CHILDREN AND ADULTS AT THE PASSMORE EDWARDS SETTLEMENT--THE FOUNDATION
OF THE INVALID CHILDREN'S SCHOOL
1897-1899
For some two or three years before the opening of the new Settlement, a
Saturday morning "playroom" for children had been held at Marchmont
Hall, mainly under the direction of Miss Mary Neal, who, as the founder
of the Esperance Club for factory girls, and one of the "Sisters"
working under Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, had already made her name beloved
in the slums of St. Pancras. In that shabby little room she had taught
them Old English games and dances, till even the street outside grew
merry with the sound of their music, and many were the groups of
children seen playing "Old Roger is dead" or "Looby Loo" at street
corners during the other days of the week. Mrs. Ward had been much
attracted by the experiment, which was hampered, like everything else at
Marchmont Hall, by lack of space; and now that the fine new buildings
were available she was eager to transplant it and to carry it further.
My diary for Saturday, October 16, 1897, duly records that "D. and Miss
Churcher and I went to the Settlement at ten to superintend the
children's play-hour, which we are now going to have every Saturday in
the big hall. It was a perfect pandemonium this time, as we hadn't
prepared any sort of organization, and there were at least 120 children
to deal with. We also had to give each child a pair of list slippers to
put on over its own boots, and this was a tremendous business and took
over half an hour. Miss Neal made them a little speech before we began
the games, and then we all formed rings and played Looby Loo and others
of that stamp for nearly an hour more."
From these unpromising beginnings sprang the whole of the "organized
recreation" for children which gradually arose at the new Settlement,
with the object of attracting the child population of the district away
from the streets after school hours. Mrs. Ward guided and inspired the
movement, though she left the actual carrying on of the classes to
younger and more robust members of her group; but she formed a special
committee (the Women's Work Committee), of which she was chairman, to
watch over it all, and generally supplied the motive force, the sense of
its being worth while, which inspired the ever-growing band of our
helpers. One class, too, she kept as her very own--a weekly reading
aloud for boys between eleven and fourteen, in the course of which she
read them a great deal of Stevenson and Kipling, or brought them
photographs of her travels in Italy, or talked to them sometimes of the
events of the day. About thirty boys came regularly to these readings,
and always behaved well with her, while she on her side came to know
them individually and felt a strong affection for many of them. Where
are they now, those thirty boys? How many have left their bones in the
mud of Flanders, or on the heights that look towards Troas, across the
narrow sea? Mrs. Ward herself was often possessed with that thought
through the years of the Great War, but never, so far as I know, heard
any direct news of them. All were of that fatal age that Death reaped
with the least pity.
After the Saturday morning play-rooms--which fortunately improved in
discipline after that first "pandemonium," and increased so much in
popularity that we had to divide them into two, taking in close upon 400
children in a morning--we launched out into musical drill-classes for
bigger and smaller children, story-telling for the little ones,
gymnastic classes for girls and boys, a children's hour in the library,
dancing and acting classes, and finally history lectures with lantern
slides, designed to supplement the very meagre teaching of history that
the children received in the elementary schools around. How much one
learnt by hard experience, in the course of it all, of the art of
keeping the children's attention--whether in teaching them a new
singing-game on Saturdays, or in the story-telling to the "under
elevens," or in the exciting task of going over Oliver's battles with
the young ladies and gentlemen of the fifth to seventh standards! For
even these, if one lost their attention for a moment, were not above
calling out "Ole Krujer!" at a somewhat forbidding slide of Sir Thomas
Fairfax, while the "under elevens" would often be swept by gusts of
coughing and talk that fairly drowned the voice of the story-teller, if
she suffered them to lose the thread of the Princess's adventures by too
gorgeous a description of the dragon. But usually they were as good as
gold, sitting there packed tight on the rows of chairs (136 children on
seventy-six chairs was one of our records), while the "little mothers"
hugged their babies and no sound was to be heard save the sucking of
toffee or liquorice-sticks.
