Pictures and Problems from London Police Courts

by Thomas Holmes

She did not present a nice appearance; she had been badly knocked about, and blood had flowed freely. Her dress all torn, no bonnet or hat, her hair anyhow, minus one eye, and half an ear, she looked bad enough for anything. I spoke kindly to her, but she pulled me up sharply with, ‘Who are you?’ I told her that I was a police-court missionary. ‘Bosh!’ she said. ‘Go away; what can you do? Say a prayer for me! Give me a tract! Tell me you are sorry for me! I know all you can say, and can say it better than you can yourself. I know all you can do, and that is—nothing.’ I kept quiet whilst she let off the steam, and then we had some conversation. I found that she was a Roman Catholic, and had been in prison scores of times, and even so notorious that no home would take her in, and that when last she made an application a policeman was sent for, as a disturbance was feared when she was refused. She seemed a clever woman, but was very bitter and sarcastic.

I was bound to admit the truth of her words, for even prayers and sympathy are of little use to homeless, vice-stricken women. So I wrote a letter, and addressed it to my wife. This I gave to Hurley, and asked that when released from prison she should bring it herself, and Mrs. Holmes would take her in even if I was not at home. She took the letter, but did not look at it. She looked at me and said, ‘You must be the missionary from North London.’ I never felt so proud in my life, and now think those words the greatest compliment ever paid me.

Her two months passed; she came to my house, but she came drunk. When I got home she sat there blinking and stupid. I am inclined to think she took drink in order to brace herself up, and that probably she would not have come without the courage it gave to her. Anyhow, my wife took that view of the matter, so we lifted her on to a sofa, spread a rug over her, and let her sleep it off.

After a couple of hours’ sleep Hurley woke up. She knew where she was, and said to me, ‘You see, I have come. What are you going to do with me?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘when you have had a wash we are going to give you some tea. Take her upstairs, mamma.’ And she was taken to her own room. She gave my wife the letter, which had been carefully preserved for two months in her stocking, from which safe hiding-place she took it. A complete change of clothing was given her, and she came down to tea. She had no airs or graces like Cakebread, so the tea passed off quietly; but I could see plainly that my wife felt a little bit afraid of her. In appearance Hurley was enough to frighten a delicate woman, but in reality she was most tractable, exceedingly well-behaved, and one of the best workers I ever knew; there was no holding her back: work was her glory and her joy. For the first time in our married life my wife began to have an easy time, for Hurley anticipated everything, and left but the lightest work undone. She was almost too industrious, for while standing on some steps cleaning a window, she slipped and fell, and all at once the house rang with horrid imprecations. My wife rushed to see what was the matter. Hurley was just gathering herself up, cursing as only such a woman can curse, and between times calling out: ‘It’s out again! it’s out again!’ The matter was that her right arm had been dislocated so often in her struggles with the police and others, that it did not take much to put it out of joint, and, as she had fallen on it, this result had ensued. Fortunately, Tottenham Hospital was close at hand, and there my wife took her, Hurley using bad language all the way. After a few hours’ detention she came back to us, with her arm and shoulder so tightly bandaged that she could not use it in the least. Being her right arm, it prevented her doing much work, and this rather upset her.

Next morning, however, I heard her about the house at five o’clock, and when I got down everything was tidy and the breakfast nicely laid, but Hurley sat there crying. I told her that I was afraid she had passed a bad night and was suffering a great deal of pain. She said she did not mind the pain, but she could not with one hand black the boots. I told her not to mind the boots, and that I would black them till her arm got right again. ‘You won’t black boots while I am here,’ she said, and off she went, and somehow with her one hand she managed it. They were not very well done, but we all praised them, and she was the happier for having accomplished the job. That was the only time during her seven months’ stay with us that Hurley used bad language. We never had the slightest trouble with her, and as we got used to her one eye and her scars of old wounds, we had nothing but pleasure in her company. Of my little boy, a four-year-old, she was passionately fond, and, ugly as she was, he was fond of her. It would not have been well for anyone to molest him if she were by; she would have gloried in a fight for him, and even when she lay dying in Whitechapel Infirmary, nothing brought such a smile to her face as a sight of the little boy; for, by her own request, we took him with us when we visited her.

