A Tooting soldier whose wife had sent him loving letters to the trenches came back to surprise her after 18 months. He found another man in possession of his home and a new baby; and, overcome by the discovery, he gave way to drink and killed himself.

A soldier who had left a comfortable home behind returned from the Front to find it ruined, with not a bed to lie on, his children never sent to school, his wife all the time in publichouses. “I wish I had been shot in the trenches,” he said when he arrived.

Outside a publichouse in Liverpool a man was dragging home his drunken wife, the mother of eleven children. They rolled over and over on the ground, the drunken women violently resisting the maddened man. Then came up the eldest son, home from the Front, with five wounds in his body.

A soldier came back to his home in London to find his wife drinking his money away, harbouring another man; one of his children cruelly neglected and the other in its grave, perished from neglect; and a drunken carman’s baby about to be born in his home.

A Lance-Corporal heard in the trenches of his wife’s misconduct. His commanding officer wrote to make inquiries, and the soldier wrote to the Chief Constable a pitiful letter: “What have I to look forward to at the end of the war?” he said. “Nothing, only sorrow. I never get a letter to know how my loving son is getting on; I think it will drive me mad.”

He came home, opened the door of his house, threw his kit on the floor, and declared that he would kill his wife. He put a razor on the table, and his little boy hid it in a cupboard, but a week later this boy of 12 went home and found his father and mother lying on the floor, the father drunk, the mother dead. The soldier, drowning his misery in drink, had strangled his wife. Rousing himself beside her, he said, as the police found them, “Kiss me, Sally. Aye, but tha are poorly.”

He had been the best of fathers, said the little boy; the best of soldiers, said his commanding officer; and the judge declared that such a man, with such a character, ought not to be with criminals.

A soldier asked a London magistrate if he could draw the allowance instead of his wife, who was in prison for drunkenness and was neglecting his four children. The magistrate said the only thing was to send the children to the workhouse.

The Soldier: “So I am to be a soldier for my King and country while my children go to the workhouse?” The Magistrate: “That is so, because you have a drunken wife. I am sorry for you.”

A seaman gunner, who had been torpedoed and had fought in the trenches, arrived home to find his wife, in his own words, “filthy drunk,” and his children utterly deplorable. He reclothed them, but his wife pawned the clothes, though she had £7 a month. He took his children away, but a crowd of women interfered with him, and the police were powerless against the mob.

A soldier just back from the Front was found in the street weeping bitterly on discovering that his wife was in gaol through drink, and his child, through her neglect, had been burned.

A soldier came home from the Front to find that drink had ruined his home, and his children were being cared for by Glasgow Parish Council. “Hour after hour we sit on this council,” says the chairman, “listening to case after case, and the cause is drunkenness, drunkenness, drunkenness. There are 2300 children under the council, and two thousand of them have parents living.” “Our raw material is the finished product of the public-house,” says one of these workers.

A motor mechanic at the Front, hearing that his wife, hitherto a sober woman, had given way to drink, obtained leave to come home. He found his wife, very drunk, struggling home with the help of the railings in the street, and neighbours described her horrible life with other soldiers. The husband obtained a separation for the sake of his children, and went back to France.

A young soldier came from the trenches to spend Christmas in his home in Sheffield—a teetotal home before the war. He found that his wife had given way to drink, had deserted one child and disappeared with the other, and that a baby was to be born which was not his.

A miner fighting at the Front came home to find his wife at a publichouse, his home filthy, and his children cruelly neglected. He was heartbroken. His young wife frequently left the house from tea-time till midnight, and in order to keep the children from the fire she had burned them severely with a piece of iron. A respectable-looking woman, the mother pleaded for a chance, and was led from the dock sobbing bitterly.

A young Yorkshire miner enlisted and left his wife, hitherto sober, with three children. She took to drink, neglected the home, and is now a dipsomaniac, with two children not her husband’s.

A soldier came home ill from France, hurried from Waterloo to his home, and found the door locked. He knocked, and his little boy’s voice came—“Is that you, mother, and are you drunk?” Hearing his father’s voice the excited lad opened the door. “Where’s mother?” asked his father. “Mother?” said the boy; “she’s drinking. She comes home drunk night after night now and knocks the kids about. She daren’t hit me; I’m fair strong, dad; but the other.... And as for baby, she never does nothing for her. I and Freddy takes turns, but I dunno what to give her to eat sometimes.”

