failure of the Houseless Poor Act, there were one or two institutions
which went on the plan of offering no inducement whatever to those who
sought shelter within their walls. The provisions were barer, the beds
harder, the reception little less cold and unsympathetic than they would
receive at any metropolitan union.
Those of my readers who remember the Refuge for the Houseless Poor which
once stood in Playhouse Yard, close to that foul tangle of courts that
still exists between Barbican and St. Luke's, and is known as "The
Chequers," will understand me when I say that there were no alluring
inducements for the houseless and the destitute to seek its aid.
I have seldom seen a more painfully suggestive crowd than that which
waited outside the blank door of that hideous building on a cold drizzly
evening when I paid the place a visit, only a short time before it was
finally closed. I cannot deny, however, that the applicants for
admission consisted of those persons for whom the institution seemed to
be especially designed. The very lowest class of poverty, the
representatives of sheer destitution, made up the 350 men and the 150
women who were to occupy the bare wooden bunks in the two departments of
the building that night, and to accept, as a stay against starvation,
the half-pound of dry bread and the drink of water. What I would call
emphatic attention to, is the fact that this place was filled nightly at
that time, because the inmates could leave early in the morning to seek
a day's work, and so rise out of that depth of destitution which was
represented by the nightly return to the casual ward. But let us
remember that, though this Institution could scarcely be characterised
by the warm name of "charity," it received all applicants who were not
suffering from infectious diseases, and therefore its policy was
deterrent. In order to separate itself from the idle casual, it made its
provisions little short of penal, and, indeed, very far short of those
common comforts that are to be found in prison.
But the Refuge in Newport Market was one of those which had been founded
on a different principle. It was never intended as a supplement to the
casual ward, or as having any relation to poor-law relief; though,
during the terrible distress that overtook the houseless in that severe
winter when our poor-law arrangements broke down utterly, it was
impossible for any place founded in the name of Christian love and
charity to be very particular in excluding famishing and frozen men and
women on the suspicion that they had already somehow obtained parochial
relief the night before.
This "Refuge" was originally established by the influence and the
personal exertions of Mrs. Gladstone, and a few ladies and gentlemen
who, knowing of the extreme distress that prevailed in all that
poverty-stricken neighbourhood about Seven Dials, around the
alien-haunted district of Soho, and in the purlieux of Drury Lane, and
the courts of Long Acre, set about providing some remedy for the misery
that homeless, destitute men, women, and children had to suffer during
the bitter nights of winter. First, a regular mission was established in
an ordinary room, and, after a time, space was secured to make a
Refuge--first for six, then for ten, and afterwards for twenty of the
most destitute cases which came under the notice of the mission-woman.
This went on till the funds were sufficient to warrant a very earnest
desire to obtain larger premises, and at last to make a bid for that
queer ramshackle old slaughter-house, which was the rather too indicative
feature of the locality. The landlords of this place were fully alive to
the value of any property rising in proportion to the anxiety of somebody
to become its tenant, and they demanded a high rent accordingly. Still,
the work had to be done, and the slaughter-house--cleansed, repaired,
whitewashed, and divided into several queer, irregular-shaped wards and
rooms, which were reached by strange flights of steps and zig-zag
entries--was opened with cheerful confidence and hope, under the earnest
superintendence of the Rev. J. Williams, who was at that time incumbent
of the parish of St. Mary, Soho. It was at that period that I first made
acquaintance with the Institution, and with the quiet, undemonstrative
work of charity which was carried on there, and is continued to this
day, though it is less arduous now that the neighbourhood itself has
felt the influence of such an organization--not so much in the
diminution of actual poverty, as in the humanising and constantly
suggestive presence of men and women who have brought a gospel to those
who were hopeless, and seemed to have none to care for them.
