CHAPTER XII

HOW THE POOR LIVE--AND DIE

One hot afternoon in July, in the hottest year of recent times, a man of about thirty-five years of age sat on a chair outside a very poor house in a very mean street of Hackney Wick. There was not a breath of air stirring, and, though the sun shone brilliantly, and the street was redolent with unsavoury smells, the poor fellow found the rays of the sun and the smells of the street preferable to the insufferably close atmosphere of the very little room--first floor back--in which he had lived for the last eighteen months. I had just come from a room where misery, poverty, and marvellous heroism had been strikingly illustrated. I neither saw the man nor smelt the unsavoury odours, for I was thinking of what I had seen, when I heard a faint but choking cough--one that told its story. I looked and stopped, and found myself face to face with the man on the chair.

His high cheek-bones, his hollow cheeks, and emaciated body and limbs told me that not much longer would he gasp for air in that unclean street, or lie waiting for death in his very, very small room. ‘You are very ill,’ I said, and he nodded his head. ‘What is the matter?’ ‘Consumption, but it is nearly all over.’ ‘Would you not be more comfortable in a hospital?’ ‘I have been in the Chest Hospital, but there is no hope.’ On further inquiry, I found that he was a single man, had no relations who knew or cared about him, and that he had come from the hospital to live with strangers, hoping that his time would be short. ‘But how do you manage to live?’ I asked. ‘Ah, sir,’ he said, ‘it is a race, and I don’t know which will be gone first--my money or my life. I knew years ago what was the matter with me, and I have been very careful and saving, and I did hope that I should leave enough to pay for my funeral.’ I got him some cooling drink, and told him that I would call and see him the following Tuesday, when I should again be in his neighbourhood.

I called on the appointed day, but his chair was not at the door, for he lay in his little room. When I went in he gave me his poor thin hand, saying: ‘I am glad you have come.’ I told him that if it gave him the least pleasure I would call every Tuesday afternoon. He looked at me and said: ‘I am glad, because you have kept your word.’ There was sad suggestiveness and deep pathos in his words and look. I had no need to inquire what he meant, for they told of promises lightly made and wickedly forgotten, of hopes raised never to be realized. After sponging his forehead with a little toilet vinegar, and putting a handful of flowers where he could fondle them, and a little fruit where he could reach it, I left him. Week by week I called upon him as he lay there waiting for the end in his stuffy little room. All the night long he lay alone, a very small, evil-smelling lamp for his companion; but night brought no relief, no welcome coolness, and all the night long, he told me, he lay and wished to God it were morning. But the morning and the brightness of the sun brought no welcome change, so during the day he lay and wished for the cool of the evening, for to sleep he had become a stranger. One day I called, and he was in great pain; he could not keep still, yet he had not strength to move. I wanted to soothe him, but I did not know how, so I said to him: ‘How can I help you?’ With his burning eyes he looked at me and said: ‘Ask God to let me sleep--if I could, I might be easier--or die.’ I knelt down by his bedside, and taking his poor hands into mine, I prayed that sleep might come upon him; and then, silent and still, I knelt there hand in hand with him for some minutes, and lo! ‘He gave His beloved sleep.’ Quietly withdrawing my hands, I left him peacefully sleeping, and took my last look at him, for I never saw him again.

It was now well into August, and I had to leave London for a few weeks. The first day of my return I went to see him, but his final sleep had come, for he was dead and buried. On inquiry, the landlady told me that he had given her, just before he died, enough money to pay for his funeral; so the race had been run and the pauper’s funeral had been avoided. She gave me a scrap of paper with some writing on it in pencil--I have it by me now. I never knew his name, he never knew mine--what did they matter? But this is what the paper says: ‘Tell the kind gentleman I am not ungrateful; I hope he will forgive me, for I think God will. I cannot bear it any longer and am going to end it. He will not see me again.’ I was told that after my last visit he again became sleepless, and that one day he got up and put on his clothes and wandered tremblingly into the street, making, as it seemed, for a canal close by. He told no one his errand; slowly, step by step, he went, till his weakened limbs could carry him no farther, for he fell exhausted close to the canal, but closer still to death; for he was carried to his little room, and God had mercy upon him. He left no debts unpaid; the rent of his little room had been discharged, all his landlady’s claims had been satisfied, and his account balanced--no assets, no liabilities.

And the simple annals of the poor in the sordid misery and dirt of our slums furnish many an instance of stern independence and unfailing industry. But heroes are of no sex, and so I want to tell the story of the poor widow who lived but six doors from my unnamed friend. I had been visiting her when I came in contact with him. I met her at the police court; she had been dragged from the Lea and charged with attempted suicide. Her garments, few and old, clung to her like cerements. Her hollow cough told its tale, and her face spoke of a pathetic hopelessness. She was a match-box maker, and, as I said, a widow. Her husband had been a wood-carver and a worker in the Ragged School. It was the fourth anniversary of his death. ‘Promise me, Mary,’ he had said, just before his death, ‘that you will not let the children go into the workhouse.’ She had willingly promised, and to her that promise was sacred. But it cost something to keep it.

