PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 BV4010 .A72 1876 
 
 Archer, Thomas, 1830-1893. 
 sheif.... "About my Father ' s 
 
 " business" : work amidst the 
 zs= sick, the sad, and the 
 
 sorrowing. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/aboutmyfathersbu1876arch 
 
"About my Fathers Business" 
 
{The Rights of Tt 
 
' 'A botit my Father s Business 
 
 WOkK AMIDST THE SICK, THE SAD, AND 
 THE SORROWING 
 
 y 
 
 THOMAS^ARCHER 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 'STRANGE WORK," (< A POOL'S PARADISE," " THE TERRIBLE LONDON, 
 
 
 THIEF, AND THE CONVICT," ETC., ETC. 
 
 Henry S. King & Co. 
 1876 
 
:-i>Oi; 
 
 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 
 
 i vol. crown 8vo., 5s. 
 
 By Bernard H. Becker. 
 
 
 tion 
 
 n Account of the History and present Scope of the following institu- 
 s : — 
 
 The Royal Society. 
 The Royal Institution. 
 The Institution of Civil Engineers. 
 The Royal Geographical Society. 
 The Society of Telegraph Engi- 
 neers. 
 The British Association. 
 The Birkbeck Institute. 
 
 The Society of Arts. 
 
 The Government Department of 
 
 Science and Art. 
 The Statistical Society. 
 The Chemical Society. 
 The Museum of Practical Geology. 
 The London Institution. 
 The Gresham Lectures. 
 
 Henry S. King and Co., London. 
 
Pfinio^ToifV 
 apr m 
 
 ■OLOGIC. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PA.GE 
 
 THE RARITY OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY - - I 
 
 WITH THE CHILDREN OF THE STRANGER - - 9 
 
 WITH THE CHILDREN'S CHILDREN - - - l8 
 
 WITH THE STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND - - 34 
 
 WITH THOSE WHO ARE LEFT DESOLATE - - "43 
 
 WITH THEM THAT GO DOWN TO THE SEA IN SHIPS - 53 
 
 WITH THEM WHO WERE READY TO PERISH - - - 62 
 
 CASTING BREAD UPON THE WATERS 74 
 
 WITH THE FEEBLE AND FAINT-HEARTED - - H 
 
 WITH THE LITTLE ONES - " ~ " - IOO 
 
 IN THE KINGDOM - - - ~ " - 1 12 
 
 WITH LOST LAMBS - - - " " I2 5 
 
 WITH THE SICK - - - - - ~ " I 3S 
 
 BLESSING THE LITTLE CHILDREN - - - - 144 
 
 WITH THEM THAT FAINT BY THE WAY - - - - 156 
 
 IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH - - 165 
 
 WITH THE HALT AND THE LAME - - - " 1 73 
 
vi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 WITH THEM WHO HAVE NOT WHERE TO LAY THEIR HEADS - 190 
 TAKING IN STRANGERS ----- 200 
 
 FEEDING THE MULTITUDE ----- 209 
 
 GIVING REST TO THE WEARY ----- 220 
 WITH THE POOR AND NEEDY - - - 227 
 
 GIVING THE FEEBLE STRENGTH - 248 
 
 HEALING THE SICK - n - - 261 
 
 WITH THE PRISONER --«-«- 274 
 
'OGICS 
 
 : 
 
 "ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS.' 
 
 THE RARITY OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY. 
 
 OULD it not be useful t% ask ourselves the 
 question whether we are forgetting the true 
 meaning of " charity " in the constant endea- 
 vour to take advantage of organized bene- 
 volent institutions, about the actual working of which we 
 concern ourselves very little ? As the years go on, and 
 what we call civilisation advances, are we or are we not 
 losing sight of u our neighbour" in a long vista of vicarious 
 benefactions, bestowed through the medium of a sub- 
 scription list, or casual contributions at an " anniversary 
 festival ?" 
 
 At the speeches that are made on such occasions, 
 when the banquet is over, and the reading of the 
 amounts subscribed is accompanied by the cracking of 
 nuts and a crescendo or decrescendo of applause, in pro- 
 portion to the liberality of the donors, we are so frequently 
 reminded of" the good Samaritan," that we begin to feel 
 that we may claim some kind of relationship to him ; and 
 
2 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS." 
 
 may shake our heads with solemn sorrow at the inex- 
 cusable conduct of the priest and the Levite. It would 
 be worth while, however, to ask ourselves whether we 
 quite come up to the mark of him who, finding the man 
 wounded and helpless by the wayside, dismounted that 
 he might convey the sufferer to the nearest inn ; poured 
 out oil for his wounds and wine for his cheer ; left him 
 with money in hand for the supply of his immediate 
 needs ; and did not scruple — with a robust and secure 
 honesty — even to get into debt on his behalf: since the 
 crown of good-will would be the coming again to learn 
 of the patient's welfare. The debt was a pledge of the 
 intention. 
 
 That was the Lord Christ's way of looking at chari- 
 table responsibility, and at benevolent effort ; and even 
 granting that He illustrated the answer to the question, 
 " Who is my neighbour?" by an extreme case of sudden 
 distress, the longer we look at the peculiar needs of the 
 man who was on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho, the 
 more perhaps we shall be convinced that there are greater, 
 far greater evils, and more terrible accidents, than to fall 
 among thieves, who temporarily rob, strip, and disable 
 their victim. 
 
 The present fashion of dealing with such an unfor- 
 tunate traveller would very much depend on which par- 
 ticular class of philanthropists the modern Samaritan 
 who found him by the road-side happened to belong to. 
 
 Of course, it would be a scandal to our Christianity 
 to follow either priest or Levite, although our cowardly 
 sympathies might lie between the two ; so, in order to 
 make all safe, we hit on a compromise, and, according 
 to our circumstances, try to find a medium line of con- 
 duct between Samaritan and Levite, or Samaritan and 
 
THE RARITY OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY. 3 
 
 priest. We are ashamed to pass on without doing some- 
 thing, and so we call at the inn on our way, and leave 
 the twopence there, in case anybody else should think 
 fit to bring on the man who is lying, stunned and bleed- 
 ing, in the roadway. Or else, having contrived to rouse 
 the poor fellow to a little effort, we borrow an ass and 
 take him back with us, to find some organised institution 
 for the relief of those who fall among thieves, where the 
 wine and oil are contracted for out of the funds. And 
 there we leave him, without remembering anything 
 whatever about the twopenny contribution which would 
 represent our own share in the benefaction. 
 
 It is an awful thought, and one which it may be hoped 
 will soon become intolerable, that, with the mechanical 
 perfection of means for relieving the necessities of those 
 who are afflicted, there seems to grow upon us a deadly 
 indifference to the very deepest need of all — that per- 
 sonal, human sympathy, without which all our boast 
 of benevolence is but as the sounding of brass and the 
 tinkling of a cymbal. Can it be possible that we are 
 approaching a condition when, refusing to have the poor 
 and the afflicted, the widow and the orphan always with* 
 us, we shut them away out of our sight, leaving the whole 
 duty of visiting them, of clothing them, of giving them 
 meat and drink, to be done by an official committee ; a 
 charitable board, distributing doles, exactly calculated. 
 on a carefully devised scale, and divided to the ounce or 
 the inch, in supposed proportion to the individual need 
 of each recipient ? Will there ever come a time when 
 we shall persuade ourselves that we fulfil the law of 
 Christ by paying so much in the pound for a charity 
 rate, and leaving all the actual " relief" to be effected by 
 an official department, or a series of official committees ? 
 
 I — 2 
 
4 " ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS!' 
 
 The present aspect of charitable administration would" 
 be truly appalling if this were likely to be the result, for 
 there are far too many evidences of that deadly indiffer- 
 ence which will get rid of all real personal responsibility 
 by paying a subscription, and will pay handsomely, too, 
 at the same time smiling grimly, and half satirically, at 
 the recollection that there are a number of people who 
 always have on hand " cases/' of whom they are anxious 
 to rid themselves by placing them in any institution that 
 will receive them without payment. 
 
 Let it not be imagined that these latter words of mine 
 are intended to apply to those workers among the poor, 
 who, with small means of their own, cannot do much 
 more than speak words of advice and comfort, and give 
 their earnest help to better the condition of sordid homes 
 and of neglected children. There are scores of true, 
 tender-hearted women who, spending much time amongst 
 the sick and the afflicted, feel their hearts sink within 
 them as they see how much more might be done, if they 
 had but the wherewithal to appease the actual physical 
 needs of those to whom they try to come spiritually 
 near. 
 
 If but the miracle so easy to others were first per- 
 formed, and the five thousand fed, then indeed might 
 follow that still greater miracle, the earnest listening of 
 the once turbulent multitude to the words of the Bread 
 of Life. 
 
 But there are those who pursue what they regard as 
 " charitable work" as an excitement — an amusement — 
 just as children are sometimes set to play with Scripture 
 conversation cards, and puzzles out of the Old Testa- 
 ment, with a kind of feeling that the employment comes 
 nearly to a religious exercise. There is as much danger 
 
THE RARITY OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY. 5 
 
 of these persons missing the true work of charity as there 
 would be in the employment of paid officials — indeed, 
 the latter would have one advantage ; they would be 
 less likely to be imposed upon by those who to obtain 
 some special advantage would cringe and flatter. 
 
 The first great difficulty in visiting and temporarily 
 relieving the lower class of destitute poor, is to dis- 
 abuse their minds of an inveterate notion that the 
 benevolent visitor and distributor is paid by some 
 occult society, of which the recipients of bounty know 
 nothing, and for which they care very little. Un- 
 fortunately, the sharp determined amateur visitor, who 
 "does a district" as other people with leisure do a flower ^ 
 
 show or a morning concert but, alas ! these very 
 
 words of mine show how common is that lack of true 
 charity of which I designed to speak. Who am I that 
 I should sum up the disposition and the heart of my 
 brother or my sister ? Only I would say that this sus- 
 picion on the part of the ignorant poor, which is so often 
 complained of— the notion that their interviewers are 
 paid for the work of charity— can only yield to the con- 
 viction that the work itself is undertaken with warm 
 living human sympathy. Before the true relief shall 
 come to any man, it must come by faith. " With the 
 heart man believeth unto righteousness," and in righteous- 
 ness also. 
 
 The two tendencies that are driving us away from 
 charity to a kind of selfish economy, are the habit of 
 " relieving our overcharged susceptibilities by secreting - 
 a guinea," and thinking we have thereby fulfilled the 
 claims of religion and humanity, and the practice of 
 going about seeking where we may find candidates for 
 other people's guineas, and so becoming a kind of chant- 
 
6 " ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS: 7 
 
 able detectives, with an eye to reputation and advance- 
 ment in the force. 
 
 We are forgetting that heartfelt sympathy, that clasp 
 of the hand and beam of the eye which will make even 
 a cup of cold water a benefaction, if we have no more 
 to give, or if the need goes no further than a refreshing 
 draught, that shall be turned from water into wine by 
 the power of loving fellowship. Or we may be saying, 
 " Be ye clothed, and be ye fed," trusting to some other 
 hand to do the necessary work, without having ourselves 
 first wrought for the means of taking our part in it, 
 either by a deep personal interest in the relieving insti- 
 tution or in the destitute recipient. 
 
 " Yet one thing thou lackest," — even though out of 
 thy great possessions a large proportion is given to the 
 poor ; " follow thou me." " Go about doing good," do not 
 think to have fulfilled the law without love — that which 
 you call charity ; the mere giving — is but to offer a stone 
 when bread is required of you, unless it be done with 
 love in your heart — personal, human, and therefore 
 Divine love. "If ye have not been faithful in that 
 which is another man's, who shall give you that which 
 is your own ?" Use the benefits of institutions — even 
 though you use them only for others — as you would 
 use your own property. Recommend only cases that 
 are known to you to be worthy and necessitous, and, 
 should the institution depend on voluntary support, 
 let a contribution accompany your "case," if you can 
 any way afford it, as an act of justice as well as of 
 mercy. 
 
 Don't join in the traffic in votes, and never go begging 
 for " proxies," in order to have an exchangeable stock 
 on hand, that you may secure a candidate for any par- 
 
THE RARITY OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY. 7 
 
 ticular institution. This kind of gambling is a cancer 
 that is eating the heart out of genuine, pure, charitable 
 effort, and is making way for the cold impersonal system 
 of distribution, which is now being advocated by those 
 who would make the relief of human wretchedness and 
 distress a mechanical organisation without the soul of 
 love. At the same time, let us not forget that no charit- 
 able effort which would be efficacious in affording relief 
 to the widely-spread distress by which we are sur- 
 rounded, could be even so much as attempted without 
 associations established for the express purpose of re- 
 lieving particular forms of suffering. This, indeed, is 
 the glory of our country, that humanity is so strong 
 among us as to lead us not only to combine, but to emu- 
 late. The absolute concentration and centralization of 
 charitable effort would be a calamity. The breaking up 
 of the best of our institutions, which have grown from 
 small beginnings in almsgiving into wide and influential 
 centres of benevolent effort, would be destruction. 
 
 If anything that may be written hereafter concerning 
 some representative (large and small, but still truly 
 representative) efforts to do the work that Christianity 
 demands as its first evidence of reality, should lead to a 
 deeper and wider personal interest in their behalf, it will 
 be matter for rejoicing. The larger the number of people 
 who ask what is being done, the greater will be the desire 
 to continue the good work, or to declare it. The atten- 
 tion that might in this way be directed to the mode of 
 affording relief would exercise so keen an influence in 
 the reformation of abuses, and the adoption of improve- 
 ments, that all our charities would soon become truly 
 " public." With the more earnest conviction of the duty 
 of personal inquiry, and real sympathetic interest in the 
 
8 " ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS." 
 
 individual well-being of our poorer brother or sister, 
 would come the satisfaction that we belonged to an 
 association, or to a chain of associations, which will 
 afford to him or to her the very relief which otherwise 
 we should despair of securing. 
 
