How the Poor Live; and, Horrible London / 1889

by George R. Sims

The poor help the poor. Nowhere are the bonds of human sympathy so strong as down the courts and alleys whose horrors have lately been exhibited in as fierce a light as ever beat upon a throne. We have all painted in strong colours the vices of the people in whom such general interest is now taken—it is only right that their virtues should be brought into equal prominence on the canvas. To weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that do rejoice is the best system of co-operation as yet invented for the benefit of mankind, and it is the system of co-operation which has long been in vogue among those whom we are pleased to term 'outcasts.' Outcasts many of the abject poor are.

They are cast out by Dives to make room for his mansions, his marts, and his manufactories, his railway schemes and his splendid streets, and they are cast out by the stern philosophers who hold that before the march of improvement all who are not fit to survive must shrink back and hide in holes and corners till, in obedience to the law of nature, they pass away and cumber the earth no more. But they are not outcasts to their brethren in misfortune, or to the grade of poor immediately above them.

The poor are kinder to each other than the rich; they are bound by stronger ties of sympathy; their hearts respond more readily to generous impulses. They have greater opportunities of helping each other, and there are no barriers of pride between them. They live their lives before each other's eyes, and their joys and sorrows are the common property of the entire community. The rich man wraps his mantle about him and breaks his heart, locked in the darkest room of his house; the poor man bares his breast to the light of day, and has not a neighbour but knows the nature of his woe and has seen every link in the chain of circumstances that brought his trouble about. What is the fate of one to-day may be the fate of another to-morrow. In their sympathy they are but making common cause against a common enemy. The poor are trained by constant association to ready appreciation of the 'points' of the human drama always being enacted before their eyes, just as certain audiences are trained to appreciate the points of the theatrical drama. To expect the rich to understand and sympathize with the poor as readily as they do with each other would be as just as to turn the old 'Grecian' audience into the St. James's Theatre, and expect them to 'take the points' of the latest society drama with the same readiness as the habitués.

It may seem harsh to say that much of the generosity of the poor springs from their improvidence, but it is true. The beggars, the lame fiddlers, the widowed warbler of street ballads, and the crippled orphan with a crutch and a concertina, reap their richest harvests on Saturday night in poor neighbourhoods. Friendly leads, whip-rounds, and benefits are nowhere so common as among the labouring classes whose earnings are precarious. While a millionaire requires a reference from the C. O. S. before giving the 'broken-down officer' who calls on him half-a-sovereign, the street-hawker or the dock labourer flings his sixpence into the hat extended for a 'poor cove' he has never seen in his life without a second thought. A pitiful tale reaches the heart of the poor in a moment—their tears are as easily won as their laughter. It is the fashion to sneer at 'cheap sentiment,' and to talk about the pathos of ordinary melodrama as 'food for the gods,' but the sneerers forget that the mimic misery comes home to the poor as it can never do to the rich. To the gallery people the starvation in the garret, the separation of husband and wife, the wail of the little children for bread, the agony of the mother over the cradle of her sick baby, the struggle with poverty, the heartlessness of the cruel landlord who wants the rent, and the roughness of the officials who are called in to persecute virtue in distress, are all so many items in their own daily life. They have been familiar with such things from their birth, and they understand the true meaning of that which the stalls—justly perhaps from their point of view—call 'bosh.'

Having shown, or endeavoured to show, why the poor sympathize with and help each other, let me give a few instances to show what practical forms their sympathies invariably take. I shall not cull them haphazard here and there, but all from the same neighbourhood which has furnished the bulk of the facts on which these articles are formed. My purpose is to give the reader the complete story of a London slum and its inhabitants, that they may consider the popular question of the day in all its bearings. I have shown the vices of one of these districts; it is a pleasanter task to chronicle the virtues.

The first thing which a visitor to the slums asks is, What becomes of the children of the men and women who are sent to prison, or who are removed to the hospitals? The answer is simple. The neighbours take them in and take care of them. Orphans are by no means rare in the slums, but they are almost always 'adopted.'

In the house of a Mrs. R. lived a family named Hinde. Mrs. Hinde died of consumption, leaving four children and a husband out of work. He set out to look for it, and Mrs. R. took the four little ones into her room to sleep with her own six. Out of her scanty earnings she fed them too, and when she was asked why she had taxed her limited resources to this extent, she answered, 'Poor young 'uns! how could I see 'em a-starvin' and their father out o' work, and no mother!' The man is still out of work, and Mrs. R. has thought it her duty to keep his children for over six months.

Orphans are not only kept, but are passed on sometimes from family to family. There is a little crippled lad I know named Dennis Sullivan. Till lately he was kept by an old watercress-seller, who had adopted him. A month or two since the poor old soul fell into the fire, and was so severely burned that she died. And when the boy was to be sent to an institution, a brother of the old watercress woman, a poor hawker, came forward and said, 'He shan't be sent away. I'll keep him for the sake o' the old woman as was so fond of him.'

One of the most touching cases of this kind I ever met I have alluded to elsewhere, but for the sake of my argument I will repeat it here. A poor woman had taken charge of three children whose father was away in the country. She had children of her own as well. Sickness came upon her, and a terrible disease almost disabled her. Yet she refused to let the little ones go uncared for. Dying slowly of dropsy, she was found one day propped up in a chair, with a wash-tub in front of her, and with her poor weak hands making a brave struggle to wash the little ones' clothes, that they might look clean and tidy at the school.

A servant-girl lost her place, and in the slums gave birth to an illegitimate child. She could not keep it; she must go to service. An old woman adopted the child, and brought it up, giving it her own name. The mother married, and then wanted the child. The old woman had fallen on evil days, and consented to part with it. But the real mother ill-treated the child, and it was unhappy. Off marched the old lady, and fetched it back again. 'I ain't got much to spare, God knows,' she said, 'but I ain't goin' to see the gal unhappy, and I'll keep her somehow.'