She buried her husband, gathered her children round her, and with her bits of furniture went into one room, and proceeded to make her match-boxes. She had four children, and the youngest, a girl, was but two years old. I know that room, for I have been in it scores of times; it measures ten feet by eight. I know everything in that room, from its miserable bed to its paltry cupboard. I know the rent of that room: it is three shillings weekly--£7 16s. a year. She has now been in it nine years, and has paid over £70 in rent for that mean room. Here with her children four she set to work to redeem the promise made to her dying husband. Here in Christian London she made match-boxes at 2¼d. a gross, finding her own paste and thread. Here in the ‘land of the free’ she made match-boxes for fourteen hours a day, seven days to the week. Here she earned 1s. 3¾d. a day for her ‘stint’ of seven gross. Here she earned 9s. 2¼d. for her week’s work of ninety-eight hours, plus fetching and returning her work, and minus the cost of her thread and paste. And so she essayed to live, and so she did live, for she had had four years of it when I first met with her. Too hopeless even for despair, she became a machine, and her heart became dead within her. No parish allowance for her, organized charity had nothing for her, and no Sister of Mercy or parish clergyman had visited in her little room, for she ‘kept herself to herself.’

But I have forgotten an important item. The widow had a widowed mother, old and feeble, but who supported herself, and out of her penury allowed her daughter a shilling a week. For three years and nine months after the death of her son-in-law the tottering old woman carried the shilling weekly to her daughter, and then she died and the shilling died with her. The loss of her mother and the shilling awoke some feelings in the dead heart of the match-box maker. For three months she struggled on, with her lessened means and the increasing wants of the children; and the anniversary of her husband’s death came round. That afternoon, as she sat at her match-boxes, looking through her window, she saw a dead body drawn out of the Lea. At midnight there was a cry raised, ‘A woman in the Lea!’ So next day I met her in the police court.

She was not punished, God forbid! but the worthy magistrate kindly committed her to my care. So I went with her to that little room ten feet by eight. I saw the wistful children almost famished, and sadly wanting clothing. I sent in food for them, and next day went again with clothing for all of them. I took them out, and bought new boots for them all, mother included. I wish that I could describe the scene in that boot-shop when the children had on their new boots. Some people might have smiled and have been amused, but I could have choked, for, God help us! it was pitiful. The younger ones were filled with joy and childish wonder. The elder boy, about eleven, looked up and down, first at his boots and then at myself; his mouth twitched. He half laughed and half cried, until I said to him, ‘How long is it since you had a new pair of boots?’ ‘I can’t remember having a pair,’ he said. But there sat the poor mother, hopeless and apathetic; the children’s joy never stirred her, nor did their wonder move her. I paid her little debts. I filled their cupboard with food. I stopped her from work. I compelled her to go out of doors. All this I could do as I continued to visit her, but no smile could I bring to her face, no hope into her heart. I got her nice clothing, but even that created no interest; there was nothing but dull, passive apathy and increasing weakness.

It was summer-time, so the children were sent into the country, and the widow accompanied my wife and myself to the seaside. Two other women went with us; both had broken down from sheer hard work and hopelessness. One was a fur-sewer, and had thrown herself in front of a train; the other a blouse-maker, who had taken laudanum. Let me picture the poor woman as I often saw her and still continue to see her in that village by the sea. She was too weak to walk, so we placed a chair for her on the sands. There she would sit hour after hour with the same hopeless, apathetic, far-away look upon her face; still and impassive she sat, save for the mysterious movements of her hands, for these were ever at work. Fourteen hours a day, seven days to the week, continued for years, had made those hands automatic, and they would make match-boxes in spite of her. Nature had its pound of flesh! still oxygen, rest, good food, did much for her, and human sympathy helped by-and-by to cheer her. After a month she returned to her little room, to her children four, and to her match-boxes; but not to fourteen hours a day, not to seven days a week. I reduced her ‘stint’ to seven hours per day and six days per week. For four years I paid her rent and clothed the children, until her eldest boy was placed in a situation, and was able to help his mother. Reluctantly I then let her go, for new and fresh demands are ever made upon me. Still, she was not entirely forgotten, and a little help was sent her from time to time.

Several years passed when, in company with a friend, I called upon her--still in the little room, still at the everlasting match-boxes; time, 1.30 p.m. From 6 a.m. she had been at it, and had just finished some work that must be sent back to the factory; she had earned 7½d. I wish again that I could describe the woman this time in her room. There in the corner is the little bed and but scant clothing upon it, but the poor sheets are clean; upon it lies her youngest child, a girl of eight. She has lain there eight weeks ill, and unable to move. No parish doctor for the mother; she is still too independent, and loves her child too much, to think of it, and she still remembers the promise made to the girl’s father. So she works the harder and starves herself the more, in order to pay two shillings a visit to a doctor. I timidly suggested the infirmary for the child, but well I knew what the response would be, and it came. ‘Don’t separate us, don’t separate us, Mr. Holmes. My heart is broke. I shan’t be long after my child,’ was all I could get from her. So I had again to begin my task, for I could not leave her in such misery.

