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A Very Gallant Gentleman
To spend a whole night in the streets is an experience that has a permanent effect on the psychology.
My first adventure of this kind found me unprepared. I was compelled to walk about, not from lack of money to pay for a bed, but because I could not find any place that would take me in.
It was on a Saturday night, and I had had a good day. I had got into touch with my friend of the plush coat, and had secured from her a number of cigarette cases which I had sold at profit to myself. After I had bought myself a meal and a glass of port, I was the proud possessor of three shillings and sixpence, and I felt entitled to a luxurious time. I had learned from my fellow outcasts that the beds at the Church Army Shelter in Great Peter Street were very cosy, and I anticipated an agreeable lodging. Sunday, I knew, there would not be much trade astir, so I could stay in bed as long as they would let me, buy myself a bit of lunch, and resume my commercial activities in the evening, reinvigorated and refreshed.
Such was the programme I mapped out—and I recall to this moment the pleasurable feeling with which I sauntered down Whitehall. My open-air life, in spite of the biting weather, had given me an added strength, of which hunger and lack of sleep could not deprive me. After all, I thought, there is a lot to be said for the physical existence which consists of a continual struggle to provide the body with essentials and leaves untouched the field of the mind. This may sound fantastic, but it holds much validity. Later on, when you have led the life of the homeless at a continuous stretch, your imagination comes into play, and the old appetite for ideas returns, invigorated. But at the outset the material blocks all other avenues of approach; you want to feed your belly, as Kitty would say, and rest your limbs, and your body is clamorous until these things are accomplished.
It was just after nine when I arrived at the Church Army Shelter. The house has an appearance of prosperity that a little chilled me. Through the wide open door I caught a glimpse of white paint and shining brass, which made me very conscious of my bedraggled skirts. But, after all, I had nothing to fear. I could pay for my bed, and I had experienced so much humanity, such ready kindliness in my travels, that I had forgotten the other side of the picture. A woman directed me to the Sister. I went along a passage, and turning to the right, found myself on a small landing, from which a flight of stairs led down into a very bright and pleasant little kitchen. A young woman, in official cap and apron, was frying sausages which sent forth a most appetising smell.
I made to go down the stairs, but was stopped by a sudden gesture from the Sister. She waved a frying fork at me.
“Stop where you are,” she said. “Don’t come down here.”
As she spoke I felt that I was destitute in every sense of the word.
“Good evening,” I said, politely. “May I have a bed?”
“Stay where you are,” she repeated, and I went back to the little pen at the top of the stairs, surprised and hurt. I realised for the first time since I began my journey, how demoralising it is to be sized up on your external appearance, and the tears were very near my eyes when I asked again for a bed, and announced that I could pay for it.
The statement did not impress the Sister, and under her eyes my shabbiness increased. Draggled coat and sodden hat grew visibly more and more demoralised.
“Please stay there.” The frying fork marked out the frontier. Then there followed a searching cross-examination, which I bore patiently and politely, under the belief that when the interrogatory was finished I should be allowed a bed. As I discovered later, however, my impression was wrong.
“What is your name and occupation?”
“I am out of work,” I said.
“When were you in a regular job?”
“Some time since,” I answered, and felt almost criminal.
“Your address?”
“I haven’t one.”
“No permanent address?”
In face of what I had told her the question seemed irrelevant.
“Well then,” she faced me with frank hostility, “where did you spend last night?”
I had to tell her the truth. I could not frame a suitable lie, besides this was a case when, it seemed to me, fiction would not help matters. The Church Army Shelter existed, I had been told, to supply beds at tenpence a night for destitute women. Why, then, should I shirk the admission of a palpable fact? And yet I felt somehow that my answer would do me out of the comfortable bed I needed so badly.
She seemed shocked at the mention of the casual ward, and positively bristled when I confessed to a common lodging house.
“Oh no,” she said, “I can’t give you a bed,” and I knew that the words were the spontaneous expression of her feeling. She did not want me and my bedraggled clothes in her bright, clean kitchen. She had no use for a woman who quite recently had lodged in Kennedy Court, and she hurled at me the condemnation of a whole world when she turned me down.
