THE SEAMY SIDE OF WELLINGTON.

Evening Post, Volume XXX, Issue 145, 16 December 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE SEAMY SIDE OF WELLINGTON.

[By " Cameo."] " Oh, for the rarity Of Christian oharity." Trite is the saying that one half the world doesn't know how the other half lives, but it is no less true than trite. It may almost be added that the half in question doesn't care either. Bracken aptly put it when he wrote those lines — Not understood ! We move apart, asunder, j Our paths grow wider as the eeasonß oreep A Ion? the years, wew c marvel and we wonder Why life is life— and then we fall aaleep, Not understood. If this be so in regard to the general run of folks, how much more so is it in regard to those who constitute the | seamy side of humanity ! — those ■ wretched creatures who form the | lower stratum of civilisation, who, Dives-like, look on at luxury afar off, from the hovel or gaol, and feel that society has oast them off for r ever, and that there is little left for them on earth but to grovel out their liveß in wretchedness or crime, and sink at last unwept and uncared for into the grave. What a picture of misery is daily to be found in our police courts ! Men whose lives have been wasted by intoxication ; women I from whose features have been blotted by drink and vicious habits all that was once fair and womanly ; girls who, growing up amidst the worst forms of vice, have had their young lives blighted from the cradle, and have ultimately found themselves the inmates of a police cell for some flagrant breach of law and order! How little of all this is known by the "respectable outsider" ; how little is known about the denizens of our slums, even by those whose ostensible mission is to search the highways and byways, and gather to their fold the morally blind, and halt, and lame, and deaf. They preach on Sundays to prim respectability, and for the most part they come in contact with only the law abiding and peaceably disposed citizens. It is true they inveigh against the evil of intemperance, but do they know the extent of that evil? Do they visit the houses of the outcasts of society ; do they see these people at their nightly orgies in hovels so wretched that one would feel it a cruelty to animals to stall them there — tenements, too (like those in Maori Eow), let at a high rontal by men who are not outcasts of society, but hold (in some instances) a recognised social status ? Do they even visit the Police Courts, where, without soiling their garments, they may learn how much of wickedness exists in the vicinity of their churches? Very seldom, I think. I once asked a prominent Church of England minister, who boasted of making periodical visits to all within his parish, whether Jew or Gentile, Catholic or Pagan, if he ever frequented the slums and alleys, where rogues and vagabonds and women of ill-repute were to be found. His reply was an emphatic INo. "Why should I go amongst them," he said, "and what would people say if I were seen entering a brothel?" I told him I thought he might afford to disregard what people said if his own conscience were clear, and then he quoted Scripture in his defence. He said St. Paul had advised us to beware of the appearance of evil. I thought to myself, "The Devil quotes Scripture for his own ends," and left. Ido not believe that all habitues of the police cells are outside the pale oi reform, but what encouragement have they ? The Magistrate, as a rule, is lenient, and often goes out of his way to give a chance to an offender. But what does that chance mean ? The woman who has been brought up over and over again for drunkenness, is turned adrift often without home or friend, and there is no one apparently who cares whether she live or die. She returns to her old haunts, and the result is an immediate relapse into her former habits, and so on to the end of the chapter. I have known women, who have been brought before the Wellington Magistrates as many as 30 and 40 times for various offences. It is true we have in this city, as elsewhere, a refuge for fallen women, but it's very title is enough to make the woman who is not beyond hope shrink from entering its doors. Admission there stamps the inmate as with the brand of Cain, and it is difficult for her to regain her self-reopect or to obtain employment after leaving it. After all there is a great deal in a name. Is it not possible to do something more for these our sisters than is done at present ? Assuredly it is possible. HABD IS THE FATE OF THE IKFIRM AND POOE. Let me draw another picture in which womankind does not so frequently figure— that of tie vagrant — & term which in our laws is exceed-

ingly comprehensive. There are many kinds of offenders included in it, some of whom are true objects of charity. "No lawful visible means of support" was the charge which was brought against a palsied, halfstarved, ragged old man at the Resident Magistrate's Court a few days ago. "He cannot work; he goes about begging and sleeps under hedges," said the Police Inspector, who appeared as prosecutor on this dreadful charge. Truly a pitiful scene iv the old age* of a human being against whom there is no record of crime save that of poverty. Hacked with rheumatic pains, scarcely able to totter along theinhospitable*Btreetß, destitute and alone in the world, he iB left to beg a morsel of bread to sustain the life which is already a burden to him, | and to seek shelter from the inclemency of the weather behind a hedge or under a tree ! "He has seen better days," observes the police officer. What a world of pathos is i there in that hackneyed phrase! How sad is the lot of such, a man, reduced to commit the penal offence of asking for food or the means to procure temporary sustenance or ! shelter! Such a man is scarcely allowed to live, and he can only die — except from old age, disease I or sheer starvation — by his own hand, and even that relief is prohibited by law. The man has undoubtedly seen better days. He is an educated man, the son of a gentleman who once held a commission in the Imperial Army. He has drifted to this colony without resources and, like many others of his class, has not been a success. After many vicissitudes, he has sunk down to the position of a menial, till ill-health and disappointment have made him prematurely old and decrepit, and at last, when his days are " dwindled down to the shortest span," his daily ration is what he can gain from the precarious charity of those who look upon him as an impostor*, and his bed the hard turf with a tree for shelter and the sky for a roof. Truly may it be said " Hard is the lot of the infirm and poor." This man has offended against the laws of his country, and so he is sentenced to a term of imprisonment with " hard labour." The Bench wishes to deal lightly with the " erring one," but there is no help for him, and he has to go to gaol. He will not have to do much hard work, and will be kept sweet, wholesome, and have enough to eat, which will be a blessing to him ; but is it right that because a man is old and infirm he should have to spend his last days in a cell branded as a criminal? As he is removed from the dock another man takes his place there. He, too, is old and infirm, and his offence is identical with that of his predecessor. He has been found at midnight lying asleep in the Queen's highway in all the severity of a pitiless rain, and a wind that would chill to the marrow the hale and hearty. He has nowhere else to go to, except he "shuffle off this mortal coil," which is illegal, and the attempt to do which would consign him to gaol till he came to his senses. His history would doubtless be interesting and instructive if he would relate it. He is one of the first settlers, and of late his occupation has been to play the piano — he has been a clever pianist in his time— in brothelß. How he reached that stage of degradation no one seems to know or care. Probably drink has had much to do with it. However, there he is in the dock, a broken down old man, and the Bench, hearing how he was found asleep in the rain at midnight, cry, "Away with him! away with him!" and then he is thrust back into the police cell to reflect on the vanity of human life and the justice of penal laws.