VII
Knocking at the Gate
It is confidently assumed that the doss house is extinct. The Public Lodging House for women, licensed by the London County Council, is supposed to have taken its place. This is not so. There are doss houses in all the poorer quarters of London, though they are more numerous on the south side of the river and in the East End than in other districts. The class of lodger who uses this kind of place for a night’s shelter is lower in the social scale than the women who frequent the lodging houses. There is, of course, the great economic difference between those who can pay one shilling and twopence, and those who can only rise to fourpence and, in some cases, threepence. As I explained, my first experience only cost me twopence, owing to the intervention of the lady in the plush coat. The general tariff is fourpence, and the accommodation is not so vastly inferior to those places which are supposed to be inspected by the L.C.C. and are permitted—so far as the beds are concerned—to flourish in undiminished dirt.
The doss houses are owned by individual proprietors, though I gather that there has arisen in this, as in other industries, a syndicate. The manageress, if she may be so called, is an employee at a small salary, and in certain instances, receives a commission on the takings. There is also frequently, a man on the premises in case of a disturbance. Usually, the outcasts who frequent the doss house are not quarrelsome—they have not the energy; but cases have been known of a free fight, invariably terminated by the arrival of the man in charge who bundles the combatants out of the house. The floors are dirty, the bed clothes are of that uniform drab-grey which harbours dirt without exposing it. It is a dreadful colour, and always you feel that underneath the surface there must lurk thousands of germs, noxious bacilli and, very often, lice and bugs.
Bugs I met with, lice I did not encounter, generally speaking. This is, I think, a very definite alteration in the underworld of London. Not so many years ago, lice were rampant in many quarters, but, as I have said, the use of chemicals keeps them down, for which relief I give much thanks.
The people who use this kind of shelter are personally very dirty. They rarely have any opportunity of changing their clothes. They have lost that zest for personal daintiness so conspicuous at Kennedy Court, where the poorest little prostitute will wash her rags at every opportunity. Clean hands are not the rule in these particular sections, and many of the women are perennially verminous, so far as their hair is concerned. The strange thing is that, no matter how infected, they will not have it cut. It is not a question of shame; it is not a desire to escape criticism, for they could quite easily cut their hair themselves, nor is there any occasion to seek an official. But cut their hair they will not and masses of unkempt locks are wound round the head, literally alive with insects.
It is, I think, a feeling that long hair is the last touch of feminine attraction that life has left them. Possibly they feel that a cropped head would unsex them. They never express irritation at their uncomfortable condition—they regard it, very largely, as an act of God, and day after day carry their load of dirt and misery without the faintest hope of any relief.
So keen is their resolve not to have their hair cut off that when, as sometimes happens, they are forced into the casual wards through sheer inability to walk, they will come out in the middle of the night rather than agree to have their heads attended to.
Next to the question of hair the matter of feet is the most crucial. Boots are an insoluble problem, for they are always worn out. The most shapeless and terrible apologies for shoes are met with in the doss houses and the street, broken in the soles, bursting out at the sides, with huge cracks across the instep that chafe the skin and set up running sores. The cheapest pair of the most secondhand kind is beyond the means of this type of outcast to purchase, for, as the external condition deteriorates, so the earning capacity dwindles, and the danger of being arrested as a beggar increases. Many of them replenish their footwear from the scourings of dust bins. In the early morning you will often find a furtive figure turning over the refuse of the roadside. Crusts of bread are taken, and all kinds of garbage; but the treasure trove is a shoe, and if a pair is salved from the wreckage, physical contentment is assured.
The feet of the woman tramp, or street vendor—it is the same thing—are very pitiful to see. They are almost nonhuman in their shapelessness. Callosities, horny growths, bunions, destroy their contours, running sores are perennial and the efforts of Nature to escape the pain of contact with rough leather, result in distortion of the bone. Ingrowing nails are common; how should it be otherwise? The care of the feet calls for plentiful hot water and requisite toilet accessories; and these women, of whom I write, have not the means to wash their sores. There is, of course, due bathing accommodation in the casual ward of a workhouse, but as I shall show, the thing that survives longest and most fiercely among the destitute, is a passionate fear of restriction, the horror of detention within four walls, under a strange roof. For this reason before they will ask a night’s lodging of the Poor Law Guardians they will push endurance to an inhuman limit.
This is especially the case with the outcasts of the London streets. These women who have taken to the road and go out into the country have accustomed themselves to the casual ward, have assimilated every twist and turn of the law, and know to a nicety what they must do, and what the master has not the power to enforce.
There are some doss houses which are licensed by the L.C.C. Of these the Salvation Army Shelter in Hanbury Street, Whitechapel, is the largest. There for the sum of fivepence an outcast, however dilapidated, dirty, starving, or afflicted, can get a clean, warm bed. My night in Hanbury Street was one of the most poignant experiences of my adventures, and I shall deal with it at length later on. At the moment I am concerned to show how and where the outcasts sleep when they have sunk below the economic level of the licensed lodging house.
