On the bed lay a strange-looking boy of nine, twisted and deformed in body, wizened in features, suffering writ all over him, yet apathetically and unconcernedly waiting for the end. With the lamp in my hand, I bent over him and spoke kindly to him. He looked at me, then turned away from me; he would not speak to me. Poor little fellow! He had suffered so long and so much that he expected nothing else. He knew that he was dying. What did it matter? The mothers in London streets are not squeamish, and their young children are very soon made acquainted with the mysteries of life and death.
"He has been in two hospitals, and I have fetched him home to die," said the widow to me. "How long has he lain like this?" I asked. "Three months." "Who sleeps in that bed with him?" "I do, and the little boy you saw in the kitchen." "Who sleeps in the kitchen?" "Only George: he is fourteen."
On inquiry, I was told that the dying boy had always been weak and ailing, and also that, when five years of age, he had been knocked down in the street by a cyclist, and that he had been crippled and twisted ever since.
Nearly five years of suffering, and now he had "come home to die." Poor little fellow! What a life for him! What a death for him! Born in a dark kitchen while his father lay dying; four years of joyless poverty in a London street; five years of suffering, in and out of hospitals; and now "home to die." And he knew it, and waited for the end with contemptuous indifference. But he had not much longer to wait, for in three weeks' time the blessed end came.
But the widow still takes in washing, damp clothes still hang in her dark kitchen, and by the faint light of her evil-smelling lamp she continues to "tie her knots"; and the silent child is now acquiring some power of expression in the gutter.
Slum property sometimes gets into queer hands. Sometimes it is almost impossible to find the real owners, and the fixing of responsibility becomes a great difficulty.
An old woman, dressed in greasy black silk, with a bonnet of ancient date, often appeared in one of our courts for process against some of her many tenants. Her hair, plastered with grease, hung round her head in long ringlets; her face never showed any signs of having been washed; a long black veil hung from her old bonnet, and black cotton gloves covered her hands. She was the widow of a well-to-do jeweller, and owned some rows of cottage property in one of our poorest neighbourhoods. After her husband's death, she decided to live in one of her cottages and collect her own rents. She brought with her much jewellery, etc., that had not been sold, and there in the slums, with her wealth around her, and all alone, lived the quaint old creature. Week by week she appeared at the court for "orders" against tenants who had not paid their rent. Though seventy-three, she would have no agent; she could manage her own business. Suddenly she appeared as an applicant for advice. She had married: her husband was a carpenter, aged twenty-one. They had been married but a few days, and her husband refused to go to work--so she told the magistrate. "Well, you know, madam, that you have plenty for both," said the magistrate. "That's what he says, but I tell him that I did not marry him that I might keep him." She got neither help nor comfort from the magistrate, so she tottered out of the court, grumbling as she went. In a few days she appeared again. "My husband has stolen some of my jewellery." Again she got no comfort. Still again she complained. "My husband has been collecting my rents." "Send a notice to your tenants warning them not to pay your husband." She did so; the husband did the same, warning the tenants not to pay his wife. This suited the tenants admirably: they paid neither. Never were such times till the old woman applied for ejectment orders wholesale. While these things were going on the youthful husband wasted her substance in riotous living, and showed a decided preference for younger women. This aroused the old woman's jealousy; she couldn't put up with it. Packing her jewels and valuables in a portmanteau, she left her house. When her husband returned at night the wife of his bosom was gone; neither did she return. He was disconsolate, and sought her sorrowing. Some miles away she had a poor widowed sister, and there the old woman found shelter.