ife, was evidently the incubus of the wretched home. "Almost before
the breath was out of his mother, that boy was searching about the bed
to see if he could find any ha'pence," said Honora. That boy was
evidently not satisfactory. His evidence was refused by the Coroner,
because he could not read or write. But then what had been the child's
surroundings? They have been described above. The man himself had a
patriarchal family of seven, from a girl of seventeen down to a baby of
two, and all, as we have seen, slept in one room, though there were two,
and though a bucket of whitewash would have made the pair habitable,
besides giving the lad some useful employment.

The father was of no particular occupation, picking up odd jobs, and
leaning largely to the shrimp trade. He stood high in Honora Bristow's
regards as having regularly paid his _1s. 9d._ a week for five years,
or, at least, being some _5s._ behind now; a sum which will probably be
covered by the chattels in the back garden. The poor home was silent
then. The mother lay calmly in the dead-house, after the post-mortem
examination, "terrible cut and hacked about," said the one gossip who
had ventured to go and see her quondam friend. The father was in
Maidstone Gaol. The little children were being taken care of by the
grandmother until such time as the mother should have been buried, when
they would gravitate to the workhouse.

In the meantime the boy, aet. twelve, the cause of all the mischief,
disports himself in Munyard's Row as though nothing had happened.
Perhaps he is the most difficult part of the problem; but the whole
question of the home is a puzzling one. The boy is evidently the product
of the home. It very much concerns the community that such produce
should become extinct; and therefore the sooner some improvements can be
introduced into such homes the better. In the first place, there is
decidedly too little light. Sunshine, under any circumstances, would
have been impossible there. The advisability of human beings burrowing
underground may be questioned, whether in cellars or genteel underground
kitchens.

Then again, one bedroom--nay, one bedstead--for father, mother, and
seven children ranging from seventeen to two is decidedly deficient.
This sounds almost too horrible to be true; but I was careful to
ascertain that the eldest girl, though in domestic service in Greenwich,
slept at the "home." More horrible still is the fact disclosed, that