FOR a Bishop the Bishop of Bedford has made an excellent suggestion apropos of the Whitechapel horrors. He has arrived, by what process does not matter, at our own conclusion that the degradation of women like the victims of the Whitechapel horrors is due primarily to poverty. He proposes therefore to give them, not penitentiaries and mission work, which may be useful enough for the conversion of the juvenile Magdalen, but have no use for women who are conscious of their shame and loathe the calling to which they are driven, but work - or the opportunity of work. It is true that work so provided will still be only a form of charity, and we want something more than charity to eradicate "social evils" of every kind. But still this is wise and practical charity, charity that, so far as it goes, can do nothing but good. It is to be hoped, therefore, that the Bishop's appeal will meet with a generous response.
"IT is my bounden duty," writes the bishop, "to use my position and experience to turn to the best account the painful interest that has been excited by recent events in the East-end." No doubt we shall see many others doing the same thing, and conventional charity flowing in response towards the East-end in an unusual volume. The idea of "blood-money" still survives in modern society. The first idea of the smug well-to-do West-ender when the curse of poverty forces itself on his notice in some peculiarly unpleasant manner is to part with a shilling or two just to ease his own conscience and smooth matters over a bit. Well, charity may cover a multitude of sins, but it will not cover all. If, for instance, Dives is the man who has reduced Lazarus to pauperism, a few coppers chucked out of the window will not square the account. On the same principle, we want to see "the painful interest excited by late events at the East-end," bearing some better fruit than subscription lists.
MR. W. H. SMITH spent a good deal of time last night in counting up the losses that would accrue to Ireland from separation. Though the forecast was highly colored, it was in the main correct, and nobody would be more willing to admit it than the Irish leaders. It is because Irishmen know that their country would lose infinitely more than she could gain from separation that they are heartily opposed to it. What they want is not separation, but self-government, and there is nothing inconsistent between the policy that makes this its chief aim an loyalty to the Empire.
DEFENDING coercion, Mr. Smith says that he has "never yet heard that the courts of justice in dealing with criminals, or that policemen in endeavoring to track a crime were guilty of any wrong against the community at large." Nobody affirms the contrary - if the Courts act justly and the police do nothing more than Mr. Smith suggests. The complaint is not that the Crimes Act enables the Courts to punish criminals, but that it gives incompetent and unscrupulous magistrates power - power they exercise whenever opportunity offers - to send innocent men to gaol, and encourages the police in practices that are absolutely indefensible.
THE exorbitant sums taken from the British working classes to support in luxury and idleness the numerous scions of Royalty have called forth many animadversions abroad, and especially in the United States. In a recent article on "Labor," Mr. Eugene Smith, secretary of the New York Prison Association, significantly remarks: - "In Great Britain the standing grievance of the Labor party has been for many years the large budget required for the support of the Royal Family. The tax levied for this object has excited a deeper discontent, and has stirred up more disloyal and riotous demonstrations on the part of the laboring classes, than perhaps any other public burden imposed on the English people." It is thought we are on the eve of more Royal applications to Parliament; but if so, the working classes must be prepared to demonstrate in such numbers and with such vigor as to crush this disgraceful system once and for ever. Even many Tories are getting ashamed of it. What is to be the end of it all when our Royal Family, which is so prolific, has multiplied by hundreds? More Germans, of course, will continue to come over to the happy hunting-grounds. Let the Queen and the Royal Family take care that they are not living in a fool's paradise. It will not always be possible to keep from them a knowledge of the people's wrongs.
