THE CROOKS FAMILY.
(Will is the second child from the right, looking over his father's left shoulder.)
"I have nothing but praise for my other schoolmaster," says Crooks. "I mean the schoolmaster at the old George Green schools in East India Dock Road. They were elementary schools then, and we paid a penny a week, though even that small sum for all of us meant a sacrifice for mother. The schoolmaster there was essentially a kind man. He had me under his teaching in the Sunday school as well as in the day school. During the few years I was with him prior to my workhouse days I learnt much that has been of service to me ever since."
Neither books nor papers found their way into Shirbutt Street. The first paper he remembers reading was The British Workman, brought occasionally to the little house in High Street just after the workhouse days. Then came a short spell of penny dreadfuls, from among which "Alone in a Pirate's Lair" stands out in memory riotous and reeking to this day.
Though the mother could not read herself, she encouraged her children by borrowing occasional magazines and inviting them to read the contents to her and her neighbours.
"I was about ten or eleven when The Leisure Hour and The Sunday at Home were started, and mother and the neighbours used to get these and ask us boys to read the stories to them.
"I owe something to an old man who went round the poor people's houses selling books. From him I got some of Dickens's novels. I suddenly found myself in a new and delightful world. Having been in the workhouse myself, how I revelled in Oliver Twist! How I laughed at Bumble and the gentleman in the white waistcoat! I have seen that white waistcoat, pompous and truculent, administering the Poor Law many times since.
"After the unceasing hunger I experienced in the workhouse, you can guess how I sympathised with Oliver in his demand for more. I thought that a delightful touch in one of our L.C.C. day schools the other day. The teacher asked a class what books they liked best.
"'Oliver Twist,' came one little chap's answer.
"'Why?'
"'Because he asked for more.'"
This early reading of Dickens may have helped to develop his own quaint, rich humour. Will Crooks often reminds one of Charles Dickens. He knows the Londoner of to-day, his oddities, whimsicalities, his trials, humours, and sorrows, as thoroughly as Dickens knew the Londoner of fifty years ago. Many a time I have journeyed with him down to his home in East London, after he had finished a hard day's work in Parliament or on the London County Council, possibly having been defeated on some public question in a way that would make many men despair; and yet how easily he has put aside all the worries and work, and made the journey delightful by his unfailing fund of Cockney anecdotes. He is one of the rare story-tellers you meet with in a lifetime. The charm, too, of all his stories is that they never relate to what he has read, but always to what he has heard or observed himself.
Some unknown friend at Yarmouth, who doubtless had heard him speak, seems to have been impressed by this ready way he has of taking his illustrations from the common things around him. Under the initials A. H. S. he sent the following "Limerick" to London Opinion:—
After Dickens the lad discovered Scott. "It was an event in my life when, in an old Scotch magazine, I read a fascinating criticism of 'Ivanhoe.' Nothing would satisfy me until I had got the book; and then Scott took a front place among my favourite authors.
"I was in my teens then, reading everything I could lay hands on. I used to follow closely public events in the newspapers. Not long ago I met a man in a car with whom I remonstrated for some rude behaviour to the passengers. He looked at me in amazement when I called him by his name.
"'Why,' he said, 'you must be that boy Will Crooks I knew long ago. Do you know what I remember about you? I can see you now tossing your apron off in the dinner-hour and squatting down in the workshop with a paper in your hand.'"
Crooks was still an apprentice when, as he describes it, the great literary event of his life occurred.
"On my way home from work one Saturday afternoon I was lucky enough to pick up Homer's 'Iliad' for twopence at an old bookstall. After dinner I took it upstairs—we were able to afford an upstairs room by that time—and read it lying on the bed. What a revelation it was to me! Pictures of romance and beauty I had never dreamed of suddenly opened up before my eyes. I was transported from the East End to an enchanted land. It was a rare luxury to a working lad like me just home from work to find myself suddenly among the heroes and nymphs and gods of ancient Greece."
The lad's imagination was also fired by "The Pilgrim's Progress."
"I often think of that splendid passage describing the passing over the river and the entry into Heaven of Christian and Faithful. I can sympathise with Arnold of Rugby when he said, 'I never dare trust myself to read that passage aloud.'"
While in the blacksmith's shop he learnt many portions of Shakespeare, with a decided preference for Hamlet. Often in the little forge the men would say, "Give us a bit of Shakespeare, Will." The lad, nothing loath, would declaim before them, more often than not in a mock heroic strain that greatly delighted his grimy workmates.
Like many other members of the Labour Party, he was greatly influenced in his youth by the principles of "Unto this Last" and "Alton Locke." Later in life he was set thinking seriously by a course of University Lectures on Political Economy delivered in Poplar by Mr. G. Armitage Smith.
Quietly he began building up a little library of his own, supplemented in later years by an occasional autograph copy from authors whose friendship he had made. Father Dolling, for instance, sent him a copy of his "Ten Years in a Portsmouth Slum," inscribed:—
Will Crooks.—The story of a kind of trying to do in a different way what he is doing.—With the author's best Christmas wishes, 1898.
In the flyleaf of this book Crooks keeps the following letter, received after his election to Parliament from the author's sister:—
Dear Mr. Crooks,—I have just seen the papers, and must send you a word of congratulation on your success. If, as I believe, the blessed dead are allowed to watch over and help us, I am sure my dear brother is thinking of you and praying that in your new sphere of usefulness you may be helped to do God's will.—Truly yours, Geraldine Dolling.
The book that he values most to-day is a pleasant little story for boys called "Joe the Giant Killer." It was given to him by the author, Dr. Chandler, Bishop of Bloemfontein, when rector of Poplar. The reason he values it so is because the printed dedication reads:—
"To WILL CROOKS, L.C.C.
In memory of many years
Of delightful comradeship in Poplar."
When, after the big victory in Woolwich, Crooks was able to add M.P. as well as L.C.C. after his name, there came among hundreds of other congratulations a cabled cheer from South Africa. It was signed "Chandler."
Proud of his Birthplace—Famous Residents at Blackwall—Memories of Nelson's Flagship—Stealing a Body from a Gibbet—A Waterman who Remembered Dickens.
Of many interesting days spent with Crooks in Poplar, one stands out as the day on which he showed me some of the haunts of his boyhood.
