London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) (77 page)

A soldier’s wife, speaking with a strong Scotch accent, made the following statement. She had altogether a decent appearance, but her features – and there were the remains of prettiness in her look – were sadly pinched. Her manners were quiet, and her voice low and agreeable. She looked like one who had ‘seen better days’, as the poor of the better sort not unfrequently say in their destitution, clinging to the recollection of past comforts. She wore a very clean checked cotton shawl, and a straw bonnet tolerably entire. The remainder of her dress was covered by her shawl, which was folded closely about her, over a dark cotton gown.

‘I was born twenty miles from Inverness, (she said), and have been a servant since I was eleven. I always lived in good places – the best of places. I never was in inferior places. I have lived as cook, housemaid, or servant-of–all-work, in Inverness, Elgin, and Tain, always maintaining a good character. I thank God for that. In all my distress I’ve done nothing wrong, but I didn’t know what distress was when in service. I continued in service until I married; but I was not able to save much money, because I had to do all I could for my mother, who was a very poor widow, for I lost my father when I was two years old. Wages are very low in Scotland to what they are in England. In the year 1847 I lived in the service of the barrack-master of Fort George, twelve miles below Inverness. There I became acquainted with my present husband, a soldier, and I was married to him in March, 1847, in the chapel at Fort George. I continued two months in service after my marriage. My mistress wouldn’t let me away she was very kind to me; so was my master: they all were. I have a written character from my mistress.’ [This, at my request, she produced.] ‘Two months after, the regiment left Fort George for Leith, and there I lived with my husband in barracks. It is not so bad for married persons in the artillery as in the line (we were in the artillery), in barracks. In our barrack rooms no single men were allowed to sleep where the married people were accommodated. But there were three or four married families in our room. I lived two years in barracks with my husband, in different barracks. I was very comfortable. I didn’t know what it was to want anything I ought to have. My husband was a kind, sober man.’ [This she said very feelingly.] ‘His regiment was ordered abroad, to Nova Scotia. I had no family. Only six soldiers’ wives are allowed to go out with each company, and there were
seventeen married men in the company to which my husband belonged. It’s determined by lot. An officer holds the tickets in his cap, and the men draw them. None of the wives are present. It would be too hard a thing for them to see. My husband drew a blank.’ She continued:

‘It was a sad scene when they embarked at Woolwich last March. All the wives were there, all crying and sobbing, you may depend upon that; and the children, too, and some of the men; but I couldn’t look much at them, and I don’t like to see men cry. My husband was sadly distressed. I hoped to get out there and join him, not knowing the passage was so long and expensive. I had a little money then, but that’s gone, and I’m brought to misery. It would have cost me 6
l
. at that time to get out, and I couldn’t manage that, so I stayed in London, getting a day’s work at washing when I could, making a very poor living of it; and I was at last forced to part with all my good clothes after my money went; and my husband, God bless him! always gave me his money to do what I thought best with it. I used to earn a little in barracks with my needle, too. I was taken ill with cholera at the latter end of August. Dear, dear, what I suffered! And when I was getting better I had a second attack, and that was the way my bit of money all went. I was then quite destitute; but I care nothing for that, and would care nothing for anything if I could get out to my husband. I should be happy then. I should never be so happy since I was born before. It’s now a month since I was entirely out of halfpence. I can’t beg; it would disgrace me and my husband, and I’d die in the streets first. Last Saturday I hadn’t a farthing. I hadn’t a thing to part with. I had a bed by the night, at 3
d
. a night, not a regular lodging-house; but the mistress wouldn’t trust me no longer, as I owed her 2
s
. 6
d
., and for that she holds clothes worth far more than that. I heard of this Asylum, and got admitted, or I must have spent the night in the street – there was nothing else for me; but, thank God! I’ve been spared that. On Christmas day I had a letter from my husband.’

This she produced. It contained the following passage:

‘I am glad this letter only costs you a penny, as your purse must be getting very low, but there is a good time coming, and i trust in God it will not be long, my deir wife, i hope you will have got a good place before this raches you. I am dowing all in my power to help you. i trust in good in 3 months more, if you Help me, between us we make it out.’

She concluded:

‘I wouldn’t like him to know how badly I am off. He knows I would do nothing wrong. He wouldn’t suspect me; he never would. He knows me too well. I have no clothes but what are detained for 2
s
. 6
d
., and what
I have on. I have on just this shawl and an old cotton gown, but it’s not broke, and my under-clothing. All my wish is to get out to my husband. I care for nothing else in this world.’

Next comes the tale of a young girl who worked at velvet embossing. She was comely, and modestly spoken. By her attire it would have been difficult to have told that she was so utterly destitute as I afterwards discovered. She was scrupulously neat and clean in her dress; indeed it was evident, even from her appearance, that she belonged to a better class than the ordinary inmates of the Asylum. As she sat alone in the long, unoccupied wards, she sighed heavily, and her eyes were fixed continually on the ground. Her voice was very sorrowful. Her narrative was as follows:

