CHAPTER XIV THE MAN WHO FED THE POOR

Chairman of the Poplar Board of Guardians—Bumbledom Dethroned—Paupers' Garb Abolished—Two Presidents of the Local Government Board Approve Crooks's Policy.

This, then, was the state of the workhouse when Crooks went on the Board. It was soon evident that a strong man had arrived. He whom some of the Guardians at first described as "a ranter from the Labour mob" soon proved himself the best administrator among them.

Within five years of his election he was made Chairman. The Board insisted on his retaining the chair for ten consecutive years. During that time he wrought out of the shame and degradation he found in the workhouse a system of order and decency and humane administration that for a long time made the Poplar Union a model among Poor Law authorities, and one frequently recommended by the Local Government Board.

Of course he made enemies. Some of the old Guardians whom he had turned out of public life nursed their resentment in secret. Others joined them, including contractors who had fared lavishly under the old régime. Presently a Municipal Alliance was formed, and though it could do nothing against Crooks at the poll, since the ratepayers would persist in placing him at the top, it found other methods of attacking him, of which more hereafter.

One of the first things he aimed at was a change in the character both of officers and of Guardians. He saw no hope for the poor under the old rulers. At each succeeding election his opposition brought about the defeat of the worst of them.

The officers could not be dealt with so publicly. Some of the officers in the infirmary, addicted to drunkenness, were able to defy the Guardians for an obvious reason. It was one of their duties to take whisky and champagne into the infirmary for the delectation of some of the Guardians, whom a billiard table often detained into the early hours. Crooks and Lansbury raised such indignation in the district as to make it impossible for this state of things to continue.

In 1894 the Master and Matron resigned. Gradually the old school of workhouse officials who had run the place as they liked were weeded out. A more intelligent, more sympathetic, better disciplined staff grew up in their place. Bumbledom was dethroned. The sick were nursed better. The inmates were clothed better. All, both old and young, were fed better.

The tell-tale pauper's garb disappeared altogether. When the old people walked out they were no longer branded by their dress. They wore simple, homely garments. They all rejoiced in the change save a few like the old woman Crooks came across one afternoon on her day out. She was looking clean and comfortable, and he asked how she liked the new clothes.

"Not at all, Mr. Crooks. Nobody thinks you come from the workhouse now, so they don't give you anything."

His greatest reform had reference to the food. "Skilly" went the way of "greasy water." Good plain wholesome meals appeared on the tables.

"And became more expensive," say the critics.

"Yes," Crooks retorts; "but to economise on the stomachs of the poor is false economy. If it's only cheapness you want, why don't you set up the lethal chamber for the old people? That would be the cheapest thing of all."

Let us see what he actually gave these people to eat, since for feeding the poor he was afterwards called to the bar of public opinion.

First he developed the system of bread-baking in the workhouse, in order to get better and cheaper bread than was being supplied under contract from outside. Under the direction of one or two skilled bakers, the work provided many of the inmates with pleasant and useful occupation. They made all the bread required in the workhouse for both officers and inmates, all the bread required in the children's schools, all the loaves given away as out-relief.

Instead of being likened to india-rubber, as it used to be in the old days, the bread now came to be described by the Daily Mail as equal to what could be obtained in the best restaurants in the West-End. Yet they were making this bread in the workhouse cheaper than it was possible to buy ordinary bread outside.

And then, for the benefit of the infirm old folk, Crooks persuaded the Guardians to substitute butter for margarine, and fresh meat for the cheap stale stuff so often supplied. He held out for milk that had not been skimmed, and for tea and coffee that had not been adulterated. He even risked his reputation by allowing the aged women to put sugar in their tea themselves, and the old men to smoke an occasional pipe of tobacco.

Rumours of this new way of feeding the workhouse poor reached the austere Local Government Board. First it sent down its inspectors, and then the President himself appeared in person. And Mr. Chaplin saw that it was good, and told other Boards to do likewise. He issued a circular to the Guardians of the country recommending all that Poplar had introduced. More, he proposed that for deserving old people over sixty-four years of age "the supply of tobacco, dry tea, and sugar be made compulsory."

This humane order of things, you may be sure, did not commend itself to all Guardian Boards; and when later there came further instructions from headquarters that ailing inmates might be allowed "medical comforts," the revolt materialised. A deputation of Guardians went to Whitehall to try to argue the President into a harder heart. Crooks and Lansbury were there to uphold the new system. Mr. Walter Long had succeeded Mr. Chaplin then. He listened patiently to ingenious speeches in which honourable gentlemen tried to show that it was from no lack of love for the poor they had not carried out the new dietary scale, but——

"Gentlemen," Mr. Long interrupted at last, "am I to understand you do not desire to feed your poor people properly?"

Then all with one accord began to make excuse. It was the difficulty of book-keeping, they said. It appeared they were prepared to stint the poor rather than add to the book-keeping.

From that day an improved dietary scale was introduced into our workhouses. The man who fed the poor in Poplar saw the workhouse poor of the kingdom better fed in consequence.

What kind of food was it that Poplar dared to give to the poor? Those "luxuries for paupers" down at Poplar, about which the world was to hear so much, what were they? A working-man had appeared, and after years of unwearied well-doing had got rid of "skilly" and "greasy water," substituting, with the approval of two Presidents of the Local Government Board, the following simple articles of food.

Observe the list carefully, for the kinds and quantities of food here set out were precisely those supplied to the able-bodied inmates during the outcry that arose over "paupers' luxuries" at the time of the Local Government Board Inquiry in 1906. The list is the official return of the food supplied in one week to each inmate.

A MAN'S DIET FOR A WEEK.

(Cost, 4s. 2d.)

A WOMAN'S DIET FOR A WEEK.

(Cost, 4s.)

When you read down that list and think of the scare headlines that appeared in London daily papers during the Inquiry—"Splendid Paupers," "Luxuries for Paupers," "A Pauper's Paradise"—you may well ask, Are we living in bountiful England? Or have we fallen upon an England of meagre diet and mean men, an England that whines like a miser when called upon to feed on homely fare its broken-down veterans of industry?

Dickens is dead, else would he have shown us Bumble reincarnated in the editors of certain London newspapers.