The need to receive numbers every night to the utmost limits of the
Institution has passed now, except occasionally during very severe
weather; and though the cases admitted are still those where deep, and
sometimes apparently almost fatal, misfortune is the claim, there is no
longer the urgency which forbade a too discriminating selection, and the
regular casual stands no chance under the quick and experienced eye of
the superintendent, Mr. Ramsden, whose military tone and manner are, by
the way, modulated so as to carry the sense of detection to the
pretender, and to support and give courage to the weak and
faint-hearted.
The same complete, quiet method of receiving applicants who await
admission enables me to repeat the impression which I received during
the time that the demands upon the night Refuge were more urgent. The
experienced visitor who stands at the gate of this rehabilitated
building that was once the old slaughter-house, and who watches the
people go in one by one, and listens to their low-voiced pleas for food
and shelter, cannot mistake them for casual ward cases. Just as, in some
other Institutions, the pain of the spectacle is the degraded poverty of
those who seek aid, the most affecting element here is utter
destitution, without that _accustomed_ debasement which would find a
fitting resource at the workhouse door, leading to the night shed.
These are broken-down men and women; old men beaten in the battle of
life, and full of present sorrow; young men who have fought and failed,
or who have eaten of the husks, and seek occasion to rise to a better
mind; middle-aged men not altogether crushed or hopeless, but in sore
want, and needing the sound of a kindly voice, the touch of a friendly
hand; women who have lost youth and worldly hope together--women who,
more weak than wicked, and without resource, need some stay alike for
fainting bodies and for wandering souls; women worn and hungry, because
of the lack even of ill-paid work, and asking for rest and food till
they can seek employment: some who will go forth in the morning and set
out afresh; others who, if they can secure two or three nights' lodging,
with a mouthful of food and drink morning and evening, have a good hope
of doing better in the future.
To those who know how the demand for certain kinds of labour varies, and
frequently slackens towards the winter months, when need is sorest, this
latter most merciful provision comes with a sense of truest charity.
Tickets of admission are issued to friends and visitors of the
Institution (and any one may be a visitor who chooses to ring at the
bell of the old slaughter-house), entitling the holder to admission
after the regular evening hour of half-past five to six, so that in
bestowing one of these the judicious subscriber (not necessarily, but
surely from sympathy a subscriber) can be a true benefactor. For these
tickets will admit the really deserving nightly for a week, with supper
of bread and coffee or cocoa, or occasional savoury soup, and breakfast
of bread and coffee. And even this time is occasionally extended, if
there be a reasonable prospect of obtaining work. Not only
ticket-holders, but every applicant, may have the same privilege, if it
can be shown that he or she is really likely to obtain employment. But
there is more than this. There are men here--truest of gentlemen, beyond
that social stamp of rank which rightfully belongs to them--who, with a
real, manly instinct, know how to take poverty by the hand without
offensive patronage or untimely preaching. There are ladies who, in
their true womanhood, can see the contrition in faces bowed down--the
shame that is caused, not by evil doings, but by the feeling of dismay
which comes of having to ask for charity--can sympathise with broken
fortunes, with gentle nurture--cast upon a hard, relentless world, with
that poverty which is "above the common."
More still. Among the supporters and the constant visitors are those who
can use special influence for cases that need it most, and obtain for
them admission to hospitals and other asylums, or introduce to
situations those who by sudden calamity have been deprived of the means
of living.
Yes, even in their deepest need, poor, wandering, homeless women may
come here and find help, for in that large, lofty, yet warm and
well-lighted room, the women's dormitory--one side of which is composed
of a series of niches where the comfortable beds are placed--there are
to be seen a row of doors, which seem to belong to a series of cabins,
as, indeed, they do. Each door opens into a small bed-room--small, but
with room for a chair, a tiny table, and the neat bed. They are the
lodgings set apart for women, who, in the midst of their poverty and
destitution, are looking forward fearfully to the time when children
will be born to them, and so to a period of weakness, and of the sad
mingling of maternal pity and desponding sorrow. Let me say, in one line
from the Report, that last year eight young women were received into the
Refuge some time before their confinement, were passed on to Queen
Charlotte's Hospital, and were helped until such time as they were able
to help themselves.