For those who have no money, not even a copper, there remains St. Crispin’s Dormitories. This Shelter, in the neighbourhood of Spitalfields, is run by charitable Catholics. The accommodation of necessity is frugal. A number of boxes run the length of the room, each box is provided with a mattress, pillow and blanket, and to obtain a box, women walk for miles and queue up early in the evening. Here there is considerable difficulty in keeping the place free from vermin, for very many of the lodgers have that long, matted hair which I have already described. St. Crispin’s is open from October to May. During the summer months it shuts down, for when the weather is warm a night on the Embankment or in one of the many open spaces of London is not insufferable. It is when the world is freezing and the wind cuts to your very soul that you cry out blindly for a bed. At such a time a dog kennel would seem hospitable: and yet all through the winter months hundreds of outcast women spend the night huddled in doorways, under arches, or keep themselves from freezing by that everlasting walking about.
The accommodation offered to women by the Metropolitan Board of Guardians is extremely limited. In the whole of London—North, South, East and West—there is but one casual ward where the destitute female can find a bed. The reasons for this limitation are interesting. Since the War, women’s casual wards have been handed over to the other sex. Paddington was a last female trench; now this has gone, and only Southwark remains. It follows, therefore, that to get a bed you must often—indeed, most frequently—traverse the length and breadth of London. For how shall it profit the outcasts at Highgate to know that on the other side of Lambeth Bridge a cubicle awaits them?
This male invasion of casual wards, intended for women, is an outcome of the fear of the authorities that an ex-service man should be discovered bedless and starving in the streets. This would arouse a very general indignation, and a steady fire of middle class criticism would be directed against the powers that be; it is the middle class, far more than the Socialist or Communist groups, that authority always fears. Were a man, who had fought in his country’s cause, found on the Embankment in the last stage of exhaustion, letters to the Press would rain down from all parts, the whole question of unemployment would be raised, and the old taunt of ingratitude flung in the teeth of the particular Cabinet responsible at the time.
There have been very few cases reported of ex-soldiers and sailors driven to the last gasp of endurance; and in order to prevent, so far as possible, such a contingency, the women’s wards of the workhouses have been taken from them. I want to make it perfectly plain that I, for one, would not take any beds from the men who fought for England. But why should the women, wives, mothers, sisters, sweethearts, of those same heroes be flung into the street in order to save the authorities from well-merited attack? The plea, that an old soldier must not starve, does not and cannot justify the callous indifference shown to a woman homeless and hungry.
There is no question of charity involved in the matter of the casual ward. The workhouse is kept up out of the rates, and every citizen, male and female, has a right to claim the shelter thus provided. But because no one cares what happens to the woman who is down and out, because no one troubles to enquire if she has a place wherein to lay her head, she is deliberately and specifically thrown to the dogs, that Cabinet Ministers may escape a whipping.
This is not the only penalty exacted from my sex. The men in the casual ward have hot tea every morning; the women have the dregs of their teapots an hour later. This, at least, was the state of things at Southwark Workhouse where I spent a night in the casual ward. Following on my revelation of this cruel custom in a Sunday newspaper, the Board of Guardians gave instructions that Southwark should be provided with a gas stove whereon an urn could sit, in which the tea could be kept hot.
As well as the superior accommodation of male public lodging houses, and the unfair division of the casual wards, the authorities rightly afford opportunity for an out-of-work, or a destitute man to make good. The master of every workhouse is instructed particularly to note those male casuals who have been in the Army or the Navy; those with any trace of education; those who have average abilities. These men when they leave the ward are given an order of admission to a hostel in Holborn, where they stay, free of charge, for a week. The conditions of life there are quite human; they have good food, decent beds, rooms for recreation and free tobacco. I cannot speak too highly of the arrangements; they provide a man with a chance to regain the footing he has lost. During the week’s stay all efforts are made to find him a job, and he is allowed to come and go in his search for employment without let or hindrance. Wise provision, admirable organisation! For the sake of the men who have endured something of what I and my sisters have passed through, I am thankful beyond words that such a place exists.
But why, because an outcast is a woman, should she be debarred from opportunity to make a living? Any one of the women with whom I came in contact—I do not include the little prostitutes—provided with a week’s respite, in decent conditions, afforded the opportunity to wash their rags, to mend their clothes and regain something of the human attributes of their beginnings, would emerge a different creature. But no! it does not matter what happens to the woman derelict; the policy seems to be that the sooner she dies of starvation and exposure the better for society.
There is no need, human or economic, to salve her. She is of no account. But save the man! Use the casual wards. Inspect the lodging houses. Throw open the kindly doors of a comfortably equipped hostel, and the Government shall escape the castigation they so merit. Apart from the Salvation Army, and one or two other bodies, the woman outcast in the London streets today is as derelict as the woman of Hood’s great lines.
Apart from political considerations there is, I think, a psychological explanation that the spectacle of a man out of work, feeling the humiliation which is the inevitable accompaniment of dependence, arouses not only commiseration, but indignation in the minds of the majority of women. Something, they feel, must be wrong with society, otherwise why should a decent, good-looking, well-spoken fellow be obliged, if not to beg, to do something very like it? But let a vagrant of the female sex come to the door, and, generally speaking, she creates a feeling of distrust, if not hostility. Dirt, in a man, not infrequently suggests romance—in a woman it implies degradation, neglect and an obstinate refusal to undertake the obligations of her sex.
