Kitabı oku: «About My Father's Business», sayfa 14

But, as I have already intimated, it is not alone for its temporary aid in affording a home that the House of Charity is distinguished; it affords a good hope also, by seeking to obtain situations, for cases where peculiar circumstances make such a search difficult – for bereaved and impoverished ladies, and for educated men, as well as for domestic servants and ordinary employés. Its supporters give their special aid to the work, and, as they number amongst them many ladies and gentlemen of considerable social influence, employment is frequently found for those whose misfortunes would otherwise be almost irretrievable.

WITH THE POOR AND NEEDY

All hope abandon, ye who enter here," would, as we might fancy, be an appropriate inscription for many a wretched court and alley in the greatest and most opulent city in the world – a city distinguished for its claims to be regarded as the centre of civilisation; as the exemplar of benevolence, and of active Christianity. It is one of the marvellous results of the vast extent of this metropolis of England that there are whole districts of foul dwellings crowded with a poverty-stricken population, which yet are almost ignored, so far as public recognition of their existence is concerned. Legislation itself does not reach them, in the sense of compelling the strict observance of Acts of Parliament framed and presumably enforced for the purpose of maintaining sanitary conditions; philanthropy almost stands appalled at the difficulty of dealing with a chronic necessity so widely spread, a misery and ignorance so deep and apparently impregnable; sentimentalism sighs and turns away with a shiver, or is touched to the extent of relieving its overcharged susceptibilities by the comfortable expedient of the smallest subscription to some association in the neighbourhood. True, active, practical religion alone, of all the agencies that have operated in these places, gains ground inch by inch, and at last exercises a definite and beneficial influence, by taking hold of the hearts and consciences of the people themselves, and working from within the area of vice and misery, till the law of love, beginning to operate where the law of force had no influence, a change, gradual but sure, here a little and there a little, is effected.

We are continually hearing of the "dwellings of the poor;" and can scarcely take up a newspaper without noting the phrase, "one of the worst neighbourhoods in London," connected with some report of crime, outrage, or suffering; yet how few of us are really familiar with the actual abodes of the more degraded and miserable of our fellow-citizens! how quickly, how gladly, we dismiss from our memory the account of an inquest where the evidence of the cause of death of some unfortunate man, woman, or child, without a natural share of light, air, food, and water, reveals hideous details of want and wretchedness, which we might witness only a few streets off, and yet are unconscious of their nearness to us in mere physical yards and furlongs, because they are so far from us spiritually, in our lack of sympathy and compassion.

Even at the time that these lines are being written I have before me a report of an examination by the coroner into the circumstances attending the death of a woman seventy years of age, who obtained a miserable and precarious living by stay-making, and who was found dead in the back kitchen of a house. Her death was alleged to have been brought about by the unhealthiness of the house in which she lived, although the landlord was a medical officer of health for one of the metropolitan districts.

In this case the alleged landlord, who was actually a medical officer of health, answered the charge made against him by the statement that he had only just come into possession of the property, and had at once set about putting it in repair. It is to be hoped that this was the case, and, indeed, the evidence of the sanitary inspector went to show that it was so; but the question remains: How is it that dwellings are permitted to be thus overcrowded, and to become actual centres of pestilence in the midst of entire neighbourhoods, where, for one foul tenement to have an infamous reputation amidst such general filth and dilapidation, it must indeed be, as one member of the jury said this place was, "so bad, that no gentleman would keep his dog there?"

