Shadwell we have only
more seamen or less seamen. Summer is a spell of stickiness and Winter a
time of fog. Season of flower and awakening be blowed! I'll have the
same again!

This is a book of adventures in and about London: not a sociological
pamphlet; but I do seriously feel that if I am writing on the subject at
all, I may as well write the complete truth. I have heard, often, in
this macabre street, the most piercing of all sounds that the London
night can hold: a child's scream. The sound of a voice in pain or terror
is horrible enough anywhere at night; it is twenty times worse in this
district, when the voice is a child's. I want, very badly, to tell the
story I refrained from telling. I want to tell it because it is true,
because it ought to be told, and because it might shake you into some
kind of action, which newspaper reports would never do. Yet I know
perfectly well that if I did tell it, this book would be condemned as
unclean, and I as a pornographist, if not something worse. So let our
fatuous charity-mongers continue to supply Flannel Underclothing for the
Daughters of Christian Stevedores; let them continue to provide Good
Wholesome Meals for the Wifes of God-Fearing Draymen, and let them
connive by silence at those other unspeakable things.

The University men and the excellent virgins who carry out this kind of
patronage might do well to drop it for a while, and tell the plain truth
about the things which they must see in the course of their labours. If
you stand in Leicester Square, in the gayest quarter of the gayest city
in the world, after nightfall, indeed, long after theatres, bars, and
music-halls are closed, and their saucy lights extinguished, you will
see, on the south side, a single lamp glowing through the green of the
branches. That lamp is shining the whole night through. The door that it
lights is never closed day or night; it dare not close. Through the
leafy gloom of the Square it shines--a watchful eye regarding the
foulest blot on the civilization of England. It is the lamp of the
office of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children. This Society keeps five hundred workers incessantly busy, day
and night, preventing cruelty to little English children. Go in, and
listen to some of the stories that the inspectors can tell you. They can
tell you of appalling sufferings inflicted on children, of bruised
bodies and lacerated limbs and poisoned minds, not only in t