In Darkest London · Chapter 8 (1/2)

VIII

The Awful Business of the Door-Handle

I first went to the casual ward under very melancholy conditions. I was dispirited to find that my entry into commerce had been postponed. I had high hopes as to what I should achieve in the sale of cigarette cases, etc., on commission. But my friend of the plush coat did not turn up. I went to the public-house again that evening, but she was not there. My low spirits were reflected in my trade⁠—I could not get my matches off, and no one would give me more than twopence. I watched the outside of that public house with a sinking heart. I had two coppers on me after a purchase of a cup of tea and a miserable bun, and there was no means by which I could raise any more. My only chance of escaping an unpleasant experience was to go home. But that would have been to confess failure, and when it comes to the fundamentals of life I always develop a certain sticking power. I decided to see this experience through.

The wind had fallen, and a peculiarly unpleasant sleet was coming down, stinging your face and creeping down between the collar of your coat and your neck. I felt as if I had been an outcast for years and I had to take myself in hand pretty thoroughly before I found courage to speak to a policeman.

The outward and visible signs of my destitution were very plain that evening. Unconsciously I had acquired the slinking gait which comes of glancing furtively behind to see if you are being followed by some prosperous citizen with an eye to complaint. It was difficult to hold up my head, my shoulders drooped wearily. I wished very much that I was coward enough to go back to my bed. But I knew that such a course would cut me off from the knowledge I was so desperately eager to gain. To understand how an outcast feels, you yourself must be outcast.

“Where is the nearest casual ward, please?” I asked a young policeman.

“There’s only one for women, and that’s in Great Guildford Street, Southwark. You’d best go over Westminster Bridge and then enquire your way.”

I followed his directions and, much buffeted by cold and rain, found myself in the Kennington Road. I was directed to a workhouse near Lambeth Walk, where I interviewed the porter. He explained that his establishment was for men only, but that he would give me an order which would admit me to Southwark. Furthermore, he handed me a red counter, marked with the mystic figure One.

“If you give this to the tram conductor, he’ll give you a ticket,” he explained.

“What shall I have to do at the Workhouse?” I asked, rather frightened.

“Oh, nothing very terrible, my dear,” was the cheery reply. “They’ll take your money away till the morning, that is, if you have any. You can’t go in with more than a shilling, you know.”

My resources, I explained, were twopence, and I got into the tram, feeling as though the eyes of all the world were on me.

“Fares, please,” said the conductor, and then I surprised myself.

Something inside me asserted itself, and I leaned forward in my best social manner, in marked contrast to my dilapidated clothes, and handed the conductor the counter.

“Stop outside the casual ward, if you please,” I said.

The woman next to me edged farther along the seat, but none of the others took any notice. The conductor beamed at me genially, answered “Certainly, Miss,” and gave me a ticket.

I was awfully glad he called me “Miss,” because it seemed to show that those other outcasts who had handed him their counters had been treated just as nicely.

He stopped at the nearest point to the House and wished me good luck very cheerily. I found the entrance to the casual ward with difficulty⁠—the walls seemed very high and the night was dark. When, at last, I unearthed the bell, the long clanging peal was ominous. Automatically the door opened, and the porter told me to come inside.

He was a nice looking young man with bright eyes and a great sense of humour.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

The inevitable “Annie Turner” duly came forth.

“Where were you born?”

The question seemed to me ridiculous.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“Now, that’s a pity,” said the porter. “Where did you go to school?”

“Manchester,” I said, lying boldly.

Age came next, colour of eyes and hair, and then⁠—“What’s your height?”

“Now why on earth,” said I, “do you want to know that for?”

The porter bent towards me confidentially. “The Minister of Health’s very interested in your height,” said he. Whereat I determined that the Minister of Health should be fully satisfied.

Now I have always wished to be a tall woman and Fate having brought me the opportunity I gave myself five foot nine inches, which the porter, highly amused, duly entered up.

“Now you go on upstairs,” said he, “and the female attendants will look after you.”

It has been said that this particular porter is cross-tempered⁠—some of my fellow casuals have whispered it with bated breath. For this reason, I should like to say, he is one of the nicest people I have ever met and I hope in a future life he will be attendant to St. Peter.

I was received by a young woman seated at a table, who put me through the identical catechism framed by the porter. These preliminaries over, she explained, quite nicely, the position of the woman admitted to the casual ward.

