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PREFACE
PREFACE
The experiences related in this volume fell to me in the summer of 1902. I went down into the under-world of London with an attitude of mind which I may best liken to that of the explorer. I was open to be convinced by the evidence of my eyes, rather than by the teachings of those who had not seen, or by the words of those who had seen and gone before. Further, I took with me certain simple criteria with which to measure the life of the under-world. That which made for more life, for physical an
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CHAPTER I. THE DESCENT
CHAPTER I. THE DESCENT
“But you can’t do it, you know,” friends said, to whom I applied for assistance in the matter of sinking myself down into the East End of London. “You had better see the police for a guide,” they added, on second thought, painfully endeavouring to adjust themselves to the psychological processes of a madman who had come to them with better credentials than brains. “But I don’t want to see the police,” I protested. “What I wish to do is to go down into the East End and see things for myself. I wi
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CHAPTER II. JOHNNY UPRIGHT
CHAPTER II. JOHNNY UPRIGHT
I shall not give you the address of Johnny Upright. Let it suffice that he lives in the most respectable street in the East End—a street that would be considered very mean in America, but a veritable oasis in the desert of East London. It is surrounded on every side by close-packed squalor and streets jammed by a young and vile and dirty generation; but its own pavements are comparatively bare of the children who have no other place to play, while it has an air of desertion, so few are the peopl
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CHAPTER III. MY LODGING AND SOME OTHERS
CHAPTER III. MY LODGING AND SOME OTHERS
From an East London standpoint, the room I rented for six shillings, or a dollar and a half, per week, was a most comfortable affair. From the American standpoint, on the other hand, it was rudely furnished, uncomfortable, and small. By the time I had added an ordinary typewriter table to its scanty furnishing, I was hard put to turn around; at the best, I managed to navigate it by a sort of vermicular progression requiring great dexterity and presence of mind. Having settled myself, or my prope
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CHAPTER IV. A MAN AND THE ABYSS
CHAPTER IV. A MAN AND THE ABYSS
“I say, can you let a lodging?” These words I discharged carelessly over my shoulder at a stout and elderly woman, of whose fare I was partaking in a greasy coffee-house down near the Pool and not very far from Limehouse. “Oh yus,” she answered shortly, my appearance possibly not approximating the standard of affluence required by her house. I said no more, consuming my rasher of bacon and pint of sickly tea in silence. Nor did she take further interest in me till I came to pay my reckoning (fou
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CHAPTER V. THOSE ON THE EDGE
CHAPTER V. THOSE ON THE EDGE
My first impression of East London was naturally a general one. Later the details began to appear, and here and there in the chaos of misery I found little spots where a fair measure of happiness reigned—sometimes whole rows of houses in little out-of-the-way streets, where artisans dwell and where a rude sort of family life obtains. In the evenings the men can be seen at the doors, pipes in their mouths and children on their knees, wives gossiping, and laughter and fun going on. The content of
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CHAPTER VI. FRYING-PAN ALLEY AND A GLIMPSE OF INFERNO
CHAPTER VI. FRYING-PAN ALLEY AND A GLIMPSE OF INFERNO
Three of us walked down Mile End Road, and one was a hero. He was a slender lad of nineteen, so slight and frail, in fact, that, like Fra Lippo Lippi, a puff of wind might double him up and turn him over. He was a burning young socialist, in the first throes of enthusiasm and ripe for martyrdom. As platform speaker or chairman he had taken an active and dangerous part in the many indoor and outdoor pro-Boer meetings which have vexed the serenity of Merry England these several years back. Little
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CHAPTER VII. A WINNER OF THE VICTORIA CROSS
CHAPTER VII. A WINNER OF THE VICTORIA CROSS
I have found that it is not easy to get into the casual ward of the workhouse. I have made two attempts now, and I shall shortly make a third. The first time I started out at seven o’clock in the evening with four shillings in my pocket. Herein I committed two errors. In the first place, the applicant for admission to the casual ward must be destitute, and as he is subjected to a rigorous search, he must really be destitute; and fourpence, much less four shillings, is sufficient affluence to dis
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CHAPTER VIII. THE CARTER AND THE CARPENTER
CHAPTER VIII. THE CARTER AND THE CARPENTER
The Carter, with his clean-cut face, chin beard, and shaved upper lip, I should have taken in the United States for anything from a master workman to a well-to-do farmer. The Carpenter—well, I should have taken him for a carpenter. He looked it, lean and wiry, with shrewd, observant eyes, and hands that had grown twisted to the handles of tools through forty-seven years’ work at the trade. The chief difficulty with these men was that they were old, and that their children, instead of growing up
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CHAPTER IX. THE SPIKE
CHAPTER IX. THE SPIKE
