Mary Higgs

“ Only one who is daily receiving the stories of the manifold ways in which women drop out or are forced out of homes, can understand the silent disintegration of womanhood that is forced upon many. Sometimes they are carefully reared, with a parent's love as protection, shielded from any real knowledge of life's hardships. But the protector dies and the struggle begins, a hard struggle for daily bread. No one is forced to keep them, save the workhouse. ”

“ If a woman is not the carefully-guarded inmate of a sheltering home, on whom devolves the duty of caring for her? Surely on the manhood of the nation. The community that fails to shield its women to the utmost of its power will either be roused to its duty by the trumpet call of flagrant wrong, or will perish by decay of manhood and of the family.
There are not wanting signs that such decay is upon us. If side by side with large aggregations of men, living under insanitary and unnatural conditions, we allow the mixed common lodging-house—unclean in every sense of the word, what can we expect? ”

“ During the afternoon one poor woman had said, "If only the rich guardians, and the heavy ratepayers, knew how their money was spent, and how us poor things had to live, they wouldn't allow it." They felt bitterly the irony of so many officials being paid to order them about, and get the maximum of work out of them while they were practically starved. The conclusion of the whole matter is, the more rigidly the system is enforced in its entirety, the more hardly it presses on the destitute poor, while it makes no provision for their need. It is not even preventive, and it is costly. ”

“ The tramp men who brought back the stoved blankets, eagerly and hungrily hid under their jackets the pieces of bread the women had left.
Now to commence, after a night of misery, with a freshly-caught cold, to sit in a cold and draughty room with no fire, and feast on gruel and dry bread, with a possible drink of water, is punishment, not charity, or alleviation of misery.
The third merit or demerit of a tramp ward is the bed. Straw beds are a luxury, wire mattresses disliked for cold, plank beds for hardness; the floor is preferable, as there is more room. ”

“ Hospitality, which has perished as a personal virtue to a large degree, must now devolve on the community. It is not to its interest that it should be neglected. Especially would I point out with all the strength I possess, the folly of indiscriminate herding together of the sexes, without the commonest precautions for decency and sanitation. If it does not pay to have in every town a lodging-house for single women, under sufficient control to secure decency, such a lodging-house should be provided. ”

“ The small grey mill rises in the landscape, the clustering village becomes the small town, houses thicken, land grows scarce—what now is to become of the nomad? He must "take to the road" for nowhere else is left him. Society no longer wants him, and barely tolerates him. Hospitality, a virtue of scattered communities, dwindles to—the Tramp Ward!! He must needs, if he would travel, turn to prey on the communities who will not recognise him otherwise. He becomes hawker, tinker, pedlar, beggar and thus in his turn acquires a trade. ”

“ The home must be made the centre of all our thought, the focus of national consciousness. We must educate each boy and girl to be primarily father and mother; we must worship at the cradle [Pg 297] of the child. The community must assume fatherhood and motherhood, and enforce a right conception of their duties on its subsidiary units. To counteract the restlessness of modern life we must make of our Fatherland a Home, where every man, woman and child will be rightly cared for, disciplined if need be, but embraced in the wide brotherhood of Humanity. ”

“ It is evident that though hope must not be abandoned for anyone, a woman who has sunk into poverty even out of a life of vice, and who still retains all her desire for it (which she indulges in if it is obtainable) must be a woman out of whom womanhood is perishing, love of drink taking hold in most instances. Yet God forbid that we should judge these poor creatures, often capable of love to one another, and of kindnesses which might make us blush. ”

“ Can we not do something to solve the problem by providing suitable and sufficient women's lodging-houses under good management, where freedom is not interfered with unduly, but influence for good is steady?
In Christian England a friendless girl should never want a friend and a home. And to guard our girls is to preserve our nation from the worst of evils—the corruption of a 'trade' based on greed and dishonour. Yet how else can a destitute girl get her living without a friend? ”

“ What is needed is—in every town an industry for destitute women; in every town a Shelter to pick up strays and guide them to self-support; in every town Women's Hostels under kind, wise, but not restrictive supervision; in every town provision for glad, free girl life, and joined to this distinct, clear, national purity teaching. What is needed is a pure, free, enlightened womanhood, ready to stand side by side with man to mother the world. ”