CHAPTER XV TURNING WORKHOUSE CHILDREN INTO USEFUL CITIZENS

A Home for Little "Ins-and-Outs"—Technical Education for Workhouse Children—A Good Report for the Forest Gate Schools—Trophies won by Scholars—The Children's Pat-a-Cakes.

After he had fed the old people and clothed the old people, and in other ways brought into their darkened lives a little good cheer, Crooks turned his care upon the workhouse children.

The Guardians' school at Forest Gate lay four miles from the Union buildings at Poplar. With five or six hundred children always under training in the school there still remained varying batches of neglected little people in the workhouse. The greater number of these belonged to parents who came into the House for short periods only.

These little "ins-and-outs" were getting no schooling and no training save the training that fitted them for pauperism. What to do with them had long been a perplexing problem. If they were sent to Forest Gate one day their parents in the workhouse could demand them back the next day and take their discharge, even though they and their children turned up at the gates for re-admission within the next twenty-four hours.

When Crooks proposed the simple expedient of sending these children to the surrounding day-schools everybody seemed amazed.

The idea had never been heard of before. The London School Board of the day did not take kindly to it at all. It poured cold water on the project at first. The neighbouring schools were nearly all full, and the Board thought it would hear no more of the matter by suggesting that if the Guardians could find vacant places they were at liberty of course to send the children.

Crooks framed an answering letter that it was the School Board's duty to find the places, and that, come what would, the Guardians were determined to send the children to the day schools.

Soon places were found for all. The little people who, through neglect and idleness in the workhouse, had been getting steeped in pauperism, were now dressed in non-institution clothes, and they went to and from the neighbouring schools, playing on the way like any other children.

That was the beginning of a system destined to have a far-reaching effect on Poor Law children all over the country. Other Unions, faced with the same problem, seeing how well it had been dealt with at Poplar, went and did likewise.

The Labour Guardian did not rest there. The children were a great deal better for coming in daily contact with the outside world, but much of the good work was undone by their having to spend every night in the workhouse. He wanted to keep them away altogether from its contaminating influence. He persuaded the Guardians to purchase a large dwelling house about a quarter of a mile away from the workhouse. This became a real home for the children. There they are brought up and regularly sent to the public day schools outside, entirely free from workhouse surroundings.

So long as the mark of the workhouse clings to children, so long, says Crooks, will children cling to the workhouse. That is what makes him so keen in getting rid of the institution dress and of everything else likely to brand a child.

He helped to banish all that suggested pauperism from the Forest Gate School. The children were educated and grew up, not like workhouse children, as before, but like the children of working parents. With what result? Marked out in their childhood as being "from the workhouse," they often bore the stamp all their life and ended up as workhouse inmates in their manhood and womanhood. Under the new system, they were made to feel like ordinary working-class children. They grew up like them, becoming ordinary working-men and working-women themselves; so that the Poor Law knew them no longer.

"If I can't appeal to your moral sense, let me appeal to your pocket," Crooks once remarked at a Guildhall Poor Law Conference. "Surely it is far cheaper to be generous in training Poor Law children to take their place in life as useful citizens than it is to give the children a niggardly training and a branded career. This latter way soon lands them in the workhouse again, to be kept out of the rates for the rest of their lives."

How far the principle was carried out at Forest Gate may be judged from the report made by Mr. Dugard, H.M. Inspector of Schools, after one of his visits. Thus:—

There is very little (if any) of the institution mark among the children.... Both boys' and girls' schools are in a highly satisfactory state, showing increased efficiency, with increased intelligence on the part of the children.... They compare very favourably with the best elementary schools.

In all that related to games and healthful recreation Crooks agreed in giving the scholars the fullest facilities. The lads were encouraged to send their football and cricket teams to play other schools. The girls developed under drill and gymnastic training, and became proficient swimmers.

In fact, the scholars at Forest Gate began to count for something. They learnt to trust each other and to rely upon themselves. They grew in hope and courage. They learnt to walk honourably before all men. In consequence, thousands of them have become merged in the great working world outside, self-respecting men and women.

I met Crooks looking elated one evening, and he told me he had just come from the Poor Law schools' swimming competition at Westminster baths.

"There were three trophies," he said. "The first, the London Shield, was for boys. Poplar won that with 85 marks, five more than the next best. The second, the Portsmouth Shield, was for girls, with a Portsmouth school competing. Our Poplar girls won that with 65 marks, the two next schools getting only 35 each. The third trophy, the Whitehall Shield, for the school as a whole with the highest number of marks, was also won by Poplar. I feel as pleased as though I'd done it myself."

The best administration in an out-of-date building is always hampered. Forest Gate belonged to the old order of Poor Law schools known as barrack buildings. Although the Guardians made the very best of the school, there were structural defects that hindered the work seriously. It was therefore decided to build cottage homes at Shenfield in Essex, where a special effort is being made to train the girls as well as the boys in rural pursuits in order to keep them out of the overcrowded cities.

The Parliamentary Committee on Poor Law Schools that sat in 1896 invited Crooks to give evidence. Many of the things he urged were included in the Committee's recommendations. Among them was the extension of the full benefit of the Education Act and the Technical Education Acts to all Poor Law children.

"The wine and spirit dues that provide the technical education grants," he told the committee, "might be said to belong to Poor Law children by right, because it is always being urged that it is owing to drunken parents that these children get into the workhouse. I don't believe it, but there is the claim."

At that time the Poor Law schools received no benefits in the way of scholarships or technical education grants. It was largely due to his advocacy that the scholars were at last given the same opportunities as other children. One of the great moments of his life was when he opened a letter from the headmaster at the Hunslet Poor Law school, telling him that "in consequence of what you have done, one of our boys has just taken a County Scholarship—the first Poor Law child to benefit under the Technical Education Acts."

Crooks would like to go much further. Until Poor Law children are taken entirely away from the control of Guardians he will never be satisfied. Why should the authority that looks after workhouses for the old and infirm be entrusted with the task of training the young? The two duties lie as far apart as East from West. He would place these children wholly under the education authority.

