Glimpses into the Abyss Part 3

VIII.)

The case of those who sleep out may end otherwise, but as tragically, after long privation. Here are two examples:--"Alfred Mather, aged about 33, no fixed home and no occupation, latterly on the tramp. Found ill on a seat opposite Temple Gardens, and taken by the police to Bear Yard Infirmary five days before death. Died from epilepsy accelerated by exposure." "Jos. Lucas, no fixed abode, 'knocked up and down mostly,'

getting odd coppers when he could, found dead in yard of White Hart, Royton." Such incidents might be multiplied, but the facts of disease and death are masked, because people suffering from illness in the street usually obtain pity. Recent statistics show that the percentage of the death rate in common lodging-houses is appalling. (See Appendix IX., Vagrancy Report.) No one who has been in a tramp ward can fail to have been struck by the low vitality and even serious illness of inmates, yet by common report it is difficult to obtain the services of a doctor, and illness is constantly taken to be "malingering."

With regard to evidence as to actual tramp ward conditions, however, no clearer account can be given than the following. The writer is personally known to the author of this paper. He is extremely truthful, and where investigation has followed, his statements have been fully endorsed. They furnish most valuable evidence. He is himself a working man of superior education, driven by misfortune into restless habits and occasionally to the tramp ward. Let him speak for himself.

VI. TRAMP WARD. FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS.

EXTRACTS FROM A CORRESPONDENCE WITH A WORKING MAN.

"I was an interested listener to your address on casual wards and common lodging-houses. Your experience coincides with mine, with the exception of the casual wards. Your description was much too favourable.

"I have been in several. This is an account of the last one I was in. After walking twenty miles with nothing to eat before I started or during the day, I was received, had a bath, and was put to bed. They gave me nothing to eat or drink; out next morning at six o'clock: for breakfast had a drink of water and a tinful of broken crusts, seven pieces in all, and I should say not more than six ounces. I suppose they had been left by the children or at the infirmaries. Same for dinner (six pieces), with a small piece of cheese; for supper, water and five crusts. On going out next morning, water and six crusts. I should put the value at one penny altogether, and that for cheese; the bread was simply waste.

"This is what I did for the value I received, Sweep, wash, and scrub out twelve or fourteen cells; ditto eighty-seven square yards of cement flooring; ditto a flight of stone steps (about fifty), four feet wide with three landings; ditto one bath-room and two lavatories; clean bath and closet pans; and polish sixty-seven sets of bra.s.ses. I started at seven o'clock and had done at 4.30, and was then locked up in the cell. I forgot to say that I had twopence when I went in, which the porter annexed, which, as he said, 'would help pay expenses.'

"I was free from vermin when I went in, but was not when I came out; and whatever the chairman may say about coming out of their place clean, I say it is impossible to do so.

"I may say that I get my living on public works, and this as you know may take you across the country."

SECOND LETTER.

"The remarks made by your chairman on stone-breaking were very misleading. He said, 'The stones required to be broken by a man were ten hundredweight. Why, he knew a man who could easily break two and a half yards in a day, and in each yard was twenty-two hundredweight, so that his hearers could see that the casual's task was not hard.'

"He did not say that the stones his man broke were probably twice the size of those broken by the casual, and that he had no grid to put them through, which takes almost as long as the actual stone-breaking.

"With regard to entering the casual ward early, I myself when I am on the road always make a point of doing twenty miles a day. Is a man after doing twenty miles fit for work? Navvies and men working on public works like to get from one job to another without delay. Very often a man will start, we will say from Yorks.h.i.+re to Devon: if he can pick up a day's work on the way he will do so; but his object is to get to Devon, and he is going to get there as soon as possible. He is pretty certain of work when he gets there because he is known either to the ganger or the agent, or some one in a position to start him, which is really the reason he goes such a distance. As a rule he sets himself twenty or twenty-five miles a day, and he does it unless it is very wet.

He therefore wants a rest at the end of the journey, not work."

Replying that this was not the cla.s.s for whom the casual ward was intended, I received the following:--

THIRD LETTER.

"I should suggest, for the benefit of the man looking for work, that in all casual wards there should be cells set apart for him at a charge, say of threepence per night. He should be taken in as early as six o'clock and let go next morning at six o'clock; if there is any work going he would stand a chance of getting it: you would not be pauperising him--he would be no charge on the rates, and your pauper returns would be greatly reduced. Very likely the argument would be that the guardians would be interfering with private rights, _i.e._ lodging-houses. In answer to this, I have to say that in a great many towns there are no lodgings of any kind, and in others they are so bad that no decent man will sleep in them. I have paid for a bed in such places as Birkenhead, Chester, Wrexham, and others, and after seeing what they were like have left them, not caring to sleep there. Also the lodging-house keepers, if they found the new system reducing their takings, would waken up to the fact that decent beds may bring them their trade back.

