PROUD OF THE POOR
The Handy Man of Poplar--Peacemaker among his Neighbours--Piloting
the Author of "In His Steps" through the Slums--Difference between
a Street Arab and a Prince--Object Lesson for a Professor of
Political Economy--How the Poor help the Poor.
During these years the saying grew up among his neighbours that nothing
happens in Poplar without someone running to Will Crooks about it. His
little house at 28, Northumberland Street, to the north of East India
Dock Road, was the gathering ground of all kinds of deputations and of
troubled individuals seeking advice on every subject under the sun. He
was a court of appeal in family troubles as well as on public questions.
A small girl came to the door one night with the announcement:
"If you please, father's took to drink again, and mother says will Mr.
Crooks come round and give him a good hiding?"
Appeals like that of an old labourer who could neither read nor write
became common. The old man stood sobbing on the step without a word when
Crooks's youngest daughter opened the door. Instinct told her it was her
father that was wanted, and she called him.
"Well, old Charley, what's the matter now?" when Crooks recognised his
caller.
"She's turned me out again," came the words between sobs. "If you would
on'y go and speak to her, Mr. Crooks, and put in a word for me! She
ain't half a bad wife, you know. It's on'y her temper and me as don't
agree."
He invited the aggrieved husband inside, going off himself alone, to
return in half an hour with the news that the road was now clear.
About a month later in the main road he was hailed from over the way.
The old labourer came hobbling towards him.
"Ah, Mr. Crooks, I don't know what yer said to my ole woman that night,
but she's bin a perfect angel since."
What Crooks had said was simple enough. On reaching the court he found
the good wife gossiping.
"Here's Mr. Crooks!" cried the little company of women as he approached.
He spoke no word, but with a mysterious air beckoned the aggressive wife
aside.
"Heard the news about your old man?" he asked with a long face.
Assuming the worst, she immediately began to weep into her apron.
"It's my fault, Mr. Crooks," she whimpered. "He often threatened to
drown hisself, but I never thought he'd go and do it!"
And then again, amid broken sobs:--"I've al'ays bin a good wife to him,
Mr. Crooks."
"Yes, I know you have; and he knows it, too. He's often told me what a
splendid wife you are. But you shouldn't cheek him so. You take my
advice and coax him a little; coax him, and then you'll find you can do
what you like with him afterwards. Why, bless you, if it hadn't been for
some of us he might have drowned himself to-night. Now you just give him
a good supper, like a sensible woman, when we send him home, and begin
coaxing him from this very night. And, mind, not a word about this to
anyone, for fear you excite him again."
When again he met the old labourer it was evident the good relations
were growing.
"Give her a treat last Saturday afternoon, Mr. Crooks--a fair knock-out.
Took her for a 'bus ride to Ludgit Circis, and showed her the Thames
Embankmint. Never seen anyfink so fine in all her life. Nearly made her
faint. When she got home she dropped into a chair and said, 'I feel I
could die now, Charlie, after that.'"
"And you?"
"I said, 'If you talk like that I'll go for Mr. Crooks again.' That
fetched her round, 'pon me honour."
The good people of Poplar expect Crooks to meet all their needs. It was
not very inspiring to be knocked up in the middle of the night and find
a carman groaning at the door.
"Oh, Will, I'm that bad with the spasms!"
"Why don't you go to the doctor?"
"I've bin to him and he ain't done me no good. I thought as how if
you'd come along with me he'd be sure to give me the right stuff."
Later in the same week the man's wife arrived breathless in the early
morning. "Would Mr. Crooks come at once?"
"What's happened now?"
"Dick took a drop too much at the 'Ship' last night, and when he come
in, me having gone to bed, he mistook the paraffin oil bottle for his
medicine. Two whole spoonfuls he took, Mr. Crooks, and we've only found
it out this morning. He says he must see you now afore he dies."
Curious ideas are held as to what Crooks's duties are. One irate citizen
declared to his mates that he was done with Will Crooks for ever. He was
appealed to for the reason.
"Why," said he, "there's our sink bin stopped up nigh on three weeks,
and he ain't bin round yet!"
All who labour and are poor in Poplar look upon Crooks as the unfailing
friend. The coal-man crying coals in the street all in vain, one morning
hails him in passing:--
"Wot's wrong with people this morning, Mr. Crooks? One would think I was
selling tombstones!"
Another day it is the chimney-sweep who stops him.
"Talk about the County Council's schools in Poplar, Mr. Crooks; I calls
it a scandal, I does."
"What's the matter?"
"Sending their chimbleys up to Bethnal Green to be swept instead of
employing local labour!"
The callers at his house were in no sense confined to his neighbours.
One day it would be C. B. Fry, the cricketer, another day G. K.
Chesterton the critic--neither of them for the first time; and again
George R. Sims, Beerbohm Tree, Lord and Lady Denbigh, Miss Gertrude
Tuckwell, Father Adderley, Bernard Shaw, Earl Carrington, and the Rev.
Charles Sheldon from the United States--to mention but a few of the men
and women of widely different walks of life who are pleased to number
him among their friends.
Mr. Sheldon called soon after the great boom of "In His Steps." On
several occasions Crooks piloted him through the slums of the East End.
While looking round a typical court the American minister asked one of
the women when they had seen a parson there.
The answer came, "We ain't seen no parson down here since we lived here,
fifteen years."
"I don't wonder that people are bad," remarked Mr. Sheldon to Crooks.
