Women’s Lodging Houses
By Mary Higgs
(English contemporary. Author of “The Master,” “How to Deal With the Unemployed,” “Glimpses Into the Abyss,” etc. The following extract is taken from the last named book.)
We sat watching until we were weary, between 11 and 12, and then went to our bedroom. The same beds were reserved, and one woman who was said to work for her living, and had a very bad cough, was already in bed. We were speedily in bed also, and for awhile were quiet. The room was very stuffy, in spite of two ventilators; the sheets were not very clean, but still fairly so. The beds were filled by degrees all but one, that previously occupied by the Scotch woman. One girl who came in late said she was not on the streets; that she had begged money for her lodging, as she was out too late to return to her place. It was holiday time, being Whit week. One girl came in late and had had drink, which made her talkative, said she was a servant, and had just left a place where she had been ten months.... She meant to “enjoy herself” over the holiday and go to service again.
One girl who had been in before grumbled that her bed had been slept in and was dirty; but her own underlinen was far from clean. No one seemed to possess a nightgown; all slept in their underlinen.
We had the door a little ajar, and far into the night the doorbell kept ringing, and girls were admitted, and laughter and conversation drifted up the stairs. Our room settled down sometime past midnight, but the girl who was drunk several times tried to begin a conversation. At last we all slept. Two, however, had bad coughs. I woke at intervals through the night, and finally at 6.30. I was longing for fresh air, so put on a skirt and went down to enquire the time, and decided to go out for a quiet stroll. The bath room was empty, the bath had old papers in it, and did not look as if it was often used. There was a table with a looking glass, and a good deal of rouge about. The wash basin was very small, and no soap was provided. There was a roller towel for everybody. We had learned by experience to take our own soap and towel, and we lent the soap several times....
I slipped out to the brightness of a May morning, and walked in the direction of the park. The park was not open, as it was not yet seven, but just outside I found a resting place. What a contrast to the fresh budding life of the trees was that perversion and decay of budding womanhood I had left behind me! A tree cut down in its prime to make way for building furnished me with a parallel. What artificial conditions of man’s making, are pressing on those young lives, sapping them off from true use to rottenness and decay?...
Is there even at the back an organized system, seeking victims and preying on them? This much is certain: that there is room for an allowance of greed and wickedness against defenseless womanhood. For if a woman cannot get work, where is she to go? What is she to do? Can all our homes and shelters together prevent many from drifting “on the streets”? Do we not need a national provision for migration, and temporary destitution among women?