[London’s Underworld by Thomas Holmes]@TWC D-Link book
London’s Underworld

CHAPTER II
12/23

Herein is a mystery: in the land of plenty, whose granaries, depots, warehouses are full to repletion, and whose countless ships are traversing every ocean, bringing the food and fruits of the earth to its shores, starvation is held to be a natural cause of death.
Here let me say, and at once, that the two widows referred to are but specimens of a very large company, and that from among my own acquaintances I can with a very short notice assemble one thousand women whose lives are as pitiful, whose food is as limited, whose burdens are as heavy, but whose hearts are as brave as those I have mentioned.
The more I know of these women and their circumstances, the more and still more I am amazed.

How they manage to live at all is a puzzle, but they do live, and hang on to life like grim death itself.

I believe I should long for death were I placed under similar conditions to those my underworld friends sustain without much complaining.
They have, of course, some interests in life, especially when the children are young, but for themselves they are largely content to be, to do, and to suffer.
Very simple and very limited are their ambitions; they are expressed in the wish that their children may rise somehow or other from the world below to the world above, where food is more plentiful and labour more remunerative.

But my admiration and love for the honest workers below the line are leading me to forget the inhabitants that are far removed from honesty, and to whom industry is a meaningless word.
There are many of them, and a mixed lot they are.

The deformed, the crippled and the half-witted abound.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books