Jones's Alley

"Jones's Alley" is a short story by Australian writer Henry Lawson, first published in 1892. The narrative offers a vivid portrayal of life in a working-class neighborhood in Sydney, capturing the struggles and camaraderie of its residents. Through the lens of poverty and hardship, Lawson explores themes of friendship, community, and resilience, painting a poignant picture of the human experience. The story is marked by Lawson's characteristic use of humor and irony, highlighting the juxtaposition of despair and hope in the lives of ordinary people.

• Short story

								
She lived in Jones's Alley. She cleaned offices, washed, and nursed
from daylight until any time after dark, and filled in her spare time
cleaning her own place (which she always found dirty--in a “beastly
filthy state,” she called it--on account of the children being left in
possession all day), cooking, and nursing her own sick--for her family,
though small, was so in the two senses of the word, and sickly; one or
another of the children was always sick, but not through her fault.
She did her own, or rather the family washing, at home too, when she
couldn't do it by kind permission, or surreptitiously in connection with
that of her employers. She was a haggard woman. Her second husband was
supposed to be dead, and she, lived in dread of his daily resurrection.
Her eldest son was at large, but, not being yet sufficiently hardened in
misery, she dreaded his getting into trouble even more than his frequent
and interested appearances at home. She could buy off the son for a
shilling or two and a clean shirt and collar, but she couldn't purchase
the absence of the father at any price--he claimed what he called his
“conzugal rights” as well as his board, lodging, washing and beer. She
slaved for her children, and nag-nag-nagged them everlastingly, whether
they were in the right or in the wrong, but they were hardened to it and
took small notice. She had the spirit of a bullock. Her whole nature
was soured. She had those “worse troubles” which she couldn't tell to
anybody, but had to suffer in silence.

She also, in what she called her “spare time,” put new cuffs and
collar-bands on gentlemen's shirts. The gentlemen didn't live in Jones's
Alley--they boarded with a patroness of the haggard woman; they didn't
know their shirts were done there--had they known it, and known Jones's
Alley, one or two of them, who were medical students, might probably
have objected. The landlady charged them just twice as much for
repairing their shirts as she paid the haggard woman, who, therefore,
being unable to buy the cuffs and collar-bands ready-made for sewing on,
had no lack of employment with which to fill in her spare time.

Therefore, she was a “respectable woman,” and was known in Jones's Alley
as “Misses” Aspinall, and called so generally, and even by Mother Brock,
who kept “that place” opposite. There is implied a world of difference
between the “Mother” and the “Misses,” as applied to matrons in Jones's
Alley; and this distinction was about the only thing--always excepting
the everlasting “children”--that the haggard woman had left to care
about, to take a selfish, narrow-minded sort of pleasure in--if, indeed,
she could yet take pleasure, grim or otherwise, in anything except,
perhaps, a good cup of tea and time to drink it in.

Times were hard with Mrs Aspinall. Two coppers and two half-pence in
her purse were threepence to her now, and the absence of one of the
half-pence made a difference to her, especially in Paddy's market--that
eloquent advertisement of a young city's sin and poverty and rotten
wealth--on Saturday night. She counted the coppers as anxiously and
nervously as a thirsty dead-beat does. And her house was “falling down
on her” and her troubles, and she couldn't get the landlord to do a
“han'stern” to it.

At last, after persistent agitation on her part (but not before a
portion of the plastered ceiling had fallen and severely injured one
of her children) the landlord caused two men to be sent to “effect
necessary repairs” to the three square, dingy, plastered holes--called
“three rooms and a kitchen”--for the privilege of living in which, and
calling it “my place,” she paid ten shillings a week.

Previously the agent, as soon as he had received the rent and signed the
receipt, would cut short her reiterated complaints--which he privately
called her “clack”--by saying that he'd see to it, he'd speak to the
landlord; and, later on, that he had spoken to him, or could do
nothing more in the matter--that it wasn't his business. Neither it was,
to do the agent justice. It was his business to collect the rent, and
thereby earn the means of paying his own. He had to keep a family on
his own account, by assisting the Fat Man to keep his at the expense of
people--especially widows with large families, or women, in the case
of Jones's Alley--who couldn't afford it without being half-starved, or
running greater and unspeakable risks which “society” is not supposed to
know anything about.

So the agent was right, according to his lights. The landlord had
recently turned out a family who had occupied one of his houses for
fifteen years, because they were six weeks in arrears. He let them take
their furniture, and explained: “I wouldn't have been so lenient with
them only they were such old tenants of mine.” So the landlord was
always in the right according to his lights.

But the agent naturally wished to earn his living as peacefully and
as comfortably as possible, so, when the accident occurred, he put the
matter so persistently and strongly before the landlord that he said at
last: “Well, tell her to go to White, the contractor, and he'll send a
man to do what's to be done; and don't bother me any more.”

White had a look at the place, and sent a plasterer, a carpenter, and a
plumber. The plasterer knocked a bigger hole in the ceiling and filled
it with mud; the carpenter nailed a board over the hole in the floor;
the plumber stopped the leak in the kitchen, and made three new ones in
worse places; and their boss sent the bill to Mrs Aspinall.

She went to the contractor's yard, and explained that the landlord was
responsible for the debt, not she. The contractor explained that he had
seen the landlord, who referred him to her. She called at the landlord's
private house, and was referred through a servant to the agent. The
agent was sympathetic, but could do nothing in the matter--it wasn't
his business; he also asked her to put herself in his place, which she
couldn't, not being any more reasonable than such women are in such
cases. She let things drift, being powerless to prevent them from doing
so; and the contractor sent another bill, then a debt collector and
then another bill, then the collector again, and threatened to take
proceedings, and finally took them. To make matters worse, she was two
weeks in arrears with the rent, and the wood-and-coalman's man (she
had dealt with them for ten years) was pushing her, as also were her
grocers, with whom she had dealt for fifteen years and never owed a
penny before.

She waylaid the landlord, and he told her shortly that he couldn't build
houses and give them away, and keep them in repair afterwards.

She sought for sympathy and found it, but mostly in the wrong places. It
was comforting, but unprofitable. Mrs Next-door sympathized warmly,
and offered to go up as a witness--she had another landlord. The agent
sympathized wearily, but not in the presence of witnesses--he wanted
her to put herself in his place. Mother Brock, indeed, offered practical

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