THE MARCH OF THE DEAD BEAT

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10468, 4 November 1911, Page 6

THE MARCH OF THE DEAD BEAT

SCENES l-\" LONDON STREETS

(By Arthur J. Heighway.)

Tiio dead-beat! Ho is in London in his thousands. He has tramped the world and returned there. Should ho tramp it again, that great city will call him back once more. By day and by night you may sco him, if you look in the rig'ht quarter. In Spitalfields the most densely populated area of the British Isles —with its 316 people to every acre, and Whitechapel with its 157 to the acre, you may find him by day in his scores. By night, the embankment claims its hundreds, and every secluded alleyway its limits. The innocent prying stranger who ponetrates alone to the alleyways of Spitalfields, Whitechapel (the Thieves' Quarter), Stepney, and districts thereabouts, is not over-wise. Even in tho day-timo men aro still robbed there, criminals and booty disappearing hopelessly and finally on the slightest r.larm into tho warrens on every side. But, beside tho policeman, there is one man who man. enter here with impunity. That man is the city missionary. Ft is to the guidance of one of this baud of workers that I am indebted for the sights I saw concerning the march of tho dead-beat.

CASUALS, CRIMINALS AND CADGERS.

That alliterative headline is a complete division of the type as we saw him during the weary six hours of night and day that we spent in tramping through his haunts. There was tho man who was not yet permanently on the streets. Ho would take a job for a time —when he could get it — and retain it until discharged for incapacity or laziness. There was tho criminal living by his ravages oil society., There was the cadger, tho professional of the streets, past master in every wile that would bring him a living without the necessity of doing a hand's turn for it. He represents some types of the "British workman" who has been outthruvt by the "sober foreigner." He is the son of laziness and outdoes his father. He can live in degradation on apparently nothing, knowing as he does how to work tho round of the free meals and the free beds. , Behind a timber yard next to the docks in Stepney we found nearly a hundred men sitting about on the footpath, waiting for the distribution of free bed tickets in Medland Hall. This \va> at 3 o'clock on a sunny May afternoon, and the tickets would not be distributed till 6 p.m. Summer and winter alike tho hall is filled by over 340 homeless failures —men who cannot afford to pay even the fourpence required by a lodginghouse keeper or tho twopence asked by the Salvation Army Homes—men who are absolutely down, down, with no prospects in I life, no ambition, no desire save tlio mere animal instincts maintained by the existence of life within them. We walked down that scattered line of misery. Rags, dirt, and filth. Tho May sun shone on the men and warmed them and revealed glaringly and I faithfully their filthy meanness of at- ' tire and grimy dirtiness of skin. From a quarter to a half of those gathered were smoking—as the footpath around would have evidenced even had the pipes vanished. In huddled bundles they sat or lounged about, exhibits.of a!! that meii should not be.

THE LURE OF THE STREET. But that was their life —waiting. They were always waiting for something to turn up —waiting for something to bo done for them or given them. Through the day they were always waiting for tiie night: at night, mduring till day came. This represented the stage of tho dead-beat —waiting, waiting for the end! Their lives lie all behind them. See their weary, dull, faces —faces aged by waiting. No young faces among thein. L'ho face of what might bo' a young man is old. And their lives? From 100 of these men you could obtain glimses of unimagined corners of the world. They have tramped it over and over. But whatever they do the lure of tho

street claims them again. Tho insistent call of the street is in their blood. Placo such a man in a quiet rural scene, with comfortable surroundings would he remain ? No. He must bo with liis fellows foraging in the streets of London; with his fellows starving in tho streets of London ; with his fellows watching the rush of the streets of London ; with his fellows feeling the pulse of the full noontide stir and by night the solitary mystic quiet—of what? Still the streets of London. Those pavements aro familiar to liis feet; those street smells welcome in liis nostrils ; and tho whole atmosphere that to which ho has been used. To London tho wido-world wanderer returns; and in London there go on for ever and ever tho wearied iteration and muffled shuffle of the march of the dead-beat.

