In Darkest London. A new ... edition of Captain Lobe, etc

Front matter

CAPTAIN LOBE BY THE SAME AUTHOR, OUT O IF WOUK. Crown &vo., 280 pp., Paper Covers, 2/- " John Law paints things as they are, and does not always spare even those who are accustomed to be regarded as public benefactors. The book can be thoroughly recommended." — Pall Mall Gazette. " There is a true ring of realistic pathos in this record of humble life. It is rendered with a power the more im pressive irom its sobriety. '—Morning Post. " Mr. Law has a peculiar gift for depicting life as it is, and very few people could read his books without being struck with the glowing colouring with which he invests his pictures. They are as minute and faithful as are Frith's ' Derby Day,' ' Ramsgate Sands,' and ' Railway Station.' Itisabook written with a purpose and by a man who has entered heart and soul into his subject-matter." — Whitehall Review.

" We have all heard of the logic of fact ; but there is also a rhetoric of fact, and this it is that Mr. John Law uses with effect." — Saturday Review. A C W^W GIEL. c/oœjf gyoofsa pp., Paper Covers, i/- ''The phases of poyerty and idleness, the contrasts of character, and the brief dream of joy followed by months of agony and despair, in poor Nelly's story are all admirably described.'' — Manchester Guardian. "Within the compass ot 190 pages Mr. Law has given his readers a little romance which is wanting neither in pathos nor in force"" — Atheneum. ■' Some of Mr. Law's social and psychological photographs would do credit to George Eliot, or any standard novelist or essayist." — The Echo. "There is so much real pathos in it that it is sure to be appreciated. The descriptions are capital, aud the whole story is evidently written by one who knows the East end and its inhabitants." — Pall Mall Gazette.

" Skill in plot-construction, a thorough sympathy with his characters, and an honest indignation at the realism he portrays, have won Mr. Law a well-deserved success." — Literary World. CAN BE OBTAINED FROM WILLIAM REEVES, 1S5, Fleet Street, E.C. IN DARKEST LONDON A NEW AND POPULAR EDITION OF CAPTAIN LOBE ]\. of tbc Valuation Armo, BY JOHN LAW. Author of " Out of Work." "A City Girl;' &c. WITH AN

Introduction

BY GENERAL BOOTH. LONDON ; WILLIAM REEVES, 185, FLEET STREET, E.C. TO MY YOUNGEST BROTHER IN HER MAJESTY'S ARMY. NOW SONO, SED BONO. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE 1. CAPTAIN LOBE ...... 1 II. RUTH 13 III. RUTH'S HISTORY 2 _' "I WISH TO DEDICATE MYSELF IV, TO THE army's service" 31 V. SLUMDOM 41 vi. slumdom — (co?itinned) . . . . . 51 VII. WHAT IT IS TO BE AN AGNOSTIC . . -65 VIII. AN EAST END DOCTOR . .... 73 IX. "HE FASCINATES ME " 90 X. THE FACTORY 1 00 XI. THE LABOUR-MISTRESS Il6 MI. THE FACTORY GIRLS I25 XIII. A PENNY GAFF 137 XIV. AMONG THE SOCIALISTS .... I52 XV. CAPTAIN LOBE ON "WORLDLINESS" . . 164 XVI. THE POLICE COURT 1 CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE XVII. THE BASTILE 189 XVIII. A CONFESSION 201 XIX. WITH THE HOP-PICKERS IN KENT 2IO XX. CAPTAIN LOBE'S DREAM .... 223 XXI. A

LETTER 230 XXII.

RUTH ........ 24I XXIII. ANOTHER

LETTER 251 XXIV.

JANE HARDY 259 XXV. MR. PEMBER 26% XXVI. THE EMIGRANTS' SHIP

INTRODUCTION.

