There was nothing of the Cakebread type about her; she loved not the precincts of a police court, and could never take her month philosophically. She would scream like a wild beast, curse the magistrate, and defy the police. Sometimes it required several officers to remove her from the dock to the cells, where her boots, if she happened to be possessed of any, had to be taken from her to prevent the noise she would make. Time after time she came, so we became friendly. In the depth of winter, with very little clothing on her, I have seen her sent to Millbank prison, where I have met her with warm clothing on her discharge. Two days later I have seen her again in the dock with the clothing all torn to rags. Again I have clothed her, and a similar result has followed. I became too familiar with her, for I looked upon her as a matter of course and as one of those for whom there was no hope, as time went on.
One morning she was in her usual place, curled up in the corner of the prisoners’ waiting-room, when I merely bade her good-morning, and passing on, turned to speak to a middle-aged man who, by his looks, was possessed of a history, and of whom I shall have something to tell later on. He cursed me, and called me a canting hypocrite. So I promptly left him alone. I had no sooner turned away from him than I heard the sound of a resounding smack, evidently with an open hand, upon someone’s face. Turning round, I saw the fellow who had insulted me, and who, by the way, had held a commission in a crack regiment, lying on the floor, and Kate, with flaming eyes and bristling hair, standing over him. She would have kicked him if she had been in possession of boots, but that morning she was not, so she was proceeding to punch him; she might even have bitten him, but I pulled her away, and she went back to her corner. The man got up muttering curses, and said to me: ‘That’s the effect of your teaching, I reckon.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I don’t think she made a bad job of it.’
The fact was that I felt exceedingly glad that a blackguard had got his desserts, but I felt more glad, nay, even touched, that the Ishmaelite had some respect and regard for me. So I walked over to her corner and, taking her hand, said: ‘Kate, it was very good of you to take my part. I am very much obliged to you.’ She looked up—for the first time I saw a softened look in her face and a tear in her eye—and said: ‘Mr. Holmes, after all your kindness to me, if I get locked up again, I will kill myself.’ But of course she did get locked up again. As two officers were taking her up the Old Kent Road, almost destitute of clothing, she broke from them when crossing the Surrey Canal, and in an instant was over the wall of the bridge, and down she went. She fell half in the water and half on the bank, but, never heeding her broken arm or cut head, she rolled over into the canal, whence with difficulty she was rescued and was afterwards charged with attempted suicide. This was the last time but one that she stood in the dock at Lambeth Police Court, and I wish that I had a picture of her as she stood there, barefooted, poor, thin, short dress, her head enveloped in surgical bandages, her right arm bound up in splints. Two hundred and fifty times she had stood there, two hundred and fifty times she had been sent to the refining influences of prison, to be redeemed and regenerated by the delightful task of oakum-picking, sack-making or scrubbing floors. Two hundred and fifty times the law had said to her, ‘You shall not.’ Two hundred and fifty times she had defied the law, had hugged her vices, and said, ‘I will.’
But this time she was quiet and said not a word, and the magistrate, a wise and big-hearted man, did not send her to prison. He remanded her on her own bail, and she went to a place other than prison. It was summer-time, and there were flowers to smile at her; she could look through her window, and the birds sang to her; kind nurses waited on her; her heart became tender, and the scream of the wild beast died away. She had again to come before the court, when the days of her remand had expired, and she stood there clothed in her right mind. How long will it be before we as a nation learn that the human heart is like a bar of iron? Hammer, hammer, hammer it cold, and you can make nothing of it; closer and harder, closer and harder does it become. Only under the softening influences of warmth can it be shaped to a thing of beauty and utility. So the law may punish, punish, punish its Kate Henesseys, but the more and still more do its Kate Henesseys defy the law, the harder and still harder do their hearts become.
So Kate did not go back to prison, but in the country, many miles from London, she found a resting-place. Twelve months she stayed there, and those who had charge of her speak well of her; but they needed patience, for the passage from evil to good, from drink and lust to sobriety and cleanliness, is not an easy one; the old instincts will not die at once, and as a tiger lusts for blood or a caged beast for liberty, even so it must have been with Kate. Among my treasured possessions is a letter written upon a leaf from a copy-book. It is a strange document, but it speaks volumes to me, for it is from Kate, and God shall put that letter to her credit, for she learned to write. What it cost her to do so He only knows. But her twenty-five years could not be given back to her. Nature’s debt must ever be paid, for Nature knows no pity. So Kate’s health failed, and, before I knew about it, she was back in London, broken and almost dying.
It was an ill-advised thing to send her to London, to step out of the station and no one to meet her or speak kindly to her, but so it happened. With an irresistible power the old instincts awoke. One wild night of debauch, one more conveyance to the police station, one more charge in a police court, once more to prison, once more homeless in the streets, once more to the infirmary ward, and death mercifully put an end to all, for Kate passed into the undiscovered country.
And poor Kate is a type of many. For years I have hoped and planned for such; disappointment after disappointment has been my lot, and though here and there among them I have been permitted to see in restored character and happiness some results for my hopes, yet oftener still, when I have apparently been on the verge of success, and have been encouraged because of someone whom I hoped to save, God has stepped up and taken them out of my hands—I never doubt to make a much better job of it than ever I could.
‘For in a world of larger scope
What here is faithfully begun
Shall be completed, not undone.’
These wild, homeless women have always had an interest for me; their very hopelessness commended them to me. No one had pity upon them, therefore I must; no door was open to them, mine must not be closed against them. So some of the most notorious women of London have formed part and parcel of my family circle. I am glad it has been so, for my conscience is easy. I was there to try to save them, and I have tried; my wife has tried, and my family have always treated them with courtesy and kindly respect. For the beginning of good in many a vice-cursed woman has come from a knowledge of the fact that someone respected her.
It was a direct challenge from one of these women that led to my offering them the shelter and protection of my own house. Susan Hurley was her name; they called her ‘Glass-eyed Sue,’ from which I infer that at some time she had been possessed of an artificial eye, but she lost the eye, if not the name, long before I met with her. She was a wild, untamed Irish woman, and would fight with man or woman, police or civilian. I believe she lost the sight of one eye in a drunken fight. I noticed, too, that a good-sized piece of her left ear had disappeared, most likely in a similar struggle. I was visiting at a different court from the one I usually attended, and Hurley had been charged and sentenced to two months’ imprisonment; she was in the cells, and I was asked to see her.