"Many a man is spent up when he left a job to look for another, because if money is found on him in the workhouse he loses it.

Give him the opportunity of paying and he will do so if he can get a _decent bed_.

"As regards those on the road who can work but will not, the authorities would not be interfering with the liberty of the subject in taking them off the road and making them work for their keep, and in doing so he need not be cla.s.sed as a pauper.

"There are others who cannot work, old men and women and children; in all cases such as these I should have them sent to the place of birth, no matter how long they had left there they must go back.

There would be a chance of reclaiming them when they knew they had to go back, and there would also be an inducement for their friends and relations to show what they are made of by helping to keep them. Of course there are numbers who do not know where they are born, also foreigners; these the Government should take in hand. It's the policy of the Government to let dest.i.tute foreigners land here, you must therefore make them responsible for them.

"These suggestions could be easily worked out to the satisfaction of the people at large; you would rescue a great number from self-imposed misery; you would be clearing the roads of a disgrace to the country; and I have not the slightest doubt that you would do away with a great deal of disease and crime. I have noticed on more than one occasion that when small-pox has broken out in a part of the country it has been reported that the cause has been traced to tramps.

"I remember going in at T ... when several of us were in the bath-room at one time, and of course one hot water for all. I noticed one man who had stripped was covered with sores, raw, festering sores. I did not object to his bathing, but of course refused to be bathed in the same water. After drawing the attention of the attendant to the man's state he was sent off without his bath; he was given the usual rugs, which of course were placed with the others next morning, and not stoved, because they have no stove there. This man had been going from place to place, and could not get to see a doctor, he told me himself, and I can well believe him. I have had occasion to ask for the doctor myself and have been refused.[30] Also on this night there were more tramps than they had room for, we had to sleep two in a cell, one on the board let down from the wall, and the other on the floor underneath. In the cell next me one of the men wanted to go to the w.c., but could get no answer to his repeated calls. Now under these circ.u.mstances if disease breaks out who is to blame?

"I think that if the rules laid down by the L.G.B. were strictly carried out things would be better, but there is too much left to the discretion of the guardians, which means the workhouse master and his subordinates, with the result that they do pretty much as they please.

"I think it is generally allowed by guardians that the most successful master is the one who can keep down the number of casuals. Why that is I do not know, because if a man is found sleeping out or begging he goes to prison. I have never been in a prison myself, but from what I hear I should say that he is better off than the man under the thumb of a workhouse master.[31]

"It ought to be generally known that it is only by starvation and heavy tasks that a master can keep down his pauper returns. In pa.s.sing I should like to say that I have found it a pretty general thing for several men to go through one lot of water."

After travelling from Kent to Devon, finding employment very bad (winter 1904-5) correspondent came north. He travelled to East Yorks.h.i.+re to a harvest job where he was expected, but found the harvest short and only got two days. He found that numbers of men who usually found harvest employment could not obtain it, and that hard-working men were roaming from place to place, and, being forced to take refuge in the tramp ward, were fast losing heart. The following is his experience in a tramp ward, where he was forced to take refuge one rainy day. Usually he slept in the open.

FOURTH LETTER.

"On going in you have your bread, and before you have time to eat it you are taken to the room for undressing. This is not very large, only for nine or ten to sit down, and there were many that night. You will see that room was limited. There were two dirty-looking baths there, but how many made use of them I could not say. I did not. Your clothes are tied into a bundle and put all together into a heap in the room you undress in. Your clothes may be good and clean and free from vermin when you undress, but what will they be like in the morning?

"You have a s.h.i.+rt and two rugs given you, and go to the sleeping room on the boards. Some have a board for their head. I had not.

It is a large room, and it need be, for there were twenty-four of us in it. It is infested with bugs. The s.h.i.+rts and rugs, I should say, have not been washed for months, and are full of vermin. Mine was, and the complaint was general, so I suppose they were all alike. Sleep is impossible. You get up, have your bread and cold water, and are put on the pump, eight on and eight off, every half-hour. There are two pumps kept continually going all day, so it cannot be for the want of water that dirt reigns supreme.

Cheese and bread for dinner, bread _and bread_ for supper, and then the awful night to go through again. Get up and have some bread and water. Then you are turned out. It was raining in torrents. I was soaked in twenty minutes after I had left."

Walking north in the vain search for work, my correspondent crossed to Lancas.h.i.+re and encountered the following experience.

FIFTH LETTER.