I think the knowledge of this is so cheerful an instance of the value of
this most representative Refuge, that even the sight of the bright,
warm, glowing kitchen, with its great boiler of hot coffee, and its
noble kettle of soup occupying the jolly range, scarcely imparts an
extra beam to the picture; while the long rows of white mugs, the
pleasant, clean, fragrant loaves, the big milk-cans, the courteous
_chef_, who has a true and pardonable pride in his surroundings--no, not
even the cosy, rug-covered berths and bunks in the dormitories, nor the
quaint little corner-room to which I have to climb a crooked staircase
to shake hands with the sister who is in charge, nor the equally quaint
and cornery, not to say inconvenient, sitting-room of Mr. and Mrs.
Ramsden, who have left their tea unfinished to do the honours of the
Institution--can suggest to me a better word to say than that which is
suggested by the picture of the poor wandering, weary, fainting women,
who, almost in despair, not only for a real, but for an expected life,
come here to find rest and peace.
Stay; one word more. Who are the class of people for whom the Refuge
doors are ordinarily open? Let us see what were the most numerous cases
among the inmates who during the year received 6,669 nights' lodgings
and 16,889 suppers and breakfasts. Among the men "labourers," of course,
are most numerous; then discharged soldiers--poor fellows who have
perhaps foolishly snatched at liberty when offered, and foregone the
advantages of re-engagement and a pension; next in numerical order come
_clerks_--a very painfully suggestive fact, especially when read by the
light of the advertisement-columns of our newspapers, and the sad story
of genteel poverty in that great suburban ring which encircles the
wealthiest city in the world. Of house-painters there were 24; of
servants, 21; of tailors, 13; of seamen, 8; and other callings were
represented in remarkable variety, including 1 actor, 6 cooks, 1
schoolmaster, 2 surveyors, and 1 tutor. Among the women, 199
servants--show sadly enough the truth of the old adage, "Service is no
inheritance;" while in numerical succession there were, 55 charwomen, 41
laundresses, 37 needlewomen, 31 tailoresses, 27 dressmakers, 26
machinists (alas! how many women still utterly depend on "the needle"
for a subsistence!), 24 cooks, 20 ironers, 16 field-labourers. There
were 4 governesses, 1 actress, 1 mission-woman, and 1 staymaker, the
rest being variously described.
From among these, 94 men and 193 women obtained employment, 77 women
having been sent to Penitentiaries and Homes, while 18 were supported in
the Refuge or elsewhere by needlework, 13 were sent to their friends, 60
obtained permanent work, and 14 girls of good character were sent to
Servants' Homes.
But I have left out one thing now. Among this great representative
company of refugees were 60 children, of whom 37 were sent to nurse or
to school, while those who were old enough---- Well, just listen to that
burst of military music in a distant upper-room of the old
slaughter-house. I must tell you something about the Newport Market boys
in another chapter.
_TAKING IN STRANGERS._
Yes; listen to that startling clangour of military music coming from an
upper room. We are standing, you know, in the cheerful kitchen of that
Refuge for the Homeless in the renovated old slaughter-house in Newport
Market, and I want you to come with me to see the boys' school, which
occupies a very considerable portion of that weatherproof but ramshackle
building.
Only those who are acquainted with the poverty and the crime of this
great metropolis can estimate the deep and urgent need that still exists
for refuges in which homeless, destitute, and neglected children can be
received for shelter, food, and clothing. Only the practical student of
the effect of our present administration of the Education Act can
calculate how vast a necessity is likely to exist for the reception and
instruction of the children of the poorest, even when all the machinery
of the present School Board is put in motion for vindicating the
compulsory clause.