No housewife of the well-kept home feels comfortable with an unkempt creature in the vicinity. “Get rid of her” is the usual instruction and irritable desire, generally coupled, I admit, with an instruction to hand out a piece of bread—never, I swear, with that additional butter which makes it fit for human consumption. Oh! the difference between bread and bread-and-butter! If it were only possible for those people who never have to worry about their next meal to know the bitter taste of dry bread. Margarine, that substitute for generosity, beloved of the meagre, raises false hopes. How eagerly you take the first bite, with what satisfaction you proceed to masticate, and then—that sickly, salty, rancid flavour overcomes you and in a violent physical revulsion you spit it out. There are brands of margarine which pass muster on the palate; but these are not for the delectation of the outcast. Poverty is their crime, and the punishment is unremitting. I have broken into this dissertation, because I am tired of hearing good and comfortable women complain of the wicked waste of good victuals bestowed at their back door. Tales have been told me of hungry beggars who cast slices of the best household in the gutter just outside. Judicious enquiry has generally uncovered the fact that the bread was very stale, and to make a meal on stale bread, unmoistened, is a physical impossibility, as I myself can testify. It is quite useless to say to the good and virtuous “Give money.” The answer is “They will spend it in drink”—a wise provision of nature mercifully ordained for the comfort of the stomach. For when your energy is gone and you are vitiated and trembling, your digestion will not assimilate cold bread, but will respond immediately to the tonic of a glass of beer, or a cup of hot coffee. Wherefore, so say all outcasts, blessed be she who dispenses coppers instead of broken meat. Though a nicely cut sandwich, such as you would eat yourself, does not come amiss.
But such is not the luck of woman. Too often she is regarded as a perambulatory dust bin, and packets of bread the worse for wear, mouldy potatoes, cheese rinds, are thrust upon her, thus clearing the pantry and poulticing the faint sense of reproach that sometimes attacks the amply nurtured. But make no mistake; those cruelly deceptive packages, unacceptable to man or beast, only serve to dishearten. I can imagine no greater nor more cruel disappointment, than awaits the poor woman who undoes the brown paper and white string so thoughtfully provided by the villa resident, only to discover the spring cleanings of the larder.
It is not for food alone that the outcast comes to the back door. There is always the lingering hope that a pair of boots may come her way. But since the war, such gifts are very rare and very precious, and indeed as a fellow outcast, some fifteen years upon the road, assured me, it is but seldom nowadays that you get so much as an old skirt.
Country houses are far more responsive in this respect than London. Probably the tradition of a large hearted hospitality still lingers, and the old commandment of the Middle Ages that none should be sent empty away may yet hold good. At any rate, I know that some of my outcast friends possess not only boots, but comfortable waterproofs and well-worn tweeds, and, as they have told me, there are places where they make a call each month or six weeks, and always there is a pile of garments waiting for them. It is interesting to note that when an outcast does obtain a decent garment she does not, as is popularly supposed, hurry to the pawnshop to raise the price of a pint of beer. For, I say again, beer plays a very small part in the life of the down-and-out, and once having got a garment able to resist the wind and weather, she will cling to the same until its final dissolution or her extreme need.
There is a nice legal point in relation to this collecting of clothes. He or she who goes to a house and asks for food or raiment is held guilty of begging and may be given in charge. But, so says the law, you may call at any house and offer to sell matches, or pins, or hairpins, or some other unimportant trifle, and there is nothing against the suggestion that the wares may be exchanged for the cast-offs of the wardrobe. Thus are the police placated and the liberty of the individual secured. Only in one case may proffered sale be omitted. You may call at any religious institution and ask for food without fear of the courts, even under the very shadow of a constable.
A dear old tramp of my acquaintance indulges in this exercise as a form of sport and greatly delights to ring the bell of a certain Nazareth House with the appraising eye of a policeman upon her. Women do not, as a rule, offer plants in exchange for clothes. That is a branch of industry reserved for men. Nor is this to be wondered at. The enthusiastic young wife who joyfully surrenders her husband’s favourite jacket for an aspidistra, at the persuasion of a man, would indignantly refuse a similar proposal from a member of her own sex. She would, indeed, immediately credit the woman with sinister designs. What should she do with a jacket? While the bare notion that any of her pretty garments should go to the clothing of the vagrant would be so distasteful as to induce the abrupt closing of the door. It may be that better luck attends the outcast at the country house because there we still find the male retainer. Even in moderate mansions or dwellings of still lesser calibre, something like a butler, a footman or a tweeny man, is yet to be found, and the immutable law of sex decrees that the most battered specimen of femininity will find a readier sympathy in the bosom of a man than from a more blooming specimen of womanhood.
This then, seems to me, an additional reason why the case of the outcast woman should be dealt with justly. Most of these street wanderers have been wives, many of them have been mothers, and for this reason alone their cry should appeal to the heart of man.