CHAPTER XVIII.

THE SLUM-DWELLER.

It cannot be said of Toronto, as it can be of some other cities, that whole districts are in such a condition as to be aptly designated slums. Portions of streets are inhabited by people whose manner of living is so degraded, and whose homes are so comfortless and filthy, as to merit such a term, but this cannot be said of any one whole district or street. Even Lombard street, which has rather an unenviable notoriety, has homes in it where the peace and satisfaction which crown industry and sobriety are to be found. St. John’s ward, which is often alluded to slightingly, contains within its borders some of the handsomest streets in the city. Our merchant princes dwell there. Hundreds of mechanics make their happy homes in the Noble Ward. The slum portion is very small compared with the acres and acres where the domestic virtues go hand in hand with industry and plenty. Our city is of such a composite character that next door neighbors are often as far apart in their manner of living as is the east from the west. Strangers who read about the doings of the denizens of York street two years ago were surprised to find on visiting the city that there were many bright, busy stores, two fine hotels and plenty of respectable houses on the street. Any remarks in the following interviews regarding localities will therefore be understood to mean only certain portions of those localities.

INTERVIEWS WITH CLERGYMEN.

For the purpose of getting the views of a class of gentlemen whose profession brings them frequently in contact with the vicious classes of our city, NEWS reporters waited on several clergymen. Those selected were men who were known not to be shirkers from this unpleasant portion of a pastor’s duties. The result will be found below.

A CITY MISSIONARY’S EXPERIENCES.

An evangelist and city missionary of some years experience in Toronto was interviewed. “You cannot,” he said “tell what the Toronto slums are like, seeing them by day light. You enter a tenement house on Duchess or Lombard streets in the forenoon or at noon. All looks quiet enough. The women, generally of middle age, are standing at the door exchanging gossip with their neighbors. Some appearance of household work has been going on, and as noon approaches there is an odor of onion stew or fried pork. We enter. You are always safe in these regions when accompanied by a policeman or a reporter or a city missionary, but your visit would be much more favorably received if your escort be of either of the two latter classes. The furniture of the living room is of the cheapest and simplest description of second-hand ware, the tables are battered and sodden with the smear of innumerable drinking bouts. The chairs are evidently more often used as missiles propelled through the air by hostile hands than for the peaceful purpose of resting the human body. The crazy old windows are grimy with dirt; grimy are the floors, the ceilings, the ricketty stairways leading to unknown dens above. Almost all of these tenement houses are a perfect baby-burrow of children, untaught, unwashed, unkempt, enfants perdus of the gutter, the protoplasm out of which the great Sin and the yet greater Misery of our city is certain to shape itself in the future! Presently, three or four able-bodied young men come in from what they call work. A sinister-looking young woman in frowsy dress, the cut across her whisky-sodden face telling its tale of last night’s revel, joins the group. The eldest child is sent with a cracked jug for beer to the corner saloon. As a rule, these people fare considerably better than the poorer ones among the respectable sober working people; they live from hand to mouth; the only text in the gospel which they obey implicitly being “Let the morrow take thought for itself.” When they are not starving they are generally well supplied with bread, meat, tea and vegetables; nor are such luxuries as pies and cake unknown to them, to say nothing of malt or spirituous liquor, though, as a rule, the drinking sets in most heavily at night. At about 10 p.m. on Saturday or Sunday to see one of these establishments at full blast! Then

DRINK REIGNS UNCONTROLLED.

Of other immorality there is comparatively little; the scorching breath of the rum king will tolerate no rival! Money has been procured, if in no other way by pawning dress or tools to the people of the house, for every one of these tenement dens is, as a rule, an unlicensed groggery and pawnbroker’s shop! The debauch which ensues nearly always ends in a free fight, in which the most furious combatants are often the women.”

“Have you ever recognized in the night life of the city slums any man or woman you have known in better circumstances in this city?”

