IX + 

Kitty and the Widow Who Drugged + 

What is it that drives women to the Casual Ward? The unthinking will answer at a venture, drink, depravity, or in exceptional cases, persistent misfortune. The class of women which seeks the shelter of the House in Great Guildford Street is drawn from London and the country. The former, in many cases, are casual in every sense of the word. Sometimes an entire family is landed miles away from their home, having lost the excursion train. In such case the police send them to the Metropolitan Asylums Board Office, under the arches of Hungerford Bridge, on the Victoria Embankment. They are given tickets of admission to the workhouse, and the mother and children are put together, while the husband goes to the men’s ward. + 

Sometimes a woman suspected of professional begging gets an order for the Casual Ward with her baby, in which case the officials communicate with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The Society has no jurisdiction inside the House, but an inspector will lurk outside, and, on the appearance of the suspected with her children, he will march her off to the police court, where he will apply for a summons against her for neglect. In the majority of instances she will go to prison for a month. + 

This seems to me to be one of the greatest abuses of the system. It is not only the professional beggar who may be seized on, towards the poor woman who comes in with her baby in a verminous or dirty condition, the same procedure is enacted; having enjoyed the respite of a night’s shelter, the unfortunate creature is seized on as she emerges with her child. + 

In some few cases professional beggars may be neglectful or unkind to their children. Personally, I have many times tried to get a definition of the term “professional.” So far as I can gather the authorities lay it down that a “professional” beggar is one who gets his living by the getting of alms. An itinerant street seller who occasionally begs does not come under the same heading. It must be remembered, however, that if a woman with young children stands in the street selling matches, or some other article, she runs the risk of being charged with exposing her children, and once again prison is the conclusion of the whole matter. + 

What, then, is the “professional” beggar to do? The root cause of this attempt to gather a livelihood is the housing shortage. It is not possible to pay the rent demanded for even the poorest room unless one member of the family is in receipt of a steady wage. Many of these beggars have lost their husbands, and have no trade by which they can support their family. Even if they had a trade they would have no place in which to ply it. For once a family has been dispossessed of a roof tree, it is unimaginably difficult for them to find another resting place. Wherefore these professional beggars alternate between the streets, the cheaper doss houses, the casual ward and prison. Generally speaking, during one of these terms in gaol, the accused’s children are compulsorily adopted. A law exists which empowers the Guardians to take over children without the consent or even knowledge of the parents, who have no right to see them, or even to know their whereabouts until they reach the age of fourteen. Some very pitiful cases have come to my knowledge where a woman, forced by circumstances out of her home, has been charged with neglecting her children, has been sent to prison, and has come out to find that she is childless. Her babies have been taken away from her, and she will see them no more. + 

There are a certain number of casuals who belong to a very different section of society. Women of position, who from time to time find themselves without resource, prefer a lodging in the House to a night in the streets. A woman of education and character visits Great Guildford Street every two or three months, and remains her allotted time of two nights and a day. She is the widow of a Government official and in receipt of a good pension. She has acquired the drug habit, however, and to satisfy the craving runs through her money long before the next instalment is due. On receipt of her cheque, she will get her jewellery and clothes out of pawn, make some additions to her wardrobe, and take a decent lodging. And then, gradually, her possessions find their way to the pawnbroker, she is turned out of her room, her shillings dwindle to pence, and she finds herself utterly destitute. When she has completely exhausted the patience of all her friends and relations, she comes to the House, generally at the last lap of the quarter. + 

I met her once at the Relieving Office under Hungerford Bridge, and she told me in her quiet, well-bred manner she was going to the Casual Ward that night, as she felt she must have a hot bath. The effects of the dope were wearing off, and her pleasant, cultured voice had its inevitable effect. + 

Everybody likes her at the House, and she is as popular with the casuals as with the officials. I saw her again one day in the West End, beautifully dressed and evidently in the receipt of her pension. She greeted me most charmingly, and asked me to tea. A few days after I knew she would reappear in rags, and later on go in as a casual. + 

Then there is a little woman who has had a lawsuit pending for years. She will produce masses of letters and documents⁠—and, like Miss Flite, thrust them into your hand with impassioned vituperation of certain nefarious solicitors and perjured witnesses. She is an embroidress by day, but works only by fits and starts, lured by that mirage of wealth that has led many a poor soul to shipwreck. It may be that one day she will come into her own, or it is equally on the cards that she may throw herself into the river, and end her misfortunes. She is possessed by this one idea, and when she goes into the House, can speak of nothing but her case. + 

