Chapter: THE WOMEN'S INDUSTRIAL HOME SOUTHWOOD, SYDENHAM HILL

This is another of the Salvation Army Homes for Women. When I visited
Southwood, which is an extremely good house, having been a gentleman's
residence, with a garden and commanding a beautiful view, there were
about forty inmates, some of whom were persons of gentle birth. For
such ladies single sleeping places are provided, with special dining
and sitting-rooms. These are supposed to pay a guinea a week for their
board and accommodation, though I gathered that this sum was not
always forthcoming. The majority of the other inmates, most of whom
have gone astray in one way or another, pay nothing.

A good many of the cases here are what are called preventive; that is
to say, that their parents or guardians being able to do nothing with
them, and fearing lest they should come to ruin, send them to this
place as a last resource, hoping that they may be cured of their evil
tendencies.

Thus one girl whom I think I saw, could not be prevented from gadding
on the streets, and therefore had been placed here. Another young
woman was a schoolmistress who would not get out of bed and refused to
work. When she came to the Home she was very insolent and
bad-tempered, and would do nothing. Now, I was informed, she rises
with the lark, at 6.30 indeed, and works like a Trojan. I could not
help wondering whether these excellent habits would survive her
departure from the Home. Another lady, who had been sentenced for
thefts, was the daughter of a minister. She horrified the Officers by
regretting that she had gone to jail for so little, when others who
had taken and enjoyed large sums received practically the same
sentence. She was reported to be doing well.

Another, also a lady, was the victim of an infatuation which caused
her to possess herself of money to send to some man who had followed
her about from the time she was in a boarding school. Another was a
foreigner, who had been sent to an American doctor in the East to be
trained as a nurse. This poor girl underwent an awful experience, and
was in the care of the Salvation Army recovering from shock; but, of
course, hers is a different class of case from those which I have
mentioned above. Another was an English girl who had been turned out
of Canada because of her bad behaviour with men. And so on.

It only remains to say that most of these people appeared to be doing
well, while many of those in the humbler classes of life were being
taught to earn their own living in the laundry that is attached to the
Institution.

 Rivers returns home that night, but finds himself unable to work or sleep. He is haunted by the images of Yealland and Callan, and the awful memories of the scenes of electro-shock therapy. He dreams of himself holding an electrode over a helpless patient's mouth, but the electrode turns into a horse's bit, and though he tries to push it into the mouth, it will not fit. Rivers wakes up screaming. Rivers tries to understand his nightmare. He feels that the patient in his dream might have been Prior. Like Callan, he was mute upon arrival and seemed smugly satisfied with it. Rivers had used the tongue depressor on Prior in a moment of irritation with him. This makes Rivers wonder whether there is any real distinction between himself and Yealland. Both of them are in the business of controlling people, of making young men back into soldiers when they no longer want to be soldiers. Although Rivers prides himself on his more humane treatments, he nevertheless feels guilty for occasional pain he has inflicted on his patients. Rivers realizes that what he witnessed that day was not the curing of the patient, but the silencing of one. By forcing Callan to speak, Yealland was forcing him to break, to relinquish his protest. It is then that Rivers realizes that the patient in his dream was not Prior, but Sassoon. Rivers confronts his guilt over breaking Sassoon, using his influence to force him to abandon his protest

