The People of the Abyss eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 229 pages of information about The People of the Abyss.

The People of the Abyss eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 229 pages of information about The People of the Abyss.

It is interesting to go more into detail concerning the London people who die on charity.

In 1886, and up to 1893, the percentage of pauperism to population was less in London than in all England; but since 1893, and for every succeeding year, the percentage of pauperism to population has been greater in London than in all England.  Yet, from the Registrar-General’s Report for 1886, the following figures are taken:-

Out of 81,951 deaths in London (1884):-

In workhouses 9,909
In hospitals 6,559
In lunatic asylums 278
Total in public refuges 16,746

Commenting on these figures, a Fabian writer says:  “Considering that comparatively few of these are children, it is probable that one in every three London adults will be driven into one of these refuges to die, and the proportion in the case of the manual labour class must of course be still larger.”

These figures serve somewhat to indicate the proximity of the average worker to pauperism.  Various things make pauperism.  An advertisement, for instance, such as this, appearing in yesterday morning’s paper:-

“Clerk wanted, with knowledge of shorthand, typewriting, and invoicing:  wages ten shillings ($2.50) a week.  Apply by letter,” &c.

And in to-day’s paper I read of a clerk, thirty-five years of age and an inmate of a London workhouse, brought before a magistrate for non-performance of task.  He claimed that he had done his various tasks since he had been an inmate; but when the master set him to breaking stones, his hands blistered, and he could not finish the task.  He had never been used to an implement heavier than a pen, he said.  The magistrate sentenced him and his blistered hands to seven days’ hard labour.

Old age, of course, makes pauperism.  And then there is the accident, the thing happening, the death or disablement of the husband, father, and bread-winner.  Here is a man, with a wife and three children, living on the ticklish security of twenty shillings per week—­and there are hundreds of thousands of such families in London.  Perforce, to even half exist, they must live up to the last penny of it, so that a week’s wages (one pound) is all that stands between this family and pauperism or starvation.  The thing happens, the father is struck down, and what then?  A mother with three children can do little or nothing.  Either she must hand her children over to society as juvenile paupers, in order to be free to do something adequate for herself, or she must go to the sweat-shops for work which she can perform in the vile den possible to her reduced income.  But with the sweat-shops, married women who eke out their husband’s earnings, and single women who have but themselves miserably to support, determine the scale of wages.  And this scale of wages, so determined, is so low that the mother and her three children can live only in positive beastliness and semi-starvation, till decay and death end their suffering.

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The People of the Abyss from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.