About My Father's Business

Only those who are personally acquainted with such a district can conceive what is the condition of the children of its streets, and yet every ordinary wayfarer of the London thoroughfares may note to what a life some of them are committed. About the outskirts of the markets, round the entrances to railway stations, cowering in the shadows of dark arches, or scrambling and begging by the doors of gin-shops and taverns, the boys – and what is even worse, the girls – are to be seen daily and nightly, uncared for, till they have learnt how to claim the attention of a paternal government by an offence against the law. When once the child, who is a mere unnoted fraction of the population, has so far matriculated in crime as to warrant the interposition of the police, he or she becomes an integer of sufficient importance to be dealt with by a magistrate. Let an infancy of neglect and starvation lead to the reckless pilfering of a scrap of food from a counter, or the abstraction of something eatable or saleable from a market-cart or a porter's sack, and the little unclassified wretch is added as another unit to a body recognised, and in some sense cared for, by the State. As a member of the great "criminal class," the juvenile thief becomes of immediate importance. Even though the few juvenile criminal reformatories be full, the gaol doors are open, and the teachings of evil companionship are consummated by the prison brand. The individual war against society gains strength and purpose, for society itself has acknowledged and resented it. The child has entered on a career, and unless some extra legal interposition shall succeed in changing the course of the juvenile offender by assuming a better guardianship, the boy may become an habitual thief, a full-fledged London ruffian; the girl – ?

It was with a deep sense of the terrible significance of this question, that a small party of earnest gentlemen met, twenty-seven years ago, in that foul neighbourhood to which I have referred, to consider what should be done to rescue the deserted and destitute girls, some of whom had already been induced to attend a ragged school, which was held in a dilapidated building that had once been a stable.

These thoughtful workers included among them two men of practical experience; one of them, Mr. H. R. Williams, the treasurer of the present institution, the other the Rev. William Tyler, whose bright genial presence has long been a power among the poor of that district, where even the little ragged children of the streets follow him, and lisp out his name as the faithful shepherd, who both gives and labours in one of the truest "cures of souls" to be found in all great London. To them soon came the present honorary secretary, Mr. J. H. Lloyd, a gentleman already familiar with teaching the poor in a neighbouring district no less wretched and neglected. They were the right men for the business in hand, and therefore they began by moving sluggish boards and commissions to put in force the sanitary laws – and, in spite of the opposition of landlords with vested interests in vile tenements let out to whole families of lodgers from garret to basement, and of the malignant opposition of owners of hovels where every abomination was rife, and pigs littered in the yards, while costermongers shared the cellars with their donkeys – insisted on the surrounding streets being paved and drained, and some of the houses being whitewashed and made weatherproof.

Nothing less could have been done, for the terrible cholera epidemic was already raging in that tangle of courts and alleys. Application was at once made for a share from the Mansion House Relief Fund, and the committee had to use every available shilling in order to supply food and medicine, blankets and clothing, to the wretched families; to visit whom, a regular relief corps was organised, carrying on its beneficent and self-denying work, until the plague began to be stayed. Then with scarcely any money, but with unabated hope and fervid faith, this little company of men and women began to consider what they should do to found a Refuge for the children (many of them orphans, and quite friendless) who were everywhere to be seen wandering about, or alone and utterly destitute in the bare rooms that had been their homes. There were already certain institutions to which boys could be sent, for then, as now, the provision for boys was far greater than for girls. This is one of the strange, almost inexplicable conditions of charitable effort, and at that time it was so obvious which was the greater need, that the committee at once determined to commence a building on a waste piece of land which had been purchased close by, and to devote it to the reception of thirty destitute girls, who should be snatched from deadly contamination, and from the association of thieves and depraved companions.

Surely, if slowly, the work went on, the plan of the building being so prepared that it could be extended as the means of meeting the growing need increased. Almost every brick was laid with thoughtful care, and when subscriptions came slowly in, the funds were furnished among the committee themselves rather than the sound of plane and hammer should cease; till at last, when the King Edward Ragged School and Girl's Refuge was completed, a large edifice of three spacious storeys had superseded the old ruinous stable amidst its fœtid yards and sheds, and, what was more, the building was paid for, and a family of children had been gathered within its sheltering walls. At the time of my first visit to the institution no more than twenty had been taken into this Refuge; but every foot of the building was utilised until the money should be forthcoming to add to the dormitories, and enable the committee to fulfil the purpose that it had in view.

In the large square-paved playground forty happy little members of the infant-school were marching to the slow music of a nursery song; and the numbers on the books were 196, in addition to 304 girls who came daily to be instructed in the great school-room, where they were taught to read, and write, and sew. A hundred and twenty boys were also being taught in the Ragged Church opposite, while seventy children over fifteen years of age attended evening classes, forty-two young men and women were in the Bible class, and a penny bank, a library of books, and a benevolent fund for the relief of poor children in the neighbourhood, were branches of the parent institution.

This, however, was seven years ago, and since that time so greatly has the work flourished, that the Ragged and Infant Schools have premises of their own on the other side of the way; and the great building having been completed by the addition of an entire wing, its original purpose is accomplished, and it is "The Girl's Refuge," of the King Edward Certified Industrial and Ragged Schools, Albert Street, Spitalfields.

