boys are all well, and all in the school and please Mr. Ramsden will
you send me the parcel up that I took into the school it was laying in
the bookcase in the school-room and I hope that all the boys are all
getting on with their instruments and the snips with their work and I
should like you to read it to the boys and I wish that you would let
---- answer it and I am getting on with my instrument very well, and I
will be able to come and see you on Cristamas season."
This is a characteristic schoolboy letter, which shows how much boys are
alike in all grades. The following is another letter from Shorncliffe:--
"Dear Sir,
"I received your kind and welcome letter along with mothers, and I
wrote back to tell you we have all been enlisted and sworn in, and we
expect to get our clothes next week and we all feel it our duty to
express our deeply felt gratitude to you Mr. Dust and the Committee,
and we are all very happy at present please give our respects to Mrs.
Ramsden Sister Zillah Mr. McDerby Mr. Mason Mr. Goodwin Miss Cheesman
and please remember us to all the boys. Leary is on sick furlough since
the 15th of Decr. and has not returned yet and Brenan, Lloyd Graham
McCarthy Henderson and all the others are very jolly at present and
been out all the afternoon amongst the snow. So I conclude with kind
thanks to one and all and believe me to be Dear Sir
"Your late pupil ----
"Band ---- Regt."
The following will show how the memory of the old slaughter-house and
the school in Newport Market remains after the boys have left and have
entered on a career. It is addressed from Warley Barracks:--
"Dear Sir
"I now take the opportunity of writing to you hoping you and all the
rest of the school and the sister also. It is a long time since I left
the school now and I dont suppose you would know me if I was to come
and see you I was apprenticed out off the school along of J---- R----
to Mr W---- in 1869 I think it was as a Tailor. I should like you to
write and tell me if you know what rigment J---- H---- belong to his
school number was 34 and mine was 35 me and him was great friends when
we were in the school and I should like to know very much were he is.
When I left the School Mr. L---- was Supperintendant and I dont suppose
I should know you sir if I was to see you I shall try to come down and
see the School if I can on Christmas for I shall be on pass to London
for seven days and I should like to know where J---- H---- is so as I
should be able to see him. I have a few more words to say that is the
school was the making of me and I am very thankful to the school for it
so with kind love to you all
"I remain your humble servant,
"Band ---- Regiment,
"Warley Barracks, Essex.
"J---- H---- number was 34 and mine was 35.
"Excuse me addressing this Letter to you as I dont know anything about
you sir."
There is something pleasant indeed in letters like these; and I for one
am not surprised that the boys should go to their musical practice with
a will.
They are just preparing to play something for our especial delight now,
and so burst out, in a grand triumphant blast, with "Let the Hills
Resound," after which we will take our leave, and, we hope, not without
melody in our hearts. Just one word as we go through this kitchen again.
Two West End clubs supply the Newport Market Refuge with the remnants of
their well-stocked larders. Did it ever occur to you how many hungry
children and poor men and women could be fed on the actual waste that
goes on in hotels, clubs, inns, dining-rooms, and large and ordinary
households every day? M. Alexis Soyer used to say that he could feed ten
thousand people with the food that was wasted in London every day; and I
am inclined to think he was not far wrong. At all events, an enormous
salvage of humanity might be effected if only the one meal daily which
might be made of "refuse" pieces of meat and bread, bones, cuttings of
vegetables, cold potatoes, and general pieces--was secured to the
thousands to whom "enough" would often indeed be "as good as a feast."
To people who know how much that is really good for food--not the
plate-scrapings and leavings, but sound and useful reversions of meat
and bread and vegetables, bones, and unsightly corners of joints--is
either suffered to spoil or is thrown at once into the waste-tub, both
in hotels and private houses, the additional knowledge that there are
hungry children in every district in London to whom a bowl of nourishing
soup or a plate of minced meat and vegetables would be a boon, may
easily be a pain, because of the inability to suggest how to organise
the means of utilising what one is tempted to call undeserved plenty.
_FEEDING THE MULTITUDE._
I suppose there are people still to be found who have but a vague notion
of what it is to be really hungry. They may be conscious of possessing a
good appetite now and then, and having the means of obtaining food, and
to a certain extent of choosing what they will eat, regard being rather
"sharp set" as a luxury which gives additional zest to a dinner,
enabling them to take off the edge of their craving with a plate of warm
soup, and to consider what they would like "to follow."