“This place,” she said, “as you know, is run by rules decided by the authorities. They are not made by us, but we are responsible that they are carried through. I hope you will see your way to conform to them.”

This reception, I admit, was a great surprise. I had thought to find Bumble rampant. I had expected to be treated with ignominy, if not with derision. I found nothing of either. The attitude of all the officials with whom I came in contact was quite human. There was nothing in their manner that could possibly affront that fundamental dignity born in the meanest of mankind. I was destitute, but that did not impair my inalienable right to human treatment. Throughout my stay I was never once made to feel I was a pauper.

“Have you any money?” asked the young woman.

I handed her my twopence and asked if I might keep my nightdress.

“We supply one,” she answered. “I am sorry, but you must not take anything with you into the ward.”

I solemnly handed over the contents of my packet, together with a dilapidated powder puff, the one thing that had not been taken from me in the doss house.

“If you have any private papers, or letters I will seal them in a packet and keep them for you until the morning. We have no desire to pry into your affairs; you understand that?”

I had not any papers, and I explained that I had spent the previous night in a doss house and should enjoy a hot bath immensely. She led the way into the bath room, and I had a hot tub, with decent soap and a good sized bath towel. The attendant watched me fairly closely.

“Why you’re quite clean,” she said, and seemed remarkably astonished. “It’s such a relief,” she continued, “to find someone who isn’t dirty. By the by, is your head all right?”

I bowed for her inspection, and my hair passed muster.

“You’ve no idea what some of them are like, you know. We have women in here who are fairly alive.”

“They can’t help it, really, can they?” I said protestingly. “It’s difficult to find the money for a wash, let alone a bath.”

“But it’s unfair to the others, all the same,” said the young woman, “and the worst of it is some of them won’t let you touch their heads.”

It was not any good to argue the point, and her attitude is quite explicable. It is not a nice job to have to “cleanse” heads riddled with lice. As I have said a number of outcasts decline to let their hair be interfered with. A small percentage, however, yield to necessity and submit to treatment.

The particular official who is on duty has to tackle the proposition with results unpleasing to a sensitive stomach. Generally speaking, when the offending head is shaved, and excavations conducted under the scalp⁠—for lice burrow deep⁠—the patient is exhausted. For it is a strange thing that, deprived of this mass of obscene life, the body seems to grow weak, and frequently a day or two in bed in the infirmary is necessary to restore normal conditions. It may be that the unceasing irritation which would drive most people almost mad, serves as a kind of counterblast to the mental stress of seeking food and lodging. In other words, the ceaseless activity of the lice may prove an anodyne to the pangs of starvation. Remove the artificial stimulus and collapse sets in.

I followed the bright-faced young woman along a bleak corridor, dressed in the workhouse nightgown, a striped garment, fastening at the back, with long enveloping sleeves.

“Leave your clothes on the floor outside the door,” she said, “they’ll be inspected, and, if necessary⁠—baked.”

This was a polite way of telling me that should my garments prove to be verminous they would be dealt with. There is always a hot chamber working in the House. Sometimes the clothes suffer as well as the insects, and the unfortunate casual gets back a singed skirt, or a scorched petticoat. I was put wise as to this by a wonderful woman, by name Kitty Grimshaw, one of the finest characters on the road.

“If they burns your clothes, me dear,” she said, “they’re bound to make ’em good, the law says so, and I stands by the law.”

There is nothing indeed about the law as it applies to the Workhouse that Kitty does not know. She is like one of those old soldiers, who have mastered King’s Regulations so completely that they can trip up a superior officer at any minute.

“Law is law,” Kitty always says, “and don’t you forget to let the Master know you know it.”

I was given a mattress, a pillow and a pair of blankets, and told to take them into my “cell”⁠—word of ill omen. It sent a shudder through my body. I do not understand why the word “cell” is employed, unless it be that it is so exact a replica of the prison variety that even the official sense of humour would boggle at another name. Still, cubicle might be tried; it would not have so ominous a suggestion.

I was left in the darkness very much alone. I had been oppressed with the sense of sleeping humanity the previous night; I had been surrounded by an atmosphere that would not let me rest; but in the terrible isolation of my cell, my soul ached for the company of the women with their unspeakable bundles, their rabbit skins, their “mog.”

