‘The members of the league pledge themselves to subscribe to its funds the odd farthing on every article and every yard of material bought at a draper’s shop.’ Each member has a box into which the odd farthings or pence, as the case may be, are dropped. The members appoint their own secretary and treasurer: Even from our own Royal Family came a voice wishing success to the Home of Rest, and some help for the undertaking.
But while these combined to make my task the easier, what made it imperative was the sight of a weary-faced, bloodless woman that sat on a chair in North London Police Court before the magistrate. ‘Give her a seat,’ said the kindly magistrate; ‘she is too ill to stand in the dock.’ She had tottered into one of our police stations and given herself up for stealing a dozen skirts which had been given her to make at 1s. 3d. per dozen, she finding machine and thread and paying carriage of the articles to and from the factory. It was cold winter time; she had four young children and a husband out of work. ‘You are drunk,’ they said to her. ‘No, no; it’s the laudanum,’ she said. Her skirts had been finished, she had no fire, and the children wanted food. So she pawned them, kindled a fire, and fed her children. Then fear took possession of her. ‘I am a thief; they will send me to prison,’ she said. But she had a few coppers left. Laudanum was bought, but not sufficient to quench the faint spark of life in her weak body. ‘I remand her for a week; take her to Holloway in a cab, and let the doctor’s attention be called to her,’ said the worthy magistrate. In a week’s time she was again before him, and was promptly discharged. ‘Do what you can to help her,’ he said to me.
Help her! Why, she had scarcely flesh enough to cover her bones, nor clothing enough to provide a semblance of warmth. She needed food, clothing, rest, fresh air, and human sympathy. I knew that in her own wretched home she could not get them, so I started my Seaside Home of Rest for Weary Women. Here is a letter from her:
‘Dear Sir,
‘I am constantly thinking of your kindness, and I think that I should be ungrateful if I did not write to you. God has answered my prayer, for I asked Him to take me out of my trouble. Oh, sir, I have only had one day’s holiday in fifteen years, and that was when I went with my first little boy to a Sunday-school treat. I feel that I should like to have more faith in God. I believe in Him, I tell Him my troubles, but I have no faith, and I forget His day (she worked on Sundays). I want to be a happy woman, but my life has been so hard, so very hard. I am feeling stronger, but I cannot lose the horror of what I have done; but do believe me, for I am grateful to the magistrate and you for the great kindness shown to me.
‘Yours gratefully.’
Fifteen years of hopeless, unending toil and of practical starvation are enough to quench the hope that is said to ‘spring eternal in the human heart,’ and without hope there can be no faith. How could the woman believe in a God of Love? Her story is common enough. Down to my little Home at Walton there has been a procession of such women. I wish that I could march them before my readers, each poor woman carrying a ‘brown-paper parcel,’ for bags, portmanteaus, or boxes have not been seen among them. No elastic step among them. Bent bodies, faces wrinkled and like to discoloured parchment. Some younger bodies, but still whitish and bloodless faces, whose eyes are dull, and no sparkle of joy in them; plenty of passivity, but no glint of fire. Some with a child each, some with two, for the children must be cared for. Some, too, alas! bruised and battered, for even the passivity of a wage-earning machine wife is no security against the brutality of a husband when the ‘potion works within him.’
Such are the women for whom I have been compelled to care. Sometimes I go down and spend a week-end with them, and I would that I could do justice to a description of them. But I cannot. In the evening before they retire to the strange luxuries of clean sheets we gather round the piano and sing an evening hymn, and I listen to their quavering voices in every key and in no key at all.
‘Watch by the sick, enrich the poor
With blessings from Thy boundless store.’
Then I feel there is something wrong, for my eyes get dim and my throat lumpy. But I read to them, ‘Are not two sparrows sold for one farthing? Not one shall fall without your Father’s knowledge. Fear not; ye are of more value than many sparrows.’ I know they can make sure of the Heavenly love. I would to God I could feel more sure of earthly love and earthly store, too, for them, for they get precious little of either!
But while I am writing this, February 6, a letter reaches me from the matron, asking questions about my arrangement for the future life of one of the women, and, like most ladies, she adds a postscript: ‘P.S.—Excuse this short letter, but they are making so much noise, laughing and shouting and playing ping-pong, that I am bewildered.’ Sweated drudges, hopeless, broken women, laughing, shouting, and playing ping-pong! I felt rewarded for my trouble. The sea air, good food, and rest, are fine tonics even in the winter.
Appetite comes by eating. The desire to increase happiness increases by giving happiness. I am not content, neither do I want to be content. Did not old Augustine say, ‘The man that says “Enough!” that man’s soul is lost?’ I have tasted the delight of making some of the poorest and most miserable glad, and I long to see more fully the realization of my hopes. I am told by some worthy people that I am ‘spoiling’ these women. I want to. ‘You will make them dissatisfied with their own homes.’ I hope I may, for the apathetic content of the poor with their dirt and misery constitutes the greatest danger. From such content may God deliver them! But who can estimate the value to these hard-working women of a few weeks’ rest and refreshment at a place where the life-giving qualities of the sea may invigorate them and its mighty diapason soothe them? But while the heart is touched and our sympathies are quickened at the sufferings of these women, and while it is easy to be charitable and philanthropic with regard to them, what new condemnation can be brought against the social conditions and the sanitary conditions under which they live and work? To me it seems rank absurdity, savouring almost of national insanity, that a country like ours, knowing what we know, and fearing what we fear, should tolerate them. We have endless and learned talk about ‘germs’; microbes are sought for and classified; sanitation is reduced to a science; isolation in fever or small-pox cases is rigidly insisted on. Yet in hundreds of fœtid and pestilential dens a thousand and one articles of every-day use for the personal comfort or gratification of every section of the community and for every period of life are made. But Nature knows no pity, break her laws, and she arises and smites you when and where you least expect it. As we sow we shall and must reap. And I would like to force it upon the mind of the nation that, if we continue to make our blouses, shirts, children’s pinafores, and babies’ clothing, our fur jackets and our cheap mantles, our tooth-brushes, corsets, match-boxes, and artificial flowers in the mansions of misery, in the dens of disease and death, then of a verity weeping and wailing and the voice of mourning shall be heard in the land. Many must suffer, but they may be the innocent. So kiss your darlings. Your first-born, proud young mothers, put their pretty hats or bonnets on their sweet little heads; but if you had but one glimpse of the room in which they were made fear and trembling would take hold upon you. Hold up your heads, brave young men, adjust your smart neckties; but if you saw the rooms in which they were made and the fingers that made them you would drop them into the fire with a pair of tongs. Here is a letter dated April 18, 1901: