Consider for a moment what this means. A woman goes to bed with all the day’s dirt and fatigue upon her. In the morning if she desires to wash—and who does not?—she has to choose between dabbing herself in a limited supply of water or going downstairs across the courtyard and into the scullery. Which means that she must dress to go downstairs—you carry your wardrobe with you—and undress again on a flagged floor in the cruel cold of a winter’s morning. The man who goes to a public lodging house is very differently placed. He can have a hot bath, and, if he wishes, wash his shirt or pants and dry them in a hot-air closet in a few minutes. Woman, whose physical formation calls for more scrupulous cleanliness than man, is shut off from access to soap and water unless she is prepared to stand the unpleasant conditions above described.
This lack of washing accommodation is not confined to Kennedy Court. Women’s public lodging houses are all deficient in this respect, though the establishments run by religious bodies are generally better equipped.
For the accommodation I have outlined—the use of a soiled bed, cold water and the lodging house kitchen—the charge is one shilling and twopence a night. This is an economic rent; eight and twopence a week for the use of a bed, is sufficient to provide clean sheets, proper bathrooms and human conditions. But even on the plea of good business I have been unable to get anyone to move in this matter. Thus, within a stone’s throw of the most luxurious part of London, you have a condition of things differing in essentials very little from the slums. And what I have said as to Kennedy Court holds good in varying degrees about the other lodging houses.
The process of undressing for the outcast is simple. A dim gas mantle gave an irritating light which enabled me darkly to follow the movements of my room mates. The general custom is to sleep—in the winter at all events—in all your clothes, removing your hat and shoes for the sake of courtesy. The younger girls take off their outer garments sometimes, but the older hands cling tightly to every stitch; a course—as I was subsequently to discover—highly to be commended.
I produced a nightgown from my brown paper parcel, and placed my clothes at the end of the bed, from whence at intervals they slipped on to the floor, to be recaptured by my groping hand, only to slide off once again. It must have been about two o’clock before the last vacant bed was filled. Downstairs in the kitchen high jinks were in progress; they were singing songs, dancing and generally enjoying life.
“It’s an awful noise, dear, isn’t it?” said the latest comer. She spoke with refinement, so much refinement that she was almost “naice.”
“One does not sleep in such a place as this from choice,” she continued. “I have never been here before but once.”
“It isn’t very comfortable,” I agreed, and watched her divest herself of two coats, two skirts, and other articles of apparel, all in duplicate.
“No, I don’t care to go into the room downstairs, and let all those women see me. They’re not fit to associate with, dear. But, as I say, in these hard times, one can’t afford four and sixpence for a night’s lodging; things have changed since the war.”
By this time she was in her petticoat. She stared at me curiously from the other side of the bed. I don’t think she altogether liked the look of me, for she solemnly re-invested herself in two of everything, and complacently got in between the sheets, fully clothed.
“I have a flat of my own, dear, beautifully appointed, electric light and hot and cold. But nowadays tradespeople are so tiresome; and I’ve had to leave it. You see I can’t go back because they insist I must settle their bills. That,” she said, with a spacious gesture, “is why I wear my two costumes.”
Presently the old crone extinguished the defective gas mantle, the noise died away from the kitchen downstairs, and Kennedy Court composed itself to slumber. I slept, but fitfully. I had not dreamt there were so many women without habitation or home, and the knowledge that, purely through force of circumstances, and by no individual merit, I was in possession of both, rankled—a sore injustice. Why should these young girls, these elderly women, be cut off from those things without which the soul cannot flower? Why should I, and so many hundreds like me, sleep softly and securely while their dragging feet walked the pavement, or, at best, found soiled shelter for the night?
The tragedy of the outcast came very close to me next morning. Ida woke us up about nine, and from under the clothes my room mates emerged, like full fledged chrysalis, completely clothed. The lady of the flat was not very cheerful. Like the rest, she dressed herself entirely in bed—an art that cannot easily be learned—and then, when the second coat was buttoned and she crawled from the dirty sheets, she began to cry.
“Aren’t you well?” I asked, and felt the utter feebleness of the words.
“Oh, my dear,” she said, “it’s the walking about, the walking about. Day after day, it’s always the same.”
And this is the sort of thing that goes on among