I told her story to friends, and liberal help was sent for her. I was enabled to furnish two rooms for her and the children. The boys had grown taller, but again they got good new clothing and boots, and better situations were found for them. The little girl was again sent to the country, and is now going to school; but the mother--the devoted, struggling mother--sometimes makes a few match-boxes; but oftener she lies ill in her bed, from which she will sometimes rise, and with failing strength, but with desperate endeavour, try to wash the sheets and clothing that have been provided for her. And so down to the grave she will go, working and struggling, her only hope to live long enough to see her children self-supporting--a hope that will not be realized.

And such lives abound; it is my sad duty to meet with them--it is my joy and privilege to help them. Great are the opportunities given to my colleagues and myself to right some of the wrongs, to undo some of the evil, that our present-day civilization inflicts upon the innocent and the helpless. Men and women apparently forgotten alike of God and man meet us. Their very hopelessness appeals to us, and it must not appeal in vain. I can fight with a dipsomaniac, as Paul fought with beasts at Ephesus. I can throw myself into the existence of a burglar, till he becomes part and parcel of myself. I can feel a deep pity for the vice and drink smitten women upon the streets of London, but to the poor, the honest, hopeless, struggling, dying poor, my very heart goes out. ‘They are for a prey, and none delivereth; for a spoil, and none crieth, Restore!’

‘But do you meet with any gratitude?’ I am often asked, for the ingratitude of the poor is a pet theme with many. I don’t go about the world looking for gratitude; if I did, I should not meet it. I want to see wrong redressed, toil lessened, comfort increased, homes replenished, children made glad, and sad hearts comforted. If I can see these things, I get joy, and never think of gratitude, but nevertheless it comes to me even when I do not look for it, and the following instance may show it.

A married man had been sent to prison for six months, and richly he merited his sentence, for he had grossly assaulted his wife, the mother of eight children. He was a violent drunkard, and it was by no means his first offence. The wife was sadly injured, and was broken and nervous from the repeated assaults. But the home had to be kept together, and the children fed. She lived in the slums and became the prey of the sweater. One Sunday afternoon I called at her house, and knocked at the door, but there was no answer. The glass panel in the door being broken, I had no difficulty in gaining access. The various families in the different rooms took no notice of me as I went upstairs to a room the door of which stood open. I stood on the threshold for a moment and took in the whole scene. The woman, facing the window that overlooked a miserable ‘yard,’ sat at a sewing-machine, the incessant rattle of which told me that she was working for life. Her back was towards me, so she neither saw nor heard me. Before she had finished her seam I had time to notice that the floor was covered with ladies’ blouses, at the making of which she was earning the fancy price of tenpence per dozen, finding her own machine and thread. Last week she had made twelve dozen blouses, and had sat at the machine 108 hours for her ten shillings, earning somewhere about one penny per hour. She finished her seam, threw the garment to the heap, and turned to take another, when she caught sight of me, uttered a frightened scream, and fell off her seat into the heap of blouses. I called to one of her neighbours, and we gathered her up, when I could not fail to notice her condition--soon again to be a mother. I put the strap of the machine into my pocket and left her five shillings, the price of fifty-four hours’ work. In a few days I called again, and found her in bed, waited on by a little girl of ten who had now another little sister. A reference to this particular visit and the poverty she was in is made in the letter, of which I give a copy. But there, lying weak and ill, she inquired for the strap of the machine, which I gave to her, and in less than a week from her confinement the rattle of the machine was heard in her room.

I continued to visit her till the time approached when her husband would be released, a time to which she looked forward with dread. She told me this repeatedly. The day the husband was released I went to the house to meet him, for I thought my services might be useful. The husband was there, but the wife had gone, taking her children with her. None of the neighbours knew where she had gone--she had kept silence on the matter--but gone she was, much to her brutal husband’s consternation, for he was now homeless. I tried several times to find her, but quite in vain, so I gave up the search: But I knew she was hiding from her husband, and was afraid to let me know her address lest he should find it out.

Two years went by, and I neither saw nor heard anything of her, when, on Christmas morning, I received a letter which contained no address or name; but it was from her. This is the letter:

‘DEAR SIR,

‘I hope this will find you and all your family quite well. I hope this Christmas will be a happy one, and that in the New Year God’s blessing may be with you in all your labours. That you may have good health and happiness, I sincerely pray; that your life may be long spared, I earnestly hope, for you to cheer the oppressed and the broken-hearted. You will, I know, continue to feed the hungry and to clothe the naked and to visit the sick, for you have done it to me many a time. Sometimes, when I have lain helpless on my bed, waited on by a little child, with only thin water-gruel, without sugar, to eat, you, sir, have come in with your helping hands, and have said: “You must have something better”; and you would bring it. Had it not been for you, my children would have gone hungry many a time, for often the last slice had gone, and the last bit of coal had been burnt, when you would again come in and bring more. I do not ask anything from you. I shall not let you know who I am. I am almost past help in this world, but I feel that I must let you know that your kindness to me is not and cannot be forgotten. May God answer the prayers I have offered for you. They shall be answered, for the King Himself shall answer, and say unto you: “Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these, you have done it unto Me”; and you shall enter into joy. May God bless you!

