Pictures and Problems from London Police Courts

by Thomas Holmes

Nor is it the children of the poorest who leave home at an early age; for the poor widow, who is left to fight life’s battle with three or four children, manages, as a rule, to keep those children round her, and her struggles for them are heroic. Sometimes, it is true, the parish authorities take some or all the children off such a mother’s hands, but as a rule they keep their children round them. Day after day I meet with poorly-clad and badly-fed but plucky mothers, who, though working very hard, make a much better job of home-life and look much better after their children than many mothers who have stalwart husbands living with them and working for them. Very pleasant it is to see the boys and girls grow up, and in their turn relieving the mother’s toil and caring for her. But the police court affords no sadder sight than a poor, elderly widow who has come to plead for a son who has got into trouble. One such scene is before me now. A young man, about twenty-two, stands in the dock, and by him stands an officer supporting him, for he has been drinking heavily, and D.-T. is almost upon him; he is not conscious of what is said or what is done. In the witness-box stands a little woman with her arm bandaged. She is the prosecutor. ‘The only son of his mother, and she a widow.’

Twenty-one years before the desire of her eyes, the partner of her life, was taken away. After following the body of her husband to the cemetery, she returned home and looked upon her only boy in the cradle, and, like one of old, she said: ‘This same shall comfort me.’ And so she loved him as only a bereaved mother can love, and she worked for him as only a widowed woman can work. The years went on, and the boy was sent regularly to school. No half-time for the widow; her boy must have the full advantage the school could give, and he made good use of his time. Fourteen years rolled by, fourteen years of washing and charing for her, but now he must have a trade. No errand-boy’s place for him. She placed him as an apprentice with a saddler. She could pay no premium, so he must work for very little wage till his twenty-first birthday should come round. This meant seven more years of drudgery to her, but bravely she faced it, and the boy went through his apprenticeship. Many a time during those seven years he said to her, ‘Mother, you shan’t work so hard as this when I’m a man’; but they were years of happiness, for the widow’s heart was full of hope, and the seven years went by.

Another year has gone by, but it has been a year of continued hard work, of unrealized expectations, of unfulfilled hopes. The climax is reached now, and she stands in the witness-box to bear unwilling evidence against him. The public-house, the fell destroyer of children’s prospects, had proved the destruction of her maternal hopes. It is an old story, but a common one. His twenty-first birthday had arrived at last, and the men in the workshop had asked him to stand treat; he had not much money, but his little was added to theirs, and drink was sent for and the lad forgot his mother. The day’s work being over, they all adjourned to a public-house, and on his twenty-first birthday, late at night, the lad reeled home—drunk. The widow had prepared a nice little supper, but it was untasted; he lay on the hearthrug the night through. The widow sat on her chair, and her feet supported the boy’s head. This was the beginning of a year of misery, for in the delights of drink and the fascination of the public-house he forgot his boyish aspirations and his chivalrous intentions. His wages were not given to relieve his mother’s toil and to gladden his mother’s heart, for drunkenness became a common occurrence.

Last night he came home very late and very drunk, but the widow was waiting up for him. A knife and some bread and cheese were on the little table in their small room. He did not want any supper, he wanted more drink. There was none in the house; he would go out and get some. Placing her back to the door, the widow endeavoured to prevent him. He did not know what he was doing, and took hold of the knife. There was a struggle, and the widow’s arm was badly cut. She screamed, and a policeman and others came in. Seeing the mother covered with blood and the son in a stupid, dazed way holding the knife, he was taken into custody and charged with wounding his mother.

In giving her evidence the widow palpably perjured herself; it was transparent. She declared it was an accident, and happened as she tried to take the knife from him. The magistrate saw through it, but there was no other evidence. When the widow had given her evidence she came out of the witness-box and threw herself before the magistrate, calling out: ‘Don’t send him to prison! Don’t send him to prison! He’s a good lad, only for the drink.’ Her testimony of her boy was true, but alas! it is true of many. Home after home I have visited; parent after parent I have tried to comfort; again and again I have heard the wail: ‘A good lad! a good lad, only for the drink!’ The public-house is the limbo of unrealized parental hopes and the execution-ground of filial chivalry.

But the magistrate did not send him to prison. The widow, the son, and myself rode in a cab to their little home, where the mother and myself carried him to bed. In that little bed for some weeks he lay, not knowing what had occurred, but conscious that something unusual had happened. When the delirium had passed and he lay in bed weak and ill, I showed him the cut on his mother’s arm, and told him what had happened; but he could not believe it till I appealed to his mother. ‘But you would not have done it, Will, you would not have done it but for the drink.’ Then he believed it, and, looking very strange, he got out of bed and kneeling down, he said: ‘I call God to witness that I’ll never take another drop.’ No other pledge was needed. Years have gone by, and it has been kept; the widow’s heart sings for joy, for she is cheered, sustained, and comforted by her son, and the full fruition of her hopes and his hopes has come. He has a small shop of his own, that does for him and his mother. He has taken to himself no wife, but mother and son hand in hand and heart to heart go gently through life. But it might have been different.

