About My Father's Business

IN THE KINGDOM

Of such are the kingdom of heaven;" and "whosoever doeth it unto the least of these little ones, doeth it unto Me." Surely there is no need to comment again on these sayings of Him who, in His infinite childlikeness, knew what must be the characteristics of His subjects, and declared plainly that whosoever should enter into the kingdom must become as a little child. One thing is certain, that those who are within that kingdom, or expect to qualify themselves for it, must learn something of the Divine sympathy with which Christ took the babes in his arms and blessed them. Thank God that there is so much of it in this great suffering city, and that on every hand we see efforts made for the rescue, the relief, and the nurture of sick and destitute children. Would that these efforts could relieve us from the terrible sights that should make us shudder as we pass through its tumultuous streets, and witness the suffering, the depravity, and the want, that comes of neglecting the cry of the little ones, and of those who would bring them to be healed and sanctified.

Only just now I asked you to go with me to Ratcliff to see the forty tiny beds ranged in the rooms of that old sail-maker's warehouse which has been converted into a Hospital for Sick Children. There is something about this neighbourhood of Eastern London that keeps us lingering there yet; something that may well remind us of that star which shone above the manger at Bethlehem where the Babe lay. The glory of the heavenly light has led wise men and women to see how, in reverence for the childlikeness, they may work for the coming of the kingdom, and those who enter upon this labour of love, begin – without observation – to find what that kingdom really is, and to realise more of its meaning in their own hearts.

To the cradle in a manger the wise men of old went to offer gifts. To a cradle I would ask you to go with me to-day; to a whole homeful of cribs; which is known by a word that means crib and manger and cradle all in one – "The Crèche."

There is something, as it seems to me, appropriate in this French word to the broad thoroughfare (so like one of the outer boulevards of Paris) out of which we turn when we have walked a score or two of yards from the Stepney Station, or where some other visitors alight from the big yellow tramway car running from Aldgate to Stepney Causeway. The Causeway itself is a clean, quiet street, and is so well known that the first passer-by can point it out to you, while, if the inhabitants of the district can't quite master the crunch of the French word, they know well enough what you mean when you ask for the "babies' home," or for "Mrs. Hilton's nursery." The home itself is but a baby institution, for it is only five years old, but it might be a very Methuselah if it were to be judged by the tender, loving care it has developed, and the good it has effected, not only on behalf of the forty sucklings who are lying in their neat little wire cots upstairs, like so many human fledglings in patent safety cages, and for the forty who are sprawling and toddling about in the lower nursery, or for the contingent who are singing a mighty chorus of open vowels on the ground-floor; but also in the hopeful aid and tender sympathy it has conveyed to the toiling mothers who leave their little ones here each morning when they go out to earn their daily bread, and fetch them again at night, knowing that they are fresh and clean, and have been duly nursed and fed, and put to sleep, and had their share of petting and of play.

The sound of the forty singing like one is not perceptible as we approach the house, which, with its large high windows open to the soft, warm air, lies very still and quiet. The wire-blinds to the windows near the street bear the name of the institution, and over the doorway is inscribed the fact that the Princess Christian has become the patroness of this charity, which appeals to all young mothers, and to every woman who acknowledges the true womanly love for children. Each day, from twelve to four o'clock, visitors are welcomed, except on Saturdays, when the closing hour is two o'clock, as, even in some of the factories down east, the half-holiday is observed, and poor women working at bottle-warehouses and other places have the happiness of taking home their little ones, and keeping them to themselves till the following Monday morning. Do you feel inclined to question whether these poor, toil-worn women appreciate this privilege? Are you ready to indulge in a cynical fear that they would rather forego the claim that they are expected to assert? Believe me you are wrong. One of the most hopeful and encouraging results of the tender care bestowed upon these babes of poverty is that of sustaining maternal love, and beautifying even the few hours of rest and family reunion in the squalid rooms where the child is taken with a sense of hope and pride to lighten the burden of the day. Early each morning the little creatures are brought, often in scanty clothing, sometimes shoeless, mostly with a ready appetite for breakfast. Then the business of matron and nurses begins. But, come, let us go in with the children, and see the very first of it, as women, poorly clad, coarse of feature, and with the lines of care, and too frequently with the marks of dissipation and of blows upon their faces, come in one by one and leave their little living bundles, not without a certain wistful, softened expression and an occasional lingering loving look.

The house – stay, there are actually three houses, knocked into one so as to secure a suite of rooms on each floor – is as clean as the proverbial new pin; and as we ascend the short flights of stairs, there is a sense of lightness and airiness which is quite remarkable in such a place, and is by some strange freak of fancy associated with the notion of a big, pleasant aviary – a notion which is strengthened by our coming suddenly into the nursery on the first-floor, and noting as the most prominent object of ornament a large cage containing some sleek and silken doves, placed on a stand very little above the head of the tiniest toddler there.

