STEPNEY
When the Letters Patent of April, 1895, were issued for “The See of
Stepney, in the Diocese of London,” there was no attempt made to define
the exact area contained by the bishopric. That was left to the Bishop
of London to determine.
Geographically speaking, it is bounded on the east by the River Lea.
All to the east of Metropolitan London--that is, what is popularly
known as “The City”--is in the Stepney district, and furnishes the
eastern portion of the responsibilities of the Bishop. When Dr.
Winnington Ingram was consecrated to the work it contained the Deanery
of Stepney, with forty-one parishes, and nearly 400,000 souls. It also
contained the Deanery of Spitalfields, with twenty-three parishes, and
200,000 souls, as well as the Deanery of Shoreditch, with twenty-one
parishes, and 150,000 souls; the Deanery of Hackney, with twenty-seven
parishes, and 220,000 souls. This represented the work of East London.
But in a northerly direction it contained the Deanery of Islington,
with thirty-nine parishes, and 350,000 souls, and the Deanery of
Enfield, with thirty-four parishes, and over 200,000 souls. In
addition to this the Bishopric included the Deanery of St. Sepulchre,
with twenty-three parishes, and 150,000 souls. So altogether, when
Winnington Ingram assumed the episcopal supervision of this vast
district it contained nearly one and three-quarter million souls in
its 208 parishes. For the spiritual needs of the people there had been
provided 210 incumbents, and 340 assistant curates, making in all 550
clergy, or about one to each 3,000 of the total population. This meant
a total of 318,000 families to be shepherded, and the facing, for their
own sakes, of the problems concerned with the betterment of their lives.
The Bishop took up his residence in the fine old house situated just
off Amen Corner, Paternoster Row, and from here, as a centre, he
worked to meet the calls from the varied portions of his diocese,
which, roughly speaking, covered an area of twenty miles, teeming with
population.
The main problem which presented itself to the Bishop was how to
increase the number of the clergy, and how to augment the usefulness
of those who were there, by the provision of more lay workers, both
visitors and residents. To settle the clergy problem, Dr. Winnington
Ingram had, as his main source of income, the resources of the East
London Church Fund. Besides this there was a very large amount of
monetary help given every year in private gifts to individual parishes,
and there were other public societies which took some share. Much of
the money which came from the Bishop of London’s Fund, as distinct from
the East London Church Fund, was invariably allocated to purchasing
sites and making grants towards building churches and mission rooms.
That assistance, though specially earmarked in this way, was greatly
needed. In many of the districts it had been shown by experience that
no sooner did the people rise, even slightly, above the level where the
work of the Church had found them, than they proceeded to move off in
the endeavour to get better air, and less trying surroundings. It was
no uncommon experience to discover that a complete roll of communicants
was worked off and passed away in about five years. In fifteen years
one incumbent had seen three numerically large sets of communicants
pass from under his hands, the vast majority of whom had moved to more
open districts. True, more came, but it was equally true that they had
gone. The Bishop found it was absolutely necessary, in order to keep
pace with these rapid removals, to put up mission churches in the new
districts, and with the help of the Bishop of London’s Fund, to make
provision for their spiritual necessities. He found when he asked the
builders of the long rows of little houses which were fast covering
so many of the once pleasant and pretty fields, that build as they
would, the houses were let before they were finished. “Something fresh,
something not dreary, something that has hanging about it some sort
of reminiscence of blades of grass and leaves of trees not smutched
with smoke, not curled and browned with chemicals, that it is that
draws them from their seasoned houses in the paved streets; draws
them irresistibly, though the homes to which they go have their walls
reeking with damp plaster, and the roads are mere cart tracks of deep
mud.” Yes, to the north and in the east, building operations were going
on with startling rapidity. To make provision for that fact was one of
the problems facing the new Bishop.