 I purpose in another chapter to ask you to read the 
 story of an institution that was in its day wonderfully 
 illustrative, and even now serves to take us back for two 
 centuries of history. Only yesterday I was speaking to 
 some of its inmates. One of them had nearly com- 
 pleted her own century of life, most of them had seen 
 far more than the threescore years and ten which we call 
 old age ; but they come of a wonderful race, the men of 
 fire and steel; the women of silent suffering — the old 
 Huguenots of France. 
 
 

 *\ x xl S LOGICS 
 -kit 
 
 WITH THE CHILDREN OE THE STRANGER. 
 
 HUNDRED and eighty-seven years ago a 
 French army invaded England and effected 
 a landing at various places on the coast. 
 Smaller divisions of that army had previously 
 obtained a footing in some of the chief towns of Great 
 Britain ; and for about fifty years afterwards other con- 
 tingents arrived at intervals to find the compatriots 
 settled among the people, who had easily yielded to their 
 address and courage, and by that time were apparently 
 contented to regard them as being permanently estab- 
 lished in the districts of which they had taken possession. 
 The strange part of the story is, that for a large part of 
 this time England was successfully engaged in war with 
 the country of the invaders, and not only with that 
 country, but with a discarded prince of its own, who, 
 having received assistance from France, strove to regain 
 the throne which he had abdicated by raising civil war in 
 Ireland. Then was to be seen a marvellous thing. A 
 detachment of the French army of occupation in England 
 went with King William to the Boyne, and when the 
 mercenaries who were at the back of James in his miser- 
 able enterprise came forth to fight, they beheld the 
 swords of their countrymen flash in their faces, and 
 
io " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS." 
 
 heard a well-known terrible cry, as a band of veteran 
 warriors cut through their ranks, fighting as they had 
 been taught to fight in the Cevennes and amidst the 
 valleys and passes of Languedoc. For the army that 
 invaded England in 1686, and for four or five years after- 
 wards, was the army of the French Huguenots, against 
 whom the dragoons of Louis XIV. and the emissaries of 
 Pope and priests had been let loose after the revocation 
 of the Edict of Nantes. 
 
 Four hundred thousand French Protestants had left 
 their country during the twenty years previous to the 
 revocation of that pact, which had been renewed after the 
 siege of Rochelle, and though the attempt to escape from 
 the country was made punishable by the confiscation of 
 property and perpetual imprisonment in the galleys, six 
 hundred thousand persons contrived to get out of France, 
 and found asylums in Flanders, Switzerland, Holland, Ger- 
 many, and England, after the persecutions were resumed. 
 
 Comparatively few of the men who came in the second 
 emigration had fought for the religion that they pro- 
 fessed. They had learned to endure all things, and 
 with undaunted courage many of them had suffered 
 the loss of their worldly goods, the burning of their 
 houses, hunger, poverty, and the imprisonment of their 
 wives and daughters in distant fortresses, because they 
 would not forswear their faith. Hundreds of their com- 
 panions were at the galleys, hundreds more had been 
 tortured, mutilated, burned, broken on the wheel. 
 Women as well as men endured almost in silence the. 
 fierce brutalities of a debased soldiery, directed by 
 priests and fanatics, who had, as it were, made themselves 
 drunk with blood, and seemed to revel in cruelty. With 
 a resolution that nothing seemed able to abate, pastors 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN OF THE STRANGER. ir 
 
 like Claude Brousson went from district to district, living 
 they knew not how, half famished, in perpetual danger, 
 and with little expectation of ultimately escaping the 
 stake or the rack. Nay, they refused to leave the 
 country, while in the woods and wildernesses of the Gard 
 great congregations of their brethren awaited their 
 coming, that they might hold services in caves and " in 
 the desert," as they called that wild country of the 
 Cevennes and of Lozere. These men were non-resist- 
 ants. They met with unflinching courage, but without 
 arms. Those of them who remained in France stayed to 
 see the persecutions redoubled in the attempt to exter- 
 minate the reformed faith. They were the truest vindi- 
 cators of the religion that they professed. Up to the 
 time of the siege of Rochelle, and afterwards, Protestant- 
 ism was represented by a defensive sword, but these 
 men discarded the weapons of carnal warfare. Only 
 some years later, when the persecutors (rioting in the 
 very insanity of wrath because their declaration that 
 Protestantism was abolished was falsified by constant 
 revivals of the old Huguenot worship) directed utter ex- 
 termination of the Vaudois, did the grandeur of the non- 
 resisting principle give way before the desperation of men 
 who came to the conclusion that, if they were to die,, 
 they might as well die fighting. 
 
 It must be remembered that some of them knew well 
 how to fight. Some of their leaders — men of peace as 
 they were, and men of an iron determination, which was 
 shown in the obstinacy with which they refused to take 
 up the sword — had come of stern warriors and were 
 Frenchmen — Norman Frenchmen — Protestant Norman 
 Frenchmen. A rare combination that ; — cold hard steel 
 and fire. 
 
1 2 " ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS: 9 
 
 But it was not till some time afterwards that these men 
 became the leaders of the peasantry, the chestnut-fed 
 mountaineers who came down from their miserable huts 
 and joined what had then become an organised army 
 of insurrection. Before this time arrived a strange 
 aberration seemed to move the people. The old simple 
 non-resisting pastors had been done to death by torture 
 and execution, and the people met, it is true, but often 
 met amid the ruin of their homes, or in desert places, 
 and as sheep having no shepherd. Then a wild hys- 
 terical frenzy appeared among them. Men, women, and 
 even children claimed to be inspired, and at length fana- 
 ticism leaped into retaliation. On a Sunday in July, 
 1702, a wild mystic preacher, named Seguier went down 
 with a band of about fifty armed men to release the pri- 
 soners. They were confined in dungeons beneath the 
 house of one Chayla, a priest, who directed the prosecu- 
 tions, and invented the tortures which he caused to be 
 inflicted for the conversion of heretics. The Protestants 
 broke open his door, forced the prison, and ultimately set 
 fire to the house, in attempting to escape from which 
 Chayla was recognised and killed. This was the begin- 
 ning of a series of retaliations by the tormented people, 
 the success of which changed the whole attitude of the 
 Protestants of the district. They had formerly endured 
 in silence ; now they were desperate enough for insurrec- 
 tion. And the insurrection followed. Seguier was 
 captured, maimed, and burnt alive ; but others took his 
 place. The war of the " Camisards " had commenced. 
 Then it was that the leaders of the Protestant army in the 
 Cevennes arose ; — Roland and Cavalier, and the men who 
 for a long time waged successful warfare against the royal 
 forces, till defeat came accompanied by a new rfgime. 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN OF THE STRANGER. 13 
 
 The rumbling of the revolutionary earthquake was 
 already shaking the throne and the persecuting church. 
 Voltaire, educated by the Jesuits, and hating religion, 
 was helping to deliver the martyrs of the Protestant 
 faith even before he began to " philosophise." 
 
 The struggle of the Camisards can only be said to have 
 ceased when the persecutions were nearly at an end, and 
 France itself was tottering. But what of that great 
 Huguenot contingent which had invaded Britain, and was 
 growing in number year by year as the emigres, leaving 
 houses and land, shops, warehouses, and factories, fled 
 across the frontier, or got down to the shore, and came 
 over the sea in fishing-boats and other small craft, in 
 which they took passage under various disguises, or were 
 stowed away in the holds, or packed along with bales of 
 merchandise, to escape the vigilance of the emissaries 
 who were set to watch for escaping Protestants ? It is a 
 little significant that of these non-combatant Protestants 
 eleven regiments of soldiers were formed in the English 
 army ; but the truth is that of the vast number of emi- 
 gres who left France, some 30,000 were trained soldiers 
 and sailors, and doubtless a proportion of these came to 
 England, though probably fewer than those of their num- 
 ber who served in the Low Countries. At any rate, in 
 1687, two years after the revocation of the Edict of 
 Nantes, there arrived in England 15,500 refugees, some 
 of whom brought with them very considerable property, 
 and most of them were men of education, or skilled in 
 the knowledge of the arts, or of those manufactures and 
 handicrafts which are the true wealth of a nation. At 
 Norwich and Canterbury they quickly formed communi- 
 ties which became prosperous, and helped the prosperity 
 
14 " ABOUT M Y FA THERS BUSINESS." 
 
 of the districts, where they set up looms, and dyeworks, 
 and other additions to the local industries. In London 
 they formed two or three remarkable colonies, so that 
 when Chamberlain wrote his "Survey of London," 
 there were about twenty French Protestant churches, the 
 greater number of which stood in Shoreditch, Hoxton, 
 and Spitalfields — in fact, above 13,000 emigrants had 
 settled in or near the metropolis. The one French Pro- 
 testant church founded by Edward VI. was, of course, 
 inadequate to receive them, and their immediate neces- 
 sities were so great that a collection was made for their 
 relief, and a sum of 60,000/. was by this means obtained 
 in order to alleviate their distress. 
 
 Among these emigres were many noblemen and gentle- 
 men of distinction, who, with their wives, were reduced to 
 extreme poverty by the confiscation of their property. 
 These had learned no trade, but with characteristic 
 courage many of them set themselves to acquire the 
 knowledge of some craft by which they might earn 
 their bread, while some of their number learned of their 
 wives to make pillow-lace, and so continued to support 
 themselves in decent comfort. 
 
 To those who knew the " old French folk," as they came 
 to be called in after years, when the later emigration had 
 again increased the number of the weavers' colony in 
 Spitalfields, nothing was more remarkable than the cheer- 
 fulness, one might almost say the gaiety, that distinguished 
 them. Reading the account given by French writers of 
 the old Huguenots in France, one might be disposed to 
 regard them as stern and sour sectaries, but that would 
 be a very erroneous opinion. Perhaps the sudden 
 freedom to which they came, the rest of soul, and the 
 opportunity to endeavour to serve God with a quiet mind 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN OF THE STRANGER. 15 
 
 raised them to a tranquil happiness which revived the 
 national characteristic of light-heartedness ; but how- 
 ever it may have been, the real genuine old French 
 weaver of Spitalfields and Bethnal Green was a very 
 courteous, merry, simple, child-like gentleman. The 
 houses in which these people lived, some of which are 
 still to be seen with their high-pitched roofs and long 
 leaden casements, were very different to the barely- 
 furnished, squalid places in which their descendants of 
 to-day are to be found ; and, indeed, the Spitalfields 
 weaver even of seventy years ago was usually a well-to- 
 do person ; while in the old time he could take " Saint 
 Monday" every week, wear silver crown-pieces for but- 
 tons on his holiday coat, and put on silk stockings on 
 state occasions. This was in the days when French was 
 still spoken in many of the little parlours of houses that 
 stood within gardens gay with sweet-scented blooms of 
 sweet-william, ten-weeks-stock, and clove-pink. When 
 there was still an embowered greenness in '• Bednall," 
 and Hare Street Fields were within a stone's throw of 
 "Sinjun" — St. John, or rather St. Jean Street, — or of 
 the little chapel of "La Patented in Brown's Lane, 
 Spitalfields. Even in later times than that, however, I 
 can remember being set up to a table, and shown how 
 to draw on a slate, by an old gentleman with a face 
 streaked like a ruddy dried pippin. I was just old 
 enough to make out that the tea-table talk was in a 
 strange tongue ; but I can remember that there were 
 evidences of the refinements that the old refugees had 
 brought with them across the sea. Not only in their 
 neat but spruce attire, in their polite grace to women, in 
 their easy, good-humoured play and prattle to little 
 children, in their cultivation of flowers, their liking for 
 
16 " ABOUT MY FA THEKS BUSINESS." 
 
 birds, and their taste for music, but in a score of trifling- 
 objects about their tidy rooms, where the click of the 
 shuttle was heard from morning to night, these old 
 French folk vindicated their birth and breeding. By- 
 tea-services of rare old china, rolls of real "point" lace, 
 a paste buckle, an antique ring, a fat, curiously-engraved 
 watch, a few gem-like buttons, delicately-coloured porce- 
 lain and chimney ornaments ; by books and manuscript 
 music, or by flute and fiddle deftly handled in the play- 
 ing of some old French tune, these people expressed 
 their distinction without being aware of it. It has not 
 even yet died out. Unfortunately, many of their de- 
 scendants — representatives of a miserably paid, and now 
 nearly superseded industry — have deteriorated by the 
 influences of continued poverty ; and even so long ago 
 as the evil war-time of Napoleon I., many of the old 
 families anglicised their names in deference to British 
 hatred of the French, but there are still a large number 
 of people in the eastern districts of London whose names, 
 faces, and figures alike proclaim their origin. 
 
 But we must go back once more to the time when the 
 great collection was made. It is at least gratifying to 
 know that the ^"60,000 soon increased to ^"200,000, and 
 was afterwards called the " Royal Bounty," though 
 Royalty had nothing to do with it during that reign. 
 In 1686-7 about 6000 persons were relieved from this 
 fund, and in 1688 27,000 applicants received assistance, 
 while others had employment found for them, or were 
 relieved by more wealthy 6migr6s who had retained or 
 recovered some part of their possessions. But there 
 were still aged and sick people, little children, widows, 
 orphans, broken men, homeless women, and lonely 
 creatures who had become almost imbecile or insane 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN OF THE STRONGER. 17 
 
 through the cruelties and privations that they had suf- 
 fered. For these a refuge was necessary, and at length 
 — but not till 1708 — an institution was founded in St. 
 Luke's, under the name of the French Hospital, but 
 better known to the " old folks" as the " Providence." 
 
 Of what it was and is I design to tell in another 
 chapter. 
 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN'S CHILDREN. 
 
