WITH THE POOR AND NEEDY.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here," would, as we might fancy, be an appropriate inscription for many a wretched court and alley in the greatest and most opulent city in the world—a city distinguished for its claims to be regarded as the centre of civilisation; as the exemplar of benevolence, and of active Christianity. It is one of the marvellous results of the vast extent of this metropolis of England that there are whole districts of foul dwellings crowded with a poverty-stricken population, which yet are almost ignored, so far as public recognition of their existence is concerned. Legislation itself does not reach them, in the sense of compelling the strict observance of Acts of Parliament framed and presumably enforced for the purpose of maintaining sanitary conditions; philanthropy almost stands appalled at the difficulty of dealing with a chronic necessity so widely spread, a misery and ignorance so deep and apparently impregnable; sentimentalism sighs and turns away with a shiver, or is touched to the extent of relieving its overcharged susceptibilities by the comfortable expedient of the smallest subscription to some association in the neighbourhood. True, active, practical religion alone, of all the agencies that have operated in these places, gains ground inch by inch, and at last exercises a definite and beneficial influence, by taking hold of the hearts and consciences of the people themselves, and working from within the area of vice and misery, till the law of love, beginning to operate where the law of force had no influence, a change, gradual but sure, here a little and there a little, is effected.
We are continually hearing of the "dwellings of the poor;" and can scarcely take up a newspaper without noting the phrase, "one of the worst neighbourhoods in London," connected with some report of crime, outrage, or suffering; yet how few of us are really familiar with the actual abodes of the more degraded and miserable of our fellow-citizens! how quickly, how gladly, we dismiss from our memory the account of an inquest where the evidence of the cause of death of some unfortunate man, woman, or child, without a natural share of light, air, food, and water, reveals hideous details of want and wretchedness, which we might witness only a few streets off, and yet are unconscious of their nearness to us in mere physical yards and furlongs, because they are so far from us spiritually, in our lack of sympathy and compassion.
Even at the time that these lines are being written I have before me a report of an examination by the coroner into the circumstances attending the death of a woman seventy years of age, who obtained a miserable and precarious living by stay-making, and who was found dead in the back kitchen of a house. Her death was alleged to have been brought about by the unhealthiness of the house in which she lived, although the landlord was a medical officer of health for one of the metropolitan districts.
In this case the alleged landlord, who was actually a medical officer of health, answered the charge made against him by the statement that he had only just come into possession of the property, and had at once set about putting it in repair. It is to be hoped that this was the case, and, indeed, the evidence of the sanitary inspector went to show that it was so; but the question remains: How is it that dwellings are permitted to be thus overcrowded, and to become actual centres of pestilence in the midst of entire neighbourhoods, where, for one foul tenement to have an infamous reputation amidst such general filth and dilapidation, it must indeed be, as one member of the jury said this place was, "so bad, that no gentleman would keep his dog there?"
Keep his dog indeed! Why I know whole rows and congeries of intersecting courts and alleys where a country squire would no more think of kennelling his hounds than he would dream of stabling his horses! There has during the past few years been a tolerably determined stand made against the introduction of pigsties into the back-yards of some of the hovels about Mile End and Bethnal Green; and though cow-sheds are not altogether abolished everywhere in close and overbuilt localities, there are some precautions taken to diminish the sale of infected milk by an inspection of the laystalls, and the enforcement of lime-whiting and ventilation in the sheds. Costermongers' donkeys are the only animals besides dogs and cats which are commonly to be found in London slums now, and as these can be stowed in any shanty just outside the back door, or can be littered down in a spare corner of a cellar, they remain, in costermongering districts, without much opposition on the part of the local authorities. For, after all, what can these authorities do? Under the 35th section of the Sanitary Act, power was given to them to register all houses let out by non-resident landlords, who were under a penalty of forty shillings for not keeping their houses in repair, well supplied with water, drainage clear, &c. To those who have an intimate acquaintance with the density of population in whole acreages of London slums, there is something almost ludicrous in these words, especially when they are read in the light of the fact that the landlords of such places are frequently parochial magnates or officials who know how to make things pleasant with subordinate sanitary inspectors.
What may be the ultimate result of an Act of Parliament "for improving the dwellings of the poor" it is not at present easy to say; but assuredly any plan which commences by a general and imperfectly discriminative destruction of existing houses, hovels though they may be, will only have the effect of crowding more closely the already fœtid and swarming tenements where, for half-a crown a week, eight or ten people eat, live, and sleep in a single apartment. It was only the other day, in a district of which I shall presently speak more definitely, that a "mission woman" was called in to the aid of a family, consisting of a man, his wife, his wife's brother—who was there as a lodger—and five or six children, all of whom occupied one room, where the poor woman had just given birth to an infant. The place was almost destitute of furniture; beds of straw and shavings, coverlets of old coats and such ragged clothing as could be spared; little fire and little food. Such destitution demanded that the "maternity box," or a suddenly-extemporised bag of baby-clothing and blankets, should be fetched at once; and though the mission there is a poor one, with terrible needs to mitigate, a constant demand for personal work and noble self-sacrifice, such cases are every-day events, such demands always to be answered by some kind of helpful sympathy, even though the amount of relief afforded is necessarily small and temporary in character.