The Bishop of Bedford, who for 10 years was rector of Spitalfields, writes, in reply to many correspondents who have desired to be informed of the best way to befriend the poor street-walkers of Whitechapel:- A night refuge in my judgement would serve no good end; it would but aggravate the evil. It is not the fact that many of these women are to be found in the streets at night because doors are closed against them. Another night refuge is not required. It would attract more of these miserable women into the neighborhood and increase the difficulties of the situation. But what is needed is a Home where washing and other work could be done, and where poor women who are really anxious to lead a better life could find employment. There are penitentiaries and there are mission-houses into which younger women can be received. But for the older women, many of whom have only taken to their miserable mode of earning a living in sheer despair, and who would gladly renounce it, we have not the Home; and it is of the utmost importance one should be provided. It would in its management differ from the ordinary penitentiary. If entrusted with means to provide such a home, I would gladly undertake the responsibility of conducting it, in conjunction with the clergy and others who are only too anxious to see it established. Two thousand pounds would enable the experiments to be tried, and I have no doubt at all of its being a success.
There are few things so inviting at Billingsgate Fish Market as their wedding celebrations. Yesterday morning one of these was held with all the pomp and ceremony usual on such occasions; in fact, the affair was a double event, their being two bridegrooms, Messrs. John Reading, jun., and T. Brennan, fish salesmen. The proceedings have almost a ring of officialism about them, for it is the sound of the bell of the Clerk of the Market which at eight o'clock in the morning gathers the hundreds which take part in the jollification. For once the odor of fish in the place is lost - it succumbs to
which is lit at one side of the market. Then the powerful band of various instruments strikes up, and drinks, which, of course, the bridegroom supplies, are handed round. Then follow cheers and songs, the latter, of course, including "For he's a jolly good fellow," and the well-known ditty, which, commencing "Now you're married, we wish you joy," goes on to prophetic aspirations as to future progeny. Thus the ceremony yesterday morning lasted half or three-quarters of an hour, and, of course, interfered with the busiest part of the morning's work. But all the dignitaries of the market insist upon keeping up the time honored precedent of an eight o'clock celebration, and if asked for an explanation, they give as their reason that "That's the time they're hanged at Newgate, see?"
"Are the London Police to be made soldiers?" will be asked and answered at a public meeting to be held at the Patriotic Club, 37A, Clerkenwell-green, at half-past eight to-night. The meeting, which will be addressed by Mrs. Annie Besant and Herbert Burrows, will protest against scores of police guarding the sacred precincts of Trafalgar-square and the West-end, whilst murder and terrible outrages ravaged the East-end.
WHITECHAPEL.
A Quiet Night - Suspicions Cleared Up by Inquiry.
Upon inquiry at the East-end police-stations at four o'clock this morning it was stated that no arrests had been made during the night. The streets in the vicinity of the recent tragedies are still patrolled by police and detectives in augmented numbers. Last night the number of amateur detectives at work did not seem so great as at the latter end of last week. The locality was almost entirely deserted except by a few of the class of persons from whom the murderer has selected his victims.
The man who left three knives at the Bull's Head Tavern, Oxford-street, called for them last night, and a detective being in waiting he was arrested. He was taken to Bow-street, but after satisfactorily accounting for himself was discharged. This morning a well-dressed man was seen walking about Covent-garden market carrying a small black bag. He was taken to Bow-street, and after explaining his business was discharged.
A respectably-dressed man was roaming about Whitechapel drunk early this morning, quarrelling with some women, who informed the police. The man was taken to the police-station, but after inquiries had been made he was released.
Detective-Sergeant Robinson received information early this morning from some Italians on Eyre-street Hill that a man had acted in a suspicious manner with a prostitute, who, becoming alarmed, had run away. Learning that the man had gone to a cabyard in Phœnix-place, the detective borrowed a hat and cloak to disguise himself with and went to the yard. Two men there, who said they meant to protect their master's property, demanded that the disguised detective should leave, and despite his explanation that he was a police officer one of them struck him in the face, and, pulling out a pocket-knife, afterwards stabbed him. The detective called out that he had been stabbed, and thinking that the officer had captured the murderer, a young fellow named Doncaster went to his assistance. He, too, was attacked and stabbed. Other officers went to the spot, and the two men were arrested.
Elizabeth Watts, who at one time was supposed to be the Berner-street victim, is alive and well in the person of Mrs. Stokes, the hard-working respectable wife of a brick-yard laborer living at Tottenham. She went to the local police-station yesterday and declared her identity.
