It is commonly believed, and accepted as an article of faith among temperance workers, that there is much less hope of reforming a drunken woman than of reforming a drunken man. My experience of both men and women leads me to the opinion that the chances are about equal. In both men and women physiological and pathological causes very often lie at the roots of their condition, and make it difficult—almost impossible—to deal successfully with the drink habit. Some of the best fellows I know are constantly getting into trouble, and creating terror and misery at home, not because they have any love for drink, or any uncontrollable impulse to take it, but because there is something wrong in their mental or physical organization.

I have studied these men, watched them, made friends of them, and the more hopeless I have seen my task to be, the more has my sympathy and desire to help them been enlarged. Ill-health, lowness of spirits, vacancy of mind, and often delusions, coupled with loss of memory in many variations, come upon them, and at such times they are apt to take drink, with terrible results. These men are not what they are because they drink, but the reverse: they drink because they are what they are. In a word, drunkenness is not the cause, but the result, of their condition. Doctors will not, of course, certify them to be insane; until, therefore, the State makes some provision for the half-mad, their case is hopeless, and frequent tragedies will continue; for matters are often ended by murder or suicide, and sometimes the latter course would undoubtedly give relief, and even comfort, to the suffering and distracted friends. But the dipsomaniac pure and simple, the man who at intervals of a few weeks or a few months has a passionate and overwhelming, uncontrollable desire for drink, is a strange being and a pitiful object. Cases of this kind almost fascinate me, for they are such tremendous contradictions.

Time after time in my own house I have sat in front of such men. I have seen their earnest—undoubtedly earnest—desire to be delivered from their enemy; I have listened to the poor pleas for help in their struggles; I have seen them and felt them clinging to me as if for life and hope. But I have perceived at the same time their fearful cunning and devilish resolve to frustrate any effort made for them, and to get drink at any cost. I have seen their trembling, eager joy when they have obtained drink; I have seen their shame, penitence, tears, and remorse even after they have swallowed the drink. ‘I am in hell! I am in hell! Give me a hand out! You tried to save Cakebread—save me!’ So from the depths of a ‘shelter’ wrote such a man to me. I wrote to him, telling him to come and be saved. He came, white and tremulous from his last debauch. I found him a clever man and a gentleman and most powerful in physique. He was a chartered accountant, and undoubtedly clever at his profession. He had swept streets in San Francisco; he had had delirium tremens in the Transvaal; he had driven bullocks in Mexico; but go where he would, and occupy himself as he might, the drink fiend stuck to him. Back to London, friendless, homeless, with the fiend still in possession, he came. ‘If I had the friendship of a man like you, I could conquer; I am sure I could conquer.’

I gave him that friendship, and he came to live with us. His intellect was in good order, his strength was magnificent, he seemed open and honest; so I felt hopeful. He told me that the drink craving would not come on him again for two months, or perhaps three. He lied to me, for it was on him then, and at that moment he was lusting and planning for drink. But I believed him. He took up his abode with us on a Thursday, employment was found for him, and his duties were to commence on the following Monday. On the Saturday at mid-day he went to his bedroom drunk. I went up to him, and found he had more drink with him. For this we had a struggle, but he was too strong for me. So I let him drink it, hoping he would go to sleep. But he did not; he became violent, and wanted to go out. This I was determined to prevent, so I locked the room door. Then he raved and swore, and declared he would stay no longer. ‘How dare you lock me in! What right have you to make me a prisoner?’ he indignantly asked. I told him that he had come to me for his own pleasure, but that he was going to stay for mine, and that I was not going to lose sight of him till he went to his work on Monday. So through Saturday night I stopped with him. All day on Sunday I was out in the open air with him, when he walked as if a fury were upon him. Every now and again I pulled him up, and gave him a soda-and-milk, and by degrees got him fit for a decent dinner, after which he had a dose of medicine and a cigar. When he had finished it, he came to me and took my hand, and with tears in his eyes said: ‘By God, Mr. Holmes, but you are a man!’ Yes, and next week-end (for he continued at work during the week) I had it all to do over again.