Let that clause be interpreted in the most liberal manner--which would
be in effect to provide State education without cost to the parents--and
the Act will still leave untouched a vast number of children for whom
nothing can be done until their physical necessities are provided
for--children who are perishing with cold, starving for want of food. A
visit to some of the big buildings recently erected by the London School
Board will reveal the fact that there are many such children now in
attendance; neglected, barefoot, half-clothed, hungry, and with that
wistful eager look, sometimes followed by a kind of stupefaction, which
may be observed in the poor little outcasts of the streets. There is no
reasonable hope of doing much with these little creatures till the
"soup-kitchen" and the "free breakfast" are among the appliances of
education, where the necessity is most pressing, and the children perish
for lack of bread as well as for lack of knowledge.
As it is--I need not refer again to the escape which is always open from
the streets to the prison. The few Government industrial-schools to
which magistrates occasionally consign young culprits brought before
them are intended only for those who come within the cognisance of the
law.
The operations of these reformatory-schools are successful so far as
they go. They represent seventy-five per cent. of successful reformatory
training as applied to juvenile transgressors committed by magistrates
to their supervision.
Perhaps, when we are fully impressed with the meaning of the statistics
which are published each year in the Report of the Inspectors of
Certified Schools in Great Britain, we shall begin to consider how it
will be possible to regard destitute children in relation to the
guardianship of the state _before_ they qualify themselves for
Government interposition by the expedient of committing what the law
calls a crime.
The last Report states distinctly that the sooner criminal children are
taken in hand, the more complete is their reformation. There are fewer
"criminals" of less than ten years of age than there are hardened
offenders of from twelve to sixteen. This is, so far, satisfactory; but
when we consider that (including Roman Catholic establishments) there
are but fifty-three reformatories in England, and twelve in Scotland
(thirty-seven of those in England and eight in Scotland being for boys,
and sixteen in England and four in Scotland for girls), and that in
1873, when the Report was issued, the sum-total of children in all these
institutions was but 5,622, of whom one-fourth were in the Roman
Catholic schools--we cease to wonder at the vast number of homeless,
neglected, and destitute children in London alone--a number which,
notwithstanding the efforts of philanthropy and the activity of School
Board beadles, exceeds the total of all the inmates of the State
reformatories throughout the kingdom.
This refuge at Newport Market had included destitute and starving boys
among those who were brought to its shelter from the cruel streets, the
dark arches of railways and of bridges, and the miserable corners where
the houseless huddle together at night, long before its supporters could
make provision for maintaining any of the poor little fellows in an
industrial-school. But the work grew, and the means were found, first
for retaining some of the juvenile lodgers who came only for a night's
food, and warmth, and shelter, and afterwards for receiving them as
inmates.
Some of these are sent to the Refuge by persons who are furnished with
printed forms of application, or by mothers who can afford evident
testimony that they can scarcely live on the few shillings they are able
to earn by casual work as charwomen, or by the no less casual
employments where the wages are totally inadequate to support a family;
while a few lads have themselves applied for admission because they were
orphans, or utterly destitute and abandoned by those on whom they might
be supposed to have a claim.
A portion of the old building, which has been adapted to the purpose,
and has been added as the need for increased space became pressing, is
now devoted to the dormitories, play-room, and school-room of some fifty
to sixty of this contingent of the great army of friendless children;
and at the time of the last Report fourteen had but just left to be
enlisted in military bands; two had become military tailors; situations
had been found for others; while one had been regularly apprenticed to a
tailor in London.
There are frequently several boys ready for such apprenticeship, for
tailoring is the only regular trade taught, the time of the lads being
occupied in learning to read, write, and cipher, to acquire the outlines
of history and geography, and to take a place in the military band which
is at this moment making the cranky old building resound with its
performance on clarinets, hautboys, cornets, "deep bassoons," and all
kinds of wind instruments, under the direction of an able bandmaster,
who keeps the music up to the mark with a spirit which bespeaks
confidence in the intelligence of his pupils.