‘FROM A POOR WELL-WISHER.’

And that was from a slum woman, but not born in the slums. To me there is no cant in that letter. I know it is permeated through and through with heartfelt gratitude. I never found her or heard more from her, but I feel that she no longer dreads the return of her brutal husband, no longer makes blouses at tenpence per dozen, no longer makes the machine fly eighteen hours for one-and-eightpence; for ere this the weary woman is at rest, and the wicked cease to trouble her.

This awful life of the slums, how strangely it acts and reacts upon our poor humanity! It brings out the worst, it brings out the best; it debases men and women, it ennobles them. Vice and misery ramp and crawl, but purity, love, and gentleness are not absent. Outstretched hands and suppliant looks tell that many are eager for the least boon that pity can bestow; but stern, unyielding independence is by no means an absent quality.

But I must tell another story of the same summer-time and of the same locality, for my unknown friend, my match-box widow, and the poor blouse-maker lived within a few minutes’ walk of each other, and close by is a horrid, unclean court, and the sun poured its torrid rays into it. It is a very narrow court, and frowsy women from their doorsteps on either side can bandy words with each other. Sometimes they meet in the roadway, and fights are not unknown. Women of a positive character live in that court, and, coming home at two o’clock in the morning, make it hideous with their lewd and drunken blasphemies. Labouring men live there too, some of whom, on returning from work, find their wives drunk, and no semblance of an evening meal; then, heigho! for the crashing blow, the brutal kick, and the yell of the trampled wife. In a room on the ground-floor of one of the houses lies a woman waiting for death--death that tarries, for she has lain there for months--and was so long, so ‘unconscionably long in dying’ that her husband, by assaulting her, had tried to expedite the process, and was sent to prison for six months for his pains. Her little bed is underneath the window, close on to the pavement, and she can hear the wrangling of the women, the crying and quarrelling of the children, the blasphemy of the ‘unfortunate,’ the maudlin talk of the drunken wife, and the blow of the brutal husband. She has no respite from these things; neither has she any respite from pain, for she is in the last grip of internal cancer. She has been operated on twice in a London hospital, but there was no hope, so she said: ‘I will go home and die among my children.’ She has four of them, and the eldest is a girl of fourteen, who earns four shillings a week at a laundry. The husband no sooner receives his well-merited six months than out of a neighbouring workhouse comes an old woman of sixty-five, mother of the cancer-stricken woman. She enters into an agreement with a working-man, who has lost his wife, to keep house for him and look after his five children. Four shillings a week she is to receive for her onerous task. And every Saturday afternoon the old woman’s four shillings are added to the four earned by the girl, and not till the cancer has done its worst (or its best), not till the grave has closed over her daughter, not till the husband has come back to his children--not till then does the old woman seek again the shelter of the workhouse, there to wait for the rest and oblivion that has come to her daughter.

Week by week for six months I visited the cancerous woman, giving her such help and comfort as I might; but what a six months for her! Unable at length to take food, she starved slowly toward death; but she lasted till the husband came back to her, and he came--drunk! He had earned a gratuity of seven shillings while in prison, and he was violently drunk at mid-day, when I arrived on the scene. I soon drew his attention to myself, and as he followed me along the street, and was grossly insulting, he again got taken into custody, and was remanded for a week to give his wife time to die. Poor woman! she cried after him, and with her failing breath told me she wanted to see him once more before she died. She had her wish, for after a week’s remand he was discharged, and I saw to it that he went home sober, for I went with him. In a week’s time there was a parish funeral from that court, attended by an old woman of sixty-five and a girl of fourteen. Brave old woman! the five pounds you so hardly earned shall be appraised at its proper value by Him who noted the widow’s mite. You can go back to the workhouse, and there die, cheered, comforted, and strengthened by the knowledge that you enabled your daughter to die outside, and the memory of that shall come to you as an angel’s smile when the time comes for you to join your daughter.

But there are poor people outside the slums, and suffering is borne with marvellous endurance in many respectable streets. Unfortunately, married men well placed will commit crimes, and have to pay the penalty, or, rather, their wives and families pay the penalty. Mercy! how they suffer! If the crime, one against property, be repeated, as it often is, then the very perfection of suffering is felt and endured by the wives and families left behind. Their friends cast them off, for the lustre of their respectability must not be soiled, even by contact with a suffering wife and innocent children. Down, down they go; bit by bit the home disappears, until there are only a few relics left of a once comfortable home, and these are worthless. Pass along some of these streets, and you will find cards in some of the basement windows announcing ‘Plain needlework done by hand,’ or ‘Pianoforte taught on moderate charges.’ My life for it, there are tragedies being enacted in those breakfast parlours down in the basement.