The police last night made an arrest in Gray's-inn-road. Last Wednesday afternoon a man called at a clothes-repairing shop, with an overcoat and a pair of trousers to be cleaned. They were both bloodstained. The manager of the shop communicated with the police, who, having examined the clothes, took them to Scotland-yard. Two detectives secreted themselves on the premises, and awaited the stranger's return. Friday and Saturday passed without his calling; but last evening he stepped into the shop a few minutes before closing time. The detectives seized him, and took him to Leman-street Police-station. He stated that while employed as a waiter at the Alexandra Park he had broken some glass and cut one of his hands rather severely. Inquiries made at his residence and at the Palace corroborated his story, and as there were no further grounds for detaining him he was discharged.
Mr. Samuel Hayward proposes to establish night shelters for the destitute in the East-end. He estimates that there are 15,000 homeless creatures in London who sleep on doorsteps or in the parks, and shrink from accepting the hospitality of the casual ward or the workhouse. The casual is merely a stepping-stone to pauperism. All who seek refuge in it must be at its doors before ten o'clock, and cannot leave until about noon on the following day. They are thus prevented from getting a day's work if they wished to. Shelters such as Mr. Hayward proposes would allow the waifs to come and go when they chose, and not stamp them with the stigma of pauperism. Similar institutions, conducted by private individuals, and also by the municipality, exist in Paris. Mr. Hayward has received several promises of support. One gentleman has sent him a cheque for £250, a prominent banker has promised to become treasurer, and Mr. Mansfield's manager telegraphed yesterday that a
on the 19th on behalf of the shelter scheme. Mr. Hayward has already found a site for one shelter near Jubilee-street. Meanwhile Mr. Hamilton has offered his mission rooms at 59, Mile-end-road, as a temporary shelter. Two large warm rooms on the ground floor were put at the disposal of the outcast last night for the first time. The police were apprised of the scheme, and promised to co-operate in advertising it. They were to direct any destitute persons whom they found wandering aimlessly about the streets, or lying on doorsteps, and without means to pay for a "doss," to Mr. Hamilton's Mission Rooms. Last night was tolerably mild, and the terror of the murderer still haunts the wretched women who walk Whitechapel streets. There were very few about after the public-houses closed, and no one up to one o'clock had sought the hospitality of the shelter, though some dropped in later.
A Vienna correspondent states that Dr. Bloch, a member of the Austrian Reichsrath, has called his attention to certain facts which may throw a new light on the Whitechapel murders. In various German criminal codes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as also in statutes of a more recent date, punishments are prescribed for the mutilation of female corpses, with the object of making from the uterus and other organs "thieves' candles" or "soporitic candles." According to an old superstition, still rife in various parts of Germany, the light from such candles will throw those upon whom it falls into the deepest slumbers, and they may, consequently, become a valuable instrument to the thieving profession. At the trial of the notorious German robber Theodor Unger, surnamed "the handsome Charley," who was executed at Magdeburg, in 1810, it transpired that a regular manufactory had been established by gangs of thieves, for the production of such candles. That this superstition has survived amongst German thieves to the present day was proved in a case tried at Biala, in Galicia, as recently as 1875.
We continue to receive complaints as to the indifference of the police when given information. A working-man called at the Star office to-day and told us that on Sunday night a mate of his met a suspicious-looking character in a low-class German coffee-house in Gray's-inn-road. The individual wore a wig and looked dangerous. He carried something bulky in his breast-pocket, and our informer's friend put in his hand and pulled out a six-chambered revolver, whereupon the stranger flourished a knife and demanded back his revolver, but when threatened with a taste of that weapon he subsided and gave up the knife. Information was given of this occurrence at the Clerkenwell Police-station. The police kept the weapons, but made no inquiries after the owner.
Warren (to Matthews): "Why don't you resign?"
Matthews (to Warren): "Why don't you resign?"
Salisbury (aside): "Why don't they both resign?"
There is no truth in the statement that Dublin detectives have arrived in London to aid in discovering the Whitechapel murderer.