There is enough work for the matron, her assistant, and the four or five young nurses who receive these welcome little guests each morning. The rows of large metal basins on the low stands are ready, and the morning's ablutions are about to commence, so we will return presently, as people not very likely to be useful in the midst of so intricate an operation as the skilful washing and dressing of half a hundred babies.

There is plenty to see in the neighbourhood out of doors, but we need not wander far to find something interesting, for on the ground-floor of these three houses which form the Crèche – the babies' home – provision has also been made for babies' fathers, in the shape of "a British Workman," or working-man's reading, coffee, and bagatelle room, with a library of readable books, and liberty to smoke a comfortable pipe.

Of the servants' home, which is another branch of this cluster of charitable institutions, we have no time to speak now, for our visit is intended for the Crèche, and we are already summoned to the upper rooms by the sound of infant voices. Doubt not that you will be welcomed on the very threshold, for here comes an accredited representative of the institution, just able to creep on all fours to the guarded door, thence to be caught up by the gentle-faced young nurse, who at once consigns the excursionist to a kind of square den or pound, formed of stout bars, and with the space of floor which it encloses covered by a firm mattress. There, in complete safety, and with two or three good serviceable and amiably-battered toys, the young athletes who are beginning to practise the difficult feat of walking with something to hold by, are out of harm's way, and may crawl or totter with impunity. They have had their breakfast of bread and milk, and are evidently beginning the day, some of them with a refreshing snooze in the little cribs which stand in a row against a wall, bright, as all the walls are, with coloured pictures, while in spaces, or on low tables here and there, bright-hued flowers and fresh green plants are arranged, so that the room, necessarily bare and unencumbered with much furniture, is so pleasantly light and gay, that we are again reminded of a great bird-cage. Out here in a little ante-room is a connected row of low, wooden arm-chairs, made for the people of Lilliput, and each furnished with a little tray or table, and, drumming expectantly and with a visible interest in the proceeding, sit a line of little creatures, amidst whom a nurse distributes her attentions, by feeding them carefully with a spoon, just as so many young blackbirds might be fed. Already some of the little nurslings are sitting up in their cribs, quietly nodding their round little heads over some cherished specimen of doll or wooden horse. One wee mite of a girl, quite unable to speak, except inarticulately, holds up the figure of a wooden lady of fashion, with a wistful entreaty which we fail to understand, till the quick-eyed lady who accompanies us spies a slip of white tape in the tiny hand, and at once divines that it is to be bound about the fashionable waist, as an appropriate scarf, and at once performs this finishing stroke of the toilet, to the immeasurable satisfaction of everybody concerned. This is in the upper room, the real baby nursery, where the age of some of the inmates is numbered by weeks only, and there is in each swinging cot a sweet, sleepy sense of enjoyment of the bottle which forms the necessary appliance of luncheon-time.

At the heads of several of these cots are inscribed the names of charitable donors, happy parents, bereaved mothers, sympathetic women with babies of their own, either on earth or in heaven, who desire to show gratitude, faith, remembrance, by this token of their love for the childlikeness of those they love and cherish in their deepest memories, their most ardent hopes. In more than one of the little beds there are signs of the poverty or the sickliness in which the children were born, and the effects of which this home, with its freshness and light and food, is intended to remedy. No cases of actual disease are here, however, since a small infirmary for children suffering from more serious ailments has been added to the institution, and the Sick Children's Hospital is but three street lengths distant.

The first most remarkable experience which meets the visitor unaccustomed to observe closely, is the freshness and beauty of the children in this place. Squalid misery, dirt, neglect, starvation, so disguise and debase even the children in such neighbourhoods, that squeamish sentimentality turns away at the first glance, and is apt to conclude that there are essential differences between the infancy of Tyburnia or Mayfair and the babyhood of Ratcliff and Shadwell. Yet I venture to assert that if Mr. Millais or some other great painter were to select his subjects for a picture from these rooms of the old house in Stepney Causeway, he would leave the galleries of Burlington House echoing with "little dears," and "what a lovely child!" and popular prejudice would conclude that from birth the little rosebud mouths were duly fitted with silver spoons instead of being scant even of the bluntest of wooden ladles.

At this Crèche at Stepney Causeway the reasons of the true childlike freshness, alacrity, and even the engaging impetuosity and loving confidence which characterise these little ones, is not far to seek. As you came up you noticed row after row of blue check bags, hanging in a current of fresh air on the wall of the staircase.

