第25章

Silence fell on the instant, and all listened to the wonderful tale.

'There was three of us breakin' stones.Wintertime, an' the cold was cruel.T'other two said they'd be blessed if they do it, an' they didn't; but I kept wearin' into mine to warm up, you know.An' then the guardians come, an' t'other chaps got run in for fourteen days, an' the guardians, w'en they see wot I'd been doin', gives me a tanner each, five o' them, an' turns me up.'

The majority of these men, nay, all of them, I found, do not like the spike, and only come to it when driven in.After the 'rest up'

they are good for two or three days and nights on the streets, when they are driven in again for another rest.Of course, this continuous hardship quickly breaks their constitutions, and they realize it, though only in a vague way; while it is so much the common run of things that they do not worry about it.

'On the doss,' they call vagabondage here, which corresponds to 'on the road' in the United States.The agreement is that kipping, or dossing, or sleeping, is the hardest problem they have to face, harder even than that of food.The inclement weather and the harsh laws are mainly responsible for this, while the men themselves ascribe their homelessness to foreign immigration, especially of Polish and Russian Jews, who take their places at lower wages and establish the sweating system.

By seven o'clock we were called away to bathe and go to bed.We stripped our clothes, wrapping them up in our coats and buckling our belts about them, and deposited them in a heaped rack and on the floor- a beautiful scheme for the spread of vermin.Then, two by two, we entered the bathroom.There were two ordinary tubs, and this Iknow: the two men preceding had washed in that water, we washed in the same water, and it was not changed for the two men that followed us.

This I know; but I am quite certain that the twenty-two of us washed in the same water.

I did no more than make a show of splashing some of this dubious liquid at myself, while I hastily brushed it off with a towel wet from the bodies of other men.My equanimity was not restored by seeing the back of one poor wretch a mass of blood from attacks of vermin and retaliatory scratching.

A shirt was handed me- which I could not help but wonder how many other men had worn; and with a couple of blankets under my arm Itrudged off to the sleeping apartment.This was a long, narrow room, traversed by two low iron rails.Between these rails were stretched, not hammocks, but pieces of canvas, six feet long and less than two feet wide.These were the beds, and they were six inches apart and about eight inches above the floor.The chief difficulty was that the head was somewhat higher than the feet, which caused the body constantly to slip down.Being slung to the same rails, when one man moved, no matter how slightly, the rest were set rocking; and whenever I dozed somebody was sure to struggle back to the position from which he had slipped, and arouse me again.

Many hours passed before I won to sleep.It was only seven in the evening, and the voices of children, in shrill outcry, playing in the street, continued till nearly midnight.The smell was frightful and sickening, while my imagination broke loose, and my skin crept and crawled till I was nearly frantic.Grunting, groaning, and snoring arose like the sounds emitted by some sea monster, and several times, afflicted by nightmare, one or another, by his shrieks and yells, aroused the lot of us.Toward morning I was awakened by a rat or some similar animal on my breast.In the quick transition from sleep to waking, before I was completely myself, I raised a shout to wake the dead.At any rate, I woke the living, and they cursed me roundly for my lack of manners.

But morning came, with a six o'clock breakfast of bread and skilly, which I gave away; and we were told off to our various tasks.Some were set to scrubbing and cleaning, others to picking oakum, and eight of us were convoyed across the street to the Whitechapel Infirmary, where we were set at scavenger work.This was the method by which we paid for our skilly and canvas, and I, for one, know that I paid in full many times over.

Though we had most revolting tasks to perform, our allotment was considered the best, and the other men deemed themselves lucky in being chosen to perform it.