I have been assured that the Church Army affords help to many destitute women. Facts and figures have been poured upon me. Statistics have set forth how many hundreds and thousands of homeless creatures have been fed and housed. This may be so, but there is an interior sympathy which expresses itself not only in statistics, and when I went to Great Peter Street that night I felt that spirit was not there.
And here I must say a word as to the moral effect of this particular treatment. I discovered that since I had left my home I had acquired a new psychology. I not only looked, but I felt destitute, and the Sister’s refusal struck me like a blow in the face. Why should she turn me down? I was clean, I was honest, I had the money to pay—and I needed a comfortable bed.
I suddenly comprehended with a dreadful clearness what destitution does to the soul. It destroys the sense of human dignity, and as your rags are, so you become. I was bedraggled, I looked miserable and I had not slept—anywhere, and the Sister in the pretty kitchen cooking supper did not want anything like me among the clean, white paint and shining brass fittings.
I once heard a prosperous-looking man say something that expressed what the Sister at that moment must have felt. Someone was speaking with anger as to the terrible condition of the slums which breed deterioration of mind and body.
“That’s all very well,” said the prosperous one, “but after all they are dogs—let them live in their kennels!”
Well, I hadn’t got even a kennel, though at that moment I wanted to slink off and find one. But I wasn’t through yet. I did not want unjustly to condemn the Sister, and it was necessary that I should discover the type of lodger that was acceptable.
I lurked in the passage near the entrance—lurking is one of the fine arts I learned in my wanderings—and watched the door to the kitchen like a lynx. Presently a nice-looking young woman carrying a despatch case walked briskly up the street and into the house. I judged her to be a shop assistant, who wanted to get away from living-in for a night. I watched her enter the little lobby and descend the stairs—no frying fork barred her way, and I listened to her conversation with the Sister.
She answered all enquiries satisfactorily and was fixed up for the night.
I left that house with a burning sense of injury.
It was not that I was penniless. I had been through that stage and had not scrupled to ask for help. When I was hungry I had begged. But now it seemed to me I was in an even more desperate condition. I had the money for a decent bed and I could not get one!
Had the Sister merely told me at the first that she had no accommodation I should not have been so hurt. But it seemed to me deliberate cruelty to interrogate me and then to tum me down. The fact that she did this effectively disposes of any suggestion that she knew from the first that there was no bed available, and that this was not so I subsequently learned.
By this time it was close on ten, and I did not relish the walk back to Holborn. Besides, I could not accept the possibility that only in Kennedy Court could I be taken in. Surely there was some other shelter?
The stars were cruelly bright that evening, and the glory of the sky made my position more unhappy. I think I could have borne it better had it rained. I watched the electric signs on the Embankment dazzling in their shifting brilliance. Where was I to go? What on earth was I to do?
I went to the inevitable policeman and asked if he could tell me of a lodging house.
“There’s one in Belvedere Road, over the Bridge and turn to the right,” he told me, and I set off on my tramp.
There is always something to discover in the land of the homeless. You learn quite a lot about streets which invariably escape your notice in ordinary life. Belvedere Road seemed to me one of the longest in London; it is full of many and curious depositories. I passed the office of the State of India tucked in between a beer-house and something to do with deep sea fisheries. Large and imposing brass plates recorded the names of obscure Government departments, hoary with age and decrepitude.
There were not many people in the road that night, and those that I passed were respectably dressed and seemed to be hurrying home to a nice supper. When I had almost given up hope of its discovery I chanced on the lodging house.
A large, austere-looking building, the exterior did not discourage me—I was prepared to scale any physical barriers to get a bed. It was the chill of the spirit that held me back. The lodging house was under the auspices of the Church Army, and this paralysed my will. I ought, of course, to have applied for admission, when I might have chanced on a more kindly reception. It was, I admit, a piece of moral cowardice to turn away from a door, but my state of mind was very raw, my emotions had been badly twisted. Something told me I should be refused for the second time, and it is too much to ask of even destitute humanity to be twice crucified on the same cross.
