Days and Nights in London Part 6

XIII.-OUT OF GAOL.

"Shall I wait to bring you back, sir?" said a cabman to me the other morning, as he landed me at an early hour before the gloomy pile, which has. .h.i.therto been known as the Middles.e.x House of Correction, placed, as my readers may know well, on Mount Pleasant, just out of Gray's Inn Road.

On a dull, dreary morning, it is anything but pleasant, that Mount, in spite of its name, and yet I dismissed the cabman and got out into the street, not to enjoy the view, or to inhale the raw fog, which threw a misty gloom over everything, nor even to admire the architecture of the substantial plain brick-wall-order of the building, which, erected in 1794, and greatly enlarged since, occupies no less than nine acres, and was devoted to the maintenance of a thousand male persons belonging to the small but thickly-inhabited county of Middles.e.x. Government, in its wisdom, has altered all that, and it is not exactly clear to what purposes the Middles.e.x House of Correction will be applied in the future, or to whom it will belong. Imperialism requires centralisation, and thus it is local government gradually disappears.

But I am not standing out here in the raw gloomy November morning to write a political disquisition which few will read, and which they will forget the next minute, but I am come to see the prisoners released from gaol. There is a little mob outside, who stand close, apparently to keep each other warm, and who regard me evidently with not a little suspicion as I light up a cigar to keep the cold out and prepare for the worst.

Every now and then a "Favourite" omnibus rumbles past with its load of clerks and warehous.e.m.e.n to their places of business, while a perpetual stream of pedestrians, aiming at the same destination, pa.s.ses on.

Evidently, they regard us with pity, and one sees that in the casual glance, even if there be no language escaping from the lips. It does not seem to me that we are a very showy lot. A little way off a dark and dingy brougham drives up as if it were ashamed of the job and only put in an appearance under protest, as it were; but all around me are wretchedly poor, and chiefly of the costermonger cla.s.s, whose language is more expressive than refined. There are sorrowful women in the group-mothers who have come for sons who have been, not to put too fine a point on it, unfortunate; wives with babies in their arms, perhaps born since the husband was in "trouble," and sisters who wait to take their brothers where they can have something better than prison fare and a lighter life than that which exists within the four walls of a prison. Some of the women are to be pitied-one, in a widow's garb, with a tear-stained face, particularly attracts my attention. She has brought all her family with her as she comes to take back from the hands of justice her erring son, who, let us hope, may yet live to be a comfort to the poor mother, who evidently needs it so much; and who, perhaps, reproaches herself that she has been a little to blame in the matter. It is hard work to train up young ones, whether they be rich or poor; but the children of the latter in the filthy lodging-houses in low districts have little, alas! to lead them right, and much in the way of precept and example to lead them wrong. With Board schools to teach honesty is the best policy, we may expect better things in the days to come; and, if that be done, I feel certain the Board will have deserved well of the country; if it fails in imparting that higher instruction which some of its leading members seem to think the one thing needful, and to be gained for the poor man's child at any cost to the unfortunate ratepayer of the cla.s.s immediately above.

But this is a digression-and it only helps to pa.s.s away the time which here this cold, raw morning appears to have quite forgotten to fly. It seems to me an age since I heard the neighbouring chimes indicate that it was a quarter to nine, and now at length they strike nine, and still the big gates are closed, and we are silent with expectation-as if, at least, we expected the arrival of a Lord Mayor or a Prince of Wales. A few policemen have now come up to keep the crowd back, whilst a quiet, respectable, una.s.suming individual comes to the gate, ready to give each prisoner a ticket to a little breakfast in a Mission Hall close by. Mr.

