'Don't touch it, mate, the nurse sez it's deadly,' warned my working partner, as I held open a sack into which he was emptying a garbage can.
It came from the sick wards, and I told him that I purposed neither to touch it, nor to allow it to touch me.Nevertheless, Ihad to carry the sack, and other sacks, down five flights of stairs and empty them in a receptacle where the corruption was speedily sprinkled with strong disinfectant.
Perhaps there is a wise mercy in all this.These men of the spike, the peg, and the street, are encumbrances.They are of no good or use to any one, nor to themselves.They clutter the earth with their presence, and are better out of the way.Broken by hardship, ill fed, and worse nourished, they are always the first to be struck down by disease, as they are likewise the quickest to die.
They feel, themselves, that the forces of society tend to hurl them out of existence.We were sprinkling disinfectant by the mortuary, when the dead wagon drove up and five bodies were packed into it.The conversation turned to the 'white potion' and 'black jack,' and I found they were all agreed that the poor person, man or woman, who in the Infirmary gave too much trouble or was in a bad way, was 'polished off.' That is to say, the incurables and the obstreperous were given a dose of 'black jack' or the 'white potion,' and sent over the divide.It does not matter in the least whether this be actually so or not.The point is, they have the feeling that it is so, and they have created the language with which to express that feeling- 'black jack,' 'white potion,' 'polishing off.'