"I was admitted at 8.10. They gave me coffee and bread, and sent me to a very nice large and well-ventilated room, a room large enough to sleep fifteen men in easily. There were three others there, and after waiting till nine o'clock, during which time nine more arrived, they started bathing us. There are four baths there, three for each bath, and how many more after used the same water I do not know. Given a s.h.i.+rt, you are sent to the cells. I noticed on going to mine that there were eleven cells on the right, and nine on the left. My cell was four from the top on the left. The right side was full, and the three on the left above mine also full. I noticed three pairs of boots outside each cell; a pleasant prospect. There were two men already in my cell. I made the third. That made forty-five men for the fifteen cells, then there were the eleven men I left in the bath-room, who would fill four others, that would make fifty-six men in nineteen cells. Now when I tell you that these cells are four feet six inches wide, and my two comrades were bigger men than me, and I am not a small one, you can fancy the situation. What I suffered from cramp alone was punishment enough for a lifetime. You have one rug each, not enough to keep you from coming in contact with the other men's flesh. As soon as you are in the door is closed and you are in black darkness, yet the gas is burning in the pa.s.sage all night. I could see it by the crack in the door, and if they would cut a hole in the door it would serve both for ventilation and light.

"I can safely say that I had never such a night in my life. Sleep was out of the question, even if you had not been disturbed by the groans and curses that were going on more or less all night, a sort of song you would fancy they sing in the Inferno.

"One of my mates was an old man. He had been drinking. Some one had given him a couple of pints of 1-1/2_d_. beer, and I suppose he had had an empty stomach, anyway he said it upset him.

'Diarrhoea,' he called it. Now the foul air arising from other causes was bad enough, but when I tell you."... Here follows a description of consequences. "The old man said it was useless to call to the attendant, he had been in before." When at 5.30 the door was opened it was only to fetch rugs and s.h.i.+rts. Permission to leave the cell or empty the vessel was refused by two attendants, and also to men in other cells. "It's a mercy I did not go off my head," my correspondent remarks concerning that horrible night.

"The second attendant also brutally refusing to allow the vessel to be removed 'because it was against rules,' said 'it would do to go with the ham and eggs.'

"'Ham and eggs' in the shape of coffee and bread appeared at seven o'clock, and those who could consume it had to do so in that atmosphere of horror. We were kept locked up until about 8.20, and then let out. I shall never forget the feeling in all my life.

"I have noticed on more than one occasion that when small-pox has broken out in various parts of the country, that it has been taken there by tramps. Now supposing small-pox broke out in a place having such a tramp ward, who would be to blame?

"The guardians cannot say they had not the room, there is the room I have mentioned. There were another row of cells I noticed, about twenty, that had the appearance of being unoccupied. There were certainly some of them empty; the doors of others were closed so I cannot say if all were, but that can easily be found out.

"There were thirty-four men kept in, and about twenty of us were sent to the wood-yard. I had asked to see a doctor. I was too ill to work, but was told to go to the yard. I went but did nothing. I could not. I felt I had not the strength of a baby, and had a hard matter to keep on my feet.

"At about ten o'clock the labour master came round. At least he was pointed out to me as the labour master, but as I did not see him again all day, I doubted it. Anyhow he asked me what I was doing; I told him I could do nothing, and wanted to see the doctor. He told me that I was a malingerer and that I should not see the doctor. 'Doctors are not for such as thou,' says he, and that I should have no dinner. I asked him to send me before a magistrate: I would have done a month gladly if I could have made this statement before a magistrate. I had forgotten to mention the state of the cell; it was very damp and coated with dirt and spit, quite enough to spread disease.

"Although I was to have no dinner, I was given some, but gave it away, as I could eat nothing until I was coming out next morning.

I did not work till the afternoon, when I felt a little better and very cold. I thought I would see what I could do, but I could not do much. At 4.30 o'clock work ceased and we had a roll each.

Afterwards I noticed that a number of men crowded round the door leading to the cells. Thinking there was something in it, I got as near the door as possible. At 5.30 this door opened. The rush of boys on opening the doors of a penny gaff was not in it. It turned out that on the second night there are two rooms to be slept in, each containing nine bedsteads, hence the rush. The first eighteen would get them--I was the lucky eighteenth.

"There were thirteen in the room I was in--four on the floor. I could not say if the remainder slept in the other room or not; I had a better night than the one previous. We were up at 5.30, and after having roll and coffee were let out at 7.30.

"I see some of the northern counties are holding a conference, under the chairmans.h.i.+p of Sir John Hibbert, in order to study the vagrant problem, and he quoted the punishment of vagrants in Henry VIII.'s time. I think if Sir John had studied the matter he would have seen that at that time vagrants were favourably dealt with in comparison with their betters. There was many a better head than even Sir John's stuck on Temple Bar for only saying what they thought.