HOW THE POOR LIVE.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 34, 26 January 1884, Page 5

HOW THE POOR LIVE.

A great sensation has been created by the re-publication in a cheap form of George R. Sims's remarkable papers on "How the Poor Live. " I have collected a few tit-bits from it which may serve to show how painfully interesting the brochure is*

The Little Sentinel. What do you think of this description of an attic in one of the rookeries of filth and vice near the Mint? We have reached the attic, and in that attic we see a picture which wijl be engraven on onr memory for many a month to come. The attic is almost bare ; in a broken lireplace are some smouldering embers, a log of wood lies in front like a fender. There is a broken chair trying to steady itself against a wall black with the dirt of ages. In one corner, on a shelf, is a battered saucepan and a piece of dry bread. On the scrap of mantel still remaining embedded in the wall is a rag ; on a bit of cord hung across the room are more rags, garments of some sort, possibly ; a broken flower-pot props open a crazy window-frame, possibly to let the smoke out, or in — looking at the chimneypots below, it is difficult to say which ; and at one side of the room is a sack of Heaven knows what— it is a dirty, filthy sack, greasy and black and evil-looking. I cannot guess what was in it if I tried, but what was on it was a little child — a neglected, ragged, grimed, and bare-legged little baby girl of .four. There she sat, in the bare squalid room, perched on the sack, erect, motionless, expressionless, on duty. She was " a little sentinel," left to guard a baby that lay asleep on the bare boards behind her, its head on its arm, the ragged remains of what had been a shawl flung over its legs. That baby needed a sentinel to guard it, indeed. Had it crawled a foot or two it would have fallen head-foremost 1 into that unprotected, yawning abyss of blackness below. In case of some such proceeding on I its part, the child of four had been left " on guard." The furniture of the attic, whatever it .was like, had- been -seized^ the week before for rent. . :The,littlesentiriel!spapaT-.thi& we unearthed of the "deputy" of the nouse later

on— was a militiaman and away ; the little sentinel 'B mamma was gone out on "a arrand," if it was anything like her usual " arrands," the deputy below informed us, would bring her home about dark, vory much the worse for it. Think of that little child, keeping guard on that dirty sack for six or eight hours at a stretch — think of her utter loneliness in that bare, desolate room, every childish impulse checked, left with orders " not to move or I'll kill yer," and sitting there often till night and darkness came on, hungry thirsty, and tired herself, but faithful to her trust to the last minute of the drunken mother's absence. < "Bless yer! I've known that young un sit there eight 'our at a stretch. I've seen her there of a mornin' when I've come up to see if I could git the rint, and I've seen her there when I've come agin' at night," says the deputy. "Lor, that ain't nothin' — that ain't." Nothing ! It is one of the saddest pictures I have seen for many a day. Poor little baby-sentinel, left with a human lite in its sole charge at four, neglected and overlooked. What will its girl-life be when it grows old enough to think ? I should like some of the little ones whose every wish is gratified, who have but to whimper to have, and who live surrounded by loving, smiling faces, and tended by gentle hands, to see the child in the bare garret sitting sentinel over the sleeping baby on the floor, and budging never an inch throughout the weary day from the place that her mother had bidden her stay in. With our minds full of this pathetic picture of child-life in the "Homes of the Poor," we descend the crazy staircase, and get out into as much light as can find its way down these narrow alleys.