All these occupations took place in the late afternoon, from 5.30 to 7,
during the hours when the children of London, discharged from school and
tea, drift aimlessly about the streets, often actually locked out from
home (in those days at least) owing to the long hours worked by mother
as well as father at "charing" or at the local factory. The instant
response made by the child-population of St. Pancras to Mrs. Ward's
piping showed that she had, as it were, stumbled upon a real and vital
need of our great cities, and as a larger and larger band of helpers was
drawn into our circle and more and more of the cheerful Settlement rooms
came into use, the attendances of the children went up by leaps and
bounds. One year after the opening they had grown to some 650 per week;
by October, 1899, to 900, and in the next three or four years they
touched the utmost capacity of the building by reaching 1,200. The
schools in the immediate neighbourhood co-operated eagerly in the new
effort, though the selection of children for our special classes often
involved extra labour for the teachers; but they rose to it with
enthusiasm, and would sometimes steal in to watch their children
enjoying the story-telling or the library, removed from the restraint of
day-school discipline, and yet "giving no trouble," as they wonderingly
recognized. Mrs. Ward made friends with many of these teachers,
especially with those from Manchester Street and Prospect Terrace
Schools, for it was her way to establish natural human relations with
every one with whom she came in contact, and the hard-working London
teacher always appealed to her in a peculiar way. An incident that gave
her special pleasure was the passing of a vote of thanks to the
Settlement by a neighbouring Board of Managers, "for the work done among
the children of this school." How she was loved and looked up to by
every one concerned--by helpers, teachers and, more dimly, by the
children themselves--is not, perhaps, for me to say; but this was the
note that underlay all the busy hum of the Settlement building in the
children's hour, as indeed in all the other hours of its day.
Occasionally, however, some critic would observe, "Well, this is all
very fine for the children, but what do the parents say about it? What
becomes of _home influence_ when you encourage the children to come out
in this way at an hour when they ought to be at home?" The answer, of
course, was that the parents themselves, and especially the more anxious
and hard-working among them, were the foremost in blessing the
Settlement (or the "Passmore," as it was affectionately dubbed in the
neighbourhood) for the good care that it took of Sidney or Alf or Elsie;
that they knew, better than anyone else, how little they could do in the
miserable rooms that served them for a home for the growing boys and
girls, and yet that "the streets" were full of dangers from which they
longed to preserve their little ones. One or two of them became
voluntary helpers at the "Recreation School," as it came to be called;
many joined the "Parents' Guild" that Mrs. Ward formed from among them,
and that met periodically at the Settlement for music and rest, or for a
quiet talk with her about the children's doings; while all were to be
seen at the summer and winter "Displays" in the big hall or in the
garden, their tired faces beaming with pride at the performance of their
offspring. Perhaps indeed it is the bitterest reproach of all against
our civilization that in the homes of the poor, "where every process of
life and death," as Mrs. Ward once put it, "has to be carried on within
the same few cubic feet of space," there is no room for the growing
children, who, as baby follows baby in the crowded tenement, get pushed
out into the world almost before they can stand upon their feet. Mrs.
Ward knew only too well the conditions of life in the mean streets of
St. Pancras or the East End; her sister-in-law, Miss Gertrude Ward, who
had become a District Nurse after the eight years of her life with us,
had frequently taken her to certain typical dens where such "processes
of life and death" were going on, and her own researches for _Sir George
Tressady_ had done the rest. Add to this her intense power of
imagination and of realization acting like a fire within her, and the
children's work at the Passmore Edwards Settlement is all explained. She
yearned to them and longed to make them happy: that was all.
Mr. Tatton, the Warden, would often say that the Recreation School was
growing to be the most important side of the Settlement work, and
himself, bachelor as he was, delighted to watch it; but Mrs. Ward would
not willingly have admitted this, even if it were true, for the many
developments of the normal work for adults were always immensely
interesting to her. Whenever she was in London (and often from Stocks
too!) she contrived, in spite of ill-health and the many claims upon her
time, to be at the Settlement three or four times a week, attending
Council meetings and committees, showing the building to friends,
talking to "Associates," old and new, or listening with delight to the
wonderful concerts that took place in the big hall on Saturday evenings.
For it had always been intended that music should play a very special
part in the life of the Settlement, and the Council had been fortunate
in securing as Musical Director Mr. Charles Williams, who, in
partnership with Miss Audrey Chapman's Ladies' Orchestra, gave concerts
of quite extraordinary merit there during the first year or two of the
Settlement's existence. He would take his audience into his confidence,
explaining, before the music began, the part of each instrument in the
whole symphony, and all with so happy a touch that even untrained
listeners felt transported into a world where they understood--for the
moment--what Beethoven or Mozart would be at. Those evenings remain in
memory as occasions of pure joy, and did much to reconcile the older
Associates of Marchmont Hall to the magnificence of the new building--a
magnificence which otherwise weighed rather sadly upon their spirits!
