In the class where no effort is made to conceal the nature of the family misfortune from kinsfolk or neighbours, the absence of the wife and mother is often sympathetically alluded to, and there is joy in the household—a criminal household, possibly—when mother, having paid the penalty of acquiring property without payment, comes back to get father's tea ready and put the children to bed.
Mr. Holmes, the veteran police-court missionary, made the other day what was described as the "startling" statement that he had found some most lovable characters among the wickedest people.
But the confession did not startle those who are in constant touch with the criminal and the vicious.
Society visits the sins of the fathers upon the children, but in the slums and alleys where the criminals congregate the child left temporarily motherless by the action of the law is "everybody's baby."
The poor woman, whose position with regard to children is very much like that of the old lady who resided in a shoe, will take in the child of the woman sent to prison and house it with her own brood, tend it, and feed it.
The home-coming of father, who has done a "length" or a "stretch," is sometimes quite a local event. I went into a little Hoxton house the other day and found great preparations in progress. The eldest girl was scrubbing the floor, the younger children were helping to tidy up. Mother had been out marketing, and on the fire was a saucepan giving forth a savoury smell. The little family seemed so excitedly happy that I ventured to ask the cause of the jubilant bustling.
"Father's coming out of prison to-day," said a little girl, smiling sweetly.
I did not like to ask to be permitted to stay and witness the home-coming of the gentleman, who had frequently returned to the bosom of his family under similar circumstances, but I knew exactly what would happen. The little domestic reunion would be delightful, and all would go well till evening. Then the welcome would be of a more public character, and the hero of the occasion would have considerably more drink offered him than was wise after a long period of enforced abstinence.
Here the home-coming is shorn of its pathos, for it takes place among a class who are openly at war with Society. The criminal's welcome to his home is that of a released prisoner of war—one who fell into the hands of the enemy and is now set free.
The painful home-coming is that of the amateur criminal—the man or woman who has taken a fatal step and endured the shame of imprisonment. Then the return of the father or the son to the home to which he has been a stranger so long is often a poignant little domestic drama. I have seen a decent man come out of prison—a man who was innocent, and whom I knew to be innocent—and even in his case the first meeting with friends and acquaintances was a painful trial.