Not once in three months did he ever taste meat.

He never knew what it was to have his hunger thoroughly appeased.

And he claimed that this chronic starvation of his childhood had robbed him of his sight.

To support the claim, he quoted from the report of the Royal Commission on the Blind, "Blindness is more prevalent in poor districts, and poverty accelerates this dreadful affliction." But he went further, this blind man, and in his voice was the bitterness of an afflicted man to whom society did not give enough to eat.

He was one of an enormous army of blind in London, and he said that in the blind homes they did not receive half enough to eat.