For twelve months he stayed with us, and if ever mortal man tried to help another, I was that man. Every bit of intelligence I possessed, every bit of time I could spare—in fact, the whole of my being—was pressed into his service. He liked chess, so in the evening I played with him; he liked whist, so we formed whist parties for him; he loved books, so we discussed literature together; he liked church, so he went to church with us. If I went for a day in the country, he went with me; when I went for my holidays, I took him with me; if he bordered on d.-t.’s I doctored him. When he earned money he paid us honourably; if he did not, we never asked him for payment.

We all liked the man, but one night I had an experience that made me afraid of him, and we all agreed that it was time for him to leave us. He came home very late, and he had been drinking heavily. He soon discovered that the clock was making strange faces at him, so we covered it up. As he sat with us till the early hours of the morning, he produced a large bottle of eau-de-Cologne, which he drank as if it were water. When I got him to his room, he promptly locked the door, and put the key in his pocket. I was inside, and he kept me there. For an hour he paced the room, cursing the day he was born, and the mother that bore him. After a while he stopped in front of me, and said: ‘Do you think I can help it? I tell you I can’t! If I could, I should not be a man. I stood in the street to-day and called for you. I shrieked your name. I called to the skies for help, but they were dumb. I could have gone on my knees, and with my teeth have gnawed the very stones for drink!’ There was no mistake about his meaning what he said.

Presently he stopped again, and said: ‘Mr. Holmes, I like you, but I am going to kill you.’ I felt uncomfortable, but said nothing; it was no use, I knew, for me to ask for the key. I was, however, glad to remember that there were no knives or razors in the room, for I had previously removed them. ‘Yes,’ I heard him say to himself, ‘I’ll kill Mr. Holmes and myself.’ Things began to look serious for me; it was no joke to be locked in a small room with a homicidal madman for a companion. Force I knew could not avail me; argument, I felt certain, would only exasperate him. So I had to try guile. I asked him how he meant to kill me. He was kind enough to give me my choice. I told him that I thought if my throat were cut with a razor, I should die easier, so he looked for the razors, but could not find them. I told him that I knew where to find them, and borrowed the key from him, that I might fetch them. He did not seem to suspect anything; for he gave me the key, and I was quickly outside the room after telling him to wait quietly till I returned. I locked the door from the outside and went to bed. I felt persuaded after this that he was another of my brilliant failures, so I told him he must leave us, which he accordingly did. I suppose that some day his brain will become affected or his body, strong as it is, will be stricken with paralysis, for neither iron constitutions nor strong brains can escape the Nemesis of Nature.

At the time when this man was living with me I had on hand as fine a selection of dipsomaniacs as could be wished. One by one in the years of my work I had picked them up, and from different police-court cells they had gathered round me. They were mostly educated men who had considerable abilities, and held positions of trust, and they kept me alive. Some of the employers of these men looked upon me as a ‘keeper,’ for no sooner was one of them absent from his duty than I received a wire to that effect. Not unfrequently I had to effect a capture and bring one to my house for treatment. They were a strange lot, and their outbreaks occurred at varying intervals.

There was one who would go for six months and sometimes more, well conducted, scrupulously clean, and well dressed, an ideal picture of a well-to-do, benevolent, elderly man. I have also known him go for six weeks unwashed, and during that time never remove his clothes, change his linen, or take off his boots. He went down into the mud at longer intervals than the others, but when in it he stayed there and rolled much longer, and went lower down. At no stage of his drinking bout did this man become jolly, lively, or in any sense companionable. He wanted no one, he wanted nothing but drink. Quiet, sullen, and determined, he set about his debauch in a business-like way. He had been with his firm for many years, and was a valuable servant who did not mind work. His employers thought much of him, and were willing to overlook his outbreaks provided they were kept within reasonable limits, and that he never appeared at the office with the slightest sign of a debauch, or of recovering from a debauch, upon him. He had a marvellous constitution, and would drink for six weeks at a time, eating little or no food, and would take bottles of spirits to bed with him. If during his outbreak he took off his boots, he would wander from public-house to public-house, winter or summer, wet or dry, without any. If he started his debauch wearing a great ulster-overcoat, no matter how the weather changed or how warm it became, the overcoat he continued to wear. Often he would lose his silk hat, and many a warm day I have discovered him without hat or boots, but wearing this great-coat. He had beautiful silver hair and beard, of which he was proud, and with which he took no end of pains when sober; no matter how long his debauch lasted, his hair would go uncombed, his beard untrimmed, and his face unwashed.

