Known to the Police

by Thomas Holmes

Drink had no more to do with her condition than it has with mine, though to some extent it was useful to her; but vice and idleness were the dominant factors in her life, not drink.

The Habitual Inebriates Act of 1898 was followed by the Licensing Act of 1902, some clauses of which dealt with habitual inebriates, and provided for the compilation of a Black List.

Every person, male or female, charged with drunkenness, or some crime connected with drunkenness, four times in one year, was to be placed on an official list, whether sent or not sent to an inebriate reformatory. Their photographs were to be taken and circulated to the police and to the publicans. Publicans were prohibited under a severe penalty from serving the "listed" with intoxicating drink within a period of three years. If the "listed" persons procured, or attempted to procure, any drink during that time they, too, were liable to a penalty not exceeding £1 or fourteen days. There was considerable fear and a strange anxiety among many of the repeatedly convicted as to what would happen to them when this Act began its operations.

But this wholesome dread soon disappeared. When its operations became known, the lists were duly made and circulated; the photographs were accurately, if not beautifully, taken; the police were supplied with the lists and the publicans with the photographs. But very soon the "listed" proceeded to procure drink and get drunk as usual, for a wonder had come to light. When charged under the new Act, instead of getting their usual month they received but a fortnight, for the Act did not allow a more severe punishment. True, they had committed more heinous offences, for they had defied the law, which said they must not procure drink, and their offences had been dual, for they had been drunk, too, and disorderly and disgusting as of yore. Nevertheless, their double offence entitled them to but half their former reward. Magistrates soon saw the humour of it, and soon got tired of it, and sometimes, when a charge was preferred against a "lister" under the Act, they ordered the police to charge the prisoners under the old Act, that more punishment might be given. But if these clauses were not successful from a legal point of view, they were from another.

The Act came into force on January 1, 1902. At the beginning of May in the same year—that is, in four months from commencing operations—339 names, mostly women, were on that List. I sometimes have the privilege of looking at the List, which has now grown to a portentous length. It is an education to look at those hundreds of portraits. I look at them with fear and wonderment, for they are a revelation—an awe-inspiring picture-gallery! I would like every student of humanity and every lover of his kind to have a copy of that List, to study those photographs, and ponder the letterpress description that accompanies each photograph. It would almost appear that we are getting back to primeval man, the faces are so strange and weird. Different as the faces are, one look is stamped upon them all—the look of bewilderment. They one and all seem to think that there is something wrong, and they wonder what it is. No one can glance for a single moment at those terrible photographs without seeing that there is something more than drink at the root of things. No one can meet them, as I have met them, face to face, can look into their eyes, and know, as I know, how pitifully sad, yet how horrible, are their lives, without affirming, as I affirm, that the State proclaims its ignorance when it classifies them as inebriates, and its impotence when it asks others to cure them of the love of drink. These are the women that fill our inebriate reformatories, and of whom the Home Office Inspector reports that 62·6 per cent. are not sane. Certainly they are not sane, and it is high time that the truth was realized and the fact faced. Is it scientific to call their disease inebriety, when in sober truth it is something far worse—something that comes down through the ages, and in all climes and at all times has seized hold upon certain women—a something that never releases its hold till the portals of death are open for its victims? Oh, I could almost laugh at the irony of it all! Cure them of animal passion elemental in its intensity? Cure them of diseased minds and disordered brains, by keeping them for two or three years without drink? It cannot be done. But something can be done; only it is so simple a thing that I feel sure it will not be done. Yet if we had any thought for the purity of our streets, any concern for public morality and public decency, any consideration for the public weal, we should take these women aside, and keep them aside—not for one, two, or three years, but for the remainder of their natural lives, justified by the knowledge that they are not responsible creatures, and that pity itself demands their submission to kindly control and to strong-handed restraint.

But the Licensing Act of 1902 dealt with another class of women inebriates, and dealt with them in a drastic but unsatisfactory way. The law got hold of really drunken women this time, but it did not give them half the consideration extended to gross and demented unfortunates. It empowered magistrates to grant separation orders between married couples when either husband or wife became habitually drunken. In this Act the same definition of habitual inebriety that governed the 1898 Act was adopted, and husbands very promptly began to demand separation orders on account of their wives' drunkenness. My experiences of the result of this Act are sorrowful to a degree; but I expected those results, for I knew that the clauses that empowered separation orders must be either inoperative or disastrous. Alas! they did not remain inoperative, for the number of discarded wives began quickly to multiply.

When the Bill was before Parliament I spent some weeks in a vain endeavour to prevent some of the worst consequences that I knew would follow, and have followed. I contributed several articles to leading reviews; I wrote to The Times and scores of other influential papers; I wrote to leaders of temperance societies; I circularized the Members of both Houses, pointing out the enormity and the absurdity of putting drunken wives homeless on the streets; I pleaded, I begged, with heart, voice, and pen, for just one chance to be given the miserable women. My efforts were vain. No one supported me. I was a voice crying in the wilderness. It might be thought that I was asking for some great thing or some silly thing. I asked for neither. Let my readers judge. We had established inebriate reformatories at the public cost. We were filling them with the grossest unfortunates, of whom there was no hope of redemption; these women we were maintaining for two or three years in comfort. Will it be believed? I asked that drunken, but not immoral, women should be given equal chances of reformation. I asked that when a wife's drunkenness was proved, that she should, whether she consented or not, be committed for one year to an inebriate reformatory, and that the husband's contribution for her support should be paid to the institution that controlled her. But the House of Commons would have none of it; the House of Lords would not entertain it; the Christian Churches would not support it; the guardians of public morality ignored it. Drunken wives, though physically weak and ill, though mothers of young children, though decent in other ways, were not to be allowed one chance of reformation, were not to be considered for one moment worthy of treatment equal to that given to demented and gross women of the streets. "Pitch them out!" said our lords and gentlemen of both Houses. "Get rid of them!" said the Christian Churches. Husbands have not been slow in taking this advice, for they have been pitching wives out and have been getting rid of wives ever since. But the public do not get rid of them so easily. It has to bear the burden that cast-off wives bring, and that burden grows with every separation granted; so wives hitherto moral are fast qualifying for the legal advantages given to unspeakable women, and by-and-by, when the cast-out women behave themselves sufficiently badly, and the police take them into custody four times in a year—then, and not till then, when it is too late, both Houses of Parliament, the Christian Churches, and the guardians of public morality offer them the reforming influences of an institution for the cure of inebriety.

Contrasts: the Young Commission Agent and a Brave Old Man.

One of the first men to apply for a separation order under the Act was a thriving commission agent—i.e., a bookmaker—who had married a barmaid. His jewellery was massive, and there was all over him the appearance of being extremely well-to-do. He brought with him a solicitor to advocate his cause, and witnesses, too, were forthcoming. His young wife, when asked for her statement, did not attempt to deny that she was sometimes the worse for drink, but contented herself by saying that her husband drank a great deal more than she did, but it took less effect. She also said if she did drink, her husband was the cause of it, for he was unfaithful to her. She readily agreed to her husband's offer of £1 weekly, so the order was promptly granted, and she went her way alone. The husband, I noticed, was not so lonely, being accompanied by a well-dressed female.