To such a place I went one Christmas Eve. A man who had held first-class positions was sent for trial on a charge of embezzlement. Three terms of imprisonment for similar offences had not sufficed to cure him of dishonesty. When he was convicted, I saw weeping at the back of the court a decent-looking woman, who carried a sickly-looking child. I had some conversation with her, and found that the prisoner just committed was her husband. She lived two miles away, and had walked to the court, carrying the child, two years of age, because she had no money to pay her fare, and the child was too ill to be left at home with the other children. She wanted to see what became of her husband, who, to use her own expression, had ‘been so good’ to her. I saw that the child was dangerously ill, and that she herself was faint; so I gave her a few shillings and sent her ‘home’ in a cab, promising to call upon her.

About a fortnight elapsed before I did so, and as I descended the steps that led to her breakfast-parlour I heard the strains of an old worn-out piano and the sound of children’s voices. Curiosity prompted me to stand outside a moment before I rapped, when I learned that children were dancing and singing within. I thought at first I would go without seeing her, for I came to the conclusion that things were looking up and my assistance would not be wanted, but I ultimately decided otherwise; so I rapped, and she came to the door and asked me in. ‘You are merry to-night,’ I said to her. ‘Hush!’ she said, as she led me into the room among the children, of whom there were twelve. They were all nicely dressed, and had slippers on. There was not much in the room. On the floor was a very worn and faded carpet, that had been a good one; and, as I have said, the pianoforte was a very old one. I could not understand, so I said: ‘You are having a party, I see.’ She did not speak, and I could see that her eyes were swollen and red. Presently she lit a small lamp and beckoned me to follow her into a small bedroom, divided from the front-room by folding-doors. As we went in she closed the doors carefully behind us, and, with the little lamp in her hand, went up to a small bed and turned down the sheet, and then looked at me. I took the lamp from her and looked. There lay the two-year-old child that I had seen at the court, but its sufferings were over, for it lay cold and still. ‘And you are having a children’s party?’ ‘Oh, no, no! I must do it or starve. The children pay me sixpence a week, and come three evenings to learn dancing and a little singing.’ Yes, she sat at the old cracked instrument playing whilst happy children danced and the child of her own body lay dead within six feet of her. Yes, and she also went to respectable houses to teach music, playing and singing, where they paid an accomplished woman threepence per lesson of one hour’s duration. So she lived and worked and hoped for her husband’s return, for he had ‘been so good’ to her. I gave her such clothing as enabled her to appear respectable, for ‘respectability’ demands that a music-teacher, even at threepence per hour, shall not appear poor.

But some streets are so ‘respectable’ that Mrs. Grundy will not allow the music-teacher or the plain sewer to exhibit their cards in their windows, either in the basement or the third floor up. It must not be known that poor struggling women pay exorbitant rents for single rooms in such houses, but they do, nevertheless. ‘Whited sepulchres’ are many of these houses, and the cheap lace curtains at all the windows and the artificial plants make pitiful pretence of comfort within. To such houses and the various rooms in such houses I am no stranger. I have seen old women hugging their respectability, and ready to perish; I have seen younger ones living lives that have filled me with wonder; I have seen husbands and wives hoping against hope, and trying to comfort each other, for not always does love fly out at the window when poverty comes in at the door.

In the top room of one of these houses I met with the most wonderful instance of sisterly devotion it has ever been my lot to meet with. I will picture it. Two sisters, only servant-girls, but their room is scrupulously clean, and even tastily furnished. The furniture is old, but the best is made of it. A pretty screen keeps the draught from the bed, on which lies one of the sisters, who is twenty-four years of age, and has lain there seven years. A piece of linen steeped in eau-de-Cologne is across her forehead; underneath her half-closed eyes are dark rings; the cartilage of her nose is almost as thin as writing-paper, and is constantly quivering; her face is pale as death itself, and her faint breath comes in quick vibrations from the top of her throat. Yonder sits her sister, at work with her needle; she is almost as pale as the invalid, and suffers from occasional hæmorrhage. Ten years ago both parents died, and the elder sister made a promise to her dying father that she would ‘look after’ the younger. Some of the furniture was put safely by, and hand in hand into service both girls went, and a year or two passed. But the younger one was delicate. The influenza soon got hold of her, and remained with her so long that she had to leave service--but not for the hospital or infirmary.

An empty room was taken, the remains of their parents’ furniture was put into it, and to her lonely room and bed the younger one was taken. Four-and-sixpence weekly was paid for that empty room. They had saved a little money, but a servant’s wages are small, and it soon went. After the influenza came all sorts of complications, paralysis and spinal disease, etc.; so the younger sister, a child in appearance but a woman in years, has lain on her bed ever since, nursed, waited on, lifted in and out of bed by her sister, who worked for the pair. For the first four years the elder sister remained in service, nursing and keeping house for two old ladies, visiting her sister every morning, washing her, tidying the room, and putting her food to hand; this had to be liquid food, in a baby’s sucking-bottle; for this was the only way in which the younger could take nourishment, and, her right arm being helpless, the bottle had to lie close to the left. Every night, after she had put her old ladies to bed, the elder would return again to the younger sister, and arrange for her comfort during the night. The younger one was left alone day and night except for the sister’s visits. This was their life for years; but her wages were not enough to keep the pair and pay rent. So she took in plain sewing, unknown to her sister or the old ladies, and sat regularly into the small hours of the morning, stitching away for private customers--hence her cough and hæmorrhage. But the old ladies died and were buried, and had no more need of her services, so now the sisters are living together, and stitch, stitch, stitch is the order of the day and night. She does not work for the factory or the sweater, but for private customers, who like their work done by hand and done well.