“Yes unquestionably, and in more cases than people would think who do not look below the surface for the three sorriest sins that enter hell, drunkenness, laziness and dishonesty, have the same effect on the educated and the uneducated. Take a recent case. Early last month I was called on to visit, not for the first time, a young married woman whom I had known in days when she had every right to the title of lady. I found her occupying a room on the rear ground floor of a house on Teraulay street. Her only baby, fortunately for herself and for it, lay dead. The father had more than once thrown it at the mother in a fit of drunken passion. I gave her money enough to provide decently for the funeral and promised to return two days afterwards, in order to conduct some simple sort of funeral ceremony.

“When I first knew this woman, then a girl years ago, her father was still living a prosperous hotel-keeper on Yonge street, a prominent church member, and an affectionate father who spared no pains on his daughter’s education. Aggie grew up to be a bright engaging girl, with a charming figure, expressive hazel eyes, and long curling dark brown hair that reached to her waist. She was especially clever at ciphering, and acted for some time as book-keeper for a well known Toronto firm. She became an accomplished pianist, and sang for some years in one of our best church choirs. Her next misfortune after her birth in this evil world eighteen years before was her father’s death. Her mother was left in fairly good circumstances, and the owner of a respectable house on George street. She was a good-natured but weak minded woman, the instincts of hotel-life were strong upon her, and as a matter of course, she took to keeping boarders. She kept a good house, and good table, for little Aggie was smart and looked after all that, and there were gay times when

AGGIE WOULD SING

and play for the young gentlemen in the evenings! But one set after another of young men came and went, and Aggie was unmarried at twenty-six, for bless you Sir, you know boarding-house flirts, as a rule, don’t marry. Meanwhile drinking habits had grown on the mother, an inferior class of boarders came to the house. In an evil hour for herself Aggie became engaged to marry a handsome well-bred and well educated cadet of a rich Lancashire family, cotton manufacturers, whose trade brand is known through the world. Horace B⸺ had been at Oxford for a few terms. A subaltern in a militia regiment which he had to leave, a clerk in the Civil Service, finally he was shipped off to Canada. He married Aggie and was a shiftless, reckless, drunken husband! Through him Aggie became addicted to drink, and her mother lost house and home. After many migrations they sought refuge in the Teraulay street tenement, where I found the dead baby. Two days later I renewed my visit. All trace of Aggie and her husband was lost, on a pine table the sole article of furniture in the room, lay the dead baby, purple with decomposition partly covered by a scanty rag! I learned from the people of the next house that a drinking debauch had taken place, the participants in which after hurling the furniture at each others’ heads, threw the baby out of the rear window into the yard! I at once procured decent christian sepulture for this child of sin and misery.

IDLENESS AND DRINK.

The Rev. William H. Laird, pastor of Elm street Methodist church, stated that but a small part of his congregation, so small as to be inappreciable, came from the poorest part of St. John’s ward, on whose northern verge this church is situated. Still he had visited among this very class a good deal, being led to do so by having particular cases brought under his notice by a young people’s association in connection with his church, who had undertaken this duty. He was very frequently appealed to for monetary aid and to visit the sick and distressed. When asked if he had seen many cases in which reform had been effected through the influence of religious agencies, Mr. Laird said: “Yes, but only in isolated cases.” He considered that the two great causes of pauperism were shiftless idleness and drink. The cases in which pauperism was the result of inevitable misfortune were, in his opinion, very few. The tramp, the beggar, the slum-dweller, owed his unhappy condition to one, generally to both, of the above causes.

RELEASED CONVICTS.

Among other clergyman of this city the writer was able to obtain the opinion of one who had been for some time acting chaplain of the Provincial penitentiary at Kingston. In reply to my question, “Have you seen anything of the Toronto ex-members of your convict congregation since your residence in Toronto?” this gentleman made the following statement: “I am glad to tell you that to my certain knowledge there are now living in Toronto no small number of reformed criminals whom I have known in the Provincial penitentiary during my term of office as chaplain. One of them is a tradesman in a small way living in St. John’s ward. He has married happily, and is the father of several children. He is a most steady, sober, industrious man. I think great influence for good was exerted over this man by the introduction of church music into the penitentiary chapel, which, previously to my term of office, was not permitted by the authorities. The man referred to had a good voice, and was much interested in our singing classes, and since his release he has been a steady attendant at a Toronto church, of whose choir he is a valued member. Another one is that of a Scotch young lady, who had been decoyed to Canada by a faithless lover, and, as too often happens to girls not naturally vicious, had found her only refuge in a “fast house,” having quarreled with the mistress of which, she was accused of larceny and sent for a short term to Kingston. Since her release benevolent ladies in Toronto received her and provided for her return home. She is the daughter of a missionary on the west coast of Africa, I also knew of several young men in quite respectable positions who have accomplished the difficult task of retrieving character and habits, even after touching the lowest depths of a convict prison. Certain forms of crime seem to me to be acute, like the most dangerous fevers which may kill, but recovered from do not recur. It is the smaller chronic types of crime, lying, thieving, drinking, which once contracted, hardly ever are eradicated.

