My Lord,

I do not inscribe this narrative of facts to you in the expectation of adding to that acquaintance with the working-classes which you have gained from personal intercourse with them.

It is for my own satisfaction that I have dedicated this little Volume to you.  An opportunity, which might not otherwise have occurred, now offers for thanking you in the name of the poor whom you have cheered by your sympathy, and of the rich whom you have stimulated by your example.

Compliments between fellow-workers are not seemly, however humble the bestower, however illustrious the receiver.

That you have allowed your name to appear in these pages cannot but be gratifying to the writer.  The reader will rejoice no less, and from higher than personal motives.  He will see in this kindness another proof of your hearty interest in that class which, if rightly considered, is, from its very poverty, a blessing to the land, by putting our indolence and selfishness to shame.

I have the honour to be,

My Lord,
Your Lordship’s obliged Servant,
MARY BAYLY.

Amidst the excitements of political contests at home, with wars and rumours of wars abroad, the voice of “Social Science” is occasionally heard, and listened to, with a growing conviction of its importance.  The Politician, the Moralist, and the Christian are impelled by various reasons to its consideration, and will listen with equal interest to its details.

Experience is always valued by practical men, and the records of what has been done are anxiously sought, to assist our judgment in future and more extended exertions.

8 Lansdowne Crescent,
      May 10, 1859.

“Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely calculated less and more.”

Wordsworth.

We not unfrequently hear people speak of life in such a way as would lead us to suppose that there had been some mistake as to the date of their birth.  Had they come a little earlier or a little later, it would have been different; but the present seems to afford them no object of interest.  They complain of intolerable dulness, the weariness of life; and in watching the cheerless, the objectless existence of such people, we wonder that it is recorded of only a single individual, that one morning he shot himself, for the reason assigned on a slip of paper which he had left on the dressing-table—“I am tired of living only to breakfast, dine, and sup.”

“O wretched yet inevitable spite
Of our short span! and we must yield our breath,
And wrap us in the lazy coil of death;
So much remaining of unproved delight!”

There are many indications in the present day that the fields are “white unto harvest.”  Several things, that were looked upon some years ago as experiments, have been so eminently successful, that no unprejudiced mind can doubt that they are the means which God has blessed, and by which He intends to accomplish a great work of reformation in this country.  It was a glorious sight at St Martin’s Hall, on the 2d of March, when 567 young persons came forward to claim the prize for having remained a twelvemonth in a situation; and, were it not for the strictness of the rules, excluding all apprentices, requiring a written character from a master or mistress, it was stated that as many as 1500 would have been present.  All these had been rescued from well-nigh certain destruction by the Ragged School, and had there received the education which qualified them to take these situations.  There must have been joy in the presence of the angels of God that night, as they witnessed these rescued ones sitting together, and listening eagerly to words by which their souls might live; and which, if the prayers of many there were answered, would prepare them to receive an incorruptible prize, that can never fade away.

I have known many women, under thirty years of age, with six or eight children, so totally unqualified for almost everything which they had to do, that I have wondered how they managed to exist at all.  I am now, of course, speaking of those below the class from which we usually obtain our domestic servants; and amongst this class, more unfit than any other for life’s solemn duties, the earliest marriages are contracted, apparently without any idea that at least as much preparation is needed as is deemed necessary for breaking stones on the road.

There are so many points of difference between the child reared in the mansions of the wealthy, and the uncared-for, friendless infant picked out of the streets and alleys, that it is not strange if they should have few thoughts in common.  It is true there is in some hearts, as in that of Elizabeth Fry, a sympathy strong enough to extend itself to everything with which it comes in contact.  The moral power of such natures is very great: they are one of God’s best gifts to this fallen world, yet not the most common.  In devising schemes of improvement, we cannot therefore rely upon the powerful assistance which they give; nor must we take it for granted that our plans will be worked out by their aid.  Probably, the best suggestion that has been offered hitherto, is made by the writer of “The Book and its Mission,” who proposes that some of the best of the poor women, superintended by ladies, should be employed as missionaries; and that each missionary should be the mistress of a house, into which a number of homeless girls might be received on payment of a small weekly sum.  Here, under motherly training, they might be fitted for their future duties.

But we are not speaking of the few who sit quietly by their fireside in the evening to weigh the actions of the day in the balance of truth; we refer to the multitude whose rule of conduct is summed up in the words—“Follow my leader.”  True, they do not always follow the same leader; and the defection of a comrade will cause them to halt.  Yet, after a time, they are found walking behind another guide.  They are contented even if he choose the old path.  But whether old or new, they cannot advance without guidance.  To such accustomed only to “move altogether if they move at all,” we would commend the great truth that God can work by and for the few as well as for the many; that He is often content with small beginnings where we should have expected mighty achievements.  This lesson we learn from our Saviour’s teaching.

Let those who are actively and successfully engaged in their own peculiar duties, spare a little time to assist their less gifted or less fortunate neighbours.  Let those who are weary of doing nothing, assist those who are weak and weary with doing too much.  Let those who are strong, aid those whose burden of life is too heavy for them to bear.  And let us all seek to fulfil the great Christian command—which should be the bane of selfishness, and must be the foundation of social elevation—“Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.”

“Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”

But we are not able to go back much further than sixty years, when we find that this necessary evil had for some time been located near the ground now covered by the Marble Arch, Connaught and other Squares.  Here the nuisance was supposed to be out of town, and the porcine tribe luxuriated in this dry and elevated region.  If there had been found at that time a registrar-general to note down the deaths and diseases of pigs, the records would excite the envy of swine in the present generation, and induce the sad belief that the former times were better than these.  But these respectable animals of the past century had apparently another cause for congratulation.  Their society seemed eagerly sought by the great London world; and seeing how perseveringly they were followed, they could proudly boast that they were leading the metropolis “by the nose.”  Such a soothing idea was, however, dispelled, when conviction was unwillingly forced upon them, that there was a general desire to get rid of them as near neighbours, and that their room was more highly esteemed than their company.

In his inquiries after pigs, &c., he became acquainted with the distress of the “West-end establishment,” and offered its members a share of the refuge which he and his friend Lake had found.  The offer was gladly accepted, and many of the masters either bought or rented small plots of land from the original proprietors, and removed their establishments of pigs and children to this favoured spot, where Lake assured them everybody should do as they liked, and “he’d see that nobody meddled with them.”

Under this magnificent charter and spirited government the little colony progressed rapidly, and numbers of houses, or rather huts, sprang up on all sides.  Such things as drainage and fresh water were considered superfluous; and the accumulation of the filth of years rendered it certain, by the simple law of self-preservation, that nothing would be meddled with.

“We had no near neighbours for a long time; there was a farm-house where the Mitre Tavern now stands, and I can mind, when I have been passing by, seeing the men stacking the hay and the corn, and hearing them singing over their work.  Then there was another farm-house, down where the Royal Crescent is now; and sometimes I have been there for a drop of milk, for we hadn’t no shops for a long time.”

I knew that my communicative old woman had been a good Christian character for many years; so I asked her how she, as an individual, had managed to pass her Sundays in this dark place, before there were either schools or places of worship of any kind there.

“Why, ma’am,” she replied, “I never would work of a Sunday—nobody couldn’t make me.  I used to tidy up my house after breakfast, and put the saucepan by the fire, and then I went over to the old church at Kensington.  The people now and then threw stones at me, and used to threaten to set the dogs at me; but they never did,—the Lord didn’t let ’em; and they knew me, too, that I’d be torn in pieces before I’d give up what I knew to be right.”

I was astonished at the immense numbers of pigs which these people seemed to keep, and I asked the old woman how they managed to find food for them all; she said—

“Do you go to the same houses every day?” I asked.

“Why, you see, ma’am, that depends upon how much refuge they have.  When they have lots of company, then they gets a deal of refuge.  I have been to the Duke of —, whenever he has been in town, for the last thirty years.  Last week one of his daughters was married, and the house was full all the week; then there was plenty for me.  But, do you know, ma’am, for all I’ve been in the habit of going backwards and forwards to that house so many years, them servants, that they have now, never had the manners to give me a bit of bridecake.  I couldn’t help speaking about it.  I says to them, ‘Well, this is something to think!  I have been in attendance on the Duke this thirty years, and can’t get a bit of bridecake when his daughter is married.’  Of course that wasn’t the Duke’s fault, you see, ma’am; it was all a-hoeing to them servants.  When the families goes out of town, the servants is put upon board wages, and they skrimps and saves everything; we aint wanted to call then, ’cause there’s not a scrap left for us.  Oh no, it aint no use then.”

In one of the first numbers of Dickens’s “Household Words” the following passages appeared, which at once brought the place into notice; and, both in and out of Parliament, plans for its improvement were discussed:—

So much for the physical aspect of the district.  But another question arises, fraught with still greater interest.  What has been done for the people themselves?  Surely the moral as well as the physical drainer had work to do here.  However scanty may have been the supply of fresh water, the “water of life” was still more scarce.  The road to heaven, though it had not to be made for them, had to be pointed out.  In the almost entire absence of the observance of the Sabbath and of the means of grace, it is not surprising that a generation should have grown up without God in the world, and to all outward appearance as “far off by wicked works” as any of the heathen nations.

The first girls’ school in the Potteries was established through the benevolent exertions of Lady Mary Fox.  Some time after its foundation, a gentleman, who took a deep interest in the improvement of the district, presented a plot of ground on which a spacious national school-room was soon erected.  It was, and is still (1859), surrounded by pigstyes.  St James’s Church was built in 1845, within a few minutes’ walk of these school-rooms.

The first curate who was appointed entered at once upon his work in this deplorably destitute district, and in spite of great difficulties, and frequent failures of health, from exposure to damp and the horrible pollutions and stench of the highways and byways, he has steadily worked on for twelve years.  He has happily lived to see a great improvement since he commenced his labours, and he has won the respect and affection of the whole community.  The old woman, from whose conversation I have before quoted, said, in speaking of him, “’Twas the best day that ever rose in the Potteries, when he came amongst us; and, let who will come after him, he’ll never be forgotten.”