So I went off again on the tramp, making instinctively for a policeman.
“There’s a place where you may get put up somewhere near Southwark, in the neighbourhood of Union Street, I think.”
It was a cross-country journey, which you could not break by omnibus or tram; but I did not mind, for by this time the fascination of the streets had got me. There are two or three processes which you go through when you are homeless. At first when you have walked about for two or three hours you get very tired. Your head aches and your limbs are like lead; the fact that you have no fixed objective is like a pall on your spirits—you urge yourself forward on mere will. But if you keep on for another hour, or two, or three, your pains vanish—in some strange way you forget cold, hunger and thirst. Your brain is light, your feet move on air. The noises of the street form a monotonous accompaniment which gradually merges into silence; you see little, hear less, feel not at all. Trouble and regret fall from you—it is as though you were doped. You have no sense of distance or time, and gradually your movements become automatic. Instinctively you adopt the slouch of the tramp; you feel yourself one with the streets; you have lost your entity.
I walked through many ages, as it seemed to me, until I chanced upon the place described by the policeman. By this time it was very late, and as it was Saturday, lodgings for the night were difficult to get. If you keep your eyes open on a Sunday morning you will find there are not many homeless creatures in the streets. Everyone, however desolate, makes a push to get put up, somehow or other, for the seventh day. For this reason the lodging house was full, but the management was very kind. The superintendent saw that I was done, and asked me if I would like to rest by the fire in the kitchen—the same communal kitchen which sheltered me in many parts of London.
I was too tired to observe very closely, and with the understanding and good manners you always find among the destitute, I was not pestered with talk. I just sat by the fireside, feeling sorry for myself and all the rest. (This house is run by the Christian Herald Mission, and I found them very Christian. I visited the place later, and in due course shall have something to say on this count. But this story of my first night in the streets must not be broken in its continuity.) Very soon I went on the tramp again.
I could, I am sure, have sat there longer, but if you rest for more than a few minutes you get stiff, not only in body, but in mind, and the “doping” process I have mentioned, has to be gone through all over again. I explored many of the broad streets and fine roads of the district and gradually worked back to Blackfriars. It was past midnight, but near the Ring there was still a flaring whelk-stall round which some night birds were eating. There were no women among them. Women are not welcome at any kind of stall; indeed many coffee stall keepers will not serve you if you are alone, and even when you can persuade the proprietor to let you buy a cup of tea his manner is uncivil, even abusive. The most abject specimen of man is quite welcome if he has the pence to pay for his refreshment. But in the case of women there is the rooted belief that they must be bad lots or they would have a home; if they are not thieves they are prostitutes, and either way, even a commercial connection with them might cause trouble with the police.
When I hear eloquent and educated women declaim on the platforms as to the wrong done to our sex by some inequality of the law that gives the father priority of control over the child, or makes the husband responsible for his wife’s debts, my mind goes spinning back to those real disabilities which press on woman. Feminism might never have blared its trumpet for all the good it has done the derelict. Women have won the vote, it is true, but they have not won the right to decent lodging house accommodation, they have not won the right to purchase at a coffee stall a cup of tea or coffee or a penny bun. Their only hope of getting such refreshment, with civility, is to accompany a man. Woman qua woman among the derelict bears all the disabilities of her sex—and no one cares a pin about it.
I have never been able to understand why because a woman is a prostitute—often because she is tired of being without a bed—Society should be held blameless in withholding from her the rights and privileges of an ordinary citizen. Rightly and properly, public indignation is felt and expressed if a man in any walk of life is refused a glass of beer in a saloon bar, on account of his shabbiness. But no one seems to think it unjust or even strange that a coffee stall keeper should “shoo” off a woman who wants to buy food or drink in the watches of the night. I have tested this particular attitude. I have been out late in my ordinary attire and have asked for a cup of coffee, and I have never been refused. Indeed, the same stall keeper who told me gruffly he did not serve women when I was destitute, was more than affable when I appeared decently dressed. He supposed I was having a look round for curiosity, and was quite ready to give me any number of legends as to his observations of life.