 HAT great invading French army of nobles, 
 gentry, artists, traders, handicraftsmen, ot 
 which some account has already been given, 
 was added to from time to time, even as 
 
 lately as the Revolution, and the restoration of the 
 dynasty after the downfall of Napoleon, when a strange 
 reaction against the Protestants was commenced, partly 
 as a pretence for concealing political animosity. The 
 department of the Gard was once more the scene of hor- 
 rible atrocities, against which Lord Brougham invoked 
 the aid of the English Parliament, and obtained the help 
 of Austrian bayonets to protect the people, who were 
 being murdered, tortured, or outraged, in defiance of 
 feeble local authorities. But by this time there was a 
 new generation of the first great Anglo-French colony 
 in London. Spitalfields had grown to the dimensions 
 of a township. Bethnal had begun to lose its greenness. 
 There was, as there still is, a remarkable settlement 
 about Soho. " Petty France" was as well known as the 
 exhibition of needlework in Leicester Square, or Mrs. 
 Salmon's wax figures in Fleet Street. 
 
 Those poor refugees who fled to escape from the hor- 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN'S CHILDREN. 19 
 
 rors of Sainte Guillotine, or the ruthless cruelties at 
 Nismes, came to brethren many of whom had never 
 seen the glowing valleys and golden fields of Languedoc, 
 whence their forefathers escaped only with life and hands 
 to work. They had preserved their national character- 
 istics ; they attended churches and chapels where the 
 pastors still spoke their native tongue, and where they 
 had established schools for their children ; but they 
 had settled down to a quiet, though a busy life, in the 
 heart of the great workshop of the world, and only a 
 few of them — principally the gentry, some of whom had 
 regained a portion of their property — felt frequent or 
 urgent impulses to return. More than a hundred and 
 twenty years had elapsed since the " Royal Bounty" had 
 been expended in the relief of the 27,000 tmigris who yet 
 were without any permanent refuge for the destitute, the 
 sick, the aged, and the insane among their number. 
 This was in 1688, and it w r as not till nearly twenty- 
 eight years afterwards that any regular institution was 
 organized. The earlier refugees had become aged or 
 had died, after having obtained such temporary help as 
 could be afforded by subscriptions or the large benefac- 
 tions of their more wealthy fellow-countrymen. Still, 
 the later emigrations increased the number of applicants 
 for permanent relief. At last, in 17 18, a great concourse 
 of French refugees assembled in a chapel which formed 
 a special portion of a building only just completed, but 
 which had already received the dignity of forming the 
 subject of a Royal charter granted by His Majesty 
 King George I. to his " right trusty and right well- 
 beloved cousin, Henry de Massue, Marquis de Ruvigny, 
 Earl of Galloway, and a number of trusty and well- 
 belcved gentlemen, all naturalized refugees, who made 
 
 2 — 2 
 
20 " ABO UT HI Y FA THE IV S BUSINESS" 
 
 the first governor and directors of the " Hospital for 
 Poor French Protestants and their descendants residing 
 in Great Britain ;" otherwise known as the French Hos- 
 pital, but soon to be spoken of with simple pathetic 
 brevity as " La Providence." 
 
 The idea of founding such a charity was due to a dis- 
 tinguished refugee in Holland — no less a personage than 
 M. de Gastigny, Master of the Hounds to Prince Wil- 
 liam of Orange ; a ruddy, jovial-looking gentleman 
 withal, whose portrait, should you go to see it, will set 
 you wondering whether he could ever have been classed 
 among the "sour sectaries" to whom it was the fashion 
 to attribute a disregard of social pleasures. A bequest 
 of a thousand pounds sterling from the bluff keeper of 
 the kennels was to be divided into equal sums — £500 
 for the building, and the interest of the remaining £500 
 to be spent on its maintenance. 
 
 Not a very adequate provision, truly, for any such 
 purpose ; but sufficiently suggestive to set the more 
 prosperous members of the great Anglo-French colony 
 to increase the amount. The astute Master of the 
 Hounds must surely have foreseen this result when he 
 left this legacy to the management of the trustees of the 
 already existing relief fund, still miscalled " the Royal 
 Bounty." They exhibited that prudence in money 
 matters which is a French characteristic, and let the 
 thousand pounds accumulate for eight years, after which 
 a general subscription w r as invited from successful mer- 
 chants and traders, while with a just appreciation of the 
 benefits which had been conferred by these good citizens 
 on the land of their adoption, some wealthy Englishmen 
 added their contributions to the general fund. 
 
 Thus it came about, that a piece of land was pur- 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN'S CHILDREN. 21 
 
 chased in the Golden Acre — a queer old half-countrified 
 precinct of St. Giles, Cripplegate — that a building was 
 erected for the reception of eighty poor persons, that a 
 charter was granted, and that the new charitable asso- 
 ciation was consecrated in the new chapel by Philippe 
 Menard, the minister of the French Church of St. 
 James's and secretary of the enterprise. 
 
 This was, indeed, something worth working for. The 
 aged or afflicted poor among the refugees were no longer 
 mere mendicants living on precarious alms. Out of their 
 abundance the more prosperous gave cheerfully. In 
 1736 another adjoining site was purchased, and another 
 side of the great open quadrangle of garden ground was 
 built upon, so that by 1760 the "Providence" numbered 
 230 inmates. This, however, was its culminating point 
 of usefulness. Religious persecution had diminished, 
 and at length may be said to have ceased altogether. 
 Even as early as 1720 only 5000 persons required relief 
 from the "Bounty," so that eventually the trustees were 
 enabled to devote part of it to the assistance of those 
 who fled from the Revolution — many of whom were the 
 descendants of those who had been the persecutors of 
 the Protestants. The great industrial colony, prudent, 
 temperate, and industrious, had almost grown beyond its 
 earlier needs — and all that it required was that some 
 adequate provision should be made for infirm or aged 
 men and women, who being widowed or unmarried, and 
 without means of support, required a refuge in which 
 they might peacefully end their days. The same causes 
 which had diminished the number of applicants had also 
 reduced the amount of current subscriptions, so that 
 some portion of the building was removed, as being no 
 longer necessary, and in order to secure a sufficient en- 
 
22 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS? 
 
 dowment an Act of Parliament was obtained, empower- 
 ing the directors to let their land on building leases. By 
 that time the neighbourhood was known not as "the 
 Golden Acre," but as St. Luke's, and on the ground once 
 purchased by the Marquis de Ruvigny and his trusty and 
 well-beloved companions, grew Radnor Street, Galway 
 Street, Gastigny Place, and part of Bath Street, while 
 the number of inmates was reduced to sixty — that is to 
 say, about twenty men and forty women, all of whom 
 were to be above sixty years of age, of French extrac- 
 tion, and professing the Protestant religion. It was a 
 queer old range of building, that retreat ; pleasant 
 enough, perhaps, when as a rather blank series of red 
 brick houses, it looked across its own formal walled 
 garden to the pleasant fields and open country, but 
 strangely silent, and with a crumbling, dreary look about 
 it, when the lunatic asylum of St. Luke's dominated all 
 the surrounding tenements of a crowded, sordid neigh- 
 bourhood. Only the initiated could easily find the little 
 low black door that opened in the bare wall, and led to 
 the large irregular space, which was laid out in weedy 
 beds and stony borders, distinguished by an air of decay 
 rather than of production — especially where in certain 
 dank corners a tangle of sapless stalks and tendrils indi- 
 cated some faintly hopeful attempt to rear an arbour, in 
 which persons of robust imagination might fancy they 
 were sheltered from impending blacks that issued from 
 the manufactory chimneys close by. The visitor to this 
 out-of-the-way corner of the great city, seeing the old 
 people walking up and down the paved causeway in 
 front of the row of crooked-paned lower windows, or 
 airing themselves at the doorsteps, might be excused for 
 the fancy that they had the imaginative faculty of chil- 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN'S CHILDREN. 23 
 
 dren ; and were expected to " make believe" a good 
 deal before they could quite reconcile themselves to the 
 notion that this dingy area of quadrilateral plots and 
 paths, in which the wet stood in small puddles, was ever 
 a " pleasaunce" gay with garden blooms, and smelling of 
 knotted marjoram and fragrant thyme. Yet there were 
 still evidences of the invincible cheerfulness of the old 
 French nature, among the old creatures with faces 
 streaked like winter apples, and hands which, even 
 though they trembled, were swift of gesture and of em- 
 phasis. 
 
 There were old fellows there who had still about them 
 indications of true comeliness and grace that distin- 
 guished them from all vulgar surroundings ; — ancient 
 gentlemen, who would go out on wet days to sweep 
 away any rainpools that might lie before the doors of 
 the old ladies, and so besmirch an otherwise immaculate 
 shoe. It should be remembered, too, that there was no 
 livery there. Those who had some one to help them to 
 the garb of gentility wore what pleased them ; those 
 who were dependent on the charity for clothing, were 
 neither bound in one pattern, nor condemned to the uni- 
 form of poverty. Neat or lively cotton prints, or warm 
 stuff gowns, with proper hose and caps and kerchiefs, for 
 the women ; plain Oxford mixture, black, steel grey, or 
 brown, for the men, and each one measured for his suit. 
 Those who entered there were not the recipients of a 
 dole grudgingly conceded. It was no poorhouse, but the 
 " Providence." Only eleven years ago there were some 
 evidences of the old meaning of the place in the rem- 
 nants of the antique furniture which adorned the queer 
 rooms. They were not wards or dormitories, but verit- 
 able bedrooms ; and each one had its own peculiarities, 
 
24 " ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS." ' 
 
 even in the bedsteads with spindle posts and dimity- 
 hangings, the boxes and cupboards, and special chairs 
 which distinguished it from the rest. Some of these 
 things had evidently been heirlooms either of the insti- 
 tution or of the individual ; and, indeed, the preserva- 
 tion of individuality was a cheerful feature of the place, 
 despite its dim and somewhat dreary surroundings. 
 
 The Board Room was, in its way, one of the most ex- 
 traordinary apartments in London : with its tables sup- 
 ported by a tangled puzzle of legs, its high-backed, 
 polished chairs with leather seats, worn till they reminded 
 one of the cover of an antique ledger bound in un- 
 finished calf; its wonderful old black-framed prints 
 representing the meetings of the Huguenots in the 
 Clerk's field in the times when men and women carried 
 their lives in their hands, and dragoons rode congrega- 
 tions down and slashed them with sabres as they fell. 
 Its dimly-seen portraits of the noble, broad-browed, 
 dark-eyed Ruvigny (the first governor), who refused to 
 go back to France even at the invitation of the King ; 
 of the gentle Pastor Menard, with high, capacious fore- 
 head, and calm, strong mien ; of hale, shrewd, ruddy 
 Gastigny ; and of some men of later date, with French- 
 man written in every line of their finely-marked faces. 
 
 The little room set apart as a chapel — a barely- 
 furnished place enough, with desk and raised platform 
 and plain seats — was venerable because of all the mean- 
 ing that lay in its studied absence of all ornament, and 
 because of the significance it must once have had to 
 the sad-eyed men who crowded into it, some of them 
 thinking, perhaps, how it had come about that they 
 could stand there in peace and without a hand upon the 
 hilt of a sword. 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN'S CHILDREN. 25, 
 
 There were, even at that later time, old men and 
 women in the dim old building who could repeat family 
 legends of the emigration — for they lived to a great age, 
 these French folk, many of them being still alert of eye 
 and ear, and foot, even though they had heard the click 
 of the shuttle and the rattle of the loom eighty years 
 before. 
 
 Some of them have survived the old place itself; for 
 while they are in a new home, the ancient building has 
 changed, if even it be not altogether dismantled. The 
 leases paid good interest, and eight years ago a new 
 French hospital arose — away from the dingy old precinct 
 of the Golden Acre. 
 
 To see this later " Providence" aright, you must come 
 through the very heart of that neighbourhood which was 
 once the great Silk Colony, thread the bye-ways of 
 Poverty Market, note the tall silent houses where the 
 looms no longer rattle, nor the sharp whirr of the shuttle 
 stirs cage-birds to sing ; pass across the debatable land 
 lying on the edge of Shoreditch, where human beings 
 live in sties built in the backyards of other houses, in 
 streets that are still with the blank silence of misery and 
 want. You should walk amidst pigeon and dog fanciers ; 
 call in at certain dingy, slipshod taverns, where at night 
 a slouching company will meet to hear bullfinches pipe- 
 for wagers, and where starving men and women stand 
 and drink away the pence that are all too few to buy 
 food for the starving brood at home, and so are flung 
 upon the sloppy counter in exchange for the drugged 
 drink that feels like food and fire in one. Through 
 Bethnal Green, with its "townships" and its "Follies," 
 extending in sordid rows of tenements built to one dreary 
 pattern. Over districts which, only a few years ago> 
 
26 " ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS." 
 
 -were fields and open spaces, leading to farm lands and 
 hedgerows, and so away to the great expanse of marsh 
 land where the dappled kine wade knee-deep in the lush 
 pastures, and the stunted pollards stand like patient 
 •fishermen upon the river's brink. 
 