Wheatley, the individual referred to, has his heart in the work, and I see he has friends and a.s.sistants in the crowd, such as Mr. Hatton, of the Mission Hall in Wylde Street, and others. In a few minutes they will be hard at work, for the big gates suddenly are wide apart, and a couple of lads appear with a smile on their pale countenances, for they are free. Face to face with the crowd outside they seem a little amazed, and scarce know which way to turn. Mr. Wheatley gives them a card of invitation, and Mr. Hatton and his friends outside follow it up with pressing remarks, which lead them to march off to a neighbouring Mission Hall. Again the doors are closed, and we are silent. Then the gates fly apart, and out come two or three more, who seem to wish to slink away without being remarked by anyone. However, a little pale-faced girl cries, "Charley!" in a soft trembling voice, and Charley looks, and as the girl leaves the rank he takes her hand, and goes his way rejoicing.

A big bullet-headed fellow has no cap as he comes out, and a friend in the crowd chucks him one, which he puts on his head, and is soon lost to sight. Another one appears at the gate, and a pal comes up to him, and offers him a pipe, which he straightway begins to smoke, with a gusto easier imagined than described. One old man as he hobbles out refuses the proffered card, saying that he was quite wicked enough, and did not want none of that. Evidently he is a hardened sinner, and I fear the chaplain has found him rather a bad subject. One man, a bit of a wag, creates a laugh, as, looking at the women in the crowd, he calls out, "Come along, my dears," and away he goes to his own place.

Again there is another pause, and then a respectable-looking man makes his appearance. Suddenly his wife clasps his hand, and leads him off.

There is irrepressible emotion in her face, though she does not say a word, nor he either. It does not seem to me that he is a hardened criminal, and he may yet retrieve the blot on his character. Order again prevails, and a voice out of the middle of the gate asks if anyone is waiting for Jones and Robinson. That means Jones and Robinson have behaved well-have earned a little money, which is to be handed over to their friends. And thus half an hour pa.s.ses away, and as I look at the crowd I see that it has partly changed, and is composed more of casual street boys and pedestrians who have stopped to look. I miss almost all the women who were there an hour ago, and most of the costermonger cla.s.s have disappeared, though a few still linger on. The voice from the closed doors says that there are no more to come out to-day, and slowly the crowd melts away. Some are evidently sad. They had expected a father, a brother, a husband, and now they have to wait awhile. On our right, as we make our way to Gray's Inn Road, there is a little Mission Hall, and I turn in. Already the place is full, and as the gas falls on their faces as they devour the morning meal provided for them by Mr.

Hatton and his friends, it seems to me that I never saw a more ill-favoured lot. There was not a pleasant face among them-not a man or a lad that I would have cared to set to work in my garden or house; and as to their poverty, that was indescribable. These are the men whom none had come to meet-the waifs and strays, without money or friends or work, with that defiant scowl which denotes how low the man has sunk, and how little it matters to him whether he spend his days in the workhouse or the gaol. Mr. Wheatley talks kindly to them, and after singing-not by them, for they all sit glum and silent-Mr. Hatton prays, and the meeting is over. A good many then come forward to sign the pledge, and I leave them as they explain their position and their need. I see Mr. Wheatley gives a few a trifle; but a trifle, alas! won't keep a man in London long out of gaol.

XIV.-IN A GIPSY CAMP.

The other day I was witness to a spectacle which made me feel a doubt as to whether I was living in the nineteenth century. I was, as it were, within the shadow of that mighty London where Royalty resides; where the richest Church in Christendom rejoices in its abbey and cathedral, and its hundreds of churches; where an enlightened and energetic Dissent has not only planted its temples in every district, but has sent forth its missionary agents into every land; where the fierce light of public opinion, aided by a press which never slumbers, is a terror to them that do evil, and a praise to them that do well; a city which we love to boast heads the onward march of man; and yet the scene before me was as intensely that of savage life as if I had been in a Zulu kraal, and savage life dest.i.tute of all that lends it picturesque attractions or ideal charms. I was standing in the midst of some twenty tents and vans, inhabited by that wandering race of whose origin we know so little, and of whose future we know less. The snow was on the ground, there was frost in the very air. Within a few yards was a great Board school; close by were factories and workshops, and the other concomitants of organised industrial life. Yet in that small area the gipsies held undisputed sway. In or about London there are, it is calculated, some two thousand of these dwellers in tents. In all England there are some twenty thousand of these sons of Ishmael, with hands against everyone, or, perhaps, to put it more truly, with everyone's hands against them.

