CHAPTER VII--A WINNER OF THE VICTORIA CROSS
I have found that it is not easy to get into the casual ward of the
workhouse. I have made two attempts now, and I shall shortly make a
third. The first time I started out at seven o'clock in the evening
with four shillings in my pocket. Herein I committed two errors.
In the first place, the applicant for admission to the casual ward
must be destitute, and as he is subjected to a rigorous search, he
must really be destitute; and fourpence, much less four shillings,
is sufficient affluence to disqualify him. In the second place, I
made the mistake of tardiness. Seven o'clock in the evening is too
late in the day for a pauper to get a pauper's bed.
For the benefit of gently nurtured and innocent folk, let me explain
what a ward is. It is a building where the homeless, bedless,
penniless man, if he be lucky, may CASUALLY rest his weary bones,
and then work like a navvy next day to pay for it.
My second attempt to break into the casual ward began more
auspiciously. I started in the middle of the afternoon, accompanied
by the burning young socialist and another friend, and all I had in
my pocket was thru'pence. They piloted me to the Whitechapel
Workhouse, at which I peered from around a friendly corner. It was
a few minutes past five in the afternoon but already a long and
melancholy line was formed, which strung out around the corner of
the building and out of sight.
It was a most woeful picture, men and women waiting in the cold grey
end of the day for a pauper's shelter from the night, and I confess
it almost unnerved me. Like the boy before the dentist's door, I
suddenly discovered a multitude of reasons for being elsewhere.
Some hints of the struggle going on within must have shown in my
face, for one of my companions said, "Don't funk; you can do it."
Of course I could do it, but I became aware that even thru'pence in
my pocket was too lordly a treasure for such a throng; and, in order
that all invidious distinctions might be removed, I emptied out the
coppers. Then I bade good-bye to my friends, and with my heart
going pit-a-pat, slouched down the street and took my place at the
end of the line. Woeful it looked, this line of poor folk tottering
on the steep pitch to death; how woeful it was I did not dream.
Next to me stood a short, stout man. Hale and hearty, though aged,
strong-featured, with the tough and leathery skin produced by long
years of sunbeat and weatherbeat, his was the unmistakable sea face
and eyes; and at once there came to me a bit of Kipling's "Galley
Slave":-
"By the brand upon my shoulder, by the gall of clinging steel;
By the welt the whips have left me, by the scars that never heal;
By eyes grown old with staring through the sun-wash on the brine,
I am paid in full for service . . . "
How correct I was in my surmise, and how peculiarly appropriate the
verse was, you shall learn.
"I won't stand it much longer, I won't," he was complaining to the
man on the other side of him. "I'll smash a windy, a big 'un, an'
get run in for fourteen days. Then I'll have a good place to sleep,
never fear, an' better grub than you get here. Though I'd miss my
bit of bacey"--this as an after-thought, and said regretfully and
resignedly.
"I've been out two nights now," he went on; "wet to the skin night
before last, an' I can't stand it much longer. I'm gettin' old, an'
some mornin' they'll pick me up dead."
He whirled with fierce passion on me: "Don't you ever let yourself
grow old, lad. Die when you're young, or you'll come to this. I'm
tellin' you sure. Seven an' eighty years am I, an' served my
country like a man. Three good-conduct stripes and the Victoria
Cross, an' this is what I get for it. I wish I was dead, I wish I
was dead. Can't come any too quick for me, I tell you."
The moisture rushed into his eyes, but, before the other man could
comfort him, he began to hum a lilting sea song as though there was
no such thing as heartbreak in the world.
Given encouragement, this is the story he told while waiting in line
at the workhouse after two nights of exposure in the streets.
As a boy he had enlisted in the British navy, and for two score
years and more served faithfully and well. Names, dates,
commanders, ports, ships, engagements, and battles, rolled from his
lips in a steady stream, but it is beyond me to remember them all,
for it is not quite in keeping to take notes at the poorhouse door.