No matter where, he is always ready to put in a word for Poor Law children on the least opportunity. It was news to his colleagues on the London County Council when, in the course of a debate in the summer of 1894, he told of his own experience in a Poor Law school. He seems to have made a deep impression by his speech on that occasion, judging by the following comment made shortly afterwards by the Municipal Journal;—

Those who heard Mr. Crooks's speech in the Council Chamber, when the subject of the training of Poor Law children came up on a side issue, will not readily forget it. One of the daily papers, in its admiration the next day, declared it to be the best speech heard at the Council. Be that as it may, the speech, coming spontaneously with the pent-up indignation of a soul that had suffered sorely from a pernicious system, was a marvellous one, producing a marvellous effect. Councillors in the front benches turned round and visitors in the gallery stretched forward to catch a glimpse of the short dark figure on the Labour bench pleading so powerfully for the children of the poor.

Nor had he been in the House of Commons long before his voice was heard there on behalf of workhouse children. Speaking in a debate in 1903 on the various methods of dealing with these children, he said:—

At one time there was no stronger advocate of boarding-out than myself. It is an ideal system in theory, but its success by practical application has yet to be proved. Many requests are made by country people to be allowed to adopt children on charitable grounds, but when inquiries come to be made into the incomes of these people the Guardians generally find it is hoped to make a profit out of the children. I have visited a village where a widow boarded four children—two more than the law allows. For these children she was paid sixteen shillings a week. She lived in a district where the labourer's wages were only eleven shillings.

In regard to another case I personally investigated, I asked how the boy was getting on.

"Oh, all right; but he is growing so big and eats such a lot that I wish you would take him away and send me a smaller boy."

The boarded-out children, so far from losing the pauper taint, are more frequently known by the name of the Union from which they come than by their own names. In fact, in some villages, I found "boarding-out" a staple industry. Boarding-out is all right in good homes; the difficulty is to find good homes.

Not long after he made this speech, there was an outcry in a section of the Press over "an amazing example of extravagance" at Poplar. It appeared in the form of a letter from a correspondent. The correspondent—who turned out to be a member of a firm of contractors—waxed virtuously indignant over the Guardians' tenders because they included, he alleged, supplies of luxuries for paupers. The so-called luxuries for the most part proved to be medical comforts ordered by the doctor for the ailing. Among the other items was 1 cwt. of pat-a-cake biscuits, and these were singled out specially as a specimen of how the workhouse inmates were pampered.

I met Crooks in the Lobby of the House of Commons at the time of the outcry, and asked what he thought of it all.

"Perfectly true," he said. "We in Poplar are guilty of the great crime of inviting tenders for the supply of a few pat-a-cakes; but our horrified critics are in error in assuming that the pat-a-cakes are for the workhouse inmates. They are for the children. We order 1 cwt. for the half-year, which I believe works out at the rate of a cake for each child about once a week. There's extravagance for you! Isn't it scandalous? Just imagine our kiddies in the workhouse school getting a whole pat-a-cake to eat!

"That's not the worst of it. Those youngsters of ours, not content with getting an occasional pat-a-cake, have actually been overheard to sing the nursery rhyme on the subject. We shall be having a Local Government Board inspector sent down to stop it if it leaks out. You should hear the little ones holding forth!

"The youngsters lie awake at nights, wondering when their turn will come again to have a farthing pat-a-cake. One of the little girls came running up to me in the playground the other day, exclaiming: 'Oh, Mr. Crooks, what do you think? I had a pat-a-cake for tea last Sunday. They promised it to us the day before, and I was so pleased when I went to bed that night that I nearly forgot to go to sleep.'"

CHAPTER XVI ON THE METROPOLITAN ASYLUMS BOARD

Mr. Chaplin's Humane Circular to Poor Law Guardians—Crooks Appointed a Member of the Metropolitan Asylums Board—Chairman of the Children's Committee—His Knack of Getting His Own Way—Reorganising the Labour Conditions of the Board's Workmen.

We have seen that the policy of Poor Law reform which Crooks was carrying out at Poplar won the good-will of the Local Government Board. Soon after Mr. Henry Chaplin took his seat in Lord Salisbury's Cabinet of 1895 he sent for Crooks, and the two spent a whole morning discussing the weak points in our Poor Law system. Mr. Chaplin made many notes during the conversation, and at parting good-naturedly remarked that Crooks had given him enough work to occupy the next two or three years.

Shortly afterwards, the Minister and the Labour man made a personal investigation of Poplar and other East-End workhouses and infirmaries. The visit to each institution was a surprise one. When the two men entered the children's ward of the Mile End workhouse, they found the nurses absent and the children screaming. In about half a minute Crooks had all the children laughing.

"What's the secret of your magic?" asked the President of the Local Government Board.

"It comes natural when you are used to them," said Crooks.

As already shown, Mr. Chaplin declared emphatically for the Poplar policy. His notable circular to Poor Law Guardians, for which as President of the Local Government Board he will perhaps be best remembered, gave the support of the Government of the day to that policy of humane administration of the Poor Law which Crooks had established at Poplar. It laid down three principles which the Labour man had urged upon the President at their first meeting:—

1. Children to be entirely removed from association with the workhouse and workhouse surroundings.

2. Old people of good character who have relatives or friends outside not to be forced into the workhouse, but to be given adequate out-relief.

3. Old people in the workhouse of good behaviour to be provided with additional comforts.

Mr. Chaplin further showed his confidence in the Labour Chairman of the Poplar Guardians by inviting him to become one of the Local Government Board's representatives on the Metropolitan Asylums Board. The work meant a heavy addition to Crooks's public duties, with the London County Council and the Poplar Guardians demanding so much of his time. There was no hesitation, however, in accepting the new office when he found it afforded further opportunities to serve the afflicted poor and help neglected children. Mr. Chaplin's successor at the Local Government Board, Mr. Walter Long, twice re-nominated Crooks to the same position.

Although the Asylums Board comes but little before public notice, except in times of epidemic, it has far-reaching powers. It is the largest hospital authority that any country can show. It has fourteen infectious disease hospitals with accommodation for nearly seven thousand people. It maintains six thousand imbecile patients in four asylums. It looks after the welfare of several hundred boys on a Thames training-ship, and of some two thousand children in various homes.

