She buried her husband, gathered her children round her, and with her bits of furniture went into one room, and proceeded to make her match-boxes. She had four children, and the youngest, a girl, was but two years old. I know that room, for I have been in it scores of times; it measures ten feet by eight. I know everything in that room, from its miserable bed to its paltry cupboard. I know the rent of that room: it is three shillings weekly—£7 16s. a year. She has now been in it nine years, and has paid over £70 in rent for that mean room. Here with her children four she set to work to redeem the promise made to her dying husband. Here in Christian London she made match-boxes at 2¼d. a gross, finding her own paste and thread. Here in the ‘land of the free’ she made match-boxes for fourteen hours a day, seven days to the week. Here she earned 1s. 3¾d. a day for her ‘stint’ of seven gross. Here she earned 9s. 2¼d. for her week’s work of ninety-eight hours, plus fetching and returning her work, and minus the cost of her thread and paste. And so she essayed to live, and so she did live, for she had had four years of it when I first met with her. Too hopeless even for despair, she became a machine, and her heart became dead within her. No parish allowance for her, organized charity had nothing for her, and no Sister of Mercy or parish clergyman had visited in her little room, for she ‘kept herself to herself.’
But I have forgotten an important item. The widow had a widowed mother, old and feeble, but who supported herself, and out of her penury allowed her daughter a shilling a week. For three years and nine months after the death of her son-in-law the tottering old woman carried the shilling weekly to her daughter, and then she died and the shilling died with her. The loss of her mother and the shilling awoke some feelings in the dead heart of the match-box maker. For three months she struggled on, with her lessened means and the increasing wants of the children; and the anniversary of her husband’s death came round. That afternoon, as she sat at her match-boxes, looking through her window, she saw a dead body drawn out of the Lea. At midnight there was a cry raised, ‘A woman in the Lea!’ So next day I met her in the police court.
She was not punished, God forbid! but the worthy magistrate kindly committed her to my care. So I went with her to that little room ten feet by eight. I saw the wistful children almost famished, and sadly wanting clothing. I sent in food for them, and next day went again with clothing for all of them. I took them out, and bought new boots for them all, mother included. I wish that I could describe the scene in that boot-shop when the children had on their new boots. Some people might have smiled and have been amused, but I could have choked, for, God help us! it was pitiful. The younger ones were filled with joy and childish wonder. The elder boy, about eleven, looked up and down, first at his boots and then at myself; his mouth twitched. He half laughed and half cried, until I said to him, ‘How long is it since you had a new pair of boots?’ ‘I can’t remember having a pair,’ he said. But there sat the poor mother, hopeless and apathetic; the children’s joy never stirred her, nor did their wonder move her. I paid her little debts. I filled their cupboard with food. I stopped her from work. I compelled her to go out of doors. All this I could do as I continued to visit her, but no smile could I bring to her face, no hope into her heart. I got her nice clothing, but even that created no interest; there was nothing but dull, passive apathy and increasing weakness.
It was summer-time, so the children were sent into the country, and the widow accompanied my wife and myself to the seaside. Two other women went with us; both had broken down from sheer hard work and hopelessness. One was a fur-sewer, and had thrown herself in front of a train; the other a blouse-maker, who had taken laudanum. Let me picture the poor woman as I often saw her and still continue to see her in that village by the sea. She was too weak to walk, so we placed a chair for her on the sands. There she would sit hour after hour with the same hopeless, apathetic, far-away look upon her face; still and impassive she sat, save for the mysterious movements of her hands, for these were ever at work. Fourteen hours a day, seven days to the week, continued for years, had made those hands automatic, and they would make match-boxes in spite of her. Nature had its pound of flesh! still oxygen, rest, good food, did much for her, and human sympathy helped by-and-by to cheer her. After a month she returned to her little room, to her children four, and to her match-boxes; but not to fourteen hours a day, not to seven days a week. I reduced her ‘stint’ to seven hours per day and six days per week. For four years I paid her rent and clothed the children, until her eldest boy was placed in a situation, and was able to help his mother. Reluctantly I then let her go, for new and fresh demands are ever made upon me. Still, she was not entirely forgotten, and a little help was sent her from time to time.
