"The coroner: 'It seems pretty clear that the old couple were too proud to ask for help.'
"The jury returned a verdict that Emily Langes died from exhaustion caused by want of food."
But listen again! as we stand in the land of crushed womanhood and starving childhood. We hear a gentle voice, "Mother, it is nearly one o'clock, the men have gone by from the public-house; you go to bed, dear, and I will finish the work." A feeble woman, with every nerve broken, rises from her machine, shakes her dress and lies down on her bed, but her daughter sits on and on.
Oh the sighs and groans and accents of sorrow that come upon our listening ears! Oh the weariness, the utter weariness of this land below the line!
Midnight! and thousands of women are working! One o'clock, and thousands are still at it! Two o'clock, the widows are still at work! Thank God the children are asleep. Three o'clock a.m., the machines cease to rattle, and in the land of crushed womanhood there is silence if not peace. But who is to pay? Shall we ultimately evolve a people that require no sleep, that cannot sleep if they would? Is crushed womanhood to produce human automatic machines? Or is civilisation generally to pay the penalty for all this grinding of human flesh and blood? Let me tell the story of an old machinist! I have told part of it before, but the sequel must be told. I had made the acquaintance and friendship of three old women in Bethnal Green who lived together, and collaborated in their work. They made trousers for export trade; one machined, one finished, and one pressed, brave old women all! They all worked in the machinist's room, for this saved gas and coal, and prevented loss of time. At night they separated, each going to her own room. The machinist was a widow, and her machine had been bought out of her husband's club and insurance money when he died twenty-one years before. I had often seen it, heard its rattle, and witnessed its whims.
She once told me that it required a new shuttle, and I offered to pay for one; but she said, "I cannot part with it; it will last my time, for I want a new shuttle too!"
Six months after she was found dead in her bed by her partners when they came to resume work.
Her words had come true! The old machine stood silent under the little window; its old shuttle no longer whirred and rattled with uncertain movements. It was motionless and cold. On a little bed the poor old brave woman lay cold and motionless too! for the shuttle of her life had stopped, never to move again.
The heroic partnership of the old women was broken, never in this world to be resumed, and so two old hearts sorrowed and two troubled minds wondered how they would be able to live without her.
I knew her well; it was my privilege to give her some happiness and some change from grime and gloom, to take her away sometimes from the wayward shuttle and rattling machine. I knew that she would have selected such a death could she have chosen, for she dreaded the parish. I think, too, that she would have wished for her old machine to be buried with her, and for its silent shuttle to be beside her in her coffin. To her it was a companion, and for it her husband died. Twenty-one years the machine and herself had lived with each other and for each other. Sharing with each other's toil, if not each other's hopes and fears! Working! working! unceasingly through life—in death and rest they were not divided.