Johnny Ludlow, First Series

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Of course they got talking about little Dick Mitchel. Duffham knew the boy; seeing that when a doctor was wanted at the Mitchels’, it was he who attended. Mrs. Todhetley told exactly what had passed: and old Jacobson—a tall, portly man, with a healthy colour—grew nearly purple in the face, disputing.

Dick Mitchel would be of as good as no use for the team, he said, and the carters put shamefully upon those young ones. In another year the boy would be stronger and bigger. Perhaps he would take him then.

“For my part, I cannot think how the mothers can like their poor boys to go out so young,” cried the old lady, looking up from her flannel bag. “A ploughboy’s life is very hard in winter.”

“Hannah Mitchel says it has to be one of two things—early work or starving,” said Mrs. Todhetley. “And that’s pretty true.”

“Labourers’ boys are born to it, ma’am, and so it comes easy to ’em: as skinning does to eels,” cried Duffham quaintly.

“Poor things, yes. But it is very hard upon the children. The worst is, all the labourers seem to have no end of them. Hannah Mitchel has just said she sometimes wonders why God should send so many to poor people.”

This was an unfortunate remark. To hear the two gentlemen laugh, you’d have thought they were at a Christmas pantomime. Old Jacobson brought himself up in a kind of passion.

What business, in the name of all that was imprudent, had these poor people to have their troops of children, he asked. They knew quite well they could not feed them; that the young ones would be three-parts starved in their earlier years, and in their later ones come to the parish and be a burden on the community. Look at this same man, Mitchel. His grandfather, a poor miserable labourer, had a troop of children; Mitchel’s father had a troop, twelve; he, Mitchel, had six, and seemed to be going on fair for six more. There was no reason in it. Why couldn’t they be content with a moderate number, three or four, that might have a chance of finding room in the world? It was not much less than a crime for these men, next door to paupers themselves, to launch their tens and their dozens of boys and girls into life, and then turn round and say, Why does God send them? Nice kind of logic, that was!

And so he kept on, for a good half-hour, Duffham helping him. He brought up the French peasantry: saying our folks ought to take a lesson from them. You don’t see whole flocks of children over there, cried Duffham. One, or two, or at most three, would be found to comprise the number of a family. And why? Because the French were a prudent race. They knew there was no provision for superfluous children; no house-room at home, or food, or clothing; and no parish pay to fall back upon: they knew that however many children they had they must provide for them: they didn’t set up, of themselves, a regiment of little famishing mouths, and then charge it on Heaven; they were not so reckless and wicked. Yes, he must repeat it, wicked; and the two ladies listening would endorse the word if they knew half the deprivation and the sufferings these poor small mortals were born to; he saw enough of it, having to be often amongst them.