We thankfully bundled up our things, including food, which we had brought upstairs to be safe, and we crept downstairs, hoping for cleanliness. The kitchen fire was lit—apparently it had never been out—and a kettle was on the bar; a working man was getting his breakfast ready; a girl, the landlady's daughter, apparently about 12, was sweeping the floor. We could now see the filth. The floor was strewn with dirty paper, crumbs, and débris, and dirty sand. All the cleaning it got was that it was swept and then freshly sanded by this small child. It then looked tidy. "Appearances" are proverbially "deceitful." But what we were not prepared for was, that all the wooden benches were occupied by sleeping men. The small child sweeping was at first quite alone with them. There was no place to wash but the small fireside sink: one man considerately cleared out from its neighbourhood, and I thought we were alone in that half of the room till I looked and saw a slumbering man on either side. They moved, as if uneasy on their hard couches. Of course, it was utterly impossible to attempt cleanliness, except hands and face. Yet our fellow-lodgers had some of them lived there for weeks, and it was reckoned by their class a superior lodging-house. I can hardly describe the feeling of personal contamination caused by even one night in such surroundings. Yet we escaped well, finding afterwards only two live creatures on our clothes. Cleanliness of person would be so impossible under such circumstances that it would soon cease to be aimed at. Yet most of the inmates had fairly clean hands and faces, and the tiny sink was used for washing clothes, which were dried in the room, and were hanging overnight from lines. Is it any wonder that such places are hot-beds of disease? How can one of this class possibly avoid spreading contagion under such bad sanitary conditions? It struck me that public money would be well spent in providing lodging-house accommodation under good sanitation and management, rather than in extending small-pox hospitals.
We did not feel inclined for breakfast, but the kettle was boiling, and a working-man showed us where to find things. We carefully washed the dirty-looking tea-pot and mugs, and borrowed a knife and spoon: no one insulted or questioned us. If our stay had been longer, however, doubtless we should have been obliged to get on friendly terms with our fellow-lodgers. We ate our food at the table farthest from the sleeping men, the sweeping still going on, and then we bundled up our things and left without seeing our landlady again.
The fresh air was sweet. Nowhere inside could be clean. Vermin might harbour in the wooden seating, doubly used by day and night: the imperfectly washed clothes, the unwashed humanity, the crowding, the absence of proper sanitation, would break down personal cleanliness in a very short time if a respectable woman was forced to sleep in such a place. Yet two shillings and fourpence a week, at fourpence a night, should surely finance some better provision for the needs of a migatory class. It must be considered that social conditions have entirely altered since the days of railway travelling have loosened social ties to particular neighbourhoods. Work is a fluctuating quantity, and men and women have to travel.
My own experience had taught me that single women frequently get shaken out of a home by bereavements or other causes, and drift, unable to recover a stable position if once their clothing becomes dirty or shabby. The question, To what circumstances and surroundings will a respectable destitute woman drift if without employment? is one which concerns society deeply, as immorality must be fostered by wrong conditions.
III. A First Night in the Workhouse Tramp Ward.
We were glad that the next ordeal before us would be the workhouse bath! For we were now really "destitute"; after purchasing a little more food we had only twopence left. We were so jaded by the imperfect sleep of the two last nights that we decided not to leave the town, but to wait about all day, and enter the workhouse at six o'clock. We had noticed a reading room and a park: to the latter we found our way. The day was gloomy and damp, but not actually wet, except for a slight drizzle at intervals. In the park we found shelter, drinking water, and sanitary convenience. We disturbed a sleeping man in a summer-house, and quickly left him. We wandered into every nook in the park, and talked, rested, or slept. The hours went very slowly, but we grew refreshed. Towards mid-day we made a frugal meal on our remaining provisions, drinking from a fountain. We still had a little sugar-plasmon left and a pinch of tea. In the afternoon, growing cold and stiff, we went to the free library, and stayed there reading an hour or two. Two or three ladies were there reading, but they took no notice of us beyond a stare; we had put our shawls over our heads, and might be taken for mill-hands. As soon as we thought it was time we set off to find the workhouse. It was about two miles, as near as we can guess, from the centre of the town, and on the way to it we made the acquaintance of an old woman who was going there. She was lame in one leg with rheumatism, and walked slowly, and she also stopped to beg at houses en route. She got a cup of tea and a glass of hot milk between the town and the workhouse. She was walking from P—— to H—— to find her brother, having been in the workhouse infirmary for many months. She said she had received a letter from her brother, offering her a home if she would come to him. She lost his address and could not write, so she had no resource but to walk from workhouse to workhouse till she reached her destination. She was very tired, and groaned with pain during the night, and almost lost heart and turned back, but in the morning she plucked up courage to go on. She had the advantage of being too infirm to be made to work hard, and she evidently knew how to beg food. She seemed a decent woman, and had reared a large family of children, who were all married, and had "enough to do for themselves." Her brother, she said, was in comfortable circumstances, and she would be all right if she found him. Her clothing was well mended, but not clean.
