His habit
was to spend the money of an insurance company by which he was
employed, in taking out the young lady to whom he was engaged, to such
entertainments. Ultimately, of course, he was found out, and, when
starving on the road, determined to commit suicide. The Salvationists
found him in the nick of time, and now he is foreman of their
paper-collecting yard.
Another, at the ripe age of twenty-four, had been twenty-seven times
in prison. His father was in prison, his eldest brother committed
suicide in prison by throwing himself over the banisters. Also, he had
two brothers at present undergoing penal servitude, who, when he was a
little fellow, used to pass him through windows to open doors in
houses which they were burgling.
I suggested that it was a poor game and that he had better give it up.
He answered:--'I shall never do it again, sir, God helping me.'
Really I think he meant what he said.
Another, in the Chepstow Street Shelter, where he acted as
night-watchman, was discharged from Portland, after serving a fifteen
years' sentence for manslaughter.
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