But there was another problem equally pressing which has already been
hinted. We refer to the paucity of workers, both clerical and lay, in
the congested districts. There was practically no supply on the spot
of laymen and laywomen to help the clergy as district visitors and
in other ways. There was, of course, a very large amount of lay help
voluntarily given by those who lived in the parishes; but from the
nature of their own work they could only give this help on Sundays,
and for a short time on week-day evenings. So it came to pass that the
incumbent of a parish might have a devoted band of helpers of this
kind among his parishioners, and yet not have one single person beyond
himself and his curates, who could go to read to a sick person, or
be sent for in any case of emergency which happened in the day-time.
Bishop Winnington Ingram declared that so far as he could judge no
other difficulty hampered their work as much as this.
Dr. Winnington Ingram set himself to plead in West-End pulpits and
drawing-rooms for the voluntary assistance of ladies and gentlemen who
had leisure to go. He told them “the visits of our West-End neighbours
are the ozone of our East-End atmosphere. The bright presence, and the
gentle and genial sympathy of well-dressed men and women, supply oxygen
to priests and people alike. The clergyman, who has not, perhaps, in
all his parish one family of his own social position and education, is
wonderfully revived by this whiff of the air he once regarded as an
essential necessary of life, of healthy moral life; of any life worth
living, as he once estimated what it was that made life worth the
living. The sick man, lying in his poor squalid room, finds matter to
think of and talk over for a week, in a quarter of an hour’s visit from
some fellow-man of a type so different from anything he has himself
been accustomed to; one to whom the sad, small cares that make up his
own anxieties are quite unknown, but who feels for the cares he himself
has to face, and gives the sympathy that is infinitely soothing and
bracing to the tired and broken man. The worn mother of a sickly little
family--sickly, but less sickly than the surroundings would lead you to
expect--has a glimpse of quite a different world from any she has known
or dreamed of in that half-hour’s quiet talk, on equal terms as far as
hearts are concerned, with a vision of fairness and freshness. That
‘fairness’ seemed to her ‘fairiness,’ until she found that the bright
brave woman has her trials and her sorrows too; and that in motherhood,
and in a mother’s cares for the children God has given, there is a
bond that makes them equal, makes them one. Not poor women only, but
poor men, are strangely stirred and strangely soothed by that gentle
presence. And not those men and women only whose whole state is summed
up at its worst in the word ‘poor,’ or ‘very poor.’ When I hear--as I
have to hear--of irreclaimable cases; when I hear of men and of women
gone hopelessly wrong, as people say, I know that the best chance
for them would be secured if we could bring them under the influence
of some delicately nurtured woman. Nothing is nearly so likely to
bring to them that which is, humanly speaking, the turning-point to
recovery--namely, that beginning of a desire to feel once more some
sort of self-respect.”
The Bishop was successful in his attempts. One rich man came to him,
and said: “I am tired of writing cheques for charities, and merely
subscribing to this and that. What I want myself is personally to
serve. I want to go and tell somebody myself personally about Christ
and His love. Can you give me half a dozen invalids in East London that
I can go and visit personally?” Of course, the Bishop did. It was a
touching thing to see that man in the evening, when his City work was
done, personally serving those poor people in East London. He had a
great desire, a deep human instinct to do something personally himself;
and he found a joy in it which he had never had before. Others gave up
their leisure during the day, and not a few actually came and lived in
the district themselves, cheering the pathway of those around them by
the unconscious influence which emanated from their presence.
