There is, as I have cause to know, a camaraderie of the tavern which nothing can excel. But for the most part women are barred from this. They are not encouraged to sit about in public houses and join in the discussions of their male friends. They go in to drink, and having drunk, custom requires them to withdraw, while the notion that social intercourse is in any way associated with Lyons or the A.B.C. is too utterly fantastic for consideration.
I had hardly got to the end of the street when the little Cockney joined me. She had been running hard and was obviously out of breath.
“What did you leave like that for, dear?” she asked.
“I thought you’d found a friend,” I said, “and didn’t want me.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” she said. “He can wait. I told yer I’d show yer the wye and I will. I’m going to sleep there myself coming to think of it.”
She led me across the broad road and round to the back of a long, narrow street full of high buildings, engineering works, bakeries, etc. We found the shelter tucked away behind a narrow door, which was opened by a pleasant faced young woman, in Army uniform. The shelter is under the control of the Salvation Army, but it is run on ordinary commercial lines. I mean by this that no religious services are held, and that no enquiries are made. You may be good, bad, or indifferent, clean or dirty, so long as you want a bed and can pay fivepence you are admitted.
I paid my money and was led down a passage into an enormous hall. My friend was claimed by an old friend in transit, and got separated from me, and I did not see her again. You are forever making transitory acquaintances in the world of the destitute. You may feel you have found a kindred mind and sympathetic soul and long to hold renewed communion, but harsh circumstances, grim and inexorable, force you apart. There is no sustained drama in the underworld, only a series of incidents, beautiful, tragic, heartrending, which dissolve one into the other like figures on a film.
A wide gallery runs round the hall, which, like the floor, is entirely covered with narrow beds, just wide enough to lie and barely to turn in. There is only enough space between the beds to pass by; it is a sea of beds, every one of which, on the night when I was there, was occupied; and the number ran into hundreds. The big gas lamp in the roof burned till dawn, casting fantastic shadows on the sleeping faces. There they all lay—there every night they lie, womanhood in extremis; old, young, middle-aged, hopeless, helpless, desperate and courageous.
The thing that hurt me most was the realisation that these women who have managed to gather their few pence to secure a bed, have lost all knowledge of anything remotely like a home. Migratory as any of the tribes of Asia, they know not where they may pitch their tent.
The place is clean, like all the Salvation Army houses, and there is an entire absence of officialdom. The beds are not too hard and the sheets and covering are clean and hygienic, mattresses and pillows are encased in American cloth, for the sake of sanitation, but with an outer cover of calico, and there is a sufficiency of bed clothing, also encased.
It was an eerie night. The sleep for which I longed, the sleep for which body and soul were craving would not come. There was something rather terrible in the presence of this army of the night; I felt myself encompassed by a tide of human desolation which at any moment might overpower and swamp me. I had found the workhouse cell solitary, but there was something worse than solitude in that huge bare ward crowded with beds. Not for one moment was there peace; there was a stirring as of the leaves in a dense forest, to a continual accompaniment of coughing. I never knew there were so many and such variety of coughs. One poor thing hacked hour after hour, her handkerchief soaked with blood. No one slept kindly, no one found rest. When the continual stirring of the leaves was still, there was a sound as of the wind over the sea, and once a woman’s voice screamed out in agony, “I can’t breathe—I can’t breathe.”
The many indescribable noises broke into definite movement. The woman was upstairs in the gallery. With the swift kindliness of the destitute, people rose from their beds and went to her from all over the hall; curious, pathetic figures, some of them clinging to the last rags of what had been a night dress which they had carried with them on their endless journeying. Others, partially undressed, with bare feet, in a skirt and a man’s sweater; others again, fully dressed, ashamed, perhaps, to show their apologies for underwear, or maybe, too proud or cold, to take their outer garments off. The girl continued to cry out, tossing from side to side. Somebody fetched the superintendent, who presently arrived, followed by an anxious queue. She administered drops, and at the second dose the pain subsided.
“I shouldn’t half like some of that,” said one of the watchers, raucously.
“Garn!” was the answer. “It’s only ginger!” and suddenly the whole place shrieked with mirth. The laughter subsided, the sick woman moaned herself to sleep, the hacking cough broke out with less disturbance. It seemed as though
