The official explanation of this device would appear quite reasonable. It is said that if people could open their doors and come out of their cells, they would visit each other all night. One or two convivial spirits might, perhaps, drift into the corridor, but for the most part the casual is so dog-tired that any such spirit of enterprise is knocked out. But even were every casual to emerge, an attendant on night duty could shoo them back with the warning that if they came out again they would be shut in. It is as I have said, the Guardians do not desire to extend hospitality too often. Therefore, they inflict slight penalties upon the body and the soul, which, in the aggregate, make up a sum sufficiently imposing to make a night in the ward a thing most strenuously to be avoided.
I had always known that the Guardians deliberately adopt this regime, that their chief intent is to keep casuals “out,” not to welcome them in. But to know a thing and to experience it is widely different. I wish some of the guardians could be “destitute” and try their own wards.
We were aroused the next morning about half-past five. The cell door was open. I found my clothes outside the door and put them on in the dim light. I could see other figures also putting on their clothes up and down the corridor. It was a queer experience. Things always seem foreshortened in the half-light before the night is utterly faded away and the morning come. When we were all dressed we folded up our blankets and carried them with pillow and mattress to the end of the corridor from whence they were despatched to be fumigated. Outside each door the number is painted in bold figures—a discovery which somehow made me feel more than ever like a convict. We were then shepherded into the day room, a mournful place with bare boards, whitewashed walls and a long trestled table. There was no fire in the grate. Large tin mugs full of what was supposed to be tea were placed on the table together with slices of bread spread with a particularly distasteful brand of “marge.”
After a bad night every woman aches for a cup of tea, and I do not think I ever felt more disappointed than when I found the liquid in the tin mugs to be loathsomely lukewarm. I could have cried at this uncalled-for rebuff. I was prepared for weak or unsweetened, but not cold tea. This piece of foolish unkindness, as I have said, is now remedied. The tea made for the men is poured off into an urn which sings merrily on a gas ring until required.
I tried to munch a piece of bread, but the marge was more than I could stomach, and feeling rather light in the head and unhappy about the heart, I sat on a form and observed my fellows.
The hour for leaving the House from the casual ward is somewhere about half-past seven. A good few were going out that morning and I listened with interest to their plans. One woman, young and good looking, was anxiously asking how she could get from Southwark to Dulwich, because she had no knowledge of London and possessed but a few pence. She was an ironer by trade and should have had little difficulty in getting work. It was Kitty Grimshaw who told her what to do.
“Get the other side of Westminster Bridge, me girl,” said she, “and ask a likely looking chap the nearest way. As like as not he’ll give you a copper.”
The young woman departed, and her place was taken by a gaunt female who came to the same fountainhead for information.
She wanted to know the best casual wards on the road to Tunbridge Wells, and once more the fine old Irishwoman came to the rescue. Kitty has a strong, handsome face. She is over sixty, but quite upright, with a wealth of greyish hair and quick, humorous eyes. She is a most efficient woman and, as she told me, can plant a field of potatoes with any man, and is first on the list for a number of fruit pickers. She is well-known at Southwark, where she returns every month or six weeks. She has been on the road for some eight years, driven there by that economic pressure which has dehoused so many women. She lived for some time in a room in Kennington, supporting herself by daily housework, with occasional incursions into a laundry.
“And then, me dear, they wanted me room, so they could get more rent—and somehowes they managed it and I’ve been on the road ever since. A fine, healthy life it is, and many’s the helping hand I get, though—” she glanced at her feet, “boots is me trouble. You’re new to the House, me dear,” she added, “but don’t you worry, I’ll put you right, so that you’ll know what to do when you come again.”
It was at this moment that a short, stugger little woman with a red face claimed attention. She was very agitated and most aggrieved. It seems that her vest, which had been fumigated with the rest of her clothes, was missing from her bundle, and leave the House without that vest she would not. The attendant on duty, a kindly young woman, of great humanity and understanding, had hunted for it up and down the corridor, but nowhere could it be found. Various women were interrogated but not a shadow of a vest was forthcoming. The red faced lady would not budge; the vest was hers, and somehow or other it must be produced.
“And right you are,” said Kitty, “and isn’t it the law? They take your clothes and if they lose your clothes you’ve got to have the