 Yes, the present "French Hospital" — the New 
 Providence — was built ten years ago in the border-land 
 beyond the Weavers Garden, that great garden and 
 pleasure-ground known as Victoria Park. It is the only 
 garden left to the descendants of those old craftsmen 
 who once dwelt in houses every one of which had its gay 
 plot of flowers, its rustic arbour, or its quaint device of 
 grotto-work, built up of oddly-shaped stones and pearl- 
 edged oyster-shells. Do you think there is now no 
 remnant of the old French folk left ? Come for a stroll 
 among the grand beds and plantations of this East-end 
 playground, and you shall see. On holidays and alas ! 
 on those days when (to use the expressive term handed 
 •down from prosperous times) the weaver is " at play" — 
 that is to say, waiting for woof and weft, and so wiling 
 away the sad and often hunger-bringing hours — you will 
 see him, with his keen well- cut face, his dark appreciative 
 -eye, his long delicate hands, his well-brushed, threadbare 
 coat and hat ; and the mark of race is plainly to be noted 
 in his intensity of look and his subdued patient bearing. 
 He comes of a stock which had it not been of the hardiest 
 and the most temperate and enduring in the world, would 
 have disappeared a century ago. On Sunday mornings, 
 when the bells are sounding round about him, he is to be 
 met with lingering (with who shall say what inner sense 
 of worship) by the strange shrubs and flowering plants, or 
 standing with a pathetic look of momentary satisfaction 
 on his lean, mobile face, to mark the rare glow and gush 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN'S CHILDREN. 27 
 
 of colour made by the blooms in a " ribbon" device of 
 flowers on a sunny border by a dark background of 
 cedar. But come and see what his forefathers might 
 have called, in their Scripture phraseology, " the remnant 
 of the children of Israel ;" the old inmates of that French 
 Hospital founded so long ago when De Ruvigny was the 
 "beloved cousin" of George I., and Philippe Menard 
 preached at St. James's ; when the Duchess de la Force 
 brought donation after donation to the work, and Philippe 
 Hervart, Baron d'Huningue gave ^"4,000, all in one 
 splendid contribution, to the building fund. Could they 
 have seen (who knows that they have not ?) this great 
 French chateau rising beyond the park palings in a 
 neighbourhood fast filling with houses, but still open to 
 the air that blows from the Weavers' Garden and from 
 the great expanse of land leading towards the forest, they 
 would have recognised the familiar style of those grand 
 mansions which in France succeeded the castles of the 
 feudal nobility when Henry Ouatre was king. The high- 
 pointed roof with its irregularly picturesque lines, the 
 quaint tow r ers and spires, the slate blue and purple, and 
 rosy tints of colour in slope and wall and gable ; the 
 various combinations of form and hue changing with 
 every point of view, make this modern copy of the old 
 French chateau a wonderful feature in any landscape, 
 and the unaccustomed visitor seeing it as it stands there 
 in its own ornamental ground, surrounded by a quaint 
 wall decorated in coloured bands, wonders what can be 
 the meaning of a building so full of suggestion ; while 
 if he be of an imaginative turn, he may fall into a day- 
 dream when he peers through the gate that stands by the 
 porter's lodge. 
 
 But let us pass through this gate, and so up to the 
 
28 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS." 
 
 entrance-hall, and we shall seem to leave behind us not 
 only the Weavers' Garden, but most things English. 
 The hall itself, paved with encaustic tile, leads to a flight 
 of broad', shallow steps, beneath an arched ceiling of 
 variegated brick and two screen arches. These steps 
 conduct us at once to a central corridor, extending for the 
 entire length of the building, and rising to the greatest 
 height of the open roof of timber with its lofty skylights. 
 In front of us is a double stone staircase, one branch 
 being for the old ladies, the other for the men ; and im- 
 mediately at the foot of the former division is the entrance 
 to the refectory, a large handsome dining-hall, where, at 
 two long tables, this wonderful company assemble, only 
 the very infirm having their meals carried to the upper 
 ward, where they are waited on by paid attendants- 
 Separate staircases are provided for the servants of the 
 establishment, whose rooms are in the tower above the 
 main wards — or rather, let us say, principal apartments, 
 for they are not so much wards as a series of twenty-two 
 large bedrooms, linen-rooms, and two bath-rooms. The 
 steward of the hospital, a venerable gentleman with the 
 courteous air and speech of some seneschal of olden 
 time, has also his own apartments, reached by a third 
 stair, his sitting-room and office occupying a space close 
 to the entrance. On the right of the main staircase and 
 at the end of the corridor is the ladies' sitting-room, a 
 fine high-windowed light and lofty place, admirably 
 warmed, as indeed all the building is, and so furnished 
 that at each large square table four old ladies can sit and 
 have not only ample space for books or needlework, but 
 on her right hand each can open a special separate table- 
 drawer with lock and key, wherein to keep such waifs 
 and strays — shreds, patches, skeins, and unconsidered 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN'S CHILDREN. 29 
 
 trifles — as children and old women like to accumulate. 
 There is another day-room beside this, and a similar, 
 though not quite so large an apartment is provided for 
 the men, both rooms being furnished with sundry books 
 and a few sober periodicals of the day. 
 
 It must not be forgotten though that many of the old 
 gentlemen have grown accustomed to the use of tobacco, 
 and here in the basement is a smoking-room, quite out 
 of the way of the ordinary sitting and dining-rooms, and 
 not far from the laundry and drying-rooms, which form 
 an important part of the establishment. 
 
 But, hush ! there is a hymn sounding yonder in the 
 refectory ; a hymn sung by voices, many of which are yet 
 fresh and clear, though the singers number more than 
 eighty years of life, and of life that has often been hard 
 and full of heaviness. 
 
 It is the grace before meat, and the hot joints, with the 
 fresh vegetables from their own garden, have just come 
 up from the big kitchen by means of a lift to the serving- 
 room. 
 
 There are no servants to wait at table, and the family 
 dinner-party is a private one, inasmuch as it is the custom 
 here for the most active of the inmates to a^ree among: 
 themselves who shall be butler, or bemifetiere, for each day 
 during the week. So the dinner-time goes pleasantly 
 and quickly, the meat, the vegetables, and the capital 
 household beer, of which each man has a. pint twice a 
 day, and each woman half a pint, being the only articles 
 that require serving. 
 
 The good old-fashioned family custom of everybody 
 having his or her own teapot is observed here. A great 
 gas-boiler stands on one side the refectory, and a row of 
 convenient lockers on the other; and each inmate has 
 
30 "ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS." 
 
 tea and coffee from the stores, while bread and butter are 
 also served out for consumption according to each indi- 
 vidual fancy, and not in rations at each meal time. Thus 
 those old ladies and gentlemen who have spending money, 
 or friends to bring them some of the little luxuries that 
 they so keenly appreciate, can add a relish to their break- 
 fast or to the evening beer. 
 
 We will not go in while they are at dinner, for there 
 are those here yet who " might have been gentlefolk " 
 but for the mutability of mortal affairs. Stay ! here 
 come the old ladies, with old-fashioned curtseys, which are 
 more than half a bow, and not a mere vulgar "bob." 
 There is no mistaking some of their faces. You may see 
 their like in French pictures, or in old French towns still. 
 Some of them with eyes from which the fire had not yet 
 died out ; with deftly-moving fingers ; with a quick, 
 springy step ; with an inherited remnant of the French 
 moiie and shrug, as they answer a gentle jest about their 
 age and comeliness. 
 
 " Eighty-four ; and I don't know how it is, but I don't 
 seem to see so well in the dark as I used. When I went 
 ,jout to see my brother-in-law, I was quite glad he came 
 part of the way home with me." 
 
 " Turned eighty, but I can't get upstairs as I used to 
 do." 
 
 "You speak French, madame ?" 
 
 " Pas beaucoup, monsieur ;" this from one of the only 
 two actual French women now in the establishment, the 
 rest being lineal descendants only. The oldest, who is 
 now going quietly and with a very pretty dignity out of 
 the refectory, is ninety-four, and can not only hear a 
 low-toned inquiry, but answers it in a soft, pleasant 
 voice. She bears the weight of years bravely, but the 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN'S CHILDREN. 3 r 
 
 burden has perhaps been heavy ; and she speaks in a 
 mournful tone, as one looking forward to a mansion 
 among the many — to a house not made with hands, may 
 sometimes speak when even the grasshopper becomes a 
 burden. 
 
 As to a young person of sixty-five or thereabout, no- 
 body regards her as having any real business to mention 
 such a trifling experience of life ; while of the men — - 
 most of whom semed to have filed off for their pipe or 
 newspaper — one remains finishing his dinner, for he has 
 been on duty for the day, and is now winding up with a 
 snack of bread-and-butter and the remainder of his mug 
 of porter — a stoutly- built, hale, stalwart-looking gentle- 
 man, who, sitting there without his coat, which hangs on 
 the back of a chair, might pass for a retired master 
 mariner, or a representative of some position requiring 
 no little energy and endurance. I fancy, for the moment 
 that he must be an official appointed to serve or carve 
 and employed on the establishment. 
 
 " Eighty-four," and one of the old weaving colony of 
 Bethnal Green. 
 
 There can be no mistake about it. Every inmate pro- 
 vides certificates and registers enough to make the claim 
 undoubted ; and as to the right by descent, half the 
 people here carry it in their faces, and to the initiated, 
 are as surely French, as they are undoubtedly weavers. 
 
 The morning here begins with family prayers, which 
 the steward reads from a desk in the refectory, and so 
 the day closes also. The Sunday services are in the 
 chapel, and such a chapel ! To those who remember the 
 dim, barely- furnished room in the old building at St. 
 Luke's, this gem of architectural taste and simple beauty 
 at the end of the main corridor comes with no little sur- 
 
32 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS? 
 
 prise. Its beautiful carved stone corbels, mosaic floor, 
 and charming ornamentation ; its broad gallery entered 
 immediately from the upper floor, so that the feeble and 
 infirm may go to worship directly from their sleeping- 
 rooms ; its glow of subdued colour and sobered light 
 from windows of stained glass ; its simple decorations, 
 and its spotless purity, are no less remarkable than the 
 plainness which characterises the general effect. It is to 
 be noticed, too, that there is no " altar," but "a table;" 
 that neither at the back of the communion nor on the 
 carving of the lectern, nor even in the windows, is there 
 to be seen a cross. Where the Maltese cross would 
 occur amidst the arabesques of the stained glass, we see 
 the fleur-de-lis. French Protestantism, has perhaps, not 
 yet lost its intense significance, at all events here, in this 
 chapel where the service of the Church of England is ob- 
 served, and an ordained clergyman ministers to the family 
 •of the children's children of the ancient persecuted people 
 of Languedoc, the symbol under which the Protestants 
 were burned and tortured and exiled has no place. This is 
 probably in accordance with the traditions left by De 
 Ruvigny, by Gastigny, by Menard, and by their succes- 
 sors, whose portraits still hang in the fine board-room of 
 the new "Providence." 
 
 Of course, no contributions or subscriptions are now 
 asked for to support this old French charity. With it 
 are associated one or two gifts of money, such as that of 
 Stephen Mounier for apprenticing two boys ; and the be- 
 quest of Madame Esther Coqueau for giving ten shillings 
 monthly to ten poor widows or maidens ; but the direc- 
 tors do not seek for external aid. To the charity when 
 it was first chartered was added a portion of the accumu- 
 lations of the benefactions of the French Church at 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN'S CHILDREN. 33 
 
 Norwich, and it may here be mentioned that at Norwich, 
 where a contingent of the army of refugees had settled, 
 the Society of Universal Goodwill was also established 
 by Dr. John Murray, a good physician, who strove to 
 extend to a large organisation a plan for relieving dis- 
 tressed foreigners. This was but ninety years ago, and 
 it was less successful than its promoter desired, so that 
 part of the funds accumulated were judiciously handed to 
 another admirable society in London, of which I shall 
 have something to say, " The Society of the Friends of 
 Foreigners in Distress." 
 
 -\ 
 
WITH THE STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. 
 
 O we ever try to realise the full meaning of 
 the declaration that they who are afar off 
 shall be made near by the blood of Christ ? 
 Surely it does not stop at the nearness to God 
 by redemption, for the only true redemption is Christ- 
 likeness, and nearness to God assumes nearness to each 
 other in the exercise of that loving-kindness which is the 
 very mark and evidence of our calling. 
 
 It would be well if we sometimes ceased to separate 
 by our vague imaginations "the next world,''' or "the 
 other world," from the present world, which is, perhaps 
 in a very real sense, if we could only read the words 
 spiritually, " the world to come " also ; — as it is obvious 
 that the world means the people around us — ourselves, 
 those who are near and those who seem to be afar off; 
 and no world to come that could dispense with our identity 
 would be of any particular significance to us as human 
 beings. 
 
 Let us then, for the present purpose, try to see how 
 effectually Christ-likeness should bring near to us those 
 who are afar off, by taking us near to them ; how He who 
 came not to destroy but to fulfil, looks to us to entertain 
 strangers ; and to " be careful " in the performance of 
 
WITH THE STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. 35 
 
 that duty, as to Him who will say either, " I was a 
 stranger, and ye took me in," or the reverse. 
 
 At the beginning of the present century, with the ex- 
 ception of the French Protestant organisation, there 
 existed in London no established association for the 
 relief of destitute foreigners who, having sought a refuge 
 here, or being, as it were, thrown upon our shores, were 
 left in distress, hunger, or sickness, — unheeded, only 
 obtaining such temporary casual relief as a few charitable 
 persons might afford, if by any chance their necessities 
 were made known to them. At that time the foreign 
 Protestant clergy, to whom alone many of these destitute 
 men and women could apply for relief, were themselves 
 mostly the poor pastors of congregations consisting 
 either of refugees or of artisans and persons earning their 
 livelihood by precarious labour connected with the lighter 
 ornamental manufactures. The means at their disposal 
 for charitable purposes outside their own churches were 
 consequently very small, and they were unable to render 
 any really effectual assistance, even if they could have 
 undertaken, what would at that time have been the diffi- 
 cult task of verifying the needs for which relief was 
 claimed. 
 