B V GENERAL BOOTH. The Salvation Army is indebted to John Law for the interesting delineation of that department of its work specially referred to in the pages of " Captain Lobe." If any of the operations therein described appear in the eyes of the reader to be in harmony with the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, or in accordance with that ideal of brother hood too often supposed to be of even still higher worth, therein will appear one more proof of the truth upon which I am always insisting that to know the Army, is, at least to admire it, perhaps also to sympathise with its work, and desire to help it. I am quite aware that the author of this volume, is in many respects very far from accepting our dis cipline, or subscribing to our theology, but to many, the witness here given will be none the less valuable on that account. So far as we are concerned

INTRODUCTION.

. II we are glad to welcome this aid, to make known a little of the darkest depths of the moral, social, and material abyss, into which our officers have descended in search of God's jewels " For he that is not against us is for us " may be he that is for us will one day be with us also ! Is it not a shame to every one of us that in this England of ours, such scenes as are described, all too truthfully in this book should be possible ! Have you no share in that shame? Have you, no obligation to the poor and outcast ? Have you no strength of body, or mind, no wealth of service, or sympathy, or gold to help these miserable ones, see to it, for whether you have thought so, or have not thought so " the condition of the people question " is YOURS, as well as mine. I

Chapter I. Captain Lobe

ONE Saturday night, just two years ago, a little man, with closely cropped hair and slight, neat figure, might have been seen walking quickly along the Whitechapel Road towards the London Hospital. His hands were in the pockets of a short jacket ; and on his collar shone S, which proclaimed him to be a member of the Salvation Army. When he reached the hospital gates the clock struck eight. He nodded to the porter, and ran up the steps into the hall. Half a dozen women and men stood there by an open door. He looked at them for a minute, then went upstairs to a ward. "Sister is in her room," a nurse said to him. " I do not want sister," he answered, gravely ; " I have come to see a patient." He walked straight to the fireplace, beside which two girls were sitting. He laid his hand on the shoulder of the youngest, and asked : " Patty, what brings you here?

" The girl was silent. " Patty," he continued, " do you remember the uight I took you to Mrs. Booth's home? Do you remember all you said then, all your promises ?" " I runned away," the girl said, sullenly. " I have come to take you back again," said the little captain. He shifted his position and stood facing the girl, with his back to the fireplace. She looked a child in the distance, but on coming close one could see deep lines cut by Time in her forehead, and marks about her mouth that said before many more years had passed by she would be twenty. " You are Sally," the captain continued, turning to her companion. " I know all about you. You nursed Patty last year through that bad illness. You went to your burial club and told them if they'd bury Patty instead of you, you'd begin paying again from the beginning."

" I wanted 'er to be buried like a lady," the girl said, apologetically. Then, seeing the captain's eyes fixed on her face, she blushed, and added, in tones full of defiance : " I can't bide without Patty. Patty and me 've been together ever since mother died, and father turned me out on the streets. I can't bide without Patty. It's no good for you to take 'er to that Booth 'Ome. It's so dull there ; and if you make 'er go she'll run back to me. Won't you, Patty ? " As the words " Won't you, Patty ? " left the speaker's lips, a titter ran through the ward. The captain's attention had been entirely occupied by the two girls, so he had not noticed that he was a general object of interest. Now he found fifty eyes fastened on him, fifty ears listening to him with the keenest interest. This was not all.

The door of the sisters' room stood half open, and leaning against the wall there were three or four young doctors. " Do you remember, Patty, the night you came into barracks ? " asked Captain Lobe, bending down, and speaking in an earnest voice. "You're ill, lass. Maybe you're dying. Come back with me, Patty." Tears ran slowly down Patty's cheeks. " I can't leave Sally," she said ; " leastways, not till I'm well again." " Good-night, lassies," said the captain. He left the hospital, and went back to the White chapel Road. That road is the most cosmopolitan place in London ; and on a Saturday night its interest reaches a climax. There one sees all nationalities. A grinning Hottentot elbows his way through a crowd of long-eyed Jewesses. An Algerian mer chant walks arm-in-arm with a native of Calcutta.