Not in one quarter of London alone, but dotted here and there throughout its vastly-extending length and breadth—from St. Pancras, and further away northward, to Bethnal Green and all that great series of poverty-stricken townships and colonies of casual labour, on the east; from the terrible purlieux of Southwark, the districts where long rows of silent houses, in interminable streets, chill the unaccustomed wayfarer with vague apprehensions, where "Little Hell" and the knots and tangles of that "Thief-London" which has found a deplorable Alsatia in the purlieux of the Borough and of Bermondsey; and so round the metropolitan circle, westward to the neighbourhood of aristocratic mansions and quiet suburban retreats, where the garotter skulks and the burglar finds refuge; further towards the centre of the town, in Westminster, not a stone's-throw from the great legislative assembly, which, while it debates in St. Stephen's on sanitation and the improvement of dwellings, scarcely remembers all that may be seen in St. Peter's, about Pye Street, and remembers Seven Dials and St Giles's only as traditional places, where "modern improvements" have made a clean sweep, just as the Holborn Viaduct and the metropolitan Railway swept away Field Lane, and the new meat market at Smithfield put an end for ever to the horrible selvage of Cloth Fair—and only left the legends of Jonathan Wild's rookery and the "blood-bowl house."
But the very mention of these places brings the reflection that not in outlying districts, but in the very heart of London, in the core of the great city itself, the canker of misery, poverty, and vice is festering still. What is the use of eviction, when the law punishes houselessness, and the Poor Law cannot meet any sudden demand, nor maintain any continuous claim on the part of the houseless? Summarily to thrust a score or so of wretched families into the streets is to make them either criminals or paupers. They must find some place of shelter; and if they are to live by their labour, they must live near their labour, the wages of which are, at best, only just sufficient to procure for them necessary food and covering for their bodies.
In the neighbourhood to which I have already referred, four thousand evictions have taken place, or, at any rate, the population has diminished from 22,000 to 18,000, because of a small section of a large puzzle map of courts and alleys having been taken down in order to build great blocks of warehouses. The consequence is, that in the remaining tangle of slums the people herd closer, and that a large number of poor lodgers have gone to crowd other tenements not far distant, and which were already peopled beyond legal measure.
For this acreage of vice and wretchedness of which I speak is close to the great city thoroughfares—almost within sound of Bow Bells. It is about a quarter of a mile in extent each way, lying between the Charterhouse and St. Luke's, close to the new meat market at Smithfield on one side, and Finsbury Square on the other. One entrance to it is directly through Golden Lane, Barbican; the other close to Bunhill Fields burial ground, along a passage which bears the significant name of "Chequer Alley." It is a maze of intersecting and interlocking courts, streets, and alleys, some of them without any thoroughfare, some reached by ascending or descending steps, many of them mere tanks, the walls of which are represented by hovels inhabited by costermongers, French-polishers, dock-labourers, chair-makers, workers at all kinds of underpaid labour and poor handicrafts. Many of the women go out to work at factories, or at charing, and the children are—or at least were—left to the evil influences of the streets, till another and a more powerful influence began to operate, slowly, but with the impetus of faith and love, to touch even this neglected and miserable quarter of London with "the light that lighteth every man."
In this square quarter of a mile—which, starting from the edge of Aldersgate, stretches to the further main thoroughfare abutting on the pleasant border of the City Road, and includes the northern end of Whitecross Street—there are eighty public-houses and beer-shops!
I tell you this much, as we stand here at the entrance of Golden Lane, but I have no intention just now to take you on a casual visit either to the dens of wretchedness and infamy, or to the homes where poverty abides. I must try to let you see what has been done, and is still doing, to bring to both that Gospel which is alone efficient to change the conditions, by changing the hearts and motives of men. I may well avoid any description of the places which lie on either hand, for, in fact, there is nothing picturesque in such misery, nothing specially sensational in such crime. It is all of a sordid miserable sort; all on a dreary dead-level of wretchedness and poverty, full of poor shifts and expedients, or of mean brutality and indifference. There is no show-place to which you could be taken, as it is said curious gentlemen were at one time conducted to the dens of the mendicants, thieves, and highwaymen of old London. Even in the tramps' kitchen the orgies, if there are any, are of so low a kind that they would be depressing in their monotonous degradation.
Let us go farther, and enter this strange wilderness by its fitting passage of Chequer Alley, so that we may, as it were, see the beginning of the work that has been going on with more or less power for more than thirty years.
I think I have some acquaintance with what are the worst neighbourhoods of London. I have made many a journey down East; have studied some of the strange varieties of life on the shore amidst the water-side population; have lived amidst the slums of Spitalfields, and passed nights "Whitechapel way;" but never in any unbroken area of such extent have I seen so much that is suggestive of utter poverty, so much privation of the ordinary means of health and decency, as on a journey about this district which I long ago named "The Chequers." Each court and blind alley has the same characteristics—the same look of utter poverty, the same want of air and light, the same blank aspect of dingy wall and sunken doorsteps, the same square areas surrounded by hovels with clothes'-lines stretched from house to house, almost unstirred by any breeze that blows, shut in as they are in close caverns, only to be entered by narrow passages between blank walls. It is the extent of this one solid district, almost in the very centre of City life, that is so bewildering, and wherein lies its terrible distraction.
The labour of reformation has begun, but the labourers are few. For more than thirty years some efforts have been going on to redeem this neglected and unnoticed neighbourhood, which lies so near to, and yet so far from London's heart.
Let it be noted that this moral effort had gone on for nearly twenty-nine years before any very definite attempt was made to improve the physical condition of the place.
In 1841 a tract distributor, Miss Macarthy, began an organised endeavour to teach the depraved inhabitants of Chequer Alley. In 1869, a sanitary surveyor, reporting on one of the courts of this foul district, recommended that the premises there should be demolished under the "Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Act," because the floors and ceilings were considerably out of level, some of the walls saturated with filth and water, the others broken and falling down, doors, window-sashes and frames rotten, stairs dilapidated and dangerous, roof leaky and admitting the rain, no provisions for decency, and a foul and failing water supply.