 Some attempt had already been made by Dr. John 
 Murray, a good physician of Norwich, to extend to Lon- 
 don the benefits of his " Society of Universal Goodwill ;" 
 but the scheme had been only partially successful. To 
 him, however, the credit is due of having striven to give 
 definite shape to an association which was afterwards to 
 take up the good work of caring for strangers. The 
 foreign Protestant clergy settled in London met to con- 
 sider how they might best organise a regular plan for 
 relieving the wants of those who had so often to apply to 
 
 3—2 
 
6 " ABOUT M Y FA THER'S BUSINESS:' 
 
 them in vain ; and having settled the preliminaries, which 
 were heartily approved by several foreign merchants, and 
 others, who were willing to assist in any scheme that 
 would include inquiry into the circumstances of those 
 who sought assistance, called a public meeting in order 
 to found a regular institution. This was on the 3rd of 
 July, 1806, and the result of the appeal was the forma- 
 tion of the society of "The Friends of Foreigners in 
 Distress." By the following April, a committee had been 
 formed and the Charity was in working order, nor were 
 funds long wanting with which to commence the work in 
 earnest. The cases requiring relief were so numerous, 
 however, and the demands on the society's resources 
 ♦were so constant, that though some large donations were 
 afterwards obtained from senates, corporations, wealthy 
 merchants, ambassadors, noblemen, and Royal bene- 
 factors, a considerable subscription list became necessary 
 in order to enable the society to grant even partial relief 
 to cases, the urgent claims of which were established by 
 careful inquiry. 
 
 There is a wonderful suggestiveness in the list of 
 " Royal Benefactors (deceased)," headed by his late 
 Majesty King William IV., and her late Majesty the 
 Queen Dowager Adelaide. More ■ than one of the 
 Royal donors themselves died in exile ; and several of 
 those who shared their misfortunes, and were their 
 faithful followers, have shared the small benefits which 
 the Society had to bestow. "His late Majesty King 
 Charles X. of France " contributed £300 ; " His late 
 Majesty Louis Philippe," 100 guineas; the unfortunate 
 Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, £25 ; and his late 
 Imperial Majesty Napoleon III., £50: while their 
 Magnificencies the Senates of the Free German Towns, 
 
WITH THE STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. 37 
 
 as well as the humbler companies of London's citizens, 
 appear to have given liberally. Notwithstanding all this, 
 however, the Society has not been able to retain funded 
 property to any considerable amount, and it is to the 
 annual subscription list — to which our Queen contributes 
 .£100, the Emperor of Germany £ 100, and the Em- 
 peror of Austria £100 — that the charity must look for 
 support. 
 
 Unhappily there are evidences that these annual sub- 
 scriptions are fewer than they should be. There seems 
 still to be some reluctance on the part of the general 
 public steadily to support an effort which has a very dis- 
 tinct and pressing claim upon Englishmen, who pride 
 themselves, justly enough, upon the free asylum which 
 this country affords to foreigners, and who appear ready 
 to give largely in the way of occasional aid. The dis- 
 parity between the number of handsome donations and 
 of very moderate annual subscriptions is a painful feature 
 of the Society's report, and even public appeals have 
 hitherto been followed rather by increased applications 
 from persons recommending cases for relief, without 
 accompanying the recommendation with a sicbscription, than 
 by any decided augmentation of the funds. The Friends 
 of Foreigners in Distress are principally to be found 
 amongst prosperous foreigners in London, and doubtless 
 this is no less than just ; but until larger aid is given by 
 the English public, we have no particular reason to 
 include this association in any boastful estimate of 
 British charity. 
 
 That the committee does its work carefully, and that 
 cases of distress are relieved only after due inquiry, and 
 with no such careless hand as would encourage idle de- 
 pendence or promote pauperism, is evident enough to 
 
38 " ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS." 
 
 anybody who will take the trouble to inquire into the 
 method of assistance. Let us go "and see. 
 
 Perhaps not one Londoner in a thousand could tell 
 you ofihand where to find Finsbury Chambers. It is 
 probably less known even than Prudent Passage, or what 
 was once Alderman's Walk ; and may be said to be less 
 attractive than either, for it is a dingy, frowsy, little out- 
 of-the-way corner in that undecided and rather dreary 
 thoroughfare — London Wall. It is, in fact, a space 
 without any outlet, and looks as though it ought to have 
 been a builder's yard, but that the builder took to erect- 
 ing houses on it as a speculation which never answered, 
 even though they were let out as " chambers ;" that is to 
 say, as blank rooms and sets of offices, the supposed 
 occupiers whereof committed themselves to obscurity by 
 causing their names to be painted on the doorposts, and 
 leaving them there to fade till time and dirt shall wholly 
 obliterate them. 
 
 And yet it is in one of these lower rooms, occupying 
 the ground floor of No. 10, that a good work is going on ; 
 for here, in an office almost representatively bare and 
 dingy even in that place, the Society of Friends of 
 Foreigners in Distress holds its weekly meetings of 
 directors, and the secretary, Mr. William Charles Laurie, 
 or his assistant, Mr. C. P. Smith, gives daily attendance 
 (Saturdays excepted), between eleven and one o'clock. 
 Assuredly, the funds of the charity are not expended in 
 luxurious appointments for its headquarters. Even a 
 German commission agent just commencing business 
 could scarcely have a more simply-furnished apartment. 
 The objects which first strike the visitor's attention area 
 row of japanned tin candlesticks, meant for the use of the 
 board at any of their Wednesday meetings which may* 
 
WITH THE STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. 39 
 
 be prolonged till after dusk. The furniture, if it was 
 ever new, must have been purchased with a regard for 
 economy in the very early history of the society. The 
 work is evidently so organised as to require no long 
 daily attendance. The place is furnished only according 
 to the temporary necessities of business quickly dis- 
 patched. Neither in official salaries, nor in expensive 
 official belongings, are the funds of the institution 
 wasted. 
 
 The system is, in fact, simple enough, and is conducted 
 on the principles laid down by the first meetings of the 
 committee above seventy years ago, with one important 
 exception. Formerly, applicants for relief must have 
 been for some time resident in England ; but changes in 
 transit, and the more rapid intercommunication of nations, 
 have made it necessary that some ready aid should be 
 granted to those who find themselves cast upon the 
 terrible London wilderness without a friend to help them, 
 ignorant to whom to apply for help, and little able even 
 to make known their sufferings. 
 
 Every Wednesday, then, the directors meet for re- 
 ceiving applications for relief, and reports of cases that 
 have been investigated by the Visiting Committee. 
 
 The plan adopted is to issue to the governors of the 
 charity a number of small tickets, each of which, when 
 signed and bearing the name of the applicant for relief, 
 entitles the latter to apply to the weekly committee for 
 an investigation of his case. Every subscriber of a 
 guinea is regarded as a governor for a year, and there 
 are, of course, life governors also. Both these are en- 
 titled to recommend cases either for what may be termed 
 casual relief, or for election as pensioners to receive 
 weekly assistance (of from 2s. to $s. f and in cases of 
 
40 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS: 1 
 
 extreme old age or great infirmity, Js. 6d. a week), 
 sick allowances, or passage money to enable applicants to 
 return to their own country. 
 
 It may easily be believed how a small weekly con- 
 tribution will often save a destitute man or woman, 
 or a poor family, from that utter destitution which 
 would result from the inability to pay rent even for a 
 single room ; while in cases of sickness, the regular 
 allowance even of a very trifling sum will enable many 
 a poor sufferer to tide over a period of pain and weakness, 
 during which earnings, already small, are either reduced 
 or cease altogether. 
 
 In cases of urgent necessity four superintendents are 
 appointed from the board of directors, with the power 
 to grant immediate relief ; and of course many applicants 
 receive temporary assistance from the governor who re- 
 commends them, until their case is investigated by the 
 committee, and they are on the list of the worthy and 
 indefatigable " visitor." 
 
 After the expulsion of the Germans from Paris during the 
 late war, that little dingy quadrangle in London Wall was 
 filled with a strange crowd of lost and helpless foreigners, 
 whose condition would admit of only a temporary inquiry, 
 and indeed needed little investigation, since want and 
 misery were written legibly enough in their faces. For 
 a large number of these, passage money had to be paid, 
 and the relief was continued till the press of refugees 
 from France abated. There was a special subscription 
 for the relief of these poor creatures, raised chiefly 
 among German merchants living in London, and even 
 now the Society has to extend a helping hand to some 
 who still remain. 
 
 Any one wandering by accident into Finsbury Buildings 
 
WITH THE STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. 41 
 
 on a Wednesday forenoon, would wonder what so many- 
 subdued and rather anxious-looking men were waiting 
 about for in such an out-of-the-way locality — some of 
 them leaning against the wall inside, others sitting in the 
 bare room, just within the barer passage. Every one of 
 these has had his circumstances carefully inquired into, 
 and is in attendance to receive what may be called tempo- 
 rary relief. During the official year of my latest visit 150 
 homeward passages had been paid, and in the two years 
 from 1 87 1 to 1 873 the number of persons who received relief 
 was 21,333, wno with their wives and families represented 
 a considerable community of poverty. During the year 
 1,983 grants were made of sums varying from less than 
 10s. to 1,324 persons, 10s. to 431, i$s. to 47, £1 to 135, 
 and so on to £5, which was allowed in a few instances, 
 while sick allowances were granted in 292 cases. One im- 
 portant and suggestive feature of this excellent Society is 
 that it numbers amongits members not only subscribers to 
 other charitable institutions, but members of the medical 
 and legal professions, who frequently render their aid 
 to applicants free of expense, in order either to relieve 
 them from suffering, or to protect them from the errors 
 or impositions to which their ignorance and helplessness 
 might expose them. 
 
 There is no restriction either as regards creed or 
 nationality, and though each case is matter for inquiry, 
 the only persons disqualified for receiving relief are those 
 who are detected as impostors — persons who are deemed 
 to have sufficient support from any other source, those 
 who cannot give a good reason for having come to this 
 country, and proof of their having striven to obtain work 
 and to labour for a maintenance, those who are proved 
 
42 " ABOUT M Y FA THERS BUSINESS: 1 
 
 to have been guilty of fraud or immoral practices, and 
 beggars, or drunken, dissolute persons. 
 
 As regards the numbers of persons who have received 
 relief since the institution was founded, there is the 
 tremendous total of 21, 645 applicants on behalf of 129,299 
 individuals. What an army it represents! Of these 
 Germany (which till recently included Austria, Hungary, 
 and Bohemia) represents 71,913 ; Sweden and Norway,. 
 9,422; Holland, 8,SyS ; France, 7,339; Russia, 7,006;. 
 Italy, 5,415 ; Belgium, 4,578 ; Denmark, 4,215 ; the West 
 Indies, 1,716; Switzerland, 1,685; and so on in a 
 diminishing proportion till we come to " Central Africa !" 
 —a very recent case, no doubt. 
 
 Can any one question the good that has been effected 
 by an institution so careful not only to relieve with rigid 
 economy, but also to do its work on so truly voluntary a 
 principle ? If the temporary and comparatively casual 
 aid afforded to poor and destitute strangers works so 
 beneficially, however, the pensions, to which only very 
 extreme cases are elected, are even still more in the 
 nature of help given to those who are ready to perish, 
 Here are some specimen cases : 
 
 A watchmaker of Frankfort, seventy-four years old, 
 and nearly seventy years in this country, disabled by 
 paralysis, with a wife, who 'is a waistcoat maker, unable 
 to compete with the sewing-machine ; one son, twenty 
 years old, who, having some small situation, lives with 
 them, pays the rent, and " does what he can ; " a boy of 
 fourteen who works as an errand boy. 
 
 An Italian looking-glass maker, seventy-three years 
 old, and fifty- three, years in this country. Has lately 
 lived by making light frames, but health and strength 
 fail, and he is suffering from asthma. His wife, an 
 
WITH THE STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. 43 
 
 Englishwoman, and aged sixty-six, works as a char- 
 woman. He has two sons, each married and with large 
 families, so that they can do nothing for him. 
 
 A French widow, sixty-seven years old, and thirty-two 
 years in this country, and paralysed for the last thirteen 
 years. Her only daughter who is in delicate health, earns 
 her " living" by needlework, but can only gain enough 
 for her own maintenance. 
 
 These are only three of the first cases in the official 
 report of pensioners, and they are not selected because 
 of their peculiarly distressing character. When it is 
 remembered that this society has not, in a general 
 way, sufficient means to grant more than two shillings 
 a week in the way of relief, and when we take the 
 trouble to observe that in the majority of cases where 
 a pension is granted the recipients have been so long 
 resident here that they may be said to have lost their 
 nationality in ours, will it be too much to ask of England 
 — alike the asylum for the persecuted and the teacher of 
 liberty and of charity — that the " Friends of Foreigners in 
 Distress " shall be regarded as the friends of all of us 
 alike in the name of Him of whom it was said, " Can any 
 good thing come out of Nazareth ?" 
 
 But I have not quite done with the pensioners. I must 
 ask the reader to go with me to Lower Norwood, where 
 amidst a strange solitude, that is almost desolation, we 
 will visit three ladies of the aucien regime, one of whom, 
 at least, began life nearly ninety years ago as a fitting 
 playmate for the daughter of a king. 
 
WITH THOSE WHO ARE LEFT DESOLATE. 
 
 HERE is something about the aspect of Nature 
 as seen from the railway station at Lower 
 Norwood on a damp and misty day which, if 
 not depressing, can scarcely be regarded as 
 ■conducive to unusual hilarity. I speak guardedly because 
 of my respect for the district, and lest I should in any 
 way be suspected of depreciating any particular locality 
 as an eligible place of residence. In the latter regard I 
 may mention that the immediate neighbourhood of Lower 
 Norwood Station is not at present converted into a small 
 township by the erection of long rows of tenements on 
 freehold or long leasehold plots. My remarks apply only 
 to the general outlook from the road, amidst an atmo- 
 sphere threatening drizzle, and beneath a sky betokening 
 rain. As far as houses are concerned, there seemed to 
 me, on the occasion of my last visit, far more probability 
 of pulling down than of building. In fact, I went for the 
 purpose of inspecting a whole series of very remarkable 
 tenements which I had heard were soon either to dis- 
 appear from the oozy-looking green quadrangle of which 
 they formed three sides, or were to be converted to another 
 purpose than that of the dwelling-places of a few elderly 
 ladies who occupied one dreary side, whence they could 
 look at the desolation of the closed houses on the other.* 
 
 * Since this was written the Almshouses have been closed, and 
 their two or three remaining inmates " lodged out." 
 