Poplar is always picturesque with the glimpses it gives of ships' masts rising out of the Docks above the roofs of houses. With Crooks as guide, this rambling district of Dockland, foolishly imagined by many people to be wholly a centre of squalor, becomes as romantic as a mediæval town.
It was not always grey and poor, as so many parts of it are to-day, though even these are not without their quaint and pleasant places.
We wended through several of its grey streets, making for the river at Blackwall. Everywhere women and children, as well as men, whom we passed greeted Crooks cheerily.
"Can you wonder so many of our people take to drink?" And he pointed to the shabby little houses, all let out in tenements, in the street where he was born. "Look at the homes they are forced to live in! The men can't invite their mates round, so they meet at 'The Spotted Dog' of an evening. During the day the women often drift to the same place. The boys and girls cannot do their courting in these overcrowded homes. They make love in the streets, and soon they too begin to haunt the public-houses."
He changed his tone when we entered the famous old High Street that runs between the West India Docks and Blackwall. He pointed out the house where he spent many years of his boyhood after his parents moved from Shirbutt Street. The old home is associated with his errand-boy experiences. In those days he finished work at midnight on Saturdays, and knowing that his parents would be in bed, he often lingered in the High Street into the early hours of Sunday, playing with other lads who, like himself, had just finished work.
As we continued our way down the High Street together, he surprised me by his wonderful knowledge of the neighbourhood. Here was a Poplar man proud of Poplar. He told me that the now silent High Street was at one time a sort of sailors' fair-ground, like the old Ratcliff Highway. It was there, he said, that Poplar had its beginning, according to the historian Stow. There shipwrights and other marine men built large houses for themselves, with small ones around for seamen.
Not for these people alone were the houses built. Worthy citizens of London lived down there. Sir John de Poultney, four times Lord Mayor, lived in a quaint old house in Coldharbour, at Blackwall, that stood until recently. This same house once formed the home of the discoverer, Sebastian Cabot. It was there that Cabot made friends with Sir Thomas Spert, Vice-Admiral of England, who also had a house at Poplar, and promised Cabot a good ship of the Government's for a voyage of discovery. And, later still, Sir Walter Raleigh is said to have been the tenant, and of course legend credits him with having smoked one of his earliest pipes there.
Gone are the old houses now, with the old traditions, the old gaiety, the old mad enthusiasm for the sea. In his day the Blackwall seaman was a dare-devil, efficient man, eagerly coveted by shipowners and captains alike. Never did a ship sail from Blackwall during Crooks's schooldays without most of the boys staying away from school, regardless of results to their skins the next morning, in order to join in the farewell cheering from the foreshore. The welcome home to the Blackwall ships was something to remember. It was always a bitter disappointment to the boys, since it robbed them of an opportunity of playing truant, if a ship came home and docked during the night, having come up, as the old tide-master used to say, and brought her own news.
Little remains to suggest the sea in Poplar High Street to-day. The old highway has lost its old glory. The old folks have forsaken the old homesteads. Of the few old buildings that remain, nearly every one has been cut up into small shops and tenements. One or two general dealers still pose as ships' outfitters, and an occasional shop remains as a marine store, as though in a final feeble struggle to preserve the old traditions.
Crooks recollected well the period that costermongers thronged this riverside highway. They came about the time seamen were deserting it, so that the street for some time lost nothing of its noise or bustle. The day came when they, too, departed, seeking a more profitable field in Chrisp Street, on the northern side of East India Dock Road, where to this day they still hold carnival. That they carried away something of the seafaring character of their former highway is borne out by the nautical turn they give to some of their remarks.
"Here," cried a fish-dealer of their number the other day, holding aloft a haddock, "wot price this 'ere 'addick?"
"Tuppence," suggested a woman bystander.
"Wot! tuppence! 'Ow would you like to get a ship, an' go out to sea an' fish for 'addicks to sell for tuppence in foggy weather like this?"
As we passed down that portion of the High Street that skirts the Recreation Ground, Crooks pointed out the quaint old church of St. Matthias. He told me it was the oldest church in Poplar, built as a chapel-of-ease to the mother church of East London, St. Dunstan's. Then it was that all the parishes that now go to make up the teeming Tower Hamlets were comprised in Stepney. As the Port of London in those days was confined to the Pool and lower reaches and to the riverside hamlets of the East End, that was why people born at sea were often entered as having been born in the parish of Stepney.
St. Matthias' Church afterwards became the chapel of the old East India Company. Poplar people sometimes call it that to this day. The Company's almshouses were near, and the chapel ministered to the aged almoners alone. According to tradition, the teak pillars in the church served as masts in vessels of the Spanish Armada. Upon the ceiling is the coat-of-arms of the original East India Company. Adjoining the church is the picturesque vicarage, where Crooks pointed out the coat-of-arms adopted by the United Company a hundred years later on the amalgamation with the New East India Company.
This chapel contains a monument to the memory of George Green, who stands out as Poplar's worthiest philanthropist. Schools, churches, and charities in Poplar to-day testify to his generosity. He was one of the owners of the famous Blackwall Shipbuilding Yard, that turned out some of the sturdiest of the wooden walls of England. They were proud in the shipyard of the Venerable and the Theseus, the former Lord Duncan's flagship at the battle of Camperdown, the latter at one time Nelson's flagship, in the cockpit of which his arm was amputated.
The people of old Poplar had at times unpleasant things to tolerate. Sometimes the pirates hung at Execution Dock, higher up the river, would be brought down, still on their gibbets, and suspended for a long period at a place near Blackwall Point, as a warning to all seafarers entering the Port of London.
One of the old East India Company pensioners used to tell Crooks's father how one of the bodies hanging on a gibbet was stolen during the night, under romantic circumstances. An old waterman at the stairs was startled at a late hour by a young and ladylike girl coming ashore in a boat and asking him to lend a hand with her father, who, she said, was dead drunk in the bottom of the skiff. A youth was with her, and the waterman assisted them to carry the supposed drunken man to a carriage which was waiting. Not until the pirate's body was missing in the morning did the old waterman know the truth.
