t spoken. We have
heard of the City and of the West End--the City, where business men
work, and the West End, where rich people live; but there is also the
East End, lying beyond the City, and the people who live here are nearly
all poor. If you asked any of the children of the East End if they had
seen Madame Tussaud's or the Zoo, they would grin, and say, 'Garn!' and
if you told them about these things they might say, 'Ye're kiddin',
ye're,' which is their way of saying they don't believe you, and think
you are telling stories. In the streets where these children live
everything is dirty and nasty. A number of families live together in one
house, perhaps even in one room, for I have heard of rooms where each
family had a corner. The women never do anything more than they can
help. They never mend their old dresses, or wash themselves or their
children, or try to cook nicely; they do nothing. They spend the day
sitting on their dirty doorsteps, with the youngest baby on their knees,
and their hair is all uncombed, and their dresses are filthy and torn,
and they shout out to other women across the street, and make remarks on
anyone who happens to pass. The poor little baby gets dreadful things to
eat--things that you would think would kill an ordinary child--bits of
herring or apple, and anything else its mother eats, and sometimes even
sips of beer or gin. If it cries, it is joggled about or slapped, and as
soon as ever it is able to sit up, it is put down on the pavement among
a number of other dirty, untidy children and left to take care of
itself. When a little girl is seven she is thought quite old enough to
look after all the younger ones, and on Saturdays she goes off with
other little girls, pushing a rickety old perambulator or a wooden cart,
with perhaps two babies in it and several smaller children hanging on to
her skirt; and she goes down the foul street and on until she comes to a
tiny little bit of ground, where there are seats and some bushes and
hard paths, and this is a playground. But what do you think it really
has been? A graveyard, and there are still graves and big stones,
showing that people have been buried there long years ago. But the
children who play in it do not mind this at all; they sit on the graves,
and think that they are very lucky to get this place away from the
street. Then the poor little babies are left in their go-carts or
perambulators, very often in the sun, with their heads hang