It was a curious experience and taught me very much. Once more I was conscious of the hideous standard which schedules you solely by externals, and cannot see beyond a woman’s bedraggled hat and sodden coat.
The streets by this time were very empty. There was none of that lingering night life that you find in the West or the East End of London. It was as though the pavements had been swept of humanity, and in the frosty air my footsteps rang out sharply. I was not making for any particular spot—I just followed the way that fancy led me, going up one alley and down another. Past an open doorway, inside which a sleeping figure huddled, cowering deep down among its clothes. Sometimes other figures could be seen in a passageway and on the staircase, all motionless in the drugged sleep of intense fatigue.
As I emerged from one of the courts that intersect the main road at the foot of Blackfriars Bridge I was conscious of being followed. As I walked a shuffling, hesitant tread came behind me. When I stopped the unknown creature stopped as well. It was an eerie feeling, and it broke through the somnolence of nerve and muscle, awaking a sense of actual fear. Stirred to watchfulness, I could not bring myself to look round, but hurried on through a tangle of courts and narrow streets. And then I knew that the more I hurried, the more frightened I should get. Already the pursuer was invested with devilish attributes; I felt as though I were going to scream. But I got a grip of myself and stood quite still, waiting for the enemy to come up to me.
Along the pavement shuffled a pitiable looking woman, with the worst pair of boots that I have ever seen. She was hugging a shabby looking bundle and shivered every now and then with the cold. Her face was ageless with suffering, her eyes seemed to have lost all memory of hope.
“Is there anything you want?” said I. “Can I do anything for you?”
“It’s lonely like,” she said. “I’ve been by myself all the evening. I felt I’d like to be near someone for a bit.”
The loneliness of the streets is something that comes upon you in great waves. You are not conscious of it when you are doped with the eternal walking about, but when consciousness stirs, you know you are alone, and very frightened. It is as if you were in a cold sea, where you kept afloat by ceaseless striving, knowing that if a billow breaks over you, it will sweep you away.
“Is there anywhere you could get a bed?” said I.
She knew a place, she said, where she could get a shakedown for a few pence.
“One gets tired,” she said. “A bed sometimes is past dreaming.”
I had given up all thought of a bed for myself that night, so I gave her the price of mine. She was so surprised that it made me ashamed. She stood with the coppers in her hand, half hesitating as to whether she should take them. I gave her a friendly word and she shuffled off at last, making for the doss house where she hoped to shelter.
By this time I wanted to leave South London and get back to more familiar ground. I crossed Blackfriars Bridge and walked along the Embankment. In less inclement weather you will still find destitutes on the benches by the river, but on this bitter night no one could have spent a night in the open and remained alive.
I passed along in the ghostly silence, broken only by the lapping of the water on the piers. Presently I met another wanderer, a man this time. A genial down-and-out, with the desire for friendly intercourse.
“You’re in a hurry, aren’t you, mate?” said he.
“It’s cold,” I answered, “and I want to keep warm.”
“Are you making for over the bridges?”
“I’ve just come from there,” said I. “I shall go the other way.”
“Well, then, my way shall be yours, mate.”
I nodded acquiescence and we walked along in silence, broken occasionally by my attempts at conversation.
“I don’t know as I wants to talk, mate,” said my escort. “I just thought you might like my arm round your waist.”
There was a simplicity of approach about his method which took away all suggestion of any possible offence. After all, it was very natural to suppose that a homeless woman should like the attentions of a homeless man, and I could imagine that my friend was a very kindly creature, with a strong and comforting arm.
But custom and training, and some of that fastidiousness which even destitution cannot kill, made his request impossible. I thanked him very kindly, told him that I must hurry on, and left him, puzzled and protesting.