“ Vagrancy proper was the crime of individuals who dropped out of a settled, mainly agricultural, society into the wandering life. Vagrancy as induced by modern conditions may be no crime. It is not a crime for a man who cannot obtain work to migrate to find it, or for a man to return home on foot from a distance. Yet, if there is no proper provision for migration, a man may, by contact with vagrants proper and degeneration, become incapable of settled existence. To prevent this should be the aim of social legislation. This would be true repression of vagrancy. ”

“ We are tramps and "mouchers"; we can beg, for we need pity; sing for our living, sell bootlaces, and turn over the money; even if we steal, prison only waits us, and it cannot be worse—our companions, who have tried it, prefer it. [94] One thing we could not do—we could not at this moment work for an honest living. It is physically impossible. By hook or by crook one or two restful nights must be put between us and the past. Strength to work has gone. One might perhaps tramp, for the air is reviving, and people are kind to a wayfarer. Do you wonder at our national tramp manufactories? ”

“ It may also be that military discipline has its advantages where a certain precision of detail, an invariable routine, similar to workhouse regulations, but more free, is a sine qua non. In our workhouses large bodies of people live under discipline, who, without it, would most of them be a danger or a drag on the community. Could we induce the "floating population" of men and women to live a less restricted life, yet a sanitary and wholesome one, much would be accomplished in a generation. ”

“ By train, tram, or road, tides of humanity move to toil; every holiday sees crowds covering green fields in pleasure parties, or transported by train. The whole of life has grown migratory. Is it not evident that we have here not the ancient problem of the Tramp, but the modern problem of the Fluidity of labour! To expect our Tramp Ward—the repressive provision of [Pg 288] a stationary society for the sparse survivals of a previous age—to cope with the needs of Migration of Labour is about as reasonable as it would be to expect the ancient windmill to grind corn for our modern population! ”

“ Even if he has money in his pocket, it is difficult to say whether he is not in as grave danger, moral and sanitary, if forced to be a lodger in some already overcrowded home, as if forced into the common lodging-house. Like a sponge, a slum neighbourhood sucks up by overcrowding in winter those who in summer obtain varied occupation far and wide. ”

“ The wonder is that any one seeks it; that it is used at all shows the stern pressure of destitution more than anything else. For, as I have stated, and must state repeatedly, the Tramp Ward is itself a factor in national degradation, the mockery of a provision for need; meaning often semi-starvation, weary toil and unrest. A man or woman must emerge from it more unfit for toil, and learn to avoid such a place if possible in future. The tramp uses it as an occasional disinfectant; the genuine working man or woman who is stranded may be forced into it temporarily and learn to be a tramp. ”

“ Every night in this England of ours our sisters are driven by poverty to sin.
"I must get my lodging money and a bit of food," they say. Money, even twopence, is not within the reach of every widow and orphan, and our poor-law conditions are almost prohibitive. Save as a temporary expedient, the casual ward, with its continual "move on," is no refuge. To descend to the common lodging-house is the last stage, just above utter homelessness. There the drink temptations are such that few women can withstand them. In many towns there do not exist lodging-houses for women only. ”

“ For the other career of womanhood is hard, and as yet a path not for the many, and therefore all the harder. A woman may attain economic independence; but she is sadly handicapped. Her wage is low, often lowered by dress expense; and her woman nature, especially under modern pressure of sentimental literature, demands satisfaction in husband and child. What wonder if she gives up the hard struggle and strays from this path. Society owes much to the women who toil on, cutting by degrees the stairs of progress. If they succeed in self-support, how often age overtakes them as toilers ”

“ This much is certain, that there is room for an alliance of greed and wickedness against defenceless and destitute womanhood. For if a woman "cannot get work," where is she to go? What is she to do? Can all our Homes and Shelters together prevent many from drifting "on the streets"? Do we not need a national provision for migration and temporary destitution among women? ”

“ Bound up with this is the fact that around the common lodging-houses in each large town is growing up silently a great evil, a network of single "furnished rooms," which are the last refuge of evicted householders, but also the home of immorality. The insufficient provision of the common lodging-house is being silently largely supplemented by these. These evils are flagrant. Yet they cannot be suppressed. The homeless must have somewhere to go. The crowding of slum areas by "lodgers" is as grave an evil. ”

“ These human units, divorced from native communities, cannot be expected to be readily anchored, and accordingly you see around each ancient community and interspersed with it, crowds of workmen's cottages, each a tent rather than a home, taken to-day, and left in a month or two. If you could uncover life and watch it as you do an anthill, you would find that it had attained a new and fresh activity. On every side Humanity is becoming organic. Huge conglomerations which we call cities blacken whole stretches of country, and the feature of the life of most men is daily migration. ”

