adept in the art of pretending to have lost money. There is the daughter
of a crossing-sweeper, who cut his throat, and yonder a child of nine,
driven from home, and charged with stealing, as her sister also is, in
another Refuge; and close by are two girls, also sisters, who were found
fatherless and destitute, wandering about famishing and homeless, except
for a wretched room, with nothing in it but two heaps of foul straw. I
need not multiply cases: and but for the known power of love and true
human interest, in which the very Divine love is incarnated, you would
wonder where some of these children obtained their quiet docile manner,
their fearless but modest demeanour, their bright, quiet, sweet faces.
One case only let me mention, and we will go quietly away, to think of
what may be done in such a place by the discipline of this love and true
Christian interest. Do you see that emaciated little creature--the pale,
pinched shadow of a child sitting at a table, where some of her
companions tend her very gently? She is the daughter of a woman who is
an incorrigible beggar. She has never known a home, and for four out of
her eight years of life has been dragged about the street an infant
mendicant; has slept in common lodging-houses; and in her awful
experience could have told of thieves' kitchens, of low taverns, and of
the customs of those vile haunts where she had learnt the language of
obscenity and depravity. But that has become a hideous, almost forgotten
dream, and she is about to awaken to a reality in a world to which the
present tenderness with which she is cared for is but the lowest
threshold. It is only a question of a month or two perhaps. One more
bright sunny holiday with her schoolmates in the pleasant garden of the
treasurer, at Highgate--whither they all go for a whole happy day in the
summer--and she will be in the very land of light before the next
haytime comes round. She wants for nothing--wine and fruit and delicate
fare are sent for her by kind sympathetic hands; but she is wearing
away, not with pain, but with the exhaustion of vital power, through the
privations of the streets. From the Refuge she will go home--a lost lamb
found, and carried to the eternal fold.
But another building has been found; a large, old-fashioned mansion in
St. Andrew's Road, close to the Canal Bridge at Cambridge Heath, and
there the more advanced inmates of this original home in Spitalfields
are to be drafted into classes whence they will go to take a worthy part
in the work of the world, so soon as the necessary subscriptions enable
the committee to increase the number of lambs rescued from the wolves of
famine and of crime.
_WITH THE SICK._
The memory of the pleasant summer holiday remains with many of us when
we have come back again to the duties of the work-a-day world, and it
will be good for us all if the gentle thoughts which that time of
enjoyment brought with it remain in our hearts, to brighten our daily
lives by the influences that suggest a merciful and forbearing temper.
It is perhaps remarkable that few of the charitable institutions at
places to which holiday-makers resort are to any commensurate extent
benefited by the contributions of those visitors who, while they are
engaged in pursuing their own pleasures, seldom give themselves time to
think that as they have freely received so they should freely give.
Considering that while we are engaged in the absorbing business of
money-making, or in the exacting engagements of our daily calling, we
can afford little time for the investigation of those claims which are
made upon us to help the poor and the needy, it might not altogether
detract from the higher enjoyment of a period of leisure if we devoted a
few spare hours to inquiring what is being effected for the relief of
suffering in any place wherein we take up our temporary abode.
With some such reflection as this I stand to-day on the spot which to
ordinary Londoners is most thoroughly representative of the summer
"outing," without which no true Cockney can feel that he is content--a
spot, too, which has become, for a large number of English men and
women, and notably for a whole host of English children, the synonym for
renewed health and strength--the head of Margate jetty.
It is a strange contrast, this moving crowd of people, with their bright
dresses and gay ribbons fluttering in the breeze; the smiling faces of
girls and women amidst a toss and tangle of sea-blown tresses; the green
sparkle of the sea beneath the shining sky; the voices of sailors, the
shrill laughter of boys and girls coming from the sands below; the gleam
of white sails; the flitting wings of fisher-birds; the gay tumult of
the High Street; the traffic of hucksters of shells and toys--a strange
contrast to the scene which may be witnessed in and around that large
building which we passed only yesterday as the Margate boat stood off
from Birchington, and passengers began to collect coats and bags and
umbrellas as they saw friends awaiting them on the landing-stage of this
very jetty.