We reached the river ourselves from the Blackwall end of the High Street, while Crooks was giving me these entertaining glimpses into the past of his native Poplar. The sight of Blackwall Causeway and the river crowded with craft instantly reminded him of the last mutiny in the Thames, of which he has gruesome recollections, associated with bad dreams as a lad, caused by the knowledge that dead seamen lay in the building adjoining his home. It was here at Blackwall Point that the crew of the Peruvian frigate mutinied in 1861. He relates graphically how the eleven men who were shot dead on the ship were brought ashore and laid in the mortuary next his mother's house by the casual ward.
The old watermen at the head of the Causeway, waiting to row people across to the Greenwich side, welcomed Crooks with a cheerful word as we approached. They were soon full of talk. The eldest told how he went to sea as a boy in the famous wooden ships turned out of Blackwall Yard. His aged companion remembered the stage coaches coming down from London to Blackwall. He was proud also of a memory of Queen Victoria's visit to the neighbourhood to see a Chinese junk.
The two ancient watermen soon overflowed with reminiscences. One remembered his grandfather telling how King George the Fourth would come down to see the ships built at Blackwall, and how on one occasion a sailor who had come ashore and got drunk took a pint of ale to his Majesty in a pewter and asked him to drink to the Army and Navy.
"Ah!" exclaimed the other, fetching a sigh; "but don't you remember that old Yarmouth fisherman who used to bring his smack round here from the Roads and sell herrings out of it on this very Causeway?"
"Remember! What do you think? That was the old man who would never keep farthings. In the evening, when he'd got a handful in the course of the day's trade, he would pitch them in the river for the boys to find."
"Likely enough," interposed Crooks. "I mudlarked about here myself as a lad."
The eldest of the ancient watermen would have it that this old boy from Yarmouth was the original of Mr. Peggotty, and that it was at Blackwall Dickens first made his acquaintance. He said he had often seen Dickens himself about those parts.
We ventured a doubt.
"Why, bless my life!" he cried; "ain't I talked to him at the Causeway here many a time?"
This, of course, was unanswerable, so we asked what Dickens did when there.
The ancient waterman thought a moment.
"What did Dickens do?" he ruminated. "Now, let me see. What did Dickens do? I know: Dickens used to go afloat!"
The other declared that Dickens did more than that: he would often go into the fishing-smack.
We immediately assumed that it was the fishing-smack of the old Yarmouth salt that was meant. We were wrong. It was another "Fishing Smack," one of the quaint old taverns by the river still standing in Coldharbour.
Three years in a Smithy—Provoking a Carman—Apprenticeship—Winning a Nickname—Activity of an Idle Apprentice—"Not Dead, but Drunk"—A Boisterous Celebration—The Workman's Pride in His Work.
The three years in the blacksmith's shop in Limehouse Causeway, that commenced at the age of eleven after the errand-boy period, were years of hard work and long hours. The lad's working day began at six in the morning and often did not close until eight at night. Working overtime meant ten and twelve midnight before the day's work was done. He was paid for the overtime at the rate of a penny an hour.
He was kept hard at it all the time. Once, in the excitement of a General Election, in the days of the old hustings, he stole away from the forge for an hour. The smith had returned in his absence, and inquired angrily where he had been.
"Only to see the state of the poll."
"You'll know the state of the poll on Saturday, young fellow."
He did. A shilling was taken from his week's wages.
It was a heavy blow. It delayed a promised pair of new trousers. The need for a new pair was constantly being brought to his notice in a more or less personal way. The biggest affront came from a tall boy at a shop he passed on the way home.
"Hi!" this youth would call after him. "Look at the kid wot's put his legs too far frew his trowsis!"
Nevertheless, the little chap in the short trousers was immensely proud to be at work. He would blacken his face before leaving for home so as to look like a working man.
Many a long day's search had he before getting that job. He spent hours one morning in calling at nearly all the shops in the two miles' length of Commercial Road between Poplar and the City. But nobody wanted so small a boy. On his way back, not yet wholly disheartened, he turned down Limehouse Causeway and peeped in at the smithy.
"Can you blow the bellows, little 'un?" he was asked.
Couldn't he; you just try him!
They tried him for an hour, then told him he was just the boy they wanted.
They got a lot of smiths' work in connection with the fitting out of small vessels in Limehouse Basin and the West India Docks. The first job at which Will assisted was on board the barque Violet.
The Causeway where the smithy stood was so narrow that carts could not pass each other. Two carmen driving in opposite directions met just outside the smithy door one afternoon. Neither would give way, and they filled the air with lurid fancies. Young Will came out of the smithy and took the part of the one whom he believed to have the right on his side.
Seizing the bridle of the other driver's horse, he commenced to back the cart down the lane. The man's flow of language increased as he tried to get at the lad with his whip. Will dodged first to one side and then to the other, then under the horse's nose, eluding the lash every time. At last he got the cart backed right out of the lane, allowing the other driver to pass in triumph.
The enraged carman sprang down and chased the lad back into the smithy. Will had just time to spring behind the big bellows out of sight before the other appeared foaming at the door. With many oaths the man swore he would have vengeance on the boy some day, come what would.
Some years afterwards Crooks found himself at work in the same yard as his burly enemy, but time, which had made little difference to the man, had transformed the boy out of all recognition. Crooks asked him if he remembered the event.
"Yes; and if I came across that youngster to-day I'd break every bone in his body."
"I don't think you would, Jack," Crooks replied, preparing to take off his coat.
Then the carman understood.
In his third year at the smithy Will was getting six shillings a week, with something more than a penny an hour for overtime. Small though the wages were, they were very welcome at home; and it meant a great deal to his mother when she sacrificed more than half this amount in the lad's best interest.
She was as determined that her boys should learn a trade as that they should learn to read and write. She took Will away from the smithy and his six shillings a week, when she found he was not to be taught the business but to be merely a smiths' labourer, and she apprenticed him to the trade of cooper at a weekly wage of half a crown.
"The sacrifice of a few shillings a week," says Crooks, "which mother made in order that I should learn a trade was only one of the many things she did for me as a boy for which I have blessed her memory in manhood many times. I really don't know now how she managed to feed us all, after losing my three-and-six a week. I know that she always put up a good dinner in a handkerchief for me to take to work. It may have got smaller towards the end of the week, like many of the men's. I remember one Monday dinner-time flopping down on a saw-tub and opening my handkerchief as the foreman passed.