A little Italian plays pitch-and-toss with a small Russian. A Polish Jew enjoys sauer-kraut with a German Gentile. And among the foreigners lounges the East End loafer, monarch of all he surveys, lord of the premises. It is amusing to see his British air of superiority. His hands are deep down in the pockets of his fustian trousers, round his neck is a bit of coloured rag or flannel, on his head is a tattered cap. He is looked upon as scum by his own nation, but he feels himself to be an Englishman, and able to kick the foreigner back to "his own dear native land " if only Government would believe in " England for the English," and give all foreigners "notice." The loafer's mind is unknown as yet to psycholo gists. He has a mind, nevertheless, although he does his best to destroy it by narcotics and stimu lants.

Any one who cares to study it need not visit Whitechapel, but can find it in all parts of London. It is the mind of the parasite, the creature who is content to exist on other people. There are many such creatures among us. We used to put them into the army, but competitive examinations have made that impossible ; so now we send them to land agents, give them family livings, or let them emigrate. Almost every family has a loafer some where — a cousin or son who is " good-for-nothing." In the West End they haunt the clubs ; in the East End they hang about the public-houses. They are kept by their families, and almost always have some fond female relation upon whom they sponge, until death puts an end to their sponging. Captain Lobe looked at more than one loafer as he hurried along the Whitechapel Road that even ing ; and of all the people he met, these men struck him as the most hopeless.

He knew them well, for only too often they came into his barracks, bent on mischief. Then, if he could not find a policeman, he turned them out with the help of his lieutenant. They were worse than the roughs, more difficult to deal with, more hopeless. Only one had come once to the penitent-bench, and that one had given a false address. The captain received many salutations as he passed between the booths and the public-houses. The flaring gas-lights showed him to vendors, and they stopped their "Buy, buy, buy" to wish him good evening. An old woman who was selling pigs' feet pulled him by the jacket, and offered him a "pen north " for nothing. Her head was wrapped in a shawl, and her wrinkled face was scarcely visible ; but he recognized her, for he had picked her up dead drunk a few nights before, and had taken her to the place she called " home," a cellar which she shared with three old hags like herself.

At last he reached a penny gaff, outside the doors of which stood men brandishing swords, inviting people to see a skeleton arm, " a sight every mother ought to witness." A crowd of children flocked round the entrance, girls and boys without pennies, who were craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the skeleton arm, and watching the shining swords with breathless interest. Captain Lobe passed the doorkeepers, and went into the large, low room used for penny entertain ments. It was ornamented with pictures of fat girls, giants, acrobats, and other such things which uneducated minds delight in. Nutshells and bits of broken pipes covered the earthen floor, and on them stamped men, women, and children, while they pushed forward to see a half-naked youth, whose arm was withered ftom the shoulder to the wrist. but who could nevertheless use it for deeds of prowess, such as throwing knives and lifting hundred-weights.

At the farther end of the room hung a long red curtain. The captain raised it, stepped over a low stage, and opened a door that led into a small cupboard. There, lying on some old properties, was a dwarf. He held out his hand to Captain Lobe, and said : " I'm glad to see you. It'll be time for me to get ready directly. I feel so ill this evening." " Has the doctor been ? " asked the captain. " Yes." " What did he say ? " " As he wasn't accustomed to midgets." There was no chair in the cupboard, only a wooden stool, on which stood a candlestick. The dwarf's head rested on a bundle of properties, his small legs were stretched on an old sheep-skin. He told the captain to put the light on the floor, and then to sit down beside him. He added : " I've something to ask of you, captain." "What is it, Midget?"