First of all, I must beg forgiveness of my body for the vileness through which I have dragged it, and forgiveness of my stomach for the vileness which I have thrust into it. I have been to the spike, and slept in the spike, and eaten in the spike; also, I have run away from the spike. After my two unsuccessful attempts to penetrate the Whitechapel casual ward, I started early, and joined the desolate line before three o’clock in the afternoon. They did not “let in” till six, but at that early ho
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CHAPTER X. CARRYING THE BANNER
CHAPTER X. CARRYING THE BANNER
“To carry the banner” means to walk the streets all night; and I, with the figurative emblem hoisted, went out to see what I could see. Men and women walk the streets at night all over this great city, but I selected the West End, making Leicester Square my base, and scouting about from the Thames Embankment to Hyde Park. The rain was falling heavily when the theatres let out, and the brilliant throng which poured from the places of amusement was hard put to find cabs. The streets were so many w
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CHAPTER XI. THE PEG
CHAPTER XI. THE PEG
But, after carrying the banner all night, I did not sleep in Green Park when morning dawned. I was wet to the skin, it is true, and I had had no sleep for twenty-four hours; but, still adventuring as a penniless man looking for work, I had to look about me, first for a breakfast, and next for the work. During the night I had heard of a place over on the Surrey side of the Thames, where the Salvation Army every Sunday morning gave away a breakfast to the unwashed. (And, by the way, the men who ca
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CHAPTER XII. CORONATION DAY
CHAPTER XII. CORONATION DAY
O thou that sea-walls sever From lands unwalled by seas! Wilt thou endure forever, O Milton’s England, these? Thou that wast his Republic, Wilt thou clasp their knees? These royalties rust-eaten, These worm-corroded lies That keep thy head storm-beaten, And sun-like strength of eyes From the open air and heaven Of intercepted skies! SWINBURNE. Vivat Rex Eduardus! They crowned a king this day, and there has been great rejoicing and elaborate tomfoolery, and I am perplexed and saddened. I never sa
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CHAPTER XIII. DAN CULLEN, DOCKER
CHAPTER XIII. DAN CULLEN, DOCKER
I stood, yesterday, in a room in one of the “Municipal Dwellings,” not far from Leman Street. If I looked into a dreary future and saw that I would have to live in such a room until I died, I should immediately go down, plump into the Thames, and cut the tenancy short. It was not a room. Courtesy to the language will no more permit it to be called a room than it will permit a hovel to be called a mansion. It was a den, a lair. Seven feet by eight were its dimensions, and the ceiling was so low a
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CHAPTER XIV. HOPS AND HOPPERS
CHAPTER XIV. HOPS AND HOPPERS
So far has the divorcement of the worker from the soil proceeded, that the farming districts, the civilised world over, are dependent upon the cities for the gathering of the harvests. Then it is, when the land is spilling its ripe wealth to waste, that the street folk, who have been driven away from the soil, are called back to it again. But in England they return, not as prodigals, but as outcasts still, as vagrants and pariahs, to be doubted and flouted by their country brethren, to sleep in
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CHAPTER XV. THE SEA WIFE
CHAPTER XV. THE SEA WIFE
You might not expect to find the Sea Wife in the heart of Kent, but that is where I found her, in a mean street, in the poor quarter of Maidstone. In her window she had no sign of lodgings to let, and persuasion was necessary before she could bring herself to let me sleep in her front room. In the evening I descended to the semi-subterranean kitchen, and talked with her and her old man, Thomas Mugridge by name. And as I talked to them, all the subtleties and complexities of this tremendous machi
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CHAPTER XVI. PROPERTY VERSUS PERSON
CHAPTER XVI. PROPERTY VERSUS PERSON
In a civilisation frankly materialistic and based upon property, not soul, it is inevitable that property shall be exalted over soul, that crimes against property shall be considered far more serious than crimes against the person. To pound one’s wife to a jelly and break a few of her ribs is a trivial offence compared with sleeping out under the naked stars because one has not the price of a doss. The lad who steals a few pears from a wealthy railway corporation is a greater menace to society t
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CHAPTER XVII. INEFFICIENCY
CHAPTER XVII. INEFFICIENCY
I stopped a moment to listen to an argument on the Mile End Waste. It was night-time, and they were all workmen of the better class. They had surrounded one of their number, a pleasant-faced man of thirty, and were giving it to him rather heatedly. “But ’ow about this ’ere cheap immigration?” one of them demanded. “The Jews of Whitechapel, say, a-cutting our throats right along?” “You can’t blame them,” was the answer. “They’re just like us, and they’ve got to live. Don’t blame the man who offer
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CHAPTER XVIII. WAGES
CHAPTER XVIII. WAGES
When I learned that in Lesser London there were 1,292,737 people who received twenty-one shillings or less a week per family, I became interested as to how the wages could best be spent in order to maintain the physical efficiency of such families. Families of six, seven, eight or ten being beyond consideration, I have based the following table upon a family of five—a father, mother, and three children; while I have made twenty-one shillings equivalent to $5.25, though actually, twenty-one shill
