Ten years in a Portsmouth slum

The real answer to the loafer and the prostitute is the environment of the children. It is almost impossible to cure; it is, comparatively speaking, easy to prevent. And so, if we are going to make any real effort towards removing these two national disgraces and dangers, it must be in the treatment of our children. Even then you have fatal odds against you, for heredity marks down many for its own prey, and it will take many generations before heredity will be conquered. But environment may be improved, and I contend that every man and woman, who tries to train their children properly, creates the needed environment. If only we could reform the parents there would be very little difficulty about the children, and I believe that the truest measure of all work like ours is the care that parents take about their children. While the mother is actually nursing her child she will make for it every possible sacrifice, but, alas! as the well-springs of nourishment dry up, the well-springs of love dry up too, and you will oftentimes wonder why Almighty God gave such mothers so many children. Poverty and uncertainty as to wages have a good deal to do with the parents’ difficulty in disciplining their children. I wonder if well-to-do people ever consider these mothers. They have no servants; however ill they feel there is no one to do anything for the children but themselves; headaches, lassitude, even the knowledge of impending sickness, is for them no excuse. They have no strengthening diet, no power to satisfy the common wants of their children in food or clothes; no baize doors between the nursery and the bedroom. I speak advisedly of the mother alone as the trainer of her children, because the father, in work, has no time, out of work no heart. My wonder is, not that they slave so little for their children, but rather that they slave so much. Religion alone can mend all this—I have seen it work miracles in homes—the belief that the child is God’s gift, that He is its Father, that He will give her strength for her every need, and that the prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” God will answer. My truest joy at Landport were these converted homes, but even these homes, and far more the homes of the careless, necessitate something more for the children. Religion quickens within the mother the power of creating a true environment round the child; but, alas! after ten years there are many parents untouched by religion in our parish. Of course we have done what we could with our Sunday School, though there is no greater mistake than to suppose that the Sunday School can in any way take the place of the home school. Our Sunday School has never attracted very many children. My desire has been to train a few children well, and the preserving of discipline, and insistence on outward reverence, in a parish like ours made our Sunday School unpopular; a mother once said to one of my sisters, “I shan’t let my boys go to your school any longer, because kneeling wears out the knees of their trousers.”

A child, who had lately joined, said to another sister, “I am leaving your school for the one round the corner, because you go to your treat in the train, and the other school goes in brakes.”

I do not suppose that we have ever had more than five or six hundred children in it, but thanks to a most excellent staff of teachers, many of whom have been with us all the ten years, our children are in perfect order, and answer extraordinarily well. We have always thought, too, that it was far more important for a child to come to the Children’s Celebration at ten o’clock than to the afternoon instruction. Indeed we very soon discovered that this ten o’clock celebration was the most important religious factor in the whole parish. It has been maintained oftentimes with great personal difficulty; I have often myself had to say four Masses on Sunday, and, until the Rev. John Elwes came to help us, one of us had always had to say two; but we felt that no amount of inconvenience could be a possible excuse for depriving our children of this most necessary factor in their religious education. Assuredly we have been well repaid.

I bless God for many things at S. Agatha’s, but for none more than the dignity of the younger acolytes, dear Barratt’s earnest leading of the children, the singing of the older girls who composed the choir, and the reverent behaviour of all the children, even the infants taking part in every word that was said or sung, thus enabling us to make the children’s service their chief education in all religion. If this service should ever be given up, I should indeed fear for the future of S. Agatha’s. With us the Sunday School has the merit of being perfectly voluntary, parents, as a rule, taking no trouble about making their children come; as long as they get rid of them they do not care whether they go to Sunday School or not, and, unless you have to punish a child, the parent often remains to you an unknown quantity.

All this made us very anxious to acquire Day Schools, and, like everything else, God sent them to us, when we were ready for them. One little corner of our district had been cut off, because the mother parish wished to preserve her schools, built in the year 1823. In 1889 they had fallen into such decay that they were practically unfit for use, and were condemned by the Education Department. The then vicar offered them to the Board. I saw at once that God meant me to take them. I called all our people together, and told them that the real difficulty was money, for I should have to lay out £1000 on the schools immediately. I knew, of course, that they could subscribe no money, but we have ever found at S. Agatha’s that praying people are more potential than giving people. They decided that they would devote one day a month to perpetual prayer, beginning at half-past five in the morning and continuing till ten at night. We have kept that custom up ever since. It is an extraordinary sight to see poor ignorant people coming in for their half-hour’s prayer, each one responsible for their own time, and, if they cannot attend, sending someone else, so that the chain of intercession is never broken. Sometimes in the afternoon, when the women have leisure, or in the evening, when work is all over, there are fifty to a hundred people all praying silently for what we need. The Blessed Sacrament is reserved all day, and the poorest bring their flowers to deck the altar. No spot in the world will ever be so beautiful to me as that little flower-covered altar. At any rate the intercession worked the first miracle for us, for in just over two months we had collected the £1000 we needed for the first outlay upon the schools, and the getting of this money was all the more wonderful because there was such a strong feeling in the diocese, and elsewhere, against us. I insert a letter received from the Bishop of Guildford, himself a most ardent supporter of Church Schools, which you will see was not intended for publication, but which his Lordship has very kindly allowed me to publish, as a proof of how really miraculous it was that we got that sum.

