Note 310 — Chapter XII

Whilst writing these pages the author read the following narrative in the “Liverpool Daily Post,” April 25, 1878, which illustrates the condition of the poor in some of the lowest parts of that town:—

“On Tuesday afternoon the attention of a constable was drawn to the not very unusual phenomenon of a drunken man and woman in Johnstone Street. The woman had a child in her arms. It was taken from her, and found to be in a shockingly diseased and neglected state. The constable afterwards visited the ‘home’ of the inebriates. The sole piece of furniture was an old table. In the top room the woman’s father was lying on the bare boards, without a vestige of clothing upon him, and covered only by an old rug. In another part of the house was an aunt, who was much the worse for drink. Around her were three young children. There was not a particle of food in the whole place, and when the children were given some buns to eat, they devoured them savagely. Drunken parents reeling in the street with an unhealthy and neglected baby; a house in a court, with only an old table in it; an old man lying on the bare boards, with simply a rug for clothing or covering; a tipsy aunt, and three hungry, dirty children around her, make up a picture which would be considered unusually terrible if the scene were laid in the hut of a savage, and which is certainly a bitter satire on nineteenth century civilisation. The father and mother were brought up at the Police Court yesterday, and remanded; and the court ordered that the children should be removed forthwith to the workhouse.”