The district known as Collier's Rents is one of the three to which
attention will first be given, and the old chapel, long disused, is now
in the builders' hands and will soon be ready for opening, not as a
chapel, but as a bright, comfortable, and in every way suitable Hall. It
would be impossible to find a building better situated for working among
the very poor and degraded than this. It stands in a short street,
leading out of Long Lane, Bermondsey, the locality in which were
recently found the bodies of nine infants, which had been deposited in a
large box at the foot of some stairs in an undertaker's shop. There are
around the Hall some 650 families, or 3250 people, living in 123 houses.
The houses are largely occupied by costermongers, birdcatchers, street
singers, liberated convicts, thieves and prostitutes. There are many low
lodging-houses in the neighbourhood of the worst type. Some of them are
tenanted chiefly by thieves, and one was pointed out which is kept by a
receiver of stolen goods. In some cases two of the houses are united by
means of a passage which affords a ready method of escape in case of
police interference.
Turning out of one of these streets you enter a narrow passage, about
ten yards long and three feet wide. This leads into a court eighteen
yards long and nine yards wide. Here are twelve houses of three rooms
each, and containing altogether 36 families. The sanitary condition of
the place is indescribable. A large dust-bin charged with all manner of
filth and putrid matter stands at one end of the court, and four
water-closets at the other. In this confined area all the washing of
these 36 families is done, and the smell of the place is intolerable.
Entering a doorway you go up six or seven steps into a long passage, so
dark that you have to grope your way by the clammy, dirt-encrusted wall,
and then you find a wooden stair, some of the steps of which are broken
through. Ascending as best you can, you gain admission to one of the
rooms. You find that although the front and back of the house are of
brick, the rooms are separated only by partitions of boards, some of
which are an inch apart. There are no locks on the doors and it would
seem that they can only be fastened on the outside by padlock. In this
room to which we have come an old bed, on which are some evil-smelling
rags, is, with the exception of a broken chair, the only article of
furniture. Its sole occupant just now is a repulsive, half-drunken
Irishwoman. She is looking at some old ragged garments in hope of being
able to raise something upon them at the pawnshop, and being asked if
she is doing this because she is poor, she gets into a rage and cries,
"Call me poor? I have got half a loaf of bread in the house, and a
little milk;" and then from a heap of rubbish in one corner, she pulls
out a putrid turkey, utterly unfit for human food, which she tells us
she is going to cook for dinner. This woman has just "done seven days"
for an assault upon a police officer. We find that she has a husband,
but he spends almost all his money at the public-house. Rooms such as
this are let furnished (!) at 3s. 6d. and 4s. a week, or 8d. a night,
and we are told that the owner is getting from 50 to 60 per cent. upon
his money.
And this is a specimen of the neighbourhood. Reeking courts, crowded
public-houses, low lodging-houses and numerous brothels are to be found
all around. Even the cellars are tenanted. Poverty, rags and dirt
everywhere. The air is laden with disease-breeding gases. The
missionaries who labour here, are constantly being attacked by some
malady or other resulting from blood poisoning, and their tact and
courage are subjected to the severest tests. In going about these alleys
and courts no stranger is safe if alone. Not long ago a doctor on his
rounds was waylaid by a number of women, who would not let him pass to
see his patient until he had given them money; and a bible-woman,
visiting "Kent Street," was robbed of most of her clothing. Even the
police seldom venture into some parts of the district except in company.
Yet bad as it is there are elements of hopefulness which encourage us to
believe that our work will not be in vain. Many of its denizens would
gladly break away from the dismal, degrading life they are leading, if
only a way were made for them to do so; as it is they are hemmed in and
chained down by their surroundings in hopeless and helpless misery.
Such is Collier's Rents. To describe the other two localities where our
work is to be commenced, in Ratcliff and Shadwell, would, in the main,
be but to repeat the same heart-sickening story. Heart-sickening but
soul-stirring. We have opened but a little way the door that leads into
this plague-house of sin and misery and corruption, where men and women
and little children starve and suffer and perish, body and soul. But
even the glance we have got is a sight to make one weep. We shall not
wonder if some, shuddering at the revolting spectacle, try to persuade
themselves that such things cannot be in Christian England, and that
what they have looked upon is some dark vision conjured by a morbid pity
and a desponding faith. To such we can only say, Will you venture to
come with us and see for yourselves the ghastly reality? Others, looking
on, will believe, and pity, and despair. But another vision will be seen
by many, and in this lies our hope--a vision of Him who had "compassion
upon the multitude because they were as sheep having no shepherd,"
looking, with Divine pity in His eyes, over this outcast London, and
then turning to the consecrated host of His Church with the appeal,
"Whom shall we send and who will go for us?"
_October, 1883._
[Illustration: Decoration]
Printers: WARREN HALL & LOVITT, 88, Camden Road, N.W.
Oh, Thou, who once on earth, beneath the weight
Of our mortality, didst live and move,
The incarnation of profoundest love;
Who on the Cross that love didst consummate--
Whose deep and ample fulness could embrace
The poorest, meanest, of our fallen race:
How shall we e'er that boundless debt repay?
By long loud prayers in gorgeous temples said?
By rich oblations on Thine altars laid?
Ah, no! not thus Thou didst appoint the way.
When Thou wast bowed our human woe beneath,
Then, as a legacy, Thou didst bequeath
Earth's sorrowing children to our ministry--
And, as we do to them we do to Thee.