The members, or "managers," as they are called, are all nominated either by London Boards of Guardians or by the Local Government Board. An indirectly elected body is the last that expects to see a representative of Labour. Imagine, therefore, the amazement of this somewhat select company when, in May, 1898, a Labour man walked into their midst as the nominee of a Conservative Cabinet Minister.

He was eyed at first with suspicion. The suspicion soon changed to curiosity. The Labour man never spoke. The managers expected a torrent of loud criticism, and here was immovable silence. For the first five months Crooks never opened his mouth at the Board meetings.

"What's your game?" asked a friendly member in an aside one afternoon.

"I'm learning the business," was the quiet reply. "This is an old established Board with notions of its own, and it's not going to be dictated to by new-comers. But you wait, my friend, and you'll find before long I'll be getting my own way in everything here."

So it proved. During the two or three years that he was Chairman of the Children's Committee and of a special committee that reorganised the hours and wages of the Board's large staff, he never lost a single recommendation he brought before the Board.

"How is it, Mr. Crooks, that whatever you ask this Board for you always get?" he was once asked by Sir Edwin Galsworthy, for many years the Board's Chairman.

Crooks returned the sally that it was because he was always right. His real secret was—convert the whole of your committee. A majority vote in committee never satisfied him. Nothing short of the support of every single member would suffice. Many times in committee has he adjourned the discussion rather than snatch a bare majority.

"Let's take it home with us," he would say jocularly from the chair. "Perhaps after a week's thought you'll all come back converted to my view. If not, then you must come better prepared to convince me that I am wrong than you are now."

The difficult and delicate work of reorganising the Labour conditions of the Board's workmen and attendants was at last brought to a triumph. He came out of the chair with the goodwill of the whole staff and of the entire Board of Managers. His colleagues included large employers of labour, eminent medical men, and retired army and navy officers. All agreed that he had settled for them Labour difficulties which had created nothing but confusion and perplexity before.

Working on his invariable rule that it pays best in every department of work to observe fair conditions, he scored a signal success on the very body where before his coming Labour members were regarded as revolutionaries. As at Blackwall Tunnel, he gained his points without losing the trust or friendship of the employers of labour.

The task put his administrative ability to a test which only able statesmen can stand. The rare faculty he has of obtaining the maximum of reform out of existing agencies carried him safely over every shoal.

Crooks is every inch an Englishman as well as every inch a Labour member. He applies his Labour principles on typical English lines; hence his success among all bodies of Englishmen, no matter what their party or class.

Few men have higher ideals or feel more deeply the injustice of much in our present-day social system, but Crooks recognises that the only way to get reform is to put your hand to the plough with things as they are, and not wait for the millennium before getting to work.

He sees the crooked things of this life as keenly as anyone, but because the things cannot be put wholly straight in his own day he does not hold aloof. He does what he can in the living present to put them as nearly straight as existing machinery makes possible, trusting that the next or some succeeding generation will continue the work until the things are put perfectly straight at last.

CHAPTER XVII A BAD BOYS' ADVOCATE

Efforts on behalf of Diseased and Mentally-deficient Children—Altering the Law in Six Weeks—Establishing Remand Homes for First Offenders—London's Vagrant Child-Life—Reformatory and Industrial Schools—The Boy who Sat on the Fence—Theft of a Donkey and Barrow—Lads who want Mothering.

Soon the call of the children reached his ears again.

He had barely finished reorganising the labour conditions on the Asylums Board when he undertook a great task in the interests of the two thousand children who had just been placed under the Board's care. These children were all sufferers from some physical or mental trouble, and it was because they required special treatment that a Parliamentary Committee had recommended that they be transferred from the London Guardians to the Asylums Board.

A comprehensive scheme had to be framed by the Board for looking after its new charges. Crooks gave three hard years to these children's well-being. During that time, as Chairman of the Children's Committee, he wrought some remarkable changes in the lot of the diseased and mentally-deficient little people handed over to the Board's keeping.

New homes were set up in the country and at the seaside for the afflicted and convalescent children. The little people's meals were made pleasant, their clothes deprived of the institutional taint. They were free to be merry, and their laughter was better medicine than the doctor's.

The sad lot of the mentally-deficient children, some of them little better than imbeciles, appealed greatly to the strong, clear-brained Labour man from Poplar. There were three or four hundred of these, all from London workhouses, the sight of whom so often reminded Crooks of the idiot boy who slept in his dormitory when he, as a child, was an inmate at Poplar.

The Asylums Board was not allowed to keep these mentally-deficient boys and girls after sixteen years of age. The children had thus to be sent away only half trained, often direct to the workhouse again, from which they never emerged unless to be taken to an institution more hopeless still.

Crooks conceived the idea that if the Board kept these luckless little people until they completed their twenty-first year it might be possible to give them such a training as would enable them to look after themselves outside, and live useful lives, instead of being a life-burden to the State and of no use to anyone. The Local Government Board agreed, and the managers now train these youthful charges till they reach manhood and womanhood.

The experiment has already justified itself. Many a youth and maid who would have been left in mental darkness all their lives have by this longer period of training gained a glimmering of light. Their limited intelligence has been sufficiently developed to enable them to assist at earning their own living and to look after themselves.

Other children under the Board's care might be said to suffer from an excess rather than from a lack of intelligence. On the Asylums Board they are known as remand children. In the police courts they are known as first offenders. They consist of boys and girls who, having been charged before a magistrate with offences which render them liable to be sent to an industrial or a reformatory school, get remanded for inquiries.

At one time, pending the inquiries, these youthful offenders used to be detained in prison. When Crooks joined the Asylums Board they had been transferred to the workhouse. The influence for evil was little better in the one place than in the other. The one introduced them to criminality, the other to pauperism.

"These children want keeping as far as possible from both prison and workhouse," argued Crooks with his colleagues. "We ought to put them in small homes and give them school-time and playtime, like other children, until their cases come before the magistrate again."