Keep his dog indeed! Why I know whole rows and congeries of intersecting courts and alleys where a country squire would no more think of kennelling his hounds than he would dream of stabling his horses! There has during the past few years been a tolerably determined stand made against the introduction of pigsties into the back-yards of some of the hovels about Mile End and Bethnal Green; and though cow-sheds are not altogether abolished everywhere in close and overbuilt localities, there are some precautions taken to diminish the sale of infected milk by an inspection of the laystalls, and the enforcement of lime-whiting and ventilation in the sheds. Costermongers' donkeys are the only animals besides dogs and cats which are commonly to be found in London slums now, and as these can be stowed in any shanty just outside the back door, or can be littered down in a spare corner of a cellar, they remain, in costermongering districts, without much opposition on the part of the local authorities. For, after all, what can these authorities do? Under the 35th section of the Sanitary Act, power was given to them to register all houses let out by non-resident landlords, who were under a penalty of forty shillings for not keeping their houses in repair, well supplied with water, drainage clear, &c. To those who have an intimate acquaintance with the density of population in whole acreages of London slums, there is something almost ludicrous in these words, especially when they are read in the light of the fact that the landlords of such places are frequently parochial magnates or officials who know how to make things pleasant with subordinate sanitary inspectors.

What may be the ultimate result of an Act of Parliament "for improving the dwellings of the poor" it is not at present easy to say; but assuredly any plan which commences by a general and imperfectly discriminative destruction of existing houses, hovels though they may be, will only have the effect of crowding more closely the already fœtid and swarming tenements where, for half-a crown a week, eight or ten people eat, live, and sleep in a single apartment. It was only the other day, in a district of which I shall presently speak more definitely, that a "mission woman" was called in to the aid of a family, consisting of a man, his wife, his wife's brother – who was there as a lodger – and five or six children, all of whom occupied one room, where the poor woman had just given birth to an infant. The place was almost destitute of furniture; beds of straw and shavings, coverlets of old coats and such ragged clothing as could be spared; little fire and little food. Such destitution demanded that the "maternity box," or a suddenly-extemporised bag of baby-clothing and blankets, should be fetched at once; and though the mission there is a poor one, with terrible needs to mitigate, a constant demand for personal work and noble self-sacrifice, such cases are every-day events, such demands always to be answered by some kind of helpful sympathy, even though the amount of relief afforded is necessarily small and temporary in character.

Not in one quarter of London alone, but dotted here and there throughout its vastly-extending length and breadth – from St. Pancras, and further away northward, to Bethnal Green and all that great series of poverty-stricken townships and colonies of casual labour, on the east; from the terrible purlieux of Southwark, the districts where long rows of silent houses, in interminable streets, chill the unaccustomed wayfarer with vague apprehensions, where "Little Hell" and the knots and tangles of that "Thief-London" which has found a deplorable Alsatia in the purlieux of the Borough and of Bermondsey; and so round the metropolitan circle, westward to the neighbourhood of aristocratic mansions and quiet suburban retreats, where the garotter skulks and the burglar finds refuge; further towards the centre of the town, in Westminster, not a stone's-throw from the great legislative assembly, which, while it debates in St. Stephen's on sanitation and the improvement of dwellings, scarcely remembers all that may be seen in St. Peter's, about Pye Street, and remembers Seven Dials and St Giles's only as traditional places, where "modern improvements" have made a clean sweep, just as the Holborn Viaduct and the metropolitan Railway swept away Field Lane, and the new meat market at Smithfield put an end for ever to the horrible selvage of Cloth Fair – and only left the legends of Jonathan Wild's rookery and the "blood-bowl house."

But the very mention of these places brings the reflection that not in outlying districts, but in the very heart of London, in the core of the great city itself, the canker of misery, poverty, and vice is festering still. What is the use of eviction, when the law punishes houselessness, and the Poor Law cannot meet any sudden demand, nor maintain any continuous claim on the part of the houseless? Summarily to thrust a score or so of wretched families into the streets is to make them either criminals or paupers. They must find some place of shelter; and if they are to live by their labour, they must live near their labour, the wages of which are, at best, only just sufficient to procure for them necessary food and covering for their bodies.

In the neighbourhood to which I have already referred, four thousand evictions have taken place, or, at any rate, the population has diminished from 22,000 to 18,000, because of a small section of a large puzzle map of courts and alleys having been taken down in order to build great blocks of warehouses. The consequence is, that in the remaining tangle of slums the people herd closer, and that a large number of poor lodgers have gone to crowd other tenements not far distant, and which were already peopled beyond legal measure.