The "pulling-down" remedy, without any simultaneous building up, has been extended since then in a locality where a model lodging-house, which has been erected, has stood for years almost unoccupied, because like all model lodging-houses in such neighbourhoods, neither the provisions nor the rentals are adapted to meet the wants and the means of the poorest, of whom, as I have already said, a whole family cannot afford to pay more than the rental for a single room, or two rooms at the utmost.
But we are wandering away from the work that we came to see. Look at that wistful young native, standing there quite close to the mouth of Chequer Alley. Ask him what is that sound of children's voices from a casually-opened doorway, and he will tell you "It's our school; yer kin go in, sir, if yer like—anybody kin." As the name of the institution is "Hope Schools for All," his invitation is doubtless authorised, and we may well feel that we have made a mistake in thinking of the Italian poet's hopeless line, for out of the doorway there comes a sound of singing, and inside the doorway is a room containing fifty or sixty "infants," seated on low forms, and many of them such bright, rosy—yes, rosy—clean—yes, comparatively, if not superlatively clean—little creatures, that hope itself springs to fresh life in their presence. It is thirty-four years since Miss Macarthy, with an earnest desire to initiate some work of charity and mercy, resolved to become a distributor of tracts, and the district she chose was this same foul tangle to which I have asked you to accompany me. Bad as the whole neighbourhood is now, it was worse then. It was never what is called a thief-quarter, but many juvenile thieves haunted it; and the men were as ruffianly and abusive, the women as violent and evil-tongued as any who could be found in all London. Instead of being paved, and partially and insufficiently drained, it was a fœtid swamp, with here and there a pool where ducks swam, while the foul odours of the place were suffocating. No constable dare enter far into the maze without a companion. But the tract distributor ventured. In the midst of an epidemic of typhus, or what is known as "poverty" fever, she went about among the people, and strove to fix their attention on the message that she carried. The religious services commenced in a rat-catcher's "front parlour," and at first the congregation broke into the hymns with scraps and choruses of songs. The crowd which collected outside not only interrupted the proceedings, but threatened those who conducted them with personal violence, and even assaulted them, and heaped insult upon them; but the lady who had put her hand to the plough would not turn back. In the midst of her patient and difficult work she herself was stricken down with fever. She had visited and tended those who were suffering. When the question was asked what had become of her, the barbarous people learnt that she was like to die. Perhaps this touched the hearts of some of them, for she had begun to live down the brutal opposition of those who could not believe in unselfish endeavours to benefit them. She recovered, however; and supported by others, who gave both money and personal effort, the beneficent work went on.
In this large room where the children are singing we have an example of what has been effected. Some of the little creatures are pale, and have that wistful look that goes to the heart; but there are few of them that have not clean faces, and who do not show in the scanty little dresses some attempt at decent preparation for meeting "the guv'ness."
There is a school for elder children also; and in the ramshackle old house where the classes are held there are appliances which mark the wide application of the beneficent effort that has grown slowly but surely, not only in scope, but in its quiet influence upon the people amidst whom it was inaugurated. Yonder, in a kind of covered yard, is a huge copper, the honoured source of those "penny dinners," and those quarts and gallons of soup which have been such a boon to the neighbourhood, where food is scarce, and dear. Then there was the Christmas dinner, at which some hundreds of little guests were supplied with roast meat and pudding, evidences of how much may be effected within a very small space. Indeed, this Hope School, with its two or three rooms, is at work day and night; for not only are the children taught—children not eligible for those Board schools which, unless the board itself mitigates its technical demands, will shut up this and similar institutions before any provision is made for transferring the children to the care of a Government department—but there are "mothers' meetings," sewing classes, where poor women can obtain materials at cost price, and be taught to make them into articles of clothing. There are also adult classes, and Sunday evening services for those who would never appear at church or chapel but for such an easy transition from their poor homes to the plain neighbourly congregation assembled there. There are evenings, too, when lectures, dissolving views, social teas, and pleasant friendly meetings bring the people together with humanising influences. It becomes a very serious question for the London School Board to consider whether, by demanding that ragged schools such as this shall be closed if they do not show a certain technical standard of teaching, the means of partially feeding and clothing, which are in such cases inseparable from instructing, shall be destroyed.
But here is a youthful guide—a shambling, shock-headed lad, with only three-quarters of a pair of shoes, and without a cap, who is to be our guide to another great work, on the Golden Lane side of this great zigzag, to the "Costermongers' Mission," in fact. You may follow him with confidence, for he is a Hope School-boy—and that means something, even in Chequer Alley.
Still threading our way through those dim alleys, where each one looks like a cul-de-sac, but yet may be the devious entrance to another more foul and forbidding, we leave the "Hope-for-All" Mission Room resounding with infant voices, all murmuring the simple lessons of the day. That room is seldom empty, because of the evening school where a large class of older pupils are taught, reading, writing, and arithmetic; the adult class, and the "mothers' meeting," to which poor women are invited that they may be assisted to make garments for themselves and their children from materials furnished for them at a cheap rate in such quantities as their poor savings can purchase. The visiting "Bible woman" is the chief agent in these works of mercy, since she brings parents and children to the school, and reports cases of severe distress to be relieved when there are funds for the purpose. Not only by teaching and sewing, however, are the hopeful influences of the place supported, for, as I have said already, in this big room the people of the district are invited to assemble to listen to lectures, readings, and music, to see dissolving views; and in the summer, when fields are in their beauty and the hedge-rows are full of glory, there is an excursion into the country for the poor, little, pallid children, while, strangest sight of all, a real "flower show" is, or was, held in Chequer Alley. One could almost pity the flowers, if we had any pity to spare from the stunted buds and blossoms of humanity who grow pale and sicken and so often die in this foul neighbourhood.
