ENGLISH PAUPERISM. Lamentable Condition of the Poor.— Purse-Proud Aristocrats. [From "San Francisco Chronicle,"]

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 16, 19 April 1884, Page 6

ENGLISH PA UPERISM. Lamentable Condition of the Poor.— Purse-Proud Aristocrats. [From " San Francisco Chronicle,"]

The times when poor citizens were knocked down in the streets by the carriages of the aristocrats, and left to bleed and die unheeded ; when poor peasants wore reduced to eating grass, while the nobles fed on turkey and truffles ; when to touch the person of a loi'd was a sacrilege, and to address him a crime — these times, which culminated in drama nearly a century asjo, appear to be happening in England to-day. History, philosophy, logic, alilce fail to inform us why such unnatural social phases are possible. Are liberty and equality unattainable? Are revolutions capable of making but a brief mark upon the body politic ? Are there some springs coiled up within mankind which are continually pressing against the senses of justice, of charity, of humanity ? The man must be blind who does not see in London to-day the beginnings of a social tempest, beside which the French Revolution will appear to have been but a gentle gale. France was a comparatively large country, with plenty of refuges for the fleeing aristocrats, and a long line of frontier, beyond which they could be secure. England is a small country, girt all around by the sea. The population of France was all of one race and one religion. The aristocrats of England are of the Norman, tho peasantry of the Saxon i*ace ; the former are Episcopalians, the latter atheists. Yes, there is no use in shutting one's eyes to plain facts, however disagreeable they may appear.

A GLOOMY PICTURE. W retch edness and hopelessness have done their fell work in England. They have turned a God-fearing, Christian people into a nation of radicals, atheists and savages. Man always makes God after his own image, and the imago of man to-day in England is that of Despair. In that country poverty is no longer a misfortune ; it is a crime, and the worst of crimes. But recently the seventh annual supper to tho criminal classes was given in Little Wilderness, Drury Lane. While 2(.0 avowed and hardened criminals were fed inside, '2,000 fainting paupers stood outside shivering in the cold and wet, their wistful eyes turned to the windows, beyond which so much good food was being eaten, m ith the hope in their despairing hearts that they, too, might have the courage to become criminals, so that they might be fed. Are these unfortunates accused of laziness, of intemperance, of any physical or moral detect ? Not Pt all ; the facts are all the other way. At a recent meeting of the London missionaries of the Established Church this question was formally discussed, "Do you, of your own personal knowledge, know of industrious, temperate, prudent people whose misfortunes could not be charged to their own fault or folly, but merely to the lack of enough to eat?" To this dreadful question '26 of the '29 missionaries present replied that they did know of such people, and they backed this assertion with «uch an array of names and dates as leaves all doubt out ol the matter.

A DREADFUL CONDITION, One of them said that, it v, a.« not uncommon for poor men, long out of work, to fall down in the street for lack of strength, superinduced by insufficient food. These were men who never drank liquor, and could not be suspected of drunkenness. In my shipbuilding report of 1866 I showed that, according to the sworn evidence of the Maine shipbuilders, they found it cheaper to hire men at §3.30 than $2.50 p ei . (j a y t on account of the superior efficiency of the former. At a later date Thomas Brassey said the same thing with reference to the employment of British navvies on German railways. In the face of these well-authenti-cated opinions, the British capitalist persists in crowding his workingman to the wall, by monopoli&ing the principal source of mechanical power, the coalfields of England ; by permitting and encouraging the naked peasants of India and Egypt to struggle against the products of British in dustry, and by taxing the British labourer out of the very implements of his drudgery. The vicar of Ticehurst, in Sussex, recently levied upon the plough horses of a tenant farmer named Tyman. This levy was not for debt or damages, but for extraordinary ecclesiastical tithes. The farmer, being a sturdy Saxon, resisted the levy, when 10 hirelings were sent for, who threw him down, beat him unmercifully, and carried off his working horses. This is the sort of religion and charity and fraternity which the British Constitution offers to the poor. I wonder if the American snob, who boasts in a languishing way of the fox-hunts he has enjoyed with his British cousin, is aware of the damage done to the poor farmers by this sport, and of the unheeded complaints which they have made concerning

