LONDON’S UNDERWORLD(地下伦敦)

VIP免费

2024-12-26 1 0 658.04KB 176 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

LONDON'S UNDERWORLD

LONDON'S

UNDERWORLD

by Thomas Holmes

(Secretary of the Howard Association)

(1912)

LONDON'S UNDERWORLD

PREFACE

I am hopeful that some of the experiences given in the following

chapters may throw a little light upon some curious but very serious social

problems. Corporate humanity always has had, and always will have,

serious problems to consider.

The more civilised we become the more complex and serious will be

our problems--unless sensible and merciful yet thorough methods are

adopted for dealing with the evils. I think that my pages will show that

the methods now in use for coping with some of our great evils do not

lessen, but considerably increase the evils they seek to cure.

With great diffidence I venture to point out what I conceive to be

reasons for failure, and also to offer some suggestions that, if adopted, will,

I believe, greatly minimise, if not remove, certain evils.

I make no claim to prophetic wisdom; I know no royal road to social

salvation, nor of any specific to cure all human sorrow and smart.

But I have had a lengthened and unique experience. I have closely

observed, and I have deeply pondered. I have seen, therefore I ask that

the experiences narrated, the statements made, and the views expressed in

this book may receive earnest consideration, not only from those who have

the temerity to read it, but serious consideration also from our Statesmen

and local authorities, from our Churches and philanthropists, from our

men of business and from men of the world.

For truly we are all deeply concerned in the various matters which are

dealt with in "London's Underworld."

THOMAS HOLMES. 12, Bedford Road, Tottenham, N.

LONDON'S UNDERWORLD

CHAPTER I

MY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES

The odds and ends of humanity, so plentiful in London's great city,

have for many years largely constituted my circle of friends and

acquaintances.

They are strange people, for each of them is, or was, possessed of

some dominating vice, passion, whim or weakness which made him

incapable of fulfilling the ordinary duties of respectable citizenship.

They had all descended from the Upper World, to live out strange lives,

or die early deaths in the mysterious but all pervading world below the

line.

Some of them I saw, as it were, for a moment only; suddenly out of the

darkness they burst upon me; suddenly the darkness again received them

out of my sight.

But our acquaintance was of sufficient duration to allow me to acquire

some knowledge, and to gain some experience of lives more than strange,

and of characters far removed from the ordinary.

But with others I spent many hours, months, or years as circumstances

warranted, or as opportunities permitted. Some of them became my

intimates; and though seven long years have passed since I gave up police-

court duties, our friendship bears the test of time, for they remain my

friends and acquaintances still.

But some have passed away, and others are passing; one by one my list

of friends grows less, and were it not that I, even now, pick up a new

friend or two, I should run the risk of being a lonely old man. Let me

confess, however, that my friends have brought me many worries, have

caused me much disappointment, have often made me very angry.

Sometimes, I must own, they have caused me real sorrow and occasionally

feelings of utter despair. But I have had my compensations, we have had

our happy times, we have even known our merry moments.

Though pathos has permeated all our intercourse, humour and comedy

have never been far away; though sometimes tragedy has been in waiting.

But over one and all of my friends hung a great mystery, a mystery

LONDON'S UNDERWORLD

that always puzzled and sometimes paralysed me, a mystery that always

set me to thinking.

Now many of my friends were decent and good-hearted fellows; yet

they were outcasts. Others were intelligent, clever and even industrious,

quite capable of holding their own with respectable men, still they were

helpless.

Others were fastidiously honest in some things, yet they were

persistent rogues who could not see the wrong or folly of dishonesty;

many of them were clear-headed in ninety-nine directions, but in the

hundredth they were muddled if not mentally blind.

Others had known and appreciated the comforts of refined life, yet

they were happy and content amidst the horror and dirt of a common

lodging-house! Why was it that these fellows failed, and were content to

fail in life?

What is that little undiscovered something that determines their lives

and drives them from respectable society?

What compensations do they get for all the suffering and privations

they undergo? I don't know! I wish that I did! but these things I have

never been able to discover.

Many times I have put the questions to myself; many times I have put

the questions to my friends, who appear to know about as much and just as

little upon the matter as myself.