Midnight passed before the mother appeared, helplessly drunk. “Did you expect me to sit at home weeping for you?” she said. The next morning, broken with tears, she promised to mend her ways. The soldier went into hospital, and there he had a letter from his boy. This is part of it:

“Dear Dad, I write to let you know mother is going on awful. She has took all Fred and Timmy’s clothes to the pawnshop, and she hit Selina on Saturday with the toasterfork and cut her face. She cried all night, it hurt her so. She is drunk every night and some nights dussent come back at all. She daren’t hit me, but I am getting afraid about baby. We are all very hungry and miserable.”

The soldier got leave, found his wife had disappeared, and, finding charity for his four little ones, he left his ruined home and went back to the hospital.

A working-man at Gravesend went to the Front, leaving behind a wife and three children, the baby lately born. His wife started drinking away her allowance, neglected her home, and, full of remorse and shame for the disgrace she had brought on the man who was in the trenches, she hanged herself. The man came home to find waiting for him three motherless children, and one of the most pathetic letters a man has ever had to read.

A soldier’s wife in Sunderland drew £12 arrears of Army pay, and she and her mother began to drink it away. She drew her pay on Friday, was carried home drunk on Saturday, gave birth to twins on Sunday morning, and died on Sunday night. The twins died a week or two after, and a week or two after that the soldier came home from the trenches to find his family in the grave.

Two women went drinking in Chester on a Sunday night, a soldier’s mother and a soldier’s wife. They had five whiskies each, and fell drunk in the street. One slept all night on a sofa, and the other lay on the floor, shouting and swearing. Her husband propped her up with a mat, and for hours she lay shrieking. In the morning she was dead. The publican was fined £5.

The wife of a Yorkshire soldier was drowned while drunk at Sheffield. She started drinking with another soldier’s wife disappeared with a drunken man, and her death was a mystery.

At an inquest on the bodies of a soldier’s twin children, both dead from chronic wasting, it was stated that the mother had 34s. a week, and both she and her husband drank. The mother had had four children in fifteen months, and all were dead.

In one street in London where there were one day four convictions for drunkenness, a woman carried a sick baby into a public house. As she stood at the bar the little baby died, but the mother went on drinking, with the dead child in her arms.

The wife of a highly-esteemed sergeant-major fighting in France was found lying drunk. Her four children, shockingly neglected, were put in a home, but she took them out, went on drinking, and received soldiers at her house. In a few weeks her husband heard in the trenches that his wife had died from drinking.

A soldier left three children at home. He had been earning £1 a week, but his wife received 32s. 6d. a week. She drank it away, neglected the children, and died in an asylum while her husband was in France.

The little child of a soldier in France died in Guy’s Hospital from burns. The mother said she could not buy a fireguard. While she was absent the baby was burned, and the mother, returning in a drunken state carrying a can of beer, said, “A good job!”

A soldier’s widow with six children, an Army pension of 30s. a week, and her eldest boy’s wages of 30s., drinks every night with a married man who has a respectable, clean, and sober wife with eight children and a ninth lately born—born prematurely as a result of her husband’s beating her. The child bore the marks of his violence, and died in two months.

The young wife of a soldier was brought from prison to be tried for manslaughter of her baby, who had died in the infirmary from neglect. She spent her time in the publichouses, and laughed when the children were taken to the infirmary. She went out one day to fetch a bottle of whisky and as she drank with a neighbour she said she knew the baby would die. The doctor said the child’s skin was hanging in folds on the bones.

A soldier’s wife drank continuously while her child wasted away, left the tiny baby alone in the house while she went for beer, and a policeman found her lying drunk across the dead child’s body.

The mother of two children whose father was fighting in France gave way to drink in his absence, neglected her children and left them in grave moral danger, and committed suicide.

A soldier’s baby starved slowly to death as the mother drank away his pay, and while the child lay in its coffin the mother was out drinking.

A munition worker at Newcastle was grievously upset by the drinking habits of his wife. The police left a summons for her and she disappeared. Two days later her body was found in the Tyne. The man broke down at the inquest, saying, between his sobs: “She was such a good wife to me for 20 years, and reared a good family before she took to drink.”