ENGLISH DESPOTISM. These complaints are only made in an anonymous form and to the newspapers. To make them openly would be to excite the animosity of the landlord, and this would entail worse consequences than the fox-hunts. It would bring about ruin The Earl of Cork, Master of the Queen's Hounds, has more than once, both by request and example, tried to close the hunting season before Easter, when the tender shoots of the wheat plant first appear above the earth to promise mankind their daily bread, but in vain. The aristocrats will not give up their noble sport for any considerations affecting the despised churls who till the land. The consequence is that the churls are emigrating and the farming lands are becoming deserted. In Sussex, in Lincolnshire, in Yorkshire, and other parts of England, many farms have fallen to one-third and even one-fourth their rental value or price three to five years a^o The proprietor of one of the largest hoteh in London informed me that an entirely new phase of hotel life had been begun. The country gentry were locking up their mansions and coming to town to live at hotels with their families, "like the Americans." The reason was that their rents had fallen below the point at which they could maintain their accustomed state. It was this fact, m«re than the unwonted influx of transatlantic tourists, which accounted for the rise of so many great hotels, which but a few years ago were dingy inns.

A TALK WITH A LANDLOIU). In conversing with one of these English absentee landlords he confirmed what the hotelkeeper had told me, and added that in some parts of England the beggars and tramps had become so numerous as to engender a fear, at least on the part of the female members of his family, that " something might happen, you know." The respectable residents of Sydenham and Forest Hill, within seven miles of the metropolis 1 had recently remonstrated with the magis- ' trates of the Greenwich Police Court for 1 their leniency to the poor. Instead of send- * ing beggars to prison they had merely cau- < tioned them, and the result was that the <■ neighbourhood was infested with mendi- t cants and "the police were paralysed."

The line of distinction in England between the happy and miserable is not so much aristocracy as wealth. The crime of the French people was that they were not noble. The panderers at court were not rich, but they were noble, and hence they were provided for by the Crown. The crime of the English people is not so much ignobility as poverty. Sir Harry Horatio Wraxhall was a oaronet, but he was poor, and so last year he died in St. Savior's Workhouse, South- ; wark. There is said to be another titled pauper in St. Olave's Workhouse, Southwark, but I did not learn his name. The nobility of these paupers did not save them. As for paupers of the middle class of mixed Norman and Saxon blood, their name is I legion.

CROWDED PRISONS. Not only are the workhouses filled with them, the debtors' prison is crowded. Any judgment debtor wno has had the means to pay his debt since the date of his judgment and owing under £50, maybe committed to prison for six weeks. Under this provision of law 5,444 were last year sent to gaol in England. To what extreme lengths poverty has gone in that country it is difficult to describe, except by examples. The food of the poor now includes the offal of animals, the most disgusting substances, rotten eggs, decayed vegetables, the leavings of sculleries cooked over, the jetsam of the streets, even old rags, perhaps saturated with disease. In a recent analysis of coffees sold to the poor they were found to be adulterated with carrots, parsnips, Venetian red, acorns, sawdust, charred rags, rope-yarn, baked horses' hearts and common dirt. Not everybody has the means to pay 10s down, and incur the risk of haying to pay three or four pounds more in costs, in order to test the sixpennyworth of coffee which they may have purchased. At least one Cabinet Minister has laid down the axiom that "adulteration is a species of competition," and political economy of this sort is stronger in England than either the statute* against adulteration or the plainest teachings of the senses. The habitations of the poor are almosttoo hideous to describe. In the case Ethel Mercer, the infant child of a carpenter at 24, Stewart Square, Chelsea, who, according to the medical testimony, died from overcrowding, it was shown that six persons slept in a room only 10 x S feet. The rent of this human pig-sty was 3s per week, and the noble landlord made 2 per cent, a month profit and lived in the West End.