Of course we most of us read in the papers of the distress of the poor
during the winter, of the number of children for whom appeals are made
that they may have a meal of meat and vegetables once or twice a week,
of the aggregate of casual paupers during a given period, and of cases
where "death accelerated by want and exposure" is the verdict of a
coroner's jury; but we do not very easily realise what it is to be
famished; have perhaps never experienced that stage beyond
hunger--beyond even the faintness and giddiness that makes us doubt
whether we could swallow anything solid, and would cause us to turn
hopelessly from dry bread. There is no need here to detail the
sufferings that come of starvation. They are dreadful enough; but if our
charity needs the stimulus of such descriptions we are in a bad way, and
are ourselves in danger of perishing for want of moral sustenance.
Those who need assurance of the hunger of hundreds of their poor
neighbours need not go very far to obtain it. A quarter of an hour at
the window of any common cook-shop in a "low neighbourhood," at about
seven o'clock in the evening, when the steam of unctuous puddings is
blurring the glass, and the odour of leg-of-beef soup and pease-pudding
comes in gusts to the chilly street, should suffice. There is pretty
sure to be a group of poor little eager-eyed pinch-nosed boys and girls
peering wistfully in to watch the fortunate possessor of two-pence who
comes out with something smoking hot on a cabbage-leaf, and begins to
bite at it furtively before he crosses the threshold.
Of course, according to modern social political economy, it would be
encouraging mendicity, and sapping the foundations of an independent
character, to distribute sixpenny pieces amongst the juvenile committee
of taste who are muttering what they would buy if only somebody could be
found to advance "a copper." But it is to be hoped or feared (which?)
that a good many people yet live who would instinctively feel in their
pockets for a stray coin to expend on a warm greasy slab of baked or
boiled, or on half a dozen squares of that peculiarly dense pie-crust
which is sold in ha'porths. This is a vulgar detail; but somehow poverty
and hunger _are_ vulgar, and we should find it difficult to get away
from them if we tried ever so hard. Even School Boards, peeping out upon
the children perishing for lack of knowledge, find themselves in a
difficulty, because there is no provision under the compulsory or any
other clause for the children who are also perishing for lack of food.
The Board beadle does not at present go about with soup-tickets in his
pockets; and for the poor shivering shoeless urchins who are mustered in
the big brick-built room where they assemble according to law there is
no free breakfast-class.
It must one day become a question how they are to learn till they are
filled. Grown people find it hard enough to fix their attention on the
best advice or the most saving doctrine while they suffer involuntary
hunger. The multitude must mostly be fed before they are taught. Even
disciples have had a revelation of the Bread of Life in the breaking of
bread that perishes. Do we still need a miracle to teach us that?
Happily, efforts are made to give meat to the hungry. During the winter
weather food is distributed in various ways amidst some of those
poverty-stricken neighbourhoods to which I am obliged to take you during
our excursions; but the demand far exceeds the supply, and people suffer
hunger at all seasons, though most of all in the time of bleak winds and
searching cold.
I want you to come to-day to a kitchen which is open all the year
round--the only kitchen of the kind in London which does not close its
doors even when the spring-tide brings buds of promise on the shrubs in
Leicester Square, and the London sparrow comes out from roofs and eaves,
and preens his dingy plumage in the summer sun, as though Great Windmill
Street had something in common with its name, and sweet country odours
came from the region of the Haymarket.
For, you know, we are still in the district of Soho. I have but just now
brought you out of Newport Market, and now we are in a very curious part
of this vast strange city. The streets are dim and dingy, but not so
squalid as you might have imagined. They are still and silent, too, as
of a neighbourhood that has seen better days, and even in its poverty
has a sense of gentility which is neither boisterous nor obtrusive.
You will remember that I referred to this neighbourhood of Soho when I
spoke of those old French refugees who came and made industrial colonies
in London after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. This is the only
really foreign quarter of London which has lasted until to-day; but that
is to be accounted for by the fact that it became representative of no
particular industry, and that, probably from the fact of many of the
patrons of literature and art having then town houses about Leicester
and Soho Squares, the more artistic refugees took up their abode in the
adjacent streets.
From the time when William Hogarth painted his picture of the Calais
Gate till only a short time ago, when refugees fled from besieged Paris
to find some poor and wretched lodging in the purlieus of Cranbourne
Street, where they might live in peace and hear their native tongue,
this has been the resort of poor foreigners in London. It almost reminds
one of some of the smaller streets of a continental city; and as we look
at the queer shabby restaurants, and the shops with strange names
painted above them in long yellow letters, we almost expect to find the
pavement change to cobble-stones, and to see some queer wooden sign
dangle overhead, so like is the place to the small _bourgeois_ quarter
that in our earlier days lay behind the Madeleine and the Porte St.
Denis.