Some of them, amid the growing activity of the new life around them,
confessed that they could not help regretting the old shabby days of
pipe-sucking at Marchmont Hall, where the dingy premises were "a poor
thing, but mine own." Mrs. Ward was distressed by this feeling, and
sought to draw them in in every way to the life and government of the
place; but one of the unforeseen features of the work was that the new
Associates who joined the Settlement in considerable numbers were for
the most part young people, rather than the contemporaries and friends
of the Marchmont Hall Associates. Shop assistants and clerks were also
on the increase, desiring to take advantage of the many facilities,
social and educational, offered by the new building; and though the
new-comers were looked on with distrust by the older members, no
definite rule could be laid down excluding them. Admission to the
Associate body might be strictly reserved to "workmen and working women"
from a definite area, but it was difficult to prove that a shopman or a
clerk did not work. One thing, however, was insisted upon--that the new
candidates should read over and digest the confession of faith which
Mrs. Ward had drawn up in the early days of Marchmont Hall, a creed
which put in simple form the aspirations of the Settlement:
"We believe that many changes in the conditions of life and labour
are needed, and are coming to pass; but we believe also that men,
without any change except in themselves and in their feelings
towards one another, might make this world a better and happier
place.
"Therefore, with the same sympathies but different experiences of
life, we meet to exchange ideas and to discuss social questions, in
the hope that as we learn to know one another better, a feeling of
fellowship may arise among us."
And though some of the younger candidates seemed to have joined the
Settlement rather to dance at the Social Evenings than to "exchange
ideas and to discuss social questions," let alone to attend the lectures
and classes, still the leaven worked, so that at the end of three years
the Warden could report that "an increasing number of Associates use the
opportunities of the Settlement to the utmost, and are always to the
front when service and help are needed. Such Associates, both men and
women, are a chief source of whatever power for good the Settlement may
exert."
And indeed, with what life and movement the whole building hummed on any
evening of the week, in those first exciting years! Apart altogether
from the children's work, the attendances of adults during the busy
winter terms reached some 1,400 a week, and must surely have
represented, when translated into terms of human aspiration or
enjoyment, much lightening of the burdens and monotonies of life in the
dull streets that surrounded the Settlement. Mrs. Ward herself, in an
appeal in favour of the work issued in 1901, summed up in these words
her feeling on the place that Settlements might fill in the life of
London's workers:
"Stand in the street now and look back at the 'Community
House'--the Settlement building and its surroundings. The high
windows shine; in and out pass men and women, boys and girls, going
to class, or concert, or drill, to play a game of chess or
billiards, or merely to sit in a pleasant and quiet room, well lit
and warmed, to read a book or listen to music. To your right
stretches the densely peopled district of King's Cross and Gray's
Inn Road, Clerkenwell. Behind the Settlement runs the busy Euston
Road, and the wilderness of Somers Town. Immediately beside you, if
you turn your head, you may see the opening of a narrow street and
the outline of a large block of model dwellings, whence many
frequenters of the Settlement have been drawn. Carry your minds
into the rooms of these old tenement houses which fill the streets
east of Marchmont Street, the streets, say, lying between you and
Prospect Terrace Board School. No doubt the aspect of these rooms
varies with the character of the occupants. But even at their best,
how cramped they are, how lacking in space, air, beauty, judged by
those standards which a richer class applies to its own dwellings
as a matter of course! and though we may hope that a reforming
legislation may yet do something for the dwellings of the London
working-class in the essential matters of air and sanitation, it is
not easy to foresee a time when the workman's house shall do more
than supply him with the simplest necessaries--with shelter, with
breathing-room, sleeping-room, food-room. Yet, as we fully realize,
the self-respecting and industrious artisan has instincts towards
the beauties and dignities of life. He likes spacious rooms, and
soft colour, and pictures to look at, as much as anyone else; he
wants society, art, music, a quiet chair after hard work, stimulus
for the brain after manual labour, amusement after effort, just
like his neighbour in Mayfair or Kensington. The young men and
maidens want decent places other than the streets and the
public-house in which to meet and dance and amuse each other. They
need--as we all need--contact with higher education and gentler
manners. They want--as we all ought to want--to set up a social
standard independent of money or occupation, determined by manners
in the best sense, by kindness, intelligence, mutual sympathy, work
for the commonweal. They want surroundings for their children after
school hours which, without loosening the home-tie, shall yet
supplement their own narrow and much-taxed accommodation; which
shall humanize, and soften, and discipline. They want more physical
exercise, more access to the country, more organization of
holidays. All these things are to be had in or through the House
Beautiful--through the Settlement, the 'Community' or 'Combination'
house of the future. The Socialist dreams of attaining them through
the Collectivist organization of the State. But at any rate he will
admit that his goal is far, far distant; probably he feels it more
distant now than he and his fellows thought it thirty years ago.