But we have strange sights yet to see, so let us continue our excursion in and out, and round and round, not without some feeling of giddiness and sickness of heart, through the "Pigeons"—a tavern, the passage of which is itself a connecting link between two suspicious-looking courts—round by beershops all blank and beetling, and silent; past low-browed doorways and dim-curtained windows of tramps' kitchens, and the abodes of more poverty, misery, and it may be crime, than you will find within a similar space in any neighbourhood in London, or out of it, except perhaps in about five streets "down East," or in certain dens of Liverpool and Manchester.
One moment. You see where a great sudden gap appears to have been made on one side of Golden Lane. That gap represents houses pulled down to erect great blocks of building for warehouses or factories, and it also represents the space in which above 4,000 people lived when the population of this square quarter of mile of poverty and dirt was 22,000 souls. This will give you some idea of the consequences of making what are called "clean sweeps," by demolishing whole neighbourhoods before other dwellings are provided for the evicted tenants. One result of this method of improving the dwellings of the poor is that the people crowd closer, either in their own or in some adjacent neighbourhood, where rents are low and landlords are not particular how many inmates lodge in a single room. Remember that whole families can only earn just enough to keep them from starving, and cannot afford to pay more than half-a-crown or three-and-sixpence a week for rent. They must live near their work, or they lose time, and time means pence, and pence represent the difference between eating and fasting.
"The model lodging-house!" See, there is one, and it is nearly empty. How should it be otherwise? The proprietors of such places, whether they be philanthropists or speculators—and they are not likely to be the latter—can never see a return of any profitable percentage on their outlay while they enforce necessary sanitary laws. The top-rooms are half-a-crown a week each, and the lower "sets" range from about six shillings for two to eight-and-sixpence for three rooms. The consequence is that the few tenants in this particular building are frequently changing their quarters. Some of them try it, and fall into arrear, and are ejected, or want to introduce whole families into a single room, as they do in these surrounding courts and alleys, and this, of course, is not permitted. Imagine one vast building crowded at the same rate as some of these two-storeyed houses are! Ask the missionary, whose duty takes her up scores of creaking staircases, to places where eight or ten human beings eat, drink, sleep, and even work, in one small room—where father, mother, children, and sometimes also a brother or sister-in-law, herd together, that they may live on the common earnings; places where children are born, and men, women, and children die; and the new-born babe must be clothed by the aid of the "maternity box," and the dead must be buried by the help of money advanced to pay for the plainest decent funeral.
I do not propose to take you to any of these sights. You could do little good unless you became familiar with them, and entered into the work of visitation. Even in the published reports of the organisation to which we are now going, the "cases" are not dwelt upon, only one or two are given from the experiences of the missionary, and she speaks of them simply as examples of the kind of destitution which characterises a district where deplorable poverty is the result sometimes of drink, or what, for want of a word applicable to the saving of pence, is termed improvidence; but frequently also, because of sickness, and the want even of poorly-paid employment. "In such cases," says the report, "almost everything is parted with to procure food and shelter outside the workhouse."
One of the two "ordinary" cases referred to was that of a poor woman who was "found lying on a sack of shavings on the floor, with an infant two days old; also a child lying dead from fever, and two other children crying for food. None had more than a solitary garment on. The smell of the room was such that the missionary was quite overcome until she had opened the window. Clean linen was obtained, and their temporal and spiritual wants at once looked after." This was in the Report of above a year ago; but cases only just less distressing occur daily still. This foul and neglected district, which lies like an ulcer upon the great opulent city, the centre of civilization and benevolence, seems to be as far from us as though it were a part of some savage or semi-heathen land under British influence. Indeed, in the latter case, there would be a probability of more earnest effort on behalf of the benighted people, on whose behalf meetings would perhaps be held, and a committee of inquiry and distribution appointed. Still, let us be thankful that something is done. Twenty-nine poor mothers have had the benefit of the maternity fund and clothing, the Report tells us. "They are very grateful for this assistance in their terrible need. Frequently the distress is so great that two changes of clothing are given to mother and babe, or they would be almost entirely denuded when the time arrived for returning the boxes. Our lady subscribers at a distance may be glad to know that blankets, sheets, flannel petticoats, warm shawls, and babies' clothing will always be acceptable." Thus writes Mrs. Orsman on the subject, for the mission is known as the Golden Lane Mission, and more popularly as "Mr. Orsman's Mission to the Costermongers." Perhaps these words scarcely denote the scope of the work; but costermongers must be taken as a representative term in a district where, in an area of a square quarter of a mile, there are, or recently were, eighty public-houses and beershops, and a dense mass of inhabitants, including street-traders or hucksters, labourers, charwomen, road-sweepers, drovers, French polishers, artificial flower-makers, toy-makers, with what is now a compact and really representative body of costermongers, working earnestly enough to keep to the right way, and, as they always did, forming a somewhat distinctive part of the population.
Sixteen years ago, Mr. Orsman began the work of endeavouring to carry the gospel to the rough-and-ready savages of this benighted field for missionary enterprise. He held an official appointment, and this was his business "after office hours." About the results of his own labour he and his Reports are modestly reticent, but at all events it began to bear fruit. Others joined in it; a regular mission was established, and, with vigorous growth, shot out several branches, so wisely uniting what may be called the secular or temporal with the spiritual and religious interest, that the Bread of Life was not altogether separated from that need for the bread which perishes. These branches are full of sap to-day, and one of them is also full of promising buds and blossoms, if we are to judge of the rows of ragged—but not unhappy—urchins who fill this large room or hall of the Mission-house.