For here is an actual _crêmerie_--a queer compound of cook-shop and
milkseller's--with a couple of bright dairy cans outside the door, and a
long loaf or two amidst the cups and plates and sausages in the dingy
window. Over the way you see "_Blanchisseuse_" in large letters; and
next door is a _laiterie_, which differs from a _crêmerie_ as a _café_
alone differs from a _café restaurant_ with its "_commerce de vins_"
painted in big capitals in front of a long row of sour-looking bottles
and a green calico curtain. It is a quaint jumble, all the way to Dean
Street, and till we reach the edge of the Haymarket--a jumble of Brown
and Lebrun, of Jones and Jean, of Robin (_fils_) and Robinson; but for
all the little musty-smelling _cafés_, the blank bare-windowed
_restaurants_, the _crêmeries_, and the _boulangeries_, there is nothing
of a well fed look about the district, especially just at this corner,
leading as it seems to a stable-yard or the entrance to a range of
packers' warehouses. There is one open front here--is it a farrier's or
a blacksmith's shop?--where they appear to be doing a stroke of
business, however, for there is a clinking, and a fire, and a steam; but
the steam has a fragrant odour of vegetables--of celery and turnips, of
haricots and gravy--the clink is that of basins and spoons getting
ready, and the fire is that of the boiler which simmers two mighty
cauldrons.
Step to the front, and you will see in big white letters right across
the house, "Mont St. Bernard Hospice." You may well rub your eyes, for
you are in the heart of London, and stand in Ham Yard, Leicester Square,
before the soup-kitchen that is open all the year.
There is something very appetising in the steam that arises from both
these huge cauldrons, one of which is the stock-pot, containing bones,
remnants of joints (_not_ plate-clearings), and reversions of cold meat,
&c., from two West End clubs. To this are added vegetables--celery,
haricot beans, or barley--making it a fresh palatable stock, not
remarkable for meatiness, but still excellent in flavour, as you may
find for yourself if you join me in a luncheon here. But the real
strengthening gravy has yet to be added, and the cauldron on the left
hand is full of it--real, genuine gravy soup, made from raw meat and
bones purchased for this purpose. As soon as this has simmered till it
is thoroughly ready, the contents of the two cauldrons are mixed, and
the result is a delicious stew, which is ready to be turned out into
these yellow pint basins, for the hungry applicants, who will sit down
at one of these two deal tables, each of which has its rough clean form,
or to be dispensed to those who bring jugs, bowls, cans, saucepans,
kettles, pipkins--any and almost every receptacle in which they can
carry it steaming away to their families.
Let us stand here and see them come in. Here is a poor famishing fellow,
who looks with eager eyes at the savoury mess. He has evidently seen
better days. There is an unmistakable air of education about him, and as
he sits down with his basin and spoon, and the handful of broken bread,
which is added to the soup from one of a series of clean sacks emptied
for the purpose, the superintendent, Mr. Stevens, scans him with a quick
eye, and will probably speak to him before he leaves. There is a
foreigner--an Italian, by the look of his oval olive face--who takes his
place very quietly, and as quietly begins to eat; and yonder a
famished-looking, rough fellow, who has already devoured the basinful
with his eyes, and is evidently in sore need. Men, women, and children,
or, at all events, boys and girls, come and present their tickets, and
receive this immediate relief, against which surely not the most
rigorous opponent to mendicancy can protest. The cadger and the
professional beggar do not go to the soup-kitchen where nothing is
charged, for they do not need food, and will only see a ticket where it
is likely to be accompanied by the penny which will buy a quart. Be sure
that there are few cases here which are not so necessitous that they are
not far from starvation; and many of them represent actually desperate
want.
The tickets for obtaining this prompt relief--often only just in time to
save some poor creature from utter destitution and crime, and as often
administered when a family is without food, and yet clings to the hope
of finding work to prevent that separation which they must submit to by
becoming paupers--are placed in the hands of clergymen, doctors,
district visitors, Bible-women, and those who know the poor, and can
feel for them when in hard times they pawn furniture, tools, and
clothes, and suffer the extremity of want, before they will apply for
parochial relief, and have offered to them the alternative of "going
into the house."
The annals of the poor, from which extracts occasionally appear in the
newspapers in the accounts of coroners' inquests, prove to what dreadful
sufferings many decent but destitute people will submit rather than
become recognised paupers; and no system of charitable relief outside
the workhouse walls will be effectual or useful which does not recognise
and respect this feeling. Who would let the possible accident of some
unworthy person getting a gratuitous pint of soup stand in the way of a
work such as we see going on here, where one year's beneficent action
includes above ten thousand persons relieved?--a large number of whom
are temporarily taken into the Hospice, as we shall see presently, while
a great contingent is represented by the family tickets, which enable
poor working men and women from various districts in London to carry
away a gallon of strong nourishing soup, and an apronful of bread to
their hungry little ones. You see that great heap of pieces of fine
bread--slices, hunches, remnants of big loaves, dry toast, French bread,
brown bread, and rolls--all placed in a clean wooden bin, they also come
from the two great West End clubs before mentioned, and are so
appreciated by the applicants for relief (they being usually good judges
of quality) that you may note a look of disappointment if the stock of
club bread has been exhausted, and a portion of one of the common loaves
bought for the purpose is substituted. The small broken bread in those
clean sacks is club bread also--the crumbs from rich men's tables, but
clean, and thoroughly good, fit for immediate addition to the soup,
which a hungry company of diners consume in a painfully short space of
time.