Throughout my many adventures I never chanced on a brutal or uncivil man. There is a gentle chivalry among those who from destitution, or by reason of their employment, are in the streets at night. There is no fear that a workman or a tramp will take you for what you are not, and the suggestion that I might like an arm round my waist is but the equivalent of an invitation to sit out for a dance. The only difference is that in the world of the homeless you just seize the moment as it flies; tonight you may be on Victoria Embankment, tomorrow may find you at Streatham Hill, or Kensal Green.
I have a very precious memory of one particular night. The bitter weather had broken, and it was mild, almost warm. I had come down the Embankment to go to the Metropolitan Asylums’ Board Office under Hungerford Bridge. There, as I have said, you may apply between the hours of 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. for a bed. The lucky ones are sent off to the Salvation Army Shelters, where they are housed free of charge, others are despatched to the Church Army, and the latest comers are sent to Southwark Casual Ward.
I was not lucky on this particular night. The shelters had taken their quota, and there only remained the workhouse. I did not want to repeat my experience; indeed, to tell the truth, I was a little frightened of venturing inside institutional doors again. So when they had given me my admission form and the red counters for my tram fare, I went back to the Embankment and sat down, waiting for something to turn up.
Now, as I always found in this strata of society, silence is a master card. You must leave it to others to speak to you. Two men came and sat beside me. They had been on night shift on some engineering works. They had also been chums in the war and recounted many experiences. I sat and listened with proper admiration, as becomes a woman, and I had my reward.
“George,” turned towards me.
“Aren’t you the young lady wot I saw come out of the Asylums Board, just now?”
I said that was the case.
“Did you get a bed, my gal?”
“They gave me an order for the workhouse, but I shan’t go there, I can’t stick it.”
“I should say not,” said George. “Did you hear that, Dick?” and he motioned to his friend.
“The workhouse ain’t any good,” said Dick. “Look here, my gal, you come on and have a cup o’ cawfee.”
I went with him meekly to a coffee stall near Savoy Hill. He bought me a cup of steaming hot coffee of excellent flavour, and offered me a piece of cake.
“You’re kindly welcome,” he said, politely, and seemed quite hurt when I refused. He told me he went to work every afternoon at four o’clock and got off just before midnight, when he always went for an airing before going home.
“It’s a treat to see the dawn come up in St. James’ Park. I fair love to sit in the Mall, and the lights across the river ain’t so dusty … Ain’t you got any friends, my gal?”
I said I had some friends, but they were very far away—as indeed they were during the whole of my adventure.
“I live with my father,” said Dick. “He’s just on seventy-three.” He told me the details of his family life, with a simple continuity, almost wholly lacking in the more sophisticated members of society.
“He’s a good old man, though it’s a bit dull sometimes. I shan’t get married while he lives, you know, there’s nobody else to look after him.”
I commended his affection and deplored the lack of responsibility evinced by his other relations.
“What do you say to having a walk round St. Thomas’s Hospital, my gal. It’s pleasant tonight.”
But I had had enough of South London and St. Thomas’s seemed a long way off.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Let’s go over to the Embankment and look at the river.”
I shall never forget the look in his eyes when I said this.
“None of that, my gal,” said he. “None of your looking at the river like that, you know.”
I did not realise what he meant, and leaned over the parapet, watching the lights and rather amused.
“Look here, my gal,” said he. “It ain’t a bit of good trying to throw yourself in, ’cause I shan’t let you. Things aren’t as bad with you as that, eh?”
There was a warm urgency in his voice, a real solicitude, utterly devoid of any artificiality. I was a woman in distress and the innate strength of the male was stirred in response to my need. He wasn’t going to let me hurt myself if he could help it.
“Oh, I’m not like that,” said I. “I shouldn’t throw myself in the river just because I was hard up.”
“Look here!” His kindly Cockney face peered into mine. “Let me give you your bed money. I can stand it all right.”
“It’s very kind of you.” It was a little difficult to speak, “but I don’t think I want a bed tonight. I’ll just go up to a lodging house I know and see if they’ll let me sit in the kitchen.”
“But you’re welcome, you know, you’re welcome!”
I knew that and told him so with considerable fervour.