It was no wonder that the appeal of the Bishop succeeded, for he
forcibly brought before the people of the West End the exact facts
of the East. Speaking one day at a drawing-room meeting in the West
End, he said: “When I come to this or similar meetings in this part of
London, I always take stock of the houses that I pass by. I find I can
walk for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour and more, without seeing
one house that says to me anything of this kind: ‘The people here need
the individual attention of the parish clergy: they are poor; they are
illiterate; they are ignorant. They have no amusements, nothing to
brighten their lives. A visit of their clergyman or his wife will be an
event in their weekly life. It will bring them into unwonted contact
with a trained intelligence, a well-stored memory, a cultivated life,
far and away above their own. It will do them an amount of good which
cannot be over-estimated.’” Then he went on in ringing tones: “That
which is not true of the very large proportion of the houses in many
parts of the West--nay, not only not true but _ridiculously_ the
opposite of the truth--that _is_ true of every house, of every floor,
of every room, in many and many a parish of the districts of which
I speak. Not one room in all the parish in which the visit of the
clergyman, or one of his living agents, is not urgently needed. Not
merely a visit once in a way, so that on the whole every room may have
been visited once in a year; but frequent visits, systematic visits, a
regular siege laid to each individual case, if Christ’s work is to be
really done. Imagine the labour that that entails. Imagine the staff
of labourers it would require, if it were adequately done. I would
to God that people like yourselves who have money and who have heart
could have just a week or so of my opportunities of knowing what a
bitter contrast there is between the staff we ought to have and the few
workers here and there which are all that we can possibly provide.”
Audiences which were spoken to in this way naturally responded to some
extent. One after another families have left West London, and gone
to settle in the East End. Often it is a widow and her daughter, or
a young husband and his wife, and the Bishop has declared that “in
no single case have I seen a family leave the West End and settle in
the East without a great blessing on the sacrifice, and without their
finding the spirit of the promise of the Gospel: ‘He that loseth his
life shall find it.’”
It is perfectly true that there were cases in which some young girl
who wanted to spend four or five evenings in the East End found that
her mother had arranged certain things for her in Society; and the
Bishop asserted that it was positively wrong for her to derange all her
mother’s plans. All the same, he has been accustomed when he invited
people to come to live in East London to put before their eyes as the
chief attraction that they would “escape the tyranny of the card-case.”
None the less, the Bishop was the first to acknowledge that there were
social duties in the West of London that needed to be carried out.
The begging of funds, and the solicitation of workers for such a vast
area as the Bishop of Stepney had in his hands, would seem to represent
such colossal work and of such a nature that there would be the risk
of a spiritual leader becoming a mere organiser, or mere official. But
the Bishop escaped all that. He flung himself heart and soul into the
affairs and difficulties of the 208 parishes, and became a familiar
figure in every part of his diocese. Take several varieties of the work
into which he threw himself as examples.
He is asked to go about eight o’clock in the evening to a parish room
to receive deputations from the various parish guilds and societies,
and say a few words to each about their work. When he arrives he
discovers there are forty such guilds and associations, and three
representatives from each. Allowing three minutes for each deputation
to pass once up and once down the long room to speak to the Bishop,
and to be spoken to, takes two hours. And three minutes is below the
average. There are Church workers to be spoken to besides, and groups
from a great choir that has meanwhile been singing through a long
oratorio. The result is the Bishop does not get back to Amen Corner
till some time after midnight, though it is not a twenty minutes’ drive
home.
The next Sunday he goes to preach there. The spacious church is full,
aisles and all, people standing at the west end. Throughout the sermon
he cannot find one pair of eyes that does not look straight into his--a
congregation of completely poor men and women, all evidently anxious to
listen.
Take another kind of work--work in which he specialises amongst men. He
goes to one parish after another on Sunday afternoons, where there are
services for men only. One afternoon, six to seven hundred are present,
and the same genius for attention manifests itself. The men are there
to listen, to ponder and consider. It is to them a piece of thoughtful
business which will provide discussion and consideration for home and
workroom. Another afternoon he goes to a church where there are only
about a hundred and fifty present. Next Sunday he speaks to about one
hundred men. Most of them appear to be clerks in good positions. When
the address is over he discovers that the work of the men is only
beginning. They have determined to do something for the boys and girls
in the streets, the children of the very poor who are left to run at
large on Sunday. They go out and collect the children to one place or
another, themselves providing all the money, and taking a delight in
keeping the children occupied and amused.