Done by hand! and her earnings are no better than the match-box makers or the blouse-makers, for a shilling a day is the average. Yet she never complains, but goes on steadfastly, quietly, and persistently with her work and her duty. Seeking no help, and hiding her poverty from the world, on she goes, no change, no holiday, no rest, excepting when she herself is ill; then, to keep the knowledge of that illness from her poor little sister, she wraps herself in a rug and takes her rest--not on the bed, but on the hearthrug.

And very thoughtless many ladies are. A couple of months the elder sister worked nearly a week, and earned five shillings. The work was all for one lady, who praised the work when it was taken home, saying she would send her more and pay for them altogether, when the work was finished. Weeks passed on, and there came no more work nor the five shillings that were so badly wanted. Four applications by letter were made before a postal order was received to discharge the debt, and the poor creature lost fourpence in postage.

‘Evil is wrought by want of thought, as well as want of heart,’ is a truth that I have often seen illustrated in our police courts. A woman about thirty-six years of age once stood in the dock, charged with being drunk. Her head was bandaged, and her mantle, which had seen much better days, was covered with blood. She had fallen from a tramcar, was picked up insensible and smelling of drink, was taken by the constable to the police station, and the doctor fetched to attend to her injuries, who stated that she was recovering from the effects of drink. So she was charged. She gave no name, no address, nor occupation, and when before the magistrate she was silent except for protesting tearfully that she was not drunk. She was ordered to pay the doctor’s fee, and having no money, was placed in the cells. Through the little trap-door I spoke to her, when I noticed that she had a parcel with her, also bespattered with blood. She was badly hurt, and quite broken-hearted at being a prisoner. I might have paid her three-and-sixpence, but I saw that she was ill and not fit to go home by herself, so I begged her to tell me where she lived, that I might see her friends. She resolutely declined at first, but after an hour in the cell she sent for me and told me where she lived, but asked me not to call till two o’clock, as her aunt, who lived with her, would not be home before.

At a quarter past two I called, and the rap I gave at the door told me that there was no linoleum on the passage floor, and but little furniture in the house. To my surprise a nicely dressed and beautiful girl of about sixteen came to the door. I told her that I had called to see the aunt, and had come from the niece, who was injured, but not seriously. She told me they had been anxious about her mother, who went to take some work home the day before, and had not returned. I did not tell the girl where her mother was, but took stock of the house. There was no carpet on the floor, and three Windsor chairs, a deal table, and a sewing-machine formed the only furniture--no other goods, save two oil-paintings without frames on the wall. I looked at them and said to the girl: ‘Whose portraits are these?’ ‘Grandpa’s and grandma’s,’ was the answer. ‘They were gentlepeople?’ I said. ‘Yes,’ she said; ‘we used to have a carriage when I was little.’

Just then I heard someone fumbling with a latch-key at the door, and presently in came the aunt, old and wrinkled, bent with age and trouble. Dressed in old-fashioned and badly-worn clothing, black cotton gloves an inch too long for her fingers, she stood and looked at me askance. I told her my errand, for the girl had left us alone. The trembling old woman sat down, put her glove-covered hands to her face, and rocked herself backward and forward, and I could see the tears trickling down. Presently she stood up, and tremblingly drew off one of her gloves, and said, ‘That’s all we have in the world, sir, and that is my parish allowance; I have just been to fetch it.’ I looked at her old skinny hand, and there in the palm lay a solitary half-crown. The girl was called in again, when I told her that I was taking her aunt to her mother, and that shortly both would be back again. The old lady was so feeble and excited that I had to support her till we got a conveyance. When we got to the court, I had again to give her my arm; but when I had paid the doctor’s fee and the cell-door was opened to her niece, she wanted none of my support; for, as soon as she saw her niece coming up the passage, she loosed her hold of me and with eager steps and a pitiful cry ran toward the tottering woman; and presently their arms were round each other, and the bruised face of the younger woman was laid against the furrows and wrinkles of the older woman, while their tears blended together.

I thought it best to see them ‘home,’ but they did not offer to tell me who they were; they did, however, tell me that the girl was a member of a well-known choir, and was only ‘home’ for a short holiday. I found out, though, what had brought the younger woman to the police court. She had taken home some finished work to a lady, who praised it and gave her more work to do. Unfortunately, she did not think of paying her, but more unfortunately still, she gave her a glass of spirits. Doubtless it was meant kindly, but it was disastrous; for the woman was weak for want of proper food, and in just that condition of body and mind when some food would have been most useful. Having to return home by tramcar, and the inside being full, she had to mount the outside. Just as she got to the top, and before she could get a seat, the car started, and overboard she went. The spirits had doubtless made her a bit giddy, but she told me that she would not have fallen but for the car starting too soon--in fact, before she was off the steps. I called again to see them. The girl had rejoined her choir; the wrinkled old lady sat in the almost empty house, thinking, thinking, everlastingly thinking of the past; the younger one with her bruised face and head still bandaged, sat at her machine. Once more I called, and the house was empty, and a bill was in the window. They were gone--and I never knew where. Neither did I ever learn whence they came or who they were; but this much I did gather, that the aunt’s means, as well as the fortune of the family, had been squandered by the husband of the younger woman.

