XII
A Word to the Well-Fed
I found myself in an unexpected world that morning. It might have been a continental city, it was so early astir. Whitechapel was already going to work; foreign faces gleamed brightly in the street. Everyone wished each other good morning—mostly in foreign tongues, and from the open doorways and shop fronts, you caught occasional gleams of vivid colour. Most of the people are Jews especially the small shopkeepers, and some of them have retained to this day the externals of their Eastern origins.
I saw one old man with a long, white beard, clad in the gaberdine—a long, black coat—typical of the Ghettos of Eastern Europe—and presently there emerged into the street a fine-looking old woman, of about seventy, draped in a red shawl, heavily embroidered. I have seen such a figure very often in the Jewish quarter of Warsaw. It was not only the shawl that was symbolic; this mother in Israel belonged to the old order, under the dispensation of which a married woman always shaved her head, no matter how young or beautiful she might be. The theory was, that as a wife she must no longer appear beautiful in the eyes of any man, though it seems hard her husband was not the exception. In Warsaw you continually meet an old Jewess with an ill-fitting wig that does not cover her bald head, and it came on me as a startling surprise that I should find such an one in Whitechapel.
Trucks of newly-baked bread, rolls and French twists, and delicious little brioche were wheeled about the streets and a stall was already busy with the morning coffee.
It is in Whitechapel also that all kinds of small goods are bought and sold. Here is the market for metal trifles such as I dealt in, and I unearthed a little factory where they turn out cigarette cases and match boxes, the equal of any German products. Here, also, street vendors can buy garters at wholesale prices, powder puffs and boxes of chocolates, etc., all the stock-in-trade of the men and women who work public-house bars and serve the queues outside the theatres. It is too risky to try to get rid of these articles on the kerbstone, unless your position with the police is very strong.
Whitechapel, moreover, is one of those places where goods acquired by mysterious means can, without difficulty, be disposed of. There is a certain public-house I know, where I have seen model dresses change hands for as many shillings as a Bond Street establishment would charge pounds. Here also come Paris hats, the proceeds of either a wholesale robbery or the outcome of a good shoplifting. You will see in the Whitechapel Road many a hat which smells of Rue de la Paix, worn by a girl obviously unable to buy it in open market. Furs, also, change hands in the saloon bars of this district, and the less valuable, and also less traceable goods are occasionally bought by the street vendors, who dispose of them to a special clientele.
This is one of the few points where what is known as the criminal world touches the destitute. Generally speaking, the two are separate and distinct. The lawless spirits who adventure in crime, would not tolerate the conditions which the destitute patiently endure. Sometimes, as we have seen, the prostitute crosses the border line and occasionally steals something and is sent to prison. But this is generally the exception; the two sections are not interchangeable.
Into these bars, where barter and sale nightly take place, the more dejected of the homeless do not come. These have their recognised houses of call, when they have sufficient money to buy themselves a drink. But this is very rarely. Indeed, so low is their scale of living that when a piece of luck enables them to have a glass of beer it not infrequently overpowers them. We often read of a woman without visible means of support, who has been found drunk and incapable in the street. Her ragged condition has been described, and in nine cases out of ten it is traced to the drink craze, which it is presumed is responsible for her destitution. This, I am convinced, is not the case. What has happened is that the poor thing has been given ale, stout, or even a little whisky, and has been unable to withstand its effects. Quite a number of the destitute have lost the desire for drink; they are so unaccustomed to its taste that they do not desire it. The elder women like tobacco, when they can get it, which they generally chew, and others have a strong partiality for snuff.
The morning had grown apace when I reached Blackfriars Bridge and joined the huge crowd of women of all ages who daily journey to the City. The spectacle of this activity roused again my desire for some form of regular work. I reported myself to a Labour Exchange, and was sent to an eating house to wash dishes. I got paid eightpence an hour, and for three hours stood at a sink at a backbreaking angle, dealing with grease-laden dishes, basins and knives and forks.