He is asked to go down to a very poor parish, to be present at the
annual declaration of the amounts raised in the parish for his own
fund, the East London Church Fund. The large parish room is full
of poor people keenly interested. It is one of the real events
of the year, to learn what the whole amount contributed is. So
they gather--fathers of families in plenty and mothers, and their
families--a real parish gathering. The boxes from scores of poor
households have been opened. The upshot of the whole is that after
deducting £8 for expenses, the Bishop is cheered by a cheque being
handed to him for £111. As he passes out of the room the incumbent
speaks to a labourer’s wife, and afterwards the Bishop asked him: “Had
she a box?” “Yes.” “Had she a family?” “Yes.” “Had the man been in full
wage?” “Not all the year, but about ten months.” “How much was there in
her box?” And the answer was “Twelve and six!”
After experiences of this kind he discovers that the poorest of the
poor give with a generosity absolutely astonishing. He hears from one
incumbent that he found a woman at her wash-tub as he went on his
rounds. The previous Sunday the incumbent had asked at the mission
church that the people would provide some kind of ornament for the
perfectly bare walls. She now said to him in a jerky way: “I wanted to
give something in memory of that little lad, that little child of the
Missioner, who lately died.” And to the incumbent’s amazement she gave
him a guinea towards the purchase of a cross for the church. Next day,
while the same incumbent was visiting, three women met him in one of
the poorest streets. One of them angrily asked why he hadn’t been to
her for money for the church before. She gave him ten shillings, and
the other two gave five each.
“And,” said the Bishop, when relating all these stories, “this very
rochet I am wearing now was a gift from a working-woman in East London.”
But amidst all these episcopal labours, the Bishop still voluntarily
carried on the work of his boys’ clubs in Bethnal Green, and other
parishes, tearing down from Amen Court on his bicycle, and regarding
it as a form of necessary physical exercise. On Saturday afternoons he
frequently set aside time to conduct parties of East End factory girls
around the Cathedral, holding them spellbound with stories concerning
St. Paul’s, and the men who had occasioned some of its monuments.
Afterwards he would entertain them all to tea. On the Sundays he would
be the guest at some vicarage, and nothing delighted him more than
to fraternise with the nursery element which he found in the varied
homes. For three years he enthusiastically carried on the work of this
East End diocese; and during that time he effectually built the bridge
between the people in the West End and the people in the East. If ever
a man deliberately translated in his life the spirit of the words “I
am among you as one that serveth,” it was the Bishop of Stepney. The
marvel is how he found time for it all: it was only done by rising
early, and staying up late, and going on “going on”--“just a day at a
time.”
However, his reward was coming. It came first in the absolute worship
of the people, who had known him for so many years in Bethnal Green,
the existence of which was proved by a singular incident. It occurred
while he was taking part in the re-opening services of a church in
Bethnal Green. Some disturbance arose at the end of the church, and
the news flew through the neighbourhood that a crowd of interrupters
were spoiling the service and insulting the Bishop. How do such
panic-impressions get abroad? However, this one flew like lightning
through the streets around, and the folk in the district hotly resented
it. When the Bishop, after the service, came out of the vicarage where
he had been chatting with the clergyman about his work, he found to his
astonishment a huge mob who had gathered, as they thought, to protect
him. They were all very poor people, many of them not Church-people
at all; but the instant they caught sight of him there was a roar of
cheers, and on his inquiring what they wanted, they said: “We’ve come
to see you safe home!” The situation was rather embarrassing; for they
insisted that he was in danger, and nothing he could say would shake
them off, and they tramped around and behind him for half a mile,
until at last he managed to get into a car, and was driven home to
Amen Court. The experience was as delightful as it was spontaneous.
For years he had carried on through many a discouragement, and nothing
to help him forward, except those hidden compensations, which no man
knows saving he that receiveth them; a period of his life never better
described than in Matthew Arnold’s famous words:
“’Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead
Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,
And the pale weaver, through his window seen
In Spitalfields, looked thrice dispirited.
I met a preacher there I knew, and said:
‘Ill and o’er worked, how fare you in this scene?’
‘Bravely!’ said he; ‘for I of late have been
Much cheered with thoughts of CHRIST, the Living Bread.’”