So many gently-born come down into our slums, and compete with the poorest of the poor for a bare and miserable existence; but they mix not with the coarse and the lewd that abound around them; they seek no help, and never flaunt their poverty. Silently and in obscurity they go down to their doom of starvation. Sometimes they will come to the court and gasp their sorrow out to the magistrate, but not often, unless, indeed, it is some man or woman brought low by their vices. In such self-respect is dead, and they are ever ready to trade upon their past affluence, and are by no means ashamed to beg; but those who have been brought low by the wrong-doing of others present a pathetic spectacle.

I have before me now an old letter which came to me at the police court. It reads as follows:

‘DEAR SIR,

‘For God’s sake, come and see us! This is a forlorn hope.’

As it gave the name and address of the writer, I went, and again it was Christmas Eve. The snow lay deep on the ground, and a hard frost had bound it together; the fog was choking and almost impenetrable, when about seven in the evening I found myself knocking at the door of the house. There was no light in the passage, but someone--I could not see who--answered the door. I inquired for Miss G----, and the voice said: ‘Downstairs.’ The door closed, the owner of the voice went away, and I was left in complete darkness. I struck a match, and by the aid of its feeble light found the ramshackle staircase that led below. I groped for a door, found one, and again knocked, and it was opened. A middle-aged woman with an old shawl round her head stood before me, a small benzoline lamp in her hand. Her face was so swollen that her features would not have been recognised even by friends. I told her my errand, and she asked me in and gave me a chair. It was an uncanny place. The fog penetrated the room, and the small, smoky lamp scarcely relieved the gloom. I had not been seated a moment before I was aware that there was something or somebody alive in one corner of the room, for a difficult and almost choking breathing was very audible. Beyond asking me in, the woman in the shawl had not spoken, so, lifting the little lamp from the table, I went to the corner, and very soon found a pair of eyes gazing into mine. The eyes and the breathing belonged to another woman, who lay on a miserable bed in the corner. She was evidently near death, and could not speak to me, so I found my way to the chair. ‘Who is she?’ I asked quietly of the woman in the shawl. ‘My sister.’ ‘She is very ill?’ I said. ‘She is dying,’ was the reply. ‘Have you had the doctor?’ ‘Yes; the parish doctor has just gone away, and he says she won’t last till morning.’ ‘Why did you write to me?’

She cried silently for some time, and then she told me that they had lived together for years, getting a living by making ladies’ aprons, etc., for the shops; that for a long time past her sister had been failing, and that for the past three months she had lain on that bed. She told me also how her own eyes had been gradually weakening, and her own earnings had fallen off, and, to make things worse, for the past month she had been half mad with neuralgia. So they had got behind with their rent, and the landlady was constantly abusing them and threatening to turn them out. They were the daughters of a once thriving tradesman. The dying sister had married a professor of languages, and with her husband had lived for a long time in Germany and France. Her husband had lived expensively and died suddenly, leaving his wife unprovided for. She herself had kept house for her father--she scarcely remembered her mother--and after the death of her father, who left her some little money, her sister joined her, and they tried to eke it out by doing needlework. But their earnings were small, and by degrees their bit of money went, and now sickness and death had come, and they were penniless. I made no more inquiries. I could see for myself that poverty and death were in that murky room. So I satisfied the landlady, sent in some coals, nourishment, and a better lamp. On Christmas Day, by the aid of this lamp, she saw her sister die, and a few days afterwards she stood by the grave of that sister, who had been given a common--very common--interment by the parish.

Several years they had lived in that underground room; a street grating was over their only window, and over that grating children played, and hundreds of people tramped daily knowing nothing of the tragedy going on underneath. But I helped her out of the cellar to a first-floor back, where there was a good window. I obtained a pair of spectacles to aid her weakened eyes, and she said she could keep herself, for old women think they can do wonders. I heard no more of her for years, but one day there came a small package to me. There was no letter, but the package contained a silver German coin, nicely mounted and made into a brooch; it was wrapped in a piece of paper, on which was written: ‘In memory. Forlorn hope.’ Either the workhouse or the grave--most probably the latter--has swallowed her.

But the numbers of poor women, devoted sisters, who go hand in hand to the grave is not limited. I have met with many such. About many of them there is nothing picturesque, no story to tell, but their lives are lives of devotion, and one might well marvel and say: ‘Behold, how these sisters love each other!’ The faults of the poor are well known to us; if they are not, ’tis not for the want of telling. The marvel is that they are as good as they are, for of many it may be said, ‘Hope is not for them.’ And yet to go on, month after month, year after year, with their self-imposed duties, with their hard, onerous, and ill-requited toil, uncheered and uninspired by hope, makes the marvel the greater and their lives the more noble. Some, as I have shown, become apathetic, and work on as machines, but still on and on with their drudgery they go, until welcome and well-earned death comes to them. But with others it is far different, for their hope has turned to bitterness, and though they never dream of relinquishing the struggle, and never seem to realize that old age is coming upon them, yet they retain a stern, rugged, and sometimes even a pugnacious independence when, after many weary years, well-meant assistance is offered them. ‘Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.’