But it is not only the poor widow who is despoiled of her hopes and robbed of her joy through the instrumentality of drink. Time and space would fail me to tell of the shamed and sorrowing fathers I have seen in homes of refinement and luxury who have looked pitifully to me to exercise some magic power and give them back their lads. ‘Good lads, only for the drink.’ If the young men of our land could only see, as I have seen, the parental anguish, could only take some measure, as I have taken some measure, of proud fathers, loving mothers and admiring sisters, it were enough to make them dash the sparkling beverage to the earth in all the pride of its mantling temptation.

There is yet another cause that leads to much evil among boys, and to a great deal of trouble for parents, and that is the neglect of many parents to provide situations or work for their boys before they leave school. Scores of lads become criminals from this one cause. The day arrives when these lads can legally leave school, and they do it. There is nothing at home to entertain them, so they seek entertainment in the street. A few weeks’ idleness, coupled with the undisciplined liberty of the street, is sufficient for the ruin of many lads. Once let boys whose only discipline has been the discipline of school be released from that discipline and no other substituted, and they will be in mischief, or, worse still, acquiring idle and shiftless habits that will stick to them through life. They become thieves or drones, and, personally, I have more hope of the thief. The number of lads that get into the hands of the police from this one cause is a very large one, and I more than suspect that every Metropolitan police court magistrate has commented upon the matter till he is tired. A large part of my time has been taken up in finding employment for such boys while they have been under remand or under sentence. Numbers of such lads are discharged by the various magistrates on the police court missionaries promising to find them employment. No one knows better than the magistrate that undisciplined idleness is the ruin of growing boys. Of course these situations ought to be procured by the fathers of the boys, and would be if such fathers had only the common-sense to know that financially it would pay them to see that the day after their boys leave school they are decently at work, not to be made into little slaves, but to acquire the habit of regular industry, without which their lives must be burdensome.

For good or evil, the old system of apprenticeship is dead and gone. It had its faults, but it had many virtues, for at any rate it insured a boy continuity of work during those years when idleness is fatal. Nor have we anything to take its place, for parental control and interest have to a great extent disappeared also. It ought naturally to have become more keen and active, but who can deny that the reverse is the case? Everything nowadays is to be done for the parents, and but little by them. So it comes that agencies and organizations innumerable are in existence for the purpose of doing work that ought to have been done cheerfully by the parents, or for undoing the evil that has been done by them. But can they undo it? Can anyone undo it? Boys from fourteen to sixteen may be sent to reformatories till they are nineteen years of age. But does such a course undo it? No; for if he behaves badly enough he is sent away, and if he behaves well enough he is sent out on license when he has been there two years. Many such boys get charged again and again, and many detectives tell me that the worst thieves in their districts are men who have spent a time in a reformatory.

Parental influence cannot be exercised by proxy. Standing as God’s vicegerents towards their children, parents have committed to them a sacred duty and a trust; they have given to them an influence that no one can exert on their behalf. Reformatories undoubtedly do a great amount of good; unfortunately, they are absolutely necessary, they cannot be dispensed with. To take a vicious lad from his surroundings is the only wise, and frequently the only possible, course; but having taken him, he ought at any rate to be kept a sufficient length of time to allow of his acquiring industrious habits and useful skill which will fit him for becoming a decent and self-supporting citizen. An idle, dishonest boy of fifteen cannot by any process be converted into an upright and aspiring youth in two years; nor can he in two years acquire technical skill sufficient to be of service to him. But it is too late an age for him to commence to learn a trade; if he is kept the full time, till nineteen, he is then released at a time when he is neither man nor boy, and it is difficult for him to begin life other than as a casual labourer. When a boy has been proved unfit for freedom, and the magistrate commits him to a reformatory till nineteen, he ought to remain till nineteen, unless special circumstances are brought to the magistrate’s knowledge and he endorses a license for the boy; for he, having adjudicated on the boy’s guilt, and having knowledge of all the circumstances, is surely the best judge as to whether in committing the boy he meant one year or three, two years or four. It sometimes happens that bad boys, who have been sent to reformatories and whom the magistrate thinks are in safe custody and good keeping, come in a short time again before him on some other charge; they have been let out on license. Fewer boys should be sent to reformatories—it should be the last resource; but having been sent, they ought to be detained for the specified time to allow them to grow out of their evil habits.