Chapter XV: Solemn Facts for Social Science

"ACCIDENTAL death," said the jury impanneled to inquire into the death of Swinden.

"But it ought to be added, 'while in a state of intoxication,'" said a listener to the evidence given on the inquest.

"Oh, yes, it may be put so, but where's the use? Will it hinder another drunkard from the same fate when he cannot direct his own movements?"

"I am afraid not," said the medical gentleman in attendance; "if warnings were of any use, we have them in abundance. This is the third violent death through drink that I have had to examine into this week, and it makes life seem one perpetual horror. In a case like this, the world hears the fact, and shudders; but draw the curtain, look behind the scenes, and one's disgust and indignation may expend themselves on another object, while a shade of pity for the wretch cut off in an instant through his mad folly may possibly arise."

"Look, there she is," said one of the jurymen who knew the neighbourhood pretty well.

And as he spoke, a woman passed quickly along, dragging by the hand a small, squalid, neglected-looking child. Every one shrank back to make way for her, and she stalked on, looking half fiend, half idiot, through a group of men whose sympathies would have naturally gathered round a bereaved widow and her children, but who drew back from the drunken wife who was partly responsible for her husband's fate.

"She knew his snare, and has been warned of the consequences, but she drank as shamefully as he did, and never had a fireside fit for him to sit down by. She left him to his own devices, well aware of narrow escapes before from the death he has met now. And, while neglecting all her duty to him, and home, and children, who is to acquit her of being the indirect cause of the accident?"

"But, you see, all this 'might' have happened to the drunken husband of a sober wife, and we are not legally able to recognise her in the matter."

"Very true; but, strictly speaking, such deaths are not accidental; they are something between murder and suicide. If he had been sober, he would not have been on the rails, and if he had possessed a good wife, and a peaceful home, he might have been sober. It is well to aim at the beer-shops, but they are not the only sources of the mischief."

The event, which had furnished sad subject of thought to the wise and good, and food for exciting gossip among the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, was of immense use to the widow herself. Lost as she was, by her own deliberate conduct, to all sense of womanly feeling and delicacy of mind, her husband's awful death was to her the seed of a great harvest. She was "the poor widow, whose drunken husband was killed on the railway." She was "left with a family wholly unprovided for, and had only her own exertions to look to for their support."

"Poor thing! As if it were not enough to have led her a life of misery, but he must shock her nearly to death by such an end!" commented one kind-hearted lady, as she tied up a bundle of clothing and sent it, with a present of money besides, to the widow's house.

While others, equally pitiful and generous, gave as their means allowed to this "case of destitution," without coming to see and inquire into it for themselves. It is singular that it seldom enters these gentle hearts to think that the sin and provocation in such "a case" may not have been all on one side.

So Mrs. Swinden towered above all her neighbours on the stilts of her misfortune and bereavement, put on her gifts of faded mourning, and sometimes with one child, sometimes two or three, presented herself at the houses of the gentry, and told her grievous story in her own lying fashion to servants, and mistresses and masters, wherever she could get a hearing, and often young ladies would come down and give from their little store, and servants would find an old garment in their box, and gather round to see the poor woman whose "case" was in all the newspapers.

"Lightly come, lightly go" is a true proverb. Money's worth is only known to those who work for it, and though there is fear of the snare on the other side, yet under any circumstances, those who work and save are infinitely more respectable than those who beg and spend. "If any man will not work, neither shall he eat," is a rule of the Holy Book, dictated by Him who knows what is in us.

Mrs. Swinden did no work, and she ate, or rather drank, as long as her gifts lasted. Then the bundles of clothing melted rapidly away, and articles that the givers only spared because they thought it a duty to help to clothe the naked and consider the poor, were soon piled on the shelves of the pawnshop, and the half-drunken mother would stagger home to throw her children a few pence to get bread for their craving hunger, while she lay down to sleep off the effects of her own indulgence.

The poor child whose brain had given way under the shock caused by the sudden view of its father's mutilated remains, had never been healthy, and for reasons best known to herself, Mrs. Swinden had made it a member of a burial society, and managed to maintain the usual deposit.

Her thoughts took a dreadful turn as she looked on the little pining creature, and felt the maddening power of the drunkard's thirst. And then the child pined more and shrank more; the coarse food she offered it would not digest, however greedily devoured at first, and there were easy ways of accounting for its illness. So its strength all went, and a little shadow of skin and bone quietly yielded up the breath of life, that a mother's loving care might have cherished into health and bloom, and made a strength and staff to her own old age.

She had watched, not to detain the lingering spark of its earthly existence, as watching mothers yearn to do as long as God permits, but in anxious hope of its quicker departure. And when at last the flicker ceased, and the chill of death had settled on the skeleton frame, she laid it out, and set up a great lamentation at the new "stroke" that had fallen upon her.

An unsuspecting doctor gave the necessary certificate, and the burial society paid the money demanded by a member's death; and again Mrs. Swinden was her own heroine.

The club money and the proceeds of begging expeditions were soon exhausted in such hands as Mrs. Swinden's, and again she cast about for means of replenishing her purse. What could she do? Work? Not if she could help it, certainly. Beg? The givers were tired just now, having been well taxed by the two deaths on which she had traded so successfully. Sell something? She looked round; there was nothing left to sell; the room contained little now but the children, and if any one would buy children, she would certainly have sold them. Steal? Ah, but how? From whom? Why, had she not a victim? Was there not somebody who dared not resist a demand if she chose to make it? The bright thought was worthy of her cause, and forthwith she set about it.

"Money I want, and money I must have," she said to herself. "They will trust me no longer, and I can't live without drink."

So she put her widow's bonnet over her straggling hair and unwashed face (she had preserved the bonnet because of the woeful tale it silently told), and drawing the old shawl, on which no pawnbroker would advance a penny, round her shoulders, she went out to pay a visit.

————————