This confidence is not misplaced, for during the past year eleven
youthful recruits have been drafted from among these boys into the bands
of various regiments, while there are above ninety applications still on
the books for more musicians who have chosen this branch of the military
service. It is a matter of choice, of course; and there are some who
prefer to become sailors, or to go into situations and learn the trade
of tailoring, that their instructors may be able to recommend them to
respectable masters as apprentices.
But let us walk through the kitchen, and ascend the short zig-zag stairs
which lead us by a passage to the school-room, where most of the boys
are at work with their slates. Very few of the little fellows are more
than thirteen years old, and some of them have been but a short time at
school; but even those who came here totally uninstructed have made
admirable progress, and some of the writing-books containing lessons
from dictation are well worth looking at for their clean and excellent
penmanship and fair spelling; while in arithmetic the boys who have been
longest under tuition have advanced as far as "practice." There is
nothing superfluous in school-room, work-room, or play-room--indeed, one
might almost say that they are unfurnished, except for desks and forms
and plain deal tables. The play-room is a lower portion of the old
slaughter-house, with a high ceiling, to a beam in which is fixed a pair
of ropes terminating in two large wooden rings by which the youthful
gymnasts swing and perform all kinds of evolutions, while a set of
parallel bars are among the few accessories.
It is evident that nothing is spent in mere ornament, and that the
expenditure is carefully considered, though recreation, and healthy
recreation too, is a part of the daily duty, which is regulated in a
fashion befitting the rather military associations of the place. Even
now, as the cheery superintendent, Mr. Ramsden, who was lately
quartermaster-sergeant of the 16th Regiment, calls "Attention!" every
boy is quickly on his feet and ready to greet us; and what is more, the
boys seem to like this kind of discipline, for it is kind in its prompt
demand for obedience, and the regularity and order includes a kind of
self-reliance, which is a very essential part of education for lads who
must necessarily be taught what they have to learn in a comparatively
short time, and are then sent out where order and promptitude are of the
utmost service to them. Economy is studied, but the recollection of the
cheery kitchen suggests that there is no griping hard endeavour to
curtail the rations necessary to support health and strength. In fact,
the boys are sufficiently fed, warmly clothed, and are encouraged both
to work and play heartily. Breakfast consists of bread and coffee;
dinner of meat and vegetables three days in the week, fish on one day
(Wednesday), pudding on Monday, soup on Friday, meat and cheese on
Saturday; tea or coffee with bread and dripping, while on Sundays butter
is an additional luxury both at breakfast and tea; and on Thursdays and
Sundays tea is substituted for coffee at the evening meal. All the boys
are decently and warmly clothed, and though only some of their number
"take to music" as a profession, and choose to go into the military
bands, they all receive instruction. They are taught to keep their own
bunks and dormitories neat, and, in fact, do their own household work;
while, morning and afternoon, personal trimness is promoted by the
military "inspection" which is part of the discipline. There is half an
hour's play after breakfast, another quarter of hour before dinner,
three-quarters of an hour for "washing and play" after dinner, a quarter
of an hour before tea, and from an hour and a half to two hours for
boot-cleaning and play before bed-time, besides out-door exercise daily,
except in wet weather, when drill and gymnastics take its place. They
also go to Primrose Hill on Tuesday and Saturday afternoons, there to
run in the fresh air and disport themselves in cricket, or such games as
they can find the toys for, by the kindness of the committee or generous
visitors. Even with these recreations, however, they find time to go
through a very respectable amount of work in the fourteen hours between
rising and bed-time; and the letters received from lads who have left
the school are an evidence that they remember with pleasure and with
gratitude the Refuge that became a home, and to which they attribute
their ability to take a place which would have been denied to them
without the aid which grew out of pity for their neglected childhood.
Here is a short epistle from one of the juvenile band, at Shorncliffe
Camp, written a year or two ago:--