“Why you’re quite clean,” she said, and seemed remarkably astonished. “It’s such a relief,” she continued, “to find someone who isn’t dirty. By the by, is your head all right?”
I bowed for her inspection, and my hair passed muster.
“You’ve no idea what some of them are like, you know. We have women in here who are fairly alive.”
“They can’t help it, really, can they?” I said protestingly. “It’s difficult to find the money for a wash, let alone a bath.”
“But it’s unfair to the others, all the same,” said the young woman, “and the worst of it is some of them won’t let you touch their heads.”
It was not any good to argue the point, and her attitude is quite explicable. It is not a nice job to have to “cleanse” heads riddled with lice. As I have said a number of outcasts decline to let their hair be interfered with. A small percentage, however, yield to necessity and submit to treatment.
The particular official who is on duty has to tackle the proposition with results unpleasing to a sensitive stomach. Generally speaking, when the offending head is shaved, and excavations conducted under the scalp—for lice burrow deep—the patient is exhausted. For it is a strange thing that, deprived of this mass of obscene life, the body seems to grow weak, and frequently a day or two in bed in the infirmary is necessary to restore normal conditions. It may be that the unceasing irritation which would drive most people almost mad, serves as a kind of counterblast to the mental stress of seeking food and lodging. In other words, the ceaseless activity of the lice may prove an anodyne to the pangs of starvation. Remove the artificial stimulus and collapse sets in.
I followed the bright-faced young woman along a bleak corridor, dressed in the workhouse nightgown, a striped garment, fastening at the back, with long enveloping sleeves.
“Leave your clothes on the floor outside the door,” she said, “they’ll be inspected, and, if necessary—baked.”
This was a polite way of telling me that should my garments prove to be verminous they would be dealt with. There is always a hot chamber working in the House. Sometimes the clothes suffer as well as the insects, and the unfortunate casual gets back a singed skirt, or a scorched petticoat. I was put wise as to this by a wonderful woman, by name Kitty Grimshaw, one of the finest characters on the road.
“If they burns your clothes, me dear,” she said, “they’re bound to make ’em good, the law says so, and I stands by the law.”
There is nothing indeed about the law as it applies to the Workhouse that Kitty does not know. She is like one of those old soldiers, who have mastered King’s Regulations so completely that they can trip up a superior officer at any minute.
“Law is law,” Kitty always says, “and don’t you forget to let the Master know you know it.”
I was given a mattress, a pillow and a pair of blankets, and told to take them into my “cell”—word of ill omen. It sent a shudder through my body. I do not understand why the word “cell” is employed, unless it be that it is so exact a replica of the prison variety that even the official sense of humour would boggle at another name. Still, cubicle might be tried; it would not have so ominous a suggestion.
I was left in the darkness very much alone. I had been oppressed with the sense of sleeping humanity the previous night; I had been surrounded by an atmosphere that would not let me rest; but in the terrible isolation of my cell, my soul ached for the company of the women with their unspeakable bundles, their rabbit skins, their “mog.”
High up in the wall was a tiny, round window, like a porthole, far beyond my power to reach. There was a little observation shutter in the door; now and again it was lifted and the light from the corridor outside peeped in.
The mattress was not too hard, the blankets soft and warm, but the pillow was as stiff as a log of wood. It is as though the Guardians feel the casual must not have comfort everywhere. This policy is part of the determination to prevent a return visit. Thus, you may stretch your limbs, hug your arms under soft fleecy wool, but your head shall find no ease. To and fro—to and fro, you turn on that torturous pillow.
The “cell,” slightly funnel-shape, is like a coffin, as it suddenly occurred to me. I felt myself entombed in an instant, cut off forever from the light of day. I wanted to scream—a sob choked my throat—I was getting hysterical—and I knew it. And over and above all this quaking of the flesh, and shrinking of the spirit, was another and more dreadful piece of knowledge. I knew that if I tried the handle of the door it would not open. No handle was there. I could not escape from my funnel-shaped coffin, I might beat my hands upon the wall, but I could not get free.
I felt that if I went to the door and ratified my instinctive suspicion I should be unable to control myself. So I kept quiet and would not go to see what I feared was true. But in the grey dawning when I was quieter—though I had not slept—I crept out and went towards the door. And it was even as I had thought.
Some months ago there was a case in the police court, where it was alleged an inmate of a casual ward was “locked” in her cell. The superintendent stated upon oath that this was not so. “There are,” he said, “no keys.”
I know of no better example of the letter of the truth—and the violation of
