_(All rights reserved.)_ TO MY SON C. R. W. NEVINSON PREFACE These sketches have been published in various papers during the last thirteen years. Many of the characters are life portraits, and the wit and wisdom of the common people have been faithfully recorded in a true Boswellian spirit; others are _Wahrheit und Dichtung_ (if one may still quote Goethe), but all have been suggested by actual fact and experience. During the last ten years great reforms have been taking place in the country. In 1908 the Old Age Pensions Act came into force, and the weekly miracle of 5s. a week (now 7s. 6d.) changed the world for the aged, giving them the liberty and independence, which ought to be the right of every decent citizen in the evening of life. The order by which a pauper husband had the right to detain his wife in the workhouse by "his marital authority" is now repealed. A case some years ago of this abominable breach of the law of Habeas Corpus startled the country, especially the ratepayers, and even the House of Commons were amazed at their own laws. The order was withdrawn in 1913 on the precedent of the judgment given in the case of the Queen _v._ Jackson (1891), when it was decided "that the husband has no right, where his wife refuses to live with him, to take her person by force and restrain her of her liberty" (60 L. J. Q. B. 346). Many humane reforms and regulations for the classification of inmates were made in 1913, and the obnoxious words "pauper" and "workhouse" have been abolished; but before the authorities rightly grasped the changes the war was upon us, the workhouses were commandeered as military hospitals, the inmates sent into other institutions, and all reforms lapsed in overcrowded and understaffed buildings. Once again the Poor Law is in the melting-pot, and it seems as if now it will pass into the limbo of the past with other old, unhappy far-off things. CONTENTS PAGE EUNICE SMITH--DRUNK 13 DETAINED BY MARITAL AUTHORITY 21 A WELSH SAILOR 27 THE VOW 33 BLIND AND DEAF 39 "AND, BEHOLD, THE BABE WEPT" 47 "MARY, MARY, PITY WOMEN!" 53 THE SUICIDE 61 PUBLICANS AND HARLOTS 68 OLD INKY 75 A DAUGHTER OF THE STATE 80 IN THE PHTHISIS WARD 85 AN IRISH CATHOLIC 91 AN OBSCURE CONVERSATIONIST 97 MOTHERS 104 "YOUR SON'S YOUR SON" 110 "TOO OLD AT FORTY" 115 IN THE LUNATIC ASYLUM 118 THE SWEEP'S LEGACY 126 AN ALIEN 130 "WIDOWS INDEED!" 134 THE RUNAWAY 138 "A GIRL! GOD HELP HER!" 145