So two or three dwelling-houses were taken in different quarters of London and adapted as Remand Homes. Crooks headed a deputation from the Asylums Board to the London magistrates at Bow Street to urge them in future to commit all remand children to the Homes. The magistrates were sympathetic enough, but showed it was their duty to carry out the law, and that the law clearly laid it down that youthful offenders under remand must be sent to the workhouse.

"We'll alter the law, then," was Crooks's reply. "For I'm determined these youngsters shall no longer be sent to the workhouse."

In the record time of six weeks the law was altered. It sounds miraculous to those who know the ways of Whitehall. Crooks's resource proved more than equal to red-tapeism.

First the Asylums Board wrote to the Home Office. Then the Home Office sent the usual evasive reply. The correspondence would have gone on indefinitely had not Crooks waited on the Home Secretary in person.

As the Labour man expected, Mr. Ritchie knew nothing about the matter, the Home Office officials having settled it without consulting the Secretary of State. Always willing to co-operate in anything that promised to keep children away from the workhouse, Mr. Ritchie asked Crooks what he had to suggest. The visitor pointed out that the Juvenile Offenders' Bill was at that very moment before Parliament, and that the insertion in that measure of an additional clause of half a dozen lines only would keep remand children away from the workhouse for all time. The Home Secretary seized the idea at once, and Crooks's suggestion became law the following month.

The first of the Remand Homes was opened at Pentonville Road for the convenience of children charged at the police courts of North London and the East-End. Sometimes as many as fifty young offenders, boys and girls, can be seen there at the same time.

Instead of loafing about the workhouse, as before, and becoming inured to pauper surroundings, they are now taught as in a day school. They have play in the open air and recreation indoors in the way of games and books. Moreover, the girls are taught to sew and knit, the boys instructed in manual work. Though seldom there more than a fortnight before being taken back to the police court, they go away cleaner, better informed, not without hope. And the magistrates now feel justified in sending about 80 per cent. of them back to their parents.

A visit to this Remand Home at Pentonville will teach you disquieting truths about the vagrant child-life of London. These wayward youngsters tell their tales with startling frankness.

That bright-faced lad of twelve—why is he here?

"Stealing," he answers us.

"What did you steal?"

"Some stockings outside a shop."

"Why?"

"To get money for sweets."

"Where did you sell the stockings?"

"In a pub."

"Have you ever stolen before?"

"Yes."

"How often?"

"A good many times, but never been caught before."

Two of the oldest lads approached, and we questioned them.

"I was took up for begging," said No. 1. "But I weren't begging—on'y looking for work."

"Where?"

"At King's Cross—me and him," pointing to his neighbour. "We was offering to carry people's bags when the copper come and took us up."

The teacher explained that boys soliciting passengers around the big railway stations were becoming such a nuisance that the police sometimes had to take them into custody.

"We didn't get hold of a man's arm and say, 'Give us threepence,' as the copper said," the youthful informant went on. "We was on'y looking for work."

"How long have you been looking for this kind of work?"

"We goes an' looks for it every day," said No. 2 (in shirt sleeves, like his pal). "And sometimes we makes half a crown, and sometimes three shillings a day, carrying gentlemen's bags. I've been a-doing of it five months. It pays better than reg'lar work, where I used to make ten shillings a week."

No. 1 could not forget his grievance against the police.

"Puts us in the cell all night," he interposed, "and gives us coffee and two thick slices of bread for supper. And takes us in a bumpy ole van to the police court in the morning along of a lot of others. Then we was sent here, where we has to write and read—just like going back to school again."

Another lad was there for "stopping out all night," according to his own rendering. When we asked "Why?" the answer came prompt enough, "'Cos I likes it."

"How many nights did you stay out?"

"Me and them," indicating others higher up the room, "we slept behind the fire station four nights and then went home."

"What happened then?"

"Mother said nofink, but she got a stick——"

He paused sufficiently long for us to take the sequel for granted, then added quietly:—

"So I stopped out the next night."

"And then?"

"Then the copper came."

Yes, they need "homes," indeed, these wayward youngsters, ensnared by the temptations of London's streets. Some are here for gambling in the gutter, many for playing truant, some for sleeping out, and others for felony. Generally they are sent home if it be a first offence, or to a reformatory if the case be a bad one.

There are girls here, too. What of them?

"Me and my sister was taken up by the police for sleeping on a doorstep," said one sad-eyed little maid in a blue frock.

"Why on a doorstep?"

"Father left us, and when mother died the landlord turned us out."

True enough, and the sisters will be sent to a girls' home shortly.

That is the best that can be done for the girls, especially the large number that are brought away from houses of ill-repute.

The boys who get committed to reformatories still find themselves under Crooks's eye. While the Asylums Board looks after them when under remand, the London County Council becomes responsible once the lads are committed. This dual control Crooks is trying to get rid of, in the hope that the duty will be given wholly into the hands of one authority.

For several years he was a member and at one time Chairman of the L.C.C. Committee that looks after the industrial and reformatory schools. The committee meets at Feltham, where is the largest of the institutions under its charge. It was rare for Crooks to be absent during his membership of the committee.

He and Colonel Rotton, who was also Chairman for a period, could generally make the lads on arrival understand them without much parleying. Every lad, on being committed to the school by a magistrate, had to appear before the committee. Here are some characteristic dialogues:—

"Well, my boy, what are you here for?"

"Burglary." The burglar was nine years of age.

"Well, you can't be a burglar here, but you can be a good lad. Everyone can be a good lad here if he likes. If he doesn't like we make him. What will you do?"

"I fink I'll like, sir."

Generally the lads do not admit their offence so readily. They are not always so frank as you find them in the Remand Homes. Most of them, when before the Committee, find excuses, like the boy who was caught with others stealing in a railway goods yard.

"Please, sir, it weren't me at all."

"We always get the wrong boy. What are you supposed to be here for?"

"Fieving, sir. But I didn't do it. I were on'y sitting on the fence."

"Then let this be a lesson to you. Never sit on the fence. Do you know the Ten Commandments?"

"No, sir."

"Can you say the Lord's Prayer?"

"No; we wasn't taught it at the school wot I used to go to."

"But you didn't go to school."

"The boy wot did go told me."

"Well, we'll see to it that you do go to school now."