Several years passed when, in company with a friend, I called upon her—still in the little room, still at the everlasting match-boxes; time, 1.30 p.m. From 6 a.m. she had been at it, and had just finished some work that must be sent back to the factory; she had earned 7½d. I wish again that I could describe the woman this time in her room. There in the corner is the little bed and but scant clothing upon it, but the poor sheets are clean; upon it lies her youngest child, a girl of eight. She has lain there eight weeks ill, and unable to move. No parish doctor for the mother; she is still too independent, and loves her child too much, to think of it, and she still remembers the promise made to the girl’s father. So she works the harder and starves herself the more, in order to pay two shillings a visit to a doctor. I timidly suggested the infirmary for the child, but well I knew what the response would be, and it came. ‘Don’t separate us, don’t separate us, Mr. Holmes. My heart is broke. I shan’t be long after my child,’ was all I could get from her. So I had again to begin my task, for I could not leave her in such misery.
I told her story to friends, and liberal help was sent for her. I was enabled to furnish two rooms for her and the children. The boys had grown taller, but again they got good new clothing and boots, and better situations were found for them. The little girl was again sent to the country, and is now going to school; but the mother—the devoted, struggling mother—sometimes makes a few match-boxes; but oftener she lies ill in her bed, from which she will sometimes rise, and with failing strength, but with desperate endeavour, try to wash the sheets and clothing that have been provided for her. And so down to the grave she will go, working and struggling, her only hope to live long enough to see her children self-supporting—a hope that will not be realized.
And such lives abound; it is my sad duty to meet with them—it is my joy and privilege to help them. Great are the opportunities given to my colleagues and myself to right some of the wrongs, to undo some of the evil, that our present-day civilization inflicts upon the innocent and the helpless. Men and women apparently forgotten alike of God and man meet us. Their very hopelessness appeals to us, and it must not appeal in vain. I can fight with a dipsomaniac, as Paul fought with beasts at Ephesus. I can throw myself into the existence of a burglar, till he becomes part and parcel of myself. I can feel a deep pity for the vice and drink smitten women upon the streets of London, but to the poor, the honest, hopeless, struggling, dying poor, my very heart goes out. ‘They are for a prey, and none delivereth; for a spoil, and none crieth, Restore!’
‘But do you meet with any gratitude?’ I am often asked, for the ingratitude of the poor is a pet theme with many. I don’t go about the world looking for gratitude; if I did, I should not meet it. I want to see wrong redressed, toil lessened, comfort increased, homes replenished, children made glad, and sad hearts comforted. If I can see these things, I get joy, and never think of gratitude, but nevertheless it comes to me even when I do not look for it, and the following instance may show it.
A married man had been sent to prison for six months, and richly he merited his sentence, for he had grossly assaulted his wife, the mother of eight children. He was a violent drunkard, and it was by no means his first offence. The wife was sadly injured, and was broken and nervous from the repeated assaults. But the home had to be kept together, and the children fed. She lived in the slums and became the prey of the sweater. One Sunday afternoon I called at her house, and knocked at the door, but there was no answer. The glass panel in the door being broken, I had no difficulty in gaining access. The various families in the different rooms took no notice of me as I went upstairs to a room the door of which stood open. I stood on the threshold for a moment and took in the whole scene. The woman, facing the window that overlooked a miserable ‘yard,’ sat at a sewing-machine, the incessant rattle of which told me that she was working for life. Her back was towards me, so she neither saw nor heard me. Before she had finished her seam I had time to notice that the floor was covered with ladies’ blouses, at the making of which she was earning the fancy price of tenpence per dozen, finding her own machine and thread. Last week she had made twelve dozen blouses, and had sat at the machine 108 hours for her ten shillings, earning somewhere about one penny per hour. She finished her seam, threw the garment to the heap, and turned to take another, when she caught sight of me, uttered a frightened scream, and fell off her seat into the heap of blouses. I called to one of her neighbours, and we gathered her up, when I could not fail to notice her condition—soon again to be a mother. I put the strap of the machine into my pocket and left her five shillings, the price of fifty-four hours’ work. In a few days I called again, and found her in bed, waited on by a little girl of ten who had now another little sister. A reference to this particular visit and the poverty she was in is made in the letter, of which I give a copy. But there, lying weak and ill, she inquired for the strap of the machine, which I gave to her, and in less than a week from her confinement the rattle of the machine was heard in her room.
I continued to visit her till the time approached when her husband would be released, a time to which she looked forward with dread. She told me this repeatedly. The day the husband was released I went to the house to meet him, for I thought my services might be useful. The husband was there, but the wife had gone, taking her children with her. None of the neighbours knew where she had gone—she had kept silence on the matter—but gone she was, much to her brutal husband’s consternation, for he was now homeless. I tried several times to find her, but quite in vain, so I gave up the search: But I knew she was hiding from her husband, and was afraid to let me know her address lest he should find it out.