In Darkest London by Ada Elizabeth Chesterton

Author:Ada Elizabeth Chesterton
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Poor--England--London, London (England)--Social conditions, Lodging houses--England--London
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2025-11-11T19:10:19+00:00

IX

Kitty and the Wid­ow Who Drugged

What is it that drives wo­men to the Cas­u­al Ward? The un­think­ing will an­swer at a ven­ture, drink, de­prav­ity, or in ex­cep­tion­al cases, per­sist­ent mis­for­tune. The class of wo­men which seeks the shel­ter of the House in Great Guild­ford Street is drawn from Lon­don and the coun­try. The former, in many cases, are cas­u­al in every sense of the word. Some­times an en­tire fam­ily is landed miles away from their home, hav­ing lost the ex­cur­sion train. In such case the po­lice send them to the Met­ro­pol­it­an Asylums Board Of­fice, un­der the arches of Hun­ger­ford Bridge, on the Vic­tor­ia Em­bank­ment. They are giv­en tick­ets of ad­mis­sion to the work­house, and the moth­er and chil­dren are put to­geth­er, while the hus­band goes to the men’s ward.

Some­times a wo­man sus­pec­ted of pro­fes­sion­al beg­ging gets an or­der for the Cas­u­al Ward with her baby, in which case the of­fi­cials com­mu­nic­ate with the Roy­al So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cruelty to Chil­dren. The So­ci­ety has no jur­is­dic­tion in­side the House, but an in­spect­or will lurk out­side, and, on the ap­pear­ance of the sus­pec­ted with her chil­dren, he will march her off to the po­lice court, where he will ap­ply for a sum­mons against her for neg­lect. In the ma­jor­ity of in­stances she will go to pris­on for a month.

This seems to me to be one of the greatest ab­uses of the sys­tem. It is not only the pro­fes­sion­al beg­gar who may be seized on, to­wards the poor wo­man who comes in with her baby in a ver­min­ous or dirty con­di­tion, the same pro­ced­ure is en­acted; hav­ing en­joyed the res­pite of a night’s shel­ter, the un­for­tu­nate creature is seized on as she emerges with her child.

In some few cases pro­fes­sion­al beg­gars may be neg­lect­ful or un­kind to their chil­dren. Per­son­ally, I have many times tried to get a defin­i­tion of the term “pro­fes­sion­al.” So far as I can gath­er the au­thor­it­ies lay it down that a “pro­fes­sion­al” beg­gar is one who gets his liv­ing by the get­ting of alms. An it­in­er­ant street seller who oc­ca­sion­ally begs does not come un­der the same head­ing. It must be re­membered, how­ever, that if a wo­man with young chil­dren stands in the street selling matches, or some oth­er art­icle, she runs the risk of be­ing charged with ex­pos­ing her chil­dren, and once again pris­on is the con­clu­sion of the whole mat­ter.

What, then, is the “pro­fes­sion­al” beg­gar to do? The root cause of this at­tempt to gath­er a live­li­hood is the hous­ing short­age. It is not pos­sible to pay the rent de­man­ded for even the poorest room un­less one mem­ber of the fam­ily is in re­ceipt of a steady wage. Many of these beg­gars have lost their hus­bands, and have no trade by which they can sup­port their fam­ily. Even if they had a trade they would have no place in which to ply it. For once a fam­ily has been dis­pos­sessed of a roof tree, it is un­ima­gin­ably dif­fi­cult for them to find an­oth­er rest­ing place.

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