Britannia's Morass: The Dawlish Chronicles September - December 1884 by Antoine Vanner

Author:Antoine Vanner [Vanner, Antoine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Old Salt Press
Published: 2020-12-11T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Florence was too impatient to read the St. James Fortnightly to wait until she returned to the Black Swan. She went instead into the ladies’ waiting room at the station. The light was dim, and she had to wear her spectacles, but her heart soared when she saw the list of contents on the front cover.

The Shame of Portsmouth – an American perspective. By Mrs. M. Bushwick of the Columbia Home Gazette.

It was the issue’s premier article, introduced by a paragraph from the editor. Mrs. Bushwick was the most-respected lady journalist in the United States, he wrote, renowned for her fearless investigations of social abuses. He had felt privileged to meet her on a previous visit to our shores. Now she was back and he was pleased that she had agreed to contribute an article, though he was ashamed for Britain that the plight of the poor here shocked such a distinguished visitor.

Mrs Bushwick began her article by saying that she had not intended to write on this topic. She had crossed the ocean this time to study women’s education in Britain in all its forms, from young ladies’ seminaries to refuges for the fallen and succour for the handicapped. Interest in St. Winifred’s Home for the Blind, Deaf and Dumb had brought her to Portsmouth. Its successes, brought about by its enlightened regime and progressive methods, were famed even across the Atlantic.

The visit to St. Winifred’s had not disappointed. There were lessons to be learned from it by similar establishments in the United States. But what did disappoint were tales of poverty she heard there from mothers who had entrusted children to it. Mrs Bushwick had thereafter visited some of these women in their own homes, often just single rooms occupied by six or eight people. The squalor was no different to what she had encountered in the slums of New York and Boston. The problems were the same too. Drink, indebtedness, overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate incomes, or none at all. Mrs Bushwick quoted some of the women, under the promise of anonymity.

Mrs. W, a widow whose work as a casual house-cleaner brought in seven shillings a week, if she was lucky, supported five children. A sixth, a blind daughter, was at St. Winifred’s.

Mrs X, whose husband was a drunkard, in and out of jail for years, fed her five children with scraps picked from refuse at the city’s meat and vegetable markets. Her last baby had died of diphtheria. She admitted that on occasion she had begged at prosperous houses.

Mrs. Y’s husband was a naval seaman, absent for long periods, who made inadequate provision for remittance of his pay. She had pawned anything of value she possessed and could not afford to redeem them. Washing glasses in a public-house brought a few shillings but without support of her relatives her children would go hungry, as she herself often did to spare them.

Another widow, Mrs. Z, whose husband, a carter, had been killed by a runaway horse, and

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