Another new-comer excused himself more ingeniously:—"Me and my mate we found a donkey and barrer at Covent Garden. We saw a man's name on the barrer, and fought if we went off wif the donkey we would git a shilling the next day for taking it back to him. But a copper stopped us as we was leading the donkey over Waterloo Bridge. So we hadn't a chance to take it back, as we was going to."

"Very well, you must stay with us until you learn that donkeys in barrows are not necessarily lost."

Crooks believed in giving the boys plenty of play and plenty of work. Nearly all their offences he believed to be due to excess of vitality. They had never had a chance of working it off in a proper way before. Besides, many of the lads needed mothering. It was always his regret that he could not persuade his colleagues on the Committee to adopt a system he found in vogue in the Moss Hill industrial school in Glasgow. When visiting that institution he was agreeably surprised to find about a dozen "mothers" on the staff. If a lad tore his coat or pulled off a button, he knew which particular "mother" to run to in order to be patched up.

"I have always said, and shall always continue to say," he states, "that reformatory schools ought to be made a State charge entirely. If there is any part of the community that can be called a national debt, it is this class of poor, misguided lads who, if they were properly cared for, would soon become a valuable national asset."

CHAPTER XVIII PROUD OF THE POOR

The Handy Man of Poplar—Peacemaker among his Neighbours—Piloting the Author of "In His Steps" through the Slums—Difference between a Street Arab and a Prince—Object Lesson for a Professor of Political Economy—How the Poor help the Poor.

During these years the saying grew up among his neighbours that nothing happens in Poplar without someone running to Will Crooks about it. His little house at 28, Northumberland Street, to the north of East India Dock Road, was the gathering ground of all kinds of deputations and of troubled individuals seeking advice on every subject under the sun. He was a court of appeal in family troubles as well as on public questions.

A small girl came to the door one night with the announcement:

"If you please, father's took to drink again, and mother says will Mr. Crooks come round and give him a good hiding?"

Appeals like that of an old labourer who could neither read nor write became common. The old man stood sobbing on the step without a word when Crooks's youngest daughter opened the door. Instinct told her it was her father that was wanted, and she called him.

"Well, old Charley, what's the matter now?" when Crooks recognised his caller.

"She's turned me out again," came the words between sobs. "If you would on'y go and speak to her, Mr. Crooks, and put in a word for me! She ain't half a bad wife, you know. It's on'y her temper and me as don't agree."

He invited the aggrieved husband inside, going off himself alone, to return in half an hour with the news that the road was now clear.

About a month later in the main road he was hailed from over the way. The old labourer came hobbling towards him.

"Ah, Mr. Crooks, I don't know what yer said to my ole woman that night, but she's bin a perfect angel since."

What Crooks had said was simple enough. On reaching the court he found the good wife gossiping.

"Here's Mr. Crooks!" cried the little company of women as he approached.

He spoke no word, but with a mysterious air beckoned the aggressive wife aside.

"Heard the news about your old man?" he asked with a long face.

Assuming the worst, she immediately began to weep into her apron.

"It's my fault, Mr. Crooks," she whimpered. "He often threatened to drown hisself, but I never thought he'd go and do it!"

And then again, amid broken sobs:—"I've al'ays bin a good wife to him, Mr. Crooks."

"Yes, I know you have; and he knows it, too. He's often told me what a splendid wife you are. But you shouldn't cheek him so. You take my advice and coax him a little; coax him, and then you'll find you can do what you like with him afterwards. Why, bless you, if it hadn't been for some of us he might have drowned himself to-night. Now you just give him a good supper, like a sensible woman, when we send him home, and begin coaxing him from this very night. And, mind, not a word about this to anyone, for fear you excite him again."

When again he met the old labourer it was evident the good relations were growing.

"Give her a treat last Saturday afternoon, Mr. Crooks—a fair knock-out. Took her for a 'bus ride to Ludgit Circis, and showed her the Thames Embankmint. Never seen anyfink so fine in all her life. Nearly made her faint. When she got home she dropped into a chair and said, 'I feel I could die now, Charlie, after that.'"

"And you?"

"I said, 'If you talk like that I'll go for Mr. Crooks again.' That fetched her round, 'pon me honour."

The good people of Poplar expect Crooks to meet all their needs. It was not very inspiring to be knocked up in the middle of the night and find a carman groaning at the door.

"Oh, Will, I'm that bad with the spasms!"

"Why don't you go to the doctor?"

"I've bin to him and he ain't done me no good. I thought as how if you'd come along with me he'd be sure to give me the right stuff."

Later in the same week the man's wife arrived breathless in the early morning. "Would Mr. Crooks come at once?"

"What's happened now?"

"Dick took a drop too much at the 'Ship' last night, and when he come in, me having gone to bed, he mistook the paraffin oil bottle for his medicine. Two whole spoonfuls he took, Mr. Crooks, and we've only found it out this morning. He says he must see you now afore he dies."

Curious ideas are held as to what Crooks's duties are. One irate citizen declared to his mates that he was done with Will Crooks for ever. He was appealed to for the reason.

"Why," said he, "there's our sink bin stopped up nigh on three weeks, and he ain't bin round yet!"

All who labour and are poor in Poplar look upon Crooks as the unfailing friend. The coal-man crying coals in the street all in vain, one morning hails him in passing:—

"Wot's wrong with people this morning, Mr. Crooks? One would think I was selling tombstones!"

Another day it is the chimney-sweep who stops him.

"Talk about the County Council's schools in Poplar, Mr. Crooks; I calls it a scandal, I does."

"What's the matter?"

"Sending their chimbleys up to Bethnal Green to be swept instead of employing local labour!"

The callers at his house were in no sense confined to his neighbours. One day it would be C. B. Fry, the cricketer, another day G. K. Chesterton the critic—neither of them for the first time; and again George R. Sims, Beerbohm Tree, Lord and Lady Denbigh, Miss Gertrude Tuckwell, Father Adderley, Bernard Shaw, Earl Carrington, and the Rev. Charles Sheldon from the United States—to mention but a few of the men and women of widely different walks of life who are pleased to number him among their friends.

