HOME LIFE AND SOME ENGAGEMENTS
Crooks becomes a Grandfather--A Glimpse of his Home Life--Mr. G. R.
Sims on "A Morning with Will Crooks"--Crooks's Daily
Post-bag--Sample Letters--Speaking at Religious and Temperance
Meetings--On Adult Sunday Schools--On the Licensing Bill--A Homily
to Free Churchmen.
By this time Crooks had moved from Northumberland Street to Gough
Street, a few minutes' walk away. The change was from a five-roomed
house to a six-roomed house, "with exactly three and a half feet more
space for a garden at the back," as he jocularly described it.
His two eldest daughters had both married, and his eldest son, who was
doing well at the same trade his father learnt--that of cooper--had also
settled down to married life in Poplar. This son had the pleasure one
day of telephoning to his father at the County Council offices, just
after the latter had passed his fiftieth birthday, "You became a
grandfather this morning. Cheer up!"
Another daughter qualified at the Cheltenham Training College as a
school teacher. The youngest daughter elected to be "mother's right hand
at home." The youngest son was apprenticed in a Thames shipbuilding
yard.
Of his children he would often remark, during the controversy over
religious education in schools, that they seemed to disprove the
theories of both contending parties. One of his daughters and a son, who
were educated in Board Schools, became communicating members of the
Church of England, while two daughters educated in Church of England
schools afterwards became Nonconformists.
A glimpse of his home life was given in the "Celebrities at Home"
series, published in the _World_. The writer described Gough Street as a
row of tiny houses so much alike that the only difference between one
and another was the number on the door.
But if you did not know Mr. Crooks's number, you could guess his
house by waiting at the corner of the street. Because, between
half-past nine and half-past ten, the door-knocker of No. 81 will
beat a tattoo twelve or twenty times to the hour, when all the
other knockers are silent. For this is the hour when Mr. Crooks is
at home and receives his visitors, while he takes his breakfast in
a spasmodic and interrupted manner--bad, one feels sure, for his
digestion. They are not social callers. They come because they want
something--an order for free medicine or for an artificial limb,
for advice as to a likely quarter to get work, for a hundred and
one needs of poor people who have no resources of their own.
They are pleasant rooms in which the Labour member finds the best
happiness of his life. They are not large. They are not handsomely
furnished, for a Labour member has no need of luxury; but to Mr.
Crooks every little adornment in them has its own story to tell and
its own pleasant memory. On one of the walls are two oil paintings
of ships in distress--"good or bad," says Mr. Crooks, "I'm no
judge," But they are valuable to him, because they were painted by
a man down on his luck, as a thanksgiving for a good turn done to
him by the only friend he had.
"Bless you," says Mr. Crooks, "they all bring me little things, and
I can't refuse them. See that champagne glass on the piano? That
was given me by a poor old lady I used to look after a bit. That
wine glass on the other side came from another old friend. Someone
will bring me a China shepherd, another a vase or candlestick, or a
comic pig. It's pleasant, you know!"...
Mr. Crooks is one of the pleasantest and most interesting men to
visit. If you take him at the right time--half-past nine
o'clock--it means an early journey from the West!--he will sit you
down to a plate of porridge and give you more information about the
life of the working-classes in the course of an hour than the most
laborious reading of Blue-books will do in a lifetime.
The visitor must be prepared for interruptions. In a corner of the
breakfast-room is a member of the family who likes to have his say.
It is a poll-parrot--"as cunning as a barge-load of monkeys," says
his owner affectionately. He has a peculiar habit of cracking
invisible filbert-nuts at the back of his throat, rather
disconcerting to a stranger; and although he dotes on Mr. Crooks,
it is a little game of his to snub the Labour member by
depreciatory remarks and scornful whistles of derision. But he
always has an affectionate "Goo'-bye, Will!" for his master when he
puts on his hat in the morning. To Mrs. Crooks he is always
courteous. "Goo'-morning, mother!" he says, when the lady comes
down to breakfast, and thrusts his beak out for a kiss. Then he
calls "Tilly! Tilly!" in a shrill voice, like an elderly landlady,
and is not satisfied till Mrs. Crooks's pretty, black-eyed daughter
has given him his morning greeting.
"He has his little prejudices, like the rest of us," says Mr.
Crooks. "He can't abide babies, and squawks at them fearfully."
Mr. George R. Sims gave a sketch of "A Morning with Will Crooks" in the
_Daily Chronicle_ of May 2nd, 1906. He suggested that if 81, Gough
Street--Crooks's Castle, as he called it--had a brass plate on the door,
the most appropriate device to be inscribed upon it would be, "Inquire
within upon everything."
It was twenty minutes past ten when I arrived. At half-past ten we
were due at the relieving office. But before we started, some three
or four pathetic narratives had found their way into the little
hall for Mr. Crooks to mark, learn, and inwardly digest.
I appreciated the situation, and expressed sympathy.
"It is depressing," said the people's M.P., "but, after all,
somebody's got to listen and somebody's got to help."
We went out into the street. In the hundred yards that we walked to
our destination six sad riddles of life were submitted to Mr.