OVERCKOWJDIN'O. It was also stated that seve v al hundred deaths occur annually in London from overcrowding. Nor are these wretched habitations confined to London, or even to the cities. While examining the Aldriggan tin mine near St. Anstell, Cornwall, 1" found that the foreman of the mine lived with 10 other persons, his grown-up sons and daughters, all in one room, where they ate, drank, slept, and performed all the offices of life ; cause, poverty. This was a sober, industrious man. His wages were about CO cents a day. In the Black county men and women live together, separate, mate with other men and women, and all without the colour of law or the faintest show of formality. Many a young woman ha s b een sold as a paramour to some brutalised peasant or workman for a pot of beer ; price, 2 pence. I here was a late case at Halesowen, where a woman, after being married 29 years, was sold for a pot of beer ; but this is not the worst, nor is it confined to the Black country. In London there are thousands of young girls whose one hope and wish and prospect of living is to be permitted to ualk the streets, a favour only accorded to those who are willing to pay for the privilege. One of the worst cases of overcrowding was that of John Hawes, the scene-shifter, who died in Wyek -street, Westminster. Six or eight persons slept in the same room, and when the wretched scene-shifter died and a post mortem was held, the body had to be cut open in the one room which these unfortunates shared in common. Not only this, but the butchered corpse remained in the room for a week, the living occupants, both male and female, described as respectable people, being obliged to remain there also, because ' ' the parish had no mortuary. "

DISGUSTING SCENES. Dr. Oeswcll Hewitt, who made the post mortem, described the sight and odour as disgusting and insufferable, and it was only aftei' ( repeated remonstrances from the physician and the deceased man's mother-in-law that the magistrate gave an order to remove the corpse. Some people, ignorant of the fact that it has become almost a privilege to enter a British workhouse, may wonder why the unfortunate poor do not repair to that eleemosynary heaven. Perhaps William Mitchells case may enlighten them. That heinous monster was recently charged by Leonard Burke, Superintendent of the casual ward at St. George's Workhouse, witJi endeavouring to obtain a night's lodging in tho workhouse under false pretences ! Mr Burke swoie that when the prisoner applied for a lodging he was asked if he had any money, to which he replied, " No." Upon searching him three half-pence were found in his pockets and fourpence in his shoes. The&e were to pay for mending the shoes, he said ; but Mr Slade, the upright magistrate, shut the fellow up and sentenced him to a month's hard labour. Not only is it a penal offence for the poor to sleep upon false pretences, but it is not even permitted for them to die in a public place.

A SAD CASE. A poor woman also had been confined for thirteen weeks in a public hospital, and turned out when barely convalescent, and ordered to find a living amidst a hundred thousand other struggling and despairing paupers. Of course she failed. A livino- t What could she do? Whom could phe serve ? She had hardly strength enough to totter from one doorstep to another. She wanted to die and lay down in the street, hoping never to be disturbed again, A policeman shook her up and told her to go to the neighbouring workhouse. Upon applying there for relief or permission to lie down and die, she was told to apply in the parish whtre she had slept the preceding night, but, as she had slept on a doorstep for three nights, she did Dot know where to go. If she could only die, she said, she would be happy A policeman was ordered to march her off, and he took her before Mr Newton, the magistrate, who sent her to Bow-street, and there, under the shadow of Newgate, the poor wretch breathed her last, before the law had a chance to march her off, again. How long can such a state of affairs last ? is a question I have often asked myself as I wandered about London. There are more than enough paupers in London to take the place by storm, but there is not the faintest sign of disaffection among them. There is no Jacquerie in England. The people are thoroughly loyal to the Government, and worship the very shoestrings of the nobles. They come into the world and then step up in their turn to bo exterminated by hunger and privation as promptly, as meekly, as unresistingly as cattle walk into the shambles to be slaughtered. They have so little spirit that to the misery to which they are subjected, thero is added a oruel disdain. I could adduce man}' instances of this contempt, but enough for tho present. Alex Djsl Mab, :