Come to a common lodging-house, and see what class of people fill the beds at fourpence a night. Poor labourers? Yes. Loafers and criminals? Yes. But hundreds of men who have once been in first-class positions, and who have had every chance of doing well, are to be found there also.
For my purpose I will merely take the cases which have drifted to the slum lodging-house through drink.
The following have all passed recently through one common lodging-house in one of the most notorious slums of London:
A paymaster of the Royal Navy.
Two men who had been college chums at Cambridge, and met accidentally here one night, both in the last stage of poverty. One had kept a pack of hounds, and succeeded to a large fortune.
A physician's son, himself a doctor, when lodging here sold fusees in the Strand.
A clergyman who had taken high honours. Last seen in the Borough, drunk, followed by jeering boys.
A commercial traveller and superintendent of a Sunday-school.
A member of the Stock Exchange—found to be suffering from delirium tremens—removed to workhouse.
The brother of a clergyman and scholar of European repute died eventually in this slum. Friends had exhausted every effort to reclaim him. Left wife and three beautiful children living in a miserable den in the neighbourhood. Wife drinking herself to death. Children rescued by friends and provided for.