Six weeks passed, and the mother came to see me at the court. She had brought me the money I had paid, and the price of the boots, too. I did not like taking it, for I knew she had obtained it by selling herself, and possibly by stealing; but she was insistent, so with much misgiving I took it, promising myself that when the time came for the girl to start in life it should be devoted to her use. Two years passed, during which time I saw little of the mother, as her appearances at the court became much less frequent, and finally ceased altogether. I called to see the girl, hoping to give her the start I had provided for. The difficulty was to find the mother. They did not know where she lived; they could only tell me the address to which her letters were sent. I wrote to her, and the letter reached her. She met me, and agreed to the girl going to the lady I had arranged with. I provided her outfit, for the mother had got older and coarser, and consequently poorer.
The girl, now a young woman, has remained in her situation, is doing well, and is much respected; the mother has developed into an habitual inebriate, and gets charged at other courts; but she never goes near her daughter, for her work is done, because her daughter is self-supporting. For fourteen long years she had lived her life, and kept the girl, whom she still loves. It is her love that keeps her away, for she would not have her child see her as she now is. Down to a lonely grave she will go, her only joy to know that her daughter is respected, and will never know the life her mother lived. Can love do more than this? Men will readily die to save others, but to live for long years a daily death, to be content to dwell in shame that a child may have a chance of purity, and, when that child has grown to early womanhood, to crush a mother’s longings, and forego a mother’s joy lest her child should be in some way harmed, is love almost passing knowledge, and it will be placed on the credit side of her great account.
Annie Adams was another of these perpetually convicted women, whose only hopes were centred in the life of her child; but while the mother was in prison that child had been taken away and was being cared for and trained many miles away from London. To think of that child was heaven to her, and the hope of seeing it was ecstasy, but to realize that henceforward their lives must be apart, and that probably she would never see her child again, was hell indeed, deeps below deeps, and down she went. ‘Evil, be thou my good’ seemed to be her resolve, and it was pitiful to see her: out of prison in the morning, the same night in the hands of the police, haunting the same neighbourhood, getting locked up invariably in the same place.