The evidence given yesterday at the inquest on the body found a week ago on the site of the new police headquarters on the Thames-embankment adds new interest to the mystery.
of 51, Salisbury-buildings, Walworth, said:- I am a bricklayers' laborer employed by Mr. Grove. I was in this vault on Tuesday afternoon at about five minutes to three, Mr. Cheney, the foreman of the bricklayers, directing me to go and see what the parcel in the basement was. I looked at it and found all the top of it bare, the rest being wrapped up in some old cloth. I thought it was old bacon at first, thrown away there, or something of that sort, but as I could make nothing of it I took hold of the strings round it and dragged it out into the light. I then got my pocket knife and dragged the strings off it.
How many strings were there? - Three or four, three being tied round and one up. The strings produced are the ones. On opening the parcel I found it was part of the body of a woman.
Were you alone when you opened it? - No, sir. Mr. Cheney was there, and Mr. Brown and another witness named Hedge.
Had you ever seen that parcel before? - No, sir. I had no occasion to go before. I could not have seen anything without taking a lamp, for it is as dark down there as the darkest night as ever was, I should think.
detective of the A division, said: About twenty past three on the afternoon of the 2nd inst. Mr. Brown came to the King-street Police-station, and from what he told the Inspector I was sent to the new building adjacent to Cannon-row. I saw lying in one of the vaults a portion of human remains. It was wrapped in a piece of dress material.
Is the dress material here?
Inspector Marshall: Yes. It has been washed since.
Witness thereupon produced the material, which was of black broché satin. Proceeding, he said: I left a constable in charge of the body, and directed him to see that nothing was removed. I informed my superintendent, and with him returned to the scene, Dr. Bond having meanwhile been called. I then directed the whole of the witnesses to come to the station, where their statements were taken.
What did you notice in the vaults? - It was very dark, and I should say it would be impossible for a stranger to find his way to where the body was found without daylight or some artificial light. In depositing the body there, whoever did it would have to pass over the trench dug for the drain making, and even with a light it would not be easy to see the trench.
deal porter, said: I found the right arm which the jury have seen. It was on 11 Sept., while I was outside Mr. Ward's deal wharf in the Grosvenor-yard. The arm was lying on the mud of the Thames, lying right underneath the drain which comes from the adjacent distillery. It was not wrapped in anything, but a string was tied tightly round the upper part of the arm. I called a policeman and left it in his charge.
How was the tide then? - Low, sir, and running down hard.
Police-constable James proved taking the arm to Ebury-bridge mortuary and sending for Dr. Neville, the police surgeon.
of 5, Hampton-terrace, Hornsey, said: I am assistant foreman on the new building at Cannon-row, Whitehall. The site is shut off from the surrounding streets by a hoarding about seven feet high, and there are three entrances. Two are in Cannon-row and one is on the Embankment. The gates to the entrance are as high as the surrounding hoardings. It is three months since these vaults have been completed. No one was admitted to the works besides the workmen, those who had business with the clerk of the works and the carmen. No one was at the gates to prevent strangers intruding, but there were notice-boards for that purpose. All the gates except one small one in Cannon-row were locked up on the Saturday before the body was found. There was no watchman at the unlocked gate, and no one left on the premises all night.
Then there is nothing to prevent anybody walking on to the sight at night? - Yes, because we latch the unlocked gate, and it would not be easy to unlatch that gate to anybody unacquainted with the way to do it.
What were the approaches to this vault? - Down a road made of planks, some two or three hundred, laid crossways. Once down the bottom of these planks it is very dark.
Was any work being done in the vaults the week before the discovery? - Yes, the carpenters were at work there.
Had any of the locks been forced when you got to the works on Monday morning? - No.
From your knowledge of the works do you think it would require
to get to those vaults? - Yes, I certainly do, because nobody would think of going to such a place without having looked for it.
Who called your attention to the body on Tuesday? - Wildbore.
Was there any smell? - I did not notice any.
The Foreman: Have there been any losses of tools? - Yes, once.