A Strange Tale. There is a licensed lodging-house, where you can be accommodated for 4d or Cd a night. This payment gives you during the day the privilege of using the common kitchen, and it is into the common kitchen we are going. AYe walk into the passage, and are stopped by a strapping young woman of about eight and twenty. She is the deputy. " What do we want '/" Once again the password is given, and the attitude of the lady changes. She formally conducts us into a large room, where the strangest collection of human beings are crow ded together. It is sheetwashing day, and there is a great fire roaring up the chimney. Its ruddy glare gives a Kembrandtish tone to the picture. Tables and forms run round the room, and there is not a vacant place. Men, women, and children are lolling about, though it is mid-day, apparently with nothing to do but make themselves comfortable. The company is not a pleasant one. ]\Jany of the men and women and boys are thieves. Almost every form of disease, almost every kind of deformity, seems crowded into this Chamber of Horrors. The features are mostly repulsive ; an attractive face there is not among the GO or 70 human beings in the room. Some of them are tramps and hawkers, but most of them are professional loafers, picking up in nny way that presents itself the price of a night's lodging. They are a shifting population, and rarely remain in one house long. Some of them only get a night in now and then as a luxury, and look upon it as a (irand Hotel episode. They sleep habitually in the open, on the staircases, or in the casual ward. The house we are in is one where Nancy and Sikes come often enough when they are down on their luck Here is a true story of this very place, which will perhaps illustrate sufficiently the type of its frequenters. Some time last year two men left the house one morning. They were going into the country on business. One, whom I will call John, kissed his mistress, a girl of twenty, and said " CJood-bye," leaving her at the house ; he wouldn't be away long, and he and Bill, his companion, set out on their travels. A day or two after Bill returns alone; the girl asks him where her sweetheart is. " He's lagged," says Bill. But the girl has a bit of newspaper, and in it she reads that " the body of a man has been found in some woods near London ;" and she has an idea it may be John. " Oh, nonsense," says Bill — I quote the evidence — "he then lit his candle, and they retired to rest." John, as a matter of fact, had been murdered by his companion, they having quarrelled over the division of the proceeds of the burglary ; and eventually this young woman, who so readily transferred her affections from one lord to another, appeared in the witness-box and deposed to pawning boots and other things for Bill, which were undoubtedly the proceeds of a robbery at a house close to where the body was found. This is the house in which we stand where the burglary was planned — whence the murderer and the murdered set out together on their fatal journey. It was at one of these tables that the young girl discussed her absent lover's fate with her new lord, his murderer,and it was here that the police came to search for him and found the girl whose evidence helped to hang him.

Mrs O'Flannigan. Here is the home of the most notorious ' ' drunkardess" — if I may coin a word — in the neighbourhood. Mrs O'Flannigan's room is easily entered, for it is on the street level, and one step brings us into the presence of the lady herself. She is in bed, a dirty red flannel rag is wrapped about her shoulders, and her one arm is in a sling. She sits up in bed at the sight of visitors, and greets us in a gin and fog voice slightly mellowed with the Irish brogue. JBiddy has been charged at the police courts seventy-five times with being drunk, and she is therefore a celebrated character. She is hardly sober now, though she has evidently "had a shaking which would have sobered most people for a month. Her face is a .mass of bruises and cuts, and every now and then a groan and a cry to certain saints in her calendar tell of aches and pains in the limbs concealed under under the dirty blanket that covers the bed. "I'm a pretty sight now,ain'tl,gintlemen dear ? " she says, with a foolish laugh. "Shure am* I got blind drunk again last Saturday, and they run me in. The inspector let me out o' Sunday : God bless him for a rale gintleman. They carried me on a stretcher, bless yer hearts, and I kicked. Ha ! ha ! ha ! " The hag positively yelled with laughter as she thought of the scene she caused and the trouble she gave the police. Suddenly she looks round as if in search of something. " Molly, ye young varmint, where are ye ? " she shouts, and presently, from under the bed, where it lay crouching in fear, she drags a child, a wretched little girl of seven or eight, with its face and head covered with sores, that make one shudder to look at them. "There, Molly, ye yoiing varmint, show yourself to their honours, will ye ?" The child begins to snivel. One of our number is the. Board School officer of the district, and' Molly has not 1 been to school I'll it i r i ! lately. * , • Mr& O'Flannigan explains.' ' "Ye see, I can^t use my; limbs just' yet, yer honour, arid "Molly— Lord love ;her jljshe's just'the only thing I got to look'aftWer me. I might be burned in my blessed'-Weti, yer honour, and not able to move,"

