In Darkest London · Chapter 1 (1/2)

I

“I Walked with Other Souls in Pain⁠ ⁠…”

London is a city of sudden and violent contrasts. You can step from comfort and security of existence into destitution within a few minutes. This sounds incredible; but it can be done as I have proved. I wanted to find out how the woman without a home, without a reference, without money, friends or a decent wardrobe, supports life. Well, I did find out, and what I have learned has impressed itself upon my mind with a rigidity that time itself cannot reduce.⁠ ⁠…

I left my home one evening in February. I wore my own clothes, which were shabby, but not ragged. I had watertight shoes and a raincoat⁠—and not one penny in my pocket. I had determined to start life from an entirely new angle. I would arrive in London with nothing but my personality between me and starvation. To do this I went to Euston, and mingled with the crowd of passengers on the 9:20 arriving from Liverpool.

It was an odd sensation to be derelict in a crowd without one familiar association. Everybody seemed to have a friend to meet, and I pictured the sort of homes that they were going to. I had never troubled about this before when I arrived at a terminus, I was always too engrossed with my own personal affairs. But when the crowd cleared off and I found myself left solitary on the platform, the first stirring of that loneliness I was later on to fathom to the full, made itself felt in me. It was one of the bitterest nights of a very cold winter, and the wind cut the skin like the lash of a whip. I pulled myself together and went right up to a policeman.

I have always admired the London police, but I never realised before that they were so tall. I was very conscious of my destitute condition, and I looked up at him wistfully, and a little afraid.

“I haven’t any money,” I said, “and I want a bed for the night. Can you tell me where to go?”

He looked down at me, mildly interested, taking in the brown paper parcel that I carried containing a nightdress, brush and comb and other toilet necessaries.

“Have you lost your money, then?”

I nodded. “I left my bag in the waiting room at Liverpool Station. I have come to London to get work.”

“Well, that’s a very silly thing, you know,” said he. “There isn’t any work in London. What can you do?”

I explained that I could cook, and the policeman’s face changed miraculously.

“Oh, a cook,” he said, “that’s a very different thing. You won’t find much trouble in getting work if that’s the case.” I thanked him for the admission, and once again asked where I could obtain a lodging for the night.

“There’s a Salvation Army Hostel off the Tottenham Court Road,” said he. “You couldn’t do better than go there.”

Now between asking what to do and doing it, there is a wide gulf fixed. I had an awful tussle with myself before I plucked up courage to knock at the Hostel door. But I wasn’t going to be beaten before I had begun the fight, and having walked up and down the street a few times I put my faith to the test.

The portress told me that there was no accommodation for itinerant wayfarers⁠—the Hostel was reserved for women in regular situations, who could pay a reasonable sum.

“But I’ve nowhere to go,” I pleaded. “Isn’t there any place where I can put up?”

“There’s a Salvation Army Shelter in Mare Street, Hackney, where they’ll give you free bed and breakfast. It’s a long way, though,” she added, “and I can’t be sure they’ll take you in, because they may not have a bed.”

It was rather a miserable prospect. Mare Street, Hackney, is a hideous distance from Tottenham Court Road, especially if you walk all the way, and the cold was growing every moment more intense. Just for a second I was tempted to go home. Never had the prospect of a comfortable bed held such allurement. But I stiffened my will and went on. I had vowed to take adventure where it found me, in my struggle to earn a living, and there was nothing for it but to walk.

It was my first experience of destitution, and it sank deep into my consciousness. It is one thing to walk through London with the knowledge of a comfortable fireside awaiting you⁠—it is another to drag the weary length of interminable streets not knowing what lies at the end of the journey. Along the Euston Road, up Pentonville Hill, on to the Angel, that was the first lap, and I enjoyed it. It was when I began the ghastly stretch of the Essex Road that I grew unhappy. It is a road that, to this day, I think has no ending. To me it goes on and on into infinity. In the cold moonlight of that bitter night, the houses stood out gaunt and hungry, the few wayfarers I passed, huddled themselves against the cold, hurrying along to shelter.

By this time it was past midnight. I had not had a meal for some hours, and I was growing more and more infuriated with a system of society that makes a woman walk for miles to get a bed.

I suddenly stopped dead. I was new to the form of endurance necessary to walk on a hopeless quest for hours, and felt I could not carry on. Once more I went up to the nearest policeman, standing like a tower in the empty street, and asked if I were right for Hackney.

