as time people bought them for decorations;
sometimes people gave the girl coppers, but did not take the flowers
from her. The police watched them very closely, as they required a
licence for selling, and if they took the girl out in the wet or dark
the police charged them.

It was very difficult to live at all, owing to police interference. The
girl did not go to school, but they had been warned that she must go;
they did not know what they should do when she could not help them.

Room 3. A strong man about thirty, his wife and two young children. The
remains of a meal upon the table, a jug of beer and a smell of tobacco.
The man looks at us, and a flash of recognition is exchanged. He had
been released from prison at 8.30 that morning after serving a sentence
of nine months for shop robbery.

We asked how much gratuity he had earned. Eight shillings, he told us.
His wife and children had met him at the prison gate; they had come
straight to that room, for which the wife had previously arranged;
they had paid a week in advance. "What was he going to do?" "He did not
know!" He did not appear to care, but he supposed he "must look round,
he would get the rent somehow." We felt that he spoke the truth, and
that he would "get the rent somehow" till the police again prevented
him.

We know that prison will again welcome him, and that the workhouse gates
will open to receive his wife and children, the number of which will
increase during his next detention in prison.

Room 4. Two females under thirty. No signs of occupation; they are not
communicative, neither are they rude, so we learn nothing from them
except that they were not Londoners.

Room 5. A family group, father, mother and four children; they had come
to Adullam Street because they had been ejected from their own home.
Their goods and chattels had been put on the street pavement, whence the
parish had removed them to the dust destructor, probably the best thing
to do with them.

The family were all unhealthy and unclean. The parents did not seem to
have either strength, grit or intelligence to fit them for any useful
life. But they could creep forth and beg, the woman could stand in the
gutter with a little bit of mortality wrapped in her old shawl, for
tender-hearted passers-by to see its wizened face, and the father could
stand not far away from her with a few bootlaces or matches exposed, as
if for sale. They managed to live somehow.

Room 6. An elder