“Do you ever recognize members of your former convict congregation who have not reformed?”

“But too frequently. Under the glare of Toronto lamps I see but too many faces once familiar to me in that unhappy flock of black sheep. I have recognized them among the loafers at the street corners, among

THE INCORRIGIBLES

half-thief and wholly drunkard, whom I have met when summoned to visit some case of illness or destitution in the city slums, I have seen the faces of women far more imbruted than when I had known them as convicts, and these not amongst the ranks of fallen women, strange to say, but chiefly as wives or housekeepers in rooms or tenement dwellings, in Duchess street or St. John’s ward.

Once, shortly after I had ceased to act as chaplain at Kingston, I had left behind me still a convict, but under a promise of release for her good conduct, a Toronto girl named Annie ⸺. Annie had been for some years a nurse in the prison hospital. She was singularly neat, good-humored, and devoted to her duties, and I was glad to hear she had been released. One evening in the July of that year, returning home with my wife to our house on G⸺ avenue, what was my astonishment to see what appeared to be a bundle of rags huddled together on the porch by the door. With the dress of a scarecrow, with every appearance of exposure to wind and weather, with unkempt hair and all the appearance of a human wild beast, was the once comely and gentle Annie. We gave her a trifle to get a bed, and told her to come again next morning for breakfast and help, but she wandered away in the night and we saw her no more. There are many such women and men in this city who are never so happy as when in prison; the prison is to such a monastery, with its three-fold rule of poverty, obedience and temperance.

Of the criminal class in Toronto there are two grades; the first of these consists of those who commit the great crimes, such as murder, forgery and the like; such crimes result in many cases from motives which may occur but once in a lifetime; such cases of reform as I have seen have come mainly from these classes. But the crimes which depend on lying, dishonest, laziness, and unchastity are ineradicable, humanly speaking. The intenser forms of crime are like the deadliest diseases which attack but once in a lifetime; the other class of crime clings to the character like itch or leprosy.

Among the more famous Toronto criminals under my care was the famous

GRACE MARKS, THE GIRL MURDERESS.

She was a singularly beautiful girl, fourteen, with dark eyes, graceful figure, and a transparent olive complexion, when she and her paramour committed the crime, for which he was hanged. Grace had pleasing manners and though considerably past forty when under my care, still retained the remains of her girlish beauty. She told me that for many years she never slept without seeing the face of the murdered man in her dreams. She has been for some years a free woman, and is now a respectably settled married woman in an American city. There is one class of women who trade in human life, who are but too seldom brought within the grasp of the law, and when the guilt of murder is most clearly proven, are too often allowed to escape with comparative impunity. Perhaps the worst case of this class known in Toronto was that of the wife of an American quack doctor, to whom, and to her husband, was clearly brought home the death, by malpractice in their den, of a young girl, daughter of a minister of the gospel. I saw this woman-fiend in the workroom at penitentiary, pert, cheerful, and confident of the speedy relief she afterwards obtained.

FROM THE EAST END.