Mr. Sheldon called soon after the great boom of "In His Steps." On several occasions Crooks piloted him through the slums of the East End. While looking round a typical court the American minister asked one of the women when they had seen a parson there.

The answer came, "We ain't seen no parson down here since we lived here, fifteen years."

"I don't wonder that people are bad," remarked Mr. Sheldon to Crooks. "The wonder is that people are so good as they are."

Before returning to America Mr. Sheldon sent Crooks a parting note, ending, "I shall always remember you as you stand, 'in the thick of it,' for the rights of little children and brother men."

Outsiders who visit Crooks find him precisely the same man as his neighbours find him. He has personal friends in the Peers' House as well as in the Poor's House, but his manner changes not in the company of either.

This characteristic trait in Crooks led Mr. Chesterton, in his book on "Charles Dickens," into an instructive comparison:—

The English democracy is the most humorous democracy in the world. The Scotch democracy is the most dignified, while the whole abandon and satiric genius of the English populace come from its being quite undignified in every way. A comparison of the two types might be found, for instance, by putting a Scotch Labour leader like Mr. Keir Hardie alongside an English Labour leader like Mr. Will Crooks. Both are good men, honest and responsible and compassionate, but we can feel that the Scotchman carries himself seriously and universally, the Englishman personally and with an obstinate humour. Mr. Keir Hardie wishes to hold up his head as Man, Mr. Crooks wishes to follow his nose as Crooks. Mr. Keir Hardie is very like a poor man in Walter Scott. Mr. Crooks is very like a poor man in Dickens.

A little incident bears out Mr. Chesterton to the letter. While Crooks was showing a party of titled people at their request round some of the dark corners of Poplar he was greeted as usual by all the children playing in the streets. Seizing the blackest of them he presented the youngster to one of the ladies of the party, a well-known peeress.

"If this little chap," said he, "was as clean as I could wash him and as well dressed as you could dress him, what difference would there be between him and a little prince?"

After the party had finished their round of inspection somebody suggested tea.

"It's no use looking for swell tea shops in Poplar," said Crooks. "But if you care to come with me, my wife will just be getting tea ready for the children coming home from school, and no doubt we can find a corner for you at the same table."

And straightway he led them to Northumberland Street and into his own house without warning, where they shared with the children at the deal table in the kitchen.

Sometimes for whole weeks together in the black days of distress he could never finish his breakfast without being called to the door to advise an out-of-work man or some sorrow-laden woman, or to deal with some case of starvation that brooked no delay.

Of course he often defied the laws of political economy. That is sometimes the only way to prevent people dying from want. A learned professor of political economy, whose name I am not at liberty to mention, was converted to some part at least of Crooks's view in a single morning. The Professor called on him during a winter of hard times, and Crooks showed him how some of his neighbours were living.

"Hunger we can sometimes stand, 'cos we gets used to it," they heard from one woman, surrounded in her bare tenement by lean and shivering babies; "but to be frozen with cold on the top of the hunger—that's the thing that makes yer squirm, guv'nor—ain't it, Mr. Crooks?"

Then the Labour man led the Professor to a slum court. On the muddy ground in the far corner a woman sat weeping.

"She ain't been living here long, Mr. Crooks," volunteered another woman from her doorstep. "Her husband's no work, and this morning she were a-sending her four children to school without a bite, so I calls 'em in here, and shared out wot we was having for breakfast."

"And what was that?" asked the Professor.

The woman seemed to resent the question from a well-dressed stranger.

"It weren't ham and eggs," she said, curtly.

"Tell my friend here what you gave them, Mrs. B——" Crooks requested.

"Well, it's just like this here, Mr. Crooks," she said apologetically. "My man's out of work hisself, and we on'y had one loaf, so I cuts it up between her children and mine."

"Why is she crying now?"

"She ain't been used to it like some of us, and it's all along of her wondering where the children's next meal is a-coming from."

As the two men came away, "I'm proud of the poor," said Crooks. "And I declare it's a dirty insult for outsiders to say that these people are degraded by the feeble efforts I make as a Guardian to give bread to the hungry. It's nothing to what they do for each other. That woman sharing her last loaf with another woman's children is typical of what you'll find in every street and corner of Poplar where the pinch of hunger is felt."

The Professor walked on silently.

"What are we to do for them?" resumed the Labour man. "Sometimes people as badly off as these we have just seen come to my house in the early morning, begging me as a Guardian to give their children bread before they send them to school. Sometimes they bring their children with them as though to prove by their hungry eyes the truth of what they tell me.

"And I say to them, 'You shouldn't come to me; you should go to the relieving officer.'"

"And they reply, 'But what are you Guardians for? We've been to the Mayor, and he refers us to the Guardians. We go to the Guardians, and they refer us to the relieving officer. We go to the relieving officer, and he tells us to attend the relief committee. We inquire about the relief committee, and find it doesn't meet for two or three days. Meanwhile, what are our children to do for bread?'

"Do you think," Crooks went on to ask the Professor, "that I can finish my own breakfast, or that any other man could with a spark of feeling in him, after being called to the door to listen to these pleadings morning after morning? Do you think, after these daily experiences, that I care how the outside public and the Press attack us because we as Guardians dare to spend public money in saving these people from starvation?

"What is a Board of Guardians to do, with its awful responsibilities and its awful obligations, during such distressful winters as Poplar sometimes witnesses? Remember, we Guardians live among the poor. We are not carriage folk who can return to the West End and talk about the poor over dinners of a dozen courses. What else can we do but try to keep the bodies and souls of these poor people together in times of trade depression and cold weather?"

CHAPTER XIX THE FIRST WORKING-MAN MAYOR IN LONDON

Elected Mayor of Poplar—"No Better than a Working-man"—Shouted Down at the Mansion House—The Lord Mayor Defends Him—Refusing a Salary—Slums and Fair Rent Courts—Fighting the Public-House Interests—Crying not for the Moon, but for the Sun.

In November, 1901, Crooks was chosen to be Mayor of Poplar. In this, as in all his public offices, he was not the seeker, but the sought-after. Of the many public positions he has filled, not one has come of his own seeking. It has always been at the earnest solicitation of others that he has gone into office. Moreover, the request in every instance but one has come from working-men.