( " You should give up getting drunk," I ventured to suggest, "then you wouldn't want a nurse." " You're right, your honour. It's the drink. Yer see, I can't help it. I ain't been sober for five years — ha ! ha ! ha !—! — and it's all thro' the trouble as come to me. My boy got into bad company and got lagged and put away for ten years, and I've never been the same since, and it broke my heart, and I took to the drink. And now my old man's took to the drink ihro' aggravation o' me, and he gets drunk every night of his blessed life. Ha ! ha ! ha !" The woman's story is practically true. Before her trouble she and her husband were costermongers and hawkers of fruit. The first of the evils of the foul slums where honest workers are forced to live, fell upon them in the ruin of the boy reared in a criminal atmosphere. The vicious surroundings were too strong for him, and he became a thier and paid the penalty. The mother sees her son— idolised in her rough way — taken from her ; the den of a home becomes doubly wretched, and the cursed drink-fiend is invoked to charm the sorrow away. That is the first step "to drown sorrow." The steps after that are oasy to count. The woman becomes an habitual drunkard, the rooms they live in get dirtier and smaller and fouler, and at last the husband drowns his sorrow too. "Aggravation " and a constant association with a drunken woman turn the poor fellow to evil ways ; himself and a whole family are wrecked, that under better circumstances might havo been good and useful ciHzens. Had these people been able to got a decent room among decent people, the first misfortune that sent them wrong might never have happened. Their case is the case of hundreds.

A Curious Wedding. A clergyman's wife who took intonse interest in a young couple living together in a room in the Mint determined to make them get married . Th c you n q fellow earn ed fair wages, and was sober and steady ; the girl kept her room and her two little children clean and decent, and was always civilspoken and pleasant. The good lady who had the entree of the place talked to the young man whenever she saw him, and he admitted at last that, perhaps, the union might as well be made a legal one — " Not that me and Sail 'ull get on any better, you know mum, we couldn't ; but since you've been on at her she seems to have a bit o' fancy for to have the marridge lines, and if you'll tell us how, we'll get it done and over, missis." Delighted with the promise, the lady set to work and prepared everything. She gave the bride a new gown to be married in, and made frocks for the two little ones to come and see their father married ; she arranged with her luisband to perform the ceremony, and last, but most important, she got the young man a day's holiday without loss ci pay irom his employers. The eventful day arrived ; the good soul beaming and elated, waited, with a few ! friends invited to see the interestingceremony at the church. The clergyman stood with his book at the altar, but no young couple. Twelve o'clock struck, the clergyman went into the vestiy, and put his coat on ; and bitterly disappointed at the failure of her little scheme, the good lady sat on for an hour, thinking some delay might have occurred, but after a while &ho gave it up as a bad job, and departed also. That evening, in as a towering a rage as a I cleryman's wife could decently be, she marched off to the Mint, and tackled the delinquents at onco. "What did they mean by it !" The young man was very civil and very apologetic. "He didn't mean to be rude, but the fact was, a mate hearin' he'd got a day of}" offered him a job at carting as was worth five bob ; and you know, mum, 1 could.it lose five bob jus for the sake o J gettin' married." I am happy to say k that the energetic lady set to work again, got another holiday for the man a week after, and this time "personally conducted" the wedding party to the church, which they did not leave till the young woman was the proud possessor of that by no means common property in the locality, a marriage certificate.

'Appy Dossers. The "'appy dossers" are the wretched people who roam about the street houseless, and creep in ts sleep on the stairs, in the passages and untenanted cellars of the lodging-houses with the doors open night and day. No policeman's lantern is ever turned on them, and they crowd together in their rags and make a jolly night of it. Sometimes in among them creeps a starving woman, to die from want and exposure ; and she dies while the foul oath and the ribald jests go on ; and the " dossers " Mho are well enough to be " 'appy " make such a noise that a lodger, disturbed in his legi timate rest for which he has paid, comes out and lays about him vigorously at the " varmints," and kickn them down stairs, if he can. Thus not only are many of the licensed lodging-houses and homes of the poor breeding houses in themselves for crime, disease, and filth, but they are, for lack of supervision, receptacles for that which has already been bred elsewhere, and which is deposited gratis t© swell the collection. A " 'appy dosser " can make himself comfortable anywhere. I heard of one who used to crawl into the dust bin, and pull the lid down ; but I know that to be an untruth, from the simple fact that none of the dust bins on this class of property have a lid. The contents are left, too, for months to decompose, not only under the eyes of the authorities, but under the noses of the inhabitants. The sanitary inspection of these houses is a farce, and in many cases the vestrymen, who ought to put the law in motion, are themselves the owners of the murder-traps.

