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Ginx's Baby
Edward Jenkins

Ginx's Baby
Edward Jenkins
(1838-1910)

CONTENTS.
----
PART I. WHAT GINX DID WITH HIM.
I. Ab initio
II. Home, sweet Home!
III. Work and Ideas
IV. Digressive, and may be skipped without mutilating the History
V. Reasons and Resolves
VI. The Antagonism of Law and Necessity
VII. Malthus and Man
VIII. The Baby's First Translation

PART II. WHAT CHARITY AND THE CHURCHES DID WITH HIM.
I. The Milk of Human Kindness, Mother's Milk, and the Milk of
the Word
II. The Protestant Detectoral Association
III. The Sacrament of Baptism
IV. Law on Behalf of Gospel
V. Magistrate's Law
VI. Popery and Protestantism in the Queen's Bench
VII. A Protestor, but not a Protestant
VIII. "See how these Christians love one another"
IX. Good Samaritans, and Good-Samaritan Twopences
X. The Force--and a Specimen of its Weakness
XI. The Unity of the Spirit and the Bond of Peace
XII. No Funds--no Faith, no Works
XIII. In transitu

PART III. WHAT THE PARISH DID WITH HIM.
I. Parochial Knots--to be untied without Prejudice
II. A Board of Guardians
III. "The World is my Parish"
IV. Without Prejudice to any one but the Guardians
V. An Ungodly Jungle
VI. Parochial Benevolence--and another Translation

PART IV. WHAT THE CLUBS AND POLITICIANS DID WITH HIM.
I. Moved on
II. Club Ideas
III. A thorough-paced Reformer--if not a Revolutionary
IV. Very Broad Views
V. Party Tactics--and Political Obstructions to Social Reform
VI. Amateur Debating in a High Legislative Body

PART V. WHAT GINX'S BABY DID WITH HIMSELF.
The Last Chapter

PART I. WHAT GINX DID WITH HIM.
I.--Ab initio.
The name of the father of Ginx's Baby was Ginx. By a not
unexceptional coincidence, its mother was Mrs. Ginx. The gender
of Ginx's Baby was masculine.

On the day when our hero was born, Mr. and Mrs. Ginx were living
at Number Five, Rosemary Street, in the City of Westminster. The
being then and there brought into the world was not the only
human entity to which the title of "Ginx's Baby" was or had been
appropriate. Ginx had been married to Betsy Hicks at St. John's,
Westminster, on the twenty-fifth day of October, 18--, as appears
from the "marriage lines" retained by Betsy Ginx, and carefully
collated by me with the original register. Our hero was their
thirteenth child. Patient inquiry has enabled me to verify the
following history of their propagations. On July the
twenty-fifth, the year after their marriage, Mrs. Ginx was safely
delivered of a girl. No announcement of this appeared in the
newspapers.

On the tenth of April following, the whole neighborhood,
including Great Smith Street, Marsham Street, Great and Little
Peter Streets, Regent Street, Horseferry Road, and Strutton
Ground, was convulsed by the report that a woman named Ginx had
given birth to "a triplet," consisting of two girls and a boy.
The news penetrated to Dean's Yard and the ancient school of
Westminster. The Dean, who accepted nothing on trust, sent to
verify the report, his messenger bearing a bundle of baby-clothes
from the Dean's wife, who thought that the mother could scarcely
have provided for so large an addition to her family. The
schoolboys, on their way to the play-ground at Vincent Square,
slyly diverged to have a look at the curiosity, paying sixpence a
head to Mrs. Ginx's friend and crony, Mrs. Spittal, who pocketed
the money, and said nothing about it to the sick woman. THIS
birth was announced in all the newspapers throughout the kingdom,
with the further news that Her Majesty the Queen had been
graciously pleased to forward to Mrs. Ginx the sum of three
pounds.