The proposal to put him forward for Mayor was made to him before he had been a member of the Poplar Borough Council many months. The Labour Party was barely half a dozen strong on the Council, so that even with the support of the Progressives it was extremely doubtful whether he could command a majority of votes. This he pointed out in reply to his party's entreaties. Since his arguments were all unavailing, he agreed at last to be nominated, making one very emphatic condition. That condition was, that were he elected there should be no talk of paying the Mayor a salary.

Any of the London Borough Councils can vote a salary to the Mayor, and in some of the boroughs £300 and £500 a year was being paid. Crooks felt he could better retain the confidence of his neighbours, and better meet the criticisms of opponents, by refusing a Mayoral grant entirely. Besides making this the condition of his nomination, he influenced the Borough Council, some few days before the Mayor was to be elected, to pass a resolution declining to pay a salary.

On the night the new Mayor was elected there were some curious scenes both inside and outside the Municipal Buildings. To be Mayor in Coronation Year seemed to be the desire of half the public men in the kingdom. There were several aspirants in Poplar, and when the number was reduced to two, Crooks's name was one of them.

Twice amid the greatest tension in the crowded Council Chamber the voting on the two names resulted in a tie. Twice the retiring Mayor appealed to the Council to come to a decision without his casting vote. Since nothing would alter the equality of the votes, the Mayor finally hit upon the device of writing both names on separate slips of paper and drawing one at random from a covered bowl.

Meanwhile, the tension had become too much for some burly working-men in the public gallery. They could be heard blubbering. When you looked up you saw them mopping their grimy faces with red-spotted handkerchiefs or the ends of their scarfs.

These men, with many of their mates, had crowded into the Council Chamber on their way home from the engineering yards and railway goods sidings in Millwall and from all the neighbouring docks. Those who could not get inside formed a dense crowd in the streets below. As the news was brought out from time to time, how two ballots had been taken and the votes were still equal, a silence strange and solemn fell upon the massed crowds surging round the Municipal Buildings in the lamp-lighted streets.

Soon the silence gave way to a roar of working-men's voices.

"Crooks has got it!"

"Our Will's made Mayor!"

"God bless the Mayor!"

Among that rough-jacketed company could be seen men falling on each other's necks. And as they streamed homeward in all directions the streets of Poplar echoed with the cry that lingered far into the night, "Will Crooks is Mayor!"

He was the first Labour Mayor in London. As such he did not make the mistake of trying to fill the office like the ordinary middle-class man. He faced all the world essentially as a working-man Mayor. He showed how well a workman can carry out the administrative and ceremonial duties inseparable from the office. In doing that he dispelled for ever the old illusion that only men of means can become mayors.

"What d'yer think?" he overheard a tradesman's wife ask another in disgust. "They've made that common fellow Crooks Mayor! And he no better than a working-man."

"Quite right, madam," he interposed, raising his hat as she turned round, crimson, and recognised him. "No better than a working-man!"

It was evident, too, that at first certain of the other metropolitan mayors thought him a common fellow, far beneath their notice. The first occasion that saw him in their midst was a conference of mayors at the Mansion House. It was convened by the Lord Mayor to consider arrangements for the Coronation Dinner to the Poor. Crooks listened for an hour to all kinds of suggestions put forward by men who knew little about the poor before rising at last to make a proposal of his own.

The instant he rose there was a howl of disapproval.

"Sit down—sit down!" "Who are you?" "We want none of your opinions." "Sit down—sit down!"

The wrath of some of these funny little functionaries at the idea of a Labour man daring to address them was something he laughed at for a long time after. Several of them had lost their heads entirely at being invited to discuss a matter which so closely concerned the King and Queen. The very presence of a Labour man at such an august gathering was felt to be an insult.

They drowned his voice each time he attempted to speak, until it began to dawn upon them that instead of gaining favour with the Lord Mayor, who was in the chair, they were incurring his displeasure.

"Gentlemen," he cried, "I protest against this conduct. I call upon my friend, Mr. Crooks, to speak."

You should have seen their faces then! They had forgotten that the Lord Mayor (Sir Joseph Dimsdale) and Crooks had been colleagues together for years on the County Council.

Having got a hearing, the Labour man spoke evidently very much to the point. Sir Thomas Lipton, who represented the King at that and the subsequent conferences, declared afterwards that the one mayor in London who seemed to know what was wanted was the working-man Mayor of Poplar. At any rate, the final arrangements for the King's Dinner were left to a small sub-committee, of which Crooks was unanimously elected one by the body that first tried to howl him down.

The illusion that working-men cannot make mayors died hard. It lingered last in the columns of the Times. Crooks had been in office several months when that journal called public attention to the fact that the Mayor of Poplar lived in a house "only rated at £11 a year." From this circumstance the Times drew the rash conclusion that a man so poor could not necessarily fill the office of mayor properly.

After this, nobody could be surprised at the wild mis-statements that followed. The Times went on to say that before Crooks's election the Labour Party of Poplar seemed to think his income of £3 10s. a week insufficient for the mayoralty, and that they started a movement "in favour of paying future mayors of the borough a salary at the rate of from £500 to £1,000 a year."

How completely the facts tell a different story has already appeared. What movement there was in Poplar for paying a salary originated with the previous mayor, Mr. R. H. Green, a large employer of labour. Mr. Green did not wish for a salary himself, being a man of means; he was only anxious that his colleagues should understand that he favoured the principle. His successor, the Labour man, was equally anxious his colleagues should understand that he did not favour payment.

The real facts were placed before the Times, but although its original mis-statements were copied into several other newspapers and led the St. James's Gazette to publish a foolish leader on the subject, the Times offered neither an explanation as to how it fell into its culpable error nor an apology for its amazing exhibition of bad taste.

In reality, his position as Mayor was strengthened by his refusal to take a salary. He stated in an interview in the Daily Telegraph towards the end of his year of office:—

I have only had to do what I have done in every other position I have held—let people understand that I have nothing to give away. Since my position has become generally known people have let me alone, except when I get an appeal like this one—to support a football club as a lover of British sports and pastimes. Nobody seems to think the worse of me for refusing.