of revulsion.

But there is the Employers' Liability Act! Yes, I admit it, and a
blessed Act it is. But the financial consideration given for a lost limb
or a ruined body is not a fortune; it soon evaporates, then heigho! for
the underworld, for bitterness and craft.

But all accidents do not come within the scope of that Act, not by any
means. If a married woman about to become a mother falls or rolls
down the stairs, when climbing to her home in the seventh heaven of
Block-land, if she sustains long injuries, who compensates her? If the
child is born a monstrosity, though not an idiot, who compensates for
that? If the poor must be located near the sky, how is it that "lifts"
cannot be provided for them? Who can tell the amount of maimed child,
middle-aged and elderly life that has resulted from the greasy stairs
and dark landings of London dwellings. Industrial life, commercial life
and social life take a rare toll of flesh and blood from the poor. For
this civilisation makes no provision excepting temporary sustentation in
hospitals, workhouses or prisons. Even our prison commissioners tell us
that "our prisons are largely filled with the very poor, the ignorant,
the feeble, the incapable and the incapacitated."

It would appear that if we can make no other provision for the disabled,
we can make them fast in prison for a time. But that time soon passes,
and their poor life is again resumed. But the disabled are not the only
suffering unfortunates in the netherworld who, needing our pity, receive
the tender mercies of prison. For there epileptics abide or roam in
all the horror of their lives "oft-times in water and oft-times in
the fire," a burden to themselves, a danger to others. Shut out from
industrial life and shut out from social life. Refused lodgings here
and refused lodgings there. Sometimes anticipating fits, sometimes
recovering from fits; sometimes in a semi-conscious state, sometimes in
a state of madness. Never knowing what may happen to them, never knowing
what they may do to others. Always suffering, always hopeless! Treated
as criminals till their deeds are fatal, then certified to be "criminal
lunatics." Such is the life of the underworld epileptic. Life, did I
call it?--let me withdraw that word; it is the awful, protracted agony
of a living death, in which sanity struggles with madness, rending and
wounding a poor human frame. Happy are they when they die young! but
even epileptics live on and