"The wonder is that people are so good as they are."
Before returning to America Mr. Sheldon sent Crooks a parting note,
ending, "I shall always remember you as you stand, 'in the thick of it,'
for the rights of little children and brother men."
Outsiders who visit Crooks find him precisely the same man as his
neighbours find him. He has personal friends in the Peers' House as well
as in the Poor's House, but his manner changes not in the company of
either.
This characteristic trait in Crooks led Mr. Chesterton, in his book on
"Charles Dickens," into an instructive comparison:--
The English democracy is the most humorous democracy in the world.
The Scotch democracy is the most dignified, while the whole
_abandon_ and satiric genius of the English populace come from its
being quite undignified in every way. A comparison of the two types
might be found, for instance, by putting a Scotch Labour leader
like Mr. Keir Hardie alongside an English Labour leader like Mr.
Will Crooks. Both are good men, honest and responsible and
compassionate, but we can feel that the Scotchman carries himself
seriously and universally, the Englishman personally and with an
obstinate humour. Mr. Keir Hardie wishes to hold up his head as
Man, Mr. Crooks wishes to follow his nose as Crooks. Mr. Keir
Hardie is very like a poor man in Walter Scott. Mr. Crooks is very
like a poor man in Dickens.
A little incident bears out Mr. Chesterton to the letter. While Crooks
was showing a party of titled people at their request round some of the
dark corners of Poplar he was greeted as usual by all the children
playing in the streets. Seizing the blackest of them he presented the
youngster to one of the ladies of the party, a well-known peeress.
"If this little chap," said he, "was as clean as I could wash him and as
well dressed as you could dress him, what difference would there be
between him and a little prince?"
After the party had finished their round of inspection somebody
suggested tea.
"It's no use looking for swell tea shops in Poplar," said Crooks. "But
if you care to come with me, my wife will just be getting tea ready for
the children coming home from school, and no doubt we can find a corner
for you at the same table."
And straightway he led them to Northumberland Street and into his own
house without warning, where they shared with the children at the deal
table in the kitchen.
Sometimes for whole weeks together in the black days of distress he
could never finish his breakfast without being called to the door to
advise an out-of-work man or some sorrow-laden woman, or to deal with
some case of starvation that brooked no delay.
Of course he often defied the laws of political economy. That is
sometimes the only way to prevent people dying from want. A learned
professor of political economy, whose name I am not at liberty to
mention, was converted to some part at least of Crooks's view in a
single morning. The Professor called on him during a winter of hard
times, and Crooks showed him how some of his neighbours were living.
"Hunger we can sometimes stand, 'cos we gets used to it," they heard
from one woman, surrounded in her bare tenement by lean and shivering
babies; "but to be frozen with cold on the top of the hunger--that's the
thing that makes yer squirm, guv'nor--ain't it, Mr. Crooks?"
Then the Labour man led the Professor to a slum court. On the muddy
ground in the far corner a woman sat weeping.
"She ain't been living here long, Mr. Crooks," volunteered another woman
from her doorstep. "Her husband's no work, and this morning she were
a-sending her four children to school without a bite, so I calls 'em in
here, and shared out wot we was having for breakfast."
"And what was that?" asked the Professor.
The woman seemed to resent the question from a well-dressed stranger.
"It weren't ham and eggs," she said, curtly.
"Tell my friend here what you gave them, Mrs. B----" Crooks requested.
"Well, it's just like this here, Mr. Crooks," she said apologetically.
"My man's out of work hisself, and we on'y had one loaf, so I cuts it up
between her children and mine."
"Why is she crying now?"
"She ain't been used to it like some of us, and it's all along of her
wondering where the children's next meal is a-coming from."
As the two men came away, "I'm proud of the poor," said Crooks. "And I
declare it's a dirty insult for outsiders to say that these people are
degraded by the feeble efforts I make as a Guardian to give bread to the
hungry. It's nothing to what they do for each other. That woman sharing
her last loaf with another woman's children is typical of what you'll
find in every street and corner of Poplar where the pinch of hunger is
felt."
The Professor walked on silently.
"What are we to do for them?" resumed the Labour man. "Sometimes people
as badly off as these we have just seen come to my house in the early
morning, begging me as a Guardian to give their children bread before
they send them to school. Sometimes they bring their children with them
as though to prove by their hungry eyes the truth of what they tell me.
"And I say to them, 'You shouldn't come to me; you should go to the
relieving officer.'"
"And they reply, 'But what are you Guardians for? We've been to the
Mayor, and he refers us to the Guardians. We go to the Guardians, and
they refer us to the relieving officer. We go to the relieving officer,
and he tells us to attend the relief committee. We inquire about the
relief committee, and find it doesn't meet for two or three days.
Meanwhile, what are our children to do for bread?'
"Do you think," Crooks went on to ask the Professor, "that I can finish
my own breakfast, or that any other man could with a spark of feeling in
him, after being called to the door to listen to these pleadings morning
after morning? Do you think, after these daily experiences, that I care
how the outside public and the Press attack us because we as Guardians
dare to spend public money in saving these people from starvation?
"What is a Board of Guardians to do, with its awful responsibilities and
its awful obligations, during such distressful winters as Poplar
sometimes witnesses? Remember, we Guardians live among the poor. We are
not carriage folk who can return to the West End and talk about the poor
over dinners of a dozen courses. What else can we do but try to keep the
bodies and souls of these poor people together in times of trade
depression and cold weather?"