It was a noisome occupation, and I could not face the possibility of practising it daily. The space was confined and the ventilation inadequate. By the time I signed off I was physically sick.
It is, I think, the re-invigoration of the open air that enables the homeless to carry on for so many years. Even in the meanest London street you feel the effects of the open sky and the lack of space within the four walls of a building tries you very heavily. This factor must be taken into account in judging those tramps, of whom it is so often said that they object to regular work. I found the confines of a building pressed very hardly on my spirits after but a short period of life in the streets. And if this was the effect on me, who had but tasted destitution, what must the influence of the open air be to those who can remember no other form of existence? It is one of the most curious facts that even in the depth of physical degradation, there are compensations, and those who find themselves at the close of a long day without the hope of a bed, will feel that they have the endurance to go through the night and start again the following morning.
I have been asked often as to the food for which the homeless crave. When you have but a few pence—and it is very rarely there is any more—you go generally to the nearest fried-fish shop and spend your coppers on a piece of haddock and potatoes. If you can add a dash of sauce or a few pickles, you have an ideal meal. Meat is beyond the means of the destitute, save in the way of sausages, and if it were not so, the quality obtainable would put you off your meal. I have already touched on the nausea which ensues on an attempt to satisfy hunger on dry, stale bread. It is worse than useless to give loaves or slices to any beggar at your back door. But you may always be sure one thing will be welcomed, a cup of hot tea, hot coffee, or even cocoa. But it must be hot; the physical craving for a hot drink is almost overmastering.
I remember on one occasion a young woman marched into a café in the East End and demanded a cup of tea. She was in a parlous state as regards boots and dress generally, but her hair was only comparatively dirty, by which I mean she was not afflicted with those masses of tangled growth that have so tragic a significance. She drank her tea, seated at a table, then, having drained the last drop, she marched up to the counter.
“I haven’t got any money to pay for it,” she said; “you can send to the police if you like—I don’t mind. But I’ve had my tea,” she added, “you can’t take that from me!”
The proprietor, a polyglot of many nationalities, protested vehemently. But he did not send for the police, and when she went away he gave her some slices of liver sausage with some pickle and a fresh roll.
It is not often that you come across such understanding, and to risk getting food without money is to chance arrest. When once you have been charged at the police court the difficulties of existence are increased a hundredfold. The destitute woman, like the prostitute, once she has been charged, is liable to be run in continuously. Keep out of the police net, and if you are quiet and decently behaved, you will remain out. Once you are enmeshed, unless you are possessed of great force of will and character, you may as well give up the fight.
It is not often the destitute show any great emotion. The women who now and again get a lodging, relieve their pent-up feelings when they find themselves beneath a roof, but the woman who spends more nights in the open than nights in a shelter, has become so far doped that it is pain to her to cry. I have seen women suddenly give way to what looks like causeless anger and fall to abusing a stranger, take up a stone and throw it at a door. I have myself experienced that overwhelming desire to smash up the smug contentment of the well-fed and well-housed section of society. But of the softer feelings little is shown. When a woman gives way to tears you feel as if you had been present at some secret and terrible exposure.
It was at a poor doss house in the North of London that I saw a girl give way to sudden irrepressible grief. She was not like the woman in Kennedy Court, she was nourished on too low a diet for such vigorous display. She sat on her bed in the drab garment, discoloured by wind and weather, which had grown to her like an animal’s skin, and the tears poured down her face. She had not a handkerchief on which to wipe them, and now and again she put up her arm, with its dirty coat sleeve, and mopped her cheeks. At first we did not take any notice. It is not polite to offer sympathy or comment. But when her thin shoulders began to shake, and her hands opened and shut convulsively, we knew the breaking point was reached. She explained that her feet hurt her, and we took off the unutterable pieces of leather, bound together by string, and the rags that had once been stockings. Her feet were a mass of running sores, only the most superhuman courage could have forced her to walk upon them. We got round the old woman in charge of the place and persuaded her to produce hot water, and one of us bathed the poor feet and dried them on an apology for a towel. But we knew that in a very little while the flesh would be as discoloured and as painful as it had been. It was unthinkable that she should again put on those jagged bits of leather, those worn and evil-smelling cotton rags. Instinctively we looked at each other. There was some seven or eight women in the room, and we produced our pence and together raised about a shilling. Then a lodger found another pair of stockings in her bundle, gave them to the girl, and a spirited conversation with the woman in charge induced her to produce an aged pair of men’s boots, whose tops were not broken. We gave her fourpence for these, and another twopence for a cup of tea and a piece of bread and marge.