They do not realise that in reality they do differ from ordinary citizens;

I realise the difference, but can find no reason for it.

No! it is not drink, although a few of them were dipsomaniacs, for

generally they were sober men.

I will own my ignorance, and say that I do not know what that little

something is that makes a man into a criminal instead of constituting him

into a hero. This I do know: that but for the possession of a little

something, many of my friends, now homeless save when they are in

prison, would be performing life's duties in settled and comfortable homes,

and would be quite as estimable citizens as ordinary people.

Probably they would prove better citizens than the majority of people,

for while they possess some inherent weakness, they also possess in a

LONDON'S UNDERWORLD

great degree many estimable qualities which are of little use in their

present life.

These friends of mine not only visit my office and invade my home,

but they turn up at all sorts of inconvenient times and places.--There is my

friend the dipsomaniac, the pocket Hercules, the man of brain and iron

constitution.

Year after year he holds on to his own strange course, neither poverty

nor prison, delirium tremens nor physical injuries serve to alter him. He

occupies a front seat at a men's meeting on Sunday afternoon when the

bills announce my name. But he comes half drunk and in a talkative

mood, sometimes in a contradictory mood, but generally good tempered.

He punctuates my speech with a loud and emphatic "Hear! hear!" and

often informs the audience that "what Mr. Holmes says is quite true!"

The attendants cannot keep him silent, he tells them that he is my friend;

he makes some claim to being my patron.

Poor fellow! I speak to him kindly, but incontinently give him the

slip, for I retire by a back way, leaving him to argue my disappearance in

no friendly spirit with the attendants. Yet I have spent many happy hours

with him when, as sometimes happened, he was "in his right mind."

I, would like to dwell on the wonders of this man's strange and

fearsome life, but I hasten on to tell of a contrast, for my friends present

many contrasts.

I was hurrying down crowded Bishopsgate at lunch time, lost in

thought, when I felt my hand grasped and a well-known voice say, "Why!

Mr. Holmes, don't you know me?"

Know him! I should think I do know him; I am proud to know him,

for I venerate him. He is only a french polisher and by no means

handsome, his face is furrowed and seamed by care and sorrow, his hands

and clothing are stained with varnish. Truly he is not much to look at,

but if any one wants an embodiment of pluck and devotion, of never-

failing patience and magnificent love, in my friend you shall find it!

Born in the slums, he sold matches at seven years of age; at eight he

was in an industrial school; his father was dead, his mother a drunkard;

home he had none!

LONDON'S UNDERWORLD

Leaving school at sixteen he became first a gardener's assistant, then a

gentleman's servant; in this occupation he saved some money with which

he apprenticed himself to french polishing. From apprentice to

journeyman, from journeyman to business on his own account, were

successive steps; he married, and that brought him among my many

acquaintances.

He had a nice home, and two beautiful children, and then that great

destroyer of home life, drink! had to be reckoned with. So he came to

consult me. She was a beautiful and cultured woman and full of remorse.

The stained hands of the french polisher trembled as he signed a

document by which he agreed to pay L1 per week for his wife's

maintenance in an inebriate home for twelve months where she might

have her babe with her. Bravely he did his part, and at the end of the

year he brought her back to a new and better home, where the neighbours

knew nothing of her past.

For twelve months there was joy in the home, and then a new life

came into it; but with the babe came a relapse; the varnish- stained man

was again at his wits' end. Once more she entered a home, for another

year he worked and toiled to pay the charges, and again he provided a new

home. And she came back to a house that he had bought for her in a new

neighbourhood; they now lived close to me, and my house was open to

them. The story of the following years cannot be told, for she almost

ruined him. Night after night after putting the children to bed, he

searched the streets and public-houses for her; sometimes I went with him.

She pawned his clothes, the children's clothing, and even the boy's fiddle.

He cleaned the house, he cooked the food, he cared for the children, he

even washed and ironed their clothing on Saturday evening for the coming

Sunday. He marked all the clothing, he warned all the pawnbrokers. At

length he obtained a separation order, but tearing it up he again took her

home with him. She went from bad to worse; even down to the deepest

depths and thence to a rescue home. He fetched her out, and they

disappeared from my neighbourhood.