It seems a week ago; and just as these few hours seem to have separated
us far from yesterday's work, and the routine of daily life, does the
short distance along the High Street and past the railway station seem
to separate us by an indefinite distance from the sickness and pain that
is yet in reality so near. Even as we think of it in this way, the
division is less marked, the contrast not so strange, for in that
building Faith, Hope, and Charity find expression, and bring a cheerful
radiance to those who need the care of skilful hands and the sympathy of
loving hearts.
The name of the place is known all over England, for within its walls
are assembled patients who are brought from the great towns of different
shires, as well as from mighty London itself, that they may be healed of
that dread malady, the most potent cure for which is to take them from
the close and impure atmosphere of their crowded homes, and exchange the
stifled breath of courts and alleys for the boundless æther of the sea.
For the building, to visit which I am here to-day, is the "Royal
Sea-Bathing Infirmary, or National Hospital for the Scrofulous Poor,
near Margate," and there are at this moment 220 men, women, and children
within its sheltering wards. Stay--let me be accurate. I said within its
wards; but here, as I pass the gates and the unpretentious house of the
resident surgeon to the broad sea front of the building, I note that
under the protecting screen of the wall that bounds the wide space of
grass-plot and gravel-paths a row of beds are placed, and in each of
them a patient lies basking in the warm sunlit air; while a little band
of convalescents saunter gently, some of them with the aid of crutch or
stick, with the enjoyment of a sense of returning strength. If I mistake
not, there are two or three "Bath chairs" crunching the gravel paths a
little further on, and down below upon the space marked out and
separated from the outer world upon the beach, the two bathing-machines
of the establishment are occupied by those for whom convalescence is
growing into health.[3]
The full meaning of such a change can only be realised by those who know
how terrible a disease scrofula becomes, not only in the deadly
insidious form of consumption, but in the various deformities and
distortions of the limbs of which it is the cause; and in those cases
where, to the pain and depression of the disorder itself is added some
terrible affection of the skin, which the sensitive patient knows can
scarcely fail to be repulsive to those who witness it, unless, indeed
they have learnt to regard it only as a reason for deeper compassion and
for more earnest consolation.
Almost every form of the disorder is to be seen out here in the wide
northern area of this inclusive building, which has long ago been bought
and paid for, along with the three acres of freehold ground on which it
stands.
Of the deep sympathy with which it has been supported by those who early
learned to take an interest in its beneficent work, the fountain which
has been erected in the centre of the green to the memory of the late
Rev. John Hodgson, one of its trustees, is a mute witness. Mr. Hodgson
laboured earnestly to secure those casual interests which might be
obtained from the vast number of persons who visit Margate every year.
In order to make the most of small regular contributions, he appealed
for "five shillings a year," and since his death in 1870 this fund has
increased, so that in one year nearly 6,000 subscribers had contributed
£1,405 7_s._ 4_d._ Never was holiday charity more appropriately applied,
as anybody who will visit the institution itself may witness in those
long wards beyond the open passage, to which the card of Dr. Rowe, one
of the three visiting surgeons, has directed me.
Since the first establishment of the institution, seventy-seven years
ago, when sixteen cases were treated as a beginning, above 29,000
patients, from London and all parts of the country, have received
relief; and to-day the number in the institution (taking no account of a
contingent of "out-patients") includes 42 men, 50 women, and 120
children, none of whom are local cases, but all from other parts of
England, whence they come frequently from a long distance.
In each of the six wards, of which four are on the ground floor, there
is a head-nurse and an assistant, with six helpers for the children's,
and four for the adult department, beside the night nurses, who sit up
in case of any emergency. There is accommodation for 250 sufferers and
for the 40 nurses, attendants, and domestics required for the service of
the hospital; so the 220 patients there now, represent the approaching
period when a new wing will have to be added, even if only the urgent
cases are to be admitted.
