In Darkest London

yet she treated me very nicely and wished me luck. My prospects were not bright, but nevertheless I was relieved to go. Institutional life, even at its very best, weighs heavily upon me. I went back to the day room to get my brown paper parcel. The little rosy-cheeked lieutenant, who had admitted me the previous night, was cutting out overalls and Mental Millie was measuring the stuff. The Madonna of the club foot had gone upstairs to her two year old baby and none of my other friends could be seen. Only the hunchback girl was there, still reading by the window. I crossed the room with its sad green walls and hopeless oilcloth and took a last look at the anemones. Then glancing over her shoulder I said goodbye. It gave me a queer sensation when the title of her book stared up at me. She was immersed in George Gissing’s The Odd Women.

II

The Fight to Work

The steps of Number 259, Mare Street, Hackney, are worn down with the countless feet that have trod them in search of succour. None have been turned empty away. It is the end of a pilgrimage of infinite pain, where the weary and heavy-laden can find respite from their suffering.

In the course of last year the receiving station dealt with 1,298 cases. It was one of the first of the Salvation Army centres, and the house, many years old, has none of the rigidity of an institution. It is large, rambling, unexpected, like the families of the last century, and it preserves the atmosphere and tradition of a Home.1

I went again to Number 259, and those parts which were closed to me the night I was given shelter I visited, and saw for myself how the inmates live. The work is divided between urgently necessitous cases and those for which time and consideration is required. From all over London, and indeed England, women and girls arrive. If a domestic servant stays out later than she has permission to do, she can always find admission in Mare Street, Hackney. If a girl comes up from the country hoping to get a situation and is disappointed, the police send her to the receiving centre. Each case is kept for a night and then referred to the Army Headquarters on the other side of the road. The Headquarters institute inquiries. I do not mean that they persecute the unfortunate applicant with merciless interrogations. Poverty is no deterrent, and even if the out-of-work has no reference, the deficiency can be dealt with. In the latter case, the girl is offered a sojourn in a training centre, from whence she is found a situation. If, on the other hand, a reference be forthcoming she stays at the shelter until a place is found for her, and from that time on regards Mare Street as her home. Any girl who has once stayed there is free to come for her holidays, or to spend her evenings off, she will meet girls of her own age, and as a rule regards the matron or the adjutant as friend and adviser.

There are forty-five beds in the house. Of these a fair proportion are filled by temporary visitors. Many cases of attempted suicide are brought to Mare Street, when young mothers, maddened by poverty and suffering have tried to take their own lives and their children’s. These women are nursed back to health for weeks or months, as the case may be, and from the Shelter return once more to the big world. Unmarried mothers, as I have said, come in considerable numbers. They wait at the Shelter until Headquarters make arrangements for them at a maternity home. There are a few cases of inebriates, who do not wish to go into an Institution. These remain at the Shelter until they regain normal health and self-control.

Perhaps I can best express the spirit which animates this place by describing a talk I had with the matron. She is a woman of very wide experience, and I asked her what in her opinion were the chief causes of the misery and starvation of the outcast. I have heard so much of the evils of drink, so many statistics have been forced upon me proving that the outcasts have but themselves to blame for their condition, that I waited very eagerly for the answer.

“Generally speaking, it’s poverty,” she answered, “and very largely, the shortage of housing. Illness, bad luck, increase of rent, drive many a decent woman out of her home and force her to become a tramp on the road, or to sell matches in the street. Humanity is very decent⁠—at least, I find it so; it’s only very seldom that you can say a woman is down and out by her own fault.”

The Mare Street Shelter is the only receiving station of its kind in London, and as will be seen it covers every department of destitution. Some of the women who first found their way there years ago still keep up their connection, and the club room in the garden, reserved for the use of former inmates, is always crowded on a Wednesday or Sunday night. The garden when I last went there was full of flowers, and some dozen babies were peacefully sleeping in the sun. These, with their mothers, are those temporary cases which I have already described. There are always babies in the Shelter. They look very well and are extremely happy.

Notwithstanding the admirable work of the Shelter, its accommodation for the permanently destitute is necessarily limited⁠—but no one is refused a bed if there be one vacant, and the police, before now, have brought a woman all across London to get her a lodging for the night. The young unmarried mother is but an immediate problem⁠—practical help and sympathy will ultimately set her on her feet with her child. Suicides, even drunkards, are only temporarily incapacitated;