The wife of a corporation workman at Sheffield, home from the trenches with six gunshot wounds and three pieces of shell in his body, found that his wife had given way to drink and starved her five children. She was sent to prison for six months.

A soldier’s wife who had spent the greater part of £100 Army money in drink was sent to prison for neglecting her children. Almost everything in the house was pawned, including the children’s clothes; and the woman began to drink at five o’clock in the morning, and went on drinking all day.

A soldier’s wife in Monmouthshire, with £3 9s. a week, was found sodden with drink, while the soldier’s eight children were in rags starving by day and huddling up in one bed by night.

A smart tidy woman in a London suburb, whose husband is fighting in Mesopotamia, has £2 10s. 6d. a week. She used to love her children and had a happy home, but she drinks away her Army pay, lives with a married man who has six children, and has become a drunken slattern. The other wife is beaten and neglected, and the soldier’s children have gone to the workhouse.

The four children of a soldier in Dublin were found hungry and shivering with cold while the mother was drinking. Several times she had let her baby fall while reeling with it in the street.

At the trial of a soldier’s wife for drinking and neglecting seven children, it was stated that a child of eleven was left in charge of a baby a fortnight old while the mother was drinking. At night all the children were heard screaming. The house was in utter darkness, and there was an escape of gas. Some men went in and turned off the gas, and at last the mother came stumbling out of a publichouse across the road.

“Your husband is fighting for his country, and his children have the right to be protected,” said the Chairman of the Chesterfield Bench to a soldier’s wife. Her children were found starving while she was drinking, and one day the little boy of three was found crouching naked inside the fender, trying to get warm. The police described the house as foul from top to bottom, with a heap of horrible rags for a bed, and a food cupboard that made the house unendurable when the door was opened.

The wife of a missing soldier was sent to prison at Chesterfield for neglecting three children between 13 years and 16 weeks old. She had gone astray through drink, and the youngest child, born under terrible conditions, was not her husband’s. It was found lying on a filthy bed, and its drunken mother, to satisfy its pangs of hunger, had given it pennyworths of laudanum. Eleven people slept in two foul bedrooms.

Five hundred children of soldiers are being cared for in the great Homes founded by Mr. Quarrier in Scotland, and most of them are there because of drinking mothers.

A soldier’s wife at Biggleswade spent her allowance on drink and left her three children locked up in the house for days at a time.

A soldier’s wife was found reeling in the streets of Dublin with a baby in her arms. At her home were found four other children, cruelly neglected.

Nineteen hundred children of soldiers have come into the care of the N.S.P.C.C., mainly through drink, since the war began.

Of 3000 soldiers’ wives being cared for in South London, 2000 are splendid, while 1000 are sinking daily to lower and lower levels through drink.

A soldier’s wife, with a separation allowance of 32s. 6d. a week, drank most of it away, ruined her home, neglected her children, and became a lunatic.

A young soldier’s wife, hitherto “quite an elegant type,” is rapidly becoming a drunkard. Women hitherto sober have not the courage to keep from women’s drinking parties, and young girls come out of factories and go to publichouses in little groups.

Outside a public house in Dublin 15 small children were crying in the cold, waiting for their mothers. Ninety-four drunken women came out in 25 minutes. There were ten drunken soldiers, and two girls of 15 were thrown into the street hopelessly drunk.

In Dundee over 170 wives of soldiers gave way to drink last year, and cruelly neglected their homes.

A soldier in the trenches received a letter from his little boy, which he sent to London with a pitiful appeal for help.

“Kindly do what you can for me and the well-being and welfare of my four beautiful children,” the poor soldier wrote. “I am enclosing a fearful letter I have received from my poor little lad, 14-1/2, the first and only letter I have received from him. Sir, I shall be most anxiously awaiting your reply, for this letter is the greatest blow I have ever received.”

This is the little boy’s letter:

A stream of nearly 15,000 men and women poured into 58 publichouses in Birmingham in less than four hours; over 6,000 were women. Into one house the people streamed at nearly 500 an hour.

For months some wives of soldiers and sailors in Scotland were never really sober. “We have done our best,” says a worker among them, “going to their homes and doing all in our power, but it beats us.” In 23 families, with 178 children born, 61 were dead.