WITH THOSE WHO ARE LEFT DESOLA TE, 45 
 
 It will not be without regret that I shall hear of this 
 intention being carried out, for the houses are devoted to 
 the sheltering of alms-folk ; and the alms-folk are the 
 elder pensioners of that admirable association, the 
 Society of the Friends of Foreigners in Distress, which, 
 for above ninety years, has been doing its useful work 
 among those who, but for its prompt and judicious aid, 
 would feel that they were "alone in a strange land." 
 
 As a part of its original provision for the relief of some 
 of the applicants who, after long residence in this 
 country, had fallen into a distressed condition at an age 
 when they were unable any longer to maintain them- 
 selves by their own exertions, the society instituted the 
 almshouses at Lower Norwood. There is now an im- 
 pression among the directors of the charity that their 
 intentions may be carried out in future by some better 
 method than placing a number of aged and frequently 
 infirm persons in a comparatively remote group of dwell- 
 ings, where they are peculiarly lonely, and lack frequent 
 personal attention and general sympathy. There can be 
 no doubt that almshouses have frequently been asso- 
 ciated a little too closely with that monastic or con- 
 ventual practice with which they mostly originated, and 
 that the retirement, almost amounting to seclusion, into 
 which the inmates of such places are removed, may be 
 very far from affording to the aged the kind of asylum 
 which they most desire. Alas, in many instances, to be 
 placed in an almshouse is to be put out of the way, — to 
 be conveniently disposed of; with the inference that 
 every possible provision has been made for comfortable 
 maintenance. Thus, susceptibilities are quieted. The 
 aged pensioners are supposed to be periodically visited ; 
 their wants attended to by somebody or other who " sees 
 
46 "ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 that they are all right," and the whole matter is conveni- 
 ently forgotten, except when a casual traveller passes a 
 quaint, ancient, mouldy-looking, but still picturesque 
 block of buildings, and inquires to what charity they be- 
 long ; not without a kind of uneasy fancy that there is a 
 custom in this country of burying certain old people 
 before their time — shutting them out of the light and 
 warmth of every-day companionship ; or, to change the 
 metaphor, making organised charity a kind of Hooghly, 
 on the tide of which the aged, who are supposed to be 
 nearing the end of their mortal life, are floated into 
 oblivion until the memory of them is revived by death. 
 
 It is no part of my intention to represent that the 
 almshouses at Lower Norwood bore such a significance, 
 but the conditions to which I have referred appear to be 
 so inevitable where places like these are concerned, that 
 I cannot question the good sense of the directors of 
 the Charity in determining to supersede them, and to 
 carry on the work by annual or monthly pensions 
 only. On behalf of the few remaining inmates of these 
 queer, half-deserted, and failing tenements, it was desi- 
 rable that the proposition should be acted on at once, 
 and a more comfortable provision be made, at least, 
 for those who wait on, with constantly deferred hope, 
 doubly heart- sickening when so little time is to be 
 counted on, in which something will be done before the 
 houses themselves, crumbling to decay, become but a type 
 of their own forlorn old age. 
 
 It is with some such thoughts as these that I stand at 
 the entrance to the green, with last year's weedy after- 
 math still dank and tangled with wind and rain. The 
 queer little one-storied dark-red houses of the quadrangle 
 bear a melancholy resemblance to a set of dilapidated 
 
WITH THOSE WHO ARE LEFT DESOLATE. 47 
 
 and discarded toys, the box for which has been lost. 
 They are built, too, on a kind of foreign-toy pattern, with 
 queer outside staircases, leading to street-doors under a 
 portico, which is the only entrance to the upper storey, 
 the lower doors in the quadrangle communicating only 
 with the ground-floor. The crunch of my footsteps along 
 the moist path, gives no echo ; the place seems to be too 
 dull and lifeless even for that kind of response. The left 
 wing and far the greater portion of the centre block are 
 still with the silence of desertion. Peering through the 
 dim leaden casements, I see only small, bare, empty 
 rooms. There is a sense of mildew and of dampjDlaster 
 peeling from the walls, — of leaky water-pipes, and a 
 humid chill, which no glowing hearth nor bright July 
 weather could utterly subdue. Such is the feeling with 
 which the whole place strikes me on this leaden wintry 
 day, when the vapour from the engine on the railway 
 trails slowly upward to meet the ragged edge of the dun 
 cloud that streams slowly downward ; when a big, black 
 dog crouches on the threshold of the village chandler's 
 shop, to get out of the drizzle ; and the butcher, who has 
 sold out, closes his half-hatch, with the certainty that he 
 may take his afternoon nap by the fire, undisturbed by 
 customers. 
 
 Even when I pause before one of the little narrow 
 portals to which I have been directed, there are few more 
 signs of life, except that at the same moment I hear 
 other footsteps behind me, and a baker stop to deliver a 
 loaf. This is promising, as far as it goes, and enables me 
 to present myself unostentatiously, under cover of the 
 baker's basket, to a lady who opens the door. Unless I 
 am greatly mistaken, that lady has a French face, and as 
 it is a French lady for whom I am to inquire, I begin to 
 
48 " ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS. 1 ' 
 
 think I have come to the end of my quest. It is evident, 
 however, from the surprised questioning look which 
 greets my appearance, that visits from strangers are not 
 of very frequent occurrence there. I can trace in the 
 rather shrinking recognition accorded to my request to 
 see the lady to whom I bring an introduction, the sensi- 
 tiveness that belongs to that kind of poverty which has 
 learned to endure in seclusion reverses that would be 
 less bearable if they were exposed to a too obtrusive 
 expression of sympathy. It is a positive relief to be left 
 alone for a minute, standing in that narrow lobby, look- 
 ing into a room which has the appearance of a disused 
 scullery, while my errand is made known in another room 
 on the right, to which I am presently bidden. It is a 
 poor little place enough ; poor, and little, and dim, even 
 for an almshouse, and scarcely suggestive of comfort 
 though a bright fire is burning in a grate, which some- 
 what resembles a reduced kitchen-range, and though the 
 table which stands beneath the casement bears some pre- 
 parations for the evening meal, and the cheap luxury of 
 a cut orange on a plate. The walls are dim, the ceiling 
 cracked and discoloured by the evident overflow of water 
 in the room overhead ; the furniture consists of a kind 
 of couch which may do duty for a bed by night, and of 
 two or three Windsor chairs, one of which has already 
 been placed for me. It is a poor place enough ; and yet 
 the lady to whom I am at once introduced is ready to do 
 its honours with a grace and dignity that well become 
 her appearance and her name. Madame Gracieuse 
 
 B , for more than forty years resident in England, 
 
 and speaking English with a purity of accent that is only 
 rivalled by the more perfect music of the French in which 
 she addresses me, has passed the threescore years and 
 
WITH THOSE WHO ARE LEFT DESOLATE. 49 
 
 ten which are counted as old age. Yet seeing her sweet, 
 calm face ; her smooth, broad, intelligent brow; the mild, 
 penetrating scrutiny of her gentle eyes ; the soft hair put 
 back under the quaint French cap, shaped like a hood ; 
 those years remain uncounted ; until, with a pleasant 
 smile, only just too placid for vivacity, she tells how she 
 came to this country in 1830, after the ruin of the fortunes 
 of her house by the revolution which dethroned Charles 
 X., and made her a governess in England, where so many 
 of the old nobility sought a refuge and a home. 
 
 But before this is' said, she has presented me to a third 
 lady — to whom, indeed, my original introduction ex- 
 tended — already long past the limit of that short period 
 which we call long life ; for she is more than eighty years 
 old, and by reason of the infirmity which has lately come 
 upon her, does not rise to receive me, but remains seated 
 in the couch by the fire. It is a very limited space in 
 which to be ceremonious ; but were this lady sitting in 
 one of a suite of grand rooms in some aristocratic man- 
 sion, with all the surroundings to which her birth, her 
 high connections, and the recollection of her own per- 
 sonal accomplishments entitle her, she might not lack the 
 homage which too often only simulates respect. 
 
 It is possible that she may long ago have learned to 
 assess it at its true value, for she has seen it at a court 
 where it could not save a king from banishment ; and if 
 we may judge from a face with strong determined linea- 
 ments, a brow of concentrated power, and eyes the light 
 of which even the recent paralysis of age has not extin- 
 guished, she has been one who could undergo exile, 
 poverty, and even the sadder calamity of being forgotten, 
 with a wonderful endurance. 
 
 4 
 
50 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS." 
 
 Yes, Madame la Comtesse Maria de Comolera, friend 
 and fellow-student of that Madame Adelaide whose 
 name has become historical, when your father was 
 Monsieur lTntendant of the Due d'Orleans, and when you 
 lived within the atmosphere of the French court, spending 
 quiet days at the easel in your painting-room, or prepar- 
 ing the delicate pate of Sevres porcelain, on which to 
 paint the roses and lilies that you loved, the grim visions 
 of exile and poverty may never have troubled you. When 
 the house of Bourbon crumbled, and you escaped from 
 the ruin it had made, you had still your art left to solace, 
 if not to gladden you; and for a time at least you lived 
 by it, and took a new rank by the work that you could 
 do. There were flowers in England, and your hands 
 could still place their glowing hues on canvas. Witness 
 those pictures of yours that now hang on the walls of 
 the gallery of the Crystal Palace, or adorn some private 
 collections. Witness, too, the recognition of some of our 
 own painters when Sir Charles Eastlake was president of 
 the Royal Academy, and when you found a friendly 
 patron in Queen Adelaide of gentle memory. Alas, the 
 nand has lost its cunning ; and if its work is not alto- 
 gether forgotten, those who look upon it are unaware 
 that you are living here in this poor room — pensioner of 
 a charity which, were it but supported as it might be, 
 could better lighten your declining years. Yet I will not 
 call you desolate, madame. Two faithful friends are with 
 you yet. The sunset of your calm life, whereof the 
 noon was broken by so terrible a storm, is dim enough ; 
 but it goes not down in complete darkness. Gentle and 
 admiring regard survives even in this dull place ; and with 
 it the love that can bring tears to eyes not over ready 
 
 to weep on account of selfish sorrows, and can move 
 
WITH THOSE WHO ARE LEFT DESOLATE. 51 
 
 ready hands to tend you now that your own grow heavy 
 and feeble * 
 
 As I become more accustomed to the subdued light of 
 the room, I note that amidst the confusion of some old 
 pieces of furniture or lumber there are pictures, unframed 
 and dim, leaning against the walls. One of them — a 
 large painting of some rare plant, formerly a curiosity in 
 the Botanical Gardens at Regent's Park, v/hile the rest 
 are groups of flowers and fruit. Just opposite me, on 
 the high mantel-piece, the canvas broken here and there 
 near the edges, obscured by the dust and smoke that 
 have dulled their surface, are two oil-paintings which I 
 venture to take down for a nearer inspection. Surely 
 they must have been finished when madame was yet in 
 the prime of her art. Exquisite in drawing, delicate in 
 colour, and with a subtle touch that gives to each petal 
 the fresh crumple that bespeaks it newly-blown, and to 
 fruit the dewy down that would make even a gourmet 
 linger ere he pressed the juice. It is almost pain to think 
 that they are left here uncared for ; and yet, who knows 
 what influence their presence above that dingy shelf may 
 have upon the wandering thoughts and waning dreams 
 of her who painted them when every new effort of her 
 skill was a keen delight ? 
 
 Nay, even as I hold them to the light, and in a pause 
 of our chat (wherein Madame la Comtesse speaks slowly 
 and with some difficulty) say some half-involuntary words 
 of appreciation, she has risen, and stands upright by the fire 
 with an earnest look in her face and a sudden gesture of 
 awakened interest. The artistic instinct is there still, 
 after more than eighty years of life, and the appreciation 
 
 * Since these lines were written, Madame Comolera has gone to her 
 rest. 
 
 4—2 
 
5 2 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 of the work animates her yet. Not with a mere vulgar 
 love of praise (for Madame is still la Comtesse Comolera 
 even though she spends her days in an almshouse), but 
 with a recognition that I have distinguished the best 
 of the work that is left to her to show. I shall not 
 readily forget the sudden look of almost eager interest, 
 the effort to speak generous words of thanks, as I bow 
 over her hand to say farewell, and feel that I have been 
 as privileged a visitor as though madame had received 
 me in a gilded salon, at the door of which a powdered 
 lacquey stood to " welcome the coming — speed the part- 
 ing guest." 
 
 And so with some pleasant leave-takings, and not 
 without permission to see them again, I leave these ladies 
 — the fitting representatives of an old nobility and an old 
 regime — to the solitude to which they have retired from a 
 world too ready to forget. 
 
 If by any means for the solitude could be substituted 
 a pleasant retirement, and for the sense of desolation 
 and poverty a modest provision that would yet include 
 some grace and lightness to light their declining days, it 
 would be but little after all. 
 
WITH THEM THAT GO DOWN TO THE SEA IN 
 SHIPS. 
 
 T is possible that those portions of the sacred 
 history which have reference to the associa- 
 tion of our Lord Jesus Christ with ships, and 
 the wonderful portions of the great narrative 
 where the Divine Voice seems, as it were, to come from 
 the sea, may have a special attraction for us who live in 
 an island and claim a kind of maritime dominion. 
 
 Surely the words "Lord, save me, or I perish," and the 
 instant response of the outstretched hand of the Saviour 
 of men, must have been read with an awful joy by many 
 a God-fearing sailor on the homeward voyage. " It is I, 
 be not afraid," must have come with an intensity of mean- 
 ing to many a heart which has known the peril of the 
 storm, wherein the voice of man to man has been almost 
 inaudible. 
 