" Do you think I've got a soul, or do you think as there's no soul in midgets ? " He was about thirty-five, and his head was of normal size, rather too large if anything. His face was very pale. His dark eyes were full of mourn fulness. He raised his hands to his thick black moustache — the hands of a child, with small fingers and wrists. His body and legs were only fit for a boy of six. He knew all this, so he asked : " Do you think I've got a soul, or do you think as there's no soul in midgets ? " "To say you haven't a soul would be to go against the Almighty, seeing He's made you, and me, and everybody," said the captain. " I ain't a man," answered the midget, sorrowfully. "I ain't nobody. Sometimes I says to myself as I'm ' the missing link,' as I'll come back again as a dog or something.

Not but that I'd rather be a dog than a midget," he added, with bitterness. " I'm worse off than a dog now, for folks aren't afraid of dogs, but they won't come nigh me if they can help it. When I go out the boys pelt me with mud and sticks ; and the women point at me and say, ' My, ain't he funny!' I've spent my life travelling about to be looked at. I'm tired of it, captain. I don't want to come back again. The world may be a good enough place for -properly made folks, but it's just hell for midgets." Captain Lobe took the dwarfs small hand in his, and sat silent. " You've been good to me," said the midget. " It was a lucky day for me when I turned into your place. I like your face, captain. There's only one other face I'd care to see when I'm dying, that's a lady what came into gaff one night.

When the manager told me to shake hands with the folks, she came straight up to me and held out her hand. She did, captain. The other folks was slinking away as they does always, but she held out her hand, and when I looked up at her I could see her eyes wet. She said nothing, but I could tell she was sorry for me, and often as I lies awake I think of her." " I believe I know who you mean," said Captain Lobe, thoughtfully. " Was she tall, and dressed in black ? Had she dark eyes, Midget ? " " I don't remember what colour her eyes was," said the dwarf. " I only know she had tears in 'em, captain." Just then the cupboard door was opened, and the youth with a skeleton arm appeared, balancing a long spear on his chin. He was dressed a la Buffalo Bill, a costume greatly admired by East End young ladies.

" Look sharp, Midget," he said. " You're wanted." When he had gone away the dwarf rose up slowly. He asked Captain Lobe to give him a small red coat and a black cocked hat, both of which were hanging on a nail near the old properties. After these had been adjusted, he buckled a small sword to his waist. "Now I'm Napoleon," he said, raising his white face to a triangle of looking-glass. " I'm Napoleon, the midget." The captain followed him out of the cupboard, and left him standing on the platform waiting for the red curtain to be lifted, ready to say : " Ladies and gentlemen, I wish you good-even ing." About three hundred people were prepared to receive him, and among them walked " the sight that every mother ought to witness." He was evidently considered a masher by the female portion of his audience, and his skeleton arm made him all the more interesting.

A little girl turned the handle of an organ close to the entrance, producing, as she did this, deafening music. Every now and then the men came in brandishing their swords ; afterwards they walked back to attract fresh members for their audience. Mothers carrying market-baskets, old men, youths, girls, and children, all stood ready to greet the midget ; and as Captain Lobe left the place, he heard a woman say : " How could God Almighty make anything so ugly ! " It was a beautiful night, and on reaching the open air Captain Lobe looked up at the stars with a feeling of relief; they seemed so far away, so still, so restful. The words, " Shocking mur — der in White — chapel ! " brought his thoughts back to the East End again. It was the old story — a woman murdered by her drunken lover. " Shock — ing mur — der in White — chapel !

" echoed down the streets, and people flocked out to see who had been done to death, and who had done it. The only things in which East End people take much interest are murders and funerals. Their lives are so dull, nothing else sets their sluggish blood in motion. But a murder gives them certainly two sensations ; and a funeral has ahvays some sensational features. Was the person poisoned, or was his throat cut ? Did the corpse turn black, or did it keep until the nails were put into the coffin ? The thing that strikes one most about East End life is its soddenness; one is inclined to think that hunger and drink will in time produce a race of sensationless idiots. Captain Lobe stopped to buy some hot roasted potatoes from a man with a weather-beaten, rugged face, who had been a sailor once, but who now picked up a living as a hawker in the streets.

