Week by week for six months I visited the cancerous woman, giving her such help and comfort as I might; but what a six months for her! Unable at length to take food, she starved slowly toward death; but she lasted till the husband came back to her, and he came--drunk! He had earned a gratuity of seven shillings while in prison, and he was violently drunk at mid-day, when I arrived on the scene. I soon drew his attention to myself, and as he followed me along the street, and was grossly insulting, he again got taken into custody, and was remanded for a week to give his wife time to die. Poor woman! she cried after him, and with her failing breath told me she wanted to see him once more before she died. She had her wish, for after a week’s remand he was discharged, and I saw to it that he went home sober, for I went with him. In a week’s time there was a parish funeral from that court, attended by an old woman of sixty-five and a girl of fourteen. Brave old woman! the five pounds you so hardly earned shall be appraised at its proper value by Him who noted the widow’s mite. You can go back to the workhouse, and there die, cheered, comforted, and strengthened by the knowledge that you enabled your daughter to die outside, and the memory of that shall come to you as an angel’s smile when the time comes for you to join your daughter.
But there are poor people outside the slums, and suffering is borne with marvellous endurance in many respectable streets. Unfortunately, married men well placed will commit crimes, and have to pay the penalty, or, rather, their wives and families pay the penalty. Mercy! how they suffer! If the crime, one against property, be repeated, as it often is, then the very perfection of suffering is felt and endured by the wives and families left behind. Their friends cast them off, for the lustre of their respectability must not be soiled, even by contact with a suffering wife and innocent children. Down, down they go; bit by bit the home disappears, until there are only a few relics left of a once comfortable home, and these are worthless. Pass along some of these streets, and you will find cards in some of the basement windows announcing ‘Plain needlework done by hand,’ or ‘Pianoforte taught on moderate charges.’ My life for it, there are tragedies being enacted in those breakfast parlours down in the basement.