"'That looks a good meal to begin the week on,' he said. 'I see how it is;—
Among the workmen was a thinker and reformer far ahead of his times. It was dangerous in those days for workmen to give expression to advanced views, and as he was a married man he made no display of his opinions. He seems to have seen promise in young Will, for he talked to him freely on social and political matters, encouraging him to read by lending him books and papers, and inspiring him with an enthusiasm for the teaching of John Bright.
So much so, that at home Will was nicknamed Young John Bright. An uncle, looking in on the eve of the General Election of 1868, said jokingly, "Now, young John Bright, tell us all about what is going to happen." Nothing loath, Will delivered a long speech on the political situation, and foretold, among other things, that the Liberals would sweep the country, and that one of their first acts would be to disestablish the Church of Ireland. The prophecy, needless to say, was fulfilled.
Will was one of half-a-dozen apprentices in the coopering establishment. While still the youngest among them he made his mark by acting as spokesman in a sudden emergency. The lads thought they had a grievance under the piece-rate system. They went in a body to the head of the firm, the eldest primed with a well-rehearsed speech stating their case.
If Will saved the situation, he began by nearly bringing disaster upon it. It happened that the spokesman's father was an undertaker in Stepney, and that on Sundays the lad, with becoming gravity, frequently walked as a mute at funerals.
Just as the solemn procession of aggrieved apprentices was about to enter the office, the employer's wondering eye upon them through the window, Will called out in a stage whisper:
"Now, Joe, put on your best Sunday face!"
The fearful tension was broken. All the boys burst into laughter. The lads tumbled over each other in their eagerness to get outside the passage. When the head of the firm opened his door Will alone remained.
"What's all this about, Crooks?"
The youngest apprentice thereupon briefly ran over the lads' grievances, and on being asked why the deputation fled in laughter, he explained the meaning of the Sunday face.
The employer laughed as boisterously as his boys. He told Crooks to go back to work, promising that the lads should have fair play. That very day he issued orders placing the apprentices under better conditions.
One of the lads, with an unconquerable liking for lying in bed, had not turned up by nine o'clock on a certain morning. The other apprentices stole out with a barrow and went to his house with the object of wheeling him to work.
Half an hour later the lad rushed into the cooperage panting and dishevelled, his clothes torn, his hat missing.
"Done 'em!" he gasped, after the manner of Alfred Jingle. "I rushed out o' the back door, got over the wall, over the next wall, fell on a flower-bed, man came out (such langwidge!), climbed his wall afore he could ketch me, landed clean on a dog kennel, dog tore me clothes, got over another wall—into the street at last—boys caught sight o' me, howling chase with barrow, woman let me run through her house, over another wall. Done 'em!"
Something more than laziness explained the occasional absence of others from work. Certain of the men would be missing for two or three days. During an unusually long absence of one of the older coopers, the men and lads rigged up a dummy figure, dressing it in whatever clothes of their own they could spare. They placed the dummy in an improvised coffin by the side of their missing comrade's bench, with an imitation tombstone at the head, bearing the inscription, "Not dead, but drunk."
The morning came when the delinquent turned up. A deep silence fell over the workshop as he entered. Men and apprentices alike suddenly appeared to be absorbed in work. The late-comer pretended not to see the effigy by his bench. With quiet deliberation he took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and lighted the furnace-fire. No one spoke. The old man brought two handfuls of shavings and piled them on the fire until it roared again. Then suddenly he seized the dummy figure and hurled it on the flames.
Everybody sprang forward to snatch his garments from the fire. One rescued his coat, another his vest, another his cap, another his muffler, another his pair of boots, the old man belabouring each in turn.
"Ah!" he cried with a chuckle, as the singed garments were dragged away. "I knew that would find you all out."
Quaint and boisterous customs were observed when an apprentice was out of his time. The greater part of the day was given up by men and boys alike to revelry and horse-play.
The ceremonies began at about eleven o'clock in the morning, to be kept up for the rest of the day. First, the apprentice was seized and put into a hot barrel. Round him stood some fifty men and boys checking every attempt he made to get out, tapping him with hammers on the head and fingers and shoulders every time he made an effort to escape. When his clothes—the last he was to wear as an apprentice—had been singed in the barrel out of all further use, he would be dragged out and tossed in the air by about a dozen of the strongest men.
Only once did the employer try to stop these boisterous interludes. He never tried again. The men laid hold of him, and for about five minutes treated him to a vigorous tossing.
It then became the bruised and singed apprentice's privilege to pay for bread and cheese and drink. In the afternoon the men turned the yard into an imitation fair. Flags and bunting were put up and side shows were improvised. One feature was to persuade the fattest men to walk the tight-rope.
On the whole, Will had a happy time as an apprentice, working hard and laughing hard, more than once threatened with dismissal because his spirit of fun led him into mischief. He became a good craftsman, and to this day boasts of being as skilful at his own trade as any man. He attributes this to the old spirit of craftsmanship that held good in his day. One incident during his apprenticeship helped to make him take a pride in what he made with his own hands. An old workman in the shop, after finishing a piece of work, set it in the middle of the floor and walked round it admiringly several times.
"'Pon my honour, one would think you'd made a thousand-horse-power engine," said the apprentice.
"Never you mind, sonny," replied the old workman. "Whether it's a thousand-horse-power engine or not, I made it myself!"
"That is the spirit I want to see revived among workmen to-day," Crooks told the Labour Co-partnership Association in 1905, relating the incident at their annual exhibition at the Crystal Palace. He went on to say:
I want to see workmen proud of what they make with their own hands. That is impossible in many workshops to-day because of the soulless way in which they are conducted. Many workmen have got the idea they only exist for what other people can get out of them. I blame employers as much as workmen for this state of things. There are in the country some excellent employers. Unfortunately, they are becoming fewer. The individual employer is going out, and the limited liability company coming in, having as its one object the making of profit, utterly regardless of the bodies or souls of the men or women from whom the profit is wrung. The result of running works and factories for company dividends only has destroyed the old school of masters and men, both of whom had a pride in their work, both of whom stamped their work with the mark of their own individuality.