‘I have been out of work for a very long while, for full three months now, and all the summer I was only on and off. I mostly had my work given out to me. It was in pieces of 100 yards, and sometimes less, and I was paid so much for the dozen yards. I generally had 3½
d
., and sometimes 1½
d
., according to what it was; 3½
d
. was the highest price that I had. I could, if I rose at five in the morning, and sat up till twelve, earn between 1
s
. and 1
s
. 3
d
. in a day. I had to cut the velvet after it had been embossed. I could, if a diamond pattern, do five dozen yards in a day, and if a leaf pattern, I could only do three dozen and a half. I couldn’t get enough of it to do, even at these prices. Sometimes I was two days in the week without work, and sometimes I had work for only one day in the week. They wanted, too, to reduce the 1½
d
. diamond work to 1
d
. the dozen yards; and so they would have done, only the work got so slack that we had to leave it altogether. That is now seven weeks ago. Before that, I did get a little to do, though it was very little, and since then I have called almost every week at the warehouse, but they have put me off, telling me to come in a fortnight or a week’s time. I never kept acquaintance with any of the other young women working at the warehouse, but I dare say about twenty-five were thrown out of work at the same time as I was. Sometimes I made 6
s
. a week, and sometimes only 3
s
., and for the last fortnight I got 1
s
. 6
d
. a week, and out of that I had my own candles to find, and 1
s
. 6
d
. a week to pay for my lodgings. After I lost my work, I made away with what little clothes I had, and now I have got nothing but what I stand upright in.’ [The tears were pouring down the cheeks of the poor girl; she was many minutes afterwards before she could answer my questions, from sobbing.] ‘I can’t help crying,’ she said, ‘when I think how destitute I am. Oh, yes, indeed [she cried through her sobs.]. I have been a good girl in all my trials. I might have been better off if I had chosen to take to that life. I need not have been here if I had chosen to part with my character.
I don’t know what my father was. I believe he was a clerk in one of the foreign confectionery houses. He deserted my mother two months before I was born. I don’t know whether he is dead or not, for I never set eyes on him. If he is alive, he is very well off. I know this from my aunt, who was told by one of his fellow-clerks that he had married a woman of property and gone abroad. He was disappointed with my mother. He expected to have had a good bit of money with her; but after she married him, her father wouldn’t notice her. My mother died when I was a week old, so I do not recollect either of my parents. When my aunt, who was his own sister, wrote to him about myself, my brother and sister, he sent word back that the children might go to the workhouse. But my aunt took pity on us, and brought us all up. She had a little property of her own. She gave us a decent education, as far as lay in her power. My brother she put to sea. My father’s brother was a captain, and he took my brother with him. The first voyage he went (he was fourteen), a part of the rigging fell on him and the first mate, and they were both killed on the spot. My sister went as lady’s-maid to Lady —, and went abroad with her, now eighteen months ago, and I have never heard of her since. The aunt who brought me up is dead now. She was carried off two years and three months ago. If she had lived I should never have wanted a friend. I remained with her up to the time of her death, and was very happy before that time. After that I found it very hard for a poor lone girl like me to get an honest living. I have been struggling on ever since, parting with my clothes, and often going for two days without food. I lived upon the remainder of my clothes for some little time after I was thrown entirely out of work; but at last I got a fortnight in debt at my lodgings, and they made me leave; that’s a week and three days ago now. Then I had nowhere but the streets to lay my head. I walked about for three days and nights without rest. I went into a chapel. I went there to sit down and pray; but I was too tired to offer up any prayers, for I fell asleep. I had been two nights and three days in the streets before this, and all I had during that time was a penny loaf, and that I was obliged to beg for. On the day that I was walking about, it thawed in the morning, and froze very hard at night. My shoes were very bad, and let in water; and as the night came on, my stockings froze to my feet. Even now I am suffering from the cold of those nights. It is as much as I can do to bend my limbs at present. I have been in the Asylum a week, and to-night is my last night here. I have nowhere to go, and what will become of me the Lord God only knows.’ [Again she burst out crying most piteously.] ‘My things are not fit to go into any respectable workroom, and they won’t take me into a lodging either,

unless I’ve got clothes. I would rather make away with myself than lose my character.’ [As she raised her hand to wipe away her tears, I saw that her arms were bare; and on her moving the old black mantle that covered her shoulders, I observed that her gown was so ragged that the body was almost gone from it, and it had no sleeves.] ‘I shouldn’t have kept this,’ she said, ‘If I could have made away with it.’ She said that she had no friend in the world to help her, but that she would like much to emigrate.

I afterwards inquired at the house at which this poor creature had lodged, as to whether she had always conducted herself with propriety while living there. To be candid, I could hardly believe that any person could turn a young friendless girl into the streets because she owed two weeks’ rent; though the girl appeared too simple and truthful to fabricate such a statement. On inquiry, I found her story true from the beginning to the end. The landlady, an Irishwoman, acknowledged that the girl was in her debt but 3
s
.; that she had lodged with her for several months, and always paid her regularly when she had money; but she couldn’t afford, she said, to keep people for nothing. The girl had been a good, well-behaved, modest girl with her.

[p. 438] The Asylum for the Houseless Poor of London is opened only when the thermometer reaches freezing-point, and offers nothing but dry bread and warm shelter to such as avail themselves of its charity.

To this place swarm, as the bitter winter’s night comes on, some half-thousand penniless and homeless wanderers. The poverty-stricken from every quarter of the globe are found within its wards; from the haggard American seaman to the lank Polish refugee, the pale German ‘out-wanderer’, the tearful black sea-cook, the shivering Lascar crossing-sweeper, the helpless Chinese beggar, and the half-torpid Italian organ-boy. It is, indeed, a ragged congress of nations – a convocation of squalor and misery – of destitution, degradation, and suffering, from all the corners of the earth.

Nearly every shade and grade of misery, misfortune, vice, and even guilt, are to be found in the place; for characters are not demanded previous to admission, want being the sole qualification required of the applicants. The Asylum for the Houseless is at once the beggar’s hotel, the tramp’s town-house, the outcast’s haven of refuge – the last dwelling, indeed, on the road to ruin.