Mothers and Children
It is easy to understand the pitiful appeal of 500 women out of Holloway Prison who begged the Duchess of Bedford to help to close all public-houses during the war. They know in their hearts of tragedies such as these, in which mothers and children die while the fathers fight and the Drink Trade goes on merrily.
A soldier’s wife in Sunderland drew £12 arrears of Army pay, and she and her mother began to drink it away. She drew her pay on Friday, was carried home drunk on Saturday, gave birth to twins on Sunday morning, and died on Sunday night. The twins died a week or two after, and a week or two after that the soldier came home from the trenches to find his family in the grave.
Facts in Sunderland papers, 1917
Two women went drinking in Chester on a Sunday night, a soldier’s mother and a soldier’s wife. They had five whiskies each, and fell drunk in the street. One slept all night on a sofa, and the other lay on the floor, shouting and swearing. Her husband propped her up with a mat, and for hours she lay shrieking. In the morning she was dead. The publican was fined £5.
Facts in “Chester Chronicle,” February 17, 1917
The wife of a Yorkshire soldier was drowned while drunk at Sheffield. She started drinking with another soldier’s wife disappeared with a drunken man, and her death was a mystery.
Facts in “Sheffield Independent,” April 26, 1916
At an inquest on the bodies of a soldier’s twin children, both dead from chronic wasting, it was stated that the mother had 34s. a week, and both she and her husband drank. The mother had had four children in fifteen months, and all were dead.
Records of Battersea Coroner, October 1915
In one street in London where there were one day four convictions for drunkenness, a woman carried a sick baby into a public house. As she stood at the bar the little baby died, but the mother went on drinking, with the dead child in her arms.
Records of Charity Organisation Society
The wife of a highly-esteemed sergeant-major fighting in France was found lying drunk. Her four children, shockingly neglected, were put in a home, but she took them out, went on drinking, and received soldiers at her house. In a few weeks her husband heard in the trenches that his wife had died from drinking.
Records of West Surrey Coroner, March 1917
A soldier left three children at home. He had been earning £1 a week, but his wife received 32s. 6d. a week. She drank it away, neglected the children, and died in an asylum while her husband was in France.
Records of Claybury Asylum
The little child of a soldier in France died in Guy’s Hospital from burns. The mother said she could not buy a fireguard. While she was absent the baby was burned, and the mother, returning in a drunken state carrying a can of beer, said, “A good job!”
Records of Southwark Coroner, December 1915
A soldier’s widow with six children, an Army pension of 30s. a week, and her eldest boy’s wages of 30s., drinks every night with a married man who has a respectable, clean, and sober wife with eight children and a ninth lately born—born prematurely as a result of her husband’s beating her. The child bore the marks of his violence, and died in two months.
Records of Shaftesbury Society
The young wife of a soldier was brought from prison to be tried for manslaughter of her baby, who had died in the infirmary from neglect. She spent her time in the publichouses, and laughed when the children were taken to the infirmary. She went out one day to fetch a bottle of whisky and as she drank with a neighbour she said she knew the baby would die. The doctor said the child’s skin was hanging in folds on the bones.
Facts in the “Observer,” January 23, 1916
A soldier’s wife drank continuously while her child wasted away, left the tiny baby alone in the house while she went for beer, and a policeman found her lying drunk across the dead child’s body.
Records of Barnsley Coroner, November, 1916
The mother of two children whose father was fighting in France gave way to drink in his absence, neglected her children and left them in grave moral danger, and committed suicide.
Records of an Orphan Home
A soldier’s baby starved slowly to death as the mother drank away his pay, and while the child lay in its coffin the mother was out drinking.
West Bromwich Police Records, June 1915
A munition worker at Newcastle was grievously upset by the drinking habits of his wife. The police left a summons for her and she disappeared. Two days later her body was found in the Tyne. The man broke down at the inquest, saying, between his sobs: “She was such a good wife to me for 20 years, and reared a good family before she took to drink.”
Records of Newcastle Coroner, Summer 1916
The wife of a corporation workman at Sheffield, home from the trenches with six gunshot wounds and three pieces of shell in his body, found that his wife had given way to drink and starved her five children. She was sent to prison for six months.
Police Records of Sheffield, November 3, 1915
A soldier’s wife who had spent the greater part of £100 Army money in drink was sent to prison for neglecting her children. Almost everything in the house was pawned, including the children’s clothes; and the woman began to drink at five o’clock in the morning, and went on drinking all day.
Facts in “Cork Constitution,” December 10, 1915
A soldier’s wife in Monmouthshire, with £3 9s. a week, was found sodden with drink, while the soldier’s eight children were in rags starving by day and huddling up in one bed by night.
Facts in “Westminster Gazette,” July 22, 1916
A smart tidy woman in a London suburb, whose husband is fighting in Mesopotamia, has £2 10s. 6d. a week. She used to love her children and had a happy home, but she drinks away her Army pay, lives with a married man who has six children, and has become a drunken slattern. The other wife is beaten and neglected, and the soldier’s children have gone to the workhouse.
Records of Shaftesbury Society
The four children of a soldier in Dublin were found hungry and shivering with cold while the mother was drinking. Several times she had let her baby fall while reeling with it in the street.
Facts in “Dublin Evening Herald,” October 20, 1916
At the trial of a soldier’s wife for drinking and neglecting seven children, it was stated that a child of eleven was left in charge of a baby a fortnight old while the mother was drinking. At night all the children were heard screaming. The house was in utter darkness, and there was an escape of gas. Some men went in and turned off the gas, and at last the mother came stumbling out of a publichouse across the road.
Facts in “Sheffield Star,” November 25, 1915
“Your husband is fighting for his country, and his children have the right to be protected,” said the Chairman of the Chesterfield Bench to a soldier’s wife. Her children were found starving while she was drinking, and one day the little boy of three was found crouching naked inside the fender, trying to get warm. The police described the house as foul from top to bottom, with a heap of horrible rags for a bed, and a food cupboard that made the house unendurable when the door was opened.
Facts in “Yorkshire Telegraph,” March 24, 1916
The wife of a missing soldier was sent to prison at Chesterfield for neglecting three children between 13 years and 16 weeks old. She had gone astray through drink, and the youngest child, born under terrible conditions, was not her husband’s. It was found lying on a filthy bed, and its drunken mother, to satisfy its pangs of hunger, had given it pennyworths of laudanum. Eleven people slept in two foul bedrooms.
Chesterfield Police Records, October 9, 1916
Five hundred children of soldiers are being cared for in the great Homes founded by Mr. Quarrier in Scotland, and most of them are there because of drinking mothers.
Facts in Reports
A soldier’s wife at Biggleswade spent her allowance on drink and left her three children locked up in the house for days at a time.
Police Court Records of Biggleswade, September 1915
A soldier’s wife was found reeling in the streets of Dublin with a baby in her arms. At her home were found four other children, cruelly neglected.
Facts in “Dublin Mail,” August 16, 1916
Nineteen hundred children of soldiers have come into the care of the N.S.P.C.C., mainly through drink, since the war began.
Records of the N.S.P.C.C.