And if I felt this in an institution characterised by the humanity of the officials, how intolerable must be the bitterness of a House ruled by insentient force? I thought of Kitty standing up before the master at Tonbridge and fighting the Law, and in my first flush of recovered independence I saluted that fine old warrior battling, not for her belly alone, but for the bellies of others.
There is, I understand, a Union of Poor Law Officials, who, apart from their work of obtaining decent wages and conditions for the members, are steadily striving to alter the regulations governing casuals. In this they are helped by individual guardians. But on the whole Boards have developed little consciousness since the days of Bumble. They have no souls to save nor bodies to be kicked and, while in London, at any rate, superintendents, male and female, have lost that sense of brutal superiority condemned by Dickens, their superiors have remained untouched. In the process of economic evolution, the soul of Bumble has ascended to a higher social plane.
I left before the midday meal, which consists of potatoes, bread, and a little cheese. The evening meal is skilly. The casuals have no tea, except in the morning. I rejoice to think that on this morning on which I write the women at Great Guildford Street have their tea hot; a small thing—but to them a great feat to have accomplished.
IX
Kitty and the Widow Who Drugged
What is it that drives women to the Casual Ward? The unthinking will answer at a venture, drink, depravity, or in exceptional cases, persistent misfortune. The class of women which seeks the shelter of the House in Great Guildford Street is drawn from London and the country. The former, in many cases, are casual in every sense of the word. Sometimes an entire family is landed miles away from their home, having lost the excursion train. In such case the police send them to the Metropolitan Asylums Board Office, under the arches of Hungerford Bridge, on the Victoria Embankment. They are given tickets of admission to the workhouse, and the mother and children are put together, while the husband goes to the men’s ward.
Sometimes a woman suspected of professional begging gets an order for the Casual Ward with her baby, in which case the officials communicate with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The Society has no jurisdiction inside the House, but an inspector will lurk outside, and, on the appearance of the suspected with her children, he will march her off to the police court, where he will apply for a summons against her for neglect. In the majority of instances she will go to prison for a month.
This seems to me to be one of the greatest abuses of the system. It is not only the professional beggar who may be seized on, towards the poor woman who comes in with her baby in a verminous or dirty condition, the same procedure is enacted; having enjoyed the respite of a night’s shelter, the unfortunate creature is seized on as she emerges with her child.
In some few cases professional beggars may be neglectful or unkind to their children. Personally, I have many times tried to get a definition of the term “professional.” So far as I can gather the authorities lay it down that a “professional” beggar is one who gets his living by the getting of alms. An itinerant street seller who occasionally begs does not come under the same heading. It must be remembered, however, that if a woman with young children stands in the street selling matches, or some other article, she runs the risk of being charged with exposing her children, and once again prison is the conclusion of the whole matter.
What, then, is the “professional” beggar to do? The root cause of this attempt to gather a livelihood is the housing shortage. It is not possible to pay the rent demanded for even the poorest room unless one member of the family is in receipt of a steady wage. Many of these beggars have lost their husbands, and have no trade by which they can support their family. Even if they had a trade they would have no place in which to ply it. For once a family has been dispossessed of a roof tree, it is unimaginably difficult for them to find another resting place. Wherefore these professional beggars alternate between the streets, the cheaper doss houses, the casual ward and prison. Generally speaking, during one of these terms in gaol, the accused’s children are compulsorily adopted. A law exists which empowers the Guardians to take over children without the consent or even knowledge of the parents, who have no right to see them, or even to know their whereabouts until they reach the age of fourteen. Some very pitiful cases have come to my knowledge where a woman, forced by circumstances out of her home, has been charged with neglecting her children, has been sent to prison, and has come out to find that she is childless. Her babies have been taken away from her, and she will see them no more.
There are a certain number of casuals who belong to a very different section of society. Women of position, who from time to time find themselves without resource, prefer a lodging in the House to a night in the streets. A woman of education and character visits Great Guildford Street every two or three months, and remains her allotted time of two nights and a day. She is the widow of a Government official and in receipt of a good pension. She has acquired the drug habit, however, and
