast nicely laid, but Hurley sat there crying. I told her that I was afraid she had passed a bad night and was suffering a great deal of pain. She said she did not mind the pain, but she could not with one hand black the boots. I told her not to mind the boots, and that I would black them till her arm got right again. ‘You won’t black boots while I am here,’ she said, and off she went, and somehow with her one hand she managed it. They were not very well done, but we all praised them, and she was the happier for having accomplished the job. That was the only time during her seven months’ stay with us that Hurley used bad language. We never had the slightest trouble with her, and as we got used to her one eye and her scars of old wounds, we had nothing but pleasure in her company. Of my little boy, a four-year-old, she was passionately fond, and, ugly as she was, he was fond of her. It would not have been well for anyone to molest him if she were by; she would have gloried in a fight for him, and even when she lay dying in Whitechapel Infirmary, nothing brought such a smile to her face as a sight of the little boy; for, by her own request, we took him with us when we visited her.
I don’t know whether or not it was our imagination, but her face and voice seemed to change, and certainly she became more human. I was looking forward to her having the homeof her own which I had promised her if she stayed with us twelve months, when all at once she told us that she must leave us. On being pressed to stay and her reason for leaving being asked, she said that she felt she was going to be ill, and did not want to be a burden to us. We told her it was nonsense, and that she must not go away on that account. She then said that she wanted to go to the hospital and get a glass eye, and when she had obtained it she would return to us. No persuasion had any effect; the glass eye she must have. As we never turned the key upon her, or, indeed, on any other woman, she went, and Henessey’s history was repeated. A wild night of debauch, a fight with the police, one more committal to prison, thence to Whitechapel Infirmary, a pauper’s funeral, and the world had seen the last of Susan Hurley.
Of her past history other than police court I know nothing. I never inquired of her, preferring always to shut it out, and to fix her mind and hopes on the future. She was intelligent, and fairly well educated, but where she came from and where her friends lived she never told us. Neither did we seek to win her from the Roman Catholic faith, and a card hanging at the head of her bed told us that while dying she had been ministered to by a priest of her own Church. She was a generous soul, coarse and wild though she had become. It was her generosity that led her to leave us. She had premonitions of the coming end, and wished to put us to no trouble or expense, and doubtless her heart went back to the faith of her youth and happier days. And so she passed from us, but not from our memory, for of none that we have known and cared for have we such kindly recollections as we have of the wild Irishwoman Susan Hurley.
But we have had women living with us whose presence did not conduce to our happiness, but rather to anxiety, not unmingled with fear, for whose departure we fervently hoped and hoped for a long time in vain, for we have never said ‘Begone!’ to the worst of them.
A frightful tragedy is compressed into the life of any man or woman who earnestly and sincerely strives to do right and yet is impelled by some strange inward power—a power that they never understand—to do absolutely wrong. Bordering for years on the verge of insanity, they form a more dangerous class and an infinitely more pitiful spectacle than those altogether mad. Clever, generous, and high-spirited, they are subject to fits of depression, unjust suspicions and violent paroxysms of rage, and woe be to anyone that offends them! When the period of unrest comes upon such, the least drop of alcohol sends them raging mad, and they become possessed of the ferocity of tigers.
Such was Annie Drayton. At thirty-six years of age she had been charged repeatedly, and in many of our courts. Her honesty was undoubted, her industry was phenomenal, not the slightest taint of immorality about her, with positively no passion or desire for drink, yet repeatedly charged with drunkenness, she constituted a problem in herself. She had never known parents, brothers, sisters, or any friends, for she was brought up in a school for foundlings, was fairly well educated, and had held very good situations. Tall in stature, and exceedingly genteel in appearance, she never had, although so often charged, the least appearance of the police court habitué. Her hair, prematurely gray in front, told of repeated pains in the head. Some wrongs, or fancied wrongs, that she had suffered had converted her into an Ishmaelite. Generally she was charged in the western districts, where she was well known to some of my colleagues. Several times she was charged in North London, and then I met with her. She had been in many rescue homes, where they gladly got rid of her; she had been sent to Duxhurst to be cured of inebriety; she assaulted poor Cakebread, and had to be sent away. She had been in Mrs. Bramwell Booth’s home, and they had to call in the police and charge her with violence and wilful damage. She had been sent by the prison chaplain to the Elizabeth Fryrefuge, where she terrorized them, and the police had again to be called in. When in the cells she tried to hang herself, when in the dock she stood defiant, her eyes full of fury, her hair hanging down, her dress all torn and bespattered with blood.
So she stood one Christmas Eve, and the policeman who had charge of her told a terrible story of her violence. To my surprise and dismay the magistrate said: ‘I am not inclined to send you to prison again; you have but just come out, and it does not appear to have done you any good. I shall leave the missionary to make some provision for you. You are discharged. Mr. Holmes will see after you.’
