Part 3

Similar reports for following days.

At the end of the mission, when they left Portsmouth—where they were most lovingly helped by Salvation Army friends—some of these poor girls followed them to the station with grateful offerings of humble bouquets of flowers, wishing them God-speed. They quickly recognized those who really loved them.

My own relations with Rebecca are illustrated by the following letter, written by me to her at Portsmouth. I find it among her little treasures left behind with me:—

“THE CLOSE, “_May_.

“MY DEAREST REBECCA,—We have read with deep interest all your letters; and our hearts are following you with love and earnest prayer. I know the state of Portsmouth must make your heart sick with sorrow to see vice reigning unrebuked, and souls perishing unrescued. The town is so large; ‘the fields are white to the harvest, but the labourers are few.’ Don’t let yourself run short of _needful_ money, my dear, so long as you think you can usefully remain where you are; for I am sure our God will supply _me_ with the needful funds. I deeply sympathize with your wish to go and preach Jesus to your former acquaintances in London; but you must come back here first, dear Rebecca. The Cottage and the work do not seem at all the same thing when you are away. Give my dear love to Katie. I am so happy in thinking of you. Every blessing be with you.

“J. E. BUTLER.”

The following is an extract from one of her letters to my friend and secretary, Miss Humbert, about the same time:—

“My heart is set upon the Winchester work. You have led me on wonderfully in God’s service, which I never could have done without your help. We shall be at Winchester at 3.42. I have two girls, I think, coming; one a little girl of 14.[2] We are taking her from one of the worst streets here. There are three sisters. We have begged the mother to let them come home with us; but they will only let this one come. All three are living in sin. And we have another, I think, of 20 years of age. We believe we shall not come home empty-handed. Last night one of the poor girls brought me two lovely bunches of flowers and a nice geranium in a pot, and she says she will come to Winchester to me; but she has got to sell her house. I have a lot to tell you when I come home.”

Footnote 2:

In future Rescue Work of this kind, we must, _if Mr. Justice Lopes rightly interprets the law_, be on our guard to obtain the formal consent of the _father_ before any child is taken out of the life of sin. We have always believed the mother’s consent was enough.

As the summer went on, Rebecca expressed the feeling sometimes that some severe discipline was in store for her. She wrote in July to Miss Humbert:—

“I feel there is some trouble coming. I could wish now I had never left my home and undertaken this other affair. I love you all very much. Do you think it would be best to shut up the Cottage for a time? I have left them no money; for I had only 5s. If you will look at my books, I only owe the baker for the bread; he never brought his book. I wish I had you with me this afternoon to hear your loving words.

“Your grateful, rescued, “REBECCA.”

The Attorney-General made much of the idea he had conceived, which indeed has no foundation in fact—that Rebecca undertook the work she did for Mr. Stead, because she knew that her whole future depended on her doing it. “She knew,” declared the Attorney-General, “that she would lose her position with Mrs. Butler;” her future with Mr. Stead would be damaged; her whole prospects in life ruined—unless she did this thing. In this, as in many other assertions, Sir R. E. Webster is absolutely wrong. Rebecca had nothing either to gain or to lose by undertaking the work of Mr. Stead. The pressure put upon her was far from being what the Attorney-General asserted it to be. I said in my evidence in the Court (but it was not reported in any newspaper) that Rebecca had lived sufficiently long with me to have learned to share my convictions and wishes concerning the mass of criminal vice existing in London and other places.

Many a conversation have we had together in my own room or elsewhere on this subject; and in our prayers together we have asked God to let in the light upon this mass of wickedness, hitherto carefully shrouded by the conspirators of greed and lust. She had wept before me over the sufferings of the children; and when it was told her that Mr. Stead was about to take some desperate action to draw the veil aside and overcome the worst obstacle we had found opposed to us in the last fifteen years—namely, the incredulity of good people as to the existence of these crimes—she was ready to do her little best to help in the great work. We were as sisters together, not “employer and employed”—as reiterated by the Attorney-General and the Judge. She never received one penny of pay from me, nor from any one here, nor from Mr. Stead. I placed her here in the humble cottage, and gave her work to do; when her boots or her gown were worn out I may have supplied her with some of my own old clothing, as she always wished to have a neat appearance: and I can testify to the fact that the comforts and adornments of the cottage were of a very humble description; the food was very plain, and the economy exercised by Rebecca was severe. I have all her little account-books before me as I write; and it is touching to me to mark her strict conscientiousness over every penny spent, and her plans for saving, even perhaps to the disadvantage of herself and her girls, as much as possible.

