The Seven Curses of London. James Greenwood
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bold-eyed, shrewdly-observant, one cannot but feel that it is a thousand pities that such boys should be driven to this harbour of refuge—that so much good manhood material should come so nigh to being wrecked. But how is it that with no more promising nurses than squalor and ignorance the boys of the reformatory should show so much superior to the boys whom a national institution, such as a workhouse is, has adopted, and had all to do with since their infancy? The theory that many of the boys who by rapid steps in crime find their way to a reformatory, are bastard children, for whose safe-keeping the baby farmer was once briefly responsible, goes far towards solving the riddle. The child-adopting fraternity is an extensive one, and finds clients in all grades of society, and there can be little doubt that in instances innumerable, while Alley Jack is paying the penalty of his evil behaviour by turning for his bread on the treadmill, his brothers, made legitimate by the timely reformation and marriage of Alley Jack’s father, are figuring in their proper sphere, and leisurely and profitably developing the intellect they inherit from their brilliant papa. Alley Jack, too, has his share of the family talent—all the brain, all the sensitiveness, all the “blood” of the respectable stock a reckless sprig of which is responsible for Jack’s being. It is only in the nature of things to suppose that Jack’s blood is tainted with the wildness of wicked papa; and here we have in Alley Jack a type of that bold intellectual villain whose clique of fifty or so, as Lord Shaftesbury recently declared, is more to be dreaded than as many hundred of the dull and plodding sort of thief, the story of whose exploits figure daily in the newspapers.
We have, however, a little wandered away from the subject in hand, which is not concerning neglected children who have become thieves, but neglected children, simply, whose future is not as yet ascertained. Speaking of the professional child farmer, it has been already remarked that his sole object, as regards these innocents that are adopted for a sum paid down, is to get rid of them as secretly and quickly as possible. And assuming the preservation of health and life in the little mortal to be of the first importance, there can be no question that he has a better chance of both, even though his treacherous “adopter” deserts him on a doorstep, than if he were so kindly cruel as to tolerate his existence at the “farm.” It is those unfortunate infants who are not “adopted,” but merely housed and fed at so much per week or month, who are the greater sufferers. True, it is to the interest of the practitioners who adopt this branch of baby-farming to keep life in their little charges, since with their death terminates the more or less profitable contract entered into between themselves and the child’s parent or guardian; but no less true is it that it is to the “farmers’” interest and profit to keep down their expenditure in the nursery at as low an ebb as is consistent with the bare existence of its luckless inhabitants. The child is welcome to live on starvation diet just as long as it may. It is very welcome indeed to do so, since the longer it holds out, the larger the number of shillings the ogres that have it in charge will be enabled to grind out of its poor little bones. These are not the “farmers” who append to their advertisements the notification that “children of ill-health are not objected to.” They are by far too good judges for that. What they rejoice in is a fine, robust, healthy-lunged child, with whom some such noble sum as a shilling a day is paid. Such an article is as good as a gift of twenty pounds to them. See the amount of privation such a child can stand before it succumbs! The tenacity of life in children of perfectly sound constitution is proverbial. A ha’p’orth of bread, and a ha’p’orth of milk daily will suffice to keep the machinery of life from coming to a sudden standstill. By such a barely sufficient link will the poor little helpless victim be held to life, while what passes as natural causes attack and gradually consume it, and drag it down to its grave. This, in the baby-farmer’s estimation, is a first-rate article—the pride of the market, and without doubt the most profitable. The safest too. Children will pine. Taken from their mother, it is only to be expected that they should. Therefore, when the poor mother, who is working of nights as well as days, that “nurse’s money” may be punctually paid, visits her little one, and finds it thin and pale and wasting, she is not amazed, although her conscience smites her cruelly, and her heart is fit to break. She is only too thankful to hear “nurse” declare that she is doing all she can for the little darling. It is her only consolation, and she goes away hugging it while “nurse” and her old man make merry over gin bought with that hard, hard-earned extra sixpence that the poor mother has left to buy baby some little comfort.
I trust and hope that what is here set down will not be regarded as mere tinsel and wordy extravagance designed to produce a “sensation” in the mind of the reader. There is no telling into whose hands a book may fall. Maybe, it is not altogether impossible eyes may scan this page that have been recently red with weeping over the terrible secret that will keep but a little longer, and for the inevitable launching of which provision must be made. To such a reader, with all kindliness, I would whisper words of counsel. Think not “twice,” but many times before you adopt the “readiest” means of shirking the awful responsibility you have incurred. Rely on it, you will derive no lasting satisfaction out of this “readiest” way, by which, of course, is meant the way to which the villanous child-farmer reveals an open door. Be righteously courageous, and take any step rather, as you would I am sure if you were permitted to raise a corner and peep behind the curtain that conceals the hidden mysteries of adopted-child murder.
As a volunteer explorer into the depths of social mysteries, once upon a time I made it my business to invade the den of a child-farmer. The result of the experiment was printed in a daily newspaper or magazine at the time, so I will here make but brief allusion to it. I bought the current number of the newspaper more than once here mentioned, and discovering, as usual, a considerable string of child-adopting and nursing advertisements, I replied to the majority of them, professing to have a child “on my hands,” and signing myself “M. D.” My intention being to trap the villains, I need not say that in every case my reply to their preliminary communications was couched in such carefully-considered terms as might throw the most suspicious off their guard. But I found that I had under-estimated the cunning of the enemy. Although the innocent-seeming bait was made as attractive and savoury as possible, at least half of the farmers to whom my epistles were addressed vouchsafed no reply. There was something about it not to their liking, evidently.
Three or four of the hungry pike bit, however, one being a lady signing herself “Y. Z.” In her newspaper advertisement, if I rightly remember, persons whom it concerned were to address, “Y. Z.,” Post Office, — Street, Stepney. “Y. Z.” replying to mine so addressed, said that, as before stated, she was willing to adopt a little girl of weakly constitution at the terms I suggested, her object being chiefly to secure a companion for her own little darling, who had lately, through death, been deprived of his own dear little sister. “Y. Z.” further suggested that I should appoint a place where we could “meet and arrange.”
This, however, was not what I wanted. It was quite evident from the tone of the lady’s note that she was not at all desirous that the meeting should take place at her abode. Again I was to address, “Post Office.” To bring matters to a conclusion, I wrote, declaring that nothing could be done unless I could meet “Y. Z.” at her own abode. No answer was returned to this my last, and it was evidently the intention of “Y. Z.” to let the matter drop.
I was otherwise resolved, however. I had some sort of clue, and was resolved to follow it up. By what subtle arts and contrivance I managed to trace “Y. Z.” from “Post Office” to her abode need not here be recited. Armed with her real name and the number of the street in which she resided, I arrived at the house, and at the door of it just as the postman was rapping to deliver a letter to the very party I had come uninvited to visit. I may say that the house was of the small four or five-roomed order, and no more or less untidy or squalid than is commonly to be found in the back streets of Stepney or Bethnal Green.
“Oxleek” was the original of “Y. Z.,” and of the slatternly, ragged-haired girl who opened the door I asked if that lady was at home. The young woman said that she was out—that she had “gone to the Li-ver.” The young woman spoke with a rapid utterance, and was evidently in a mighty hurry to get back to some business the postman’s knock had summoned her from.
“I beg your pardon, miss, gone to the —”
“Li-ver; where you pays in for young