Brother of a vicar of large London parish—died in the slum.
These are all cases which have passed through one common lodging-house. What would the others show, had we the same opportunity of knowing their customers? These people have all been forced back on a rookery through drink—sober, they need never have sunk so low as that. Now come from the lodging-house into the hovels—the places where men, women, and children herd together like animals.
To one fearful court we trace a master in a celebrated college, a Fellow of the Royal Society. To another a lieutenant in the army, who ekes out a miserable drunken existence as a begging-letter impostor. Among the tenants of houses that are in the last stage of dilapidation and dirt, we find the sons of officers in the army and navy, of contractors and wealthy tradesmen. Some of them are waterside labourers, and one is the potman of a low beer-shop. Perhaps the most terrible case that has drifted to this slum is the wife of a West-End physician, who became one of the lowest outcasts of the neighbourhood, and died in the workhouse.
I could multiply instances like these, but there is no necessity. They will suffice to show that drunkenness is one of the causes of overcrowding in poor districts.
But drinking goes on among the natives as well as among the immigrants. It is only when one probes this wound that one finds how deep it is. Much as I have seen of the drink evil, it was not until I came to study one special district, with a view of ascertaining how far the charge of drunkenness could be maintained against the poor as a body, that I had any idea of the terrible extent to which this cause of poverty prevails.
In the street I saw evidence enough. From a common lodging-house and from the tenement houses I have quoted the cases given above. Come to the school and see how the drink affects the future of the children of whom we have such hopes. Let them tell their own stories:
M. L. Father drunk; struck mother and hurt her skull. Mother went raving mad, and has been in a lunatic asylum ever since. Father slipped off a barge when he was drunk and was drowned. Poor old grandmother has to keep the children.
E. S. Father gets drunk and beats mother. Is in prison now for assaulting her. Children dread his coming back, he is so cruel to them when he's drunk.
S. H. Has a fearful black eye. Mother and father both drink, and hurl things at each other. Missiles often bruise and injure the children.
C. S. Mother drinks 'awful.' Dropped baby on pavement; baby so injured it died. This is the second baby she has killed accidentally.