“HORRIBLE LONDON.”

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3375, 28 January 1884, Page 2

“HORRIBLE LONDON.”

We take the following from one of the papers descriptive of the slums of the metropolis which Mr G. E. Sims_ is now contributing to the “ Daily News”:

The Bishop of Bedford, in a recent speech, expressed a desire to have the drink statistics of a slum. I cannot give figures, but I can give facts. The Bishop expressed a belief that the revelation would greatly astonish the public. I am quite sure that it will.

More than one-fourth of the daily earnings of the denizens of the slums goes over the bars of the public-houses and gin palaces. To study the drink phase of this burning question, let us take the districts from which I have drawn the facts and figures I have submitted in previous articles. On a Saturday night, in the great thoroughfare adjacent there, are three corner public-houses which take as much money as the whole of the shops on both sides of the way put together. Butchers, bakers, greengrocers, clothiers, furniture.dealers, all the caterers for the wants of the populace, are open till a late hour; there are hundreds of them trading round and about, bat the whole lot do not take as much money as three publicans —that is a fact ghastly enough in all conscience. Enter the publichouses and you will see them crammed. Here are artisans and laborers drinking away the wages that ought to clothe their little ones. Here are the women squandering the money that would purchase food for the lack of which their children are dying. One group rivets the eye of an observer at once. It consists of an old grey-haired dame, a woman of 40, and a girl of about 19 witb a baby in her arms. All these are in a state which is beat described as “ maudlin”— they have finished one lot of gin, and the youngest woman is ordering another round. It is a great grandmother, grandmother, and a mother and her baby—four generations together—and they are all dirty, and dishevelled, and drunk, except the baby, and even that poor little mite may have its first taste of alcohol presently. It is no uncommon sight in these places to see a mother wet a baby’s lips with gin and water. The process is called “ givin’ the young ’un a taste,” and the baby’s father will look on sometimes and enjoy the joke immensely. But the time to see the result of a Saturday night’s heavy drinking in a low neighborhood is after the houses are closed. Then you meet dozens of poor wretches reeling home to their miserable dens ; some of them roll across the roadway and fall, cutting themselves till the blood flows. Every penny in some instances has gone in drink.

One dilapidated ragged wretch I met last Saturday night was gnawing a baked potato. By his side stood a thinly-clad woman bearing a baby in her arms, and in hideous language reproaches him for his selfishness. She had fetched him out of a public-house with his last halfpenny in his pocket. With that halfpenny he had bought the potato which he refused to share with her. At every corner the police are ordering or coaxing men and women to “move on.” Between 12 and 1 it is a long procession of drunken men and women, and the most drunken seem to be those whose outward appearance betokens the most abject poverty. Turn out of the main thoroughfare and into the dimly-lighted back streets, and you come upon scene after scene, to the grim, grotesque horror of which only the pencil of a Dore could do justice. Women with hideous distorted faces are rolling from side to side shrieking aloud snatches of popular songs, plentifully interlarded with the vilest expressions. Men as drunk as themselves meet them, there is a short interchange of ribald jests , and foul oaths, then a shower of blows. Down from one dark court rings a cry of murder, a woman, her face hideously gashed, makes across the narrow road pursued by a howling madman. It is only a drunken husband having a row with his wife.

Far into the small hours such cries will ring here—now that of an injured wife, now that of a drunken fool trapped into a den of infamy to be robbed and hurled into the street by the professional bully who resides on the premises. As you pass the open doors of some of the houses you may hear a heavy thud and a groan* and then stillness. It is only a drunken man who, staggering up the staircase to his attic, has missed his footing and fallen heavily. Spend any Saturday night you like in a slum, and then say if one-tenth of the habitual horrors of the drunken night has been catalogued here. And all these people who have spent so much in drink are undoubtedly among the class included in the description “ the abject poor.”

Much as I had seen of the drink evil, it was not until I came to study one special district, with a view of ascertaining how far the charge of drunkenness could be maintained against the poor as a body, that I had any idea of the terrible extent to which this cause of poverty prevails. Come to the schools and see how the drink affects the future of the children of whom we have such hopes. Let them tell their own stories.

M.L. —Father drunk, struck mother and hurt her skull. Mother went raving mad, and has been in a lunatic Asylum ever since. Father slipped off a barge when he was drunk and was drowned. Poor old grandmother has to keep the children.

E.S.—Father gets drunk and beats mother. Is in prison now for assaulting her. Children dread his coming back, he is so cruel to them when he’s drunk.

S.H—Has a fearful black eye. Mother and father both drink and hurl things at each other. Missiles often bruise and injure the children. C.S, —Mother drinks “ awful.” She dropped baby on the pavement; baby so injured it died. This is tho second baby she has killed accidentally.

M.A.H.—Came to school with arm broken. “ Father didn’t mean no harm, but he was tight." S.S.—Bright, lively girl of seven. Mother drinks. Shoulders and neck black with bruises. There is a curious domestic arrangment in this case which is worth recording. S.’s mother lived with a man and had several children. The man deserted her. Mrs S.’s sister was married to a man named D., and bad also several children. One day Mrs D. gets 18 months for assaulting the police. Then D. Takes compassion on his wife’s sister, and has her to live with him, and the children of both families herd together. How tho family will rearrange itself when the legitimate Mrs D. comes out remains to be seen.

These stories, told by tho lips of little children, are terrible enough, but

the authorities of the district, and those whose business takes them constantly into the wretched homes, can tell yon worse. A friend of mine, who is never tired of trying to urge the people of this district to temperance, not long since found a man sitting np naked on a heap of rags shivering with the death throes on him, after crying for water for his parched throat. His wife, in a maudlin state of intoxication, was staring helplessly at her dying husband. A coat was given to wrap round the poor fellow. At night when my friend returned, he found the man cold and dead and nuked, ani the woman in a state of intoxication. She had torn the coat from the body of the dying man and pawned it for drink. In these districts men and women who are starving will get grants of bread, and some of them ask for the bread to be wrapped up in clean paper. Do you know why ? That they may sell the loaf to someone for a copper or two, and get drunk with the money. Men will come and buy a pair of boots in the morning out of their earnings, and pay 7s for them. At night they will return to the same shop and offer to sell them back for 4s. They have started drinking, and want the money to finish their carouse with.

Such are a few of the facts connected with the drink phase of one London slum. They might easily be multiplied and intensided did we pass from the slum to the workhouse, and then to the County Lunatic Asylum, but for my purpose I have given the reader sufficient evidence already, I have endeavored to prove that drink is one cause of the existing misery and over-crowding. But is it a cause which is more beyond remedy than are any of the others ? All honour to the brave temperance workers who have already done so much to diminish the evil. In this district such men are laboring night and day. No one now disputes the good which temperance can accomplish. It will strengthen the hands of those who are trying to wean the thriftless poor from drink, if we give the people better homes and enforce sanitary laws. The very oxtent of the evil shows the necessity for immediate action. Signing the pledge is a very good thing for drunkards to do, but in this neighborhood a woman signed it 23 times and died drunk. Again, all alcohol may be poison in some good people’s estimation, but there are degrees of poison. It is the vile nature of the stuff now allowed to be sold to the poor which increases the effect of drink upon them and makes their re clamation more difficult. There are drunkards, there are criminals, there are poor laborers in these districts who will never be “improved.” No one who knows them has the slightest hope for them. But Sodom was to be spared for the sake of ten just persons ; in the City of Dreadful Night where our poor herd together there are hundreds of just persons. For their sakes the city must be saved.