The People of the Abyss

"The People of the Abyss" by Jack London, published in 1903, is a work of investigative journalism in which London documents the extreme poverty and harsh living conditions in the East End of London during the early 20th century.

• Journals
• Non-Fiction

								
PREFACE


The experiences related in this volume fell to me in the summer of
1902. I went down into the under-world of London with an attitude of
mind which I may best liken to that of the explorer. I was open to be
convinced by the evidence of my eyes, rather than by the teachings of
those who had not seen, or by the words of those who had seen and gone
before. Further, I took with me certain simple criteria with which to
measure the life of the under-world. That which made for more life, for
physical and spiritual health, was good; that which made for less life,
which hurt, and dwarfed, and distorted life, was bad.

It will be readily apparent to the reader that I saw much that was bad.
Yet it must not be forgotten that the time of which I write was
considered “good times” in England. The starvation and lack of shelter
I encountered constituted a chronic condition of misery which is never
wiped out, even in the periods of greatest prosperity.

Following the summer in question came a hard winter. Great numbers of
the unemployed formed into processions, as many as a dozen at a time,
and daily marched through the streets of London crying for bread. Mr.
Justin McCarthy, writing in the month of January 1903, to the New York
Independent, briefly epitomises the situation as follows:—

“The workhouses have no space left in which to pack the starving crowds
who are craving every day and night at their doors for food and
shelter. All the charitable institutions have exhausted their means in
trying to raise supplies of food for the famishing residents of the
garrets and cellars of London lanes and alleys. The quarters of the
Salvation Army in various parts of London are nightly besieged by hosts
of the unemployed and the hungry for whom neither shelter nor the means
of sustenance can be provided.”

It has been urged that the criticism I have passed on things as they
are in England is too pessimistic. I must say, in extenuation, that of
optimists I am the most optimistic. But I measure manhood less by
political aggregations than by individuals. Society grows, while
political machines rack to pieces and become “scrap.” For the English,
so far as manhood and womanhood and health and happiness go, I see a
broad and smiling future. But for a great deal of the political
machinery, which at present mismanages for them, I see nothing else
than the scrap heap.

JACK LONDON.


PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA.




CHAPTER I.
THE DESCENT


“But you can’t do it, you know,” friends said, to whom I applied for
assistance in the matter of sinking myself down into the East End of
London. “You had better see the police for a guide,” they added, on
second thought, painfully endeavouring to adjust themselves to the
psychological processes of a madman who had come to them with better
credentials than brains.

“But I don’t want to see the police,” I protested. “What I wish to do
is to go down into the East End and see things for myself. I wish to
know how those people are living there, and why they are living there,
and what they are living for. In short, I am going to live there
myself.”

“You don’t want to live down there!” everybody said, with
disapprobation writ large upon their faces. “Why, it is said there are
places where a man’s life isn’t worth tu’pence.”

“The very places I wish to see,” I broke in.

“But you can’t, you know,” was the unfailing rejoinder.

“Which is not what I came to see you about,” I answered brusquely,
somewhat nettled by their incomprehension. “I am a stranger here, and I
want you to tell me what you know of the East End, in order that I may
have something to start on.”

“But we know nothing of the East End. It is over there, somewhere.” And
they waved their hands vaguely in the direction where the sun on rare
occasions may be seen to rise.

“Then I shall go to Cook’s,” I announced.

“Oh yes,” they said, with relief. “Cook’s will be sure to know.”

But O Cook, O Thomas Cook & Son, path-finders and trail-clearers,
living sign-posts to all the world, and bestowers of first aid to
bewildered travellers—unhesitatingly and instantly, with ease and
celerity, could you send me to Darkest Africa or Innermost Thibet, but
to the East End of London, barely a stone’s throw distant from Ludgate
Circus, you know not the way!

“You can’t do it, you know,” said the human emporium of routes and
fares at Cook’s Cheapside branch. “It is so—hem—so unusual.”

“Consult the police,” he concluded authoritatively, when I had
persisted. “We are not accustomed to taking travellers to the East End;
we receive no call to take them there, and we know nothing whatsoever
about the place at all.”

“Never mind that,” I interposed, to save myself from being swept out of
the office by his flood of negations. “Here’s something you can do for
me. I wish you to understand in advance what I intend doing, so that in
case of trouble you may be able to identify me.”

“Ah, I see! should you be murdered, we would be in position to identify
the corpse.”

He said it so cheerfully and cold-bloodedly that on the instant I saw
my stark and mutilated cadaver stretched upon a slab where cool waters
trickle ceaselessly, and him I saw bending over and sadly and patiently
identifying it as the body of the insane American who would see the
East End.

“No, no,” I answered; “merely to identify me in case I get into a
scrape with the ’bobbies.’” This last I said with a thrill; truly, I
was gripping hold of the vernacular.

“That,” he said, “is a matter for the consideration of the Chief
Office.”

“It is so unprecedented, you know,” he added apologetically.

The man at the Chief Office hemmed and hawed. “We make it a rule,” he
explained, “to give no information concerning our clients.”

“But in this case,” I urged, “it is the client who requests you to give
the information concerning himself.”

Again he hemmed and hawed.

“Of course,” I hastily anticipated, “I know it is unprecedented, but—”

“As I was about to remark,” he went on steadily, “it is unprecedented,
and I don’t think we can do anything for you.”

However, I departed with the address of a detective who lived in the
East End, and took my way to the American consul-general. And here, at
last, I found a man with whom I could “do business.” There was no
hemming and hawing, no lifted brows, open incredulity, or blank
amazement. In one minute I explained myself and my project, which he
accepted as a matter of course. In the second minute he asked my age,
height, and weight, and looked me over. And in the third minute, as we
shook hands at parting, he said: “All right, Jack. I’ll remember you
and keep track.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Having burnt my ships behind me, I was now
free to plunge into that human wilderness of which nobody seemed to
know anything. But at once I encountered a new difficulty in the shape
of my cabby, a grey-whiskered and eminently decorous personage who had

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