The Orange Girl

by Walter Besant

Then, when the girl had assumed a civilized look, Jenny began to lament her approaching fate of which the poor creature seemed herself unconscious. Indeed, I think the child understood nothing at her trial or her sentence except that she was horribly frightened and was carried out of court crying.

'Is it not terrible,' she asked, 'that we must hang children—ignorant children?'

'It is the law of the land, Jenny. Judges have only to administer the law of the land.'

'Then it is a cruel law, and the Judges ought to say so. A man is a murderer who condemns a child to death, even if it is the law, without declaring against it.'

'Nay, Jenny'—this she could not understand for the reasons I have already given—'we must remember that the children suffer for the sins of the fathers, unto the third and fourth generation.'

She stared. 'Why,' she said, 'the poor child has been taught no better.' And, indeed, there seems no answer to this plea. If in the mysteries of Providence we must so suffer, the Law of men should not punish ignorance. 'To hang children!' she insisted. 'To destroy their lives before they have well begun! And for what? For taking something not their own—Oh! Will, it is monstrous. Just for a bit of cloth—only a bit of cloth off a counter. Oh! the poor child! the poor child!'

Then, just as she had spared no trouble to get me out of my danger so she now began to work for the rescue of this child. She spoke to the Governor about it. He looked astonished: children of fifteen, or so, were frequently executed for one offence or the other: the Law was doubtless severe: but criminals of all kinds were multiplying: after all, they were out of the way when they were hanged: this girl, for instance, would only grow up like the rest, a plague and a curse to the community. Still he gave Jenny advice, and by her instruction I drew up a Petition from the child herself addressed to no less a person than her Gracious Majesty the young Queen, who was said to have a kindly heart. The petition, with certain changes, might almost have been that of Jenny herself for her own case. Here is a piece of it.

'Your Petitioner humbly submits that she was born and brought up in a part of London occupied entirely by thieves, rogues, and vagabonds: that she was taught from infancy that the only way by which she could earn her daily bread was by stealing: that the only art or trade she had ever learned was that of stealing without being detected: that she was never at any school or Church or under any kind of instruction whatever: that she was never taught the meaning of right or wrong: that she had learned no religion and no morals and knew not what they meant; and that being caught in the act of stealing a piece of cloth value six shillings from a shop, she is now lying under sentence of death.'

To make a long story short, Jenny entrusted this Petition to Lord Brockenhurst, who generously interested himself in the girl and undertook that the Petition should reach the hands of Her Majesty the Queen—with the result, as you shall presently hear, that the girl's life was spared.

This incident has nothing to do with the story, save that it shows Jenny's generous nature and her good heart; thus in the midst of her own anxieties to think of the troubles of others. Nay, she not only saved the life of this girl, but she brought her to a new mind and to new thoughts: and, whereas she had been before what you have seen, she converted the child into a decent, well conducted civil girl, worthy of better things—even to marry an honest man and to become the mother of stout lads and sturdy wenches. Let us consider how many lives might have been destroyed had they hanged this young girl. I have sometimes calculated that if they hang a hundred women every year, most of them young, they deprive the country of five hundred children whose loss may mean the loss of two thousand five hundred grandchildren, and so on. Can any country afford to lose so many valuable soldiers and sailors every year, the number still mounting up? Why, then, cannot we take the children when they are still young out of Roguery and place them in some house where they will be taught religion and morals and a craft? At present the cry is all 'Hang! Hang! Hang!' or 'Flog! Flog! Flog!' So the soldiers and the sailors and the wretched women are tied up and flogged well nigh to death: and the carts go rumbling along Holborn loaded with the poor creatures on their way to be hanged: but the rogues increase and multiply. Since hanging and flogging do no good cannot we try Jenny's method of kindness? I say this writing many years afterwards—because at that time I did not understand the law of kindness which I now perceive to be the Heavenly Law of Charity. Jenny, who had no glimmer of religion, poor thing, in her quick way divined the Law of Charity.