She had nothing to lose or gain by undertaking the work for Mr. Stead, which proved to be too hard for her. I had her with me for several hours previous to her going to London, and we talked the matter fully over: we asked God to guide us; and to this hour I believe He did guide us, in spite of our mistakes. If Rebecca had said, on leaving the room that day, “Mrs. Butler, I cannot undertake this work,” I should have replied, “All right, dear Rebecca, don’t attempt it. Go back to your work at the Cottage.” She would not have incurred one moment’s displeasure from me; and she knew it.

I here interpose a remark. It may be asked, What induced me to unite with Mr. Stead in making use of so poor an instrument, so young a convert, and one with so terrible a past history, for the difficult work for which we engaged her? To this I reply that Mr. Stead needed for his purpose an “ex-brothel-keeper:” that was the character he told me he must have. He had tried several, who professed more or less of sincerity. They each at the very outset got drunk, and made off with the needful money he gave them to carry out his directions. Supposing that you who ask the question wanted for an end—which certainly was a holy, though a desperate one—such a character as this, where would you turn? Is such a person easy to find for such a work? Is it usual to find one who would have combined anything like a wish to serve a good cause with the experience of a disreputable past? It must be obvious to you how difficult it was to find the person wanted.

I do not wish to make any excuse for my own share in the hardihood and imprudence to which I am ready to confess, and of which I was guilty in asking Rebecca to undertake this difficult work; but in an exceptional enterprise we were forced to use exceptional means; and I can echo the words of Mr. Stead, that even our mistakes and want of wisdom have been, and will be, overruled for the success of the great cause we have at heart.

Supposing we had seen a house in flames, and we knew that in that house were shut up a number of little children who must perish unless the doors were broken open. The doors are barred: no entrance can be effected except by a violent blow. We seize the first instrument we find to our hand in the attempt to break open the door; but the instrument is too feeble, and breaks in our hands. Will you blame us because of that fact?—or will you not rather remember that one thought alone was present to our minds; and that was the horrible fate that awaited those children, and that our hearts were filled with the one absorbing desire to save them?

Rebecca continued her Mission work in Winchester with success, after the incident of the procuring of Eliza Armstrong, up to the 11th July, when she left Winchester.

Much was said in the Court about the letter written by Rebecca to Broughton on the 10th of June. It seems to have perplexed many people: to me it was quite clear. My own friends at least will accept, as worthy of credit, what I have to say concerning this; though I expect nothing but derision from the cynics who posed during the Trial in pretended astonishment over the hypocrisy of the woman who professed a desire for the real good of a person who had sold her child.

I had followed Rebecca’s inmost thoughts and mind during all this period. She felt that in acting the part imposed upon her, she had, perhaps, done an unkind thing. Day after day her yearning after little Eliza became more intense. I said to her on one occasion, “You seem to have an extraordinary love for that child; how is it?”

She replied, “The child and I have gone through so much together—through such strange scenes: and I do long to have her with me, to act straight towards her and her poor mother, and to show them what I really am, and what I feel towards them.”

I can attest that, beyond all doubt, poor Rebecca dwelt night and day upon the thought of making the whole story “end well.” She built a sort of castle in the air, in which she continually dwelt. Her plan—her dream—was as follows: To get the child from Paris; to have her with us here to train and teach her; then a little later to take her herself to Charles Street, London, to present her to her mother and father, and to Mrs. Broughton, and to make use of her own position towards her—as well as the child’s well-being—to convince these poor people that she (Rebecca) was indeed a changed character; and try to show them that, low and sinful as she knew them to be, the same Saviour who had changed her could change them, and enable them to live new lives.

We spoke together of a plan of inviting Mrs. Armstrong to come and stay a few days at the Cottage. We would, Rebecca hoped, induce her to give up the drink; and we would show her the happy life of those who had really turned from their sins, and were serving God.

The end in view, in writing this letter and the subsequent postcards, was the _conversion_ of these poor souls. Yes, in spite of all that the Judge, the Attorney-General, the London Press, and ten thousand cynics may say, this was the real and true feeling and purpose of Rebecca’s heart. There are others, besides myself, who can testify to it.