Let him, let all of us work meanwhile for something near our hands,
for the deepening and extension of the Settlement movement, for the
spread, that is, of knowledge of the higher pleasures, and of a
true social power among the English working-class."
How instinct are these words with the idealisms of a bygone generation,
a generation that knew not Communism or Proletarian Schools! No doubt,
nowadays, we have gone beyond all that; we may not speak of the
"self-respecting and industrious artisan"; class-war is the word of
power instead of class-appeasement. So far on the onward road have we
travelled since 1901!
For the rest, Mrs. Ward's main task during these early years was to use
her gifts of understanding, of patience and of human sympathy in keeping
all the workers at the Settlement together, in straightening out the
differences that would arise among so varied a crew of energetic people,
and in pushing forward the work in ever new directions. All difficulties
were referred to her by Residents, by Associates, by Warden and
Treasurer. On her also rested the responsibility for raising the
necessary money. Much helped by the Duke of Bedford, who remitted the
ground-rent, and also gave a considerable subscription, she prospered
beyond all rational probability in the latter task. Her many friends
were touched by her infectious enthusiasm, and gladly helped her to the
best of their ability, so that the deficits on each year's working
turned out to be far less than the prudent had expected. Such a letter
as the following was not uncommon--though the amount enclosed did not
always reach so round a figure:--
_May 25, 1898._
DEAR MRS. HUMPHRY WARD,--
I shall be very happy to dine with you on the 14th of June.
You once said that the P. Edwards Settlement would not be
disdainful of subscriptions, and I had not anything to give at the
time. I can now send you with pleasure a cheque for £100. I am sure
you will find some good use for it.
Yours very truly,
NORTHBROOK.
The use found for Lord Northbrook's gift was in tidying and beautifying
the garden at the back of the Settlement--a piece of land, shaded by
fine old plane trees, which the Duke kept in his own hands, but allowed
the Settlement to use for a nominal fee. It was now laid down in grass,
and became a vital element in the carrying out of Mrs. Ward's further
schemes for the welfare of her London children. It was there that she
opened her first "Vacation School" in 1902 for children left to play and
quarrel in the streets during the August holiday, and there too that she
could see health returning to the faces of her cripples, after the
opening of the "Invalid Children's School" in February, 1899.
* * * * *
In looking back over the origin of Mrs. Ward's interest in crippled and
invalid children, the vision of our old house in Russell Square rises
once more before me, with its gravelled garden at the rear running back
to meet the Queen Square gardens to the east of us, for there, across
those old plane-shaded spaces, rose the modest buildings of the
"Alexandra Hospital for Diseases of the Hip"--or, as we used to call it
for short, the "Hip Hospital." What "Diseases of the Hip" exactly were
was an obscure point to our childish minds, but we knew that our mother
cared very much for the children lying there, that all our old toys went
to amuse them, and that sometimes a lame boy or girl would appear at the
cottage down the lane past Borough Farm, which was Mrs. Ward's earliest
attempt at a convalescent home for ailing Londoners. No doubt many
another Bloomsbury family did just as much as we for these helpless
little ones, but the sight of them kindled in her the spark of
imagination, of creative force or what you will, that would not accept
their condition passively, but after many years forged from time and
circumstance the opportunity for a fundamental improvement of their
lives.
The opportunity presented itself in the tempting emptiness of the
Settlement rooms during the day-time. From five o'clock onwards they
were used to the uttermost, but all the morning and early afternoon they
stood tenantless, asking for occupation. Mrs. Ward had heard of a little
class for crippled children carried on at the Women's University
Settlement, Southwark, by Miss Sparkes, and of another in Stepney
organized by Mr. and Mrs. G. T. Pilcher, and before the new Settlement
was a year old she was already making inquiries from her friends on the
London School Board as to whether it might be possible to obtain the
Board's assistance in opening a small school for Crippled Children at
the Passmore Edwards Settlement. Already London possessed a few Special
Schools for the "mentally defective"; the Progressive party was in the
ascendant on the School Board, and among its chiefs were certain old
friends of Mrs. Ward's--Mr. Lyulph Stanley (now Lord Sheffield) and Mr.
