But while you may see what I have described almost any day, there is much that you cannot see, and which, please God, I shall never see again. So come with me in imagination into the prisoners’ waiting-room on that particular Monday morning, for it is well you should know that some changes for the better have taken place in London police courts. Out of a long corridor thronged with policemen we turn into the waiting-room, where the prisoners, excepting some few who are in the cells, wait for their turn to appear before the magistrate. There is a long list on the wall, with the name of each prisoner and number of the officer who has charge of each case, and showing the order in which they will have to appear. Scan the list, and you will see the part drink plays in it. ‘Drunk and disorderly,’ or drunk and something else, is appended to fifty out of the sixty names on the list.
Is it a lazar-house we are in? Oh no; it is part of an English court of justice in the Metropolis of all civilization. Never mind the sickening atmosphere, heavily laden as it is with the fumes of beer and spirits. Look around you. You feel sick and faint? You must bear up, for we want to see the prisoners. What is that lying on the floor? That is a woman; she has had a fit, and there she lies with a bag of straw under her head, and not a single woman in the place whose duty it is to attend to her. What is that cowering in the corner? Well, that has been a woman, driven years ago by the devil of sensuality into the wilderness of sin, where she took to herself other devils. But only one has her in his grip now, and he will not let her go. ‘Drink! drink! drink!’ the devil says to her, and she is a dying piece of flesh whose only capability is the absorption of alcohol. That in the other corner is reported to be a woman. She has got men’s boots on, no hat or bonnet, no jacket or mantle; her arms are bare; her dress, what there is of it, is short; her forehead is low, her broad face is cut and bruised, her eyes are inflamed, and her hair hangs loosely down. Twenty-four years of age, they say, and she has been in that corner one hundred and fifty times, and there’s another hundred to follow. Poor Kate Henessey! an Irish girl of the slum, a mother at fifteen; an Ishmaelite indeed, every man’s hand is against her, and verily hers is against every man.