FROM THE CHEERING MULTITUDE TO A SORROW-LADEN HOME
The Dock Strike of 1889--"Our Dock Strike Baby"--At the Point of
Death--Discouraging a Missioner--Before a House of Lords
Committee--Entrance upon Public Life--A Widower with Six
Children--Second Marriage.
The great Dock Strike of 1889 nearly brought Crooks to his grave. Much
of the brunt and burden of that famous struggle fell upon his shoulders.
Months before, he had prepared the way by his Dock Gate meetings. When
at last the disorganised bands of dock and river-side labourers startled
the industrial world by standing together as one man for better
conditions of work and a minimum wage of sixpence an hour, Will Crooks
was one of the half-dozen Labour Leaders who directed the campaign to
its historic triumph.
Seldom, while the strike lasted, did he take his clothes off. He worked
at his own trade during the day and gave nearly the whole of the night
to the strikers. The outdoor meetings he addressed kept him going up to
midnight. The early morning hours saw him lending a hand at the
organising offices and relief stations until the dawn called him to his
ordinary daily work again.
There were times when he gave both day and night to the dockers,
preferring to lose time at his own work rather than miss an opportunity
of lending a hand to his less fortunate fellows. Sometimes he would
accompany the men in their demonstrations through the City and the
West-End.
Those daily marches of the dock labourers opened London's eyes. The
orderliness of the ragged battalions, headed by "the man in the straw
hat," who was afterwards to take a seat in the Cabinet--John Burns--was
as impressive as their numbers. They were forbidden to use bands of
music in the City streets, so the men conceived the ingenious device of
whistling. It had a curious effect, some fifty thousand men whistling
the "Marseillaise" all the way from Aldgate to Temple Bar.
When Crooks did get home for an hour or two in the evening it was not to
rest, but to sit by the bedside of his ailing wife and tend the youngest
of his children. Ill though his wife was, little though she saw of him
during the strike, she urged him from her sick bed to keep on helping
the dockers.
"Don't mind me, Will," she told him, when he would peep in anxiously
after many hours' absence. "I shall be all right if you can only pull
those poor dockers through."
He came in one night after nearly two days' absence, having arranged to
spend the whole of that evening by her bedside. She had just given birth
to a son--"our Dock Strike baby," as he came to be called for long
afterwards, now a promising apprentice in a Thames shipbuilding yard.
She was very happy at the good news he brought of the progress of the
strike. She was happier still at the prospect of his being spared for
his first evening at home. Presently the sound of hurrying footsteps was
heard in the street. Something important had happened. The men wanted
Will Crooks. Would he come again?
He looked at his wife. She must decide.
"Go, Will," she said. "Never let it be said your wife kept you from
helping those in need."
The reaction came after the victory. When the dockers in their thousands
were back at work rejoicing at having won their sixpence an hour, Crooks
lay at the point of death in the London Hospital in Whitechapel Road. It
was the first time he had been ill in his life. Friends feared this
first illness was to be his last. Not until after a struggle of thirteen
weeks could he be pronounced out of danger.
He is fond of telling this incident that occurred in the hospital:--
"When I was approaching convalescence, and naturally fairly happy at the
thought of soon being able to get out and return home, a missioner, as I
think he was called, came to see me as I lay in bed in the hospital. He
said to me quite bluntly, 'Are you not a miserable sinner?'
"I said: 'No; I may be a sinner, but I am not a miserable one just now.'
"The missioner left my side in disgust, and then returned and asked to
be allowed to send me a Testament. I consented, and received in a day
or two one marked in several places with red ink, apparently intended to
impress upon me what a depraved and miserable creature I was.
"The missioner called again, and questioned me as to whether I had read
the marked passages and what I thought of them.
"I told him that, as applied to me, they were not true.
"I shall never forget the look I received, and I expect I was given up
as a lost man.
"A few minutes after he had left my ward a patient from another ward
came to see me, and said:--
"'I say, Twenty-five, that's the way to get rid of them.'
"I said, 'What have _you_ done to get rid of him?'
"'Oh,' he answered. 'The missioner said, "Are you not a miserable
sinner?" and I said "Yes"; and then he said, "Thank God for that," and
went away.'"