For this acreage of vice and wretchedness of which I speak is close to the great city thoroughfares – almost within sound of Bow Bells. It is about a quarter of a mile in extent each way, lying between the Charterhouse and St. Luke's, close to the new meat market at Smithfield on one side, and Finsbury Square on the other. One entrance to it is directly through Golden Lane, Barbican; the other close to Bunhill Fields burial ground, along a passage which bears the significant name of "Chequer Alley." It is a maze of intersecting and interlocking courts, streets, and alleys, some of them without any thoroughfare, some reached by ascending or descending steps, many of them mere tanks, the walls of which are represented by hovels inhabited by costermongers, French-polishers, dock-labourers, chair-makers, workers at all kinds of underpaid labour and poor handicrafts. Many of the women go out to work at factories, or at charing, and the children are – or at least were – left to the evil influences of the streets, till another and a more powerful influence began to operate, slowly, but with the impetus of faith and love, to touch even this neglected and miserable quarter of London with "the light that lighteth every man."

In this square quarter of a mile – which, starting from the edge of Aldersgate, stretches to the further main thoroughfare abutting on the pleasant border of the City Road, and includes the northern end of Whitecross Street – there are eighty public-houses and beer-shops!

I tell you this much, as we stand here at the entrance of Golden Lane, but I have no intention just now to take you on a casual visit either to the dens of wretchedness and infamy, or to the homes where poverty abides. I must try to let you see what has been done, and is still doing, to bring to both that Gospel which is alone efficient to change the conditions, by changing the hearts and motives of men. I may well avoid any description of the places which lie on either hand, for, in fact, there is nothing picturesque in such misery, nothing specially sensational in such crime. It is all of a sordid miserable sort; all on a dreary dead-level of wretchedness and poverty, full of poor shifts and expedients, or of mean brutality and indifference. There is no show-place to which you could be taken, as it is said curious gentlemen were at one time conducted to the dens of the mendicants, thieves, and highwaymen of old London. Even in the tramps' kitchen the orgies, if there are any, are of so low a kind that they would be depressing in their monotonous degradation.

Let us go farther, and enter this strange wilderness by its fitting passage of Chequer Alley, so that we may, as it were, see the beginning of the work that has been going on with more or less power for more than thirty years.

I think I have some acquaintance with what are the worst neighbourhoods of London. I have made many a journey down East; have studied some of the strange varieties of life on the shore amidst the water-side population; have lived amidst the slums of Spitalfields, and passed nights "Whitechapel way;" but never in any unbroken area of such extent have I seen so much that is suggestive of utter poverty, so much privation of the ordinary means of health and decency, as on a journey about this district which I long ago named "The Chequers." Each court and blind alley has the same characteristics – the same look of utter poverty, the same want of air and light, the same blank aspect of dingy wall and sunken doorsteps, the same square areas surrounded by hovels with clothes'-lines stretched from house to house, almost unstirred by any breeze that blows, shut in as they are in close caverns, only to be entered by narrow passages between blank walls. It is the extent of this one solid district, almost in the very centre of City life, that is so bewildering, and wherein lies its terrible distraction.

The labour of reformation has begun, but the labourers are few. For more than thirty years some efforts have been going on to redeem this neglected and unnoticed neighbourhood, which lies so near to, and yet so far from London's heart.

Let it be noted that this moral effort had gone on for nearly twenty-nine years before any very definite attempt was made to improve the physical condition of the place.

In 1841 a tract distributor, Miss Macarthy, began an organised endeavour to teach the depraved inhabitants of Chequer Alley. In 1869, a sanitary surveyor, reporting on one of the courts of this foul district, recommended that the premises there should be demolished under the "Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Act," because the floors and ceilings were considerably out of level, some of the walls saturated with filth and water, the others broken and falling down, doors, window-sashes and frames rotten, stairs dilapidated and dangerous, roof leaky and admitting the rain, no provisions for decency, and a foul and failing water supply.