We arrived, alone, a few minutes before six, at the workhouse lodge, which stood all by itself down a long lane which ended in iron gates. This lodge was very small, and was occupied by a man, the workhouse buildings being a little way off. There were a good many trees around, and it was a pretty spot, but lonely. The man was a male pauper, and no one else was in sight. We had to enter his hut to answer questions, which he recorded in a book, and we were then out of sight of the house. The nearest building was the tramp ward, the door of which stood open; but there was no one in it, as we afterwards found. A single woman would be completely at the mercy of this man. If our pilgrimage has had no other result, I shall be glad to be able to expose the positive wrong of allowing a male pauper, in a lonely office, to admit the female tramps. When we first arrived at the gate he told us to wait a few minutes, as we were before time. Some male tramps came up, and we saw him send away one poor, utterly ragged man, who begged pitifully to be admitted. The lodge-keeper told him he could not claim because he had been in that workhouse within the month. So he limped away. He could not possibly reach another workhouse that night. The man admitted three others, and sent them on to the male quarters. He let us in at five minutes to six. We thought this was kind, as he might have kept us waiting, and it had begun to rain. He took my friend's name, occupation, age, where she came from, and her destination, and then sent her on, rather imperatively, to the tramp ward. She stood at the door, some way off, waiting for me. He kept me inside his lodge, and began to take the details. He talked to me in what I suppose he thought a very agreeable manner, telling me he wished I had come alone earlier, and he would have given me a cup of tea. I thanked him, wondering if this was usual, and then he took my age, and finding I was a married woman (I must use his exact words), he said, "Just the right age for a bit of funning; come down to me later in the evening." I was too horror-struck to reply; besides, I was in his power, with no one within call but my friend, and all the conditions unknown and strange. Probably silence was best; he took it for consent, and, as other tramps were coming, let me pass on. I made a mental vow to expose him before I left the place. He took my bundle, and asked if I had any money. I gave him my last penny. I received a wooden token for the bundle. I then joined my friend, and told her she had better give up her umbrella and her penny. She went to do so after some tramps had passed, and though I stood and waited, and she was only gone a moment, he tried to kiss her as she gave him the things!
When she joined me, very indignant, we went forward into an oblong room containing six bedsteads with wire mattresses and filthy straw pillows. A wooden table and bench and "Regulations for Tramps" were the remaining articles of furniture. There were big, rather low, windows on three sides; the bottom panes were frosted, except one, which had been broken and mended with plain glass, and overlooked the yard where the male tramps worked. Presently our wayfaring friend arrived, and we all three sat and waited a considerable time. A solitary woman might have been at the mercy of the man at the gate some time. No one was in sight, or came near us, till at last a motherly-looking woman entered by a door leading to a room beyond. She asked us if we were clean. Our fellow-traveller (whose garments were at any rate not clean) was let off, as she had spent the last night in a workhouse tramp ward. We said we should like a bath, and were shown into a bath-room and allowed to bathe ourselves. Our clothes were taken from us, and we were given blue nightgowns. These looked fairly clean, but had been worn before. They were dirty round the neck, and stained in places; we hoped they had been stoved! The old woman dressed in one without bathing. We found in the morning that both blankets and nightgowns were folded up and put away on shelves, just as we found them, apparently, and left for new comers. We were told that the blankets were "often stoved," but I have since ascertained that they are not stoved at all workhouses every day. All kinds of personal vermin might be left in them by a tramp who went straight out of dirty clothes to bed, and even a bath might leave them open to suspicion. We saw several bugs on the ceiling in this ward. Perhaps the using of others' dirty nightgowns was the most revolting feature in our tramp. At neither workhouse were the garments handed to us clean. We found afterwards that by Government regulation clean bath water and a clean garment can be demanded, but this we did not know. It should be supplied. After the bath we were each given