The Attorney-General suggested that I am a weak and amiable person, who could be made to believe anything by any poor wretch who chooses to “pose” before me as a “Magdalen.” I have had a life-long experience of the most unhappy of my own sex; compared with which the experience of the gentlemen in the Court—even the most advanced in life—is that of mere children. I cannot therefore be surprised at their crude judgments in the matter. Some of them expressed wonder at Rebecca having a single kindly thought toward Mrs. Armstrong. How little do they know of human nature, in its conflicts, and wrestlings to free itself from sin, in its flashes of generosity and high feeling, even in its worst estate! Men of the world are wise, no doubt, in their generation; but often blind to much which concerns the spiritual world and the deepest life of the human soul. My astonishment was great, as I sat in that Court, at their own confession of their deep ignorance of human nature.

That letter of the 10th June, then, clumsily (for Rebecca is clumsy in all her ways and words) expressed the desire of the writer to prepare the way for the interview with Mrs. Armstrong and Mrs. Broughton, which was to be the beginning of a new chapter in the story; and the beginning, she hoped, of blessing to their souls. No opportunity was given me in the Court of throwing any light on this part—or any part—of her actions, although I was known to be her most intimate friend; and we were told, _ad nauseam_, that the question of “motive” could not be in any way admitted.

What I here state is confirmed by the letters written later by Rebecca to Mrs. Bramwell Booth, in which were the following expressions:—“Her conscience reproached her,” she said, “for leaving the child alone among a lot of foreigners.” “I am a mother myself, and have a mother’s heart. I loved this little one as a mother does.” And the little one loved her; and would have been well cared for if she had been left in Rebecca’s hands.

I do not here enter into the details of the alleged “abduction” process, of which we have heard enough and more than enough of contradictory statements and conflicting views.

Among the incidents connected with the Old Bailey, I will just mention, however, a conversation I had with Mrs. Bramwell Booth at the close of one of the most painful days in Court. I quote only from memory: her words were true and wise words.

Leaning sadly against a window, looking out on the Court, she said to me: “Oh, Mrs. Butler, how little do these men know of the lives of the _very poor_! How little do they understand what it is for a poor creature to free himself or herself from vicious surroundings and the wretched past! and how little do they know of God’s patient dealing with such souls struggling out of darkness to light!”

“Our heathen in England,” I replied, “are in the position of the heathen converts to whom St. Paul wrote as ‘dearly beloved in the Lord,’ and ‘called to be saints.’ Yet shortly afterwards he has to instruct these same people in the first principles of morality. ‘Let him that stole steal no more.’ Men must be honest, and work, and not live by rapine. He has to rebuke them both for vices and crimes, such as incest, and for drunkenness while partaking of the sacrament.”

“No,” she answered: “our highly-placed, worldly-wise gentlemen have no real experience of the ignorant, wretched populations of heathen England; else they would know that even when the heart of one of these is thoroughly turned to God, perfectly sincere, and meaning to lead a new life, the conscience still is for long enough covered with the rust of past evil habits. They are strangers—absolute strangers—to the ethics of Christianity in which we, more happily placed, have been carefully trained from childhood. The conscience, even after conversion, has to be trained and polished, so to speak. To us a lie, or even the approach to prevarication, is a thing which we carefully avoid and condemn in ourselves. To them, accustomed to lie, cheat, swear, etc., during their whole lives, it is not so easy—even after the poor soul has come out into the light, and is filled with the joy of salvation—to shake off the habits of falsehood and prevarication. It is in vain to expect the full education of a trained Christian in such converts drawn from the slums.”

Mrs. Booth continued:—“I think they would judge differently of the sincerity of Rebecca, if they could have seen her as I have seen her in the first weeks after her rescue. I have stood over her and wiped the great drops of perspiration from her forehead, when for hours she has wrestled in a kind of death-grip with her old temptation—the love of strong drink. Once she had obtained a glass of spirits after some hours of depressing faintness and exhaustion through her self-imposed abstinence. With this standing before her, she prayed in an agony; I watched her, prayed with her, and pleaded for her; and she conquered, and thrust it from her. This may seem a little thing to persons who have never been slaves to drink; but it is not a small thing; it is a test of a real and desperate sincerity in one who has been a subject of that raging passion.”