It has been remarked of the people in the United States of America, that they are all, to some extent, tinctured with the spirit of their early founders.  The indomitable spirit, the resolution to conquer difficulties at any cost, is traced back by some to “the Pilgrim Fathers.”  Those who reason thus would perhaps think they could account in the same way for that extraordinary spirit of independence which is so manifest in the dispositions of the people of whom we are now writing.  The descendants of Lake and Stephens would, if placed in the same difficulties, undoubtedly exhibit the same ingenuity and resolution to extricate themselves.  Another cause of this independence may be, that they have remained very much their own masters.  Each man and woman seems to have had so many pigs and children to rule over, and no one dared to interfere.  This absence of service, each one having to think for himself, and not to conform to the dictates of another, would also cause unusual self-reliance.

But other agencies for good have also been at work.  The church and congregation assembling at Horbury Chapel directed their kind sympathies, and stretched out helping hands to cleanse this “Slough of Despond.”  A room was first hired, in which to conduct a Sunday school; but this was soon overfilled, and it was proposed to build a chapel and school-rooms.  By the exertion of kind and influential friends, the proposal was carried out, and the building was opened in 1852.  An excellent master and mistress for the schools were secured: it is not too much to say that their influence for good is felt through the length and breadth of the district.

“1st, That should such school-rooms be raised, they should be placed in trust of a committee of evangelical Christians, to consist of members of the Church of England and Dissenters in equal numbers.

“2d, That they should be for the benefit of four chief objects:—the Boys’ Ragged School, the Girls’ Ragged School, the Infant School, and the Mothers’ Meetings.

“3d, It is also considered important that the use of the building should be granted for lectures and for general educational purposes.  The means of carrying out these resolutions are left for decision till a future meeting.”

“The same rains rain from heaven on all the forest trees;
Yet those bring forth sweet fruits, and pois’nous berries these.”

Trench.

I was, as usual, at once impressed with the great deficiency of home comforts; and the miserable countenances of many of the children told of neglect and bad management more forcibly than words could have done.

I told them I had just come to reside near them, and I hoped we should be good neighbours.  Like them, I was so occupied with my home duties, that I feared I should not be able to visit them frequently; but it had occurred to me, that if they could spare an hour one evening in the week, I would try to do so also, and we would spend it together in conversing over our various duties and difficulties, more especially those relating to our children, and by this means I hoped we might mutually benefit each other, as well as get more intimately acquainted.

This invitation was by no means warmly responded to at first, but it was the first step taken towards the formation of the Kensington Potteries Mothers’ Society.

“I know,” was the laconic answer.

“I am seventy-five years old; I have hardly had any illness all my life; I have done a deal of work, and God has been very good to me, and I am not going to grumble at Him now for shutting me up a few months.”

“Your wife tells me you cannot read much, on account of your eyes; I suppose you find the time a little tedious after the active life you have led?”

The character of Nehemiah came so forcibly into my mind while he was speaking, that when he had ended I could not help remarking, “If you had lived in the days of Nehemiah, I suppose you would not have disapproved of what he did?  You know, he not only reproved the people, but he smote certain of them, and plucked out their hair.”

“Ah!” said the old man, “he was in the right of it.  Whenever I reads that, I always says, ‘Sarved ’em right.’  We want Nehemiahs bad enough now-a-days,—people, I mean, as has got the courage to call things by their right names.”

He was silent a minute, and then, as if unable to keep in any longer what had evidently been in his thoughts throughout, he said, “Ma’am, I’ve often heard from my old ’ooman and the rest of ’em what you says to ’em at the meetings, and it has been upon my mind, when I did see you, to tell you I think, if you know’d more about some of ’em you get there, you would be rather more sharp upon ’em than you are.”

“You mean, I suppose, that when I know of anything particularly wrong in any of them, I ought to reprove them?”

“Why, yes.  You see, they look up to you a good deal; and, it seems to me, you might do a power of good this way.”

“Well,” said the old man, “some of ’em is a deal better for going, I must confess; but it ’pears to me you say things to them as if they were all alike, whereas some of them is a deal wickeder than others.”

“Ah!” said he, “that blessed book!  I have lived in this place through a dark time, and I am sure I can say that it has been ‘a light to my feet, and a lamp to my path.’”  Just then a sad fit of coughing came on, which seemed almost to deprive him of the power of breathing.  When it was over, I said, “Do you often cough like that?”  “I often do in the night,” he replied.  “I can never quite lie down; for if the cough were to come on suddenly, I might be choked before I could be got up.  The doctor says I shall go off in one of these fits some night.”

I asked the wife if any one was with them at night: she said, “Oh, no, John isn’t never afraid.”  “The last thing that I and my old ’ooman does at night,” added John, “is to kneel down and commend ourselves to God’s keeping.  I said to her last night, after we had been praying, ‘Jane, if I am sent for to-night, I am ready;’ and what it will be to leave this poor place, and go right off at once to the mansion my Saviour has provided for me!”

“Can you feel as trustful as your husband?” I asked Jane.

“Why, ma’am, I do try to, and I am as happy to think about heaven as he is; but you see, ma’am, the thing I feel is, that we must die first before we can go there, and death may be an awfuller thing than we think for.”