But the crowning encouragement of all was to come quite early in the
next year, 1901, for on March 8 the Bishop-Suffragan of Stepney was
nominated by the Prime Minister to take up the Bishopric of London, and
on March 25 the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s Cathedral unanimously
accepted the nomination, and the election was publicly declared
and confirmed on April 17, when in the church of St. Mary-le-Bow,
Cheapside, Dr. Winnington Ingram took his oath as Bishop, both to the
King and the Archbishop of Canterbury. On April 30 his enthronement
took place in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
He was only forty-three years of age at the time. Eleven of them had
been spent in the Worcestershire home; twelve of them in Preparatory
School, and at Marlborough and at Keble College, Oxford; three as a
tutor. In was after this that he decided to take Holy Orders and in
following up his decision he had now been between sixteen and seventeen
years entirely engaged in work connected with the Church. Putting
aside his work, which was done at the side of Dr. Maclagan, when he
was Bishop of Lichfield, which occupied three years of the sixteen, as
the Bishop’s secretary and chaplain, we see that he had been allowed
to spend ten years in practical performance of priestly and parochial
duties in poverty-stricken parishes; and three more in carrying the
administrative responsibilities connected with those parishes as a
whole. Roughly speaking, his career had divided itself into two halves.
The first half and a little more than the first half had seemed the
kind of training likely to produce a cultured, almost courtly type of
ecclesiastic. Marlborough with its crowd of the Sons of the Clergy;
Keble with its somewhat austere traditions; Oxford with its atmosphere
of conservatism; Lichfield with its Cathedral associations: these were
all factors which might have been expected to produce the kind of man
whose manner, methods, and outlook would have fitted him to be the
popular incumbent of some wealthy and aristocratic parish. It scarcely
appeared the right introduction for the work he would have to do in the
grim streets of the East End. On the other hand, the years he spent in
facing the problems of men and women who were passing their lives in
“pulling together two ends which somehow never seemed to meet” scarcely
seemed the exact preparation for one, who would one day be “A Prince
of the Church,” and, the friend of Monarchs, Cabinet Ministers and
ecclesiastical dignitaries. Yes, to the merely casual observer, there
must seem years in Winnington Ingram’s life which at the time did not
appear to tell upon the final result.
Ah, but they told upon the man who had to live it! In the counsel and
purposes of God nothing is wasted. While we, in our short-sightedness,
would shape the environment of men with a view to some special purpose,
He _shapes the men who have to fulfil it_.
It was thus that Winnington Ingram was shaped! The _strong_ man
that London now needed must of necessity have been a _strung_
man. To comprehend London’s problems he would have to be a
man who _understood_; and that means “one who stands under,
stands-at-the-roots.” But not merely at the roots of one part of
its life. His experiences in the East End gave him the necessary
understanding of the sacrifices, suffering, and struggles of London’s
poor. The Headship of Oxford House, the rectorship of Bethnal Green,
did that for him. But the East End of London is not all London. There
is a West End, where there is wealth and refinement and a different
type of existence. This could only be reached and led by one who
understood all this: had had its advantages himself and knew its points
of view. Marlborough, Oxford, Lichfield did this for him. But the East
End and the West End is not all London. There are great suburban cities
within and without its borders where dwell many professional people
and workers, who belong to neither one nor the other. The man who can
lead them must understand _them_ too. Winnington Ingram’s Bishopric
of Stepney gave him this power. In North and North-East London he
became familiar with their peculiar type of life. Hampstead, Highgate,
Stamford Hill, Wood Green had much to say to him that neither West
End nor East End could teach him; but when at last he had had this
threefold experience he understood them all--stood-at-the-roots of
all their lives; knew them at their best and their worst; knew their
possibilities and their limitations; knew their beliefs and their
prejudices. The way in which he had gained it was a strange way. But
at the end of the way he stood there an instrument ready and fitted for
the Master’s use: and the man who understood London was called to lead
it in spiritual things.
God knows and God knows best; and while we in our short-sightedness
would shape the thing we call life, _He shapes the men who have to live
it_.