The following little note was written to me by Rebecca in the Old Bailey, and passed along to me:—

“THE DOCK, “_November 7th._

“DEAR MRS. BUTLER,—I do thank you very much for your love and kindness to me during all this time of trouble; and more especially for your confidence in me after all the terrible things you have heard said of me by the Prosecution in this Court. I am not at all flinching from the punishment which will be put upon me. God will be with me in prison, and with all of us. What we did was done for a good end; and God will stand by us all. But think of me; pray for me. You know how unwilling I was to do all that; but I do not mind what people think of me. God knows all about it. Remember me very kindly to Canon Butler, and to all I know at Winchester—Miss Humbert, Mrs. Hillier, Mrs. Jones. My love and deepest gratitude to yourself and your sister, Mrs. Meuricoffre. God bless you.

“From your REBECCA.”

Canon Butler, to whom she alludes with affection, has often testified to his good opinion of her. He writes of her thus, in response to an application from a friend:—

“THE CLOSE, WINCHESTER, “_November, 1885_.

“I hear that Rebecca Jarrett is likely to suffer from prison treatment. I cannot refrain from expressing a hope that she maybe treated with all possible leniency during her imprisonment, for the following reasons:—

“(1.) She has suffered for some time from a weak hip, which frequently troubled her when she was at the House of Rest.

“(2.) Because, when she was at Winchester, her conduct was excellent, both as matron of a small cottage with several girls under her charge, and as an active agent in rescue work.

“(3.) Because, whatever may have been her faults, I believe her to be a sincere convert, and capable of being usefully employed for Christian work.

“GEORGE BUTLER, D.D., “_Canon of Winchester_.”

I brought Rebecca home with me on the night of the 7th, after the verdict. On Sunday, the 8th, we had a crowded meeting in our House of Rest, to express sympathy with her. Canon Butler spoke on Paul and Silas in prison, singing praises to God at the midnight hour. Rebecca said, after the meeting:

“Don’t trouble about me, kind friends; I don’t mind the prison. This is how I take it. I have been a great sinner in the past; and I take this going to prison as a chastisement for my past, and not for what I did for Mr. Stead, which I did with a good motive.”

When talking privately to Miss Humbert, she said, “I have been so tired and knocked about. I do feel I would like to be alone with God in the prison, even if it was for a year.”

I cannot help alluding, with gratitude, to the kindness and loyalty of several of the barristers in the Court—for the most part young men—and to their personal courtesy to us; to Mr. Read, who has twice been bail for Rebecca; and to other friends whom I might mention. I am sure that fortnight in the Old Bailey was an educating time to many.

Numerous great questions have been focussed in this bitter struggle; amongst others, the question of the gradual slipping away of some of our constitutional liberties, over which many of us have mourned for years. I made my protest publicly, seven years ago, against the withdrawal of the prisons of the country from local control, and the centralization of their management in the Home Office. I foresaw the tyranny which might henceforth be practised without hope of redress; for now, when an abuse arises, or a prisoner is cruelly treated, we can only appeal from the wrong-doer to the wrong-doer, from the tyrant to the tyrant; and we know by experience how little hope of justice we have when we appeal to the Government against the wrong-doing of its own officials.

Again, I protested publicly against the institution of the Public Prosecutor. I know that it is pleaded that there are occasions when such an institution is indispensable. It may be so; but I have observed for many years past on the Continent—and now the same observation is beginning to hold for England—that in cases where any question affecting morality or the action of reformers of abuses is involved, the Government, through its Public Prosecutor, almost invariably sides with the vicious against the virtuous—almost invariably acts in the interests of that portion of society which seeks to hide abuses by a conspiracy of silence, by which all hope of reform is barred. We cherish the hope that, in spite of the encroachment of principles foreign to the English sense of freedom, the sacred institution of Jury-trial will continue in its integrity, and that English Judges will continue to be impartial and just, as in our past history they have for the most part been.

I can scarcely exaggerate the shock it was to my feelings, as a humble watcher for many years for my poor country’s good, to hear that summing up of Mr. Justice Lopes on Saturday, Nov. 7th, and the tone in which he repeatedly impressed on the Jury that they had no alternative but to find a verdict of guilty against two of the accused. He had previously ruled out any question of the mother’s authority in disposing of her child, and based the question entirely on that of the father; and then, again and again, he reminded the Jury, that this being the case, and it being clear that the father’s consent had not been obtained, they, the Jury, could consequently pronounce but one verdict. Surely the country will be on its guard in future as to what may be expected whenever a Government prosecution is heard of in connection with any question of this nature vital to the moral life of the people.