Note 1 — Chapter V
Reading edition
In the Record, the official organ of the United Free Church of Scotland, there appeared in the August number, 1916, a letter written by a 'Special Constable' which gives a terrible word-picture of a slum family:
'Let me give a personal experience of one of the multitude of family tragedies directly due to drink which come under my notice. A family of eight persons—four of them adults—occupied a single room in a slum area.
'The eldest son, aged twenty-one years, was in the last stage of consumption, and occupied the only bed in the room. On visiting the house one morning, I found the lad lying on the floor, in a corner. He had required to vacate the bed for his mother, and during the night there had been born into these surroundings another of those immortal souls who, in the words of Kingsley, "are damned from their birth."
'The following day the mother was sitting at the fireside, and was never back in bed till the son died some days later. It is hardly necessary to add that the mother, the infant, and another girl followed him at short intervals. On the day of the mother's funeral the husband got drunk and had to be locked up—the twentieth-century method of remedying evils of this kind.'