Graham Wallas, who knew something of her powers and of the probability
that anything to which she set her hand in earnest would be carried
through. Mrs. Ward on her side believed that the number of crippled but
educable children scattered through London was far greater than anyone
supposed, and moreover that the policy of drafting them into the new
schools for the mentally defective (as was being done in some cases) was
fundamentally unsound. In the summer of 1898, therefore, she formed a
sub-committee of the Settlement Council, which undertook to carry out a
thorough inquiry in the neighbourhood of Tavistock Place into the
numbers of invalid children living at home and not attending ordinary
school, whose infirmities would yet permit them to attend a special
centre of the type that she had in mind. The help of all the
neighbouring hospitals was asked for and most ungrudgingly given, in the
supplying of lists of suitable children, while the Invalid Children's
Aid Association actively helped in the work of visiting, and the School
Board directed their Attendance Officers to assist Mrs. Ward by
providing the names of children exempted on the ground of ill-health
from attending school. Sad indeed were the secrets revealed by this
inquiry--of helpless children left at home all day, perhaps with a
little food within reach, while mother and father were out at work, with
_nothing on earth to do_, and only the irregular and occasional visits
of some kind-hearted neighbour to look forward to.
"I have a vivid recollection," writes one of the most devoted
workers of the I.C.A.A., Mrs. Townsend, "of being asked by a
neighbour to visit two small boys in a particularly dirty and
unsavoury street. I found the door open, felt my way along a
pitch-dark passage, and found at the end of it a small dark room,
very barely furnished: in one corner was a bed, on which lay a boy
of ten with spinal trouble; in the other corner were two kitchen
chairs, on one of which sat a boy of seven, with hip disease, his
leg propped on the other. Between them stood a small table, and on
it a tumbler of water and a plate with slices of bread and jam. The
mother of these two was at work all day: at 6 a.m. she put their
food for the day on the table and went off, leaving them all alone
until she got home from work dead tired at 8 p.m. At least there
were two of them, which made it a little less dreary for them than
for another spinal case in the next street, who was left in the
same way and was dependent on a kindly but very busy neighbour for
any sight of human beings for fourteen hours of each day. I could
quote case after case of these types--the children untaught and
undisciplined, without hope or prospect in life, sometimes
neglected because mother's whole time was spent in trying to earn
enough to support them, more often spoilt and petted just because
they were cripples, with their disability continually before them,
and made the excuse for averting all the ordinary troubles of
life. The attempts to place such children when they grew up were
despairing--they were unused to using their hands and brains,
unused to looking after themselves, supremely conscious that they
were different from other people. The days before Special Schools
seem almost too bad to look back upon even!"
From the reports on such cases which Mrs. Ward received from her helpers
throughout the summer of 1898 she formed the opinion that no school
could be successful unless it maintained a nurse to look after the
children's ailments, and an ambulance to convey them to and from their
homes. But she felt confident of being able to raise the money
(£200-£220 a year) for these purposes, if the School Board would provide
furniture and pay a teacher. Accordingly, by October, 1898, her
committee forwarded to the School Board a carefully-sifted schedule of
twenty-five names, together with a formal application that the Board
should take up the proposed class, provide it with a teacher, and supply
suitable furniture for the class-rooms, while the Settlement undertook
to provide rooms free of charge, to pay a nurse-superintendent, and to
maintain a special ambulance for the use of the school. Some
correspondence followed with the School Management Committee, of which
Mr. Graham Wallas was Chairman, and which was besieged at the same time
by those who thought such schools totally unnecessary, since all invalid
children whom it was possible to educate at all could attend the
Infants' (i.e. ground floor) departments of ordinary schools, where the
teachers would look after them. But Mrs. Ward collected much evidence to
show that this course could not possibly be pursued with any but the
slighter cases. "We have heard very pitiful things of the risks run by
these spinal and hip-disease cases in the ordinary schools," she wrote
to Mr. Stanley, "and of such children's terror of the hustling and
bustling of the playgrounds," and early in December she summed up the
arguments on this head in another memorandum to the Board. The
atmosphere was favourable, and indeed Mrs. Ward had marshalled her
evidence and put the case for the school so convincingly that no serious
opposition was possible. The School Board gave its consent early in
January, 1899; the approval of the Board of Education followed promptly,
and nothing remained but to provide the ambulance, and the set of
special furniture which was to fill the two rooms set aside for the
children at the Settlement.