The "pulling-down" remedy, without any simultaneous building up, has been extended since then in a locality where a model lodging-house, which has been erected, has stood for years almost unoccupied, because like all model lodging-houses in such neighbourhoods, neither the provisions nor the rentals are adapted to meet the wants and the means of the poorest, of whom, as I have already said, a whole family cannot afford to pay more than the rental for a single room, or two rooms at the utmost.

But we are wandering away from the work that we came to see. Look at that wistful young native, standing there quite close to the mouth of Chequer Alley. Ask him what is that sound of children's voices from a casually-opened doorway, and he will tell you "It's our school; yer kin go in, sir, if yer like – anybody kin." As the name of the institution is "Hope Schools for All," his invitation is doubtless authorised, and we may well feel that we have made a mistake in thinking of the Italian poet's hopeless line, for out of the doorway there comes a sound of singing, and inside the doorway is a room containing fifty or sixty "infants," seated on low forms, and many of them such bright, rosy – yes, rosy – clean – yes, comparatively, if not superlatively clean – little creatures, that hope itself springs to fresh life in their presence. It is thirty-four years since Miss Macarthy, with an earnest desire to initiate some work of charity and mercy, resolved to become a distributor of tracts, and the district she chose was this same foul tangle to which I have asked you to accompany me. Bad as the whole neighbourhood is now, it was worse then. It was never what is called a thief-quarter, but many juvenile thieves haunted it; and the men were as ruffianly and abusive, the women as violent and evil-tongued as any who could be found in all London. Instead of being paved, and partially and insufficiently drained, it was a fœtid swamp, with here and there a pool where ducks swam, while the foul odours of the place were suffocating. No constable dare enter far into the maze without a companion. But the tract distributor ventured. In the midst of an epidemic of typhus, or what is known as "poverty" fever, she went about among the people, and strove to fix their attention on the message that she carried. The religious services commenced in a rat-catcher's "front parlour," and at first the congregation broke into the hymns with scraps and choruses of songs. The crowd which collected outside not only interrupted the proceedings, but threatened those who conducted them with personal violence, and even assaulted them, and heaped insult upon them; but the lady who had put her hand to the plough would not turn back. In the midst of her patient and difficult work she herself was stricken down with fever. She had visited and tended those who were suffering. When the question was asked what had become of her, the barbarous people learnt that she was like to die. Perhaps this touched the hearts of some of them, for she had begun to live down the brutal opposition of those who could not believe in unselfish endeavours to benefit them. She recovered, however; and supported by others, who gave both money and personal effort, the beneficent work went on.

In this large room where the children are singing we have an example of what has been effected. Some of the little creatures are pale, and have that wistful look that goes to the heart; but there are few of them that have not clean faces, and who do not show in the scanty little dresses some attempt at decent preparation for meeting "the guv'ness."

There is a school for elder children also; and in the ramshackle old house where the classes are held there are appliances which mark the wide application of the beneficent effort that has grown slowly but surely, not only in scope, but in its quiet influence upon the people amidst whom it was inaugurated. Yonder, in a kind of covered yard, is a huge copper, the honoured source of those "penny dinners," and those quarts and gallons of soup which have been such a boon to the neighbourhood, where food is scarce, and dear. Then there was the Christmas dinner, at which some hundreds of little guests were supplied with roast meat and pudding, evidences of how much may be effected within a very small space. Indeed, this Hope School, with its two or three rooms, is at work day and night; for not only are the children taught – children not eligible for those Board schools which, unless the board itself mitigates its technical demands, will shut up this and similar institutions before any provision is made for transferring the children to the care of a Government department – but there are "mothers' meetings," sewing classes, where poor women can obtain materials at cost price, and be taught to make them into articles of clothing. There are also adult classes, and Sunday evening services for those who would never appear at church or chapel but for such an easy transition from their poor homes to the plain neighbourly congregation assembled there. There are evenings, too, when lectures, dissolving views, social teas, and pleasant friendly meetings bring the people together with humanising influences. It becomes a very serious question for the London School Board to consider whether, by demanding that ragged schools such as this shall be closed if they do not show a certain technical standard of teaching, the means of partially feeding and clothing, which are in such cases inseparable from instructing, shall be destroyed.

