And here I can fancy I hear the incredulous reader exclaim, “But that is mere imagery of course; ragamuffin babies never are cradled in gooseberry sieves, with a wisp of hay to lie on.” Let me assure you, dear madam, it is not imagery, but positive fact. The strangest receptacles do duty as baby cradles at times. In another part of our book, it will be shown that a raisin-box may be so adapted, or even an egg-box; the latter with a bit of straw in it as a cradle for an invalid baby with a broken thigh! But as regards the gooseberry sieve, it is a fact that came under the writer’s immediate observation. Accompanied by a friend, he was on a visit of exploration into the little-known regions of Baldwin’s Gardens, in Leather Lane, and entering a cellar there, the family who occupied it were discovered in a state of dreadful commotion. The mother, a tall, bony, ragged shrew, had a baby tucked under one arm, while she was using the other by the aid of a pair of dilapidated nozzleless bellows in inflicting a tremendous beating on a howling young gentleman of about eleven years old. “Tut! tut! what is the matter, Mrs. Donelly? Rest your arm a moment, now, and tell us all about it.” “Matther! shure it’s matther enough to dhrive a poor widdy beyant her sinses!” And then her rage turning to sorrow, she in pathetic terms described how that she left that bad boy Johnny only for a few moments in charge of the “darlint comfortable ashleap in her bashket,” and that he had neglected his duty, and that the baste of a donkey had smelt her out, and “ate her clane out o’ bed.”
I have had so much experience in this way, that one day I may write a book on the Haunts and Homes of the British Baby. It was not long after the incident of the gooseberry sieve, that I discovered in one small room in which a family of six resided, three little children, varying in age from three to eight, perhaps, stark naked. It was noon of a summer’s day, and there they were nude as forest monkeys, and so hideously dirty that every rib-bone in their poor wasted little bodies showed plain, and in colour like mahogany. Soon as I put my head in at the door they scattered, scared as rabbits, to the “bed,” an arrangement of evil-smelling flock and old potato-sacks, and I was informed by the mother that they had not a rag to wear, and had been in their present condition for _more than three months_.