The Spike.
The old Spartans had a wiser method; and went out and hunted down their Helots, and speared and spitted them, when they grew too numerous.With our improved fashions of hunting, now after the invention of firearms and standing armies, how much easier were such a hunt!
Perhaps in the most thickly peopled country, some three days annually might suffice to shoot all the able-bodied paupers that had accumulated within the year.
-CARLYLE.
FIRST OF ALL, I MUST BEG forgiveness of my body for the vileness through which I have dragged it, and forgiveness of my stomach for the vileness which I have thrust into it.I have been to the spike, and slept in the spike, and eaten in the spike; also, I have run away from the spike.
After my two unsuccessful attempts to penetrate the Whitechapel casual ward, I started early, and joined the desolate line before three o'clock in the afternoon.They did not 'let in' till six, but at that early hour I was number 20, while the news had gone forth that only twenty-two were to be admitted.By four o'clock there were thirty-four in line, the last ten hanging on in the slender hope of getting in by some kind of a miracle.Many more came, looked at the line, and went away, wise to the bitter fact that the spike would be 'full up.'
Conversation was slack at first, standing there, till the man on one side of me and the man on the other side of me discovered that they had been in the smallpox hospital at the same time, though a full house of sixteen hundred patients had prevented their becoming acquainted.But they made up for it, discussing and comparing the more loathsome features of their disease in the most cold-blooded, matter-of-fact way.I learned that the average mortality was one in six, that one of them had been in three months and the other three months and a half, and that they had been 'rotten wi' it.' Whereat my flesh began to creep and crawl, and I asked them how long they had been out.One had been out two weeks, and the other three weeks.
Their faces were badly pitted (though each assured the other that this was not so), and further, they showed me in their hands and under the nails the smallpox 'seeds' still working out.Nay, one of them worked a seed out for my edification, and pop it went, right out of his flesh into the air.I tried to shrink up smaller inside my clothes, and I registered a fervent though silent hope that it had not popped on me.
In both instances, I found that the smallpox was the cause of their being 'on the doss,' which means on the tramp.Both had been working when smitten by the disease, and both had emerged from the hospital 'broke,' with the gloomy task before them of hunting for work.So far, they had not found any, and they had come to the spike for a 'rest up' after three days and nights on the street.
It seems that not only the man who becomes old is punished for his involuntary misfortune, but likewise the man who is struck by disease or accident.Later on, I talked with another man,- 'Ginger' we called him, who stood at the head of the line- a sure indication that he had been waiting since one o'clock.A year before, one day, while in the employ of a fish dealer, he was carrying a heavy box of fish which was too much for him.Result: 'something broke,' and there was the box on the ground, and he on the ground beside it.
At the first hospital, whither he was immediately carried, they said it was a rupture, reduced the swelling, gave him some vaseline to rub on it, kept him four hours, and told him to get along.But he was not on the streets more than two or three hours when he was down on his back again.This time he went to another hospital and was patched up.But the point is, the employer did nothing, positively nothing, for the man injured in his employment, and even refused him 'a light job now and again,' when he came out.As far as Ginger is concerned, he is a broken man.His only chance to earn a living was by heavy work.He is now incapable of performing heavy work, and from now until he dies, the spike, the peg, and the streets are all he can look forward to in the way of food and shelter.The thing happened- that is all.He put his back under too great a load of fish, and his chance for happiness in life was crossed off the books.
Several men in the line had been to the United States, and they were wishing that they had remained there, and were cursing themselves for their folly in ever having left.England had become a prison to them, a prison from which there was no hope of escape.It was impossible for them to get away.They could neither scrape together the passage money, nor get a chance to work their passage.The country was too overrun by poor devils on that 'lay.'
I was on the seafaring- man- who- had- lost- his- clothes- and-money tack, and they all condoled with me and gave me much sound advice.To sum it up, the advice was something like this: To keep out of all places like the spike.There was nothing good in it for me.
To head for the coast and bend every effort to get away on a ship.
To go to work, if possible, and scrape together a pound or so, with which I might bribe some steward or underling to give me chance to work my passage.They envied me my youth and strength, which would sooner or later get me out of the country.These they no longer possessed.Age and English hardship had broken them, and for them the game was played and up.
There was one, however, who was still young, and who, I am sure, will in the end make it out.He had gone to the United States as a young fellow, and in fourteen years' residence the longest period he had been out of work was twelve hours.He had saved his money, grown too prosperous, and returned to the mother country.Now he was standing in line at the spike.
For the past two years, he told me, he had been working as a cook.
His hours had been from 7 A.M.to 10.30 P.M., and on Saturday to 12.30P.M.- ninety-five hours per week, for which he had received twenty shillings, or five dollars.