The Rev. Mr. Taylor, rector of St. Bartholemew’s church, at the east end of Wilton avenue gave much interesting information with regard to the condition of the poorer classes at the east end of the city. “With us,” he said, “there is more poverty than pauperism. What pauperism there is, unlike that screened from public view by the alleys of St. John’s ward, can be seen from the public thoroughfares. The lowest district, Regent street, can be seen from Wilton avenue. It is wide and well-drained, but the humble hovels which line its sides make a hideous comment on its ambitious title. Little better than this is St. David’s street, which crosses Regent street, east and west. Sumach street was poverty-stricken a few years ago, but is now improving, but Sackville, Sydenham, Parliament, and all the streets in this region are to a great degree peopled by the poorer classes of our citizens.” As far as many years intimate acquaintance with the poor of this district has entitled him to form an opinion, there is little or no public immorality among those people, who thus form an entirely different class from the inhabitants of the St. John’s ward slums. The great evil is a certain shiftlessness, a tendency to hope for support anywhere or from any one rather than to their own exertions. This I have noticed especially among immigrants from London and other parts of England. Mr. A. called on me several years ago with an introduction from one of the best known and most hardworking clergymen in a well-known London parish. He was respectably dressed, and though he lived in one of the poorest shanties in a lane off Sackville street, the place when I called there was clean, even neat, and decorated with a few good engravings and other survivals of his former English home. He had a wife, a neat, well-dressed person, three fine girls, and two as nice boys as I have ever seen. The girls had already found employment as dressmakers, a business to which they had been apprenticed at Camberwell, London. The father sought a genteel situation, something in the line of a clerk, bookkeeper or secretary; he could write a good hand, and was a competent arithmetician. But as you know, our city is already overstocked with applicants for such positions. I soon found that Mr. A. looked to the church for some slight monetary assistance, which, as our poor fund, small enough for legitimate uses, was already over-drained, I was obliged to withhold. The result was that Mr. A.

KEPT AWAY FROM CHURCH

for about a year. But the evil righted itself, as the boys grew up and found employment. They and their sisters supported the family by their earnings, an act of self-denial which, I have no doubt, was of the greatest possible moral benefit to themselves. After a time Mr. A. found occupation not wholly incompatible with his dignity, as caretaker in a furniture factory, became a most regular attendant at church and a communicant. This is the history of many of these English arrivals in Toronto, more especially of those who come from London. They are generally fairly well-educated, are respectably connected, and in most cases, I believe, are “assisted” to this country by relations anxious to shift from their shoulders the burdens of directing or aiding their course. The parents are people trained to earn money, if at all, in a single groove, seldom in one available in Canada. They cannot, like our people, turn their hand to anything that presents itself. But for all that they form a valuable element in our city population, for their children soon get Canadianized, imbibe the Canadian idea of being self-dependent and form the best possible addition to our vastly increasing numbers. One of the greatest evils I have to contend against in dealing with this class is an absurd and bastard pride and love of keeping up appearances. A woman living in a rented room on Sackville street lost a child by death. I provided her out of the poor fund with a plain black coffin as the means of conveyance to the place of interment. Soon afterwards another woman lodging in the same house lost a child. I offered to do the same for her that I had done in the former case. The woman indignantly refused, but begged me to give her money to get a more expensive coffin. Now, I had in my pocket a small sum of money from the poor fund, which I had intended to give her, but which I felt compelled to withhold when I found it would but be spent superfluously on “the trappings and the suits of woe.” Still I felt sorry for the poor mother, in her desire to give a handsome funeral to her dead darling, though I could not conscientiously gratify her at the expense of those of my poor who needed food, not sentimental gratification. But when I came to officiate at the funeral I found she had provided a rosewood casket with white metal plate, a hearse and a carriage. Among my saddest experiences here are my visits to

THE NUMEROUS BABY FARMS,

which drive a more or less thriving trade in this part of the city. Some of them are situate on St. David street, several of them in a healthier position north of the General hospital. I have frequently visited these places; each dwelling will accommodate from three or four to as many as eight or ten infants, who are in almost all cases the children of shame, for whom their mothers, often persons in respectable positions, pay a small sum monthly. I do not think that they are neglected by the women who undertake the charge of them; in fact it is, of course, their interest that the babies should thrive, as on their living depends the monthly pay; but the circumstances of the birth and rearing of these poor infants, and, above all, the deprivation of the mother’s milk, the often sour milk in the feeding-bottle, and the unavoidable crowding together, make these places nothing less than nurseries of death—the babies all die!”