So I lost them and often wondered what the end had been. To-day he

was smiling; he had with him a youth of twenty, a scholarship boy, the

LONDON'S UNDERWORLD

violinist. He said, "I am just going to pay for his passage to Canada; he

is going to be the pioneer, and perhaps we shall all join him, she will do

better in a new country!" On further inquiry I found that she was trying

hard, and doing better than when I lost them.

Thinking she needed greater interest in life, he had bought a small

business for her, but "Mr. Holmes, she broke down!"

Alas! I knew what "breaking down" meant to the poor fellow, the

heroic fellow I ought to have said. And so for her he will leave his

kindred, home and friends; he will forsake the business that he has so

slowly and laboriously built up, he will sacrifice anything in the hope that

the air of Canada "will do her good." let us hope that it may, for her good

is all he lives for, and her good is his religion.

Twenty years of heartbreaking misery have not killed his love or

withered his hope. Surely love like his cannot fail of its reward. And

maybe in the new world he will have the happiness that has been denied

him in the old world, and in the evening of his life he may have the

peaceful calm that has hitherto been denied him. For this he is seeking a

place in the new world where the partner of his life and the desire of his

eyes may not find it easy to yield to her besetting temptation, where the air

and his steadfast love will "do her good."

But all my acquaintances are not heroes, for I am sorry to say that my

old friend Downy has served his term of penal servitude, and is at liberty

once more to beg or steal. He is not ashamed to beg, but I know that he

prefers stealing, for he richly enjoys anything obtained "on the cross," and

cares little for the fruits of honest labour.

Downy therefore never crosses my doorstep, and when I hold

communication with him he stands on the doorstep where I bar his

entrance.

Yet I like the vagabond, for he is a humorous rascal, and though I

know that I ought to be severe with him, I fail dismally when I try to

exhort him. "Now, look here, old man," he will say, "stop preaching;

what are you going to do to help a fellow; do you think I live this life for

fun" and his eyes twinkle! When I tell him that I am sure of it, he roars.

Yes, I am certain of it, Downy is a thief for the fun of it; he is the worst

LONDON'S UNDERWORLD

and cleverest sneak I have the privilege of knowing; and yet there is such

audacity about him and his actions that even his most reprehensible deeds

do not disgust me.

He is of the spare and lean kind, but were he fatter he might well pose

as a modern Jack Falstaff, for his one idea is summed up in Falstaff's

words: "Where shall we take a purse to-night?" Downy, of course,

obtained full remission of his sentence; he did all that was required of him

in prison, and so reduced his five years' sentence by fifteen months. But

I feel certain that he did nor spend three years and nine months in a

convict establishment without robbing a good many, and the more difficult

he found the task, the more he would enjoy it.

I expect his education is now complete, so I have to beware of Downy,

for he would glory in the very thought of "besting" me, so I laugh and joke

with the rascal, but keep him at arm's length. We discuss matters on the

doorstep; if he looks ill I have pity on him, and subsidise him.

Sometimes his merry look changes to a half-pathetic look, and he goes

away to his "doss house," realising that after all his "besting" he might

have done better.

Some of my friends have crossed the river, but as I think of them they

come back and bid me tell their stories. Here is my old friend the famous

chess-player, whose books are the poetry of chess, but whose life was

more than a tragedy. I need not say where I met him; his face was

bruised and swollen, his jawbone was fractured, he was in trouble, so we

became friends. He was a strange fellow, and though he visited my

house many times, he would neither eat nor drink with us. He wore no

overcoat even in the most bitter weather, he carried no umbrella, neither

would he walk under one, though the rains descended and the floods

came!

He was a fatalist pure and simple, and took whatever came to him in a

thoroughly fatalist spirit. "My dear Holmes," he would say, "why do you

break your heart about me? Let me alone, let us be friends; you are what

you are because you can't help it; you can't be anything else even if you

tried. I am what I am for the same reason. You get your happiness, I

get mine. Do me a good turn when you can, but don't reason with me; let

LONDON'S UNDERWORLD

us enjoy each other's company and take things as they are."

I took him on his own terms; I saw much of him, and when he was in

difficulties I helped him out.

