{"id":"01KG8AKT622WC760GNSG3NBACP","cid":"bafkreid5avy6wk4usg73f64aiu5deerhqvnk6nfbpt2tjgqy2a3oqzevym","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":7131,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:14.842Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1GP71YDJ60P8SRH97MF","start_line":7060,"text":"CHAPTER XXXVII.\r\nWHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT’S-HEY\r\n\r\n\r\nThe dead-house reminds me of other sad things; for in the vicinity of\r\nthe docks are many very painful sights.\r\n\r\nIn going to our boarding-house, the sign of the Baltimore Clipper, I\r\ngenerally passed through a narrow street called “Launcelott’s-Hey,”\r\nlined with dingy, prison-like cotton warehouses. In this street, or\r\nrather alley, you seldom see any one but a truck-man, or some solitary\r\nold warehouse-keeper, haunting his smoky den like a ghost.\r\n\r\nOnce, passing through this place, I heard a feeble wail, which seemed\r\nto come out of the earth. It was but a strip of crooked side-walk where\r\nI stood; the dingy wall was on every side, converting the mid-day into\r\ntwilight; and not a soul was in sight. I started, and could almost have\r\nrun, when I heard that dismal sound. It seemed the low, hopeless,\r\nendless wail of some one forever lost. At last I advanced to an opening\r\nwhich communicated downward with deep tiers of cellars beneath a\r\ncrumbling old warehouse; and there, some fifteen feet below the walk,\r\ncrouching in nameless squalor, with her head bowed over, was the figure\r\nof what had been a woman. Her blue arms folded to her livid bosom two\r\nshrunken things like children, that leaned toward her, one on each\r\nside. At first, I knew not whether they were alive or dead. They made\r\nno sign; they did not move or stir; but from the vault came that\r\nsoul-sickening wail.\r\n\r\nI made a noise with my foot, which, in the silence, echoed far and\r\nnear; but there was no response. Louder still; when one of the children\r\nlifted its head, and cast upward a faint glance; then closed its eyes,\r\nand lay motionless. The woman also, now gazed up, and perceived me; but\r\nlet fall her eye again. They were dumb and next to dead with want. How\r\nthey had crawled into that den, I could not tell; but there they had\r\ncrawled to die. At that moment I never thought of relieving them; for\r\ndeath was so stamped in their glazed and unimploring eyes, that I\r\nalmost regarded them as already no more. I stood looking down on them,\r\nwhile my whole soul swelled within me; and I asked myself, What right\r\nhad any body in the wide world to smile and be glad, when sights like\r\nthis were to be seen? It was enough to turn the heart to gall; and make\r\na man-hater of a Howard. For who were these ghosts that I saw? Were\r\nthey not human beings? A woman and two girls? With eyes, and lips, and\r\nears like any queen? with hearts which, though they did not bound with\r\nblood, yet beat with a dull, dead ache that was their life.\r\n\r\nAt last, I walked on toward an open lot in the alley, hoping to meet\r\nthere some ragged old women, whom I had daily noticed groping amid foul\r\nrubbish for little particles of dirty cotton, which they washed out and\r\nsold for a trifle.\r\n\r\nI found them; and accosting one, I asked if she knew of the persons I\r\nhad just left. She replied, that she did not; nor did she want to. I\r\nthen asked another, a miserable, toothless old woman, with a tattered\r\nstrip of coarse baling stuff round her body. Looking at me for an\r\ninstant, she resumed her raking in the rubbish, and said that she knew\r\nwho it was that I spoke of; but that she had no time to attend to\r\nbeggars and their brats. Accosting still another, who seemed to know my\r\nerrand, I asked if there was no place to which the woman could be\r\ntaken. “Yes,” she replied, “to the church-yard.” I said she was alive,\r\nand not dead.\r\n\r\n“Then she’ll never die,” was the rejoinder. “She’s been down there\r\nthese three days, with nothing to eat;—that I know myself.”\r\n\r\n“She desarves it,” said an old hag, who was just placing on her crooked\r\nshoulders her bag of pickings, and who was turning to totter off, “that\r\nBetsy Jennings desarves it—was she ever married? tell me that.”\r\n\r\nLeaving Launcelott’s-Hey, I turned into a more frequented street; and\r\nsoon meeting a policeman, told him of the condition of the woman and\r\nthe girls.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJRKNBP7BQ7AC8F90RW5Q","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1GP71YDJ60P8SRH97MF","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKT62Q46V313E8H2ECKTC","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:16.578Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:30.891Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}