The year's list of occupants of the 250 beds shows a total of 721
patients, of whom 614 had been discharged in January, 399 being either
cured or very greatly benefited, 171 decidedly benefited, and only 44
obviously uncured; a very large amount of actual gain to humanity, when
we reflect on the conditions of the disease to remedy which the
institution is devoted.
If out of 721 cases 399 are either cured or have received such marked
benefit as to render their ultimate cure highly probable, it is an
achievement worthy of the earnest work of which it is the result, a
contribution to beneficent efforts well worth the £7,966 which has
necessarily been expended in the provision, not only of the appliances
which give comfort and rest, but of the generous food and drink which,
with the glorious air from the sea, is the medicine necessary to build
up the feeble frames and renew the impoverished blood of those to whom
meal-times come to be welcome events in the day, instead of merely
languid observances.
Down in the kitchen, with its great cooking range and its capacious
boilers, there are evidences of that "full diet" which is characteristic
of the place; and it is difficult to decide which are the most
suggestive, the long row of covered japanned jugs which hang
conveniently to the dresser-shelf, and are used for the conveyance of
"gravy," or the mighty milk-cans standing in a corner, ready to be taken
away when the evening supply comes in from the Kentish dairies. Half a
pound of cooked meat for dinner is the daily allowance for each man and
for every boy over fourteen years of age, while women and girls receive
six ounces, and children four ounces. Breakfast consists of coffee and
bread-and-butter, varied in the afternoon by tea, and supper of bread
and cheese for adults, and bread and butter for children. Roast and
boiled meat is served on alternate days, with accompanying vegetables,
and there are three "pudding days" for those who can manage this
addition to the fare; while every man and woman may have a pint of
porter, and each child a pint of table ale, at the discretion of the
doctors. This, of course, represents the ordinary diet, in which
specific differences are made for special cases where other or daintier
food is required. Perhaps I should have said that this is the scale
adopted in the refectory, a large airy room, to the long table in which
the patients who are able to "get about" are now advancing with a
cheerful premonition of dinner. There is no space to spare, and there
are at present no funds to spend in additional building, so that this
great airy refectory is used as chapel and assembly room. The Bread of
Life, as well as the temporal bread, is distributed here; and those who
would object to the necessity may either contribute to build another
room, or may come and learn how every meal in such a place, and for such
a cause as this, should become a sacrament. Many varieties of the forms
taken by scrofulous disease may be seen here; and yet the hopeful looks,
the cheerful influence of the bright summer weather, the green glimpses
of the sea through doors and windows, and the fresh bracing air, impart
to these sufferers an expressive lively briskness, which somehow removes
the more painful impressions with which we might expect to witness such
an assembly.
It is so perhaps in a still greater measure in these large airy wards,
where children sit or lie upon the beds, some of them wholly or
partially dressed, where the disease has produced only deformities under
surgical treatment, or such forms of skin disease as affect the face. Of
the latter there are some very severe and obstinate cases, and from
these the unaccustomed visitor can scarcely help turning away, but often
only to _re_-turn, and mark how cheerfully and with what a vivid
alacrity the little patients move and play, and look with eager interest
on all that is going on. For here--in the boys' ward--there is no
repression of youthful spirits, so that they be kept within the bounds
of moderate decorum, nor do the patients themselves seem to feel that
they are objects of melancholy commiseration. To speak plainly, even the
worst cases are not reminded that there are people who may be revolted
at their affliction. Indeed I, who am tolerably accustomed to many
experiences that might be strange to others, am rather taken aback by
one little "case," whose face and limbs, though apparently healed, have
been so deeply seamed and grooved by the disorder, which must have
claimed him from babyhood, that he has evidently learned to regard
himself as an important surgical specimen, and, on my approach to his
bed, begins with deliberate satisfaction to divest himself of his
stockings, in order to exhibit his legs. Hip and spinal disease are
among the most frequent and often the most fatal forms of scrofula. One
boy, with delicate and regular features, his fragile hand only just able
to clasp in the fingers the small present I am permitted to offer him,
shows the shadow of death upon his face. In his case the disorder has
shown itself to be beyond medical, as it has already been beyond
surgical aid, and his short hurried breathing denotes that before the
summer days have been shortened by the autumn nights, and the leaves are
lying brown and sere, he will be in a better and a surer home, and
healed for evermore.