four blankets and told to make our beds and get into them. The art of bed-making on a wire mattress, without any other mattress to cover it, is a difficult one, even with four blankets. The regulation number is two, and with these I fancy the best plan would be to roll yourself round and lie on the mattress. For the wire abstracts heat from the body, and one is an insufficient protection. Even with one spread all over and another doubled under the body and two above I woke many times cold. In winter the ward is warmed by hot-water pipes, but the blankets are the same. A plank bed, such as is given in some workhouses, would probably be warmer, though harder. Put to bed, like babies, at about half-past six, the kind woman in charge brought us our food. We felt rather more cheerful after our bath, with the large, airy room, instead of the foul, common lodging-house; only one thing had exercised my mind—"What did that pauper mean by my going to him later?" However, I told the portress all about what he said. She was very indignant, and said I must tell the superintendent of the tramp ward next morning, that she had to leave us, but would take good care to lock us in, and I need not be afraid, he could not get at us. We were very hungry, having had nothing to eat since about twelve o'clock. Anything eatable would be welcome, and we were also thirsty. We were given a small lading-can three parts full of hot gruel and a thick crust of bread. The latter we were quite hungry enough to eat, but when we tasted the gruel it was perfectly saltless. A salt-box on the table, into which many fingers had been dipped was brought us; the old woman said we were "lucky to get that." But we had no spoons; it was impossible to mix the salt properly into the ocean of nauseous food. I am fond of gruel, and in my hunger and thirst could easily have taken it if fairly palatable. But I could only cast in a few grains of salt and drink a little to moisten the dry bread; my companion could not stomach it at all, and the old woman, being accustomed to workhouse ways, had a little tea in her pocket, and got the kind attendant to pour the gruel down the w.c. and infuse her tea with hot water from the bath tap. We were then left locked in alone, at eight o'clock, when no more tramps would be admitted. The bath-room, containing our clothes, was locked; the closet was left unlocked; a pail was also given us for sanitary purposes. We had no means of assuaging the thirst which grew upon us as the night went on; for dry bread, even if washed down with thin gruel, is very provocative of thirst. I no longer wonder that tramps beg twopence for a drink and make for the nearest public-house. Left alone, we could hear outside the voice of the porter. I wondered if he expected us to open a window. However, we stayed quiet, but had one "scare." Suddenly a door at the end of the room was unlocked, and a man put his head in! He only asked, "how many?" and when we answered "Three," he locked us in speedily. I could not, however, get to sleep for a long time after finding that a man had the key of our room, especially as our elderly friend had told us of another workhouse where the portress left the care of the female tramps to a man almost entirely, and she added that "he did what he liked with them." I expressed horror at such a state of things, but she assured me it was so, and warned us not on any account to go into that workhouse. She said, however, that it was some time since she had been there, and "things might be different."
At last my companions slept the sleep of weariness. Sounds outside had ceased; within, my friend coughed and the old woman groaned and shifted. The trees waved without the windows, and two bugs slowly crawled on the ceiling. I measured distances with my eye. They would not drop on my bed! I pity the tramp who has only two blankets on a wire mattress. I could not get thoroughly warm with four; some part of me seemed constantly to feel the cold wire meshes through the thin covering. The floor would be preferable. I have been told since at one workhouse, with considerable surprise on the part of the portress, that the male tramps prefer the floor to their plank bed! I do not wonder. The pillow was too dirty to put one's face on, so I covered it with a blanket.
In this workhouse the management was lax—too lax to ensure cleanliness; clothes and towels appeared to have been used, and blankets were probably unstoved. As our own clothes are taken away and locked up, it would be impossible for a tramp to wash any article of personal clothing. Consequently she must tramp on, growing day by day more dirty, in spite of baths, especially as really dirty work is required of her in return for "board and lodging!" There was no comb for the hair; fortunately we had one in our pocket.