It is only the first-floor of two ordinary houses knocked into one, but a great work is going on. The parochial school was once held here, and now the room is full of children who might still be untaught but for the effort which made the Ragged School a first consideration in an endeavour to redeem the whole social life of the district. Wisely enough, the School Board accepted the aid which this free day-school for ragged and nearly destitute children affords to a class which the Education Act has not yet taught us how to teach.
In four years, out of ninety-five boys and girls who entered situations from this school, only one was dismissed for dishonesty, and it was afterwards found that he was the dupe of the foreman of the place at which he worked.
Well may Mr. Harwood, the school superintendent, be glad in the labour that he has learnt to love in spite of all the sordid surroundings. There is life in the midst of these dim courts—a ragged-school and a church, which is poor, but not, strictly speaking, ragged. In fact, "the patching class" for ragged boys, which meets on Thursdays, from five to seven in the afternoon, remedies even the tattered garments of the poor little fellows, who, having only one suit, must take off their habiliments in order to mend them. Occasional gifts of second-hand clothes are amongst the most useful stock of the schoolmaster, as anybody may believe who sees the long rows of children, many of them, like our juvenile guide, with two odd boots, which are mere flaps of leather, and attire which it would be exaggeration to call a jacket and trousers.
The school-room is also the church and the lecture-hall. It will hold 300 people; and the Sunday-evening congregation fills it thoroughly, while, on week-nights, special services, and frequently lectures, entertainments, and attractive social gatherings bring the costers and their friends in great force.
The chief of the costermongers is the Earl of Shaftesbury; and here, standing as it were at livery in a quiet corner of a shanty close to the coal-shed, is the earl's barrow, emblazoned with his crest. This remarkable vehicle, and a donkey complimentarily named the "Earl," which took a prize at a Golden Lane donkey show, designate his lordship as president of the "Barrow Club," a flourishing institution, intended to supersede the usurious barrow-lenders, who once let out these necessary adjuncts to the costermongering business at a tremendous hire. Now the proprietors of the barrows, going on the hire and ultimate purchase-system, are prospering greatly. There are free evening classes, mothers' meetings, a free lending library, a free singing class, a penny savings bank, dinners to destitute children, numbering more than 10,000 a year, a soup-kitchen, tea-meetings, and other agencies, all of which are kept going morning, noon, and night, within the narrow limits of these two houses made into one. It is here, too, that the annual meeting is held, an account of which every year filters through the newspapers to the outer world—"The Costermongers' Annual Tea-Party." The records of this united and earnest assembly have been so recently given to the public, that I need not repeat them to you as we stand here in the lower rooms, whence the big cakes, the basins of tea, the huge sandwiches of bread and beef, were conveyed to the 200 guests. But as we depart, after shaking Mr. Harwood by the hand, let me remind you that it has been by the hearty, human, living influence of religion that these results have been effected. The stones of scientific or secular controversy have not been offered instead of food spiritual and temporal. The mission-hall has been made the centre; and from it has spread various healing, purifying, ameliorating influences. From this we may well take a lesson for the benefit of another organised effort which appeals to us for help—that of the London City Mission. This institution is trying to effect for various districts and several classes of the poor and ignorant in and about London that introduction of religious teaching which Mr. Orsman began with amongst the costermongers and others in the benighted locality where now a clear light has begun to shine.
At a recent meeting of the promoters of the City Mission work, held at the Mansion House, it was stated that the 427 missionaries then employed by the society were chosen without distinction, except that of fitness for the office, from Churchmen, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Wesleyans, and Baptists, while the examining and appointing committee were composed of thirteen clergymen of the Established Church and thirteen Dissenting ministers.
Anybody who is accustomed to visit the worst neighbourhoods of London will know that these missionaries go where the regular clergy cannot easily penetrate, and where even the parish doctor seldom lingers. Every missionary visits once a month about 500 families, or 2,000 persons. They read the Scriptures, exhort their listeners, hold prayer and Bible meetings, distribute copies of the Scriptures, see that children go to school, address the poor in rooms when they cannot persuade them to go to church, visit and pray with the dying, lend books, hold open-air services, endeavour to reclaim drunkards (1,546 were so restored during the last year), admonish and frequently reclaim the vicious, raise the fallen, and place them in asylums or induce them to return to their homes, and work constantly for the great harvest of God to which they are appointed.
Then there are special missionaries appointed to visit bakers, cabmen, drovers, omnibus men, soldiers, sailors, and foreigners of various countries. They also go to tanneries, the docks, workhouses, hospitals, and other places; and there is a vast harvest yet, without a sickle to reap even a single sheaf. When will the time come, that, to the means for carrying the sustaining comfort of the Word to men's souls, will be added some means of helping them to realise it by such temporal aid as will raise them from the want which paralyses and the degradation which benumbs?
GIVING THE FEEBLE STRENGTH.
