I have been over some of the Salvation Army Maternity Homes and, though in some the conditions are more comfortable than others, they are all animated by the same spirit of uncritical helpfulness. Other maternity homes there are, excellently sanitated and most hygienic, where the unmarried mother is nailed to the cross of intolerance, and branded with what the female warders call her “shame.”
I want to make it again quite plain that before I started on my voyage of exploration I knew absolutely nothing of the Salvation Army centres, shelters or homes. If there be any value in this account of my experience, it must lie in this, that I write only of what I myself have seen and felt and known.
It will be plain that one contingent of the outcast world is fairly well provided for. The unmarried mother, of whatever class, does not find it very difficult to discover a kindly hand, and, as I have said, once her difficulty is over, it is probably she will meet safe harbourage in quiet waters. The remaining sections of destitute womanhood compromise, amongst others, itinerant street vendors, itinerant office cleaners and odd job charwomen. All these belong to a floating population, without home or habitation, living from hand to mouth, sleeping how and when and where they can.
Another section is the cheaper kind of prostitute. The girl, or young woman, who, without a roof over her head, or a room in which to prosecute her trade, has to play her calling up blind alleys, in dark places, for a few pence. These find a bed—when they have sufficient money—in the public lodging houses at prices ranging from tenpence to one and two. Then again, you have the women on the road, who peddle matches, hairpins and other trifles, and cover a definite route, returning to London every few weeks. These women for the most part put up at casual wards or doss houses. They are a very definite type, sturdy of physique and of spirit. They have been forced to this mode of life through the tragic scarcity of housing, and the falling in the purchasing power of the shilling.
There is a deplorable lack of proper accommodation for the itinerant London outcast. Be she matchseller or prostitute, she should have the opportunity of getting a decent bed on payment of a fixed sum. Outside the Salvation Army shelters, the standard of cleanliness is variable. Among the public lodging houses, run for individual profit, it is extremely low, and in some of these places the beds are stained, the blankets dirty, the washing accommodation of the most rudimentary kind, and this, it is somewhat disconcerting to find, in houses licensed by the London County Council and under its inspection. Certain religious bodies other than the Salvation Army also run women’s lodging houses; these I shall deal with in turn. I have stayed at nearly all of them and know their slightest variation from type.
Here I feel is the place for me to protest against the apathy which prevails with regard to the state of these public lodging houses. I have written to women M.P.’s, women Country Councillors and I have urged on them the necessity for reform. I have received letters of courtesy meaning nothing; and I ask myself for what reason women are in politics if not to fight for decent conditions for their sex? I am not a feminist; that is to say I hold no brief for the view that man is the cause of injustice to woman. But I contend that it is a deliberate and unjustifiable injustice that the London County Council—England’s premier civic authority—should provide spacious, clean, comfortable lodging houses for me, replete with bathroom sand every modern hygienic appliance, and at the same time refuse to consider the supply of similar accommodation for women.
Why should a woman, if she can pay, be compelled to sleep in a dirty bed when for the same price a man can get a clean one? I have walked from one end of London to the other, looking for a bed, and I have been treated as though I was a criminal trying to steal. I could not have dreamed that in this day of feminine emancipation from political disabilities that trade union leaders, women preachers and doctors, barristers, lawyers and under secretaries, would all have passed by on the other side, leaving their sisters to find refuge in squalor, or to spend the night walking the inhospitable streets.
I have run the gamut of lodging house accommodation. I have slept in the same room as matchsellers, tramps and prostitutes, and the general conditions—always excepting the Salvation Army—are a standing reproach to every woman who believes in what she calls social reform or has any touch of feeling for her sex.
That I speak with knowledge will be shown in the detailed accounts herein following of the places I have visited.
III
The Hard-Faced Woman of Charity Square
I went straight from the Shelter to the Hackney Labour Exchange. There is something about a Government department that casts a shadow on the freeborn spirit. You may tell yourself that you are independent of its machinations, apart from its tyrannies, but as you approach you feel that fluttering of the heart which spells apprehension. As an indignant ratepayer you bluster and get rid of your inhibition to indignation. As a member of the destitute class no such resource is open to you. You begin to have doubts as to your right to live; you would not be surprised to read your own sentence of extermination.
I felt very oppressed when I entered the Hackney Labour Exchange. I was asked my name, business, place and date of last employment and watched, with increasing alarm, my replies being entered in the book. When it was found that
