e as pitiful--it is this: the
allowance of coal during the winter months for these heroic souls
was one half-hundredweight per week, fifty-six lb., which cost them
eightpence-halfpenny.

CHAPTER VIII. MARRIAGE IN THE UNDERWORLD

Young folk marry and are given in marriage at a very early age in the
underworld. Their own personal poverty and thousands of warning examples
are not sufficient to deter them. Strange to say, their own parents
encourage them, and, more strange still, upperworld people of education
and experience lend a willing hand in what is at the best a deplorable
business.

Under their conditions it is perhaps difficult to say what other
course can or ought to be taken, for their homes are like beehives,
and "swarming" time inevitably comes. That oftentimes comes when young
people of either sex are midway in their "teens." The cramped little
rooms or room that barely sufficed for the parents and small children
are altogether out of the question when the children become adolescent.
The income of the family is not sufficient to allow the parents, even
if they were desirous of doing so, taking larger premises with an extra
bedroom. Very few parents brace themselves to this endeavour, for it
means not only effort but expense. So the young folks swarm either to
lodgings, or to marriage, and the pretence of home life.

Private lodgings for girls are dangerous and expensive, while public
lodgings for youths are probably a shade worse. So marriage it is, and
boys of nineteen unite with girls one or two years younger.

I have no doubt that the future looks very rosy to the young couple
whose united earnings may amount to as much as thirty shillings weekly,
for it is an axiom of the poor that two can live cheaper than one.

It is so easy to pay a deposit on a single room, and so easy, so very
easy, to purchase furniture on the hire system. Does not the youth give
his mother ten shillings weekly? Why not give it to a wife? Does not the
girl contribute to her mother's exchequer? Why may not she become a wife
and spend her own earnings? Both are heartily sick of their present home
life, any change must be for the better! So marriage it is! But they
have saved nothing, they are practically penniless beyond the current
week's wages. Never mind, they can get their wedding outfit on the pay
weekly rule, the parson will marry them for nothing. "Here's a church,
let's go in and get married." Christmas, Easter or Ban