I was in a difficult position. What was I to do with her? No home in London or out of London would have her; to the workhouse she would not go. Private lodgings were out of the question, as she might half murder someone. There was only the choice of my own house or the streets, and it took me two hours to decide which. Ultimately I took her with me, trusting to my wife’s gentleness and sympathy to exercise a beneficial influence upon her, though I had the consciousness that I was exposing my wife to anxiety and danger that she ought not to undergo. But a surprise awaited me. For the first two months she proved a treasure and a help. She was a handy woman, and could do anything in the house or with her needle. She was a woman of taste, and I had to get plenty of fresh flowers with which she would decorate the table, etc.; for she loved to arrange them. She liked to wait on my sons and to study their appetites; she was always making something nice for this one and something nice for the other. It was all right for the lads, but the housekeeping expenses went up considerably. After two months I noticed that she had quiet and moody times occasionally, at others an increase in animal spirits. Sometimes I saw the old flash of temper, and I began to be afraid. By degrees she began to speak insolently to my wife, and I was vexed. She went out twice and got drunk, and I had to carry her to bed. Still, I saw how hard she wastrying to do right and to acquire self-mastery. She had nowhere to go, and my wife would not hear of her being sent away. One day, however, I heard her grossly insult my wife, so I fetched her into my room, and this is what happened. ‘Annie,’ I said, ‘I heard you insult my wife.’ ‘Well, what of it?’ ‘Don’t do it again, or it will be the worse for you.’ ‘I am going to do it now. I want to see what you will do,’ she said. ‘What do you think I will do?’ ‘Send for a policeman, give me into custody, charge me, charge me. You are no better than the others. I should like you to do it.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I shall want no policeman for you. I can settle you myself, and this is how I shall do it.’ I took her by the throat and gave her a good shaking. When I let go of her, she looked at me and I looked at her. I don’t think she was the least bit afraid of me, but to say that she was surprised is to put it mildly. She was completely astonished, and presently she said, ‘I did not think you could have done that.’ ‘Oh, that’s not much,’ I said, ‘for I can do a great deal more if there’s any necessity.’
I think that was the best turn I ever did for her. Of course, I had no intention of hurting her, but as I looked into her eyes I saw that she had mistaken my kindness for weakness. I thought the exhibition of a little strength might do good. It was the inspiration of the moment, and it succeeded, but I don’t suppose it would often come off. But Annie behaved in a better fashion after that little affair, and she seemed to possess a growing power of self-control. Six months went by, and she left, hopeful and happy, to take a good situation in service. She was a most valuable servant, and could command the best of wages. She had applied for the place and got it, the lady taking her with full knowledge of her past life and present peculiarities, which I felt it my duty to furnish.
But Annie lives no longer in the borderland between sanity and insanity; for she writes to me from a lunatic asylum, expecting that somehow I shall accomplish her deliverance.One short year in service—a year full of hopes and struggles, of desires to do right, and compulsion to do wrong; a year marked by increasing violence and strange delusions—then Nature had its way, and the gates of a lunatic asylum closed upon her. But the magistrate never knew what a task he set me when he asked me to minister to the diseased mind of that poor woman.
I could with ease write a volume about these unfortunate women, for their name is legion. As I sit and write I see them all—young women, middle-aged women, and old women. If I were an artist, I could paint their portraits, so real are they to me. I dare not give reins to my memory; I cannot unfold my knowledge. A great deal of it will not bear repetition; but I have learned to be pitiful and patient with them, for I have seen much that is good among them, and have found that in bodies given over to gross sensuality pitiful and tender hearts sometimes exists. Even they feel the dint of pity; to the touch of Nature they are by no means strangers. Self-denial, patience, kindness, and fortitude are by no means unknown qualities among them.
Some of the grossest women I have met with, who have been sent to prison time after time, and whose conduct and bearing was unspeakable, have had little children—one or more—whom they love with a passion that ordinary people cannot understand—children for whom they would die. Knowing the law and loving their children, they do not keep those children with them, but provide a decent home for them miles from the streets they themselves ‘walk.’ One woman that I know well, who had been fined many times, and had been sent to prison on several occasions, was a long time ago in a cell waiting to be conveyed to Holloway Prison for a month. I had known her for years, but did not know that she had a daughter of twelve. This time the woman was in great distress, and sent for me. She told me her trouble. She paid eight shillings a week for her child’s board and lodging, and was amonth in arrears, and the landlady had been pressing for the money, and while in prison another month’s arrears would accrue, and she was afraid that, not hearing from her, the woman would take her child to the workhouse. She wept bitterly, and begged earnestly of me to call and pay one month’s money, that the girl might remain with the woman, promising that she would pay me every penny back. She was so concerned that I promised to call and see the woman, and ascertain what had better be done about the child. I went and found a beautiful girl, exceedingly well cared for. The woman seemed decent and motherly, the house was tidy and clean. I had a long talk with the girl, who was going regularly to school, and had not the slightest idea of the life her mother was leading. I suspect the woman knew, but she professed ignorance to me, and, at any rate, she had never hinted to the girl that there was anything wrong with her mother. The woman was poor, and the money must be paid, for I saw at once that it might be fatal to the girl’s future if she had to be taken to the workhouse. So I paid the arrears, and, moreover, bought the girl a pair of boots, the only things she required, for of clothing she had plenty. I never expected to be repaid, neither did I trouble much about it.
