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Edna the Inebriate Woman E-Book

Jeremy Sandford

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Herausgeber: Marion Boyars
Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
Sprache: Englisch
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 1976

Beschreibung

Edna the Inebriate Woman was written when Jeremy Sandford, whose documentary Cathy Come Home had focused public attention on the plight of homeless families, decided to study the equally grave problems faced by Britain's thousands of single homeless people. The author follows Edna on her continuous journey through town and country and shows us at first hand the shortcomings and sheer absurdities of a society whose response to Edna's predicament is insensitive, inappropriate and expensive. Sandford's own anger and impatience with our reluctance to help those who wander through the twilight world at the bottom of society is infectious.

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Leseprobe

EDNA

THE INEBRIATE WOMAN

JEREMY SANDFORD

Marion Boyars London

Title Page

Introduction

Credits

Screenplay, Edna, The Inebriate Woman

The story brought up to date

Bibliography

Organisations and pressure groups

By the Same Author

INTRODUCTION

Edna was written because of my anger at the sort of lives that we, an affluent country, are prepared to tolerate for those in the bilges of our population.

In Cathy I had written of the cruelty done to our homeless families. Now I wanted to look at the lives of our single homeless—the sort of person that Cathy had become, when, stripped of her family, she walked into the night away from the railway station.

Specific impetus was given by the Rev. Ian Henderson of the Christian Action Hostel for Homeless Women in Lambeth High Street, and I kept in close touch with and received much help from the staff and clients of the hostel.

The response of society to the single homeless is, I believe, both absurd and expensive.

We send them on a trek from prison to psychiatric hospital, to common lodging house, which does nothing to help them and is immensely expensive to the taxpayer.

How many people are there like Edna in Britain? And what attitude should we take to them? At the time when Edna was first written, concern about the homeless family had been mobilised in ‘Shelter’ and the Squatters, but the equally grave problem of homeless single persons had so far received less attention. Such people are often dubbed ‘socially inadequate’, and information about them was fairly hard to come by.

Kenneth Stonely, representing the National Association of Voluntary Hostels, an organisation that tries to find homes for such people, told me, ‘We alone now try to find homes for thousands of such people each year. Some thousands sleep out. Others will come from a meagre bed in a common lodging house (about 30,000 beds in Britain) or a psychiatric hospital, or prison, or some other type of institution.’ These are the exits from the down-and-out world. The fruitless heavens for those who’ve fallen foul of ‘Britain basking in its contemporary affluence’.

Anton Wallich-Clifford of the Simon Community Trust has campaigned through most of his life for such people. He said, ‘The Survey done by the National Assistance Board in 1966 estimated many thousands of people who sometimes or habitually sleep rough. My researches indicate an even greater number. To the thousands of people in reception centres and common lodging houses must be added thousands of homeless inadequate single people who are, at the moment, in mental hospitals or prison or other institutions. The homeless single person—who is he? So often he is someone who has suffered a series of acts of violence which have been directed against him. I estimate there are in Britain 100,000 people of this type for whom there are no social services available from which they could get real benefit. We at the Simon Community Trust have set up many hostels to try to help these people. I am hopeful—but also sometimes feel despair. Even in Brighton in February, so a survey showed, there were at least fifty people sleeping out—some in pleasure shelters overlooking the waves.’

‘What makes them like they are?’ I asked a doctor.

‘Some claim it’s very simple–and sad. That hardly any of them had the pleasure of a loving relationship with their parents. This is what maims them, so that they can’t now make contact with society. Many others had foster parents. Others again were institutionalised in psychiatric hospital or prison.’

Christian Action has established a hostel for such people and describes them in a handout, written by Leslie Tuft, as follows: ‘Many live in shiftless existence, moving restlessly from one lodging house to another. Others are to be found in psychiatric and general hospitals, casualty departments, police stations, and in prison. Yet others have no alternative but to sleep rough in doorways or all-night launderettes, telephone kiosks, on the wooden benches of the main-line railway stations. Traumatic childhood experiences, early departure from the family home, loss of family ties, inability to settle for long in one job or one place, no marriage or a disastrous failure of marriage, all contribute to the development of a possible social isolation.’

I arranged in the script for Edna to pass through many of the traditional lodging places of persons of her type. Sometimes she was sleeping out in ‘derries’ (derelict buildings). Occasionally she used the ‘Spike’—or reception centre. These places are so named because in the old days, in exchange for a night’s shelter, you had to break up a certain number of rocks on a spike. There used to be Spikes arranged as a network all over Britain, usually connected to the old workhouses, and each a day’s walk apart. Since the war, however, the policy has been to close them down, so that there are not many of them left now and they’ve been renamed ‘Reception Centres’.