“It’s a long way yet,” said he. “You’d better take a twopenny tram, there’ll be one along directly.”

“I’ve no money,” I said bitterly, “and I want to get to the Salvation Army Shelter; they may give me a bed.”

He looked me up and down, and then he put his big hand into his pocket. “Here you are,” said he, and gave me twopence. “Look sharp now, there’s a tram coming along.”

One gets into the habit of using words almost as if they were dead things, and then suddenly they quicken into life. Gratitude is a word of easy coinage, it rises so glibly to the lips. I had never acutely felt that thing for which it stands, before. But when the policeman gave me twopence I understood and I wanted at that moment to do something to show what I felt. It was not only that the money saved me a heartbreaking tramp in the bitter wind, it was the recognition of humanity which means so much to the outcast. I might have been lying to him in the letter, as I was in the spirit, but I was still a woman, very tired and forlorn. His gift without question or suspicion reconciled me to my fellow man.

Now Mare Street is at the end of the world and the tram rolled on and on and on, it seemed to me, to the next century. I had lived many lives when I came to my terminus, and found myself in a broad thoroughfare with high old-fashioned houses and important looking shops. But though I was in Mare Street I was by no means at the end of my quest; and here I would like to state a very real grievance from which the outcast suffers. The Salvation Army Shelter was No. 259. That sounds easy, but it isn’t. None of the shops or houses have any number that is visible, the only exception to this dismal rule being the tobacconists. I counted up the number from one particular lighthouse and finally found myself outside a big barrack-like building in a gaunt garden with a gravel path. The gate clanged behind me, and I went up a long flight of stone steps and gazed at the windows, staring from the three floors above.

They were all dead, in the sense that only windows can be⁠—not a spark of life showed through the panes. The place was terribly still, and when, summoning courage, I pulled the bell, its tingling echoes frightened me. What was I to do if they would not let me in? Had I the will, let alone the strength, to walk about until the morning?

A light gleamed out of a window and a pleasant voice with a North Country burr asked what I wanted.

“A bed,” said I.

“Have you been here before?” said the voice.

“Never,” I protested, eagerly.

“Wait a minute, and I’ll come down and let you in.”

It seemed a long time before door was opened and a rosy-cheeked little lieutenant bade me enter. She carried a candle and its dim light showed a wide, bare hall in which were hanging spectral coats and hats. She told me to hang mine beside them.

“Have you anything of value, dear?” she said.

I shook my head. “I haven’t any money,” I answered. “I’ve come to London to get work.”

“Well, well,” she said. “We’ll see about that in the morning. Tell me your name and I’ll take you to bed.”

Annie Turner was the name I had assumed for my wanderings, and the lieutenant noted it with a smile. Now I had expected to be severely questioned. I had anticipated being faced with innumerable forms, interrogating me as to my family history, where I was born, how educated, what disease my parents had died from, and other intimate details. There was nothing like that at all. I was asked no questions as to character or past employment. I might have been a thief, or a drunkard⁠—it didn’t matter. I was homeless, destitute. That was enough. I appeared, a stranger out of the night, and the Salvation Army took me in.

I don’t think anything has ever surprised me more than this. I had not dreamed that such a thing could happen. The homeless woman has so much insult and contumely to bear; all the pomps and panoplies of existence are against her. But this one thing remains. The outcast can find shelter and kindliness in Mare Street, Hackney, and for this reason it will always be to me a blessed place.

My guide led the way along dark passages, over a courtyard paved with cobblestones, into a huge room. In the dim light which filtered through the five tall windows I could see rows of beds against the wall and down the middle of the floor. Each held a sleeping figure. My bed was pointed out to me, and “Good night, dear. God bless you,” said my guide.

She went and took the candle with her. I sat upon the edge of my bed, and all at once I felt spiritually isolated, utterly cut off. There is something terrible in being with a number of strange people who are asleep. Waking, I could have found community with any of them. But sleeping, they suggested dark and almost sinister things. The room was full of the sound of breathing, the breathing of strange sleeping bodies. Awake I could have felt myself one with them, but asleep these unknown souls and tired limbs cowed me. I was slowly, but surely, surrounded by terror⁠—an almost ungovernable impulse urged me to flight. The five tall windows were pitiless⁠—I fell into the depths of unknown misery. I had set sail on an uncharted sea, and the waters lapped cold and deathly on my spirit.

