In Darkest England and The Way Out [91]
the gallows or the grave.
In one room, with a wee window, lies a women dying of consumption; wasted wan, and wretched, lying on rags and swarming with vermin. Her little son, a boy of eight years, nestles beside her. His cheeks are scarlet, his eyes feverishly bright, and he has a hard cough. "It's the chills, mum," says the little chap. Six beds stand close together in another room; one is empty. Three days ago a woman died there and the body has just been taken away. It hasn't disturbed the rest of the inmates to have death present there. A woman is lying on the wrecks of a bedstead, slats and posts sticking out in every direction from the rags on which she reposes.
"It broke under me in the night," she explains. A woman is sick and wants Liz to say a prayer. We kneel on the filthy floor. Soon all my faculties are absorbed in speculating which will arrive first, the "Amen" or the "B flat" which is wending its way to wards me. This time the bug does not get there, and I enjoy grinding him under the sole of my Slum shoe when the prayer is ended.
In another room we find what looks like a corpse. It is a woman in an opium stupor. Drunken men are brawling around her.
Returning to our tenement, Em and Liz meet us, and we return to our experience. The minor details vary slightly, but the story is the same piteous tale of woe everywhere, and crime abounding, conditions which only change to a prison, a plunge in the river, or the Potter's field.
The Dark Continent can show no lower depth of degradation than that sounded by the dwellers of the dark alleys in Cherry Hill. There isn't a vice missing in that quarter. Every sin in the Decalogue flourishes in that feeder of penitentiaries and prisons. And even as its moral foulness permeates and poisons the veins of our social life so the malarial filth with which the locality reeks must sooner or later spread disease and death.
An awful picture, truly, but one which is to me irradiated with the love-light which shone in the eyes of "Em's serious, sweet, saintlike face."
Here is my second. It was written by a Journalist who had just witnessed the scene in Whitechapel. He writes: --
I had just passed Mr. Barnett's church when I was stopped by a small crowd at a street corner. There were about thirty or forty men, women, and children standing loosely together, some others were lounging on the opposite side of the street round the door of a public-house. In the centre of the crowd was a plain-looking little woman in Salvation Army uniform, with her eyes closed, praying the "dear Lord that he would bless these dear people, and save them, save them now!" Moved by curiosity, I pressed through the outer fringe of the crowd, and in doing so, I noticed a woman of another kind, also invoking Heaven, but in an altogether different fashion. Two dirty tramp-like men were listening to the prayer, standing the while smoking their short cutty pipes. For some reason or other they had offended the woman, and she was giving them a piece of her mind. They stood stolidly silent while she went at them like a fiend. She had been good-looking once, but was now horribly bloated with drink, and excited by passion. I heard both voices at the same time. What a contrast! The prayer was over now, and a pleading earnest address was being delivered.
"You are wrong," said the voice in the centre "you know you are; all this misery and poverty is a proof of it. You are prodigals. You have got away from your Father's house, and you are rebelling against Him every day Can you wonder that there is so much hunger, and oppression, and wretchedness allowed to come upon you? In the midst of it all your Father loves you He wants you to return to Him; to turn your backs upon your sins; abandon your evil doings; give up the drink and the service of the devil. He has given His Son Jesus Christ to die for you. He wants to save you. Come to His feet. He is waiting. His arms are open. I know the devil has got fast hold of you; but Jesus will give you grace to conquer him.
In one room, with a wee window, lies a women dying of consumption; wasted wan, and wretched, lying on rags and swarming with vermin. Her little son, a boy of eight years, nestles beside her. His cheeks are scarlet, his eyes feverishly bright, and he has a hard cough. "It's the chills, mum," says the little chap. Six beds stand close together in another room; one is empty. Three days ago a woman died there and the body has just been taken away. It hasn't disturbed the rest of the inmates to have death present there. A woman is lying on the wrecks of a bedstead, slats and posts sticking out in every direction from the rags on which she reposes.
"It broke under me in the night," she explains. A woman is sick and wants Liz to say a prayer. We kneel on the filthy floor. Soon all my faculties are absorbed in speculating which will arrive first, the "Amen" or the "B flat" which is wending its way to wards me. This time the bug does not get there, and I enjoy grinding him under the sole of my Slum shoe when the prayer is ended.
In another room we find what looks like a corpse. It is a woman in an opium stupor. Drunken men are brawling around her.
Returning to our tenement, Em and Liz meet us, and we return to our experience. The minor details vary slightly, but the story is the same piteous tale of woe everywhere, and crime abounding, conditions which only change to a prison, a plunge in the river, or the Potter's field.
The Dark Continent can show no lower depth of degradation than that sounded by the dwellers of the dark alleys in Cherry Hill. There isn't a vice missing in that quarter. Every sin in the Decalogue flourishes in that feeder of penitentiaries and prisons. And even as its moral foulness permeates and poisons the veins of our social life so the malarial filth with which the locality reeks must sooner or later spread disease and death.
An awful picture, truly, but one which is to me irradiated with the love-light which shone in the eyes of "Em's serious, sweet, saintlike face."
Here is my second. It was written by a Journalist who had just witnessed the scene in Whitechapel. He writes: --
I had just passed Mr. Barnett's church when I was stopped by a small crowd at a street corner. There were about thirty or forty men, women, and children standing loosely together, some others were lounging on the opposite side of the street round the door of a public-house. In the centre of the crowd was a plain-looking little woman in Salvation Army uniform, with her eyes closed, praying the "dear Lord that he would bless these dear people, and save them, save them now!" Moved by curiosity, I pressed through the outer fringe of the crowd, and in doing so, I noticed a woman of another kind, also invoking Heaven, but in an altogether different fashion. Two dirty tramp-like men were listening to the prayer, standing the while smoking their short cutty pipes. For some reason or other they had offended the woman, and she was giving them a piece of her mind. They stood stolidly silent while she went at them like a fiend. She had been good-looking once, but was now horribly bloated with drink, and excited by passion. I heard both voices at the same time. What a contrast! The prayer was over now, and a pleading earnest address was being delivered.
"You are wrong," said the voice in the centre "you know you are; all this misery and poverty is a proof of it. You are prodigals. You have got away from your Father's house, and you are rebelling against Him every day Can you wonder that there is so much hunger, and oppression, and wretchedness allowed to come upon you? In the midst of it all your Father loves you He wants you to return to Him; to turn your backs upon your sins; abandon your evil doings; give up the drink and the service of the devil. He has given His Son Jesus Christ to die for you. He wants to save you. Come to His feet. He is waiting. His arms are open. I know the devil has got fast hold of you; but Jesus will give you grace to conquer him.