The first time I met him he was in this condition; he had been picked up in the snow about three o’clock one February morning, and was charged at North London Police Court. Without hat or boots, with matted hair and beard, blood-shot eyes and inflamed face, he sat shaking in the prisoners’ room. He was described on the charge-sheet as ‘A man; address not tendered.’ Truth to tell, he was unable to give his own name or to say where he came from. When I spoke to him, he looked up and said, ‘Water!’ I got him a full quart and held it to his mouth, for he trembled too violently to do it for himself. At two draughts he swallowed the lot. I could not get a word from him, neither could the police, and when before the magistrate he was dumb and vacant. The magistrate kindly sent him in a cab to the workhouse infirmary. I promised to go and see him in a few days’ time.

I went, and found him in workhouse clothing; his mental faculties were coming back to him, but he was not fit for removal, being ill and weak. He could, however, tell me where he came from and where he was employed. So I called on his employers, who had seen nothing of him since Christmas Eve. They were pleased to hear of him, and put me in communication with his daughter, a very accomplished young lady who had left her position as governess in the country and had come up to London to seek for him, for nothing had been heard of him for some weeks; in fact, he had disappeared. The daughter went with me to the workhouse to visit her father, and found it a very unpleasant experience. As he was approaching us I said, ‘Here is your father coming, miss.’ In his corduroy trousers, his brown coat with brass buttons, and his brown Scotch cap, she did not recognise him at first; when she did, she nearly fainted, but ultimately had a good cry instead. I got fresh rooms for him, and his daughter consented to live with him, giving up her own prospects in order to do it. His employer paid his debts, advancing a sufficient sum of money to his daughter. In a few days he went back to the office, the same elderly, benevolent-looking gentleman as he had been before his debauch, with not a suspicion of drink upon him.

For three months he worked almost night and day, and then he was at it again. His daughter left him and went I know not whither, for I have never heard of her since. Again he was left lonely in London. I sought him, but could not find him, so I arranged with his landlady to let me know at once if he returned home in the daytime, for his lodgings were handy. At night I waited for him in his own room. He returned one morning about two, when I quickly took possession of him. About four o’clock he insisted on going out, but I had locked his door, so he had to remain. The next day I cut short his debauch by taking him home with me, and putting him under lock and key. This he was most indignant about, and questioned my right to make a prisoner of him. I told him that might was right, and that he had got to remain. In a week’s time he went to his lodgings and his work. For six months this time he worked well and regularly. He was a Roman Catholic, so I insisted on his going to his priest, making a full confession, and signing the pledge. This he did, not that it had much effect, for again, after six months, he was in the mud. I could not find him for a long time, and when I did he was penniless, and had, moreover, pawned everything he possibly could. He lost his employment; his firm would have no more of him. His landlady, too, would have no more of him, and so the door was closed against him. Penniless, homeless, and friendless, I took him in.

He stayed two years with us, regaining his situation and doing so well that the firm substantially increased his salary. He was saving money fast, but he became too grand and important for us, and left us for other lodgings. For a while he kept straight, coming to visit us every Saturday evening. His silvery hair, his deportment, and his irreproachable clothing conferred quite a lustre upon our establishment, and his visits were a pleasure to us; but his holiday-time came round. For this he made great preparations, for he loved to do things in style. He had not had a seaside holiday for years; his frequent lapses prevented the thought of such a thing. He wanted a cab to take him to the station, for his luggage was considerable—a trunk, two portmanteaus, a Gladstone bag, a hand-bag, two hat-boxes, all full. With a gold-mounted Malacca cane, a gold-mounted umbrella, a gold watch and chain, away he went.

About five weeks afterwards, at two o’clock in the morning, he was on my doorstep, rapping and ringing and calling out, ‘For the love of God, let me in!’ I went down to him, and a pretty picture he presented. Unwashed and dirty to a degree, with an old cloth cap on his head, he stood there shaking and trembling again, almost in delirium tremens. Every bit of his luggage and belongings, excepting the clothes he was wearing, had disappeared, and the work of two years was completely undone. He had no claim upon me for lodging, but I took him in, and saw him in bed; there he made such unearthly noises, the neighbours got up, thinking a murder was being committed. They told us about it next day, but never thought the noises proceeded from our house. By the aid of light nourishments, frequent cooling drinks, and medicine, we got him round again, and he went to face his employer. I don’t know what excuses he made, but, contrary to my expectations, he was allowed to commence his work, although he had been absent two months. Again he got straight, paid his debts, and appeared as a philanthropic elderly gentleman, goodly to look upon.