“I’ve taken a liking to you, my gal,” said he. “I’m mostly here on the Embankment about twelve, and if you’re by tomorrow you’ll find me. Don’t be afraid, if you can’t get any work tomorrow; I shall make you take your bed money then.”
He did not try to induce me to stop and chat; he did not try to accompany me. He left me with a beaming smile and the assurance that he would be on the Embankment if I wanted him.
This is but one of the many instances of chivalry that I have met with, and not only I, but others in my case. I don’t suppose Dick troubled as to the moral character of the woman he was good to. I don’t suppose he asked himself if I were a prostitute or a thief; he took a liking to me because he was not blinded by externals, and found something in a destitute woman akin to himself, and he offered to her the testimony of his belief and the great wealth of his generosity.
On most evenings the Asylums Board Office contains an assortment of derelicts. The most wretched of street sellers go there as a last resource. There also women, stranded in London, find their way. The police all over London have instructions to send here outcasts of both sexes who want a bed. Rarely, however, do you find a prostitute among the applicants. Only once did I meet one of their number. She was a pretty little creature and wore her thin coat with an air. She was in the inevitable sunset stockings, but her patent shoes were deplorably rent. She looked round fearfully and came towards me, wanting reassurance.
“There’s no fear of their sending me to gaol, dear, is there? It was a bobby who sent me here, he said they’d give me a bed. I haven’t been in bed for two nights, business has been too bad. I couldn’t raise the price even for a shakedown. But—but—I can’t risk being sent to choky; you don’t think they’ll run me in, dear, do you?”
I told her there was no fear of that, and being called into the next room to give particulars, she left me with an appealing glance. But she came up to scratch with all the bravery of her type. Through the half-open door I heard the interview. She gave her name, insisted that she was a dressmaker and had been born in Nottingham.
“My parents?” she said. “Oh, my father was a sergeant-major, and my mother was the daughter of a Baptist minister. Anything else you’d like to know?”
The official closed the interrogation and handed her the paper of admission and she went off, with a wave of her hand. Appearances like hers are fugitive, for, at the risk of repetition, I want to make this plain: the little prostitute avoids the institution like the plague.
I have been told by many people that it is she who makes it impossible to run successful women’s lodging houses. It has been said that Lord Rowton, who devoted so much energy and money to providing houses for destitute men, refused even to contemplate the problem of destitute women. I do not know what is meant by the term successful in this connection. From an economic standpoint the results should be quite satisfactory. From a social standpoint they should be desirable, and as I contend, with the moral standpoint, lodging housekeepers have nothing to do. Nor, in my opinion, has Society. For the causes that drive a girl to the street, few people are concerned. To suggest that she often sells her body to give herself a bed, is an explanation very few have heard, but it is a true one. And if we get down to bedrock fundamentals, a homeless woman, whatsoever her moral character, is still a terrible indictment of society. But until Society refuses to act with moral courage, our streets will be full of derelict women, quite as many of them physically as chaste as the most bigoted puritan.
I left the Embankment and went up Whitehall towards St. Martin’s Church. The crypt is always open to the homeless, and on a cold night is fairly full. Sleeping figures huddled on forms are dimly seen, each with their own secrets and sufferings. But, though I was dog-tired, I did not feel I could spend the few remaining hours before the dawn in this particular place. The old horror of sleeping strangers that I had first felt at Mare Street, Hackney, came back to me, and I turned from the door and resumed my tramp.
I don’t distinctly remember the route I took. I was fairly doped by this time, and a curious exhilaration, almost an exaltation of spirit filled me. It seemed to me I had found freedom, the freedom that comes of cutting off those intimate responsibilities, centred in home and friends. I had no call to be back at any hour; I could walk forever, or so long as my strength held out, if I pleased. Imagination released, or stimulated by hunger, reached out to tracks I had never before explored.
It was with a shock that I found myself at St. Pancras Station just after seven.
I went into the waiting room, and curling up on one of the settees, went to sleep. The destitute can sleep when and where the opportunity finds them, and most mercifully I was not disturbed. When I awoke I had a wash and some breakfast and prepared to face a new day.