A NIGHT'S SLEEP

The afternoon wore on, and up from tho dock's and down from the slums, in ones and twos and threes, with shuffling, sliding feet, sunken eyes, and ragged rounded shoulders, that brigade of mi erv gathered. A man in blue at the top of tho street watched their numbers swell. To him it was a matter of routine. At a little before six thero wero some four hundred men gathered there, aiid tho tickets for free beds that would be distributed numl>ered only three hundred oddSome fifty men would have to find beds elsewhere. Presently the mission worker appeared. How those men eyed his approach ! How those who had been there too often feared his glance, for, with such a crowd as- this the "chronics," whom lie knew too well, would have to wait until all the new ones had been supplied. The work of distribution proceeds apace. Each man as he recevies liis hit of cardboard shuffles down to the hall as happy as his limited capacity for enjoyment will allow him to bo low that he is safe for the night. All tho tickets are now gone, and 70 men appear appoalingly before the worker. To bestow a bed lie is powerless. But food ho can give, and as-the night is gone, sleeping out, provided the poiice can be evaded, will not bo too grevt a hardship. So down t oMedland Hall thoro people are taken, and each given a pint of hot coffee and a thick sandwich. We stood and watched those men eat —feed is the proper word. Tha great thick sandwichs disappeared m an incredibly short space of time, assisted as it was by great gulps of hot liquid. One old man with bowed head and grey beard leaned against the wall near us. His cheeks were terribly sunken and his frame shaky. But a little while and ho would be in tho infirmary. It was a motley crowd. The average New Zealand tramp would bo as a West End swell to these men. Not a whole garment amongst them; not a pair of boots even recently sound; not a face shaved within.weeks. Imagine all the destitution ajid poverty of New Zealand swept into one corner and magnified five times; conjure up, you who have not left New Zealand shores, a vision at which you shrink, and you may arrive at f-ome conception of the misery before that one hall. And there were only four hundred individuals ' in the crowd. London has nearly 20,000 men such as they; and a hundred thousand but little better.

INSIDE THE SHELTER. Passing inside Medland Hall, we viewed the accommodation provided. The hall was originally a chapel with two galleries rising above the ground floor. On all tho floor spaco were ranged numbered sleeping berths—great wooden coffins. In each there was a mattress covered with Ameri • can cloth, and one thick quilt or rug of tho samo material. By rolling up his moagre clothes the sojourner obtains a pillow, aud reckons Jiimself well off for the night. The men take possession at 6, and have until 9 o'clock to settle down. At that hour the lights are put out. The lavatory accommodation in the building is ample, and patches of cloth and leather are kept for rendering assistance towards repairs. Each man on arrival is given the food already and on leaving in the morning the supply is repeated, with the addition that ho also receives a paper bag with three thick slices of bred.

Ib is almost useless trying to paint the scene within tho hail. Some got into conversation with others, but a great oppressive saddness seemed to dominate everyone. Some sat disconsolately on the side of .their "coffins." Some lay down fully dres?ed for the night. Perhaps they had no shirt, and a newspaper did duty for one. In a corner a group produced a pack of cards, and played tho inevitable game. Some mended clothes, and some washed.

Last year this one hall provided 123,000 men with food and lodging. In addition, 51,694 were given bread and butter and turned away for the night. Missionaries swept the streets between midnight and 4 a.m., and gave 60,457 miserable beings breakfast. In this fashion 60 tons of bread were consumed.

Fourteen men from New Zealand j were glad to sleep in the ball last i year. Australia sent 91, Canada 29, '• India 10, Jamica 3, Cape Colony 13, ] United States 53, Russia 8, Germany; 20, Italy 5, South America 4. The London County Council area provided 660 men. Scotland 730, Ireland 616, Wales 497, the Isle of Man 26. The cost of working Medland Hall is borne by the Congregational Union of England and Wales, land works out at Hd per man per niglit. So the march of the dead-beat goes on. The shelters and lodging houses empty forth their stream of casuals, criminals and cadgers every morning. Round the streets by day they Ho and loll; mayhap searching' diffidently for an honest crust, cadging for a charitable one. They pass the day somehow. And then, every night, the same sad scene unfolds. —Otago Daily Times.