“Maddened by earth’s wrong and evil,‘Lord!’ I cried in sudden ire,
‘From Thy right hand, clothed with thunder,
Shake the bolted fire!’”
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It was with his gentle heart aflame with the burning wrongs of colored slavery, that dear old Whittier prayed thus. Might not one who has looked upon the blight and woe of wronged childhood call forth the vengeance of Heaven in no less measured terms than these.
War, injustice, slavery, have not lacked poets whose clarion tongues have rung out an alarm-peal in every land – who have not feared to dip their pens in blood, or to tip them with fire, that so they might startle into life men’s love of fight for right and freedom. Yet at the havoc wrought by passion and lust, men must draw breath and speak softly, these must be veiled horrors, and he who makes public protest against this wrong, brings about his head a storm of opprobrium and abuse.
The cry of the “Maiden Tribute” has not yet lost its echo. Its reverberations in the byways of our great city keep hushed and hidden much of what was once done openly, and hold in terror the violators of the law of protection it reeducated the people to make.
But have men parted with passion since the day they bought the “Pall Mall Gazette” and trembled as they read?
Did the storm of indignation which swept the land purify from love of license the souls of men?
Would that it were even so! Then would not much sunshine of joyous innocence have darkened to agony, nor would unmerited shame and life-long suffering have fallen as a blight upon mere childhood, while the Rescue Records kept at our Women’s Social Headquarters would have lacked their worst horrors.
It is difficult to read some of these without overmastering indignation against the perpetrators of violence and outrage, and one would fain close the books for ever, and withdraw oneself from touch and sight of the misery, if only refusal to know a wrong but did away with its existence in the world! As long as evil exists which may be grappled with and conquered, brave and pure-souled men and women must be willing to know the worst that they may do efficient battle – though the worst may not be written here.
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Beth (13)
“My dear, what is the matter?” asked an Interview officer of an eager-faced child of thirteen; “why have you come here?”
“Please, ma’am,” she strove to say, her lips quivering the while, “I wanted to be good, so I’ve run away from home.”
“From home ? but that is naughty,” began the officer; “your friends will miss you, and” –
“But I can’t be good there, ma’am, so I’ve come away to you.”
Tears choked the story, which, when sifted to the bottom and verified, brought details of wronged practiced upon this child by two relatives since her sixth year. Once before she had been away, but was fetched back to the slavery her little soul had first begun to hate, when she heard at a Salvation Army meeting of Christ’s sorrow over sin.
Alas! The slavery was of mind as well as body, and many a tough battle did she fight in her efforts to “think good,” before the Rescue officers were able to rejoice with her in that she had obtained the full deliverance of Jesus “from the guilt of power and sin.”
A child in a police-court is always a sorry sight. Beth, a tiny London maid-of-all-work, could scarcely be seen over the witness-box when she went to give evidence against her mistress’s son in the Old Bailey. She was thirteen, and gave her testimony of facts clearly enough, but in some fashion which nobody could quite understand, the young man was let off.
Her mother, a respectable hard-working woman, was nearly wild with despair, they had worked so hard to get justice done, and there seemed none to be had. She brought Beth straight to Devonshire House, nor did she plead her trouble in vain.
After the little girl had been with us some time, we obtained for her a place where she would not be required to work beyond her strength. Very soon, however, her new mistress called on the Home Secretary.
“What’s the matter?” asked the latter. “I thought Beth would give you real satisfaction, she had become a truly converted child, and seemed so anxious to do right.”
“Why, that’s the trouble,” smiled the visitor, “she is so anxious to do right that I never know what prodigious efforts she won’t make. We breakfast at half-past eight, you know; well, that child is down at half-past five, and by six o’clock she is watching her kettle boil, so as to have all ready in time. Think of the waste of coals.
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Trissie (13) and Kate (14)
Trissie and Kate were aged thirteen and fourteen respectively. A mother whose little daughters of this age are sheltered in nursery and school-room, would shudder with horror at the bare idea of such children being pressed into the most repulsive traffic in which human beings can share. Yet, night by night found them thus engaged upon one of the most brilliantly-lighted thorough fares of the city.
For Kate there was no escape. Her mother was an abandoned drinking woman, who treated the child with ferocious cruelty we dare not here describe, if she ventured to return home with out the money she had been bidden to seek in such fashion as should curse her future-womanhood.
Trissie was motherless, her father a great drunkard, who cared little that the left his children to starve in the attic they called home. On finding out where and how the thirteen-year-old spent her late evenings, one of our officers called at the address she gave. A crippled girl, an elder sister, opened the door, showing a clean and tidy room, but bare of every comfort.
“Did you know how Trissie got her money?” inquired the officer, after explaining why she had come.
“We daren’t inquire,” replied the girl on crutches, “the fact was we were all so starved we were glad not to ask.”
On investigating the truth of the child’s story, we were shown a West-End house where she had been decoyed for months before, and given her introduction to gilded sin, carrying away with her one sovereign of the five paid for her procuration.