But here is a youthful guide – a shambling, shock-headed lad, with only three-quarters of a pair of shoes, and without a cap, who is to be our guide to another great work, on the Golden Lane side of this great zigzag, to the "Costermongers' Mission," in fact. You may follow him with confidence, for he is a Hope School-boy – and that means something, even in Chequer Alley.

Still threading our way through those dim alleys, where each one looks like a cul-de-sac, but yet may be the devious entrance to another more foul and forbidding, we leave the "Hope-for-All" Mission Room resounding with infant voices, all murmuring the simple lessons of the day. That room is seldom empty, because of the evening school where a large class of older pupils are taught, reading, writing, and arithmetic; the adult class, and the "mothers' meeting," to which poor women are invited that they may be assisted to make garments for themselves and their children from materials furnished for them at a cheap rate in such quantities as their poor savings can purchase. The visiting "Bible woman" is the chief agent in these works of mercy, since she brings parents and children to the school, and reports cases of severe distress to be relieved when there are funds for the purpose. Not only by teaching and sewing, however, are the hopeful influences of the place supported, for, as I have said already, in this big room the people of the district are invited to assemble to listen to lectures, readings, and music, to see dissolving views; and in the summer, when fields are in their beauty and the hedge-rows are full of glory, there is an excursion into the country for the poor, little, pallid children, while, strangest sight of all, a real "flower show" is, or was, held in Chequer Alley. One could almost pity the flowers, if we had any pity to spare from the stunted buds and blossoms of humanity who grow pale and sicken and so often die in this foul neighbourhood.

But we have strange sights yet to see, so let us continue our excursion in and out, and round and round, not without some feeling of giddiness and sickness of heart, through the "Pigeons" – a tavern, the passage of which is itself a connecting link between two suspicious-looking courts – round by beershops all blank and beetling, and silent; past low-browed doorways and dim-curtained windows of tramps' kitchens, and the abodes of more poverty, misery, and it may be crime, than you will find within a similar space in any neighbourhood in London, or out of it, except perhaps in about five streets "down East," or in certain dens of Liverpool and Manchester.

One moment. You see where a great sudden gap appears to have been made on one side of Golden Lane. That gap represents houses pulled down to erect great blocks of building for warehouses or factories, and it also represents the space in which above 4,000 people lived when the population of this square quarter of mile of poverty and dirt was 22,000 souls. This will give you some idea of the consequences of making what are called "clean sweeps," by demolishing whole neighbourhoods before other dwellings are provided for the evicted tenants. One result of this method of improving the dwellings of the poor is that the people crowd closer, either in their own or in some adjacent neighbourhood, where rents are low and landlords are not particular how many inmates lodge in a single room. Remember that whole families can only earn just enough to keep them from starving, and cannot afford to pay more than half-a-crown or three-and-sixpence a week for rent. They must live near their work, or they lose time, and time means pence, and pence represent the difference between eating and fasting.

"The model lodging-house!" See, there is one, and it is nearly empty. How should it be otherwise? The proprietors of such places, whether they be philanthropists or speculators – and they are not likely to be the latter – can never see a return of any profitable percentage on their outlay while they enforce necessary sanitary laws. The top-rooms are half-a-crown a week each, and the lower "sets" range from about six shillings for two to eight-and-sixpence for three rooms. The consequence is that the few tenants in this particular building are frequently changing their quarters. Some of them try it, and fall into arrear, and are ejected, or want to introduce whole families into a single room, as they do in these surrounding courts and alleys, and this, of course, is not permitted. Imagine one vast building crowded at the same rate as some of these two-storeyed houses are! Ask the missionary, whose duty takes her up scores of creaking staircases, to places where eight or ten human beings eat, drink, sleep, and even work, in one small room – where father, mother, children, and sometimes also a brother or sister-in-law, herd together, that they may live on the common earnings; places where children are born, and men, women, and children die; and the new-born babe must be clothed by the aid of the "maternity box," and the dead must be buried by the help of money advanced to pay for the plainest decent funeral.