A rung above these again come the ‘kiphouses’. Many of these are run by the Salvation Army, some run by local authorities, others by Rowton Houses, the Church Army, and others. Beyond these are psychiatric hospital and prison.

The events of my story of Edna are all based on real events that happened to real down-and-outs—men and women—within the last few years.

Move on, move on. This seems to be the reality of life for thousands of dossers and down-and-outs in Britain.

‘Oh yes, the shades (police) like to have a clean beat,’ one tells me. And yet down-and-outs possess many Christ-like virtues. They take no thought for the morrow, lay up no worldly goods.

People like Edna are people to whom violence has been done. And to a certain extent this has kept them, though adult in physical appearance, at the stage of development of children.

If I behave unjustly to a child he will sulk and say, ‘I hate you’. But what he is really saying is, ‘Please love me’. A wise parent or schoolmaster realises this, and that a fit of the sulks, accompanied by’, Fuck society, put me back in the nick, at any rate that’s warm,’ etc. etc., is a plea for help.

Help we must and care we must. More and more people each year are going into care, and, despite pruning, entry into psychiatric hospitals remains roughly constant. More people are going into the courts, into homes for juveniles and into prison—especially teenagers.

The flood of homeless teenagers who seem unable to cope with society is becoming so great that it now constitutes one-third of all the NAVH placements. And this is a grave sign. Many of course will find a happier orientation in life when they ‘settle down’. But the numbers are too great for us to write off the danger so easily.

And, if we don’t learn better how to cope with the Ednas of Britain they will continue to grow in numbers—until they constitute a population numbering, not one hundred thousand, but hundreds of thousands.

I believe that the answer for Britain’s thousands of Ednas’ lies in permissive hostels akin to the fictional one run by Josie in my script. Hostels like this that I have been connected with and applaud are run by the Cyrenians. There are too many people around who are not capable of functioning outside a protective set-up. But, once provide that protective set-up, which need be little more than a house that they can be confident they’ll not be thrown out of, and these people can achieve a happy and fulfilled life. Those considering what life-style would be most fulfilling for themselves and also helpful to others could do worse than consider going through the necessary stages to set up such a place. Most people make the decision to have a family and look after their own children. But there is a need for hundreds of people to make a different decision, and, instead, set up artificial families.

This is happening. All the time, new hostels or ‘houses of hospitality’ are springing up and there are now hundreds of places in Britain corresponding more or less to the one run by Josie in this script. But the situation is not a rosy one. There have also been many closures. Many people in this field of social work have told me that pressure gets worse, not better. There is need for hundreds more. What threatens this sort of hostel?

Firstly, the problem of personnel. It is hard to find someone of the right personality to run them.

Secondly, finance. The Government can underpin the price of beds for certain types of hostel. This is good. Some hostels, however, are run on such a shoestring that it is impossible for them to get up to the standards which would be passable by the local Health Inspector. Receiving Government money would make them liable to be inspected and so they do not claim money because they fear that if they were inspected they would be closed down.

In those hostels which are not afraid of this, one of the most important things that a kindly person running them can do is to help their residents claim what is their right from Social Security. So often a failure in communication has resulted in a breakdown in relationships with the Social Security and this can be put right. The Social Security will then pay their rent.

A few local authorities are making available houses which are not to be developed for a few years to those who would like to run houses of hospitality. Otherwise it is necessary to find such a place to rent or to buy—this again presents money problems.

A third thing which threatens the establishment of hostels is the antagonism of neighbours. Here there is a need for greater understanding. And I would be happy if I felt that Edna had helped a little with this.

Jeremy Sandford

CREDITS

Written byJeremy Sandford DirectorTed Kotcheff PhotographyPeter Bartlett SoundPeter Edwards EditorPeter Coulson ProducerIrene Shubik

Edna,theInebriateWoman was written in late 1968 and early 1969. It was filmed by Ted Kotcheff for the BBC and transmitted in 1971.

This version of the script is the one from which the film was made, (BBC project no. 02140/3484). I have tidied it up in places to make it easier reading. I have added two scenes that I wrote, at Ted Kotcheff’s suggestion, while the film was being made. These are the ‘Blimey O’Reilly’ scene in the dormitory at the spike, and the scene in the washroom at the ‘Manor House’.