And yet you thought the latch on the gate sufficient? - Yes.
George Cheney, the bricklayers' foreman, gave corroborative evidence.
general laborer on the site, said: I was in the vault at twenty minutes to five on the Saturday evening before the discovery, having been there to get a hammer, and I went right across the very place where the body was found subsequently. I am sure it was not there then. I had to strike a match, so I am positive about it. I was then the only man left on the job as far as I know, it being my duty to lock up.
said: On 2 Oct. I was called to the new police building, and was there shown the decomposed trunk of a woman. I saw the wall against which the body had lain, and found it stained black, so that I thought it had been there several days, although I was unable to form any positive opinion. I had the remains placed in spirits, and on the following morning I made an examination, assisted by Mr. Hebbert. The trunk was that of a woman of considerable stature, and well-nourished. The head had been separated from the trunk by means of a saw. The lower limbs and the pelvis had been removed by a series of long sweeping cuts, a saw being used for the bone. We examined the skin all over for marks of injury or wounds and found none. The arms had been removed at the shoulder joints by several incisions, the cuts apparently having been made obliquely from above downwards. The body appeared to have been wrapped up in a very skilful manner. We found no indications of the woman having ever been a mother, but found that at some time she had had severe pleurisy. That, however, was old. She was a woman of mature age - that is, of over 24 or 25. She was of
The date of death would have been from six weeks to two months. The arm previously found accurately fitted the trunk, the hand being quite that of a woman unused to manual labor. There was nothing to indicate the cause of death, except that it was not suffocation. It was more likely death from hemorrhage, for the heart was pale, and free from clots. I did not anatomically examine the arm, but merely fitted it to the trunk.
The Coroner: Can you give us any opinion as to the height of the woman? - We believe the height of the woman to have been about 5ft. 8in. Those measurements depend more upon the measurements of the arm than of any measurements which have been made of the trunk.
The Coroner: Was the woman a very stout woman? - She was not a very stout woman, but she was a thoroughly plump woman, and a fully developed one. There was no abnormal excess of fat, but the body was that of a thoroughly well nourished, plump woman. These measures are not strictly diagnostic to an inch, but they lead to a very fair inference that she was
at least 5ft. 8in. high. The hand was certainly that of a woman, as I have said, who was not used to manual labor.
The Coroner: Would the hand be that of a refined woman? - The hand was that of a woman not used to hard work.
Mr. Charles Alfred Hibbert, M.R.C.S., of Great College-street, Westminster, deposed: I assisted the last witness. I saw this arm first on 16 Sept., and then made an examination of it. It was the right arm, which had been separated from the trunk at the shoulder joint by a cut which passed obliquely round. The arm measured 31in. in length, and its circumference at the point where it was separated was 13in. The hand measured 7 ½ in. The arm was surrounded in the upper part by a piece of string, and this made an impression upon the skin of the arm. When the string was loosened it was found that there was a great deal of blood in the arm. The skin of the arm was in a fair condition, and was not very much decomposed, but the skin of the hand was very thin, white, and corrugated through immersion in the water. The hand itself was
and the nails were small and well-shaped. There were no scars or marks of any kind, and there were no bruises. There were a few dark brown hairs left under the arm. The woman must have been over 20. The arm had apparently been separated from the body after death. The calculation as to the height of the woman, founded upon the measurement of the arm, made her about 5ft. 8 ½ in. high. I thought the arm was cut off by a person who, while he was not necessarily an anatomist, certainly knew what he was doing - who knew where the joints were and cut them pretty regularly. There were not many cuts - about six or seven. They had evidently been done with a very sharp knife. I was enabled to examine the arm at the same time as the trunk, and found they exactly fitted. The skin cuts corresponded, and the bones and the hair corresponded. The hair was precisely the same, and when the two lots were mixed together they could not be separated.
The Coroner: Did you notice whether there was similar skill in the division of the corresponding arm, according to the appearance of the shoulder? - Yes, it was done exactly in the same way. The line of the cuts began at the top of the shoulder and passed round the arm at either side.