I do not propose to take you to any of these sights. You could do little good unless you became familiar with them, and entered into the work of visitation. Even in the published reports of the organisation to which we are now going, the "cases" are not dwelt upon, only one or two are given from the experiences of the missionary, and she speaks of them simply as examples of the kind of destitution which characterises a district where deplorable poverty is the result sometimes of drink, or what, for want of a word applicable to the saving of pence, is termed improvidence; but frequently also, because of sickness, and the want even of poorly-paid employment. "In such cases," says the report, "almost everything is parted with to procure food and shelter outside the workhouse."

One of the two "ordinary" cases referred to was that of a poor woman who was "found lying on a sack of shavings on the floor, with an infant two days old; also a child lying dead from fever, and two other children crying for food. None had more than a solitary garment on. The smell of the room was such that the missionary was quite overcome until she had opened the window. Clean linen was obtained, and their temporal and spiritual wants at once looked after." This was in the Report of above a year ago; but cases only just less distressing occur daily still. This foul and neglected district, which lies like an ulcer upon the great opulent city, the centre of civilization and benevolence, seems to be as far from us as though it were a part of some savage or semi-heathen land under British influence. Indeed, in the latter case, there would be a probability of more earnest effort on behalf of the benighted people, on whose behalf meetings would perhaps be held, and a committee of inquiry and distribution appointed. Still, let us be thankful that something is done. Twenty-nine poor mothers have had the benefit of the maternity fund and clothing, the Report tells us. "They are very grateful for this assistance in their terrible need. Frequently the distress is so great that two changes of clothing are given to mother and babe, or they would be almost entirely denuded when the time arrived for returning the boxes. Our lady subscribers at a distance may be glad to know that blankets, sheets, flannel petticoats, warm shawls, and babies' clothing will always be acceptable." Thus writes Mrs. Orsman on the subject, for the mission is known as the Golden Lane Mission, and more popularly as "Mr. Orsman's Mission to the Costermongers." Perhaps these words scarcely denote the scope of the work; but costermongers must be taken as a representative term in a district where, in an area of a square quarter of a mile, there are, or recently were, eighty public-houses and beershops, and a dense mass of inhabitants, including street-traders or hucksters, labourers, charwomen, road-sweepers, drovers, French polishers, artificial flower-makers, toy-makers, with what is now a compact and really representative body of costermongers, working earnestly enough to keep to the right way, and, as they always did, forming a somewhat distinctive part of the population.

Sixteen years ago, Mr. Orsman began the work of endeavouring to carry the gospel to the rough-and-ready savages of this benighted field for missionary enterprise. He held an official appointment, and this was his business "after office hours." About the results of his own labour he and his Reports are modestly reticent, but at all events it began to bear fruit. Others joined in it; a regular mission was established, and, with vigorous growth, shot out several branches, so wisely uniting what may be called the secular or temporal with the spiritual and religious interest, that the Bread of Life was not altogether separated from that need for the bread which perishes. These branches are full of sap to-day, and one of them is also full of promising buds and blossoms, if we are to judge of the rows of ragged – but not unhappy – urchins who fill this large room or hall of the Mission-house.

It is only the first-floor of two ordinary houses knocked into one, but a great work is going on. The parochial school was once held here, and now the room is full of children who might still be untaught but for the effort which made the Ragged School a first consideration in an endeavour to redeem the whole social life of the district. Wisely enough, the School Board accepted the aid which this free day-school for ragged and nearly destitute children affords to a class which the Education Act has not yet taught us how to teach.