But once more the drink craving came and took him by the throat, and he was helpless in its grip. Warnings were nothing to this man, for when he was sober he never dreamt or thought it possible that he could ever fall again; others might, but himself never. Never could it or should it happen again to him; but it did, and again I brought him home, and locked him up. This time, however, he was too much for me, for he got through the window of the room with nothing on but trousers, shirt, and stockings, and in that condition this nice, elderly, silver-haired gentleman went ‘on the drink.’ I sent out scouts, and he was found in a public-house some distance away. I went for him, and found him with a stiff glass of brandy before him, which I quickly upset. He refused to come with me, and would not budge an inch, so I explained matters to the landlord, who refused to serve him again. Still he would not come with me. Calling for a cigar and a glass of lemonade, I made myself as comfortable as I could, and risked my reputation as a teetotaler by waiting a good hour for him. He must have suffered something in that hour. With drink all round him, the fumes of it increasing his passion, waiting, longing, mad for it, there he sat till he could bear it no longer, so he got up and said he was ready to go. Again I locked him up, took possession of his money and thought I had him safe.

The next day, in my absence, he burst the door of his bedroom, went out and pawned something, came back and went to bed. When I got home, I searched his room, but could find no drink. I made him undress, but he had no drink upon him. I took away all his clothing, and then searched his bed. I found under the mattress a flask of brandy. When I took it away, I noticed a cunning look on his face, which I did not understand at the time, but I thought it strange that he quietly acquiesced in my taking the flask. For several days he stayed in his room, getting more and more drunk. I could not understand it, so determined to make another search, and soon found that he had completely fooled me by placing the small flask where he knew I should find it, but also hiding several large bottles up the chimney. These were now empty, and he was stupidly, insensibly drunk. I came to the conclusion that my wits were not sharp enough to cope with his, so I put his clothing back in his room, determined to let him have his fling. Again with matted beard and hair unwashed for weeks he went in and out; again the workhouse brought him up. This time it was his own seeking; he knew that I had decided to have done with him. He had pawned and parted with everything possible; he wandered about and could get no more drink, so, abject and ill, he went to the workhouse infirmary.

For seven long years I had hoped and struggled for this man. I had fought the drink demon with every resource at my command, and I had to confess defeat. The last thing I did for him was to get a change of clothing out of pawn, take him to Euston Station and pay his fare to a large Northern city. There Nature has had its revenge, for he lies paralyzed in a workhouse infirmary, waiting for the end. There his wife lives in easy circumstances, bringing up her younger children to hate the name of their father. She had property and friends, and years ago she obtained a judicial separation, for when the trial came on he was in the mud. His eldest daughter I have never heard of since the day she disappeared. But about once a year a stalwart sailor comes into London port, and for a few weeks revels in the mud after the fashion of the silver-haired gentleman. Cut and wounded, penniless and shaken, he goes back to his ship, or, should that be gone, seeks for another; for he inherits the same passion, and is slave to the same over-mastering craving, as his father—a passion I have some reason to fear the accomplished daughter is not a stranger to.

God help all such! for who else can understand them, who else can help them? Moral force is of no avail; human sympathy, kindly interest, and earnest solicitations are of no avail with them. Sufferings and remorse, burning shame and hopeless poverty, teach this kind nothing. Though they know that the prison or workhouse waits for them, though they know that the grave is yawning for them—yea, though hell itself stood open for them—into it they would go for the chance of satisfying their all-compelling craving. And it comes upon them like a thief in the night, when it is least expected. To-day they are clean, circumspect, gentlemanly, even religious; to-morrow they are bestial and wallow in the mud. Education is powerless, culture is powerless, refinement is powerless, good desires are powerless, self-respect is powerless, before this omnipotent craving. As I sit writing, all of these men whom I have ever met seem to crowd round me, and they are all educated men—University men and business men, clergymen and ministers of religion, artists and literary men, men of historic family and doctors of repute—I see them all again in their hopeless misery. I listen to their appeals for help, and I feel again the dint of pity as I look into their faces. I know only too well that I cannot and have not helped them. I have but pitied them, and given them such assistance as lay in my power.