 There is something very solemn in the prayers we send 
 up for those at sea. " Most of us feel a heart-throb when 
 we lie awake listening to the mighty murmurs of the 
 wind, and waiting for the shrill shriek with which each 
 long terrible blast gathers up its forces — a throb which 
 comes of the sudden thought of lonely ships far out upon 
 the ocean, where men are wrestling with the elements, 
 
54 "ABO UT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS:' 
 
 and looking with clenched lips and straining eyes for the 
 lingering dawn. 
 
 Yet, with all this, it is a national reproach to us that 
 until a comparatively recent date we have done little or 
 nothing for our sailors — little for those who have been 
 ready to maintain the old supremacy of our fleet — almost 
 nothing for that greater navy of the mercantile marine to 
 which we are indebted for half the necessaries and for 
 nearly all the luxuries which we enjoy. 
 
 A national reproach, because not only have charitable 
 provisions for destitute, sick, infirm, or disabled sailors 
 been neglected, but subscriptions demanded by the State 
 from seamen of the merchant service were never properly 
 applied to relieve the distress of those for whom they 
 were professedly received. Considerably over a million 
 of money has been contributed by merchant seamen, by 
 deductions of sixpences from their monthly pay for the 
 maintenance of Greenwich Hospital, and in addition to 
 this there have been accumulated in the hands of the 
 Government the examination fees of masters and mates 
 passing the Board of Trade examination, and the penny 
 fees paid by common seamen on shipment and unship- 
 ment, while the unclaimed wages and effects of seamen 
 dying abroad are calculated at about ^"8000 a year. 
 
 Now there can be no doubt that Greenwich Hospital 
 was originally intended to include merchant seamen in 
 its provisions, for the preamble to the original scheme of 
 William III. recites, "Whereas the King's most excellent 
 Majesty being anxiously desirous to promote the Trade, 
 Navigation, and Naval strength of this Kingdom, and to 
 invite greater numbers of his subjects to betake them- 
 selves to the sea, hath determined to erect a hospital," 
 &c. For this purpose sixpence per man per month was 
 
WITH THEM THAT GO DOWN TO THE SEA. 55 
 
 to be paid out of the wages of all manners to the support 
 of the Hospital, and every seaman was to be registered. 
 Why ? That the charity might be " for the relief, benefit, 
 •or advantage of such the said registered Marines, or 
 Seamen, Watermen, Fishermen, Lightermen, Bargemen, 
 Keelmen, or Seafaring Men, who by age, wounds, or 
 other accidents shall be disabled for future service at 
 sea, and shall not be in a condition to maintain them- 
 selves comfortably ; and the children of such disabled 
 seamen ; and the widows and children of such of them 
 as shall happen to be slain, killed, or drowned in sea ser- 
 vice, so far forth as the Hospital shall be capable to re- 
 ceive them, and the revenue thereof will extend." 
 
 So far as words went, therefore — and subsequent Acts 
 of Parliament confirmed them— Greenwich Hospital was 
 open to all registered seamen. The fact has always been, 
 however, that it was barely able to meet the claims made 
 by the disabled and infirm sailors of the Navy alone, and 
 therefore the mercantile marine was practically excluded, 
 while the payments were still demanded. 
 
 Now let us see what past Governments did for the re- 
 lief of those old, infirm, or disabled men who having "seen 
 wonders on the great deep," came home and sought help. 
 
 A charitable trust, called the "Merchant Seamen's 
 Fund," had been established by merchants and ship- 
 owners of the City of London, who gave large sums to 
 it, in order to try to make up for the injustice by which 
 these sailors were virtually excluded from Greenwich 
 Hospital, to which the men of the mercantile marine still 
 had to pay sixpence a month. By a remarkably know- 
 ing piece of legislation, an Act was passed (the 20th of 
 George II.) which incorporated the Merchant Seamen's 
 Fund, appointed president and governors, and gave au- 
 
56 " ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS." 
 
 thority to purchase land for building a hospital, to help 
 pay for which another sixpence a month was claimed 
 from the pay of merchant seamen and masters of mer- 
 chant vessels. 
 
 Not till the year 1834, by an Act passed in the reign 
 of William IV., were the merchant sailors relieved from 
 ■compulsory payment to Greenwich. They had contri- 
 buted to the hospital for 138 years without having de- 
 rived any direct benefit from it ; and though they were 
 not unwilling to subscribe for their brethren in the Royal 
 Navy, the injustice which demanded their contributions, 
 though their own fund was inadequate to pay for the 
 promised building for which it was intended, became too 
 glaring to be continued. It was therefore determined 
 that a grant of ^"20^000 should be made to Greenwich 
 Hospital out of the Consolidated Fund, and that the 
 merchant sailors should go on paying their shilling a 
 month for their own benefit (masters paying two shil- 
 lings), and that a provision for widows and children 
 should be included in the charity, the benefits of which 
 were to be extended to Scotland and Ireland. 
 
 The hospital never was built. The Board of Trade 
 taking the management of the contributions, appointed 
 trustees, who were altogether incompetent, and did their 
 duty in a perfunctory or careless manner. In 1850, only 
 .£20,000 was distributed among old, infirm, and disabled 
 seamen, while ^"41,000 was bestowed on widows and chil- 
 dren ; the allowances varying at different ports from £1 
 to £7, each place having its own local government. Of 
 course a collapse came. The fund was bankrupt ; and 
 in the following year an Act was passed for winding it 
 up — for, says the Board of Trade Report, " the Govern- 
 ment has had no control over the matter. The London. 
 
WITH THEM THAT GO DOWN TO THE SEA. 57- 
 
 Corporation and the trustees of outports could not by 
 any mangement have prevented the insolvency of the fund,. 
 as long as they were guided by the principles which the 
 
 several Acts of Parliament laid down the whole 
 
 system was vicious." 
 
 By the winding-up Act of 1851 compulsory contribu- 
 tions ceased ; but those who chose to continue to sub- 
 scribe voluntarily might do so. It is hardly to be won- 
 dered at that the merchant seamen lost confidence in 
 the paternal protection of the Board of Trade. A few 
 thousand pounds were left from the compulsory contri- 
 butions, and when this came to be inquired for, nobody 
 knew anything about it. It had somehow slipped out 
 of the estimates, and nobody could tell what had become 
 of it. 
 
 That is what past governments have done for poor 
 mercantile Jack. 
 
 What has the great British public done for him ? Not 
 so very much after all. The truth is, that the sailor, who 
 has always been spoken of as "so dreadfully improvi- 
 dent," has been practically regarded as being most self- 
 helpful. All the time that we have been shaking our 
 solemn heads, and lifting up our hands at the improvi- 
 dence, the folly, and the extravagance of these frequently 
 underpaid and sometimes overworked men, we have 
 made even the help that we were willing to extend to 
 them in their deeper necessities partially dependent on 
 their own constant and regular subscription to the same 
 end. 
 
 Poor improvident Jack! — poor thoughtless, incorrigible 
 fellow! — it was necessary for the Government of his coun- 
 try to look after him, in order to protect him against his 
 own want of forethought, and the result has been to run- 
 
58 "ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS." 
 
 the ship into shoal water, and go hopelessly to wreck 
 without so much as salvage money. 
 
 Jack ashore ! Don't we all still look at the sailor in the 
 light of the evil war-times, when the king's men were said 
 to draw pocketsful of prize-money and to spend it in low 
 debauchery or wild wanton folly ? Even now we repeat 
 the stories of frying watches along with beefsteaks 
 and onions, or eating bank-note sandwiches. Nay, to 
 this day in the fo'c's'le of merchant vessels some of the 
 melancholy old songs in which sailors are wont to satirise 
 themselves are occasionally sung, telling how 
 
 " When his money is all spent, 
 And there's nothing to be borrowed and nothing to be lent, 
 In comes the landlord with a frown, 
 Saying, ' Jack ! get up, and let John sit down, 
 For you are outward bound.' " 
 
 There's a world of meaning in that grim suggestive sum- 
 mary; but, thank God! it has less meaning now than it 
 once had. Until quite lately, sailors of merchant ships 
 could be kept for days waiting to be paid, and, sickened 
 with lingering for long weary hours about the office of 
 the broker or agent who withheld their money, fell into 
 the hands of the harpies who were, and still are con- 
 stantly on the look-out to plunder them. Men with all 
 the pure natural longing for home and reunion with those 
 near and dear to them, were compelled to loiter about 
 the foul neighbourhood of the dock where their ship dis- 
 charged its cargo, lodging in some low haunt with evil 
 company, and liable to every temptation that is rife in 
 such places, till too often so large a portion of their 
 hardly-earned wages had been forestalled, that in a 
 dreary and desperate madness of dissipation they were 
 tempted to fling away the small balance remaining to 
 
WITH THEM THAT GO DOWN TO THE SEA. 59 
 
 them, and to awake to reason only when, naked and 
 nearly destitute, they were compelled to go to sea again, 
 with a slender stock of clothes, and a week's board and 
 lodging paid for with advance notes. 
 
 From long confinement and monotony on shipboard, 
 the sailor even now comes to a sense of temporary free- 
 dom, giddy with the unaccustomed sense of solid ground 
 and the wild toss and uproar of the ocean of life in a 
 great city. What are still the influences which in many 
 seaports await him directly his foot touches the shore, 
 and sometimes even before he has come over the vessel's 
 side ? With a boy's recklessness, a man's passions, and 
 the unwonted excitement of possessing money and bound- 
 less opportunities for spending it, a shoal of landsharks are 
 lying ready to batten on him. The tout, the crimp, and 
 all the wretches, male and female, who look upon him as 
 their prey, will never leave him from the time when they 
 watch him roll wonderingly on to the landing-stage, till 
 that desperate minute when he flings his last handful of 
 small change across the tavern counter, and calls for its 
 worth in drink, since " money is no use at sea." 
 
 This was far more frequently the termination of mer- 
 cantile Jack's spell ashore, before the new regulations as 
 to prompt payment of seamen's wages came into force. 
 At that time you had only to take a morning walk across 
 Tower Hill, where the bluff lay figure at the outfitter's 
 door stands for Jack in full feather, and thence to America 
 Square, or the neighbourhood of the Minories and Rose- 
 mary Lane, to see dozens of poor fellows lounging list- 
 lessly about the doors of pay-agents, waiting day after 
 day at the street-corners, with an occasional visit to the 
 public-house, and the perpetual consumption of "hard ' 
 tobacco. It was easy afterwards to follow Jack to Rat- 
 
60 " ABOUT M V FA THERS BUSINESS? 
 
 cliffe, Rotherhithe, Shad well, and the neighbourhood, 
 where his " friends " lay in wait for him to spend the even- 
 ing ; in the tap-rooms of waterside taverns, where he sat 
 hopelessly drinking and smoking during a hot summer's 
 afternoon ; to frowsy, low-browed shops of cheap 
 clothiers, to hot, stifling dancing-rooms, to skittle-alleys 
 behind gin-shop bars, where a sudden brawl would call 
 out knives, and the use of a " slung-shot " as a weapon 
 would make a case of manslaughter for the coroner ; to 
 very minor theatres, where he could see absurd caricatures 
 of himself in the stage sailors, dancing hornpipes unknown 
 at sea ; to the dreadful dens of Bluegate Fields and Tiger 
 Bay — to any or all of these places you might have fol- 
 lowed Jack ; and may even yet follow his fellows who 
 have not yet been redeemed from the evil ways of those 
 bad times, when there were no homes for sailors amidst 
 the bewildering vice and misery of maritime London, and 
 other seaport towns of this great mercantile island. 
 
 It so happened that I made my first intimate acquaint- 
 ance with the one real, publicly representative " Sailors' 
 Home " in Well Street, near the London Docks, after 
 having seen Jack under several of the terrible conditions 
 just referred to, so that, with this painful knowledge of 
 him and his ways, it was with a kind of delighted sur- 
 prise that I suddenly walked into the great entrance- 
 hall of the institution, where he and his fellows were sit- 
 ting on the benches by the wall with the serious, contem- 
 plative, almost solemn air which is (in my experience) 
 the common expression of sailors ashore, and during 
 ordinary leisure hours. There they were, a good ship's 
 crew of them altogether, sitting, as I have already said, 
 in true sailor fashion — stooping forward, wrists on knees, 
 lolling on sea-chests and clothes-bags, taking short fore- 
 
WITH THEM THAT GO DOWN TO THE SEA. 6r 
 
 and-aft walks of six steps and a turn in company with 
 some old messmate, smoking, growling, chatting, and 
 generally enjoying their liberty ; not without an eye, now 
 and then, to the smart officer who had come in to see 
 whether he could pick up a brisk hand or two for the 
 mail service. 
 
 This was some five or six years ago, and it is a happy 
 result of the plan on which the Home was first estab- 
 lished (which was intended ultimately to make the insti- 
 tution self-supporting, if the cost of building were 
 defrayed) that the whole scheme has been so enlarged 
 since that time, that anybody who would see what our 
 mercantile seamen are like, may now go and see them, 
 in a largely increasing community, in this great insti- 
 tution. So many come and go and reappear at in- 
 tervals represented by the length of their voyages, that 
 10,120 officers and men had partaken of its inestimable 
 benefits during the year from the first of May, 1872, to 
 the end of April, 1873. 
 
 But the institution itself was founded in earnest faith, 
 and built with the labour that is consecrated by prayer. 
 Both to the Home and to its companion institution, 
 the Refuge for Destitute Seamen — we will pay a visit on 
 our next meeting. 
 