And then the terror that walks in darkness was shattered by a cry. From the far corner of the room someone screamed for help and immediately the sleeping figures stirred and the room was full of life.

“It’s Millie,” said a tired voice, “she’s mental, you know. It’s all right, Millie, go to sleep.”

Mental! The explanation was not entirely comforting. I had a vision of Millie approaching near my bed and strangling me with horrid cries. But the explanation still continued.

“She’s often like that, you know. Mental people always are.”

“Mental, I don’t think,” said someone. “It’s a nice way of putting it. The poor thing lost her husband and five sons in the war.”

“Oh, yes,” said the first speaker, “but she gets a lot of money for it. Millie has a fine pension.”

It was an unaccustomed point of view, but its utter lack of sentiment attracted me, and I was still puzzling over the respective attractions of a fine pension and a family when the girl in the bed next to mine sat up. By this time I had slipped off my things and was in between the sheets. The bed was quite comfortable and the clothing clean and warm. It wasn’t a pauper bed by any means.

“You were in very late,” said my neighbour. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I just wanted a lodging,” I answered.

“Are you going to have a baby, dear?” she queried. “Most of us are, here.”

I reassured her on the point, and she told me, very simply, that she expected her child to be born in three months. She explained that the Shelter was a kind of clearing house for the Salvation Army. All sorts of conditions of women in every kind of trouble went there and were sorted out, some to maternity homes, others to situations, and others again to the Colonies. I shall have more to say as to the working of this particular centre later on.

I found plenty to think about from what I had already been told. I did not get any sleep that night, but watched the grey dawn lighten the window panes until, at half-past five, signs of life began to appear; the officers in charge, captain and lieutenant, got up and dressed. The gas was turned on and I could see the room quite plainly. At the far end was a row of basins and jugs and by the side of each bed a carpet mat. That was all the furniture. There were no chairs and every woman laid her clothes across the end of the bed⁠—except those who slept in them. We were allowed to rest until half-past six when a bell rang and we all turned out. We stripped our beds and were sent to fetch water to wash with. I took a tin jug and went across the courtyard. It was the coldest morning I ever remember⁠—and by the time I reached the tap my hands were almost numb. I suffered acutely at the thought of the cold water which would presently emerge. But a miracle happened and a warm, kindly stream gushed forth. It is a very childish thing to admit, but when I found it was hot water I had to wash in I could have cried. At that moment I could have believed in the existence of God⁠—which for an agnostic is something of an admission!

There was no looking glass in the sleeping room, but we did our hair by sense of touch and, having shaken our mats and made our beds, trooped into a large room known as the day or working room and waited for breakfast.

It is a cheerless place, that room. The walls of sea green are utterly hopeless, erupting every little space into a photograph of some Salvation Army celebrity, all very stiff and precise and bristling with efficiency. The floor is covered with a sad oilcloth, but the long French windows look out on a fair-sized garden, which even on that dark February morning showed signs of spring with starlike auriculas and fugitive anemones.

We did not speak much before breakfast, but sat round the fire, or as near to it as we could get. One girl I noticed particularly. She was a hunchback, with the spiritual eyes and refined face of the type. She seemed oblivious to the rest of us and read intently, without looking up.

At half-past seven we went down to breakfast, and here again I was astonished. I anticipated a long service, but the meal was merely heralded by a short grace, and then we all sat down at two long tables, spread with clean cloths, nice crockery and spoons and forks. There was porridge, well made, with milk and sugar, plenty of hot tea, good bread and quite bearable margarine. There is a great deal in that word “bearable.” Butter is beyond the dreams of the outcast, and the number and variety of horrors known as “marg,” are undreamt of by the comfortably placed.

It was a very human meal, with plenty of cheery talk. The majority of the women were quite young⁠—domestic servants, for the most part⁠—and very cheerful. The level of good looks was a high one, and I noticed an entire absence of powder or paint. The girls were bobbed or shingled, wore pretty frocks, many of them sleeveless, smart shoes, and almost invariably silk stockings. That is one of the discoveries I made in my wanderings. The outcast, until she gives up hope, tries at all costs after silk hosiery; indeed, apart from matchsellers, I was the only destitute woman who wore wool.