It will be a peaceful end, no doubt, and he will yet have strength
enough to be taken home to die, where other than strangers' hands will
minister to him at the last, but not more tenderly, it may be, than
those that smooth his pillow to-day.
As we leave the boys' wards--clean, and bright, and fresh as they
are--we encounter a cosy little party of juvenile convalescents, who are
comfortably seated on the door-mat, engaged in a stupendous game of
draughts.
There is more of beauty than deformity, more of life than of death, more
perhaps of living eager interest than of sadness and sorrow to be seen
here, after all; and this is particularly remarkable in the
large-windowed spacious ward where the girls can look fairly out upon
the gleaming sea. Properly enough, the room occupied by these young
ladies has been made more ornamental than that of the boys. The walls
are gay with coloured prints, and there are flowers, and a remarkably
cheerful three-sided stove, which gives the place an air of comfort,
though, of course, it has now no fire in it. Then some of the girls
(with those thoughtful delicate faces and large wistful inquiring eyes
which are so often to be observed among lame people) are engaged in
fancy needlework as they lie dressed upon the beds to which they are at
present mostly confined, because of deformities of the feet or legs
requiring surgical treatment. There is a library (which needs
replenishing), from which patients are allowed to take books; and those
children who are able to leave the wards, and are not suffering from
illness, are taught daily by a schoolmaster and a schoolmistress, while
a visiting chaplain is of course attached to the hospital.
[3] This was written in the latter part of July, 1874.
_BLESSING THE LITTLE CHILDREN._
I cannot yet leave that sea-coast where so great a multitude go to find
rest and healing. The Divine Narrative may well appeal to us in relation
to such a locality, for it was by the sea-shore that the Gospel came to
those who went out to seek Jesus of Nazareth; it was there that the poor
people heard Him gladly; there that the sick who were brought to Him
were made whole: there that He fed the great company who lacked bread.
All the deeds of humanity were recognised by Him who called himself the
"Son of Man." The blessing of little children is one of those needs of
true human life which the Lord recognised gladly. He recognises it
still; and His solemn mingling of warning and of promise with regard to
its observance, has an intensity that may well appeal to us all, now
that, after eighteen centuries of comparative neglect and indifference,
we are discerning that the only hope of social redemption is to be found
in that care for children which shall forbid their being left either
morally or physically destitute.
There is a house, standing high above the sea, in that great breezy
suburb of Margate, known as Cliftonville--to which I want you to pay a
visit when the bright, cheerful, airy wards, the light, spacious
dining-room, and comfortable, home-like enlivening influences of the
place will entitle it to be regarded as the fitting consummation of two
other admirable institutions for the nurture and maintenance of orphan
and fatherless children.
The modest little building referred to is named "The Convalescent and
Sea-side Home for Orphans," Harold Road, Margate. The parent
institutions are "The Orphan Working School," at Haverstock Hill, and
that most attractive series of pretty cottages on the brow of the hill
at Hornsey Rise, which have been more than once spoken of as "Lilliput
Village," but the style and title of which is "The Alexandra Orphanage
for Infants"--a name, the distinguishing feature of which is that it is
immediately associated with its first patroness, the Princess of Wales.
Of the Home at Margate I need not now speak particularly, except to note
that it is for the reception of the little convalescents,
who--suffering, as many of them do, from constitutional and hereditary
weakness, which is yet not actual sickness, and recovering, as many of
them are, from the feeble condition which has been to some extent
remedied by the careful nurture, good food, and healthy regimen, of the
large institutions near London--are not fit patients either for their
own or any other infirmary wards, and yet require to be restored to
greater strength before they can join the main body of their young
companions in the school or the playground.
