I almost fancied that I could see the haggard face staring up
at me through the slimy water; but no, it was as opaque as stone.
I shuddered and went in again, to see slatternly gin-smelling women
stripping off their clothes--true women even there--to cover the poor naked
corpses; and pointing to the bruises which told a tale of long tyranny
and cruelty; and mingling their lamentations with stories of shrieks and
beating, and children locked up for hours to starve; and the men looked on
sullenly, as if they too were guilty, or rushed out to relieve themselves
by helping to find the drowned body. Ugh! it was the very mouth of hell,
that room. And in the midst of all the rout, the relieving officer stood
impassive, jotting down scraps of information, and warning us to appear the
next day, to state what we knew before the magistrates. Needless hypocrisy
of law! Too careless to save the woman and children from brutal tyranny,
nakedness, starvation!--Too superstitious to offend its idol of vested
interests, by protecting the poor man against his tyrants, the house-owning
shopkeepers under whose greed the dwellings of the poor become nests of
filth and pestilence, drunkenness and degradation.
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