But let me tell a story. I have told it before, but I want to tell it again. Standing in the dock of one of our police courts is a tall, spare woman of fifty-five. Her dress is of rusty black, and has done duty for many a year. Her bonnet, surmounted by a veil, is also black, and of ancient type. Her face tells of years of suffering, and bears that wistful look that is generally found on the faces of those that are stone-deaf. The gaoler stands beside her with a slate, on which are written down bits of the evidence for her to read. The officer in the witness-box says that about ten o’clock the previous night--a cold, dark night in February--he was on duty by the Lea, when he heard a splash and a cry. By the aid of his lantern he saw a black object in the water; he swam towards it, and found the prisoner, who said, ‘Let me die! Let me die!’ With difficulty he got her out, for she had tied a satchel round her waist, and in the satchel he found a flat-iron.

Following the officer in the witness-box came a little elderly woman, a small edition of the prisoner, but bent with hard work, her face furrowed and wrinkled. Her hands were twisted and gnarled like the roots of a tree; every joint was enlarged with rheumatics: they told a tale of hard, incessant toil. For thirty years, day after day, year after year, she had stood at the wash-tub and scrubbed out the social salvation of herself and sister.

The prisoner, she said, lived with her, and had done so for many years. Thirty years ago her sister had brain fever, and lost completely her sense of hearing. She was also detained for a short time in an asylum, out of which place she came to live with her. She had been ill many times since, and lately had not seemed happy. Yesterday the witness went to fetch home some work, and when she got back her sister had disappeared. Under an inverted basin on the table she found two pennies, a piece of cake, and a note which read as follows:

‘DEAR EMMA,

‘I have been a great burden to you; for more than thirty years you have worked for me, and now you are getting old, and will not be able to work for me much longer. Good-bye; you will never see me again.’

She begged the magistrate to allow her to take her sister home again; her sister was no burden to her. She could easily keep her, and would promise to look well after her. The magistrate kindly agreed to this, and asked me to render what help I could, so I went home with them; and I shall not forget going, for that poor little home is before me now, with all its spare, old-fashioned, respectable poverty, and its scrupulous cleanliness. It bore eloquent witness to the work and struggles of the pair. A week later I was in that little home again on a very glad errand. I had ten golden sovereigns to give them, and my wife was with me to see the joy of the sisters, and to share in my pleasure. Ten golden sovereigns! What would they not do for the sisters? Coal, food, warm clothing, and rest were all in those shining bits of metal. I loved the chink of the metal for the sake of the two women. The skinny arms were bared to the elbows, the gnarled and twisted fingers were in the soap-suds when I told her my errand, and put the money before her.

She looked at me strangely for a moment, and then, straightening up her old bent body, she lifted up her hands before me and said, almost fiercely, ‘Sir, do you see these hands? For thirty years they have worked for and kept my poor sister. I have had no charity from parson or parish; not one penny have I received from anyone, and, please God, I never will. I can work for my sister. Take the money back to the sender. I dare say it was meant kindly, but there is none of it for us.’

Argument and persuasion were of no avail; the indomitable little woman was proof against both: not a penny would she receive. The money might be sent back, or I might use it for the poor who needed it, but not for them--not for them. So she gathered the money up and gave it back to me. Had I not taken it, she would have thrown it into the street. Foolish old woman! but brave, heroic old woman! We left her with full hearts, and the chink of the money was not quite so joyous. Years ago timely help and kind sympathy might have cheered and comforted her, but now it is too late, for she will die rather than receive it. Years have gone by, but the pair are still living together. A few Sundays ago I met them out for a walk, both looking older and more feeble, their ancient clothing still more rusty; both living the same hard lives, hand in hand, down to the grave they go. It will be a mercy if they can cross the bourne together, for brave, steadfast, and heroic in their lives, even death should not divide them. The story of Charles Lamb and his sister lives; his love and devotion to his poor sister will never be forgotten, for his love almost passed the love of women. Up and down the neighbourhood where these sisters live Charles and Mary Lamb had many times wandered hand in hand. Can the example of the witty writer and loving heart have influenced the poor washerwomen? No, for she never heard of him. Only the promptings of her own true heart were needed, only the feeble strength of a little woman was required, only unceasing toil, only perpetual pain, only reticent poverty, sustained for many a year, and a life was lived, endurance exhibited, and a devotion shown that will compare with any lives of which I have ever heard or read, and will not lose in the comparison. But she was only a poor washerwoman!

So in their little homes, in their crowded tenements, high up in the ‘blocks,’ or low down in their underground bedrooms, the poor live, so they die. I could tell of their sins, and of their vices, but that would be no pleasure to me; so I tell of their virtues and sorrows, of their patience and love, of their sufferings and wrongs.