Enough that it is picturesque and substantially pretty, as becomes a
place which is to become the home of thirty children, taken from among
nearly six hundred, the parents of nearly half of whom have died of
consumption, and so left to their offspring that tendency to a feeble
constitution which can be best remedied by the grand medicine of
sea-air, wholesome nutritious food, and a judicious alternation of
healthful exercise and rest.
It is to Mr. Joseph Soul--the late indefatigable secretary of the
Working School, with which he has been connected for nearly forty years,
and the honorary secretary of the Alexandra Orphanage, of which he may
be regarded as the virtual founder--that the proposal to establish this
Convalescent Home was due, and its affairs are administered at the
office of the two charities, at 63, Cheapside.
But it is necessary to tell as briefly as possible the story of the
oldest of the two institutions of which this building is to be an
accessory--not only the oldest of these two, but probably _the oldest_
voluntarily supported orphan asylum in London, since it dates from 116
years ago, when George II. was King, when Louis XV. was scandalising
Europe and preparing the Revolution, when Wesleyan Methodism was
commencing a vast religious revival, when Doctor Johnson had but just
finished writing his dictionary, and when William Hogarth was painting
those wonderful pictures which are still the most instructive records of
society and fashion as seen in the year 1758.
It was in that year, on the 10th of May, that fourteen periwigged and
powdered gentlemen met at the George Inn, in Ironmonger Lane, in order
to discuss how they might best found an asylum for forty orphan
children--that is to say, for twenty boys and twenty girls.
They soon came to a solemn decision that there was a "sufficient
subscription for carrying the scheme into execution," and a record to
that effect was soberly entered in the very first clean page of the
first minute-book of the Charity, with the additional memoranda that a
committee was chosen, and a treasurer appointed to collect and take care
of the money necessary to support the undertaking.
The early minute-books of this charity, by the way, are models of
serious penmanship. Grave achievements of caligraphy, with engrossed
headings, elaborate flourishes, and stiff formal hedge-rows of legal
verbiage, suggestive of the fact that the secretaries were either
attorneys or scriveners, and regarded the entries in a minute-book or
the opening of a new account as very weighty and important events not to
be lightly passed over. In this they were probably right: and, at all
events, just so much of the old methodical exactitude has come down to
the present day in the history of the institution, that the published
accounts of the Orphan Working School have been referred to by the
_Times_ as models of condensation with a clearness of detail, which may
be regarded as the best indication of a well-ordered and economical
administration.
It might not be too much to say that the old principle of carrying a
scheme into execution only when there are sufficient subscriptions still
characterises the operations of the institution. At all events, Mr. Soul
had secured enough money for the completion of the new building at
Margate before the actual work commenced, and his experience told him
that funds would be forthcoming to maintain it.
The founders of the original Orphan Working School, however, laid their
wigs together to obtain a house ready built, and at last found one
adapted to the purpose, in what was then the suburban district known as
Hogsden--since gentilised into Hoxton. Like all really good work, the
enterprise began to grow--there were so many orphans, and this was still
the only general asylum maintained by subscriptions--so that, as funds
came in, two other adjoining houses were rented, and in seventeen years
the number of inmates had increased from forty to 165.
Reading the formal and yet most interesting records of this parent
institution for the care of the orphan and the fatherless, I fall into a
kind of wonder at the enormous change in the method of "nurture and
admonition," of teaching and training, which has taken place in the past
eighty years. Even in this house at Hoxton, whereof the founders appear
to have been kindly old gentlemen, the discipline was enormously
suggestive of that stern restriction and unsympathetic treatment which
was thought necessary for the due correction of the "Old Adam" in the
young heart. We know how great an outcry has quite lately been made at
the discovery of the remains of that mode of chastisement which seems to
have been abandoned almost everywhere, except by a special revival in
gaols, and at two or three of the public schools to which the sons of
gentlemen are consigned for their education.