Soon after Crooks came out of the hospital he made his first appearance
in a public capacity in Parliament. He was invited on July 11th, 1890,
to give evidence before the Committee of the House of Lords on the
Infant Life Insurance Bill. It was seriously argued at the time that
working class parents deliberately neglected their children for the sake
of the insurance money. The Bill actually proposed that the insurance
money be kept out of the hands of the parents altogether and paid to
the undertaker. The offending clause disappeared after Crooks's
evidence.
The _Evening News_, which headed its report of the day's proceedings "A
Working Man shows the Weak Points in the New Bill," summarised what
Crooks told the Committee thus:--
A journeyman cooper from Poplar, evidently a thoroughly
straightforward and independent working-man of more than average
intelligence and facility of expression, gave evidence yesterday
before the Committee of the House of Lords, presided over by the
Bishop of Peterborough.
He said he objected to the provision in the Bill for the payment of
insurance money to the undertaker. It was not merely to cover the
actual expenses of burial that the working man insured his child,
but to provide "black" and to meet other unavoidable expenses. If
insurance were abolished workmen would be obliged to fall back on
the old practice of "Friendly Leads," which generally led to
drinking at public-houses.
He knew thousands of families of working people, and was perfectly
certain that there was not among them one mother lacking maternal
affection. There was no sacrifice the poor would not make for their
children, and it would be felt as a great reproach to say that a
child had not been properly cared for. In other cases bad mothers
would be bad mothers under any circumstances, and it was for the
criminal law to find them out; but if there was one bad in a
thousand he did not see why nine hundred and ninety-nine
respectable persons should be punished.
To stop child insurance, witness said in reply to Lord Norton,
would punish honest parents and do no good whatever.
It was about this time that the working people of Poplar began to urge
him to go into public life. They elected him a member of the Poplar
Board of Trustees, in regard to which he had recently unearthed a
notorious scandal. Then he was made a Library Commissioner in
recognition of the prominent part he had taken in persuading Poplar to
adopt the Act. Soon afterwards he was returned as one of the two Poplar
representatives to the London County Council.
The cloud that had hung over his home all through the Dock Strike was to
grow yet darker. He had not been on the County Council many weeks when
his wife died. She had barely recovered from the illness that kept her
bedfast during the exciting days of the strike. Then there came the
three anxious worrying months as her husband lay between life and death
in the hospital. The worry wore her out, and a brave God-fearing woman
of the people went down to her grave commanding her husband to work on.
Thus, at the commencement of his public career and while still in his
thirties, Crooks found himself a widower with six children on his hands,
the youngest a baby.
Among the many letters of sympathy that poured in upon him, that which
got nearest to his heart came from one whose acquaintance he had but
recently made, who described himself as "a fellow sufferer under a like
bereavement." The writer was Lord Rosebery, then Chairman of the London
County Council.
All that first year of Crooks's public life was gone through while he
was bearing heavy burdens at home. His new duties as London County
Councillor, the many urgent calls to help the Labour movement in other
quarters, now that he was beginning to be known far beyond the bounds of
Poplar, kept him away from home often until a late hour. All this added
greatly to his domestic cares, since he had to be both mother and father
to his children. The eldest daughter, fourteen years of age, managed
bravely; but many a night he turned away from addressing the cheering
multitude of a crowded, glittering hall and went to a cheerless home to
find the youngest children crying. He would help to wash them, to mend
their clothes, and to cook for them.
A year's experience convinced him that neither he nor the children could
go on in that way. His aged mother rendered all the help her growing
infirmities would allow. The old lady, with her married children's aid,
now lived in modest comfort in a little house off the High Street. There
lodged with her a young nurse engaged at a neighbouring institution,
whose maiden name was Elizabeth Lake, a native of Gloucestershire.
Crooks laid his case before her. She consented to become his wife and
bring up his children. They were married in Poplar Parish Church in
1893.
The union has been a singularly happy one. Mrs. Crooks has done more
than bring up the children. She has guided and inspired her husband in
all his public life. So much so, that when some eight years later he
laid down his robes of office after a successful year as Mayor of
Poplar, he stated publicly in acknowledging a presentation to himself
and the Mayoress:--
"Without my wife's aid I would have been of little use in my public
work. Whenever I return home troubled or anxious, or defeated on some
pet scheme, I never have from my wife anything but cheering and
encouraging words. She it is who has made my public life possible. She
it is who deserves your thanks far more than I."