I don’t know whether or not it was our imagination, but her face and voice seemed to change, and certainly she became more human. I was looking forward to her having the home of her own which I had promised her if she stayed with us twelve months, when all at once she told us that she must leave us. On being pressed to stay and her reason for leaving being asked, she said that she felt she was going to be ill, and did not want to be a burden to us. We told her it was nonsense, and that she must not go away on that account. She then said that she wanted to go to the hospital and get a glass eye, and when she had obtained it she would return to us. No persuasion had any effect; the glass eye she must have. As we never turned the key upon her, or, indeed, on any other woman, she went, and Henessey’s history was repeated. A wild night of debauch, a fight with the police, one more committal to prison, thence to Whitechapel Infirmary, a pauper’s funeral, and the world had seen the last of Susan Hurley.

Of her past history other than police court I know nothing. I never inquired of her, preferring always to shut it out, and to fix her mind and hopes on the future. She was intelligent, and fairly well educated, but where she came from and where her friends lived she never told us. Neither did we seek to win her from the Roman Catholic faith, and a card hanging at the head of her bed told us that while dying she had been ministered to by a priest of her own Church. She was a generous soul, coarse and wild though she had become. It was her generosity that led her to leave us. She had premonitions of the coming end, and wished to put us to no trouble or expense, and doubtless her heart went back to the faith of her youth and happier days. And so she passed from us, but not from our memory, for of none that we have known and cared for have we such kindly recollections as we have of the wild Irishwoman Susan Hurley.

But we have had women living with us whose presence did not conduce to our happiness, but rather to anxiety, not unmingled with fear, for whose departure we fervently hoped and hoped for a long time in vain, for we have never said ‘Begone!’ to the worst of them.

A frightful tragedy is compressed into the life of any man or woman who earnestly and sincerely strives to do right and yet is impelled by some strange inward power—a power that they never understand—to do absolutely wrong. Bordering for years on the verge of insanity, they form a more dangerous class and an infinitely more pitiful spectacle than those altogether mad. Clever, generous, and high-spirited, they are subject to fits of depression, unjust suspicions and violent paroxysms of rage, and woe be to anyone that offends them! When the period of unrest comes upon such, the least drop of alcohol sends them raging mad, and they become possessed of the ferocity of tigers.

Such was Annie Drayton. At thirty-six years of age she had been charged repeatedly, and in many of our courts. Her honesty was undoubted, her industry was phenomenal, not the slightest taint of immorality about her, with positively no passion or desire for drink, yet repeatedly charged with drunkenness, she constituted a problem in herself. She had never known parents, brothers, sisters, or any friends, for she was brought up in a school for foundlings, was fairly well educated, and had held very good situations. Tall in stature, and exceedingly genteel in appearance, she never had, although so often charged, the least appearance of the police court habitué. Her hair, prematurely gray in front, told of repeated pains in the head. Some wrongs, or fancied wrongs, that she had suffered had converted her into an Ishmaelite. Generally she was charged in the western districts, where she was well known to some of my colleagues. Several times she was charged in North London, and then I met with her. She had been in many rescue homes, where they gladly got rid of her; she had been sent to Duxhurst to be cured of inebriety; she assaulted poor Cakebread, and had to be sent away. She had been in Mrs. Bramwell Booth’s home, and they had to call in the police and charge her with violence and wilful damage. She had been sent by the prison chaplain to the Elizabeth Fry refuge, where she terrorized them, and the police had again to be called in. When in the cells she tried to hang herself, when in the dock she stood defiant, her eyes full of fury, her hair hanging down, her dress all torn and bespattered with blood.