In all, the schools have cost me over £3000; but they have a splendid record, and I do not grudge one single penny. In 1889 the average attendance was 350, the Government grant £276; in 1895 the average attendance was 519, the grant £476. Let me say, at once, this was due to our teachers. Never have any schools had such devoted teachers, their one object in view not the gaining of the grant, but the moral character of the child.

The ease with which my sisters and others have been able to mould our younger girls into their present excellent state, is very largely due to the splendid foundation laid by Mrs. Berrow, the mistress of the girls. Her indefatigable labours during many years in which she has managed the girls’ school, are beyond all praise. Over and over again, when in utter amazement I have said to a girl, “Who warned you of that danger which you have been able to avoid? who put before you that path of duty which you have had the grace to follow?” the answer was, “Oh, Mrs. Berrow, of course!” The “of course” is so characteristic, because it just shows how perfectly naturally the most difficult duty was performed. I would that I had words to express the gratitude I feel to this most Christian lady.

When our boys’ school had reached its lowest ebb, discipline and teaching having been twice condemned by the Inspector, I asked my dear friend Saunders, whose father was a very valued friend of mine, to lead a forlorn hope in the boys’ school. The ardour with which he commenced his work has never for a single moment slackened. He found the school the worst in the town. I leave it under his management, one of the very best. But I do not value his teaching powers so much as his influence over the boys’ futures. He has created a school library and a school band. He has managed for three years the best continuation school in the whole district. The Bible-class, into which he gathers on Sunday the lads who have left him, is one of the most valuable helps to religion in the whole parish. It would vex them if I were to tell you of the extraordinary sacrifices they have made for S. Agatha’s schools; but, as I believe God gave me the schools, so I believe He gave me my head teachers, and the rest of the school staff; and I am confident, as long as the schools remain under their management, there will ever be an influence amongst those of the flock most dear to our Lord, such as He Himself desires His little ones should be affected by.

No one can measure what England owes to the Board Schools; it would have been impossible for the Church to have kept pace with the increase of population, and with the new thought, which has not yet been half realised, that every child has a right to the best education. But there is one truth that I am sure we shall all, sooner or later, hold—it is not the business of the State to teach religion. If some means could be devised by which each denomination might appoint teachers to give the religious instruction, the education difficulty might be solved. But we are told this is impossible—an impossibility, I fear, arising largely from the laziness and jealousy of those who ought to be the religious teachers. If religion is taught in a school it is the most vital of all subjects; it needs the most skilful handling, the most God-sought and God-given tact, and yet it is just the one subject upon which no enquiry can be made as to the fitness of its teachers. In fact, it is possible for a child to be taught by teachers of every, and of no, religious opinions. Then there is no such thing as unsectarian religion: the very words are contradictory. Every teacher has his own bias, and he would be more than human if he did not convey this to the children. People think that this does not matter, because children are too young to understand, or because such teaching can do them no harm. But it is far easier to teach a dogmatic truth than to make a child understand, or gain any benefit from, a whole chapter of the Bible. To hold up Christ as an example, and His words as precepts, and not to teach the child the method by which Christ conveys to him the power of copying the example, is a cruel wrong. I believe even in many Church Schools there has been a great want of definite teaching. We have taught far too much, yet far too little—far too much about the Old Testament and the services of the Church; far too little about those saving truths which even quite young children can apprehend, and assimilate to themselves. Just before Christmas we were asked to take in a little soldier from Aldershot, a lad of about sixteen. His father and mother had died when he was four. An uncle, who played a whistle outside public-houses in the southern parts of Scotland, had adopted him. When he came to us he said that, until he had joined the army, six months before, he had never slept three consecutive nights in the same place; indeed, most nights a doorstep or a hayrick had been his bed. It is almost impossible to conceive a worse bringing up. On Sunday he went to church with our own boys; and Conibeere, who looks after them, remarked, on coming out of church, “I think he must be a Roman Catholic, because he was so reverent.” Alas! soldiers, sailors, and tramps coming from all parts of England are seldom reverent. That Sunday night he told me all about himself. It was almost impossible to believe that so pure a soul should have matured under circumstances so adverse, but he had a talisman that had never failed him; he had never forgotten the few soul-saving truths he had learned as a little child. Bishop Virtue, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth, very kindly confirmed him, and now the little man is on his way to India. But he wrote us before he sailed that he would never forget S. Agatha’s, for there he had first learned what a home was. He knew nothing about the Bible, Old or New Testament; but he knew what repentance meant, what prayer meant, what communion meant. He knew it so thoroughly that neither the temptations of the street nor of the barrack-room had robbed him of it. Surely that is what we ought to teach every child. Let us recognise that some children are born religious—I mean they love the Bible and the lives of the saints; they have a power of expressing much fervour—I do not know that they are always the best children—and they will certainly acquire all the unnecessary part of religion. But every child has the capacity for acquiring the necessary part, and surely it is the duty of the Church to see that all her children have the chance of its acquirement. Every energy is now being put forth by the Church to retain, or even to increase, her schools. Thirty years ago she had almost the whole of the schools of England in her hands. Was she true to her enormous chance? Did she turn out Churchmen and Churchwomen? Are the Sacraments frequented to-day by those whom she taught? In all honesty let us face this question, Why this anxiety to-day? and let us earnestly pray Almighty God that it means her united effort to teach her children as they ought to be taught, refusing to accept diocesan schemes that insist on an amount of teaching altogether unnecessary and superfluous; and, above all, the getting rid of that hideous system of examinations which ruins not only religious, but all secular, education.

