Page:The elephant man and other reminiscences.djvu/116

104 proposing the health of his wife in a rapturous speech. It was the day of his life.

Next morning she told him the truth.

I asked her why she had not told him at once. She replied, "It was his half-holiday and I wished to give him just one more happy day."

The second episode belongs to the days of my youth when I was a house-surgeon. The affair was known in the hospital as "The Lamp Murder Case." It concerned a family of three—husband, wife and grown-up daughter. They lived in an ill-smelling slum in the most abject quarter of Whitechapel. The conditions under which this family existed were very evil, although not exceptional in the dark places of any town.

The husband was just a drunken loafer, vicious and brutal, and in his most fitting place when he was lying in the filth of the gutter. He had probably never done a day's work in his life. He lived on the earnings of his wife and daughter. They were seamstresses and those were the doleful days of "The Song of the Shirt." As the girl was delicate most of the work fell upon the mother. This wretched woman toiled day by day, from year's end to year's end, to keep this unholy family together. She had neither rest nor relaxation, never a gleam of joy nor a respite from