Barbara.--She had sunk about as low as any woman could when we found her.From the age of eighteen,when her parents had forced her to throw over her sailor sweetheart and marry a man with "good prospects,"she had been going steadily down.
She did not love her husband,and soon sought comfort from the little public-house only a few steps from her own door.Quarrels in her home quickly gave place to fighting,angry curses,and oaths,and soon her life became one of the most wretched in the place.Her husband made no pretence of caring for her,and when she was ill and unable to earn money by selling fish in the streets,he would go off for a few months,leaving her to keep the house and support herself and babies as best she could.Out of her twenty years of married life,ten were spent in these on-and-off separations.And so she got to live for only one thing--drink.It was life to her;and the mad craving grew to be irresistible.The woman who looked after her at the birth of her child refused to fetch her whisky,so when she had done all she could and left the mother to rest,Barbara crept out of bed and crawled slowly down the stairs over the way to the tap-room,where she sat drinking with the baby,not yet an hour old,in her arms.So things went on,until her life got so unbearable that she determined to have done with it.Taking her two eldest children with her,she went down to the bay,and deliberately threw them both into the water,jumping in herself after them."Oh,mither,mither,dinna droon me!"wailed her little three-year-old Sarah,but she was determined and held them under the water,till,seeing a boat put out to the rescue she knew that she was discovered.Too late to do it now,she thought,and,holding both children,swam quickly back to the shore.A made-up story about having fallen into the water satisfied the boatman,and Barbara returned home dripping and baffled.But little Sarah did not recover from the shock,and after a few weeks her short life ended,and she was laid in the Cemetery.
Yet another time,goaded to desperation,she tried to take her life by hanging herself,but a neighbour came in and cut her down unconscious,but still living.She became a terror to all the neighbourhood,and her name was the bye-word for daring and desperate actions.But our Open-Air Meetings attracted her,she came to the Barracks,got saved,and was delivered from her love of drink and sin.
From being a dread her home became a sort of house of refuge in the little low street where she lived;other wives as unhappy as herself would come in for advice and help.Anyone knew that Barbie was changed,and loved to do all she could for her neighbours.
A few months ago she came up to the Captain's in great distress over a woman who lived just opposite.She had been cruelly kicked and cursed by her husband,who had finally bolted the door against her,and she had turned to Barbie as the only hope.And of course Barbie took her in,with her rough-and-ready kindness got her to bed,kept out the other women who crowded round to sympathise and declaim against the husband's brutality,was both nurse and doctor for the poor woman till her child was born and laid in the mother's arms.And then,to Barbie's distress,she could do no more,for the woman,not daring to be absent longer,got up as best she could,and crawled on hands and knees down the little steep steps,across the street,and back to her own door."But,Barbie!"exclaimed the Captain,horrified,"you should have nursed her,and kept her until she was strong enough."But Barbie answered by reminding the Captain of "John's"fearful temper,and how it might cost the woman her life to be absent from her home more than a couple of hours.
The second is the case of--
Maggie.--She had a home,but seldom was sober enough to reach it at nights.She would fall down on the doorsteps until found by some passer-by or a policeman.
In one of her mad freaks a boon-companion happened to offend her.
He was a little hunch-back,and a fellow-drunkard;but without a moment's hesitation,Maggie seized him and pushed him head-foremost down the old-fashioned wide sewer of the Scotch town.Had not some one seen his heel's kicking out and rescued him,he would surley have been suffocated.
One winter's night Maggie had been drinking heavily,fighting,too,as usual,and she staggered only as far,on her way home,as the narrow chain-pier.Here she stumbled and fell,and lay along on the snow,the blood oozing from her cuts,and her hair spread out in a tangled mass.
At 5in the morning,some factory girls,crossing the bridge to their work,came upon her,lying stiff and stark amidst the snow and darkness.
To rouse her from her drunken sleep was hard,but to raise her from the ground was still harder.The matted hair and blood had frozen fast to the earth,and Maggie was a prisoner.After trying to free her in different ways,and receiving as a reward volleys of abuse and bad language,one of the girl's ran for a kettle of boiling water,and by pouring it all around her,they succeeded by degrees in melting her on to her feet again!But she came to our Barracks,and got soundly converted,and the Captain was rewarded for nights and days of toil by seeing her a saved and sober woman.