I have had occasion lately to take you with me to some of the worst "parts of London." The phrase has become so common, that there is some difficulty in deciding what it means; and we are obliged to come to the conclusion, that in every quarter of this great metropolis, large and lofty buildings, splendid mansions, gorgeous shops, and even stately palaces, are but symbols of the partial and imperfect development of true national greatness, and can scarcely be regarded as complete evidences of genuine civilisation, if by that word we are to mean more than was expressed by it in heathen times, and amidst pagan people. Perhaps there is no more terrible reflection, amidst all the pomp and magnificence, the vast commercial enterprise and constantly accumulating wealth of this mighty city, than that here we may also find the extremes of want and misery, of vice and poverty, of ignorance and suffering. Side by side with all that makes material greatness—riches, learning, luxury, extravagance—are examples of the deepest necessity and degradation. "The rich and the poor" do indeed "meet together" in a very sad sense. It would be well if the former would complete the text for themselves, and take its meaning deep into their hearts.
There is reason for devout thankfulness, however, that here and there amidst the abodes of rich and poor alike, some building with special characteristics may be seen; that not only the church but the charity which represents practical religion does make vigorous protest against the merely selfish heaping-up of riches without regard to the cry of the poor. There are few neighbourhoods in which a Refuge for the homeless, a soup-kitchen, a ragged-school, a "servants home," an orphanage, a hospital or some asylum for the sick and suffering, does not relieve that sense of neglect and indifference which is the first painful impression of the thoughtful visitor to those "worst quarters," which yet lie close behind the grand thoroughfares and splendid edifices that distinguish aristocratic and commercial London.
I have said enough for the present about those poverty-haunted districts of Shoreditch, Spitalfields, and Bethnal Green, to warrant me in taking you through them without further comment than suffices to call your attention to the poorly-paid industries, the want and suffering, and the too frequent neglect of the means of health and cleanliness which unhappily distinguish them and the surrounding neighbourhoods lying eastward. The weaver's colony can now scarcely be said to survive the changes wrought by the removal of an entire industry from Spitalfields to provincial manufactories, and the vast importations of foreign silks, and yet there is in this part of London a great population of workers at callings which are scarcely better paid than silk weaving had come to be, previous to its comparative disappearance.
Marvellous changes have been effected in the way of buildings and improvements during the last thirty years, but much of the poverty and sickness that belonged to these neighbourhoods remain. The looms may be silent in the upper workshops with their wide leaden casements, but the labour by which the people live seldom brings higher wages than suffice for mere subsistence. The great building in which treasures of art and science are collected is suggestive of some kind of recognition of the need of the inhabitants for rational recreation and instruction, and what is perhaps more to the purpose, it is also a recognition of their desire for both; but it cannot be denied that the recognition has come late, and has not been completely accompanied by those provisions for personal comfort, health, and decency, which a stringent application of existing laws might long ago have ensured in neighbourhoods that for years were suffered to remain centres of pestilence.
The greatest change ever effected in this quarter of London was that which followed the formation of Victoria Park. That magnificent area, with its lakes and islands, its glorious flower-beds and plantations, its cricket-ground and great expanse of open field, made Bethnal Green famous. There had always been a fine stretch of open country beyond what was known as "the Green," on which the building of the Museum now stands. A roadway between banks and hedges skirting wide fields led to the open space where a queer old mansion could be seen amidst a few tall trees, while beyond this again, across the canal bridge, were certain country hostelries, one of them with what was, in that day, a famous "tea-garden;" and, farther on, a few farms and some large old-fashioned private residences stood amidst meadows, gardens, and cattle pastures, on either side of the winding road leading away to the Hackney Marshes and the low-lying fields beyond the old village of Homerton. It was on a large portion of this rural area that Victoria Park was founded. Tavern and farmhouse disappeared; the canal bridge was made ornamental; and just beyond the queer old mansion that stood by the roadway, the great stone and iron gates of "the people's pleasure-ground" were erected.
Now, the mansion, to which I have already twice referred, was in fact one of the few romantic buildings of the district, for it was what remained of the house of the persecuting Bishop Bonner, and the four most prominent of the tall trees—those having an oblong or pit excavation of the soil at the foot of each—were traditionally the landmarks of the martyrdom of four sisters who were there burnt at the stake and buried in graves indicated by the hollows in the ground, which popular superstition had declared could never be filled up.
That they have been filled up long ago, and that on the site of the ancient house itself another great building has been erected, you may see to-day as we stand at the end of the long road leading to the entrance of "the people's park."
The abode of cruelty and bigotry has been replaced by one of the most truly representative of all our benevolent institutions. The graves of the martyred sisters might well take a new meaning if the spot could now be discovered in the broad and beautifully planted garden, where feeble men and women sun themselves into returning life and strength amidst the gentle summer air blowing straight across from the broad woods of Epping and Hainault miles away.
The people's playground is fitly consummated by the people's hospital. That the City of London Hospital for Diseases of the Chest, Victoria Park, might well be called "the people's," is shown, not because it is supported by state aid or by charitable endowment, on the contrary, it depends entirely on those voluntary contributions and subscriptions which have hitherto enabled it successfully to carry on a noble work, but yet have only just sufficed to supply its needs, "from hand to mouth." Yet it is essentially devoted to patients who belong to the working population. Like the park itself it attracts crowds of visitors, not only from the City, from Bethnal Green, Mile End, Poplar, Islington, Camden Town, and other parts of London, but even from distant places whence excursionists come to see and to enjoy it. This hospital receives patients from every part of London, and even from distant country places. There were seven inmates from York last year, as well as some from Somerset, Hereford, Derby, Lincolnshire, Lancashire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Huntingdon, Northampton, Wiltshire, and other counties; so that in fact the districts of Bethnal Green, Spitalfields, and Shoreditch, represented only a very small proportion of the 781 in-patients and the 13,937 out-patients, who were admitted to medical treatment during the twelve months. More than this, however, amongst the contributions which are made for the support of this hospital, there must be reckoned those collected by working men of the district in their clubs and associations, in token of the appreciation of benefits bestowed by such an institution to failing men and women, wives and shopmates and relatives, who being threatened or actually stricken down with one of those diseases which sap the life and leave the body prostrate, require prompt skill and medical aid, even if they are not in absolute need of nourishing food and alleviating rest.