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Nell (12)
Of many of these unhappy children we cannot write at all; would that they could be deprived of the memory of their earlier years, when cruelty and passion vied with each other in providing hideous reminiscences for their later life! To Janie and Bertha we give but passing reference – who could give details of the child of ten, whose morals were ruined (apparently for ever) by the occupants of the police and fire-engine stations opposite her aunt’s little sweet-stuff shop? Too young to understand why, she went when bidden, and when fear would have led her to seek protection, threats overawed her into fatal silence. As for Bertha, whose age was fourteen when she came to us, her own father must answer with shame.
Then there was Nell – poor little, ill-used Nell – for whom we are now wanting a mother’s love and a mother’s watchful care. The child of a legal marriage, strangely enough, she lost with the death of her father all earthly consideration. Her remaining parent – one shrinks from calling such a woman by the sweet name of “mother” – went to live with a man to whom she was not married, both by turns treating Nell with cruelty.
Other children were born, whose wants were carefully attended to, well fed, warmly clad and happily nurtured, while the butt of their jokes and blows went hungry and cold. Oftentimes the rest of the family would be sitting around the table eating a good meal, while Nell would be crouching outside on the doorstep with only a crust to gnaw.
This little one, twelve years of age, has been for some time under our care, and we are anxious to find a motherly woman who would take her to train for God. She is a willing little worker, and knows how to make herself useful, but past ill-usage has somewhat stunted her growth. Under careful training, and in a loveful atmosphere, little Nell would be a blessing to somebody.
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Corrie
If only one looked at Corrie’s antecedents, no one could wonder that the child should have fallen a prey to evil at the age of twelve.
There was only one room for seven of them – a truly wretched place – and out of it went two of her brothers to the Reformatory, and one sister to join the army who nightly pace our streets. Both parents were drunkards, taken up now and then for brawling and fighting.
The mother was at last carried to the hospital for lengthy medical treatment, and the one room was given up. Corrie found refuge, as day-worker in a little fried fish shop, rejoicing in freedom from her mother’s heavy blows.
At length, she found the work irksome, and ran away, being about the streets by day, picking up whatever she could find in the shape of food, good, bad or indifferent, and sleeping at night upon the stone staircases of various model lodging-houses.
Meantime, the father had dropped into our Limehouse Shelter, and, under the influence of the new, pure atmosphere, was pricked into remembrance of his duty towards his child. At the end of the sixth week of her vagrant life, he found her asleep on the doorstep of one of the said lodging-houses.
“We cannot keep her here, my good fellow!” said the Shelter captain, when the lost-looking little girl was produced by her father. “Take her along to Mrs. Bramwell Booth. See, I’ll write you a note. She will take care of her, if any one knows how to!”
So she came, but a more wretched-looking little creature could hardly have been seen, to judge from the accounts given by those who washed her. To begin with, she was half-starved: bad food and exposure had done their worst with her, and her face was that of a thin old woman.
“She was just one little mass of rags and dirt,” quoth Major Reynolds of Corrie; “no skirts but the thin, ragged thing that hung from her waist, and just rags round her legs for stockings. I don’t think I ever saw a child in a more neglected state. You would not know her now as the neat-looking child who runs messages!”
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Effie (13) and Flo (14)
Some of the may live out of mind the woes and wrongs of their childish days; but what of Effie and Flo, who, at thirteen and fourteen respectively, were sheltered in our Maternity Home? Can they ever forget?
Even if memory died within them, both children bore out with them tokens of their shame their arms were hardly strong enough to carry far.
Flo was a small, fair-haired Sunday scholar, the victim of vice fostered by overcrowding, her own brother being answerable for her downfall.
Effie’s story is perhaps the sadder of the two to those who know her. A sweet, bright little girl, she came to us in short frocks, with her dark hair falling loose upon her shoulders, so baby-like, so innocent-looking, it was indeed difficult to believe that she could have come to the right place.
Her father was a village blacksmith, whose eyes were so injured by the heat of his forge that he could not see to read, and gladly welcomed the Scripture-reader of the village to supply his lack of eyesight. This man lived near at hand, and, when his wife went to work at the squire’s. Effie was requisitioned to run messages in return for the kindness he showed her father.
He vilely used his influence to put the child under a sort of slavery, binding her to silence with terrible threats of prison for her if she dared to tell of his actions.
Ultimately, the truth was discovered by a doctor, who won Effie’s confidence by removing her fear of prison, inwardly vowing within himself that the culprit should taste that which he had so fairly frightened the child. The parents willingly prosecuted the man, and, helped by the doctor, secured a sentence of eighteen months.
Poor little Effie! She could not realize her position at all, she was so innocent of al that her fatal silence had brought upon her; she played with her baby as she would have done with a big doll, her ignorance leaving her no room for shame.
To her father the shock was heavy indeed, nor has he yet recovered from it; fortunately, in the mother who fetched her home she has sympathy and comfort.
Effie took away with her a very real knowledge of Jesus as her Savior, and now and the writes pretty old-fashioned letters to tell how “It does seem hard to be quite good at times, but I’m trusting Jesus, and He does help me!”
Are our child-life stories all told? By no means, but we think enough has been written to give thinking matter to any who have it in their power to promote stricter legislation upon this question – to make this crime against innocent childhood so heinous an one as, at any rate, to reduce the probability of its recurrence to a minimum.
In face of the facts which confront us at every turn, is this too much to ask?
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