Sick and Starving. If you could bring yourself to imagine truthfully the condition of the sick poor without the hospitals to go to,you would see a picture of human misery so appalling that you would cover your eyes and turn away from it with a shudder. Yet there are such pictures to be seen. There are cases which, from varying circumstances, do not go to the hospital. There are men and women who lie and die day by day in these wretched single rooms, sharing aljj the family trouble, enduring the hunger and the cold, and waiting without hope, without a single ray ot comfort, until God • curtains their staring eyes with the merciful film of death. It was such a case we came upon once in our wanderings, and which, without unduly harrowing the reader up, I will endeavour to describe. , The room was no better and no worse than hundreds of its class. It was dirty and dilapidated, with the usual bulging blackened ceiling, and the usual crumbling greasy walls. fts furniture was a dilapidated fouivpost bedstead, a chair, and a deal table. On the bed lay a woman, young, and with features that before hourly anguish had contorted them had been comely. The woman was dying slowly of heart disease v J)e'ath was, "\writ 'large" upon her face. At her breast she held her child, a poor little 'mite of a baby that wag drawing the last

drain of life from its mother's breast. The day was a bittovly cold one ; through tho broken casement the wind came ever and anon in icy gusts, blowing the hanging end of the ragged coverlet upon the bod to and fro like a flag in a breeze. The wind roared in the chimney too, eddying down into the firelcss grato with a low howling noise like tho moan of a Banshee round a haunted house. To protect the poor woman from the cold her husband had flung on it his tattered great coat — a garment that the most ancient four - wheel night cabman would have spurned as a knee protector. "He was a plumber," she whispered to us in a weak, hollow voice ; "he had been out of work for a week, and he had gone out to try and look for a job." One shivered to think of him wearily trudging thestreets this bitter day, half clad and wholly starved. What must have been his torture as he failed at place after place, and day wore on and brought the night wben he would have to return to the poor dying wife with the old sad story ? As one realised the full meaning of this little domestic tragedy, and knew that it was only one of many daily enacted in the lichest city in the world, the scene of it lay not a mile from the full tide of all the pomps and vanities of fashion, of all the notorious luxury and extravagances which is the outward show of our magnificence and wealth, it was hard to repress a feeling of something akin to shame and anger — shame for the callous indifference which bids one half the world ignore the sufferings of the other — anger that with all the gold annually borne along pn the broad stream of charity, so little of it ever reaches the really deserving and necessitous poor. The house this poor woman lay dying in was one of a block which would have been a prize to a sanitary inspector anxious to make a sensational report. For the room in question the plumber out of work had to pay four and sixpence, and the broken pane of the landlord had refused to replace. The man was told "he must do it himself, or if he didn't like it as it was he could go."

A Day in the Country, I will now end with a little incident of which I was an eye-witness this week Some poor children of the slums had " a day in the country given them " by a friend, at Mirich I had the privilege of being present. At tea, to every little one there were given two largo slices of cake ; I noticed one little boy take his, break a little piece oil', eat it, and quietly secrete the remainder in hi\ jacket pocket. Curious, and half .suspecting what his intention was, I followed the lad when tea was over, to the fields. " Eaten your cake yet ?"' I said. "JS r o, si)'," he answered, colouring as though he had done something wrong. " What are you going to do with it ?" "Please sir," he stammered, "I'm goin' to take it 'omc to mother. She's ill and can't eat nothink, and I thought as she might manage cake, sir." In the train that brought those youngsters dow n came one white-faced child, who looked faint and ill with the -ualk to the station. The head teacher, a\ ho has the history of the child at her finger's ends, saw what was the matter. " Had no breakfast to-day, Annie ?" " ]S T o, ma am," was the faltering reply. There \\ as a ciowd of poor mothers at the station i:omc1o .seethe children off. One went out and presently returned with a penny, which she pressed into the child's hand— to buy herself something with. The woman had pawned her shawl for a copper or two in sheer womanly sympathy. Had she had the money about her she needn't have left the station. There was a good deal of pawning that morning, I know, Irom an eye-witness, and all to give the little children a copper or two to spend. And what a struggle there had been to get them something decent to Avear for that grand day out ! If all the stories were written that could be told of the privation and sacrifices endured by mothers, that Sally and Jane and Will might look res pectable at the treat, your heart would ache. As I don't wish it to, we will not go into the matter.