Chapter I

"_WE PLACED HIM IN THE HOME PROVIDED BY US
FOR SUCH CASES._"

Robin having been thus early in life deprived of both his parents--of his mother by death, of his father by desertion--it became our duty to provide for him. He, being bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, must not be left to starve and die; we must start him in life with at least a fair chance of success; and being obliged to stand _in loco parentis_ to this baby, we placed him in the home provided by us for such cases. We gave of our money, that Robin and other orphans and permanently deserted children might be brought up, until the age of sixteen, in the workhouse.

We did not do this willingly. It is the first duty in life that parents should provide for their own children, and with this law we, as Britons, never like to interfere.

Accordingly, when the miserable baby was found on the steps of the workhouse, the first thing necessary was, if possible, to discover his parents; and, if possible, to hand him back to them. To aid us in this, the police were set on the track; the child was examined, any peculiarities with regard to his appearance noted down, and search instituted in various ways. Perhaps, however, with all our searching, nothing would have been found out but for a fact quite overlooked by Timbs.

In due time, in Blind Alley, Mrs. Timbs had to be buried, her death inquired into, and the missing baby asked for.

A baby of two days old missing in Blind Alley--a baby of two days old unaccounted for in the union at David's Row, Whitechapel: the link was complete, the police and the State triumphant. Timbs was outwitted; he had reckoned without his host; the unwelcome burden was to be returned upon his hands: but not only so; his offence was punishable, the law would punish him.

Timbs, wishing neither for the baby nor the punishment, again called his scattered wits to work; this time with better success. He absconded, deserting not only the baby, but the nine older children.

He was no great loss to any of them, and none of them, not even Molly and Patty, troubled themselves to look for him; they believed he had gone to America. For my part, I am glad to let his name drop out of Robin's story. I have never heard of him since.

By this act of Timbs he certainly managed to punish the State for not thankfully and without a murmur accepting his one child, for now several more had to be housed, fed, and trained in the way that they should go. On investigation, it was found quite impossible for Molly and Patty, working as diminutive "hands" at a factory from eight in the morning to half-past five in the evening, and earning respectively for this labour sixpence and sevenpence a day, to take care of any members of the family but themselves.

The little thieves were accordingly sent to reformatories, and the other children to Paul's Gate pauper school. For the present the baby, Robin, was to remain in the workhouse, at the door of which his father had placed him. He was to be put into the infirmary and taken care of by the pauper women, and if he proved a healthy child, at the age of two years he would be forwarded for the purposes of education to the school at Paul's Gate.

Thus far he was provided for.

In the investigation that followed the baby's arrival, there was found, pinned to his dirty pink frock, the identical coloured print of Robin Redbreast, after which the children had called him This print had been cut out of the book of birds, and fastened on the baby's dress on the sly, by Phil, for the purpose of annoying Patty; but the use of it now was, that when the chaplain came to baptize the child, he called him Robin; and this pretty name, joined to his pretty face, helped to make the child a favourite, even in so poor a place as the workhouse infirmary.

There were numbers of babies in all the wards of the workhouse infirmary--babies of poor deserted mothers, orphan babies, babies of the honest but half-starving poor, babies also--and there were many of these--of idle, drunken, and reckless parents, who looked upon the workhouse as a provident club, very useful for a day of need. The babies, as a rule, came and went with their mothers, the orphans and deserted children alone making a home of the workhouse infirmary.*

* George Hartley, author of "The Parish Net," says, that in England alone, 18,000 children are annually deserted and taken to the workhouses of the country.

It was not a cheerful place for a young life to open in--by no means a cheerful place; the spirits of pauperism and dependence were too much about, and the sick and dying were too near the little lives that should hardly know just yet what sickness and dying meant.

But though not a good place, by no means the place we would choose to bring up our own babies in, there might have been worse abodes for the dawning of life even than the workhouse infirmary. It was decidedly a good thing for Robin that his father had laid him down outside those stern-looking black doors, for what his life would have been brought up in Blind Alley, deprived of his mother, no words can say.

The other little Timbses, starved as they undoubtedly were, in their babyhood at least were caressed, and largely blessed with a whole wealth of mother love poured out upon them by the poor faithful heart now in its grave. But Robin would have been starved without the love, so the workhouse was a much better place for him. There at least he was clothed and fed, and in a measure, and after a fashion, well taken care of.

His life, begun thus smoothly, might have gone on to its fitting close. He might have gone through the usual career of a pauper child--in process of time joined his brothers and sisters at the pauper school at Paul's Gate; in process of time also, have been apprenticed to a trade, and have eventually turned out, with the thousands of paupers, badly--or again, with the thousands of paupers, well; for after all that has been said and written against them, the pauper schools train perhaps as well on the monster system, as any other schools on the monster system, all such systems being, however, directly contrary to nature, and therefore bad.