Copyright, 1915,
By George H. Doran Company

INTRODUCTION

IN the city of Glasgow there is a lodging-house for women known as “TheRat-pit.” Here the vagrant can get a nightly bunk for a few pence, andno female is refused admittance: the unfortunate, the sick, andwork-weary congregate under the same roof, breathe the same fetid airand forget the troubles of a miserable existence in strong drink, thesolace of the sorrowful, or in heavy stupor, the slumber of thetoilworn. The underworld, of which I have seen and known such a lot, hasalways appeared to me as a Greater Rat-pit, where human beings, pinchedand poverty-stricken and ground down with a weight of oppression, arehemmed up like the plague-stricken in a pest-house.

It is in this larger sense that I have chosen the name for the title ofNorah Ryan’s story. By committing the “great sin” and subsequently byallowing the dictates of motherhood to triumph over decrees of society,she became a pariah eternally doomed to the Greater Rat-pit. Whilst myformer book, “Children of the Dead End,” was on the whole accepted asgiving a picture of the life of the navvy, there were some who refusedto believe that scenes such as I strove to depict could exist in acountry like ours. To them I venture the assurance that “The Rat-pit” isa transcript from life and that most of the characters are real people,and the scenes only too poignantly true. Some may think that such thingsshould not be written about; but public opinion, like the light of day,is a great purifier, and to hide a sore from the surgeon’s eye out ofmiscalled delicacy is surely a supreme folly.

A word about “Children of the Dead End.” I am highly gratified by thesuccess attained by that book in Britain and abroad. Only in Ireland, mynative country, has the book given offence. Reviewers there spokeangrily about it, and one went so far as to say that I would end my daysby blowing out my brains with a revolver. The reference to a tyrannicalvillage priest gave great offence to a number of clergy, but on theother hand several wrote to me speaking very highly of the book, and Ihave been told that a Roman Catholic Bishop sat up all night to read it.In my own place I am looked upon with suspicion, all because I “wrote abook, a bad one makin’ fun of the priest,” as an old countryman remarkedto me last summer when I was at home. “You don’t like it, then?” I said.“Like it! I wouldn’t read it for a hundred pounds, money down,” was theanswer.

Patrick MacGill.

London Irish,
St. Albans.
Feb. 5th, 1915.

CONTENTS

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