London's Underworld [42]
or canal gives up its dead.
But it is not every woman that maintains such a high tone, for once in the underworld the difficulty of personal cleanliness confronts them, and dirt kills self-respect. Poverty makes them acquainted with both physical and moral dirt, and the effect of one night in a shelter or lodging-house is often sufficient to destroy self-respect and personal cleanliness for life.
I am quite sure that I am voicing the opinion of all who have knowledge of the underworld in which such women are compelled to live, when I say that the great want in London and in all our large towns is suitable and well-managed lodging-houses under municipal control and inspection, where absolute cleanliness and decency can be assured. Lodging-houses to which women in their hour of sore need may turn with the certainty that their self- respect will not be destroyed. But under the present conditions decent women have no chance of retaining their decency or recovering their standing in social life.
Listen again! a widowed tooth-brush maker speaks to us: "Dear Mr. Holmes, I feel that I must thank you for still allowing me a pension, and I do thank you so much in increasing it. When I received it my heart was so full of joy that I could not speak. My little boys are growing, and they require more than when my husband died six years ago. I am sure it has been a great struggle, but I have found such a great help in you, I do not know how to thank you for all that you have done for me and many poor workers.
"I do hope that God will still give you health and strength to carry on the good work which you are doing for us. When I last spoke to you I thought my little boys were much better, but I am sorry to say that when I took them to Great Ormond Street Hospital, they said they were both suffering from heart disease, and I was to keep them from school for a time; and they also suffer from rheumatics. They are to get out all they can. I have been taking them to the hospital for over two years, and sometimes I feel downhearted, as I had hoped they would have improved before this.
"The eldest boy does not have fits now, and this I am thankful for. But I feel that I am wasting a lot of your time reading this letter, so I must thank you very much for all your great goodness to me."
But one of the boys is now dead, to the other "fits" have returned, and the widow still sits, sits and sits at her tooth- brushes in poverty and hunger.
Listen to an old maid's story; she is a shoe machinist: "Yes, sir, I have kept them for six years, and I hope to keep them till they can keep themselves, and then perhaps they will help to keep me."
The speaker was a worn and feeble woman of fifty-five years, at least that was the age she gave me, and most certainly she did not look less. We were talking about her two boys, her nephews, whose respective ages were eleven and thirteen.
"Both their parents died six years ago; their father was my only brother, and their mother had neither brothers nor sisters! Of course I took them; what else could I do? What! Send them to the workhouse? Not while I can work for them. Ah, sir! you were only joking!" In this she was partly right, for I had merely offered the suggestion in order to draw her out.
"So after the double funeral they came to live with you?" "Yes." "Did their parents leave any money?" "Money, no! How can poor people leave any money? their club money paid for the funeral and the doctor's bill." "So they owed nothing?" "Not a penny; if they had, I should have paid it somehow."
And doubtless she would, though how, it passes my wit to conceive. But there, it would have meant only a few more hours' work daily for the brave old spinster, but not for the boys, for they would have been fed while she fasted, they would have slept while she worked.
"Yes," she continued, "I am a boot machinist, and it is pretty hard work; we had a tough time when I had to pay two shillings weekly for that machine, but we managed, and now you see it is paid for, it is my own;
But it is not every woman that maintains such a high tone, for once in the underworld the difficulty of personal cleanliness confronts them, and dirt kills self-respect. Poverty makes them acquainted with both physical and moral dirt, and the effect of one night in a shelter or lodging-house is often sufficient to destroy self-respect and personal cleanliness for life.
I am quite sure that I am voicing the opinion of all who have knowledge of the underworld in which such women are compelled to live, when I say that the great want in London and in all our large towns is suitable and well-managed lodging-houses under municipal control and inspection, where absolute cleanliness and decency can be assured. Lodging-houses to which women in their hour of sore need may turn with the certainty that their self- respect will not be destroyed. But under the present conditions decent women have no chance of retaining their decency or recovering their standing in social life.
Listen again! a widowed tooth-brush maker speaks to us: "Dear Mr. Holmes, I feel that I must thank you for still allowing me a pension, and I do thank you so much in increasing it. When I received it my heart was so full of joy that I could not speak. My little boys are growing, and they require more than when my husband died six years ago. I am sure it has been a great struggle, but I have found such a great help in you, I do not know how to thank you for all that you have done for me and many poor workers.
"I do hope that God will still give you health and strength to carry on the good work which you are doing for us. When I last spoke to you I thought my little boys were much better, but I am sorry to say that when I took them to Great Ormond Street Hospital, they said they were both suffering from heart disease, and I was to keep them from school for a time; and they also suffer from rheumatics. They are to get out all they can. I have been taking them to the hospital for over two years, and sometimes I feel downhearted, as I had hoped they would have improved before this.
"The eldest boy does not have fits now, and this I am thankful for. But I feel that I am wasting a lot of your time reading this letter, so I must thank you very much for all your great goodness to me."
But one of the boys is now dead, to the other "fits" have returned, and the widow still sits, sits and sits at her tooth- brushes in poverty and hunger.
Listen to an old maid's story; she is a shoe machinist: "Yes, sir, I have kept them for six years, and I hope to keep them till they can keep themselves, and then perhaps they will help to keep me."
The speaker was a worn and feeble woman of fifty-five years, at least that was the age she gave me, and most certainly she did not look less. We were talking about her two boys, her nephews, whose respective ages were eleven and thirteen.
"Both their parents died six years ago; their father was my only brother, and their mother had neither brothers nor sisters! Of course I took them; what else could I do? What! Send them to the workhouse? Not while I can work for them. Ah, sir! you were only joking!" In this she was partly right, for I had merely offered the suggestion in order to draw her out.
"So after the double funeral they came to live with you?" "Yes." "Did their parents leave any money?" "Money, no! How can poor people leave any money? their club money paid for the funeral and the doctor's bill." "So they owed nothing?" "Not a penny; if they had, I should have paid it somehow."
And doubtless she would, though how, it passes my wit to conceive. But there, it would have meant only a few more hours' work daily for the brave old spinster, but not for the boys, for they would have been fed while she fasted, they would have slept while she worked.
"Yes," she continued, "I am a boot machinist, and it is pretty hard work; we had a tough time when I had to pay two shillings weekly for that machine, but we managed, and now you see it is paid for, it is my own;