Six weeks passed, and the mother came to see me at the court. She had brought me the money I had paid, and the price of the boots, too. I did not like taking it, for I knew she had obtained it by selling herself, and possibly by stealing; but she was insistent, so with much misgiving I took it, promising myself that when the time came for the girl to start in life it should be devoted to her use. Two years passed, during which time I saw little of the mother, as her appearances at the court became much less frequent, and finally ceased altogether. I called to see the girl, hoping to give her the start I had provided for. The difficulty was to find the mother. They did not know where she lived; they could only tell me the address to which her letters were sent. I wrote to her,and the letter reached her. She met me, and agreed to the girl going to the lady I had arranged with. I provided her outfit, for the mother had got older and coarser, and consequently poorer.
The girl, now a young woman, has remained in her situation, is doing well, and is much respected; the mother has developed into an habitual inebriate, and gets charged at other courts; but she never goes near her daughter, for her work is done, because her daughter is self-supporting. For fourteen long years she had lived her life, and kept the girl, whom she still loves. It is her love that keeps her away, for she would not have her child see her as she now is. Down to a lonely grave she will go, her only joy to know that her daughter is respected, and will never know the life her mother lived. Can love do more than this? Men will readily die to save others, but to live for long years a daily death, to be content to dwell in shame that a child may have a chance of purity, and, when that child has grown to early womanhood, to crush a mother’s longings, and forego a mother’s joy lest her child should be in some way harmed, is love almost passing knowledge, and it will be placed on the credit side of her great account.
Annie Adams was another of these perpetually convicted women, whose only hopes were centred in the life of her child; but while the mother was in prison that child had been taken away and was being cared for and trained many miles away from London. To think of that child was heaven to her, and the hope of seeing it was ecstasy, but to realize that henceforward their lives must be apart, and that probably she would never see her child again, was hell indeed, deeps below deeps, and down she went. ‘Evil, be thou my good’ seemed to be her resolve, and it was pitiful to see her: out of prison in the morning, the same night in the hands of the police, haunting the same neighbourhood, getting locked up invariably in the same place.
The years went on, and she got older; no rescue home wouldhave her, for I tried them all. No corner of the world would have her, for I tried the various emigration societies in London, and though the necessary money would have been forthcoming to pay for her outfit, voyage, etc., no one would have her; so I clothed her decently and brought her home. Three days she stayed with us, and the thought of her child maddened her; the lust for liberty and drink came upon her, and about ten o’clock at night away she sped, on and on, for the devil lent her wings, till down in the old neighbourhood she found herself. A wild joy and a fierce fight followed. The next morning, when I went into the female prisoners’ waiting-room, she lay on the floor with cut head and bruised face, her bonnet all smashed, her clothes all torn.
Now, Adams was naturally a kind and timid woman. When in the cells she was quiet, when before the magistrate respectful, when in prison well-behaved; but the devils of sensuality, drink, and despair had made their abode within her, and they led her whereso’er they would. The years went on and she still kept it up; bronchitis seemed to get fast hold upon her, and it was wonderful to me how she lived. Probably it was the frequent detentions in prison that kept her alive, for her name became notorious, and her record was next only to that of Cakebread. Again Lady Henry Somerset wrote me, ‘Bring her down to Duxhurst.’ Many might have considered that the residue of her days were not worth saving; yet I took her, and though Lady Henry knew that to receive her was to receive a broken, almost dying, piece of humanity, she received her. Two years she stayed there, and they were two years of peace. She proved docile, obedient, kind, and trustworthy. But again Nature had its own. She manifested symptoms of a disease that could only be treated in a London hospital, and she was sent for treatment. It did not succeed, and she soon passed away.
In one of the rooms at Duxhurst is a tablet kindly placed there to her memory, and it tells of her goodness whilst aninmate of that institution. Somewhere in one of our great London cemeteries, deep down she lies—I know not where. Somewhere out in the world is her child, now a man. He knows the life of shame and notoriety his mother lived. For years, her hope was to see him, and to her doom she went with that hope unfulfilled. If he is ‘respectable,’ I at least hope he is not hard or bitter, and that he lets the knowledge that she had a passionate love for him draw a thick veil over the main part of her sad life.
