Known to the Police

by Thomas Holmes

Here we come at once upon one of the greatest difficulties of the industrious poor. If they wish to live in any way decently, one-half their earnings disappears in rent.

"We have nowhere to go." The difficulties the poor have in finding suitable—or, indeed, any—rooms that may serve as a shelter for themselves and their children, and be dignified by the name of "home," are almost past belief. All sorts of subterfuges are resorted to, and it is no uncommon thing for a woman, when applying for one or more rooms, to state the number of her children to be less than half what it is in reality. Sometimes, it must be confessed, the people who obtain rooms by such means are not desirable tenants; but it is also true that even decent people have to resort to some kind of deception if they are to find shelter at all.

Day after day in London police-courts the difficulty is made manifest. Houses altogether unfit for human habitation have to be closed by order of the authorities; but, wretched and insanitary as those dwellings are, dangerous to the health and well-being of the community as they may be, they are full to overflowing of poor humanity seeking some cover. But they must "clear out." Their landlords say so, the sanitary authorities say so, and the magistrate confirms the landlord and the sanitary authorities. The one cry, the one plea of all the poor who are to be ejected is: "Where are we to go? We can't get another place." The kindly magistrate generally allows a few weeks' grace, and tells them to do their best meanwhile to procure other rooms. For some this is a possibility, but for others the period of grace will pass, and on an appointed day an officer of the court will be in Paradise Row or Angel Court, as the case may be, to see that the tenants are ejected without undue violence, and that their miserable belongings are deposited safely in the street.

On dark November days, with the rain coming steadily down, I have frequently seen the débris of such homes, the children keeping watch, and shivering as they watched. I have spoken to the children, asked them about their mother, and their reply has been: "Mother has gone with the baby to look for another place."

Heaven help that mother in her forlorn hope and desperate search! I can imagine her clutching the babe tightly to her, holding in her closed hand the shilling that is to act as a deposit for binding a tenancy, her last rent-book in her bosom to show her bona fides, going from street to street, from house to house, climbing staircase after staircase, exploring and appealing time after time. She will stoutly declare that she has but two children, when she has six; she will declare that her husband is a good, sober man, and in regular work, neither of which will be true. Ultimately, she will promise to pay an impossible rent, and tremulously hand over the shilling to bind the contract; then she will return to the "things," and tell the children of their new home. This is no imaginary picture. It is so very true, so very common, that it does not strike our imagination. The cry of the very poor is ever sounding in our ears: "We have nowhere to live! We don't know where to go!"

This fear of being homeless, of not being allowed to live in such wretched places as they now inhabit, haunts the very poor through life, and pursues them to the grave. And this worry, anxiety, and trouble falls upon the woman, adding untold suffering to her onerous life; for it is the woman that has to meet the rent-collector, whose visits come round all too quickly; she has to mollify him when a few shillings remain unpaid. The wife has to procure other rooms when her husband has fallen out of work, and she receives the inevitable notice to quit when there appears to be a possibility of the family becoming still more numerous. If sickness, contagious or otherwise, comes upon any of the children, and the shadow of death enters the home, upon the wife comes the heart-breaking task of seeking a new home and conveying her children and "things" to another place. This is no light task. The expense is a consideration, and the old home, bad as it was, had become in many ways dear to her. What more pitiful sight can be imagined than the removal? No pantechnicon is required—a hired barrow is sufficient; and when night has well advanced the goods are conveyed in semi-darkness from the old home to the new.

Think for a moment what a life she lives, to what shifts she is reduced, what privations she endures! Is it any wonder that the children born of her have poor bodies and strange minds?

"The children born of thee are fire and sword,

Red ruin, and the breaking up of laws,"

Tennyson makes King Arthur to say. In many respects these words are true of poor mothers in London. The houses in which they live, the conditions under which they exist, the ceaseless worries and nameless fears they endure, make it absolutely certain that many of the children born will be strange creatures.