Those bags contain the clothes in which these children are brought to the Home in the morning. They are changed with the morning's ablutions, and clean garments substituted for them until the mothers come in the evening to fetch away their bairnies, and by that time they have been aired and sweetened. It is noticeable that this has the effect in many instances of inducing the women to make praiseworthy efforts to improve the appearance of the children, and, indeed, the whole tendency of the treatment of the little ones is to develop the tenderness and love which lie deep down in the hearts of the mothers. Even the endearing nicknames almost instinctively bestowed upon the tiny darlings have a share in promoting this feeling, and the pretty rosy plump little creatures, or the quaint expressive bright-eyed babies, who are called "Rosie," "Katie," "Pet," "Little Old Lady," and so on, all have a kind of happy individuality of their own in the regards of the dear lady who founded and still directs the institution, and in those of the nurses who tend them. Sometimes the names arise from some little incident occurring when the children are first brought there, as well as from the engaging looks and manners of the little ones themselves. "The King," is a really fine baby-boy, the recognised monarch of the upper nursery, but his sway is strictly constitutional; while a pretty little wistful, plump lassie, is good-humouredly known as "Water Cresses," and has no reason to be ashamed of the name, for it designates the business by which a hard-working mother and elder sister earn the daily bread for the family.

Did I say that the charge for each child is twopence daily? Nominally it is so; and let those who desire to know something of the real annals of the poor remember that even this small sum – which of course cannot adequately represent anything like the cost – is not easily subtracted from the scanty earnings of poor women engaged in slopwork, or selling dried fish, plants, crockery, and small wares in the streets, or going out to work in warehouses, rope-walks, match-making, box-making, and other poor employments, where the daily wages will not reach to shillings, and sometimes are represented only in the pence column. Let it be remembered, too, that the husbands of these women (those who are not prematurely widows, or whose husbands have not deserted them) are employed as dock labourers, and are often under the terrible curse of drink, or are in prison, while the women struggle on to support the little ones, who but for this institution, would perhaps be left – hungry, naked, and sickly – to the care of children only two or three years older than themselves; or would be locked in wretched rooms without food or fire till the mother could toil homeward, with the temptation of a score of gin-shops in the way.

Each of the bright intelligent little faces now before us has its history, and a very suggestive and pathetic history too.

Look at this little creature, whose pet name of Fairy bespeaks the loving care which her destitute babyhood calls forth; she is only ten months old, and her mother is but nineteen, the widow of a sailor lost at sea two months before the baby was born.

Katie, of the adult age of five years, is the child of a man who works on barges. Rosie, one of the first inmates, has a drunken dock-labourer for a father, and her mother is dead. Dicky represents the children whose father, going out to sea in search of better fortune for wife and children, is no more heard of, and is supposed to be dead. "The King" is fatherless, and his mother works in a bottle-warehouse. The pathetic stories of these children is told by Mrs. Hilton herself, in the little simple reports of this most admirable charity. They are so touching, that I cannot hope to reproduce them in any language so likely to go straight to the heart as that in which you may read them for yourself if you will either visit the Crèche, or send ever so small a donation, and ask for a copy of the modest brown-covered little chronicle of these baby-lives. Standing here in the two nurseries, where the dolls and Noah's arks, the pictures and the doves, nay, even the baby-jumpers suspended from the ceilings, are but accessories to the clasp of loving arms and the softly-spoken words of tender womanly kindness, I wonder why all one side of Stepney Causeway has not been demanded by a discriminating public for the extension of such an institution. Loitering in the lower room, where one little bright face is lifted up to mine, as the tiny hands pluck at my coat-skirt, and another chubby fist is busy with my walking-stick, I begin to think of the workhouse ward, where mothers are separated from their children night and day; of a prison, where I have seen a troop of little boys, and a flogging-room provided by a beneficent Government for the recognition by the State of children who had qualified themselves for notice by the commission of what the law called crime.

A pleasant odour of minced beef, gravy, and vegetables, known as "Irish stew," begins to steal upon the air. The wooden benches in one of the rooms are suddenly turned back, and like a conjuring trick, convert themselves into tiny arm-chairs, with convenient trays in front for plates and spoons. The little voices – forty like one – strike up a fresh chant, and a whisper of rice-pudding is heard. So we go out, wondering still, and with a wish that from every nursery where children lisp "grace before meat," some gracious message could be brought to aid and strengthen those who believe with me that the most profitable investment of political economy, the most certain effort of philanthropy, is to begin with the men and women of the future, and so abate the fearful threatenings of coming pauperism, and the still more terrible menace of a permanent "criminal class."