The ambulance was presented by no less a well-wisher than Sir Thomas
Barlow, the great physician, while Mrs. Burgwin, the Board's
Superintendent of Special Schools, and Miss McKee, a member of the
Board, busied themselves in procuring and ordering a set of ingenious
invalid furniture--little cane arm-chairs with sliding foot-rests,
couches for the spinal cases, a go-cart for the play-ground, and so
forth--such as no Public Education Authority had ever occupied itself
with before. Preparations were made at the Settlement for serving the
daily dinner, which was to be an integral part of the arrangements, and
which, in those happy days, was to cost the children no more than
three-halfpence a head. At last, on February 28, 1899, all was
ready--save indeed the ambulance, for which an omnibus with an
improvised couch had to be substituted during the first few weeks. The
nurse, too, had been taken ill, so that on this first day the children
were fetched and safely delivered at the Settlement by Mrs. Ward's
secretary, Miss Churcher. It was pitiful to see their excitement and
delight at the new adventure, their joy in the "ride" and their wonder
at the pretty, unfamiliar rooms, each with its open fire, its flowers
from Stocks, and its set of Caldecott pictures on the walls, which
greeted them at the end of their journey. Mrs. Ward was, of course,
among the small group of those who welcomed them. Two medical officers
from the Board were there to admit them officially, and after this
ceremony they were handed over to the care of Miss Milligan, their
teacher--a woman whose special gifts in the handling of these delicate
children were to be devoted to the service of this school for nearly
twenty years. It is to be feared that little in the way of direct
instruction was imparted to them on that first day. But there they now
were, safe within the benevolent shelter of that most human of
institutions, the London School Board, and in a fair way to
become--though few of us realized it fully then--useful members of a
community from which they had received little till then but capricious
petting or heart-rending neglect.
The arrangements for the children's dinners and for the hour of
play-time afterwards were a subject of constant interest and delight to
Mrs. Ward. The housekeeper at the Settlement put all her ingenuity into
making the children's pence go as far as they could possibly be
stretched in covering the cost of a wholesome meal, and for a long time
the sum of 3_s._ 6_d._ a day was sufficient to pay for dinners of meat,
potatoes and pudding for twenty-five to thirty children. Their health
visibly improved, and the gratitude of their parents was touching to see
and hear. Nevertheless, Mrs. Ward was not satisfied. Some of the
children were very capricious in their appetites, and although most of
them did learn to eat milk puddings (at least when washed down with
treacle!), there were some who could hardly manage the plain wholesome
food, and others who could have eaten more than we had to give. It was
tempting to try the experiment of a larger and more varied dietary upon
them, and in days when the C.O.S. still reigned supreme, and the policy
of "free meals for necessitous children" was hardly breathed by the most
advanced, Mrs. Ward had the courage to carry it out. She described the
results in a letter to _The Times_, in September, 1901:
"It was pointed out to the managers that a more liberal and varied
dietary might have marked effects upon the children's health. The
experiment was tried. More hot meat, more eggs, milk, cream,
vegetables and fruit were given. In consequence the children's
appetites largely increased, and the expenses naturally increased
with them. The children's pence in May amounted to £3 13_s._ 6_d._,
and the cost of food was £4 7_s._ 2_d._; in June, after the more
liberal scale had been adopted, the children's payments were still
£3 13_s._ 10_d._, but the expenses had risen to £5 7_s._ 8_d._
Meanwhile, the physical and mental results of the increased
expenditure are already unmistakable. Partially paralysed children
have been recovering strength in hands and limbs with greater
rapidity than before. A child who last year often could not walk at
all, from rickets and extreme delicacy, and seemed to be fading
away--who in May was still languid and feeble--is now racing about
in the garden on his crutches; a boy who last year could only crawl
on hands and feet is now steadily and rapidly learning to walk, and
so on. The effect, indeed, is startling to those who have watched
the experiment. Meanwhile the teachers have entered in the
log-book of the school their testimony to the increased power of
work that the children have been showing since the new feeding has
been adopted. Hardly any child now wants to lie down during school
time, whereas applications to lie down used to be common; and the
children both learn and remember better."
It may be added that while the minimum payment of 1-1/2_d._ for these
dinners was still maintained at the Settlement School, payments of 2_d._
and even 3_d._ were asked from those who could afford it, and were in
many cases willingly given, while there were always a few children who
were excused all payment on the ground of poverty at home.
Another element that contributed largely to the success of the school
from the very beginning was that of the "dinner-hour helpers"--a panel
of ladies who took it in turns to wait on the children at dinner and to
superintend their play-time afterwards. They came with remarkable
regularity, and became deeply attached, many of them, to their frail
little charges. When the School Board extended the Cripples' Schools to
other parts of London they were careful to copy this development of
ours, by insisting that local committees of managers, half of whom
should be women, must be attached to each school. Here, surely, in this
simple but effective institution, may be seen the germ of the Care
Committee of future days!