It is to the receipt of munificent anonymous donations that the committee owe the completion of the building, and in order to extend the usefulness of their Refuge they have certified it under the provisions of the Industrial Schools Act of 1866. That this was in accordance with their ruling principle of making the most of every advantage at their command may be shown by the fact that when the School Board, almost appalled at the need for making immediate use of any existing organization, began to send cases to existing "Homes," only eight of these institutions could receive the children, and in these eight no more than forty-four vacancies existed for Protestant girls. The consequence of opening the King Edward Refuge under the Act was that it received nearly all the cases of the year, and that in the twelve months it was certified ninety new inmates after found an asylum within its walls.

If you were to go there with me to-day, you would not wonder that the supporters of this institution were anxious to erect another building in some part of London, where another hundred lambs straying in this great wilderness could be taken to the fold. Passing through the neat dormitories, with their rows of clean white beds; peeping into the big toy cupboard, where the kindly treasurer has recently placed a whole family of eighty dolls, and other attractive inventions to induce children to play, some of whom have never known before what play really meant; looking at the lavatory with its long rows of basins let into slate slabs, and each with its towel and clean bag for brush and comb; noting the quiet "Infirmary," with its two or three beds so seldom needed, and remarking that from topmost floor to the great laundry with its troughs and tubs, a constant supply of hot water provides alike for warmth and cleanliness, I begin to wonder what must be the first sensations of a poor little dazed homeless wanderer on being admitted, washed, fed, and neatly clothed. Why, the two kitchens – that one with the big range, where most of the cooking is done, and the other cosy farmhouse-looking nook, with its air of comfort – must be a revelation to all the senses at once. Then there are the highly-coloured prints on the walls, the singing of the grace before meat; the regular and wholesome food; the discipline (one little rebel is already in bed, whither she has been sent for misconduct, and an elder girl demurely brings up her slice of bread and mug of milk and water on a plate); the provision for recreation; the occasional visits of parents (many of them unworthy of the name) at stated seasons; the outings to the park, the Bethnal Green Museum, and other places; the Christmas treat; the summer presents of great baskets of fruit; the rewards and prizes; the daily instruction in such domestic work as fits them for becoming useful household servants. What a wonderful change must all these things present to the children of the streets, whose short lives have often been less cared for than those of the beasts that perish! Everywhere there are marks of order, from the neat wire baskets at the foot of each bed in which the girls place their folded clothes before retiring to rest, to the wardrobe closets and the great trays of stale bread and butter just ready for tea. Everywhere there are evidences of care and loving kindness, from the invalid wheel-chair – the gift of the treasurer to the infirmary – to the splendid quality of the "long kidney" potatoes in the bucket, where they are awaiting the arrival of to-morrow's roast mutton, three days being meat dinner days, while one is a bread and cheese, and two are farinaceous pudding days.

As we sit here and sip our tea – for I am invited to tea with the committee – and are waited on by three neat and pretty modest little women – one of them, a girl of eight, so full of child-like grace and simplicity, that there would be some danger of her being spoiled if she were not quite used to a little petting – who can help looking at the inmates now assembling quite quietly at the other end of the room, and thinking that in some of those faces "their angels," long invisible because of neglect and wrong, are once more looking through, calm, happy, and with a hope that maketh not ashamed. Do you see that still rather sullen-looking girl of thirteen. She came here an incorrigible young thief – her father, a tanner's labourer, and out at work from five in the morning – her mother bedridden – her home was the streets – her companions a gang of juvenile thieves such as haunt Bermondsey, and make an offshoot of the population of a place till recently called "Little Hell."

That girl, aged ten, was sent out to beg and to sing songs, and was an adept in the art of pretending to have lost money. There is the daughter of a crossing-sweeper, who cut his throat, and yonder a child of nine, driven from home, and charged with stealing, as her sister also is, in another Refuge; and close by are two girls, also sisters, who were found fatherless and destitute, wandering about famishing and homeless, except for a wretched room, with nothing in it but two heaps of foul straw. I need not multiply cases: and but for the known power of love and true human interest, in which the very Divine love is incarnated, you would wonder where some of these children obtained their quiet docile manner, their fearless but modest demeanour, their bright, quiet, sweet faces.

One case only let me mention, and we will go quietly away, to think of what may be done in such a place by the discipline of this love and true Christian interest. Do you see that emaciated little creature – the pale, pinched shadow of a child sitting at a table, where some of her companions tend her very gently? She is the daughter of a woman who is an incorrigible beggar. She has never known a home, and for four out of her eight years of life has been dragged about the street an infant mendicant; has slept in common lodging-houses; and in her awful experience could have told of thieves' kitchens, of low taverns, and of the customs of those vile haunts where she had learnt the language of obscenity and depravity. But that has become a hideous, almost forgotten dream, and she is about to awaken to a reality in a world to which the present tenderness with which she is cared for is but the lowest threshold. It is only a question of a month or two perhaps. One more bright sunny holiday with her schoolmates in the pleasant garden of the treasurer, at Highgate – whither they all go for a whole happy day in the summer – and she will be in the very land of light before the next haytime comes round. She wants for nothing – wine and fruit and delicate fare are sent for her by kind sympathetic hands; but she is wearing away, not with pain, but with the exhaustion of vital power, through the privations of the streets. From the Refuge she will go home – a lost lamb found, and carried to the eternal fold.

But another building has been found; a large, old-fashioned mansion in St. Andrew's Road, close to the Canal Bridge at Cambridge Heath, and there the more advanced inmates of this original home in Spitalfields are to be drafted into classes whence they will go to take a worthy part in the work of the world, so soon as the necessary subscriptions enable the committee to increase the number of lambs rescued from the wolves of famine and of crime.