Crooks for solution.
The broad-shouldered, black-bearded, smiling politician of the
people had a cheery word of advice for all applicants, and scarcely
had these pavement consultations ended before we were seated in the
relieving office listening to tales of woe told by a procession of
poor petitioners with whom the world had gone woefully wrong.
The committee of relief were generous and sympathetic. Poplar has a
reputation for generosity in this matter. It struck me that at
times the committee might have impressed a little more earnestly
upon the recipients of out-relief the other side of the situation;
but I am bound to admit that undeserving cases--cases which had a
history of drink and thriftlessness--were dismissed with no
illusions....
We went to the workhouse at the dinner hour. A comfortable place
certainly, and the dinner probably better than a good many of the
inmates had been accustomed to when they were earning their own
living....
A pleasant hour with Mr. and Mrs. Crooks and their daughters at
the castle, a stroll in the little garden which is Mrs. Crooks's
delight, a short interview with Tommy the Tortoise, and it is time
for the Member for Woolwich to start for Westminster and take his
place in the National Assembly.
He takes up a leather case containing some sixty or seventy letters
to be answered, and we go out into the street, which is happily
bathed in sunshine. We get on the top of an omnibus, and I listen
to the merry stories merrily told until we arrive at Aldgate
Station and bid each other good-bye.
I have spent a most interesting and instructive morning with a
typical Englishman, a man who has laboured with skill and used his
brains as well as his hands to good purpose--a man who has fought
his way up from boyhood, a man whose heart is as big as his
shoulders are broad.
Beyond his sterling common sense and his sympathy with suffering,
Will Crooks has one golden quality in a tribune of the people. He
has a sense of humour. It does your eyes good to see him smile. And
he has a laugh that makes you feel the sunshine even when the north
wind blows.
Sometimes the Labour man has nearly a hundred letters a day to deal
with. First attention is always given to those from people seeking
counsel or help in Poplar and Woolwich.
An old man of ninety-four asks him to visit him for old times' sake. A
widow has lost her property--will Mr. Crooks see her righted? A sick
woman wants to know how she can get into a convalescent home. An anxious
father asks him to speak to a wayward son, because "the lad sets such
store by what you say, Mr. Crooks." Again, it is a distracted mother
who writes, maybe about a son or a daughter who has run away or fallen
into trouble.
Amusing letters come sometimes, varying the note of sorrow sounded in so
many of the others. This, for instance, from a sympathetic Frenchman,
who evidently imagines that a place called Poplar must be studded with
trees of that name and surrounded by open fields. "I see," wrote this
sympathiser from across the Channel, "that you are doing much for the
unemployed, and I have pleasure in sending you enclosed cheque for them.
I would suggest, in view of the importance of the poor children having
pure milk, that the money be spent in putting unemployed men to work in
cleaning out the ponds in the fields and lanes of Poplar where the
cattle drink."
While Crooks is essentially a home-loving man, counting it one of his
chief joys to have an evening free or a week-end to call his own, he
regards it as a duty to speak at religious and temperance meetings, and
on behalf of other movements not necessarily allied with the Labour
Party.
One day finds him with the Bishop of London at the Mansion House meeting
of the United Temperance Council. Another day he is speaking with the
President of the Baptist Union, the Rev. John Wilson, one of his best
supporters in Woolwich, at the Union's annual gathering. Another day he
is congratulating Canon Hensley Henson, at the annual meeting of the
London Wesleyan Mission, on having "six of his parishioners on the
platform"--a reference to the presence of half a dozen members of
Parliament, Canon Henson being rector of the House of Commons.
After addressing the Baptist Union on a second occasion, a letter came
to him from the secretary, the Rev. J. H. Shakespeare:--
On behalf of the Council of the Baptist Union and on my own behalf
I beg to thank you most warmly for the magnificent services you
rendered to us last Tuesday night. It was delightful to hear you. I
personally was very curious to see you managing a dense crowd of
men. It does not seem to me that there is any reason why you should
ever stop drawing from the rich and endless resources of your
eloquence and wit and your wise sayings.
I feel very deeply indebted to you for having kept your engagement
under such trying circumstances, and I hope you were not too
fatigued afterwards.
A different letter was one from his old friend the Hon. and Rev. J. G.
Adderley, announcing his call to Birmingham:--
Alas! I leave dear old London on November 2nd. Thank you for all
you have been to me during my time here. I have known you now
fifteen years.
The many occasions on which he addressed working men at adult Sunday
schools in different parts of the country forced him to this conclusion,
to which he gave public expression:--
The adult school movement has, I do sincerely believe, done more to
make men understand that Brotherhood is not merely a word, but a
real living thing, than any other movement of recent days. Men
under the influence of adult schools now begin to see that their
whole life on earth does not consist merely in eating, drinking,
and working and going to a place of worship, but in taking a
living part in God's work personally--in a word, in striving for
some of Christ's ideals on earth as in Heaven.
He assisted at conducting something like an adult school in Poplar.