In summer-time their lot is by no means to be envied; in winter their state is deplorable indeed.

We entered, Mr. George Smith and I, and were received as friends. Had I gone by myself I question whether my reception would have been a pleasant one. As gipsies pay no taxes they can keep any number of dogs, and these dogs have a way of sniffing and snarling anything but agreeable to an unbidden guest. The poor people complained to me that no one ever came to see them. I should be surprised if anyone did; but Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, is no common man; and having secured fair-play for the poor children of the brick-fields-he himself was brought up in a brick-yard-and for the poor and sadly-neglected inmates of the ca.n.a.l boats, he has now turned his attention to the gipsies. His idea is-and it is a good one-that an Act of Parliament should be pa.s.sed for their benefit, something similar to that he has been the means of carrying for the ca.n.a.l and brick-field children. In a paper read before the Social Science Congress at Manchester, Mr. Smith argued that all tents, shows, caravans, auctioneer vans, and like places, used as dwellings, should be registered and numbered, and under proper sanitary arrangements, with sanitary inspectors and School Board officers in every town and village.

Thus in every district the children would have their names and attendance registered in a book, which they could take with them from place to place, and, when endorsed by the schoolmaster, it would show that the children were attending school. In carrying out this idea, it is a pity that Mr. Smith should have to bear all the burden. As it is, he has suffered greatly in his pocket by his philanthropic effort. At one time he had a well-paid situation, which he had to relinquish, as he declined to keep silence when the wrongs of the children of the brick-yards were to be proclaimed and redressed. He not only did this, but he parted with what little property he had rather than the battle should be lost; and I am glad to see that a George Smith Fund has been formed, of which Lord Aberdeen is chairman; and as Mr. Smith is now without business or occupation, or means of livelihood, if I had five pounds to spare-which, alas! I have not-I know where it would go. As to the gipsies, they evidently hail Mr. Smith as a friend in need and a friend indeed.

It is no joke, going into a gipsy yard, and it is still less so when you go down on your hands and knees and crawl into the gipsy's wigwam; but the worst of it is, when you have done so there is little to see after all. In the middle, on a few bricks, is a stove or fireplace of some kind. On the ground is a floor of wood-chips, or straw, or shavings, and on this squat some two or three big, burly men, who make linen-pegs and skewers, and mend chairs and various articles, the tribe, as they wander along, seek to sell. The women are away, for it is they who bring the grist to the mill, as they tell fortunes, or sell their wares, or follow their doubtful trade; but the place swarms with children, and it was wonderful to see with what avidity they stretched out the dirtiest little hand imaginable as Mr. Smith prepared to distribute some sweets he had brought with him for that purpose. As we entered, all the vans were shut up, and the tents only were occupied, the vans being apparently deserted; but presently a door was opened half-way, and out popped a little gipsy head, with sparkling eyes and curly hair; and then another door opened, and a similar spectacle was to be seen. Let us look into the van, about the size of a tiny cabin, and chock full, in the first place, with a cooking-stove; and then with shelves, with curtains, and some kind of bedding, apparently not very clean, on which the family repose. It is a piteous life, even at the best, in that van; even when the cooking-pot is filled with something more savoury than cabbages or potatoes, the usual fare; but the children seem happy, nevertheless, in their dirty rags, and with their luxurious heads of curly hair. All of them are as ignorant as Hottentots, and lead a life horrible to think of. I only saw one woman in the camp, and I only saw her by uncovering the top and looking into the tent in which she resides. She is terribly poor, she says, and pleads earnestly for a few coppers; and I can well believe she wants them, for in this England of ours, and especially in the outskirts of London, the gipsy is not a little out of place. Around us are some strapping girls, one with a wonderfully sweet smile on her face, who, if they could be trained to domestic service, would have a far happier life than they can ever hope to lead. The cold and wet seem to affect them not, nor the poor diet, nor the smoke and bad air of their cabins, in which they crowd, while the men lazily work, and the mothers are far away. The leading lady in this camp is absent on business; but she is a firm adherent of Mr. George Smith, and wishes to see the children educated; and as she is a Lee, and Lee in gipsy annals takes the same rank as a Norfolk Howard in aristocratic circles, that says a good deal; but then, if you educate a gipsy girl, she will want to have her hands and face, at any rate, clean; and a gipsy boy, when he learns to read, will feel that he is born for a n.o.bler end than to dwell in a stinking wigwam, to lead a lawless life, to herd with questionable characters, and to pick up a precarious existence at fairs and races; and our poets and novelists and artists will not like that. However, just now, by means of letters in the newspapers, and engravings in the ill.u.s.trated journals, a good deal of attention is paid to the gipsies, and if they can be reclaimed and turned into decent men and women, a good many farmers'

