My child is freezing and I haven't a – farthing for fuel or a feed

*THE WORKER*

Brisbane, March 16, 1895.

One Among Many.

A searching drizzle, a murky, clammy fog, choking the hardy passenger along the High Street – yet everywhere, now two and three together, huddled under a sheltering doorway, and here one alone darting out with wanton invitation, were ranked the women of shame – the outcasts of a mighty city. I quickened my step as I passed one woman more importunate than the rest – the many were too drugged with the reeking mist to be active or impatient. I felt her hand on my shoulder and her breath on my face and made a rough effort of repulse. “For God's sake listen,” she cried as she clutched at me,”- you, won't you listen? My child is freezing and I haven't a – farthing for fuel or a feed. . . . half-a-crown and its – cheap.” and she ended with a laugh, the horrible gurgling laugh of the despairing – more awful than passionate weeping – the laugh of Hell.

* * *

I turned and looked her in the face as she gripped my shoulder and swung against me. A face, what need to describe it? Pretty once, no doubt, like a hundred others, now drawn with hunger, blotched and scarred. We moved towards the entry where she had laid in ambush, one of the dark alleys which burrow behind the shops of the High Street. “Where have you left your child?” I asked aimlessly and mechanically. The question seemed to touch her, she ceased the filthy gestures, ungripped my arm, and her body shook with sobbing.

* * *

Then rousing again she pushed me away. “Go, and God – you, I'll drown myself and her before the – mornin' – I'll drown myself;” and then the sobbing burst out again. Little by little I found out where she lived, gave her a few shillings I had on me and asked again to see her child. She had now grown somewhat quieter, even thanked me for the money and we walked on together through a maze of dirty courts and lanes.

* * *

Soon I had all her story – a good husband maimed by a scaffold fall, a long drawn out dying, and then widow and little daughter thrown penniless into the grinding mill of existence. The sordid, desperate details of that struggle we can hear any week at the coroner's inquests or the Guardian's board. And, last of all, mad with care for the innocent babe, weary of rate-wardens and charity-mongers, the sinks to the streets, and plies her ghastly trade to outward seeming like any other. But every night, she told me, and I believe her, she had knelt by the little cot screened off by an old shawl from the rest of the room – knelt there before the evening's quest and prayed with a desperate cry from her mother's heart for the child she was selling herself to cherish and rear. And over it she hung now, her sobbing hushed to the panting movement of her bosom, and watched eagerly as the light from the dirty dip in her hand shone on her little girl, tossing through the night in the feverish sleep of the starving.

* * *

For some moments I watched too, then begged her to come to my house on the morrow. Something must, could be, done for her child – for herself a brave heart and better things in the coming year. She thanked me warmly, impulsively, then, shrinking back with a blush which mantled in spite of grease and paint, begged pardon for the accosting. Pardon! I hardly kept down the bitter laugh which rose within me; we grind the hopeless and hapless, drive our women to the streets, and then they ask our pardon!

* * *

And as I left the stifling garret for the street outside the mist was lifting, a star shone right ahead in the cold sky, and one all but felt the breathing of the dawn.

C.V.H., in London Justice.