Is a division like that one which you have for any purpose of anatomy? - No. For a surgical motive, the cut would have been so made as to leave the skin outside. In this case the skin was cut through by several long cuts, and then the bone was
The pieces of paper produced, which were found near the body, are stained by some animal food. It is certainly not the blood of a bird or a reptile. There was no mark of a ring on the finger of the hand.
Detective Inspector Marshall deposed: I am an inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department, attached to the A Division. About five o'clock on the 2nd inst., I went to the new police buildings on the Thames Embankment, and in the basement saw the trunk. The corner of the vault from which it had been drawn was pointed out to me. I saw that the wall was a good deal stained. I examined the ground, and there found a piece of newspaper (produced). I also found a piece of string which seems to be a piece of sash cord, and Mr. Hibbert handed me two pieces of material which he said had come from the body. I made a thorough search about the vaults in the immediate vicinity at once, but nothing more was found. On the following morning, with other officers, I made a further search of the vaults of the whole site. Nothing more was found nor anything suspicious observed. With regard to the piece of paper, I have made inquiry, and find it is a piece of the Echo, dated 24 Aug., 1888. Dr. Hibbert also handed me a number of small pieces of paper, which he said were found on the body, and I find they are pieces of the Daily Chronicle. They are not pieces of any paper issued from that office this year. The dress is a broché satin cloth, of Bradford manufacture, but an old pattern, probably of three years ago. It is
There is a flounce in it six inches from the bottom. The material probably cost 6 ½d. a yard. It is easy, I think, to get over the hoarding in Cannon-row, but there are no indications of anyone having done so. It is quite easy for any one to open the latch referred to. I should think the body had been where it was found for days, from the stain on the wall, but the witness who has been examined declares most positively that it was not there on Saturday, as he was on the very spot.
Hedge, recalled, deposed: Where the parcel was found was in a corner.
The Coroner: Would you have any occasion to go into that corner? - No, except to nail a locker up, and I looked into the very corner with the light for a hammer. I am quite sure the parcel could not have been there without my seeing it.
In reply to the Coroner, Inspector Marshall said that was all the evidence he possessed.
The Coroner asked if it was probable that any other evidence would be forthcoming.
Inspector Marshall said one or two more of the workpeople might be examined. Of course, the all important task was to find the head.
The Coroner: As there are other witnesses, and there seems to be this doubt as to whether the parcel was in the vault before Saturday, I adjourn the inquiry until this day fortnight.
SIR, - The "East-end atrocities" have certainly been an ill-wind that has blown grist to the mill of the votaries of the modern woman-cultus. To the unsophisticated mind it would be difficult to see how the murder of a few women by an obviously unique kind of maniac could possibly raise any general point respecting the "woman question" any more than the murder of, say, two or three City clerks by an ex-principal whose mind was affected by losses occasioned through the negligence of penmen he had employed should raise the general question of the social position of City clerks. But there is no one like your woman's rights advocate for making capital out of everything that comes to hand, and nothing like the modern English Press for giving him or her a one-sided hearing.
Accordingly we find Mrs. Fenwick Miller and her allies in the Daily News all athirst for the blood of men, seeking to raise the wind in favor of barbarous judicial sentences. The truly bestial howl for the torture of the lash which comes with the regularity of an intermittent fever, is again heard in our midst. The Rev. Mr. Burnett moralises in The Star, the general drift of his remarks being that the working man is a kind of semi-monster and his wife a wingless angel let loose from Paradise. Mr. Barnett has, of course, never come across women whom have wrecked the lives of working men - oh, dear, no! If there is one thing that might make a working-man hesitate before contracting a legal marriage, it is that nowadays law and middle-class public opinion place him entirely at the mercy of his wife. As a recent correspondent (a barrister) of the Daily Telegraph observed, the whole legislation of the past quarter of a century has been entirely in favor of women at the expense of men.