Standing here, in front of this broad noble building, with its many windows, its picturesque front of red brick and white stone, its central tower, its sheltered garden-walks, and pleasant lawn, we may well feel glad to hear that the work done within its wards is known and recognised. What a work it is can only be estimated by those who remember how fell is the disease from which so many of the patients suffer, and how great a thing it has been, even where cures could not be effected, usefully to prolong the lives of hundreds of those who must have died but for timely aid. Nay, even at the least, the alleviation of suffering to those on whom death had already laid his hand has been no small thing; and when we know that of 240,000 out-patients who have received advice and medicines, and 10,400 in-patients whose cases have warranted their admission to the wards, a large number of actual cures have been effected since the establishment of this hospital, we are entitled to regard the institution as one of the most useful that we have ever visited together.
Let us enter, not by the handsome broad portico in the centre of the building, but at the out-patients' door, in order that we may see the two waiting-rooms, where men and women bring their letters of admission, or attend to see one of the three consulting physicians. Of these three gentlemen the senior is Dr. Peacock, of whom it may be said that he is the organiser of the hospital, the efficiency of which is mainly due to his direction. This is no small praise, I am aware, but there are so many evidences of thorough unity and completeness in all the details of management that, considering how great a variety of cases are included under "diseases of the chest," from the slow insidious but fatal ravages of consumption to the sudden pang and deadly spasm of heart disease, and the various affections of throat and lungs, it may easily be seen how much depends upon the adoption of a system initiated by long study and experience. The perfect arrangements which distinguish this hospital are doubtless rendered easier by ample space and admirable appliances. Plenty of room and plenty of air (air, however, which has been warmed to one even temperature before it enters the wards and corridors where the patients eat and drink, sleep and walk) are the first characteristics of the place, while a certain chaste simplicity of ornament, and yet an avoidance of mere utilitarian bareness, is to be observed in all that portion of the structure where decoration may naturally be expected.
The board-room, the secretary's room, and the various apartments devoted to the resident officers on the ground-floor, are plain enough, however, though they are of good size and proportions, the only really ornamental article of furniture in the board-room being a handsome semi-grand piano, the gift of one of the committee. This is a real boon to such of the patients as can come to practise choral singing, as well as to those who can listen delightedly to the amateur concerts that are periodically performed, either in the hospital itself or in one of the wards. For they have cheerful entertainments in this resort of the feeble, where, to tell the truth, food is often the best physic, and sympathy and encouragement the most potent alleviations.
As to the actual physic—the employment of medicines—it is only in some of the large endowed hospitals that we can see such a dispensary as this spacious room, with its surrounding rows of bottles and drawers, its two open windows, one communicating with the men's and the other with the women's waiting room, its slabs, and scales and measures, on a central counter, where 380 prescriptions will have to be made up to-day before the alert and intelligent gentleman and his assistants who have the control of this department, will be able to replace the current stock out of the medical stores.
These small cisterns, each with its tap, occupying so prominent a place on the counter, represent the staple medicine of the establishment, pure cod-liver oil, of which 1,200 gallons are used every year, and they are constantly replenished from three large cylinders, or vats, containing 800 gallons, which occupy a room of their own adjoining the dispensary and the compounding room, the latter being the place where drugs are prepared, and the great art of pill-making is practised on a remarkable scale.
Continuing our walk round the hospital, we come to the consulting-rooms, where the physicians attend daily at two o'clock, each to see his own patients, and the reception-room, where an officer takes the letters of introduction, and exchanges them for attendance cards. This is the door of the museum; and though we shall be admitted, if you choose to accompany me, it is, like other surgical museums, of professional more than general interest, and not a public portion of the hospital. Turning into the great main corridor, with its peculiar honeycombed red-brick ceiling and pleasant sense of light and air, we will ascend the broad staircase to the wards, those of the women being on the first floor, while the men occupy a precisely similar ward on the second. These wards consist of a series of rooms of from two to six, eight, and twelve beds each, so as to afford opportunity for the proper classification of the cases. A day-room is also provided for each set of wards, so that those patients who are well enough to leave their beds may take their meals there, or may read, play at chess, draughts, or bagatelle, or occupy themselves with needlework. These wards and their day-rooms all open into a light cheerful corridor, with large windows, where the inmates may walk and talk, or read and rest, sitting or reclining upon the couches and settees that are placed at intervals along the wall. All through these rooms and corridors the air is kept at a medium temperature of from fifty-five to sixty degrees, by means of hot-air or hot-water apparatus, the latter being in use as well as the former. You noticed, as we stood in the grounds, a large square structure of a monumental character;—that was in fact the chamber through the sides of which draughts of air are carried to channels beneath the building, there they are drawn around a furnace, to be heated, and to escape through pipes that are grouped about the entire building. In order to ensure the necessary comfort of patients requiring a higher temperature, each ward is provided with an open fire-place.
