“You wait an’ listen, me dear. When he was through with giving the poor thing to the police, he comes to me an’ wants to start me washing the floor. I didn’t argue, I just said, quite quiet, ‘But, Master, that’s not the law, an’ none should know it better than you—an’ me belly is empty an’ on an empty belly the law says you mustn’t put me to work. An’ I’ll be pleased an’ proud to tell the Bench the same.’ ”
“He scowled at me, but I had me bit of cheese before I scrubbed. I wasn’t bearing him any ill-will, but he got a spite against me, an’ when it was time for me to leave I had a cup of cold gruel, though something hot in the way of tea is the right of ev’ryone before they leave the House. He wouldn’t give me any, so I took the gruel an’ hides it in the garden, an’ then I walks out an’ I asks if there’s anyone can send me to a committee lady, an’ don’t you forget, me dear, that’s what you’ve got to do. Always go to a committee lady. I found one right enough, an’ I asked her very civil if she’d be kind enough to step up to the House an’ see me breakfast. An’ she came, God bless her, an’ I showed her me gruel. She put the Master in his place an’ stood by while I had me cup of tea, an’ she wished me a pleasant good morning an’ gave me sixpence. But—”—Kitty spat on her blacklead brush—“I can’t never go to Tonbridge again.”
But for Kitty’s entertainment time would have been a heavy burden. There is nothing so enervating to the spirit as a repetition of totally useless work, and the only alternative to the re-scrubbing of tables already scrubbed, the re-polishing of handles already shining, is to pick oakum. This is of all tasks the most cruel. It tears the finger nails and soils the soul; it has no value, social or economic. Oakum is employed, it is true, as hospital swabs, but, like all mechanical, impersonal labour, it is untouched with any satisfaction. Oakum-picking is part of the system deliberately designed to deter people from claiming a night’s lodging to which, as members of a community heavily rated, they are entitled.
The same system compels the compulsory detention of any casual until the morning of the second day. There could be no ethical or material objection to any woman doing two or three hours’ useful work. This, however, is not the object, which is to undermine all feelings of self-respect, and implant in the mind the belief that poverty is a crime which must be heavily punished. Not by any active or deliberate cruelty, but by the imposition of futile yet degrading denials. This denial of liberty, this abnegation of freedom, is so insistent that only in the last resource will a London outcast go into the House. The case of women on the road is different and will be subsequently dealt with.
Following on the publication in a Sunday newspaper of my article dealing with the Casual Ward, a revision of the rules has taken place. Oakum picking has been abolished for both male and female casuals, and the latter are now permitted to spend two or three hours daily in washing and mending their clothes and attending to their persons. These alterations, with the provision of hot tea at breakfast, already referred to, stand to the credit of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, and though there is still much which awaits reform, these alterations afford me and my fellow casuals cause for thankfulness.
The arrival of the superintendent, a pretty woman, with bobbed hair, aroused my jaded energies. I seized on a duster and rubbed at a door handle, breathing heavily on the brass. My request was explained to her by an attendant official.
“Have you any hope of work?” she asked.
“At Ealing,” I answered, “I am sure of a day’s charing.” Ealing was the first place I could think of.
“Have you been here before?” she asked.
“It’s the first time I have ever slept in a casual ward.”
“In that case I’ll let you go. But you must understand if you come back here within a month you will have to stay for three days; if you return next month, you will have to stay the usual time—a day and a night. On no account will you be let off again.”
I wanted to blaze out my sense of the injustice of this rule, but I remembered in time that she was but the instrument and not the law, and I realised that the Superintendent, like the other officials, was far more humane than the institution which they served. Besides, I was beginning to have a wholesome fear of the State; I did not want to be thrust back into that awful cell. The thought of a second night in that funnel-shaped coffin appalled me. I hurriedly thanked her, and turned towards the office to get my hat and coat, powder puff and pence.
But I was not to leave the house without further proof of loving kindness. The battered Ellen came after me and slipped into my hand a thing most valued in the outcast life—a piece of soap.
I followed the attendant down the stone stairs, a very nice young woman, whom I shall always remember with gratitude. She advised me to go to the Labour Exchange and said that daily chars were in demand and she wished me good luck with a bright smile.
The door clanged behind me and I went out into the bleak, raw day, feeling as if I had escaped from the grave. I reeled almost with the sense of liberty, a liberty that my hunger, weariness and great distress could not embitter. I understood then why it is that humanity dreads what is known as organised relief. I contrasted the ghastly regulations of
