‘I don’t know about that, but it is not good enough for my wife.’
‘I am sure of that; but why don’t you apply for this?’
‘This’ was an advertisement for a police court missionary at Lambeth Police Court. I laughed, and said I had never been in a police court but once in my life, and that was for thrashing a big lad who had been ill-using a lesser one. He, however, strongly advised me to apply for the post, and to please him I did so. It turned out that the Bishop of Rochester and his Council, not having the guidance of a phrenological professor, selected me out of a dozen candidates. I don’t know why to this day, but I suspect it was owing to my dear old Vicar. And so I became a police court missionary, and came to London.
CHAPTER II
IN LAMBETH POLICE COURT
It was one Monday morning in May that I first saw the inside of a London police court. It is fifteen years ago, but that day is still fresh in my memory; nay, rather, it is burned into my very consciousness. There was I, up from the country, with great hopes of doing good, and not altogether ignorant of the world or the vices and sorrows of our large cities; but a revelation awaited me. I spent that day in a horrible wonderland, and although dazed and afraid to speak to anyone, I noticed everything and everybody, and I have a mental photograph of it all now.
Even as I sit and write, it is all before me and around. I hear again the horrible speech and diverse tongues. I hear the accents of sorrow and the burst of angry sound. I hear the devil-may-care laugh and the contemptuous expression. I hear the sighs and groans and bitter plaints. I see men shorn of all glory. I see womanhood clothed in shame. I see Vice rampant. I see Misery crawling. I see the long procession of the drink- or vice-stricken as they tramped down to the place of wrecked lives and slain souls. I see some going cursing to destruction. I see some going jesting to destruction. I see some going down with open eyes and passive will. I see some that long to be delivered from their body of death. I hear the unuttered cry, ‘The waters have gone over me! The waters have gone over me! Out of the black depths do I cry to be delivered.’ And I was there to deliver them!
But I see and hear more. I see women with bruised and battered faces, I see their cuts and wounds and putrefying sores, I hear stories of devilish cruelty, and I hear the poor bruised women pleading that their husbands may not be punished for their cruelty. ‘Don’t send him to prison! Don’t send him to prison! He is a good husband when he is sober!’ I hear the words again and again. I see more women with poor, thin clothing. I look into their faces, and I see sorrow writ large and rings of care around their eyes, and in their hearts a weight of agony that makes them ready to curse God and die. My God! and I was there to comfort them.
I see more. I see the children old before their time, looking up with pale and piteous faces. I see some with blighted bodies, and I know that rounded limbs and happy hearts are not for them. Still more do I see: matronly women, charged with being drunk, holding in their arms little bits of mortality. Puling cries are heard, but soon hushed, for I see the little ones draw from their mothers that leprous distilment that shall blast their lives and wither their bodies. I see more: young men to whom obscenity is the breath of life and immorality the highest good. I see some young in years who have already come to the wayside of life, for their bones are full of their sin. I see young women, sometimes fair and sometimes foul to look upon, but whether fair or foul, half beast and half human. I hear stories of lust, drunkenness, and theft. I see the smartly-dressed harpies who farm them waiting to pay their fines. I see the most despicable of all mankind, the fellows who live upon them, hovering by like beasts of prey. I see old men of threescore and ten and old women of equal age, whose tottering limbs have borne them from the workhouse to the public-house, that they might drink and forget their misery once more before they die.
I see them all; they are around me now. I breathe again the sickening whiff of stale debauch; I am faint with the unspeakable atmosphere; the chloride of lime is again in my throat, and my nostrils tingle with it. But I see more: I see the matter-of-fact way in which all this was received. I see that no one wonders at it. I see that all this is looked upon as perfectly natural, for I see no look of wonder, no divine pity, no burning indignation—all, all received as a perfect matter of course, and all, all quite as it should be.
Now, what I saw, dear reader, on that particular Monday in that particular court you may see on any Monday in any of our Metropolitan police courts, and on any other day, only in a less degree. Year in and year out the procession of the sinning and sorrowing passes through all our courts. Prison and death thin the ranks of the procession; but the public-house is a grand recruiting agency, and neither police nor magistrates are likely to be idle, neither is the procession likely to dwindle, or the ‘yell of the trampled wife’ to cease, while the public-house holds its triumphant sway.