And now as to these sentences so much talked about. No one who reads his newspaper can deny the extreme reluctance of juries to convict women of any serious offence and the excessive leniency of sentences passed upon them. Only the other day (on the north-west circuit, I think) a big powerful woman was convicted of the murder of her husband, a poor, feeble, paralytic old man, by battering his head in, a continued course of ill-usage having been proved, and was recommended to mercy! Imagine the howl that would have arisen had the cases been reversed. Again, every one must have noticed the growing tendency to twist what would formerly have been regarded as manslaughter cases into murder cases where women are the victims. Then as to mere brutality, who shall deny that in many of the worst instances of cruelty to children women are the culprits? Only a short time ago a woman tortured her stepson, a little boy of three years old, by burning him with a red-hot iron. Does anyone propose that a brute like this should have the lash? Oh, no; divine woman must not be subjected to degrading punishments!
I write, sir, as an advocate of equality between the sexes. At the present time, apart from mere political rights, which are, after all, only a means to an end, women constitute a privileged class, and the aims of their advocates is to give them a still more privileged position. They are virtually freed from the criminal punishments to which men are liable, and they can compel men to support them on pain of imprisonment. It is all very well to talk about women being economically dependent on men. The feudal lord was also economically dependent on his serfs; that is to say, he would have been in a sorry plight if his vassals and serfs had suddenly deserted him, and would then probably have had to have taken to what used to be euphemistically known as the "road;" much as "deserted" women now sometimes take to the streets. Yet the feudal lord is none the less usually deemed to have belonged to a privileged class.
The desperate and glorious inconsistency of your woman advocate is aptly shown in his criticism of seduction cases, where the man is always painted as the malignant scoundrel and the woman as the innocent young person who does not know her right hand from her left, and yet we are told in the same breath this simple young innocent, unable to protect herself against the wiles of wicked man, is the equal of man in all respects, and fit to be entrusted with every political and social function.
Mr. Barnett admonishes the working-man to regard his wife as his equal. Now do let us put aside cant on this subject for once. How can the working-man regard a woman as his equal when she is obviously not his equal. Apart from mere intellectual inequality, most working men know that the greatest obstacle in the way of their political work for the emancipation of their class is precisely the "drab" at home who is perpetually nagging and browbeating him. - Yours, &c.,
SIR, - In a leading article commenting on the Rev. Mr. Barnett's letter in your issue of 5 Oct., you say truly that "it is poverty which lies at the root of what we, perhaps rightly, call the social evil, and it is by aiming at the abolition of poverty that we shall cure a variety of woes which we usually set down to an entirely different set of causes." I entirely concur with you in this statement; and, as I have had a very long practical acquaintance with the poorer classes of the East-end of London in my capacity as physician to the Metropolitan Free Hospital, which was once situated close to Whitechapel Church, I claim to speak with some experience. To me, then, the extreme squalor and hopelessness of Whitechapel, St. George's-in-the-East, and Bethnal-green are due to the two causes so well pointed out by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in a lecture in Bethnal-green this year, viz., to over-population and drink. The birth-rate of Bethnal-green last year, 1887, was nearly 40 per 1,000 as compared with that of Kensington, which was only 19.5; and as a consequence of this poor families are compelled to crowd together in these sad haunts of the poor about which we have heard so much during the last few weeks. I found on inquiry from out-patients attending at the Metropolitan Free Hospital a few years back, that the average number of children to a family was 7.2 - i.e., 100 married women over 45 had had 720 children on an average of many hundreds I questioned. The average of children to a family in prudent France is now 3.2, and although naturally we, with our colonies, could afford to support more children than the French, yet the average of 7.2 is utterly beyond the powers of the poor of the East-end. Alcohol, too, is another of the causes of misery in the East-end; and these two causes combined are quite enough to account for the terrible misery of Bethnal-green, Whitechapel, and St. George's-in-the-East. So that it is not so much of importance that the West-end should give alms to the East-end. What is wanted is that West-end people should teach East-end people to have smaller families, and thus escape from early death and lifelong destitution. - Yours, &c.,
23, Sackville-street, London, W., 6 Oct.