He had been through the "First War in China," as he termed it; had
enlisted with the East India Company and served ten years in India;
was back in India again, in the English navy, at the time of the
Mutiny; had served in the Burmese War and in the Crimea; and all
this in addition to having fought and toiled for the English flag
pretty well over the rest of the globe.
Then the thing happened. A little thing, it could only be traced
back to first causes: perhaps the lieutenant's breakfast had not
agreed with him; or he had been up late the night before; or his
debts were pressing; or the commander had spoken brusquely to him.
The point is, that on this particular day the lieutenant was
irritable. The sailor, with others, was "setting up" the fore
rigging.
Now, mark you, the sailor had been over forty years in the navy, had
three good-conduct stripes, and possessed the Victoria Cross for
distinguished service in battle; so he could not have been such an
altogether bad sort of a sailorman. The lieutenant was irritable;
the lieutenant called him a name--well, not a nice sort of name. It
referred to his mother. When I was a boy it was our boys' code to
fight like little demons should such an insult be given our mothers;
and many men have died in my part of the world for calling other men
this name.
However, the lieutenant called the sailor this name. At that moment
it chanced the sailor had an iron lever or bar in his hands. He
promptly struck the lieutenant over the head with it, knocking him
out of the rigging and overboard.
And then, in the man's own words: "I saw what I had done. I knew
the Regulations, and I said to myself, 'It's all up with you, Jack,
my boy; so here goes.' An' I jumped over after him, my mind made up
to drown us both. An' I'd ha' done it, too, only the pinnace from
the flagship was just comin' alongside. Up we came to the top, me a
hold of him an' punchin' him. This was what settled for me. If I
hadn't ben strikin' him, I could have claimed that, seein' what I
had done, I jumped over to save him."
Then came the court-martial, or whatever name a sea trial goes by.
He recited his sentence, word for word, as though memorised and gone
over in bitterness many times. And here it is, for the sake of
discipline and respect to officers not always gentlemen, the
punishment of a man who was guilty of manhood. To be reduced to the
rank of ordinary seaman; to be debarred all prize-money due him; to
forfeit all rights to pension; to resign the Victoria Cross; to be
discharged from the navy with a good character (this being his first
offence); to receive fifty lashes; and to serve two years in prison.
"I wish I had drowned that day, I wish to God I had," he concluded,
as the line moved up and we passed around the corner.
At last the door came in sight, through which the paupers were being
admitted in bunches. And here I learned a surprising thing: THIS
BEING WEDNESDAY, NONE OF US WOULD BE RELEASED TILL FRIDAY MORNING.
Furthermore, and oh, you tobacco users, take heed: WE WOULD NOT BE
PERMITTED TO TAKE IN ANY TOBACCO. This we would have to surrender
as we entered. Sometimes, I was told, it was returned on leaving
and sometimes it was destroyed.
The old man-of-war's man gave me a lesson. Opening his pouch, he
emptied the tobacco (a pitiful quantity) into a piece of paper.
This, snugly and flatly wrapped, went down his sock inside his shoe.
Down went my piece of tobacco inside my sock, for forty hours
without tobacco is a hardship all tobacco users will understand.
Again and again the line moved up, and we were slowly but surely
approaching the wicket. At the moment we happened to be standing on
an iron grating, and a man appearing underneath, the old sailor
called down to him, -
"How many more do they want?"
"Twenty-four," came the answer.
We looked ahead anxiously and counted. Thirty-four were ahead of
us. Disappointment and consternation dawned upon the faces about
me. It is not a nice thing, hungry and penniless, to face a
sleepless night in the streets. But we hoped against hope, till,
when ten stood outside the wicket, the porter turned us away.
"Full up," was what he said, as he banged the door.
Like a flash, for all his eighty-seven years, the old sailor was
speeding away on the desperate chance of finding shelter elsewhere.
I stood and debated with two other men, wise in the knowledge of
casual wards, as to where we should go. They decided on the Poplar
Workhouse, three miles away, and we started off.
As we rounded the corner, one of them said, "I could a' got in 'ere
to-day. I come by at one o'clock, an' the line was beginnin' to
form then--pets, that's what they are. They let 'm in, the same
ones, night upon night."
