Probably it would be better still if the law were altered to allow of their detention till twenty-one. There would then be a sufficiency of time to allow of their learning some useful occupation. If this were done, and a start were also given them on their discharge, I feel persuaded a greater amount of success would ensue. Better still would it be if all reformatories—adult as well as juvenile—were entirely in the hands of the State, for then a greater length of time could be allowed for reforming purposes. In the eradication of criminal instincts, or for the cultivation of good habits, time is an important factor, for good qualities are not like mushrooms—they do not spring up in a night. Another great difficulty, too, would disappear if reformatories were State institutions. Before a boy can be received at either industrial school or reformatory, he must be declared by a medical officer to be of sound health and constitution, and free from physical or mental defect. It by no means follows because a boy is weakly, has bad eyesight, or has some mental peculiarity, that he cannot become a criminal; the reverse is true, for just because he possesses one or more of these defects he is the more likely to become a criminal. Reformatories and industrial schools have the right of refusing any boy, and being philanthropic societies, they are quite in the right when they exercise their own judgment. But it happens that boys with defects go uncared for, with this result, that their defects become more emphasized and their instincts more and more criminal, and ultimately the workhouse or prison has to receive them. A State reformatory, to which our magistrates can commit any boy, as a matter of right and not of favour, with the positive knowledge that such boys, even with their defects, would be kept, taught and trained till twenty-one years of age, would be an inestimable boon, and would confer lasting good on the community.
CHAPTER VI
RECORD-BREAKERS: JANE CAKEBREAD
A strange being was Jane, or, rather, ‘Miss Cakebread,’ as she loved to call herself. Helpless, homeless, and penniless as she was, I question whether any lady other than the Queen attracted the attention of the public so long, or had so many paragraphs written about her as poor demented Jane Cakebread. For years all England laughed and grew merry over Jane, heedless of the tragedy that attended her, and of the cruel farce, so long drawn out, that was enacted with regard to her.
Queen of her domain, she held the field against all comers. Many were her challengers for notoriety, but they came and went, the grave closed over them, yet she held on. Her movements were regular as the motions of the planets. From police court to prison, from prison to the streets, thence again to the court, was the regular order of her life. Her quips and cranks, ready wit, and cool assurance, made her dear to reporters, and Jane became national property.
Vain to an extraordinary extent, she dearly prized the notoriety that a police court afforded her. To her the hum of amused wonder and scarcely suppressed laughter when ‘No. 12, Jane Cakebread, your worship,’ was announced by the gaoler was the very breath of life, and proved ample compensation for the discomfort of the cells. But by no means did she make herself miserable in the cells, for times and again have I seen her in those cells with her little hymn-book, singing softly her old favourite hymns, or repeating aloud choice portions of the Bible; for she had a capital memory. Many a time has she repeated to me two chapters from the Book of Job which she had learned forty years before. Again and again I have seen her on her knees in the cells, repeating her little prayers; yet there was not the faintest suspicion of the hypocrite about her. I have seen her rise from her knees and pour out floods of blasphemy and obscenity if she had been in the least disturbed in her devotions. That was Jane all over; from Job to foul obscenity, from hymns to coarse blasphemy, from prayer to violent temper, were to her natural transitions, occupying but one moment of time. The changes in her facial expression, even when sober and at liberty, were most extraordinary. One had only to look into that face, with its little, twinkling eyes, its square-set, powerful jaw, and its determined mouth, to see in rapid succession all the passions and powers that dwelt in her strange body and mysterious mind reflected in it. Put a little child before her, and that hard mouth would soften, and the whole face would brighten up. ‘Bless its dear little heart!’ she would say. ‘Shall I sing it a little hymn?’ And she would begin in her thin old voice to sing to the child. In the middle of a verse she would leave off abruptly to pour out the vials of wrath upon some imaginary offender—and her wrath was something to be remembered.
Five minutes’ conversation with Jane was quite sufficient to prove to me, at any rate, that she was an absolutely irresponsible creature, of unsound mind; not insane in the ordinary acceptation of the term, yet insane beyond a doubt. Her language in conversation would vary, sometimes choice, grammatical, and well-expressed, the next moment drivel, the next idiotic. I have seen her eyes light up with keen intelligence one moment, and the next moment be dulled with vacancy. When before the magistrate she was always at her best, and the knowledge that she was sure to be the cause of many paragraphs next day seemed to brace her up for a special effort; and oh the dear delight if she could but make the majesty of the law to unbend, and cause a smile to appear on the magistrate’s face! For that smile she would cheerfully ‘do’ her month. ‘Mr. Holmes,’ she has said to me many times, ‘did you see me make the magistrate laugh?’ And in the cells she would hug herself, and fall to her hymns and prayers with rare enjoyment.
Pitiful though her condition was, there was still an irrepressible gaiety about her, and a power of saying ridiculous things in a humorous way, that everyone who heard and saw was bound to smile at. The smiles would not only be visible, but audible, and having seen and heard, Jane would step jauntily out of the dock, bestowing her benediction on the magistrate, and assuring the police that she ‘loved the very ground they walked upon.’ ‘Save me a paper till I come out,’ she would say to me. I never did, but somehow she did get one, and carefully she treasured the little bits about herself.
Everything was for the best with Jane, and just as it should be. Everyone else might be all wrong; she was all right, though once or twice I have perceived a strangely pathetic look in her face, as if there was a glimmering consciousness that perhaps, after all, everything was not quite for the best with her; but on the whole there was a tone of confidence about her that admitted of no argument—indeed, ‘argufying’ was an abhorrence to her; she would have none of it, and I soon found that my only plan was to agree with her and pander to her vanity.
Jane was not an idle woman, but she had not the slightest wish or intention to do anything toward earning her own living. She believed herself to be a ‘lady,’ and prided herself on that belief. Very funny it was to see the poor creature pounding up pieces of brick to a fine powder. I came across her one day on Clapton Common while she was thus engaged. I asked her what she was making the powder for, and found she used it for tooth-powder. She was proud of her teeth, and cleaned them regularly with her brick-dust; and, indeed, she had a set to be proud of, for they were beautifully regular and perfectly sound. I believe that on one occasion, when Jane was in trouble and was not behaving nicely, the attendants, believing her teeth to be false ones, tried to take them out, fearing she might get choked with them. She bit right and left, and they soon came to the conclusion that her teeth were best let alone. She told me several times about the affair, but she was always angry about it, considering it the greatest indignity ever offered to her.
She was a strange mixture of good and evil, sense and nonsense, sanity and insanity. Her physical powers were as strange as her mental, for she bade defiance to the elements, and laughed disease to scorn. If out of gaol for a month, she spent that month out of doors night and day unless I provided shelter for her, and toward the last I found this difficult to do, for no one would have her, even if paid well. During the great frost of 1895, for nine weeks she lay out of doors, her lodging the bare ground, her bed a bundle of sticks, her dressing-room the banks of the Lea, where morning by morning she broke the ice that she might wash. ‘Ladies always wash in cold water,’ she was fond of saying, and not in the depths of winter would she consent to have even the chill taken off; and when at length in the asylum, she told me with tears that they compelled her to bathe in warm water. Time after time I have at midnight made some provision for her lodging. I have found her in the early morning at other times lying wet through on a bed of shavings shivering with cold, yet hot with fever. When I have suggested the workhouse, she has got up and cursed me, and staggered away. Next day she would smilingly accost me in the police court, where she cheerfully awaited her month.