The little private doss-houses, as a rule, are unmitigated horrors.I have slept in them, and I know; but let me pass them by and confine myself to the bigger and better ones.Not far from Middlesex Street, Whitechapel, I entered such a house, a place inhabited almost entirely by working-men.The entrance was by way of a flight of steps descending from the sidewalk to what was properly the cellar of the building.Here were two large and gloomily lighted rooms, in which men cooked and ate.I had intended to do some cooking myself, but the smell of the place stole away my appetite, or, rather, wrested it from me; so I contented myself with watching other men cook and eat.
One workman, home from work, sat down opposite me at the rough wooden table, and began his meal.A handful of salt on the not over-clean table constituted his butter.Into it he dipped his bread, mouthful by mouthful, and washed it down with tea from a big mug.A piece of fish completed his bill of fare.He ate silently, looking neither to right nor left nor across at me.Here and there, at the various tables, other men were eating, just as silently.In the whole room there was hardly a note of conversation.A feeling of gloom pervaded the ill-lighted place.Many of them sat and brooded over the crumbs of their repast, and made me wonder, as Childe Roland wondered, what evil they had done that they should be punished so.
From the kitchen came the sounds of more genial life, and I ventured in to the range where the men were cooking.But the smell I had noticed on entering was stronger here, and a rising nausea drove me into the street for fresh air.
On my return I paid fivepence for a 'cabin,' took my receipt for the same in the form of a huge brass check, and went upstairs to the smoking-room.Here, a couple of small billiard tables and several checkerboards were being used by young working-men, who waited in relays for their turn at the games, while many men were sitting around, smoking, reading, and mending their clothes.The young men were hilarious, the old men were gloomy.In fact, there were two types of men, the cheerful and the sodden or blue, and age seemed to determine the classification.