Measure the increase in good education which has taken place since the passing of the Education Act, and every true Englishman will surely rejoice. Recognise that all that the State ought to do is to teach secular education. If the Church, by possessing schools, can help the State in this matter, and therefore get a better opportunity of teaching her own children, let her rejoice, but let her recognise her twofold responsibility, that the religious education must be ample and complete, the secular education the best that can be given. If she fails in either of these two duties she has no right to remain a teacher, and it would be fatal to her duty if, for the sake of gaining a little money, and thereby lessening the continual burden of subscription, she either gives an inferior education, or has inferior buildings, unsanitary or such like, which the State should not for a moment permit, or else allows some outside control to interfere with the religion which she is bound to teach, or with her method of appointing teachers. It is easy to accept unfettered money from a Conservative Government, but no party remains in power very long in England, and the taking of money now may possibly be an excuse for another Government to enforce its own terms. I had the honour to serve on the School Board in Portsmouth for three years. I know the zeal and energy with which its members manage the schools in the town. I am grateful beyond expression for the benefits they have conferred on education in Portsmouth. I confess that their energy has been the incentive to all the Church Schools to progress, for they set a standard of education which is extremely useful to the whole district. But I, for one, would far rather have seen them merely imparting secular knowledge. I believe that, if we knew that no religious teaching was given, every Dissenting minister and every Church clergyman would throw far greater energy into the work of teaching religion to their own children. I believe that oftentimes the knowledge that religion is taught is a salve to the conscience, an excuse not to realise our duty towards our children far more than we do. It is an awful thought, that of a Godless England. It is a thought that should strike terror into the conscience of every single man, whether he be cleric or laic; yet I believe that there are thousands of children to-day who, if a year after they leave school were questioned about their religion, would, as far as actual knowledge went, be discovered to be Godless.

My service on the Board, I think, taught me another benefit in Church Schools. The daily visit of the clergy and other Church workers is not only an enormous encouragement to the teachers, but creates altogether a more humane atmosphere. It tends, too, to more softened ways and more refined manners on the part of the children, and it gives often a greater opportunity for getting work for children and keeping a hold over them when they have left school. I think that there were a few members of the Board who tried to do something in this way, but the most of us were far too busy. I am told that under the London School Board this omission is corrected by a system of managers, who are in touch both with the children and the teachers. I fear in the Portsmouth Board we should have been jealous of delegating any authority. I believe, too, that if there had been a more personal touch between the members of the Board and the teachers, several little difficulties, which have lately arisen, would have disappeared. Indeed, I blame myself very much that during my three years’ service I did not get more personally acquainted with the teachers, though I threw open my gymnasium twice a week to the younger ones, and many joined our debating society. The increase of population in Portsmouth has been so abnormal, that the expenditure of the Board in creating places and plant has necessarily been very great, and consideration for the ratepayers’ pockets is the reason why our salaries do not compare favourably with those in like-sized towns. And there were some other little vexatious arrangements, which I believe more personal intercourse between the Board and the teachers could easily have re-arranged.

I say all this because I am conscious that the two difficulties which Englishmen must face with regard to the Board School question are these—first, that the State cannot, and therefore ought not to be expected to, teach religion; and secondly, that a danger exists in all elected bodies that they may become merely machines, and so create in those they employ a merely mechanical habit of performing their duties.