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