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CHAPTER XIX. THE GHETTO
CHAPTER XIX. THE GHETTO
Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the time, City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime? There among the gloomy alleys Progress halts on palsied feet; Crime and hunger cast out maidens by the thousand on the street; There the master scrimps his haggard seamstress of her daily bread; There the single sordid attic holds the living and the dead; There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor, And the crowded couch of incest, in the warrens
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CHAPTER XX. COFFEE-HOUSES AND DOSS-HOUSES
CHAPTER XX. COFFEE-HOUSES AND DOSS-HOUSES
Another phrase gone glimmering, shorn of romance and tradition and all that goes to make phrases worth keeping! For me, henceforth, “coffee-house” will possess anything but an agreeable connotation. Over on the other side of the world, the mere mention of the word was sufficient to conjure up whole crowds of its historic frequenters, and to send trooping through my imagination endless groups of wits and dandies, pamphleteers and bravos, and bohemians of Grub Street. But here, on this side of the
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CHAPTER XXI. THE PRECARIOUSNESS OF LIFE
CHAPTER XXI. THE PRECARIOUSNESS OF LIFE
I was talking with a very vindictive man. In his opinion, his wife had wronged him and the law had wronged him. The merits and morals of the case are immaterial. The meat of the matter is that she had obtained a separation, and he was compelled to pay ten shillings each week for the support of her and the five children. “But look you,” said he to me, “wot’ll ’appen to ’er if I don’t py up the ten shillings? S’posin’, now, just s’posin’ a accident ’appens to me, so I cawn’t work. S’posin’ I get a
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CHAPTER XXII. SUICIDE
CHAPTER XXII. SUICIDE
With life so precarious, and opportunity for the happiness of life so remote, it is inevitable that life shall be cheap and suicide common. So common is it, that one cannot pick up a daily paper without running across it; while an attempt-at-suicide case in a police court excites no more interest than an ordinary “drunk,” and is handled with the same rapidity and unconcern. I remember such a case in the Thames Police Court. I pride myself that I have good eyes and ears, and a fair working knowle
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CHAPTER XXIII. THE CHILDREN
CHAPTER XXIII. THE CHILDREN
“Where home is a hovel, and dull we grovel, Forgetting the world is fair.” There is one beautiful sight in the East End, and only one, and it is the children dancing in the street when the organ-grinder goes his round. It is fascinating to watch them, the new-born, the next generation, swaying and stepping, with pretty little mimicries and graceful inventions all their own, with muscles that move swiftly and easily, and bodies that leap airily, weaving rhythms never taught in dancing school.
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CHAPTER XXIV. A VISION OF THE NIGHT
CHAPTER XXIV. A VISION OF THE NIGHT
All these were years ago little red-coloured, pulpy infants, capable of being kneaded, baked, into any social form you chose.—CARLYLE. Late last night I walked along Commercial Street from Spitalfields to Whitechapel, and still continuing south, down Leman Street to the docks. And as I walked I smiled at the East End papers, which, filled with civic pride, boastfully proclaim that there is nothing the matter with the East End as a living place for men and women. It is rather hard to tell a tithe
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CHAPTER XXV. THE HUNGER WAIL
CHAPTER XXV. THE HUNGER WAIL
“My father has more stamina than I, for he is country-born.” The speaker, a bright young East Ender, was lamenting his poor physical development. “Look at my scrawny arm, will you.” He pulled up his sleeve. “Not enough to eat, that’s what’s the matter with it. Oh, not now. I have what I want to eat these days. But it’s too late. It can’t make up for what I didn’t have to eat when I was a kiddy. Dad came up to London from the Fen Country. Mother died, and there were six of us kiddies and dad livi
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CHAPTER XXVI. DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND THRIFT
CHAPTER XXVI. DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND THRIFT
The English working classes may be said to be soaked in beer. They are made dull and sodden by it. Their efficiency is sadly impaired, and they lose whatever imagination, invention, and quickness may be theirs by right of race. It may hardly be called an acquired habit, for they are accustomed to it from their earliest infancy. Children are begotten in drunkenness, saturated in drink before they draw their first breath, born to the smell and taste of it, and brought up in the midst of it. The pu
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CHALLENGE
CHALLENGE
I have a vague remembrance Of a story that is told In some ancient Spanish legend Or chronicle of old. It was when brave King Sanchez Was before Zamora slain, And his great besieging army Lay encamped upon the plain. Don Diego de Ordenez Sallied forth in front of all, And shouted loud his challenge To the warders on the wall. All the people of Zamora, Both the born and the unborn, As traitors did he challenge With taunting words of scorn. The living in their house
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