Besides the Sunday morning meetings at the Dock Gates, the Labour
League, in conjunction with the Rector of Poplar, carry on a winter
series of addresses at the Town Hall on Sunday afternoons, to which
Crooks and his friend, Mr. Fred Butler, give a good deal of their time.
Of these Town Hall meetings he wrote in the article he contributed to
the volume of essays on "Christianity and the Working Classes":--
The meetings are always crowded with working-men and their wives
and working girls and lads. The rector or myself takes the
chair--often we are both on the platform together. The gatherings
are not religious in the orthodox sense, nor is any attempt made to
teach religion, but I venture to say they have as much influence
for good on the work-people of Poplar as many of the churches. We
nearly always begin with music by singers or players who give their
services, and then we have a "talk," generally by a public man, on
social questions, on education, on books, and authors, and
citizenship. Some of our speakers take Biblical subjects.
Thus every week we get together a good company of work-people who
ordinarily attend no place of worship on Sunday; and if nothing
more, we keep them out of the public-house, we make them think for
themselves, we awaken some sense of citizenship. The presence of
the rector has convinced many, who were formerly hostile to all
parsons, Anglican and Nonconformist, that the Churches and Labour
can work in harmony. Without pretending to be this, that, or the
other, our gatherings have made for the love of one's neighbour,
and therefore for the cause of Christ.
Nearly every P.S.A. and adult school and men's Sunday meeting in London
wanted him. He would be at the Whitefield Tabernacle one Sunday, at the
Leysian Mission another, at Dr. Clifford's church another.
The demands made upon him by temperance bodies redoubled after the
introduction of the Licensing Bill of 1904, of which he was an
uncompromising opponent. In nearly all his temperance addresses, full as
they were of his humorous fancies, he denounced the practice, followed
by so many temperance reformers, of making cheap jests at the men or
women whom drink has degraded.
"We who can overcome temptation should be the last to make light of
those who have failed to overcome temptation. Rather should we use our
greater power to assist them."
What he said from public platforms he did not hesitate to repeat on the
floor of the House of Commons. Speaking after Mr. Balfour, in one of the
debates on the Licensing Bill, he said:--
"I wish to take the opportunity, while the Prime Minister is in the
House, to say a few words on the question of temptation, because the
impression left on my mind by the remarks of the right hon. gentleman is
that every man who indulges in drink is capable of taking care of
himself and of overcoming the drink habit by his own efforts. I hold
that there are thousands of our fellow-men and women who cannot resist
temptation when the opportunity to drink is put in their way. No doubt
if everyone had the moral fibre of the Prime Minister there would be
little need for a measure of temperance reform. Those hon. members who
attend prayers at the opening of the proceedings of this House listen to
the words, 'Lead us not into temptation.' I ask the Prime Minister
whether he has ever thought that the thousands of people in our asylums
through drink are there because they are capable of looking after
themselves? No; it is because temptation has been too much for them.
Does not that involve an obligation on the State to take temptation out
of their way?"
The National Free Church Council invited him to address their annual
gathering in 1906. The Council met in Birmingham in March, and the
President (the Rev. J. Scott Lidgett), in introducing Crooks, said the
invitation to him had not been given lightly. It was a deliberate
recognition of the claim that Labour had upon the thought, energy, and
prayer of the Free Churches. Then, turning to Crooks, he clasped his
hand. "Thus," said the President, "Labour and the Free Churches are
joined in their endeavour to solve some of the great human problems."
"The world," said Crooks in his opening remarks, "could be divided into
two classes--some willing to work and the rest willing to let them." He
went on to ask the representatives of the churches to put it out of
their heads that the workman who did not go to a place of worship was a
man utterly without religion. Such a man often had greater faith and
more works to his credit than many regular worshippers.
Shortly afterwards the Free Church Council asked him to the banquet
given at the Hotel Cecil in celebration of the return of nearly two
hundred Free Churchmen to the House of Commons.
"You Free Churchmen," he said in his after-dinner speech, "have to come
out of yourselves a great deal more in the future than you have in
by-gone days. You cannot live for Sunday alone. You have to live for all
the seven days of the week, and we expect you to come out and take a
share of the work of social reorganisation. You are all of you, or the
majority of you, a little bit ashamed of South Africa, and some of you
wish you had got your tongues loose two or three years ago instead of
now. You can imagine how I feel about this. A few of us at that time had
to take our lives in our hands because we dared to say that that was a
wicked war. Remember, the Empire does not consist in yelling about the
Union Jack; the Empire begins in the workman's kitchen....
"I have been told plenty of times that our men and women are not
God-fearing. Aren't they? I know the stories they tell you parsons
sometimes; but down at the bottom of their hearts is a deep religious
feeling which some of us would be better for having. Why can I always
get the truth from the poor, who so often deceive you parsons? Why,
because they feel I am a brother, and they have a doubt about you. You
have got to wear that doubt off. You have got to make the humblest of
our brothers and sisters understand that you do really care for them,
that you intend to use the Parliamentary machine to abolish sweating
and slumdom. We have got to promote industry in such a way that every
honest worker may find useful work to do. We have to deal with the
shirker whether he wears a top hat or hobnail boots."