To get back to a better state of things workmen must become their own masters, and the Co-Partnership Association is showing men the way. It is teaching them to live and work with and for each other. I want men who groan under the injustice of so much in our industrial system to understand that they can do much for themselves. By combination and co-operation they can run businesses of their own. But they must first take to the water before they can swim. It means discipline, but trade unionism has meant discipline. The administrative capacity of workmen can be developed to an enormous extent yet.
How are we going to train our men and women workers to take on the responsibilities of regulating their own lot in a better manner? Trade unionists are now learning that instead of spending money on strikes it is better to spend it in starting workshops of their own. The time has come when Labour leaders and others might well cease talking to the workers about their power and begin talking to them about their responsibilities.
The day after this speech he received the following letter from George Jacob Holyoake, a few months before that veteran co-operator passed away:—
"Against my will I was prevented from being present at the Crystal Palace, but that does not disqualify me from expressing my thanks for the wise and practical speech you made—in every way admirable."
Marriage—Dismissed as an Agitator—Home broken up—"On the Road"—Timely Help at Burton—Finding Work at Liverpool—Bereavement—Back in London—A Second Tramp to Liverpool—Feelings of an "Out-of-Work."
On a grey morning in the December of 1871 two young people came out of St. Thomas's Church, Bethnal Green, man and wife. Both were only nineteen years of age. The husband was Will Crooks; his wife the daughter of an East London shipwright named South.
They set up their home in Poplar, near the coopering yard where Will was employed. At first they had to be content with apartments; then came a small tenement; soon after a little house of their own.
It was fair and pleasant sailing for the first two or three years. He got a journeyman's full wages the first week he was out of his apprenticeship. It seemed as though he were to have an unbroken run of good fortune. The bright hopes soon collapsed.
Good craftsmanship and trade unionism, blended as they were in Crooks, made him rebel against certain conditions of his work. Finally he refused to use inferior timber on a job, and objected to excessive overtime. Although the youngest among them, he addressed the workmen on the subject. A few days afterwards he was dismissed.
He took his notice lightly enough, confident that as master of his trade he could soon secure work again.
It was not to be. Every shop and yard in London was closed to him. Word had gone round that he was an agitator.
Try as he did, he could not break through the barrier that had been raised against him. Wherever he applied, whether in Rotherhithe, Battersea, Hackney, or Clerkenwell, he was known as the young fellow who would not work with shoddy material and talked other men into the same view.
The experience was the same at every place of call.
"What's your name?"
"Crooks."
"Of Poplar?"
"That's me."
"We don't want anyone."
From several of these places he heard afterwards that the instant he was gone other men were taken on.
Since London was a closed door to him, he turned his back upon it, and set out tramping the country in search of work. With a fully-paid-up trade union card, he knew he could count on an occasional half-crown to help him on the way at those towns where his society had branches.
His home had to be broken up. His wife with their child went to her mother's, there to await for weary weeks the result of her husband's first quest into the country.
The only piece of good news came from Liverpool. Not until he reached that city did he get a job. He tramped into Liverpool from Burton-on-Trent. Never in his life, either before or since, did a silver coin mean so much to him as the half-crown given by a member of his own trade to help him on the road as he set out from Burton for Liverpool.
Twenty-nine years later Crooks was speaking at a meeting of co-operators in Burton when he recognised his former benefactor on the platform. He told the audience of his last visit to their town, remarking how on that occasion no one but this man offered him hospitality, whereas now, if he lived to be a hundred and fifty years of age, he would not be able to accept all the invitations he had received from friends and would-be friends to spend week-ends with them. His regret was, he told the meeting, that those good people did not begin to ask him earlier and that they did not think of asking other poor men in a similar plight to his when he first entered Burton.
By the time he dragged himself into Liverpool he was without a sole to his boots. The journey was completed on the uppers of his boots, with the aid of string, a device he had learnt from friendly tramps on the road. Having got what looked like a promising job, he invited his wife to join him with their child, enclosing the fare from his first week's wages.
This work in Liverpool had not been obtained without much weary searching. A good friend to the young fellow in his distress was the Y.M.C.A. in that city. Nearly thirty years later he addressed a crowded public meeting in the large hall of the Liverpool Y.M.C.A. He had an enthusiastic welcome when he rose to speak.
I am very grateful to you for your kind welcome of me to-night. This hall has carried my memory back to 1876 when I first visited Liverpool. I was then looking for work, knowing what it was to want a meal many a day. I don't know what I should have done without the many kindnesses I met with from Liverpool people, and from none more hearty and truly helpful than I received here in this building.
But Liverpool is associated with one of the saddest memories in his life. This is how he refers to it:—
"My wife joined me, bringing our little girl, a bonny child of whom we were immensely proud. The little one pined from the day it reached Liverpool and died within a month. I thought my wife would have followed the child to the grave within a day or two. I never saw her so much affected in all my life. She pleaded to be taken away from that place. 'Anywhere,' she said, 'only let's get away.' So we buried our little girl in Liverpool one rainy Saturday afternoon, and came back to London to seek work the same night."
It was the most miserable railway journey of his life. If anything, the misery was increased when as the dull dawn crept over London he and his wife stepped out of the train and walked the seven miles of silent streets between Euston and Poplar.
No better fortune awaited them in London. The young husband sought work with no success. News reached him that his trade was thriving again in Liverpool, so he set out to tramp there a second time.
"It is a weird experience, this, of wandering through England in search of a job," he says. "You keep your heart up so long as you have something in your stomach, but when hunger steals upon you, then you despair. Footsore and listless at the same time, you simply lose all interest in the future.
"I have always been drawn towards Canon Liddon since reading an address of his in which he said that the roughest tramp upon the road was, in his eyes, one who might come to be numbered among those favoured by Christ, and that the most brilliant and distinguished guest he had ever met had no higher possibility than that.
"Nothing wearies one more than walking about hunting for employment which is not to be had. It is far harder than real work. The uncertainty, the despair, when you reach a place only to discover that your journey is fruitless, are frightful. I've known a man say, 'Which way shall I go to-day?' Having no earthly idea which way to take, he tosses up a button. If the button comes down on one side he treks east; if on the other, he treks west.
"You can imagine the feeling when, after walking your boots off, a man says to you, as he jingles sovereigns in his pocket, 'Why don't you work?' That is what happened to me as I scoured the country between London and Liverpool, asking all the way for any kind of work to help me along."