For a time I became his keeper, and when he had chess engagements to

fulfil I used to deliver him carriage paid to his destination wherever it

might be. He always and most punctiliously repaid any monetary

obligation I had conferred upon him, for in that respect I found him the

soul of honour, poor though he was! As I think of him I see him dancing

and yelling in the street, surrounded by a crowd of admiring East Enders, I

see him bruised and torn hurried off to the police station, I see him

standing before the magistrate awaiting judgment. What compensation

dipsomania gave him I know not, but that he did get some kind of wild joy

I am quite sure. For I see him feverish from one debauch, but equally

feverish with the expectation of another.

With his wife it was another story, and I can see her now full of

anxiety and dread, with no relief and no hope, except, dreadful as it may

seem, his death! For then, to use her own expression, "she would know

the worst." Poor fellow! the last time I saw him he was nearing the end.

In an underground room I sat by his bedside, and a poor bed it was!

As he lay propped up by pillows he was working away at his beloved

chess, writing chess notes, and solving and explaining problems for very

miserable payments,

I knew the poverty of that underground room; and was made

acquainted with the intense disappointment of both husband and wife

when letters were received that did not contain the much- desired postal

orders. And so passed a genius; but a dipsomaniac! A man of brilliant

parts and a fellow of infinite jest, who never did justice to his great powers,

but who crowded a continuous succession of tragedies into a short life. I

am glad to think that I did my best for him, even though I failed. He has

gone! but he still has a place in my affections and occupies a niche in the

hall of my memory.

I very much doubt whether I am able to forget any one of the pieces of

broken humanity that have companied with me. I do not want to forget

them, for truth to tell they have been more interesting to me than merely

LONDON'S UNDERWORLD

respectable people, and infinitely more interesting than some good people.

But I am afraid that my tastes are bad, and my ideals low, for I am

always happier among the very poor or the outcasts than I am with the

decent and well behaved.

A fellow named Reid has been calling on me repeatedly; an Australian

by birth, he outraged the law so often that he got a succession of sentences,

some of them being lengthy. He tried South Africa with a like result;

South Africa soon had enough of him, and after two sentences he was

deported to England, where he looked me up.

He carries with him in a nice little case a certified and attested copy of

all his convictions, more than twenty in number. He produces this without

the least shame, almost with pride, and with the utmost confidence that it

would prove a ready passport to my affection.

I talk to him; he tells me of his life, of Australia and South Africa; he

almost hypnotises me, for he knows so much. We get on well together

till he produces the "attested copy," and then the spell is broken, and the

humour of it is too much for me, so I laugh.

He declares that he wants work, honest work, and he considers that his

"certificate" vouches for his bona fides. This is undoubtedly true, but

nevertheless I expect that it will be chiefly responsible for his free passage

back to Australia after he has sampled the quality of English prisons.

My friends and acquaintances meet me or rather I meet them, in

undesirable places; I never visit a prison without coming across one or

more of them, and they embarrass me greatly.

A few Sundays ago I was addressing a large congregation of men in a

London prison. As I stood before them I was dismayed to see right in the

front rank an old and persistent acquaintance whom I thoroughly and

absolutely disliked, and he knew it, for on more than one occasion I had

good reason for expressing a decided opinion about him. A smile of

gleeful but somewhat mischievous satisfaction spread over his face; he

folded his arms across his breast, he looked up at me and quite held me

with his glittering eye.

I realised his presence, I felt that his eye was upon me, I saw that he

followed every word. He quite unnerved me till I stumbled and tripped.

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

LONDON'SUNDERWORLD1LONDON'SUNDERWORLDbyThomasHolmes(SecretaryoftheHowardAssociation)(1912)*LONDON'SUNDERWORLD2PREFACEIamhopefulthatsomeoftheexperiencesgiveninthefollowingchaptersmaythrowalittlelightuponsomecuriousbutveryserioussocialproblems.Corporatehumanityalwayshashad,andalwayswillhave,seriouspro...

展开>> 收起<<

LONDON’S UNDERWORLD(地下伦敦).pdf

共176页,预览36页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

LONDON’S UNDERWORLD(地下伦敦)

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: