He had never been used to an implement heavier than a pen, he said.

The magistrate sentenced him and his blistered hands to seven days' hard labour.
Old age, of course, makes pauperism.

And then there is the accident, the thing happening, the death or disablement of the husband, father, and bread-winner.

Here is a man, with a wife and three children, living on the ticklish security of twenty shillings per week--and there are hundreds of thousands of such families in London.

Perforce, to even half exist, they must live up to the last penny of it, so that a week's wages (one pound) is all that stands between this family and pauperism or starvation.