wives will sleep comfortably at night, especially when geese and turkeys are being fattened for Christmas fare; and a desirable impulse will be given to the trade in soap.

XV.-THE STREET BOYS OF LONDON.

One of the comic sights of the City is that of a guardian of the streets making an attack upon a bevy of small boys, who are enjoying themselves in their own wild way in some quiet corner sacred to the pursuits of trade. It may be that the ragged urchins are pretending to be engaged in business, but X. Y. Z. knows better, and, remembering that order is heaven's first law, and that the aim of all good men and true is to make London as much as possible like the New Jerusalem, he dashes in amongst the chaotic mob in the vain hope that he shall be able to send them about their business. Alas! London in one respect resembles a place not mentioned in ears polite, in that it is paved with good intentions. X.

Y. Z. is a case in point. In a fair field the chances would be in his favour. He has long legs, he is well made, he has more than an average amount of bone and muscle, but he is not fairly matched. Indeed, he is as much out of his element in the contest as a bull in a china shop. He can't dodge under horses' bellies; he can't crawl between the wheels of an omnibus or railway waggon; he can't hide his portly form behind a letter pillar; and his pursuit is as vain as that of a b.u.t.terfly by a buffalo; and generally he does but put to rout the juvenile mob, and resolve it into its component parts only for a time. It is not always so. A. B. C. comes to the aid of X. Y. Z., and captures the small boy, who, to avoid Charybdis, falls a prey to Scylla, and then the precious prize is borne away before the bench, and Old Jewry rejoices, for there is one little pest the less. Of course the policeman is right. He does what I could not do. I am not a millionaire, but it would require a very handsome sum to get me to go boy-hunting down Cheapside or in any of its adjacent streets. X. Y. Z. has less sense of incongruity than I have, or he sees the eternal fitness of things from a different point of view.

Let me observe here the boy has also a standpoint differing from either.

Let me take a single case. Jack Smith, as we will call him, was the son of a Scotch piper. He was born-or he has heard his mother say so-in one of the vast number of the courts that lead out of the Strand. His father was in the army, but on his discharge took to playing in the streets and in public-houses for his living till his death a few years back. As to his mother-hear this, ye sentimentalists who say pretty things about a mother's love!-she deserted the boy, and left him to s.h.i.+ft for himself.

He took, of course, to selling lights and newspapers. When he got money he lodged in the Mint, when he had not, he slept in the barges off Thames Street. At last one morning he was caught by a policeman, and hauled before the Lord Mayor. The latter let him off that time, but warned the boy that if he were caught again it would be the duty of society to send him to gaol. What can such a boy think of society? Will he be very grateful for its kindness, or very anxious for its welfare? I think not.

London, it is calculated, contains ten thousand of these shoeless, homeless, friendless, forsaken, ragged, unwashed, uncombed young urchins of doubtful antecedents. It is difficult to trace their genealogies, and it is still more difficult to understand why they ever came into existence at all. They are not a blessing either to father or mother, and as a rule may be said to deny the existence of parental authority altogether. "Mother dead; father gone for a soldier-a sailor"-as the case may be-is the common result of all inquiry; and, when it is not so, when father and mother do "turn up"-"turn up" from the nearest gin-shop, all redolent of its perfume-it is not always to the boy's advantage.

