[-3-]
Dedication
THIS book is dedicated to the public - to the public which feels, the public
which
reflects. Which feels for the miseries and sufferings of our poorer brethren;
which reflects upon the causes that produce and intensify, and the methods which
may alleviate or remove them. It was the public which supported the efforts of
Howard when he arrayed the powers of his intellect against the continuance of the
horrors that in his day marked the incarceration of criminals. It was the public
which encouraged Wilberforce and Granville Sharp when they sought to uproot that
system of slavery that disgraced humanity. It was the public which only a few
brief months ago lent its aid and countenance to the efforts of the best hearts
and brightest intellects of to-day, when they strove to rescue English girls and
women from shame and degradation.
Will that same British public do its duty now? Will it rescue the denizens
of the common lodging-houses of London from dens, which permitted - nay, even
encouraged - by the law, are little, if any, less loathsome than the prisons of
bygone days? Will it rescue the poor from moral and intellectual slavery, which
is almost as painful, and to the full as powerful for evil, as the physical
slavery that once disgraced America? Will it rescue the daughters of the
humblest and most helpless class in Outcast London from vice and degradation,
which are none the less pitiful because they are engendered, not so much by
force or fraud as by intense poverty, by the mischievous operations of
inadequate laws, and the selfish ineptitude - or worse - of those who are charged
with
the administration of such laws as do exist?
[-7-]
CHAPTER I.
WHO ARE THE "DOSSERS"?
But a short time has elapsed since the Press teemed with articles and the
bookstalls overflowed with pamphlets treating of the woes of "outcast
London." The "Bitter Cry," " Horrible London," and " How the Poor
Live," threw a glare of lurid light upon appallingly miserable scenes. People's
hearts were stirred, and many belonging to that half of the world which is
proverbially ignorant on such subjects began to inquire "how the other half
lived." "Slumming" became a popular amusement; and with this amusement, and
the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the matter, the public
conscience was salved. A short Act was passed, which may be useful if properly
administered, and then the interest which had been temporarily aroused subsided,
and the sympathy excited, which had been more sentimental than real, went to
sleep once more. Its slumbers will probably last until the curtain which shrouds
the only partially depicted scenes of London wretchedness be lifted with a ruder
hand, and the "bitter cry" sound more bitter and perhaps more menacing.
[-8-] There is, however, a stratum of society even lower than that of the poor
wretches who herd together in noisome courts and foetid, filthy alleys. These
are the unfortunate creatures whose only home is the "doss-'ouse," whose
only friend the "deppity"* [* "Doss-'ouse" and "Kip-'ouse" are synonymous, and signify
a common lodging-house. The deputy is the man who super- intends the
establishment.] ; who have, perhaps, for years never known what
it is to have the shelter of a roof save that of a common lodging-house. There
is no bitter cry from these, or at all events they have as yet found no
spokesman to echo it in the public ear. Those who wrote - and wrote with power
and pathos - of the squalid houses and still more squalid rooms in which the
denizens of "horrible London" herd, and breed, and die, said little or
nothing about the people who have neither house nor room that they can call
their own, and who night after night, week in, week out, for many a weary year,
"doss" in the nearest lodging-house, and hardly dare to dream of any other
or better accommodation. While they live their principal care is to find the
necessary fourpence each night, together with a few coppers more for food, or at
all events for drink. When they die they depend upon the kindly feeling of their
chums and fellow-dossers for the means of burial, or upon the scantier, if more
certain, mercy of the parish sexton and the workhouse hearse.
In the course of some work in connection with one of those grand East-end
institutions which undertake the rescue of destitute gutter-children, I became [-9-]
acquainted, in a practical form, with the class I have described. I came into
contact with many boys, of all ages, who had known no other sleeping-place than
the lodging-houses, from the time when they could first remember sleeping at
all. Every one of these lads spoke with horror and disgust of them, and of the
surroundings at present inseparable from them. Their accounts determined me to
see the "kip-ouses" from within as well as from without; to learn from
experience as well as from rumour the sort of accommodation with which our
poorest brethren are compelled to be content, and to know from personal
investigation who the "dossers" are, and what is their lot in life.
In the following pages I have endeavoured - how imperfectly I can perhaps tell
even better than the reader - to set forth my experiences in the common
lodging-houses,
and the conclusions I deduce from them. The sketches there depicted may be
ill-drawn, but they are not exaggerated, and I have stated nothing which has not
come under my own observation. In every case I have given chapter and verse for
what I have written. It may be well, however, to say a few words as to the
occupants of the lodging-houses generally, before proceeding to give the more
particular descriptions, to which, in all humility, I venture to invite the
careful attention of the reader.
Amongst those congregated in a lodging-house, one may find every sort of man
and woman whom poverty can compel to seek a refuge there. Firstly, there are the "loafers."
The drones in the working-class hive [-10-] are always to be encountered in a "doss-'ouse." But it is a grievous
mistake to imagine, as many do, that none but the idle and vicious are to be
seen among the "dossers" - nay, the proportion of such characters is by
no means so large as is generally believed. Many have seen better days;
respectable artizans whom the waves of trade-depression have overtaken and
submerged; clerks elbowed out of a berth by the competition of smart young
Germans; small shopkeepers ruined by the poverty of the working-folk among whom
their business lay; even professional men - land surveyors, solicitors, surgeons
- are now and then to be found among the motley crowd in a "kip-'ouse"
kitchen. Nevertheless, the greater number belong to the very lowest class of the
community. The navvies, the costermongers, and the thieves of the East-end herd
together in these places, and many of the men who are to be met there combine
the characteristics, and follow the avocations, of all three. And the women, in
those lodging-houses into which women are admitted, are even worse. flags who
have for years gained their living on the streets, but whom age and hideousness
have compelled to relinquish their loathsome calling; hawkers of flowers, the
freshness and bloom of which contrast painfully with the pallor and decay of the
vendors; girls prematurely old, gin-sodden and steeped in vice; these, for the
most part, are the representatives of what in their case has long since ceased
to be a softer or a gentler sex. Others there are, but these, thank God! are
few. The honest seamstress whose work has failed her;
[-11-] the widow left destitute, to find for herself and her little ones a home
where she may; the wife deserted by a brutal husband; these occasionally find a
refuge in the lodging-houses-but when they do, Heaven help and pity them!
Are you prepared, reader, to meet such company? If so, come with me round
some of the places I have visited. You will have the advantage that, while my
tour was made in the flesh, yours may be completed in the spirit. And much is to
be learned from such an expedition, even if made only in imagination, by those
who have but very dimly realized the fact that there are dens of misery
unutterable, and of vice indescribable, in some quarters of this wealth-teeming,
yet poverty-producing, metropolis.