High up in the wall was a tiny, round window, like a porthole, far beyond my power to reach. There was a little observation shutter in the door; now and again it was lifted and the light from the corridor outside peeped in.

The mattress was not too hard, the blankets soft and warm, but the pillow was as stiff as a log of wood. It is as though the Guardians feel the casual must not have comfort everywhere. This policy is part of the determination to prevent a return visit. Thus, you may stretch your limbs, hug your arms under soft fleecy wool, but your head shall find no ease. To and fro⁠—to and fro, you turn on that torturous pillow.

The “cell,” slightly funnel-shape, is like a coffin, as it suddenly occurred to me. I felt myself entombed in an instant, cut off forever from the light of day. I wanted to scream⁠—a sob choked my throat⁠—I was getting hysterical⁠—and I knew it. And over and above all this quaking of the flesh, and shrinking of the spirit, was another and more dreadful piece of knowledge. I knew that if I tried the handle of the door it would not open. No handle was there. I could not escape from my funnel-shaped coffin, I might beat my hands upon the wall, but I could not get free.

I felt that if I went to the door and ratified my instinctive suspicion I should be unable to control myself. So I kept quiet and would not go to see what I feared was true. But in the grey dawning when I was quieter⁠—though I had not slept⁠—I crept out and went towards the door. And it was even as I had thought.

Some months ago there was a case in the police court, where it was alleged an inmate of a casual ward was “locked” in her cell. The superintendent stated upon oath that this was not so. “There are,” he said, “no keys.”

I know of no better example of the letter of the truth⁠—and the violation of the spirit. There are no keys, but, as I have said, when the casual is duly in bed, the handle of the door is withdrawn.

The official explanation of this device would appear quite reasonable. It is said that if people could open their doors and come out of their cells, they would visit each other all night. One or two convivial spirits might, perhaps, drift into the corridor, but for the most part the casual is so dog-tired that any such spirit of enterprise is knocked out. But even were every casual to emerge, an attendant on night duty could shoo them back with the warning that if they came out again they would be shut in. It is as I have said, the Guardians do not desire to extend hospitality too often. Therefore, they inflict slight penalties upon the body and the soul, which, in the aggregate, make up a sum sufficiently imposing to make a night in the ward a thing most strenuously to be avoided.

I had always known that the Guardians deliberately adopt this regime, that their chief intent is to keep casuals “out,” not to welcome them in. But to know a thing and to experience it is widely different. I wish some of the guardians could be “destitute” and try their own wards.

We were aroused the next morning about half-past five. The cell door was open. I found my clothes outside the door and put them on in the dim light. I could see other figures also putting on their clothes up and down the corridor. It was a queer experience. Things always seem foreshortened in the half-light before the night is utterly faded away and the morning come. When we were all dressed we folded up our blankets and carried them with pillow and mattress to the end of the corridor from whence they were despatched to be fumigated. Outside each door the number is painted in bold figures⁠—a discovery which somehow made me feel more than ever like a convict. We were then shepherded into the day room, a mournful place with bare boards, whitewashed walls and a long trestled table. There was no fire in the grate. Large tin mugs full of what was supposed to be tea were placed on the table together with slices of bread spread with a particularly distasteful brand of “marge.”

After a bad night every woman aches for a cup of tea, and I do not think I ever felt more disappointed than when I found the liquid in the tin mugs to be loathsomely lukewarm. I could have cried at this uncalled-for rebuff. I was prepared for weak or unsweetened, but not cold tea. This piece of foolish unkindness, as I have said, is now remedied. The tea made for the men is poured off into an urn which sings merrily on a gas ring until required.

I tried to munch a piece of bread, but the marge was more than I could stomach, and feeling rather light in the head and unhappy about the heart, I sat on a form and observed my fellows.

The hour for leaving the House from the casual ward is somewhere about half-past seven. A good few were going out that morning and I listened with interest to their plans. One woman, young and good looking, was anxiously asking how she could get from Southwark to Dulwich, because she had no knowledge of London and possessed but a few pence. She was an ironer by trade and should have had little difficulty in getting work. It was Kitty Grimshaw who told her what to do.

“Get the other side of Westminster Bridge, me girl,” said she, “and ask a likely looking chap the nearest way. As like as not he’ll give you a copper.”

The young woman departed, and her place was taken by a gaunt female who came to the same fountainhead for information.