Solomon says, "Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child;" he might have said the same of many who are not children; and what is to be expected of a boy who is born and bred, as it were, in the streets of London? I have known wise fathers have foolish sons. I have seen the children of what are called pious people go astray. In the very city of London many are the ministers' and clergymen's sons who kick over the traces. The crop of wild oats sown by some of these young fellows is really astonis.h.i.+ng. It was only the other day that the son of the foremost baronet in Evangelical circles, the last scion as it were of a n.o.ble house, stood trembling at the bar of the Old Bailey. But these children of the gutter have never had a chance of going right. No mother has watched their every step-no father has held up to them a living example of truth and integrity and right-no teacher has waited the dawning of their young intellect-no Christian minister has moulded and guided the workings of their young hearts-the atmosphere in which they live and move and have their being as of poverty and crime. Mostly they run away from home, the home of the thief and the harlot and the drunkard, and what they learn they learn in the back streets of Whitechapel, in the filthy courts of Drury Lane, in the purlieus of St.

Giles. Like perpetuates its like. The seed of the serpent is always venomous; the tiger's cub is always thirsting for blood. There are gutter children in London who have risen to be merchant princes, but they have come of an honest good family stock. As to those of whom I write, there is a curse on them from their very birth. Happily for them, they are unconscious of it, and yet in some undefined way it treads upon their steps. Like Gray's naughty schoolboys:

They hear a voice in every wind, And catch a fearful joy.

As I say, they are secretly conscious of a war between themselves and all that is deemed respectable. They feel that society, in the shape of the policeman, has its eye upon them. They have very restless eyes and very restless legs. They are as unlike the primitive ploughboy of the fat fields of Suffolk, of the swamps of Ess.e.x, of the fens of Lincolns.h.i.+re, of the Suss.e.x Downs, as can well be imagined. You can scarcely fancy they belong to the same species; yet, at the same time, the street boy of the city is the same all the world over. In Paris, in London, in Edinburgh, in Dublin, and Belfast, the dirty little ragged rascals are intrinsically one and the same-barring the speech. It is wonderful this oneness of sentiment, the bonds of brotherhood. The other day, on the pier at Boulogne, I lit a fusee for the purpose of having a smoke.

Before I could say Jack Robinson, I was beset with hordes of ragged, shoeless, unwashed urchins, just the same as those you see in Cheapside; and it was only by bribery and corruption that I could emanc.i.p.ate myself.

In London, as is to be expected, we have more of the commercial element; there is less freedom for them here. They must turn traders, and hawk _Echos_ and cigar-lights, or sweep crossings. As to miscellaneous and irregular talent, society fosters it no more in the ragged boy than it does in the well-clad man, and so we have got rid of the Catherine-wheel business and dangerous gymnastics of that kind. Many boys have the vices of their breed-the vices engendered by a life of poverty and of fear.

They are afraid to be honest in their answers. They are afraid, when you talk to them, you have got some end in view. They will watch you, when you question them, to see how they can best please you. If you want to see what they are, catch them flattening their noses against the eating-house shop windows just about pudding time. That's human nature, and a wonderful thing is human nature. It would be well if society would take the trouble to recognise that fact. It was the want of the recognition of that fact in the good old times, when wild lawlessness was tempered with Draconian severity, that has entailed on the present generation the difficult problem as to what is to be done with our street boys.

Two solutions of the problem are offered us-the Reformatory School and the Refuges for Homeless and Dest.i.tute Children. According to our statisticians, in the former seventy per cent. are reclaimed and reformed. According to the latter, eighty per cent. are similarly improved. Mr. Williams, of Great Queen Street, claims for his inst.i.tutions that they have an advantage over the reformatories, inasmuch as the taint of a prison attaches to the former; and that the fact of a boy having been an inmate of one of them exerts very often a most unfavourable influence over his prospects in life, however desirous he may be of acting honestly and industriously. For years and years he becomes marked, and is treated with more or less suspicion; and, when this is the case, it is not to be wondered at if he returns to a life in which the standard of action is very different to that of good society, and in which the most successful criminals are the most highly envied and applauded. The returns of the Great Queen Street Refuge show, however, much may be done to cure the evils arising from suffering the street boys of our day to ripen under the devil's guidance into depravity and crime.

