The Mysteries of Modern London

by George R. Sims

He left this retreat after a time, cured, it was supposed, and once more the public thronged to see him, and to laugh at his jokes and antics, and to cheer him frantically. Alas! it was but a temporary lifting of the cloud. There was a relapse, and then the end came swiftly and mercifully.

I never see the pleasant retreat and look at the sheltering wall but I think of the delightful droll whom I knew and loved, and who passed the months of his madness here, his presence unsuspected by the thousands who passed by. They little thought what a train of mirth lay hidden away behind the few yards of brick.

Here, in a mean street in a poor district, is a house let out in rooms. In the lower front room the ragged dirty blind is down. From this house you will see in a couple of hours, if you wait and watch, a grand funeral procession start. There will be an open car drawn by a pair of horses, and on it will be a wreath-laden coffin. Funeral coaches and four-wheel cabs will follow with many mourners, and the street will be filled with a crowd of women and children assembled to see the grand funeral of Widow Wilson's eldest son.

While you are waiting for the funeral car and carriages to arrive, I will take down the fourth wall. Now you can see inside the room with the drawn blind.

It is a poverty-stricken, squalid room. In the centre is a rickety table, round which the widow and her three remaining children are gathered, making a scanty meal before they put on their black to follow the dead lad to the cemetery. The thin stew has been taken from the fire, and is being served out on chipped and cracked plates to the children, and in the centre of the table at which the family are dining lies the corpse.

I am not inventing the details to paint a picture of life among the poor—I am giving the actual facts as discovered by the School Board officer of the district, who called to inquire why one of the children had not attended school the previous day.

No one seeing the elaborate and expensive funeral that started a couple of hours later from the house could have imagined the scene there was to be witnessed behind the brick wall. The living and the dead had been together in that one room for over a week.

There are many reasons why funerals are not hurried in the poorer districts. Here is a case in which one was delayed for three weeks.

Mrs. Jones's baby died just as it was completing its first year's experience of life. Mr. Jones drew the money from the burial club and gave an order to the undertaker. But before the day fixed for the funeral arrived Mr. Jones had lost half the money by backing horses that didn't win. In his distress he spent the balance at the public-house. "No money, no funeral," was the undertaker's motto, so the baby uncoffined, but shrouded in a sheet, was left in the cupboard.

Mrs. Jones, when the disaster was made known to her, told her story to her poor neighbours. They generously clubbed together, and in a few days they handed her the needed amount.