What could have possessed the woman I can't say, but about a
twelvemonth after, Mrs. Ginx, with the assistance of two doctors
hastily fetched from the hospital by her frightened husband,
nearly perished in a fresh effort of maternity. This time two
sons and two daughters fell to the lot of the happy pair. Her
Majesty sent four pounds. But whatever peace there was at home,
broils disturbed the street. The neighbors, who had sent for the
police on the occasion, were angered by a notoriety which was
becoming uncomfortable to them, and began to testify their
feelings in various rough ways. Ginx removed his family to
Rosemary Street, where, up to a year before the time when Ginx's
Baby was born, his wife had continued to add to her offspring
until the tale reached one dozen. It was then that Ginx
affectionately but firmly begged that his wife would consider her
family ways, since, in all conscience, he had fairly earned the
blessedness of the man who hath his quiver full of them; and
frankly gave her notice that, as his utmost efforts could
scarcely maintain their existing family, if she ventured to
present him with any more, either single, or twins, or triplets,
or otherwise, he would most assuredly drown him, or her, or them
in the water-butt, and take the consequences.

II.--Home, sweet Home!

The day on which Ginx uttered his awful threat was that next to
the one wherein number twelve had drawn his first breath. His
wife lay on the bed which, at the outset of wedded life, they had
purchased secondhand in Strutton Ground for the sum of nine
shillings and sixpence. SECOND-HAND! It had passed through, at
least, as many hands as there were afterwards babies born upon
it. Twelfth or thirteenth hand, a vagabond, botched bedstead,
type of all the furniture in Ginx's rooms, and in numberless
houses through the vast city. Its dimensions were 4 feet 6
inches by 6 feet. When Ginx, who was a stout navvy, and Mrs.
Ginx, who was, you may conceive, a matronly woman, were in it,
there was little vacant space about them. Yet, as they were
forced to find resting-places for all the children, it not seldom
happened that at least one infant was perilously wedged between
the parental bodies; and latterly they had been so pressed for
room in the household that two younglings were nestled at the
foot of the bed. Without foot-board or pillows, the lodgment of
these infants was precarious, since any fatuous movement of
Ginx's legs was likely to expel them head-first. However they
were safe, for they were sure to fall on one or other of their
brothers or sisters.

I shall be as particular as a valuer, and describe what I have
seen. The family sleeping-room measured 13 feet 6 inches by 14
feet.

Opening out of this, and again on the landing of the third-floor,
was their kitchen and sitting-room; it was not quite so large as
the other. This room contained a press, an old chest of drawers,
a wooden box once used for navvy's tools, three chairs, a stool,
and some cooking utensils. When, therefore, one little Ginx had
curled himself up under a blanket on the box, and three more had
slipped beneath a tattered piece of carpet under the table,
there still remained five little bodies to be bedded. For them
an old straw mattress, limp enough to be rolled up and thrust
under the bed, was at night extended on the floor. With this, and
a patchwork quilt, the five were left to pack themselves together
as best they could. So that, if Ginx, in some vision of the
night, happened to be angered, and struck out his legs in navvy
fashion, it sometimes came to pass that a couple of children
tumbled upon the mass of infantile humanity below.

Not to be described are the dinginess of the walls, the smokiness
of the ceilings, the grimy windows, the heavy, ever-murky
atmosphere of these rooms. They were 8 feet 6 inches in height,
and any curious statist can calculate the number of cubic feet of
air which they afforded to each person.

The other side of the street was 14 feet distant. Behind, the
backs of similar tenements came up black and cowering over the
little yard of Number Five. As rare, in the well thus formed,
was the circulation of air as that of coin in the pockets of the
inhabitants. I have seen the yard; let me warn you, if you
are fastidious, not to enter it. Such of the filth of the house
as could not, at night, be thrown out of the front windows, was
there collected, and seldom, if ever, removed. What became of
it? What becomes of countless such accretions in like places?
Are a large proportion of these filthy atoms absorbed by human
creatures living and dying, instead of being carried away by
scavengers and inspectors? The forty-five big and little lodgers
in the house were provided with a single office in the corner of
the yard. It had once been capped by a cistern, long since rotted
away--

* * * * *

The street was at one time the prey of the gas company; at
another, of the drainage contractors. They seemed to delight in
turning up the fetid soil, cutting deep trenches through various
strata of filth, and piling up for days or weeks matter that
reeked with vegetable and animal decay. One needs not affirm
that Rosemary Street was not so called from its fragrance. If
the Ginxes and their neighbors preserved any semblance of health
in this place, the most popular guardian on the board must own it
a miracle. They, poor people, knew nothing of "sanitary reform,"
"sanitary precautions," "zymotics," "endemics," "epidemics,"
"deodorizers," or "disinfectants." They regarded disease with
the apathy of creatures who felt it to be inseparable from
humanity, and with the fatalism of despair.

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