I remember Crooks recalling his experience at a dinner-party given by the Hon. Maud Stanley at her Westminster house. Crooks was then a fellow-member with Miss Stanley of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, and she invited us on that occasion to meet her friend Professor Wyckoff, the American author, who wrote "The Workers." In "The Workers" the author tells the story of how for a time he turned his back upon his usual well-to-do haunts in order to find out what earning one's own living by tramping from place to place doing manual work was actually like.
Crooks, who, perhaps unconsciously to himself, had become the chief entertainer at table, showed Mr. Wyckoff in a moment that, realistic though his experiences had been, he could not possibly enter into the feelings of the real out-of-work who had nothing but sixpence between him and starvation. However hard up Mr. Wyckoff might have been at times, he always had the consolation that if the worst came to the worst, funds awaited him at home. The ordinary workman tramping the country, said Crooks, had no such feeling of a sure foundation somewhere, and it was only when you felt—as he had often felt when tramping for work—the utter hopelessness and loneliness of things, made doubly worse by the knowledge that wife and children were suffering too, that you could enter fully into the feelings of an out-of-work.
Evidently Mr. Wyckoff had not thought of this view before, but it seemed to me to mark the all-important difference between the amateur and the real sufferer. There are some things no man can play at, and the game Mr. Wyckoff, with the best intentions in the world, and with a good deal of self-imposed suffering, tried to play was one of them. There are some experiences of life which no one can ever have for the seeking only. They come; they can never be commanded.
A Casual Labourer at the Docks—A Typical Day's Tramping for Work in London—Demoralising Effects of being Out of a Job—Emptying the Cupboard for a Starving Family—Work found at last—Doing the "Railway Tavern" a Bad Turn.
In Liverpool again the prospect was not what he had been led to believe. An odd job here and an odd job there still left him in want. At last, in response to the earnest entreaties of his wife, whom nothing could persuade to revisit Liverpool, he returned to take his chance again in London.
This time Crooks determined to try to find work outside his own trade. He went down to the Docks, where, by the aid of a friendly foreman, he got occasional jobs as a casual labourer.
The sight of so many other poor fellows struggling at the Dock Gates proved more than he could bear. He turned away from the eager mass of men one morning, resolved never to join in the demoralising scrimmage again. With a trade of his own he felt he had no right to take a job for which so many men, more helpless than himself, were daily striving.
The morning he turned away finally from the Docks was the very one on which his friend the foreman had promised him a job if he turned up at the gates by noon. The piteous appeals of the hundreds of other men for the half-dozen places offered so affected him that he hung back and sat down out of sight. He saw the foreman scan the crowd, looking for him, and then engage the number of men he wanted and go inside. Crooks went off to seek work in other quarters.
One typical day of tramping for work in London he described to me thus:—
"I first went down to the river-side at Shadwell. No work was to be had there. Then I called at another place in Limehouse. No hands wanted. So I looked in at home and got two slices of bread in paper and walked eight miles to a cooper's yard in Tottenham. All in vain. I dragged myself back to Clerkenwell. Still no luck. Then I turned towards home in despair. By the time I reached Stepney I was dead beat, so I called at a friend's in Commercial Road for a little rest. They gave me some Irish stew and twopence to ride home. I managed to walk home and gave the twopence to my wife. She needed it badly.
"That year I know I walked London until my limbs ached again. I remember returning home once by way of Tidal Basin, and turning into the Victoria Docks so utterly exhausted that I sank down on a coil of rope and slept for hours.
"Another day I tramped as far as Beckton, again to no purpose. I must have expressed keen disappointment in my face, for the good fellows in the cooperage there made a collection for me, and I came home that night with one and sevenpence.
"There are few things more demoralising to a man than to have a long spell of unemployment with day after day of fruitless searching for work. It turns scores of decent men into loafers. Many a confirmed loafer to-day is simply what he is because our present social system takes no account of a man being out of work. No one cares whether he gets a job or goes to the dogs. If he goes to the dogs the nation is the loser in a double sense. It has lost a worker, and therefore a wealth-maker. Secondly, it has to spend public money in maintaining him or his family in some kind of way, whether in workhouse, infirmary, prison or asylum.
"A man who is out of work for long nearly always degenerates. For example, if a decent fellow falls out in October and fails to get a job say by March, he loses his anxiety to work. The exposure, the insufficient food, his half-starved condition, have such a deteriorating effect upon him that he becomes indifferent whether he gets work or not. He thus passes from the unemployed state to the unemployable state. It ought to be a duty of the nation to see that a man does not become degenerate."
In his own unemployed days, he awoke every morning with the half-suppressed prayer: "God help me to-day. Where shall I look for work to-day? Where can I earn a bob?"
Actual starvation was only kept away by occasional help from his own and his wife's people and by the few shillings out-of-work pay which his Trade Union allowed him every week. Even in those days he was never so hard up as not to be ready to help others in greater privation. He was out one morning when he met a man whom he knew slightly near his own house. He could see that he looked ill and that he wanted to speak. So he went up to him and said:
"Well, mate, what's amiss?"
With tears in his eyes the man told his tale—his tale of starvation. He was afraid or ashamed to ask for relief, and there had been no food in his house for over twenty-four hours.
Crooks told the man to go home, promising to come to him presently. He himself went back to his own home and told his wife.
"Let's see what we've got," she said.
All she found was a portion of a packet of cocoa and a loaf of bread. She made a large jug of cocoa and gave her out-of-work husband that and the loaf to take round to the other man's family.
"It's all we have in the house," she said; "but we've had our breakfast, and they haven't."
Work came at last in an unexpected way. He was returning home after another empty day when he hailed a carman and asked for a lift.
"All right, mate, jump up," was the response.
As they sat chatting side by side, the carman learnt that his companion was seeking work.
"What's yer trade?" he inquired.
"A cooper."
"Why, the guv'nor wants a cooper."
So instead of dropping off at Poplar, Crooks accompanied the carman to the works, and he who had tramped the country and London so long in search of a job was at last driven triumphantly to work in a conveyance, "like a Lord Mayor or a judge," as he afterwards described it.
On the first pay day, glad at heart, he was about to start for home. The men stopped him.
