Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

In late February 1765 Jane Austin found herself in a terrible situation. She had lost her lodging in White Hart Yard when the man she was living with, John Duggin, beat her and threw her out. She was homeless and friendless on the streets of London and was suffering from both the beating and a long-standing chest complaint. Her first response was to apply to the overseers of the poor of the parish of St Martin in the Fields for admission to their workhouse. Her settlement was inquired into and she was found to possess none, and as a result was turned back onto the street. For three days she begged about the parish, up and down the Strand and in Covent Garden, sleeping in doorways at night, but by the third day she had become desperate. She was starving and the wound in her side from the beating continued to plague her. At noon on the third day she knocked at the door of Elizabeth Stewart's apartment in a low lodging house belonging to Ann James in New Bedford Court, a tiny enclave off the Strand. Several women were working in the room and Jane begged to be allowed to sit by the fire. She was invited in, and sat for the rest of the afternoon, while more fortunate women - poor but employed - worked around her. In the evening she shared a pint of purl - hot beer and gin mixed together - and at ten, when Elizabeth Stewart returned from an errand, she asked to be allowed to sleep in ... log in or subscribe to read full text