Half the men and women of the lower orders who are imprisoned for various small offences, such as being drunk and incapable, assaulting each other, or committing petty larceny, are married and have families. Bachelors and spinsters are rare after a certain age in low neighbourhoods, and large families are invariably the result of early marriages, or that connection which, among the criminal classes and the lowest grade of labourers, does duty for the legally-solemnized institution. Many persons who wander into police-courts at the East-end, either for business or amusement, must be familiar with the poor woman, a baby in her arms, and her head strapped up with sticking-plaster and surgical bandages, who begs the magistrate not to punish the hulking fellow in the dock who has so brutally ill-used her. The woman knows, what the magistrate and the public ignore, that the three months' sentence means comfort and luxury to the man--misery and starvation to the woman and her little ones. He has probably been the chief bread-winner; the woman is incapacitated by his ill-treatment from doing any work, and so she and her children are suddenly rendered penniless and homeless. She must crawl back from the court to her miserable garret, and when her babies ask for food pawn her few rags to get it for them; and when all is pawned and gone, she cannot pay her nightly rent, so she must turn out with her little family into the streets or go into the workhouse. Such a case we heard as we looked into a police-court on our travels; and I shall not soon forget the agonized cry of the woman as the magistrate gave her husband six months, and congratulated her on being temporarily rid of such a ruffian. 'Great God, what will become of us now?' I see that many humane people are asking what can be done to alleviate the sufferings of the poor. I don't know whether there is any society which looks after the wives and children of malefactors, and lends them a helping hand, if they deserve it, to tide over the absence of their sole source of income; but if there is not, I fancy here is work for idle hands to do, and a source for charity that, worked with discrimination and care, might alleviate one of the crushing evils to which poor families are liable. But these people are not always friendless, and it is a case I wish to quote which has led me to touch upon the subject. In one wretched room we visited there were six little ones home at the mid-day hour from school. 'You have six children?' I said to the woman. 'No, sir, only four; these two little ones ain't mine--they are staying with us.' I imagined that they were the children of a relative, and questioned the woman further, wondering how she cared to crowd her little den with extra visitors, and then the story came out.