"We always go to 'The Railway Tavern' on Saturdays. A decent chap keeps the 'Railway.' Come and join us."
"Not me."
"Won't the missus let you?"
"No, she won't."
Throughout the next week he was mercilessly "chipped" in the workshop and referred to as the man whose missus was waiting for him at the other end. At the close of the next week he was asked after pay-time—
"Did the missus meet you last week?"
"Yes, and she'll meet me this week too."
"Come along, old chap, no kid, have a parting glass."
"No, I can part without the glass."
At the end of the third week a fellow-workman whispered: "What time are you going home, Will?"
"Same time."
"Let me leave with you, will you?"
"Certainly. Your missus been at you?"
"Yes; the fact is, Will, I stayed drinking down here until I'd blown eight bob last week. It meant my two little girls had to go without their promised pairs of new boots."
"All right, Jim; I'll give you a whistle when it's time to go."
At the end of six weeks the "Railway" was without a customer from that shop.
That work was a stepping-stone to another and a better job at Wandsworth. His new employer urged him to leave Poplar and take a house near the works.
"But suppose you pay me off when the busy time passes?" said Crooks.
"I shan't do that," was the answer. "I like your work too well."
The day came when Crooks was offered work nearer Poplar. When he handed in his notice the Wandsworth employer became wrathful.
"Never mind, I'll come back here when I'm out of work again," said Crooks good-naturedly.
"Will you? I can promise you there'll be no more work for you here. Leaving me like this!"
"Oh, yes, there will. You haven't kept me on for love, you know. I like you, and I'll come here for another job directly I'm out of work again."
It was not to be. Crooks was never out of work again in his life.
Years later he found himself sitting next to his old Wandsworth employer at a public dinner.
"You never came back to claim that job," said the good-natured old man.
"I will when I'm out of work—as I promised."
"Ah! you don't know how often I wished you would come back. You may have talked to the men a good deal about the rights of Labour, but I never knew the rights of employers to be observed so honourably. You seemed to keep the men more sober and the work up to a higher level of efficiency than I had ever known before. That's why I wanted you to come and live near, thinking to make sure of you. That's why I was so angry when you handed in your notice."
Commending himself to his Employers—"Crooks's College"—His Style of Teaching—Specimens of his Humour—Admonitions against Drink and Betting.
With regular work well assured, Crooks was able to give more time and study to public affairs and to the Labour Movement. For an unbroken period of ten years he held a good position in a large coopering establishment in East London, where he was held in high esteem by men and masters alike, the latter more than once intimating to him they would make it worth his while to remain in their service all his life.
Crooks was always proud of the good standing he held in his employers' eyes. He knew it was due solely to his skill as a workman, for it certainly did not tell in his favour that he was beginning to be known more widely than ever as a Labour agitator. This, as a term of derision, used to be applied to all Labour leaders in the 'eighties and long afterwards. Certain writers and speakers who wished to be particularly derisive would refer to them as paid agitators. Even to this day an occasional echo of the cry reaches the ears. The offenders belong to the same school as the lady who withdrew her money from the bank after the General Election of 1906 because so many Labour members had been returned.
It was during these years of regular work that Crooks founded his famous College. He began a series of Sunday morning Labour meetings outside the East India Dock Gates, which have been continued ever since. The place in association with these Sunday meetings came to be known among Poplar workmen as Crooks's College.
Many a useful lesson has he driven home to his working class audiences at his College at the Dock Gates. He generally leads off with some little humorous fancy.
"If you fellows only have a quid a week, don't despise your share in the country's government. You needn't go the length of the Cockney taxpayer who rowed out to a man-o'-war at Portsmouth.
"'Ship ahoy!' he shouts. 'Ship ahoy!'
"At last he makes someone hear.
"'Is the captain aboard?' says he.
"'What d'yer want with the captain?' asks a bluejacket.
"'Feller,' says the taxpayer, big-like, 'just tell your captain that one of the owners of this 'ere ship wants to come aboard, and look slippy about it.'
"The captain invites him on the deck, and he goes round the ship sniffing at this and complaining about that until the ship's carpenter gets riled.
"'Don't you know that I have a share in this ship, feller?' says the taxpayer.
"'Oh, have yer?' says the carpenter, handing him a chip. 'You just take your share then, and get over the side double quick, or I shall be under the necessity of showing you the way.'"
When the East End was suffering from one of the water famines that used to be fairly common before the supply was taken over by a public authority, he never tired of calling the attention of his Dock Gate meetings to the fact that the company went on charging the same rates, whether there was water or not.
"When I got home last night, my wife said, 'Will, the water's come on at last; but just look at it—it's not fit to drink!' So I went to the tap and saw a lot of little things swimming about in the water. The wife was alarmed, and asked what we should do. 'My dear,' I replied, 'for goodness sake don't say anything about it to anybody. If this gets to the ears of the company they might charge us for the fish as well as for the water.'"
Never was instruction at college imparted with so many human touches and humorous sallies. He noticed that many of the men slunk away when the public-houses opened. He made it a practice to commence his own address a few minutes before the public-houses threw open their doors. In this way he kept most of the men about him. The waverers among them were shamed into staying by little thrusts like these:—
"Some of you chaps imagine you can only be men by taking the gargle. If you could see yourselves sometimes after you've been indulging you would jolly soon change your opinion. Perhaps you've heard of the man who asked for a ticket at the railway junction.
"'What station?' asked the booking clerk.
"'What stations have you got?' he stammered, clinging to the ledge for support.
"But even that chap was not so bad as the railway guard who went home a bit elevated. He saw the cat lying on the hearthrug, and chucked it in the oven, slamming the door and yelling, 'Take yer seats for Nottingham.'
"I've heard men say they only take it because the doctor orders it. One of these chaps was caught having secret nips of whiskey. 'Bless yer heart!' he says. 'Don't yer know I has ter take it for me health? I suffers wiv tape worms.'
"One of the chief reasons some of you chaps booze is because you are too sociable-like in standing treat. A rattling boozer was once screwed up to the point of signing the pledge. He writes his name, puts his hand in his pocket, and asks how much?
"'Nothing to pay,' says the young lady, smiling.
"'What? Nothing to pay?' he repeats in amazement. 'Do I get it for nothing? Do you mean to say that I, a working man, am offered something for nothing?'