“ The Continental system of providing an incentive to labour in the shape of a very small wage is well worth consideration. [75] It makes government easy and provides for sifting one class from another. It is not sufficiently recognised that undesirables act as social microbes. If they can be got to live under restraint, much evil is averted. The modern organization of labour is such that it ought to be possible to place our Poor Law on a sound economic basis, instead of the present haphazard system. The cost of administration as it is, goes up by leaps and bounds without adequate return. ”

“ Not to the tramp ward again—not at once—it cannot be borne immediately; later it may be again a necessity. Now anything is preferable. Prison? It has lost its terrors—it cannot be harder. [143] It is only an incident in life to "go down." Sin? What's the odds? It may pay for a decent bed and food. The river? That is best of all, if one could manage to face it. Silence, oblivion, and the mercy of the God above Who knows. Yet life is sweet, and it is a pleasant thing to behold the sun. To be a beggar is best—spring stirs already—God opens hearts. Food and shelter may be begged as "charity." ”

“ Before us would have stretched, in grey monotony, the life of poverty, a possible search for uncertain work, a gradual pawning of every available article for food, more workhouses, more common lodging-houses. The last article gone, cleanliness lost, clothing dilapidated or dirty—what then?
To wander helpless and homeless, driven to tramp, or to descend still farther into vice. ”

“ It is the constant recruiting of vagrancy that is such an evil. It would seem as if the free leave given in Germany for a man to enter and leave a colony, and then enter and leave another, but at the same time to be under compulsion to earn his living, is adapted to the "pastoral" class, who cannot easily settle yet will intermittently work. To let them degenerate into "loafers" is fatal.
Then again the slum dweller clings to his environment, and it is useless to force him to wander, and so send him down the ladder. ”

“ It is evident that facilities for migration must have some relation to amount of migration. In the days when it was a formidable journey to travel from London to Manchester, the fact affected all grades of society. The coming of the steam engine has meant more than industrial revolution, it spells social revolution. It has acted as a disintegrating as well as an integrating force. On the one hand the community is more closely bound together by newspapers, common customs, facilities for intercourse, and quick transit. ”

“ The life and death of our nation depends on an awakening to the gravity of the menace that threatens the true home on every side. An unstable society has brought about fear. People fear to fall out of employment and be thrust down into the abyss, and hence the custom of limitation of family, with all its consequences, is spreading to the upper stratum of the working [Pg 292] classes. I cannot recall any one of the many respectable young couples I have known married during the last sixteen years with a large family of living children. ”

“ We sat on the edge of a plank with our backs against a hole that gave a view of a place we found afterwards was under the tramp ward, apparently used for bricks. A married woman, somewhat respectably dressed, came in with her husband. One by one men dropped in. The women spoke little, but a buzz of conversation went on among the men, whose numbers grew to over thirty. Two facts struck me. Hardly any one was old, most were in the prime of life, and, with a few exceptions, if you had met them in the street, you would say they were ordinary working men. ”

“ Times of general distress [Pg 19] and unemployment are harvest times for the man who lives by preying on society. He who is not ashamed to beg can easily invent a "moving tale," and find his harvest of charity ready. Consequently, he is seldom too hard up to get a bed in the common lodging-house. "Mouchers" of all descriptions, both infirm and otherwise, may be found enjoying themselves, getting usually plenty of drink and food, while the "genuine working man" roams the country with a sinking heart and empty stomach, sleeping in the open or forced into the casual ward. ”

“ The constant habit of dealing for so brief a period with individuals prevents the formation of the customary links of human kindliness; the worst characters return, the best stay so short a time and are lost to sight; any act of kindness meets apparently no reward. Kindness for kindness' sake is difficult, a peremptory official habit easily acquired. There may be texts in an officer's sitting room, and yet the Christian qualities fortitude and patience and self-sacrifice may be better exhibited to one another by the tramps outside her door than by the inmate in authority. ”

“ The industrial highly skilled loses his trade. He is quite "at sea" out of his usual environment. But at first he has no desire to rove. He would cling to any environment that found him sustenance; and take eager interest in a new trade. Thus in the Lancashire cotton famine many industrials became skilled out-door workers. But if he cannot get employment he roves to find it, and becomes "unsettled." It is hard then for him to "settle down," he becomes fond of a day or two's work and a day or two's play alternating. Finally, he becomes a true vagrant—a nomad. ”