And but too frequently their own friends show no pity towards them—nothing but stern and implacable resentment. Doubtless they have suffered much because of them, but what can justify a father in speaking of his son as ‘the accursed wretch that bears my name’? for in these words a wealthy gentleman living in Kennington replied to me when I wrote to him concerning his son, who was a clergyman and a dipsomaniac. In the depth of winter, with his toes peeping out through his old boots, this man had sought me out. I had given him food and a new pair of boots, and out of pity had appealed to his father. I might as well have appealed to an iceberg. ‘You may be able to work miracles,’ he had sneeringly added, and not even a cast-off coat would he give to his son.

But the most extraordinary dipsomaniac I have had to deal with was the man whom poor Kate Henessey knocked down in the prisoners’ room for insulting me. I did not have a promising introduction to this gentleman, but as I saw much of him afterwards, we became friendly, and he asked me to call on him. One morning, on my way to the court, I called at the address he gave. ‘Not at home,’ the landlady said. I called again in the afternoon. ‘Not returned yet,’ I was told. I felt interested in the man, for I had gathered from our conversation that he was an educated man of good family, and had been well-to-do. So next morning I called again. Seeing me persistent, the landlady invited me in, and asked me my business. When I told her who I was, and what was my errand, she asked me if I had a few minutes to spare. I told her that I had. We were then in a narrow, miserable passage, and, opening a door on the left, she told me to look in.

I took one step forward, and a pitiful sight met my eyes. A young man, tall, thin, and emaciated, was lying on a low pallet-bed; a clammy sweat stood on his brow, and his eyes were burning with an unnatural light. Only one look was required to tell that his sands were fast running out, and that consumption had almost done its work. I took one step forward, and said: ‘I am sorry to see you lying here like this. Can I do anything for you?’ ‘Only go away and don’t bother me,’ was his reply. I told him that I did not wish to trouble him, that I had called by his father’s request, but that I should be glad to do him any little service I could. He said that he only wanted to be let alone that he might die in peace. Seeing that he was not inclined for conversation, I withdrew, and had some talk with the landlady. She told me that the young man was the grandson of a celebrated British officer who had distinguished himself in the Peninsular War. The youth’s father was the only son of that officer, and had himself held a commission in a crack regiment. Their property was vested in trustees for the young man, the father receiving a weekly allowance and a further sum once a quarter. I was told how the father and mother, the youth and two sisters, lived in one room upstairs, and that father and mother had been away drinking for five days, and had left the boy to the care of his two sisters, one aged fifteen and the other five years. Being moved with pity for the dying youth, the landlady had given him that little room, and placed him there so that she might occasionally look to him. It was a dirty house in an awful neighbourhood. The woman herself looked coarse, and by no means tidy, but she had a kind, motherly heart, and had done her best for the lad.

Thinking a few nice grapes would be acceptable, I went out and obtained some, and came back to him. As I sat giving him a few, I heard the father and mother come in, and go tumbling upstairs. After a short time I went up to them, and, being invited, entered their den, for no other word can fitly describe it. I have been in many wretched places, but have seen nothing worse than their ‘home.’ The furniture consisted of three chairs—each bottomless—and a miserable table, on which were some stale bread and a dirty piece of cheese that the child of five (she had no shoes or stockings on) was pecking at with a fork. In the corner stood a small iron bedstead, covered with a quilt made up of portions of old clothing stitched indiscriminately together. No fire was alight, but the accumulated ashes of many days choked the hearth. The atmosphere was insufferable; the father drunk, the mother drunk, a female who had come in with them drunk also; and the poor lad lay dying below—all this made up such a scene of grotesque horror as fairly made me gasp.

It was some time before I could speak to them, and when I did it was in no measured terms, telling them that they were a scandal to humanity. Afterwards, when I spoke to them of their duty and responsibility to their son, they began to cry and wring their hands, repeating again and again: ‘Drink is damnation! Drink is damnation!’ while the wretched woman they had brought in joined her maudlin tears with theirs, and repeatedly wished that her husband would give up drink. Day by day I visited the youth for five days before I found the parents sober, and then I brought them, sober and miserable, to the bedside of the dying boy, and there they swore before God to touch no more drink while he lived, promising also to make his last days peaceful.