"Do you want 'em peppered and salted?" the man asked, selecting some of the finest potatoes, "or will you have 'em in their dishabils, captain ?" " As they are, thank you," answered Captain Lobe. He was putting the potatoes into his pocket, when the door of a public-house opened close behind him, and a bevy of girls and men came out, singing the chorus of a favourite East End song. As they passed by, one of the men jerked the captain's hand up, and the potatoes fell into the gutter. "Give it 'im, captain," a girl said. '"E's 'ad so much gin 'e can't see straight before 'im. At 'im, captain." "Move on," said a policeman. "None of your nonsense ; move on." Captain Lobe bought some more potatoes, and then continued his way home. He reached the barracks, and went upstairs to the long, low room set apart for the Army's servants.

The fire was out, and the room was dark. He did not wait for warmth or light ; he sat down at once on an old horsehair sofa to eat his potatoes. He was hungry and tired, no uncommon thing with a Salvation Army captain. When the potatoes were finished, and the skins had been thrown under the grate, he lay flat on the sofa, thinking. To live on a pound a week is difficult ; but to give half away, and live on ten shillings, is a problem that would have baffled Euclid. Light suppers are ordered by Army regulations ; and a lighter meal cannot well be conceived than one large potato, and two small potatoes in their "dishabils," neither peppered nor salted. Such meagre fare is apt to affect the spirits : and lying there on the sofa, the captain felt both mentally and physically exhausted. He was slightly made, and delicate.

The life he led took the strength out of him ; for he felt every word that he said, and the sympathy which he showed to his fellow-men was a fire fed by self sacrifice. He was no milk-and-water religionist, this little captain. He did not preach about hell, and then go home to enjoy a good meal of roast beef and plum-pudding. If he consigned a sinner to the burning pit, he gave the sinner half of his own dinner to eat on the journey, and recognized the fact that a man's soul has an intimate relationship with a man's stomach. He hated sin in the abstract ; but he loved sinners, and most of all he loved his Whitechapel people. Even the loafers were dear to him. And the roughs were good lads, he said, lacking opportunities. Presently he jumped off the sofa, and walked up and down the room with his arms folded.

He was thinking of the girls he had seen in the London Hospital, wondering how he could persuade Patty to return home again. He could not conceive why the girl preferred a cheap, dirty lodging to Mrs. Booth's charitable institution, nor what her friend meant by "dulness." Girls like Patty were a puzzle to the captain. They seemed soft as wax in barracks ; hard as brass out in the streets. No impression made on them lasted more than a few weeks. They gave promises with the greatest ease, and broke vows without any reluctance. Walking up and down the long, low room he thought of a face, one as different from Patty's as light is from darkness. It was the face of a girl who sometimes came to his meetings with an old woman, her nurse. Her name was Ruth ; and she lived not very far from the barracks.

Chapter II. Ruth

THE next morning Captain Lobe went to headquarters directly after breakfast. He had made his own bed before he started, swept out his rooms, and cleared away his breakfast. Tea, bread and butter, with an egg, were his morning rations. These never varied. When the egg-shell had been pitched under the grate, the tablecloth had been shaken out of the window, the cup and saucer had been put away in a cupboard, he was ready to begin the day. He generally read the War Cry while eating his egg, or one of the few books that helped to form his meagre library. People who really believe in hell do not indulge in the morning paper, or join a circulating library ; they would imagine it un-Christlike to leave sinners to perish while they themselves enjoyed clubs, concerts, dinner-parties, crushes, and other entertainments.