But it is not only for their own flesh and blood that these poor outcasts care. ‘Unfortunates’ as they are, a divine pity for those who are more unfortunate still is ever one of their distinguishing traits, though it may be a comparative stranger that calls it into play. They have their own way of doing things; to better people it may not seem a nice way, it may not even be a good way, but nevertheless they do ‘good things.’ I have known very much better people do much worse things than some of these outcasts do. On one of the bitterest winter days I remember a number of women sat in the female prisoners’ waiting-room in one of our police courts. It was a makeshift sort of a place, and only intended for temporary use. There sat two of these women, who were by no means strangers to the place. Fairly well dressed, but coarse and repulsive in appearance, they were equally ready to drink, fight, or steal, while to decent ears their language was not nice. Beside them sat a young woman of very different stamp, but of the same occupation. Her eyes were closed, her head was leaning against the wall, and it was patent to anyone that the hand of Death was upon her. She was nicely dressed and of refined appearance, evidently not a slum girl. Opposite to them sat a fearsome thing that had been a woman, now a piece of humanity—all disease and dirt—whose only joy was to absorb alcohol. She had been found dead-drunk in the streets, and taken on an ambulance to the police station. The other three had been found drunk and disorderly at 1 a.m.
‘Look at that, lassies!’ I said to the strong girls. They looked and shuddered as I pointed to the ‘ghoul.’ ‘Look at this!’ and I pointed to their dying companion. ‘Which will you be?’ They looked uncomfortable, but did not answer. ‘Come!’ said I, ‘let me send you away from London, and you shall begin a new life.’ ‘And what is to become of her?’ I was asked. ‘I will take her to the infirmary.’ ‘No, thank you. We can look after her ourselves.’
I could not persuade them, and one by one, before the magistrate, they were fined ten shillings or seven days. The two coarse girls paid their fines and went into the wintry streets, but the ‘ghoul’ and the delicate one had no money, and were placed in a cell. Now, this particular wooden cell had a charm for me that the rest of the cells lacked. A street artist, who had been one of its occupants but a short time before, had whiled away some of his time with the help of his crayons, and had placed on the whitened boards the good old mottoNil desperandum. There, in good-sized Old English capitals and startling colours, it smiled upon everyone that entered. When I went to the cell to speak to the sick woman I found underneath the motto two words freshly written—Deus misereatur. They were written in a woman’s hand, with pencil, so I knew who had written them. ‘Tell me where your friends live, and I will go and see them,’ I said. ‘It is no use your going, sir. I know I am very ill, and I saw my mother last week, but she won’t have me home again.’ But while I was speaking to her the gaoler came for her; her fine had been paid. There in the gaoler’s office stood the two coarse girls. Cold as it was, they were without their jackets, for they had left them at the nearest pawnshop to raise their friend’s fine. I took them into a refreshment-house, gave them a warm breakfast, and told them that they had done a deed of heavenly charity and made the angels smile. I earnestly renewed my attempt to care for the sickly one, and send them away; but no, they meant to see the last of her. I watched them in thestreet that cold wintry morning as the snow fell about them, two jacketless girls, one on each side of a dying one, supporting her. I saw them pass into a haunt of vice, and I knew they would be faithful unto death. In less than a month’s time there was a funeral from that house, and though it was not the time of flowers, there was a good display; and in a cab behind the hearse rode the two girls, each holding a wreath, and each newly dressed in mourning. How had they got their new clothing? Five shillings down and half a crown a week to a ‘tallyman.’ How had they paid for the funeral, kept their friend, and paid the doctor? By selling themselves, by hunting drunken men and possibly by robbing them, by the help of other ‘unfortunates,’ and by getting into debt. And I had no word of condemnation as I saw them pass along, not though the girls courted public attention; nay, I had a lump in my throat, a dimness in my eyes, and a thankfulness in my heart. For I had visited at a house of refinement, I had seen a well-dressed, respectable mother, I had pleaded for an erring but dying girl; but respectability said, ‘I must consider her sisters,’ and that was the only reply I got. True, money was offered for the girl’s needs, but as motherly love and sisterly sympathy were denied, I declined it, and left it to the outcasts to tend the dying and bury the dead.
The two are older and coarser. They are often before the court, when the police tell of their bad language and worse conduct, and sometimes they go to prison. Their mourning has long since been worn out or been torn to shreds, but the tallyman has been paid in full, and the doctor was not defrauded.Deus misereatur.No, the devil does not have it all his own way even with these women, not till the evening of their lives, not till they have become ghouls, not till they are left with but one passion to satisfy, not till King Alcohol has claimed them for his own—not till then does all goodness die within them.Deus misereatur, for it is a frightful power that impels these women to the streets of London.