"'Nothing to pay,' repeats the young lady.
"'Well, 'pon my honour, this is the first time I've ever got anything for nothing. Come and have a drink.'"
"Some of you fellows who live on the Isle of Dogs have seen the allotment system started there. I asked one of the publicans of the neighbourhood why he complained about the allotments. 'Why,' said he, 'the men used to come in and have a gargle on Saturday afternoons, but now they go and dig clay.'
"But ask the men's wives what they say about the allotments, and you will hear a different story. The men now have time not only to cultivate their plots, but to look after their families.
"How many of our poor women who give way to drink can trace their descent to the neglect of the men who married them. It may be hard to be burdened with a drunken wife, but often enough a good deal of the fault is on the side of the husband because of his early neglect. He should have strengthened her. He should have shared her sorrows as well as her joys. We ought not to leave a woman to bear all her own burdens. Many a young wife breaks down because of early neglect at a time when she ought to be built up, when it would be real manliness on the husband's part to put up with a little trouble for her sake.
"Some of you giggle when you see a man nursing a baby in long clothes. What is there to giggle at? I carried a baby in long clothes up the stairs of Shadwell Station the other day, because I saw it was too much for the poor mother who was struggling along.
"'Here,' I said, 'hand it over; I'm used to that sort of job.'
"My wife heard of it before I got home, and she said to those who told her, 'Well, if the woman didn't thank him, I shall when he comes home.'
"Perhaps you thought I looked a fool clambering up the stairs with a baby in long clothes. I don't think so. I satisfied myself by doing what evidently wanted doing."
He hurried away from his college by the Dock Gates one Sunday morning to keep an appointment to address the Isle of Dogs Progressive Club. He found less than a dozen men in the lecture hall, while the bar and the billiard room were crowded. He walked out without a word and sat down in the club garden.
"This is all right. I'm enjoying myself perfectly here," he told the bewildered secretary. "If they prefer to play at billiards and to drink beer, let them. I am quite content to enjoy this garden."
In ten minutes time not a man remained in the bar or billiard room. The lecture hall was filled.
"We deserve your reproach, Will," shouted someone from the audience when at last he stepped on to the platform.
If he was severe on drink he was more severe on betting.
"Many a man here," he told one of his Sunday morning audiences at the Dock Gates, "can tell me the pedigree of half-a-dozen race-horses. It shows you can think if you like. But that kind of thinking is what I call thinking off-side."
Crooks had a hundred happy illustrations for urging upon his working-class hearers the duty of citizenship and co-operation.
"We chaps are like the old lady's cow that gave a good pail of milk regular, but often kicked it over. We have built up trade unions and friendly societies and co-operative societies that stand for the best working class organisations in the world. But we have a weakness for kicking the pail over. How? Because we are constantly spoiling our own good work by allowing other classes to do all the governing of the country.
"It reminds me of a group of boys I saw coming home from a football match.
"'How did yer get on?' they were asked by other lads in the street.
"'Won.'
"'How many?'
"'Seven to nothing.'
"'Been playing a blind school?'"
And then Crooks would go on: "Well, we workers have been the blind school, and we have been allowing other classes to score goals against us all the time. If we haven't been blind we've certainly been blindfold. Tear the bandage off your eyes. Be men."
Behind all his banter there was a serious message in all his Sunday morning addresses.
"Labour may be the new force by which God is going to help forward the regeneration of the world," he told his hearers. "Heaven knows we need a little more earnestness in our national life to-day, and if the best-born cannot give it, the so-called base-born may. We common people have done it before. Who knows but what it is God's will that we should do it again? We can all afford to laugh at that dear lady, bless her, who could not bear the idea that some of the Apostles were fishermen, and who solemnly asked her minister whether there was not some authority for believing that they were owners of smacks.
"We working men are gaining power. Let us see that we also gain knowledge to use the power, not to abuse it. Parliament is supposed to protect the weak against the strong. It doesn't pan out like that. After all these years of popular education, isn't it about time we taught the dialectical champions in the House of Commons that the people are the creators of Parliament, and that we demand as its creators that Parliament should be at the service of the people and all the people, instead of at the service of the powerful and the wealthy?
"But don't think that Parliament and municipality can do everything. They are not going to make the world perfect. What they can do and what we should insist on their doing is to make it easier to do right and more difficult to do wrong. They can deal with those 'who turn aside the needy from judgment and take away the right of the poor of My people,' but they cannot make good men and good women. That must depend upon ourselves."
That College at the Dock Gates can point to some notable achievements. The Blackwall Tunnel, which has its entrance at the very spot where the meetings take place, was one of the earliest things the College agitated for. Between the dock wall and the tunnel is a large municipal gymnasium and recreation ground, the scheme for which was first unfolded by Crooks at the College, when the ground was a waste and the children were without play-places.
Crooks's College began the campaign for a free library. The well-equipped public library that now stands in the High Street was its first achievement. The College founded the Poplar Labour League, which first introduced Crooks to public life. Crooks's College first created the demand for a technical institute for Poplar. The institute is now an accomplished fact, comprising the best municipal school of marine engineering in the country. Crooks's College started the campaign for the footway tunnel under the Thames between the Isle of Dogs and Greenwich, which now serves the daily convenience of thousands of work-people. Crooks's College began that policy of humane treatment of workhouse inmates which had a great deal to do with improved administration of the Poor Law all over the country. Crooks's College was the originator of the farm colony system in this country. Crooks's College stood out for the welfare of Poor Law children. Crooks's College broke down the corrupt practices on three of the old municipal authorities in Poplar.
And perhaps the greatest occasion in the history of the College at the Dock Gates was that Sunday morning in June, 1906, that followed the opening of the Local Government Board Inquiry into the administration of the guardians. For the week previously the Press and the local Municipal Alliance had done their best to poison the mind of Poplar against its long-trusted Labour man.
How would the College fare now? The attendance at the Dock Gates that morning was one of the largest on record. Thousands of ratepayers were there, and when Crooks walked through their ranks to the little portable rostrum he had one of the great receptions of his life. He urged them not to be discouraged because their cause seemed to be under a cloud, but to strengthen his hands in maintaining the integrity of public life and to possess themselves in quietness, confident that before long the accused would become the accusers.