A week passed, and the father received his quarterly allowance, and with the money I persuaded him to take rooms close by, and furnish one comfortably for his son. This he did, and one bright day we got the doctor’s permission to move him on his bed to their new home. For another week there was quietude and some degree of comfort. My visits became acceptable to the poor lad, and in his better room we became close friends. I began to feel hopeful, but my hopes were soon to be dashed to the ground. One morning when I called, the bedroom door of the boy’s room was splintered, the hearthrug and other articles of comfort were gone, and his bloodshot eyes told of a fearful night. The drink madness had come upon the father, and he had broken into the room for anything portable and of value. He now seemed to lose all sense of restraint, and from this day till the death of his son nothing seemed too horrible for him. The new boots went off his little daughter’s feet; the elder girl was pushed into the street and told to get her own living; the dying son was assaulted and robbed of a little watch that was intended for a ‘keepsake’ for the sister. I shall not forget the morning after that assault. I saw at once that the poor boy was overwhelmed and exhausted. I asked him what was the matter. With his claw-like hands he turned down the sheet and pointed to his thin neck, and there on his throat were two red patches. Then he told me how the drink madness had come again on his father; how in the night he had come stealthily into his room, crept to his bedside, and put his hand under the pillow to take thence the little watch; how he had called out: ‘Oh, father, don’t take my watch!’ and then made an effort to keep it, and how his father took him by the throat and compelled him to give up the watch, which he took away. During the hours I spent with him the boy told me such stories of their sufferings that I wept when I heard them; told me of the unimaginable depths to which his father descended when the drink madness was upon him, and told me, with half-closed eyes and burning cheeks, of the loathsome occupation his father would sometimes follow to satisfy that drink-madness.

One morning in July the message came to me that I had been expecting. The landlady of the house where they lived came bareheaded and breathless begging of me to go at once; for the young man was dead and the father mad drunk, and she was afraid there would be murder or something almost as bad. I hurried there, and found a number of people congregated in front of the house. The front-door was open, so I ran direct to Johnny’s room. A desperate struggle had evidently taken place; the furniture was upset, the mattress thrown off the bed, and the dead body of the son lay on the floor close to the window. The elder girl stood confronting her father with a knife in her hand; the mother, weeping, followed me into the room, out of which her husband quickly went when he saw me.

Briefly this is what had taken place: the boy died soon after I left him the day before, and in a very short time the father had pawned all his clothes and stayed out during the night. He came back the next morning at nine o’clock drunk, and went up to the room where his son’s body lay, intending to take away the bed-clothing, etc. A struggle had thereupon ensued between the girl and her father for possession of them; and as he wanted the mattress, he had actually thrown the body on to the floor. A cheque for fifteen pounds was forwarded by the trustees for funeral expenses. A coffin was brought, but the rest of the money the father spent, never coming to the house till it was gone. More money was received from the trustees, and the day of the funeral came on. I had promised the youth to see the last of him and to be present at the funeral. The father did not come near the house that day, and it seemed as though the funeral would pass off quietly, but just as we got into the main road, he joined us in a cab. Soon there was a great shout, and a number of women closed around the cab; sticks and stones were thrown at him, and an effort made to drag him out and lynch him. He did get roughly handled, but the cabman, having a good horse, vigorously plied his whip, and drove through the crowd, waiting for us further on. There was no other disturbance, for in a few days the wife went down to the trustees and left her husband.

Three months afterwards I again met him, but this time he stood in the dock, when a serious charge was made and proved against him. The last view I had of him was as he stepped into the prison-van, to be conveyed to the punishment he so richly merited. So passed from my knowledge the worst dipsomaniac it has been my lot to meet with. Like Lucifer from heaven, he fell to the lowest depth, and evil became his good; for it is always so: the greater the height from which a man falls, the lower the depths to which he descends. As in the physical world, so in the moral world, there is a law of gravitation. I have tried to understand these men, and I have failed to do so. I have taken some measure of the force that impels them, but neither I nor anyone else other than a dipsomaniac can realize in anything approaching its fulness the might and dreadfulness of the power that inhabits them.