It is now just dinner-time. The ample rations of meat and vegetables, fish and milk, and the various "special diets," are coming up on the lift from the kitchens, and in the women's day-room a very comfortable party is just sitting down to the mid-day meal. Here, as elsewhere, greater patience and more genuine cheerfulness are to be observed among the women, than is as a rule displayed by the men, and there are not wanting signs of pleasant progress towards recovery, of grateful appreciation of the benefits received, and of a hopeful trusting spirit, which goes far to aid the doctor and the nurse. There are, of course, some sad sights. Looking into the wards, we may see more than one woman for whom only a few hours of this mortal life remain; more than one child whose emaciated form and face looks as though death itself could bring no great change. Yet it must be remembered that cases likely soon to terminate fatally are not admitted. The severity of the diseases and their frequently fatal character under any condition will account for the large proportion of sickness unto death which finds here alleviation but not absolute cure; though, of course, the sufferers from heart disease, who are on the whole the most cheerful, as well as those whose affections of the lungs can be sensibly arrested, if not altogether healed, are frequently restored to many years of useful work in the world. On this second storey, in the men's ward, there are some very serious cases, and some sights that have a heartache in them; yet they are full of significance, for many of them include the spectacle of God's sweet gift of trust and patience—the mighty courage of a quiet mind. Yonder is a courageous fellow, who, suffering from a terrible aneurism, had to cease his daily labour, and now lies on his back, hopeful of cure, with a set still face and a determined yet wistful look at the resident medical officer, or the nurse who adjusts the india-rubber ice-bag on his chest. Here, near the door, is that which should make us bow our heads low before the greatest mystery of mortal life. Not the mystery of death, but the mystery of meeting death and awaiting it. A brave, patient, noble man is sitting up in that bed, his high forehead, fair falling hair, long tawny beard, and steady placid eye, reminding one of some picture of Norseman or Viking. Lean and gaunt enough in frame, his long thin hand is little but skin and bone, but it is clasped gently by the sorrowing wife, who sits beside him, and glances at us through tearful eyes as we enter. One can almost believe that the sick man who is going on the great journey whither he cannot yet take the wife who loves him, has been speaking of it calmly, there is such an inscrutable look of absolute repose in that face. He is a Dane, and the doctor tells us has borne his illness and great pain with a quiet courage that has challenged the admiration of those about him—a courage born of simple faith, let us believe, a calm resting on an eternal foundation of peace. Here, in the corridor, is a party, some of its members still very weak and languid, who, having just dined, are about to take the afternoon lounge, with book or newspaper, and, leaving them, we will conclude our visit by descending to the basement, whence the chief medicine comes in the shape of wholesome nourishing food, of meat and fish, of pure farina, of wine, and milk, and fresh eggs, of clean pure linen, and even of ice, for ice is a large ingredient here, and several tons are consumed every year. The domestic staff have their apartments in this basement portion of the building, another division of which is occupied by the kitchens and storerooms, while lifts for coal and daily meals and every other requisite, ascend to the upper wards, and shoots or wells from the upper floors convey linen and bedding that require washing, as well as the dust and refuse of the wards, to special receptacles.
The kitchen itself is a sight worth seeing with its wide open range, where prime joints are roasting, or have been roasted, and are now being cut into great platefuls for the ordinary full-diet patients. In the great boilers and ovens, vegetables and boiled meats, farinaceous puddings, rice, tapioca, fish, and a dozen other articles of pure diet are being prepared, while a reservoir of strong beef-tea represents the nourishment of those feeble ones to whom liquid, representing either meat or milk, is all that can be permitted. We have little time to remain in the separate rooms, which are cool tile-lined larders, where bread and milk and meat are kept, but among the records of donations and contributions to the hospital it is very pleasant to read of the multifarious gifts of food and other comforts sent from time to time by benevolent friends. They consist of baskets of game, fruits, rice, tea, flour, books, warm clothing for poor patients leaving the hospital, prints, pictures, fern-cases, all kinds of useful articles, showing how thoughtful the donors are, of what will be a solace and a comfort to the patients, while not the least practically valuable remittances are bundles of old linen. Still more touching, however, are the records of gifts brought by patients themselves, or by their friends.
"I was a patient here four years ago," says a man who has made his way to the secretary's room, "and I made up my mind that if ever I could scrape a guinea together I should bring it, and now I have, and here it is, if you'll be so good as to take it, for I want to show I'm truly grateful."
"If you'll please accept it from us; my husband and I have put by fifteen shillings, and want to give it to the hospital for your kindness to our son, who was here before he died."
These are the chronicles that show this to be a people's hospital indeed, and that should open the hearts of those who can take pounds instead of shillings. In such cases the secretary has ventured to remind the grateful donors that they may be unable to afford to leave their savings, but the evident pain, even of the hint of refusal, was reason for accepting the poor offering. Poor, did I say? nay, rich—rich in all that can really give value to such gifts, the wealth of the heart that must be satisfied by giving.
There is one more adjunct to this great human conservatory which we must see before we leave. Down four shallow stone steps from the corridor, and along a cheerful quiet sub-corridor, is the chapel. A very beautiful building, with no stained glass or sumptuous detail of ornament, and yet so admirable in its simple architectural decoration and perfect proportions, that it is an example of what such a place should be. It is capable of seating three or four hundred persons, and visitors are freely admitted to the Sunday services when there is room, though of course seats are reserved for the patients, who have "elbows" provided in their pews, that they may be able to lean without undue fatigue. The chapel itself was a gift of a beneficent friend, and was presented anonymously. One day an architect waited on the committee, and simply said that if they would permit a chapel to be erected on a vacant space in their grounds, close to the main building, he had plans for such a structure with him, and the whole cost would be defrayed by a client of his, who, however, would not make known his name. The gift was accepted, and the benevolent contract nobly fulfilled. I should be glad to hear that some other charitable donor had sent in like manner an offer of funds to fill those two great vacant wards which, waiting for patients, are among the saddest sights in this hospital.