Last year, there were admitted there 445 boys, as follows: From various casual wards and other night-shelters, 63; on the application of parties interested in their welfare, 95; on their own application, 98; sent in by the secretary and subscribers from the street, 76; brought in by the boys' beadle (that is, a person employed to hunt up needy cases), 17; sent by magistrates and policemen, as being utterly dest.i.tute, 17; sent by London City missionaries, ragged-school teachers, and others, 44; readmitted from the s.h.i.+p, 60; sent from Newsboys' Home, 29. The benefit of such an agency is still more apparent when we remember that it is not much more than five years since the _Chichester_ training-s.h.i.+p has been established, and that during that time, upwards of one thousand boys have been placed on board, and in little more than four years and a half the committee have trained and placed out in the Mercantile Marine and Royal Navy as many as seven hundred boys, all of whom, it is to be remembered, were bound to be, from necessity, as it were, the criminal cla.s.ses of society. But, after all, this is but a drop in the bucket. It is something to do; it is a great deal to do. England requires good sailor lads; and these lads generally, according to the testimony of their masters, turn out such. At Farningham, the secretary, Mr. A. O. Charles, will show you any day three hundred street arabs all growing respectable.

England is already overstocked with incapables and scoundrels; and these boys would have been such had not kindly hearts and friendly hands come to the rescue. That they can be trained and made useful we see in the number of well-conducted blacking boys, of whom, I believe, the number is three hundred and sixty-two, and in the little scavengers who pursue their calling almost at the very peril of their life. In 1851 the first Shoe-black Society was formed. There are now eight, and last year the earnings of the boys amounted to upwards of 11,000. Only think of all this money made by London mud!

Clearly the street boy can be elevated in the scale of being. The vices of his early life may be eradicated. The better part of him may be strengthened and called into existence. He is not all bad, nor altogether incurable. He is what you and I might have been, good or bad, had we been left to ourselves. It is hard work winning him over. It requires a patience and a wisdom such as only a few possess, but it can be done, and it must be done, if the future of our country is to be brighter and better than its past. Ah, he is very human, that little unwashed, uncombed, unfed, untended n.o.body's child. Leave him alone, and he will be cunning as a serpent, cruel as a wolf, like a roaring lion, ever hungering for its prey. Grown up to a man, and not hung, he will cost the State a great deal of money, for no man wastes property like the thief, and to try him and shut him in prison is very costly work. It is infinitely cheaper to make an honest man of him. For ten pounds you may plant him with a Canadian settler, who will make a man of him, in a very few years. At any rate it is unwise to treat him unkindly, to keep him moving on, to chivy him for ever along the streets, much to the disgust of old ladies, who are always "dratting" those horrid boys. It is to be feared their number is on the increase, and this, I regret to write, is the testimony of one who ought to know. What is the reason? My informant tells me it is diminished parental authority. Every day, mothers and fathers come to him with boys of tender years, whom they declare to be utterly unmanageable. Another cause undoubtedly is our cheap and trashy literature. Recently, a great newsvendor stated before a committee of the House of Commons, that he sold weekly one hundred of "The Black Monk," one hundred of "Blighted Heart," five hundred and fifty of "Claude Duval," fifty of "The Hangman's Daughter," and three hundred and fifty of "Paul Clifford." If you want to see what these boys read, visit Kent Street or the New Cut. Look at the sensational pictures of the cheap ill.u.s.trated journals, in which murder, suicide, and crime are the staple commodities treated of. Read some of the journals professedly written for boys, and which you will see the boys read if you happen to pa.s.s any large establishment at the dinner hour, and it will not be difficult to understand what street boys, if left to themselves, are sure to become.

THE END.