The girl accepted these offerings quite quietly; she was too dazed to say much, but at least we had the satisfaction of knowing that her feet would not be quite so painful, and that she would set out on her day’s tramp with at least something towards board and lodging.
And here I would beg those of my readers, who feel in any sense the desire to help their destitute sisters, to remember their perpetual need for shoes and boots. If it were possible to have some kind of clearing house, where cast-off foot gear could be deposited and sent out again to women’s lodging houses, conditions might be alleviated. It is, I know, the custom of many households to send their cast-off clothes and other oddments to the Salvation Army and the Church Army, and I have nothing to urge against such methods. I would only say that, generally speaking, the down and outs do not, and cannot, benefit by these gifts, for the big organisations have many recognised outlets for the disposal of clothes, and the destitute do not come within their orbit. If, however, people would remit their cast-off footgear to definite shelters with the request that those women who wanted boots might be served, something might be done to assuage the most poignant sufferings of those street dwellers, whose feet are so rarely at rest.
It should not be difficult to arrange such a distribution at the lodging houses licensed by the London County Council, if and when that body institutes a proper system of inspection. As things are, it seems to me highly improbable that the managers or proprietors of these places would concern themselves as to which of their casual inmates wanted boots.
Another alternative would be to establish a place apart from any lodging house, where, for a few pence—or for nothing—derelicts could get covering for their feet. It is, at any rate, worth consideration, for the outlay would be very small, and many of those who at present devote quite large sums to the support of what are termed organised charities, would find that the reduction of comparatively a few shillings from their cheques, would result in that direct alleviation which is the object of the generous-minded.
I have not yet discovered any shelter or lodging house where such help is forthcoming. The Salvation Army Centre in Mare Street do their best to deal with human down and outs, and if they are employable, will find them work and supply a wardrobe. But, as I have said, a very large proportion of the women who walk the pavements have gone beyond regularised assistance, and before they could fit themselves for work, they would have to be found some tiny home of their own where they could recover their powers of resistance. Meanwhile, they endure physical hardships which could be alleviated by a small expenditure of money and the cost of some trouble and thought. Once you have seen the feet of the outcast, you realise the most burning and most practical thing to do, next to the provision of a bed, is to find boots.
The homeless are, I admit, difficult to help through the ordinary channels. People who come under sectional headings—discharged prisoners, convicted prostitutes, unmarried mothers—are more easily assisted. Human nature has a weakness for labels. It is distressed, almost affronted, by the silence of apparently inexplicable human wreckage.
“I always ask one of these women you speak of, what is wrong with her,” said a very kindly friend of mine. “But they never will tell me anything. I give them money and buy their matches or anything they have to sell, and I always try to have a little talk with them, but they won’t answer. I ask them where they’re going to sleep, and if they’ve walked far, and they just mumble something and move away.”
I suppose it is difficult if you have never been within a mile of destitution to realise how completely you are cut off from the common channels of communication. The poor women my friend referred to, very probably, did not know exactly where they had come from; they certainly did not know where they would sleep. Further, they associate interrogation with officialdom, and the never absent fear of the institution governs their mind. If they say nothing, little can be proved against them. Once they give an account of themselves they may be caught out in a lie, and between a false statement and a policeman there is a pitifully short distance. You must never hope to learn by direct question. The only way you can find out the truth is to go down into the depths, lead their lives and endure their privations.