Sometimes an elderly actress, long since out of work, comes to Great Guildford Street. She does not complain, but retails the story of her sufferings and her triumphs without comment. Now and again she gets a job in a “fit-up,” and tours through the country from village to village, playing at the local halls. Then again, there is a little woman, the wife, probably, of a professional man, who has outbreaks of dipsomania. On such occasions she will leave her home, sell what belongings she can carry, and steadily and blindly drink until the fit passes and she finds herself either in a doss house or derelict upon the pavement. It is at this point that, like a homing pigeon, she comes to Southwark, where her clothes are baked and generally tidied, and the rest restores her to something like her normal self. What happens when she goes back nobody knows, but, apparently, her husband always receives her⁠—for every time she come to the casual ward she is wearing clothes which were once expensive and of a new and fashionable cut. + 

This strange and fitful company flit in and out of the great doors. But for them the House has not the terrors that it holds for the perennially destitute⁠—those who have no abiding place, and for whom life has no foothold. I do not suppose the horror of the coffin-shaped cell ever affects the repose of the widow who drugs, the one who drinks, or those other transitory visitors who take the workhouse in their stride. But for the homeless it remains a thing of menace⁠—a trap from which, once caught, they cannot escape. + 

Then we come to the women on the road⁠—sturdy, fine specimens, who have become tramps from economic necessity. Such an one is Kitty Grimshaw, who was forced from her lodging in circumstances common to many. Kitty does a regular round, returning to Southwark as the central point. She has still friends among her former employers, and as she told me, could earn a decent living, if only she had a room. Physically fit and astonishingly witty, she is as clean a living woman as could be found. + 

“Many’s the opportunity I get of seeing life,” she told me. “A man will tell me in the road, ‘Come on, Kitty, an’ give me a love, an’ there’s a sixpence for you.’ But I says to them, ‘keep your sixpence, I’ve a man of me own in the Navy, and, please God, I’ll be married next Christmas.” + 

She told me a great deal, about her “man.” He is a bo’sun’s mate, and her great anxiety is to keep from him that she is a tramp. He writes to her every few weeks and always sends a little money. + 

“How do you get his letters?” I asked. It did not seem possible that the workhouse should act as a clearing station for correspondence. + 

“I pays an old lady sixpence a week to take his letters in, me dear. She lives at Peckham, an’ I call there every time I come to town.” + 

I often think of Kitty with her big, bright eyes and unconquerable spirit. It’s a great thing to know that, though life has dealt her such heavy buffets and left her without a home⁠—forcing her to tramp the roads with her small stock of matches, hairpins, etc.⁠—she still preserves her capacity for happiness, her belief in the good things to come. What can a woman who, at sixty years of age, believes confidently that her man is coming home to marry her? I am not a sentimentalist, but I share Kitty’s faith in her sailor. I hope he will come back to her; my belief in humanity will receive a blow if he does not return. + 

It was Kitty who put me wise as to the advantages and disadvantages of certain local workhouses. But whatever their varying degrees of discomfort, one and all prescribe the same penalty for poverty. You have to pay for your night’s bed by a day and night’s detention. It is argued that were this punishment abolished, the Houses would be flooded with the destitute. This I deny⁠—for however the externals may be softened, the interior fact remains the same. You are in an institution, the machinery of which, if you are not wary, may catch you up⁠—and once caught in the toils you may abandon hope. + 

A second argument is that were the casual put to do economic work, it would be in defiance of trade union rules and regulations. I admit the validity of the contention within limits. It would obviously be improper to institute any kind of workshop or factory from which goods could be marketed. The same objection would hold good were the goods simply for local consumption. But there can be nothing to prevent the women being set to do jobs which would materially affect the well being of all casuals. They could wash the nightgowns, etc., used by the inmates or make new ones. They could hem tea cloths and dusters; they could make up garments from the rolls of material sent by the charitable. They could even knit shoes and frocks for the babies born in the Infirmary. Those with an aptitude for cooking, could work in the kitchen. Two or three hours constructive labour would amply pay for their bed, and at the same time conserve that human dignity to which we are all entitled. The imposition of useless, meaningless tasks has a humiliating effect; they are the outcome of deliberate design. + 

These and similar reforms could be brought about without any derangement of the civil machinery. If the women who sit as Poor Law Guardians would only rid themselves of the belief that destitution is the outcome of moral delinquency, instead of the result of economic pressure, much could be accomplished. But the majority of women who hold official positions on public bodies are convinced that the casual is an economic, rather than a human problem, and should be dealt with at the cheapest possible rate. It seems to have passed the consciousness of the majority of citizens that any man or woman has the right to claim a bed, inasmuch as they have contributed to the rates. For rights are the last thing that the destitute are held to possess, and the pauper, casual or residential, is only regarded as a source of national trouble and expense. + 

One last word I have to say regarding the Casual Ward. When the women are not engaged in the repetition of meaningless tasks, there is nothing for them to do in the way of recreation. Books are not provided⁠—the day room did not boast even a single paper or magazine when I was there. With only bare walls on which to gaze, and nothing but weary hours to look forward to, it is to me a miracle that the mind of the woman who migrates from House to House does not become an utter blank. + 