The success of the school in Tavistock Place--the roll of which soon
increased to some forty children--naturally attracted a good deal of
attention, and it had hardly been running a year before the pros and
cons of setting up similar schools in other districts began to be
debated within the London School Board. Some members inevitably shied at
the prospect of the increasing expense to the rates, especially if the
whole cost of premises, ambulance and nurse were to be borne by the
public authority, and a definite movement arose, either for bringing the
crippled children into the ordinary schools, with some provision in the
way of special couches, etc., or for brigading the crippled and invalid
children with the "Mentally Defectives" in the special centres which had
already been opened for the latter. Much encouragement was given to this
latter view by the official report of one of the Medical Officers of the
School Board, who was instructed, in the spring of 1900, to examine and
report upon all cases of crippled children not attending school, and
submitted a report recommending that "those cases whom it is advisable
to permit to attend school at all" should be sent to the Mentally
Defective Centres, while neither nurse nor ambulance were, in the
opinion of the writer, required.
Mrs. Ward and her friends on the School Board were obliged to fight very
strenuously against these views, which, if they had prevailed, would
have prevented the establishment of "Physically Defective Centres" as we
know them to-day. It is perhaps unprofitable to go into the details of
that long-past controversy, the echoes of which have so completely died
away; suffice it to say that a Special Conference appointed by the Board
to consider the Medical Officer's Report recommended, in October, 1900,
that "The Board do make provision for children who, by reason of
physical defect, are incapable of receiving proper benefit from the
instruction in the ordinary public elementary schools, but are not
incapable by reason of such defect of receiving benefit from instruction
in special classes or schools"; and "that children of normal
intelligence be not taught with mentally defective children." A little
later it recommended the provision of both ambulance and nurse. These
resolutions--which were accepted by the Board--cleared the way for the
establishment of new centres for "Physically Defective" children, as
they now began to be called; but in order to make her case invincible,
and to accelerate the work of the School Board, Mrs. Ward undertook, all
through the autumn and winter of 1900-1901, a complete investigation
into the numbers and condition of the invalid children not attending
school in some of the largest and poorest London boroughs. In
consultation with the trained workers whom she employed for the purpose,
she had special forms printed for use in the inquiry, and I remember
well her eager comments as the statistics came in, and her consternation
at the ever-increasing numbers of crippled children which the inquiry
revealed. Finally this investigation extended to nine out of the ten
School Board divisions of London, and embraced a total of some 1,800
children, of whom 1,000, in round numbers, were recommended by her as
suitable for invalid schools. Of the rest, a substantial proportion were
reported as fit for ordinary school with a little additional care on
the part of teachers and managers; some were too ill for any school, and
some were both mentally and physically defective, and therefore
recommended for the "M.D." Centres. Meanwhile, the Special Schools
Sub-Committee of the School Board, under their Chairman, the Hon. Maude
Lawrence, had been at work since February, 1901, in making inquiries
into possible sites and buildings for the new schools, and by the middle
of March the Board were able to inform Mrs. Ward that sites for four
Centres had been agreed upon, while two more were to be located in
Kennington and Battersea "on the constitution of your returns, which
have now been marked on the map by the Divisional Superintendents."
Four ambulances had also been ordered, and it was decided to appoint
nurses at each of the Centres at a salary of £75 a year. Kitchens were,
of course, to be provided at all the Centres, so that the hot midday
meal which had proved so successful at the Settlement might be supplied.
The first two Centres to be opened by the School Board--in Paddington
and Bethnal Green--were ready by September, 1901, and both drew their
children entirely from those on Mrs. Ward's lists. It may be imagined
with what intense satisfaction she had followed every step taken by the
School Board towards this consummation. Finally she gathered up the
whole story of the Settlement School and of the School Board's adoption
of responsibility for London's crippled children in the letter to _The
Times_ mentioned above, pleading for the extension of the movement to
other large towns, and describing certain efforts made at the Settlement
School for the industrial and artistic training of the older children.