They are not inhabitants of this district, either; comparatively few
come from the immediate neighbourhood, though, of course, some poor
families of the adjacent streets and alleys, and occasionally foreign
workmen--many of them adepts in artistic employments, who are in the
land of the stranger and in want--come here and have not only the help
of a meal, but the kind inquiry, the further aid that will sustain hope,
and enable them to look for work, and find the means of living.
Londoners from Kentish Town, Lambeth, Shoreditch, and Chelsea--poor
hungry men and women from all parts of the great city--find their way
here to obtain a dinner; and it is extremely unlikely that they would
leave even the least profitable employment and walk so far for the sake
of a basin of soup. Food alone is offered, not money, and there is
little probability of imposition when there is so little to be gained by
the attempt. But while the great cauldrons are being emptied, let us
hear what they do at this "Mont St. Bernard Hospice" at the Christmas
season.
Here is a list of good things that were sent at Christmas-tide for a
special purpose:--A noble earl sent a sheep, if not more than one, and
other generous givers in kind--many of them manufacturers of or dealers
in the articles they contributed--forwarded loaves, biscuits, hams,
rice, flour, currants, raisins, ale, porter, cocoa, peas, and other
comfortable meats and drinks, so that there was a glorious distribution
to the poor on Christmas Eve, when 936 families were provided with a
Christmas dinner, consisting of 4 lbs. of beef, 3 lbs. of pudding,
bread, tea, and sugar, together with such other seasonable and most
acceptable gifts as were apportioned to them in accordance with the
number of their children and the quantity of miscellaneous eatables and
drinkables available for the purpose.
But we have not quite done with it yet, for it is a hospice in fact, as
well as in name. Just as in the Newport Market Refuge, the houseless and
destitute are received with little question--the homeless and friendless
are here taken in after little inquiry, even the subscriber's ticket for
admission being occasionally dispensed with, when Mr. Stevens, the
superintendent, sees an obviously worthy case among the applicants who
come to ask for a meal. It must be remembered, however, that an
experienced eye can detect the casual very readily, and that Mr.
Stevens, who served with his friend Mr. Ramsden, of Newport Market, when
they were both in the army, is as smart a detective as that shrewd and
compassionate officer. It is so much the better for those who are really
deserving--so much the better even for those who, being ashamed to dig,
are not ashamed to beg--the ne'er-do-weels who, even in the degradation
of poverty brought about by idleness and dissipation, come down to
solicit food and shelter, and find both, together with ready help, if
they will mend their ways. There are some such, but not many: more often
a man of education, broken by misfortune, and perhaps by the loss of a
situation through failure or accident beyond his control, finds himself
starving and desolate. Such men have come here, and found, first, food,
then a lavatory, then a bed in a good-sized room, where only seven or
eight persons are received to sleep, then a confidential talk, advice,
the introduction to people willing and able to help them among the
committee and subscribers of the Institution.
It may be a French tutor destitute in London, but with his character and
ability beyond doubt; it may be, it _has_ been, a young foreign artist;
a skilled labourer from the country, who has come to London to find work
and finds want instead; a poor school-teacher who, having lost an
appointment, and being unable to work at any other calling, is in
despair, and knows not where to turn; an honest fellow, ready and
willing to turn his hand to anything, but finding nothing to which he
can turn his hand without an introduction. Such are the cases which are
received at this hospice in Ham Yard, where they are permitted to remain
for a day or two, or even for a week or two, till they find work, or
till somebody can make inquiries about them and help them to what they
seek.
About seven men and eight women can be received within the walls, but
there are seldom the full number there, because it is necessary to
discriminate carefully. The object is to relieve immediate and painful
distress, and to give that timely aid which averts starvation by the
gift of food, and prevents the degradation of pauperism by means of
advice, assistance, and just so much support as will give the stricken
and friendless men or women time to recover from the first stupor of
hopelessness or the dread of perishing, and at the same time afford the
opportunity of proving that they are ready and willing to begin anew,
with the consciousness that they have not been left desolate.
_GIVING REST TO THE WEARY._