Moreover, a Salvation poke bonnet takes away from Satan his most subtle temptations for the female sex — shopping, and the looking-glass. A Salvation blood-red vest reminds men of other things than pipes and tennis. Captain Lobe ran down the winding staircase, and out into the street. He passed by the butchers' shops nearly opposite Aldgate Station, and saw a herd of frightened sheep being driven over the sawdust into the slaughter-house. Their bleating was piteous ! At their feet ran a dog, barking. Men in blue coats drove them along with sticks, callous of their terror and distress. Many people in the East End enjoy these sights. Some will climb up walls to see a bullock stunned with a spike, or a calf's throat cut. There is in every one of us a deeply seated love of cruelty for its own sake, although the refined only show it by stinging words and cutting remarks.

So let no one think the scum worse than the rest. The scum is brutal, the refined is vicious. Captain Lobe spat on the pavement and walked across the road. The smell of the meat made him feel sick after his light breakfast. Then he thought about the midget, and determined to visit the gaff that evening, after service. Monstrosities were a trial to his faith. "To turn away from them with disgust, just as one does from a butcher's shop, is to set oneself up above God Almighty," he said to himself. " Yet when I see creatures with two heads, or four legs, I feel all of a creep. I wonder if they're men or beasts ! Now the midget's a man right enough, and yet he feels himself to be a missing link or some thing. I'll ask the general about it. The Army's got many queer soldiers, but none queerer than Napoleon the midget."

RUTH. 15 Soon he reached Victoria Street, and pushed through the doors. " Here's a note for you," said the little girl behind the bookstall. He broke the envelope and read : " Dear Brother, — I want to see you upstairs. " Yours, in the service of the King, " James Warner. The writer was an older man than himself, one of the Army's best servants. This man had formerly been an employer of labour, a small capitalist. He had given up business because he felt (so he ex pressed it) " that somehow or other the devil was in it." Now he lived on £l a week, and worked sixteen hours a day for the Army. He and Captain Lobe had fraternised from the day they met ; and since then they had spent much time together ; they had become very intimate. Captain Lobe went upstairs to a narrow room that had six desks in it.

By each desk sat a man in uniform, busy writing. The ex-manufacturer rose at Captain Lobe's entrance. He looked about forty five, and his gaunt face had many lines upon it. His blue eyes smiled a welcome as he grasped the little captain's hand, but he proceeded at once to business. " I took a woman to a doss-house not far from your place last night. Here's her name and address. She came to the penitent-bench, and we could not send her away without a penny." "What is she?" " A confirmed drunkard, I think." " How old ? " " Fifty." " I'll send one of the slum sisters to her. Those lassies know the way to deal with such women. We'd one of their " saved " at our place last Sunday night, one of the worst drunkards in Whitechapel. A slum sister saved her." " Praise the Lord ! " said the ex-manufacturer.

" Praise the Lord !" said the men at the six desks, without looking up from their work. Captain Lobe then went downstairs again. He had come to headquarters for a special purpose. One of the inferior officers, a young man who was very fond of smoking, had determined to make a sacrifice. Captain Lobe had persuaded him to give up his pipe, because he spent more money on tobacco than anything else. The pipe was that day to be handed over to the Army, and placed among their trophies, with their flags and banners, in a place where every one could see it. The assembly-room was full of people by the time Captain Lobe arrived in it. Men in red vests, women in poke bonnets, had formed a ring. They held banners and flags, and sang a hymn, while the young man produced his pipe. It was easy to see that he did not think the ceremony at all amusing.

He seemed to realize what it meant to part with his special favourite, the symbol of pipes he had already sacrificed. He looked at it with great affection for a minute, then gave a sigh, and placed it in the hand of an old man whose duty it is to receive such trophies. RUTH. 17 " If there is any one here who can smoke this pipe to the honour and glory of God, let him say so," said the old man, " and he shall have it." " No, no 1 " cried the men and women. "Then we will put it among the other things which have been given up by the Army's servants." The men and women waved their flags, and cried, " Praise the Lord ! " in a frantic way, that would have been comic had they not looked so much in earnest. Then the pipe was placed on the wall among a strange collection of symbolic things, such as novels, ribbons, tankards, and photo graphs.