THE TASK OF HIS LIFE BEGINS
Elected to the Poplar Board of Guardians--Bumbledom in
Power--Prison preferred to Workhouse--Poverty treated like Crime.
Six months after his return to the London County Council, Poplar elected
Crooks to the Board of Guardians. When he took his seat as a member in
the very Board-room where thirty years before he clung timorously to his
mother's skirt he knew that the task of his life had begun.
He and his friend George Lansbury were elected together--the only Labour
men on a Board of twenty-four. They were the firstfruits of the reduced
qualification for Guardians introduced by Mr. (afterwards Lord) Ritchie,
at that time President of the Local Government Board.
To Crooks belongs much of the credit for this welcome change. He felt
keenly that working-men and women could never become Guardians of the
Poor so long as the £40 property qualification remained. He persuaded
the Poplar Trustees, of whom he was one, to ask the Local Government
Board to make it possible for workpeople to become Guardians. Mr.
Ritchie, ever sympathetic towards the East-End, a division of which he
was then representing in Parliament, met this request from Poplar by
lowering the qualification to £10. His successor at the Local Government
Board, Sir Henry Fowler, abolished the property qualification
altogether.
At the time of Crooks's election the dissatisfaction felt by ratepayers
with the old Guardians was deep and bitter. The Local Government Board
has evidence in its possession that poor people of the district were
saying at the time that if you wanted out-relief you must move into such
and such a street, where rents were collected by someone who had
influence with the Board.
Inside the workhouse Crooks found a state of things that seems
incredible to-day. Bumbledom held sway over paupers and Guardians alike.
There were Guardians who had never been inside the workhouse once. When
Crooks attempted to enter as a Guardian he found that the Master had
power to shut the gate upon him. Without the Master's permission, except
on the regular House Committee days, Guardians had no legal right inside
the workhouse at all.
The two Labour men raised such a hubbub over this anomaly that Sir Henry
Fowler issued an order giving a Guardian the right to enter the
workhouse at any reasonable hour. As a result there began, not only in
Poplar but all over the country, a marked improvement in the treatment
of old people in workhouses.
Here was a distinct score at the first venture. With the right of
admission established, Crooks made full use of it. He found most of the
officers hostile. So much so, that during a fire that broke out in the
workhouse bakery, bringing the brigade engines round, one of the
officers exclaimed, in the presence of the others when the fire was at
its height:--
"The only thing wanting now is that Crooks and Lansbury should be put on
the top of it."
The cheers with which this remark was received were soon to give way to
grave concern. It was clear the two Labour men meant to put an end to
many things. Several of the officers were summarily suspended by Crooks
one morning when he appeared on the scene unexpectedly.
A woman inmate had contrived to escape from the workhouse. She came
round to his house and knocked him up. In consequence of an alarming
story she told him respecting the conditions under which a fellow inmate
had died in her arms that very night, Crooks hurried round to the
institution and suspended certain of the officers on the spot.
The officers whom Crooks had suspended were dismissed by the Board. Nor
were they by any means the last to be dismissed or to take their
departure, for other scandals were brought to light.
"We found the condition of things in the House almost revolting," Crooks
stated in evidence before the Local Government Board Inquiry of 1906.
"The place was dirty. The stores were empty. The inmates had not
sufficient clothes, and many were without boots to their feet. The food
was so bad that the wash-tubs overflowed with what the poor people
could not eat. It was almost heart-breaking to go round the place and
hear the complaints and see the tears of the aged men and women.
"'Poverty's no crime, but here it's treated like crime,' they used to
say.
"Many of them defied the regulations on purpose to be charged before a
magistrate, declaring that prison was better than the workhouse.
"One day I went into the dining-room and found women sitting on the long
forms, some sullen, some crying. In front of each was a basin of what
was alleged to be broth. They called it greasy water, and that was
exactly what it looked and tasted like. They said they had to go out and
wash blankets on that. I appealed to the master to give them something
to eat, as they said they would sooner go to prison than commence work
on that. Those women, like the men, were continually contriving to get
sent to prison in order to escape the workhouse. After a few heated
words between the master and me he gave them some food, and none of them
went to prison that day.
"A few weeks later I was in the workhouse when these same women were
creating a fearful uproar.
"'Ah, there you are,' said the master, meeting me. 'Go and look at your
angels now! A nice lot they are to stick up for!'
"I went to the dining-room. There was a dead silence the moment I
entered.
"'I am right down ashamed of you,' I said. 'When you were treated like
animals, no wonder you behaved like animals. Now that Mr. Lansbury and I
have got you treated like human beings, we expect you to behave like
human beings.'
"They said not a word, and later in the day the ringleaders, without any
prompting, came to me and expressed their regret. From that day to this
no such scene among the workhouse women has ever been repeated.
"The staple diet when I joined the Board was skilly. I have seen the old
people, when this stuff was put before them, picking out black specks
from the oatmeal. These were caused by rats, which had the undisturbed
run of the oatmeal bin. No attempt was made to cleanse the oatmeal
before it was prepared for the old people.
"Whenever one went into the men's dining-room there were quarrels about
the food. I have had to protect old and weak men against stronger men,
who would steal what was eatable of their dinners. There was no
discipline. The able-bodied men's dining-room on Sundays gave one as
near an approach to hell as anything on this earth. It was everybody for
himself and the devil take the hindmost. If a fellow could fight he got
as much as he wanted. If he could not, he got nothing. Fights, followed
by prosecutions at the police courts, were common. The men boasted that
prison had no worse terrors than that place. They were absolutely beyond
control. They wandered about all over the place, creating all kinds of
discord, and even threatening to murder the officers. Two labour masters
nearly lost their lives in trying to control them.
"The inmates were badly clothed as well as badly fed. Not one of them
had a change of clothing. Their under-clothes were worn to rags. If they
washed them they had to borrow from each other in the interval.
"The inmates' clothes were not only scanty, they were filthy. On one
occasion the whole of the workhouse linen was returned by the laundry
people because it was so over-run with vermin that they would not wash
it.
"One of the inmates--a woman--who was doing hard work at scrubbing every
day, asked me whether she couldn't have a pair of boots.
"'Surely,' I said, putting her off for the time, 'nobody here goes
without boots?'
"A second and a third time when I came across her scrubbing the floors
she pleaded for boots. She raised her skirt from the wet stone floor,
and showed two sloppy pieces of canvas on her feet, and that was all she
had in the way of boots."
Crooks went on to relate that he walked along the corridor and saw a
female officer. "There's a woman over there who has asked me three times
to get her a pair of boots," he said.
She drew her skirt round her and said, "Oh, why do you worry about
these people; they are not our class."
"Worry about them!" Crooks rejoined. "What do you mean by our class? We
are here to see these people properly clothed. I do not want to quarrel,
but that woman must have a pair of boots to-day."