Her final paragraph ran as follows:
"The happiness of the new schools is one of their most delightful
characteristics. Freed from the dread of being jostled on stairs or
knocked down in the crowd of the playground, with hours, food and
rest proportioned to their need, these maimed and fragile creatures
begin to expand and unfold like leaves in the sun. And small
wonder! They have either been battling with ordinary school on
terribly unequal terms, or else, in the intervals of hospital and
convalescent treatment, their not uncommon lot has been to be
locked up at home alone, while the normal members of the family
were at work. I can recall one case of a child, lame and
constantly falling, with brain irritation to boot--the result of
infant convulsions--locked up for hours alone while its mother was
at work; and another, of a poor little lad, whose back had been
injured by an accident, alone all day after his discharge from
hospital, feebly dragging himself about his room, in cold weather,
to find a few sticks for fire, with the tears running down his
cheeks from pain. His father and sister were at work, and he had no
mother. It could not be helped. But he has been gathered into one
of the new schools, where he has become another being. Scores of
children in as sore need as his will, I hope, be reached and
comforted by this latest undertaking of the Board.
"And for some, all we shall be able to do, perhaps, will be to
gladden a few months or years before the little life goes out. From
them there will be no economic return, such as we may hope for in
the great majority of cases. But even so, will it not be worth
while?"
As the efforts of the School Board and--after 1903--of the Education
Committee of the London County Council to spread the "Special Schools
for Physically Defective Children" over London grew more and more
effective, and the number of the new schools rose steadily, Mrs. Ward
and her principal helpers concentrated their attention mainly upon the
training of the children for suitable employment on their leaving
school. As early as 1900 a little committee was formed for this purpose
at the Settlement, which engaged special teachers of drawing and design
for the boys and of art needlework for the girls--for these delicate
children were often found to possess artistic aptitudes which made up to
them in a certain degree for their other disabilities. Presently this
committee developed into the "Crippled Children's Training and Dinner
Society," presided over by Miss Maude Lawrence, of the London School
Board, a Committee which did hard pioneer work in the organizing of
careers for these crippled children, whose numbers stood revealed beyond
all expectation as the Special Schools spread to every quarter of
London. By the year 1906 the numbers of schools had risen to
twenty-three, and of children on the rolls to 1,767; by 1909 the figures
were thirty and 2,452 respectively. The dark-brown ambulances conveying
their happy load of children to and from the schools became a familiar
sight of the London streets. But, though Mrs. Ward's experiment had
grown in these ten years with such astonishing rapidity, it had not lost
its original character. She had impressed it too deeply with her own
broad and sane humanity for the Special Schools Department of the L.C.C.
to become lost in red tape or officialdom, and under the wise reign of
Mrs. Burgwin and Miss Collard (Superintendents of Special Schools under
the Council) the traditions that had gathered round the first Invalid
Children's School were carried on and perpetuated. And to this day the
Boards of Managers that watch over the "P.D." Schools seem to be
inspired by a tenderer and more personal feeling than any other of the
multifarious committees that take thought for the children of the State.
The secret, in fact, of Mrs. Ward's success in this as in her other
public undertakings lay in the fact that her action was founded on a
real and urgent human need, and that she combined a power of presenting
and urging that need in forcible manner with an unfailing tenderness for
the individual child. As one of her colleagues expressed it once in
homely phrase: "The fact is, she had the brain of a man and the heart of
a woman." Nor did the heart dissolve itself in "gush," but showed its
quality rather in a disinterestedness that cared not where the _hudos_
went, so long as the thing itself were done--in an eager desire to bring
others forward and to give them a full share of whatever credit were to
be had.
The view of the School Board authorities was summed up long afterwards
in these sentences from the pen of Mr. Graham Wallas: "She brought to
the task not only imagination and sympathy, but a steady and systematic
industry, which is the most valuable of all qualities in public life.
She was never disheartened, and never procrastinated."
What was felt of her spirit by those who worked with her more
intimately, who saw her week by week in contact with the children
themselves, is harder to put into words. Perhaps this little vision of
her, recorded by the teacher of the school, Miss Milligan, comes nearest
to saving what is, after all, an intangible essence, that once had form
and being and is now vanished into air:
"But above and beyond all else Mrs. Ward was--what she was always called
amongst us--'The Fairy Godmother.' In the early days before the school
grew so big, every child knew this Fairy Godmother personally, and
loved her, and we remember how on the occasion of one Christmas Party
Mrs. Ward was unable to be present through illness, and the children
were so sad that even the Christmas tree could hardly console them. When
she had recovered and came again to see them, _they_ gave _her_ a
delightful little tea-party, even the poorest children giving half-pence
and farthings to buy a bunch of Parma violets, and a sponge-cake--having
first ascertained what sort of cake she liked. It was a pretty sight to
see them all clustering round her, and her kind, beautiful face whenever
she was amongst the children will haunt one for years."