The policy of the authorities, says Mrs. Hilton, in her interesting narrative of the Crèche, in stopping outdoor relief to poor widows with children is causing much sorrow. The 2s. 6d. or 3s. received from the parish secured their rent, and they managed, with shirt-making or trouser-finishing, to earn a bare subsistence; but now the battle for a mere existence is terrible. Doubtless, the children would be better cared for in the House, but mothers cannot be persuaded to give them up. One such case has just passed under my notice; but the woman shall speak for herself. "'Oh, Mrs. Hilton, they have taken off my relief! – I, with four little ones who cannot even put on their shoes and stockings. They offer me the House; but I never can give up my children. Look at baby; he is ten months old; his father died of small-pox six months before he was born; he was only ill five days.' I told her I was afraid she would not be able to earn enough to keep them all. 'Well,' she said, 'I must try – I will never go into the House.'"

"But these women have very little feeling for their children, they are so low and brutalised." Are they? Let those who think so visit this Cradle Home, and witness the bearing of the mothers who come to take their little ones home, or to nurse the sucklings at intervals snatched from work. Let them hear what such poor women will do for children not their own, even to the extent (as recently took place, in one instance, at least) of sharing with their less necessitous babes the natural sustenance that the mother cannot always give.

Sixty-five children received daily and a hundred or more on the books, with space needed for many more than can be admitted; children who, some of them infants as they are, have learned to lisp profane oaths and babble in foul language, and to give way to furious outbursts of passion, the result of neglect and evil example, and the life of the street and the gutter. It is but a short time, however, before this strange dreadful phase of the distorted child mind disappears, and the pet name is bestowed along with the gentle kindness that obliterates the evil mimicry of sin. The baby taken home from this purer atmosphere of love becomes a messenger of grace to many a poor household, as the short annals of the Crèche will tell; and even the pet names themselves are adopted by the mothers in speaking of and to their own children. One short story from the first report sent out by Mrs. Hilton, and we will go our way with a hope that some words of ours may win a fresh interest for these little ones.

"A precious babe died, and the mother, too poor to bury it, sent for a parish coffin. The child was very dear to us, and we had named her our nursery Queen which had degenerated into 'Queenie.' It was a sore trial to us to see the golden curls mingled with sawdust, which is all that was placed in the coffin; and yet we could not spend public funds on the funeral, and feared to do it privately. In a few hours a mother came and said, 'Come and look at your Queenie now.' We went and saw that loving hands had softened all the harsh outlines. A little bed and pillow had been provided, a frill placed round the edge, and some children had lain fresh-gathered flowers on the darling's breast. The cost had been 9½d., paid for by those mothers, and although so freely and lovingly given, it was the price of more than a meal each."

If every mother in London with a well-stocked larder would give the price of a meal for the sake of a living child – but, there! my duty is not to beg, but to describe.

WITH LOST LAMBS

Only quite lately I had to write about the old French colony in Spitalfields, and of the changes that have come over entire neighbourhoods which were once associated with what is now a failing industry, or rather with one which, so far as London is concerned, has nearly died out altogether.

Not that the public has ceased to hear sundry reports of those quarters of the metropolis of which the name of Bethnal Green is an indication as suggesting dire poverty, neglected dwellings, poorly-paid callings, and constant distress. Some few years ago it became quite a fashion for newspaper special reporters (following in the wake of one or two writers who had begun to tell the world something of the truth of what they knew of these sad regions) to make sudden amateur excursions beyond Shoreditch, for the purpose of picking up material for "lurid" articles about foul tenements, fever, hunger, want, and crime. Bethnal Green became quite a by-word, even at the West End, and certain spasmodic efforts in the direction of charitable relief were made by well-meaning people, so that for a time there was danger of a new kind of demoralisation of the "low neighbourhood," and the price of lodgings, even in the wretched tenements of its notorious streets, were expected to rise in proportion to the demand made by emigrants from other less favoured localities, to which the special correspondent had not at that time penetrated. One good work was effected by the attention of sanitary authorities being called to the fever dens during a time of terrible epidemic, and a certain provision of medical aid, together with purification of drains, whitewashing of rooms, and clearing of sties and dustheaps, was the result. This was but temporary, however; and those who best know the neighbourhood lying between Shoreditch and Bethnal Green, and disclaimed by the local authorities of both because of its misery and dilapidation, are also aware that in various parts of the whole great district from the Hackney Road to Bishopsgate, and so embracing Spitalfields and part of Whitechapel, far away to Mile End and "Twig Folly," there can be discovered more of want, hunger, and disease than could exist in any free city under heaven, if men were not such hypocrites as to defy and disregard the laws which yet they claim to have a hand in framing, and a power to enforce.