WITH THEM WHO WERE READY TO PERISH 
 
 N the 28th of February, 1828, a very terrible 
 calamity happened in the placeknown as Well- 
 close Square, Whitechapel. A new theatre 
 called the Brunswick, had been erected there 
 on the site of a former building, known as the Old Royalty. 
 It had been completed in seven months, and three days 
 afterwards, during a rehearsal, the whole structure gave 
 way and fell with a crash, burying ten persons amidst 
 the ruins, and fearfully injuring several others. Such a 
 catastrophe was very awful, and the people of the 
 neighbourhood looked with an almost solemn curiosity at 
 the wreck of an edifice in which they themselves might 
 have met with death suddenly. 
 
 Very soon, however, they began to regard the heap of 
 ruins with surprise, for early one morning there appeared 
 two officers of the Royal Navy, surrounded by a gang of 
 labourers with picks and shovels, and before these men 
 (some of whom were Irish Roman Catholic) began to 
 work they listened attentively while one of the officers 
 offered up an earnest prayer to God for a blessing on the 
 results of the labour they were about to undertake. 
 Morning after morning their labour was thus sanctified, 
 and evening after evening it was celebrated by the voice 
 of thanksgiving, till at length the ground was cleared, and 
 
WITH THEM WHO WERE READY TO PERISH. 63 
 
 on the 10th of June, 1830, the first stone of a new build- 
 ing was laid. The building was to be a Home for Sailors, 
 and as a necessary adjunct to the Home, it was intended 
 to establish a Destitute Sailors' Asylum. 
 
 The two naval officers were Captain (now Admiral) 
 George C. Gambier, and Captain Robert James Elliot, 
 now gone to his rest, who with Lieutenant Robert Justice 
 afterwards Captain, and now with his old comrade, in the 
 heavenly haven, had been seeking how to ameliorate the 
 condition of seamen, numbers of whom were to be seen 
 homeless, miserable, and frequently half naked and de- 
 stitute, in that foul and wretched neighbourhood about 
 the Docks and beyond Tower Hill. 
 
 The task was a difficult one, and might have daunted 
 less brave and hopeful men, forit was intended to demolish 
 the piratical haunts where the enemies of the sailor lay in 
 wait for his destruction ; where crimps and thieves and 
 the keepers of infamous dens held their besotted victims 
 in bondage, while they battened on the wages that had been 
 earned during months of privation and arduous toil. 
 
 It was necessary, therefore, first to provide a decent 
 and comfortable lodging-house for the reception of sailors 
 coming into port, — aplacewhere they might safely deposit 
 their clothes and their wages, and where they could "look 
 out for another ship" without the evil intervention of crimps 
 or pretended agents. It was a part of the intended plan 
 also to establish a savings bank, for securing any portion 
 of their wages which they chose to lay by, or for safely 
 transmitting such sums as they might wish to send to their 
 relations. In short, the design was to provide a home 
 for the homeless, and hold out helping hands to those 
 who were ready to perish. 
 
•64 " ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS." 
 
 Those ruins of the theatre stood on the very spot for 
 such an establishment, and the two captains, Gambier and 
 Elliott, began by buying the ground and the wreck that 
 stood upon it, not by asking for public subscriptions, but 
 mostly with their own money, to which was added a few 
 contributions from any of their friends who desired to 
 join in the good work. 
 
 It is impossible to use more earnest or touching words 
 than those in which the late Rear- Admiral Sir W. E. 
 Parry spoke of the labours of his friend and fellow- 
 supporter of the Sailors' Home, in an address to British 
 seamen at Southampton, in 1853. "And now," he said, 
 "let me just add that, from the first moment in which 
 Captain Elliot stood among the ruins of the Brunswick 
 Theatre, till it pleased God to deprive him of bodily and 
 mental energy, did that self-denying Christian man 
 devote all his powers, his talents, his influence, and his 
 money, to this his darling object of protecting and pro- 
 viding for the comfort of sailors. Connected with a 
 noble family, and entitled by birth, education, and 
 station, to all the advantages which the most exalted 
 society could give hm, he willingly relinquished all, took 
 up his abode in a humble lodging, surrounded by gin- 
 shops, near the i Home :' denied himself most of the 
 comforts, it may almost be said some of the necessaries 
 of life, in order the more effectually to carry out his 
 benevolent design ; and for eighteen years of self-denial 
 and devotion, made it the business of his life to superin- 
 tend this institution." 
 
 For the noble officer lived to see the building for which 
 he had wrought and prayed, complete and successful. In 
 1835 300 sailors could be received and welcomed there. 
 
WITH THEM WHO WERE READY TO PERISH. 65 
 
 The piratical lairs began to empty of some of those who 
 had been shown a way of escape, and the good work 
 went on. In the adjoining Seamen's Church the con- 
 gregation was largely augmented by the boarders from 
 the Sailors' Heme, while the Honorary Chaplain and the 
 Missionary attached officially to the institution, became 
 not only parson and preacher, but friendly adviser and 
 instructor, ready to speak, to hear, and to forbear. The 
 addition of a book depository, where various useful pub- 
 lications may be purchased, and Bibles are sold at the 
 lowest possible prices, and in various languages, was a 
 valuable auxiliary to moral and religious instruction, and 
 at once increased the home-like influences of the place. 
 
 The institution having gone on thus prosperously, 
 under the direction of a goodly number of officers and 
 gentlemen, added to its possessions by acquiring other 
 plots of freehold ground, extending backward to Dock 
 Street; and in 1863 Lord Palmerston laid the stone of 
 an entirely new block of building, which was inaugurated 
 by the Prince of Wales in 1865, since which time 502 
 boarders can be received, each being provided with his 
 separate cabin. 
 
 Since the opening of the institution in 1835 it has 
 received 246,855 seamen of various countries and from 
 all parts of the world. Of these 72,234 have been old or 
 returned boarders, and most of them have conducted their 
 money transactions through the " Home," and have 
 made good use of the savings-bank. 
 
 There are 270 inmates under that protecting roof as I 
 step into the large entrance hall in Well Street to-day ; 
 and the two hundred and seventy- first has just gone to 
 look after his kit and sea-chests, which have been care- 
 fully conveyed from the Docks by one of the carmen 
 
 5 
 
66 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 belonging to the institution, who has " The Sailors' Home, 
 Well Street," worked in red worsted on his shirt, and 
 painted on the side of the van from which he has just 
 alighted. 
 
 It is evident that our friend No. 271 has been here 
 before, for he knows exactly where to present himself in 
 order to deposit some of his more portable property with 
 the cashier or the superintendent. He scarcely looks 
 like a man who will want an advance of money, for he is 
 a smart, alert, bright-eyed fellow, with a quiet air of self- 
 respect about him which seems to indicate an account in 
 the savings-bank ; but should he be " hard-up/' he can 
 ask for and receive a loan not exceeding twenty shillings 
 directly his chest is deposited in his cabin. Just now the 
 chest itself, together with its superincumbent bundle, 
 stands against the wall along with some other incoming 
 or outgoing boxes, more than one of which are associated 
 with brand new cages for parrots, and some odd-shaped 
 cases evidently containing sextants or other nautical in- 
 struments. There is a whole ship's crew, and a smart one 
 too, in the hall to-day; while a small contingent occupies 
 the clothing department, where one or two shrewd North- 
 countrymen are being fitted each with a "new rig," 
 knowing well enough that they will be better served there 
 than at any of the cheap outfitters (or the dear ones 
 either) in the neighbourhood. Fine blue broadcloth, 
 pilots, tweeds, rough weather, and petershams are here 
 to choose from " to measure," as well as a wonderful col- 
 lection of hats, caps, underclothing, hosiery, neckties, 
 boots, and shoes so unlike the clumsy specimens that 
 swing along with the tin pots and oilskins in some of 
 the little low-browed shops about the district, that I 
 at once discover the reason for the smartness and general 
 
WITH THEM WHO WERE READY TO PERISH. 67 
 
 neatly-fitted look of most of the men and lads now pacing 
 up and down, talking and smoking. It is quiet talk 
 for the most part, even when half a dozen of the inmates 
 adjourn to the refreshment-room, where they can obtain 
 a glass of good sound beer (though there is a much more 
 general appreciation of coffee) and sit down comfortably 
 at a table like that at which two serious mates are 
 already discussing some knotty point, which will pro- 
 bably last till tea-time. 
 
 Tea-time ? There is the half-past five o'clock signal 
 gong going now, and light swift steps are J:o be heard 
 running up the stairs into the large dining-hall, where the 
 two hundred and seventy-one, or as many of them as are 
 at home, sit down like fellows who know their business 
 and mean to do it. It is a pleasant business enough, 
 and one soon despatched ; for there are so many big tea- 
 pots, that each table is amply provided by the alert 
 attendants, who dispense bread-and-butter, watercresses, 
 salads, and savoury bloaters and slices of ham and tongue, 
 the latter having been already served by a carver who is 
 equal to the occasion. It is astonishing how quickly the 
 meal is over when its substantial quality is taken into 
 account ; but there is no lack of waiters, the number of 
 attendants in the building being sixty-five, some of whom, 
 of course, belong to the dormitories and to other depart- 
 ments. 
 
 The meals here are, of course, served with the utmost 
 regularity, and without limit to quantity. Breakfast, 
 with cold meat, fish, bacon, and general " relishes," at 
 eight in the morning ; dinner at one : consisting of soup, 
 roast and boiled meats, ample supplies of vegetables, 
 occasional fish, stupendous fruit-pies and puddings, and 
 a good allowance of beer. After tea comes a substantial 
 
 5—2 
 
"ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINE. 
 
 snack for supper, at nine o'clock, and the doors of the in- 
 stitution are kept open to half-past eleven at night; those 
 who wish to remain out later being required to obtain a 
 pass from the superintendent. 
 
 Of course it is requested that the boarders come 
 in to meals as punctually as possible ; but those 
 who cannot conveniently be present at the regular 
 time, can have any meal supplied to them on appli- 
 cation. Indeed, two or three belated ones are arriving 
 now, as we go to the end of the long and lofty 
 refectory to look at the crest of the late Admiral Sir 
 William Bowles, K.C.B., which, supported by flags, is 
 painted upon the wall, as a memorial of a gallant officer 
 and a good friend to this institution and to all sailors. 
 
 Leaving the dining-hall, we notice a smaller room, set 
 apart for masters and mates who may desire to have their 
 meals served here ; and on the same extensive storey is 
 a large and comfortable reading-room well supplied with 
 periodicals, and containing a capital library consisting of 
 entertaining and instructive boc' 
 
 T!:e board-room is close by, and is of the size 
 and shape to make an excellent mission-room, where 
 week-night services and meetings of a religious character 
 are held, and well attended by men who, having seen the 
 wonders of the Lord upon the great deep, join in His 
 reasonable service when they are at home and at rest. 
 This vast floor also contains two dormitories : but 
 most of the sleeping cabins are in the second and third 
 floors. 
 
 There are few sights in London more remarkable than 
 these berths, which are, in fact, separate cabins, each 
 closed by its own door, and containing bed, wash-stand, 
 chair, looking-glass, towels, and ample space for the sea- 
 
 
WITH THEM WHO WERE READY TO PERISH. 69 
 
 chest and personal belongings of the occupant. The 
 cabins extend round a large area rising to a great height, 
 and surrounded above by a light gallery reached by an 
 outer staircase, round which are another series of berths 
 exactly resembling the lower ones ; so that there are, in 
 fact, double, and in one or two dormitories treble tiers of 
 cabins, and the upper ones may be entered without dis- 
 turbing the inmates of those below. One of the three- 
 decker areas is of vast size, and, standing in the upper 
 gallery and looking upward to the lofty roof, and then 
 downward to the clear, wide, open space between the lower 
 rooms, the visitor is struck by the admirable provision 
 both for light and ventilation ; the former being secured 
 at night by means of properly distributed gas jets, which 
 are of course under the care of the night attendants, who 
 are on watch in each dormitory, and may be summoned 
 at once in case of illness or accident. 
 
 Not only is there provision against fire by a length of 
 fire-hose attached to hydrants on each storey, but the 
 water supply to lavatories and for other purposes is 
 secured by a cistern holding 4,000 gallons at the top of the 
 building; so that there is complete circulation throughout 
 the various parts of the building. 
 
 It is time that we paid a visit to the basement of this 
 great institution, however ; for, in more senses than one, 
 it may be said to be at the foundation of the arrange- 
 ments. Yes, even with respect to the amusements pro- 
 vided for the inmates — for while chess, draughts and back- 
 gammon are to be found in the library and reading-room, 
 ■and billiards and bagatelle hold their own on the great 
 landings of the first storey, we have down here a skittle- 
 alley of a character so remarkable, that some of us who 
 have read Washington Irvine think of the reverberations of 
 
7o ''ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS* 
 
 the giants'.'pastime in the mountains, while we wonder 
 where sailors can first have acquired a taste for this par- 
 ticular amusement. It is a good and healthy one, how- 
 ever, and is wisely provided, since it adds one more 
 efficient inducement to the men to take their pleasure 
 among their true friends instead of seeking it amidst the 
 evil influences of a filthy tavern, or in the garish heat of 
 some vile RatclirY Highway bowling-alley, where men are 
 maddened with drugged drink, and greeted with foul 
 imprecations by the harpies who seek to rob and cheat 
 them. 
 
 There is much to see in this basement, and to begin 
 with here is No. two hundred and seventy-one sending his 
 chest up by the great luggage-lift to the second floor, 
 where he will find it presently in his cabin. We cannot 
 stay to speak to him, however, for we are on the very 
 verge of the kitchen, to which we are, as it were, led by 
 the nose ; for wafted thence comes an appetising perfume 
 of new bread j ust taken from one of the great ovens devoted 
 to the daily baking. There are lingering odours also of to- 
 day's dinner, though the meat ovens and the great boilers 
 and hot plates are clean and ready for the morrow. The 
 pantry door, too, is open, and there are toothsome varieties 
 of" plain-eating" therein, while the storerooms savour of 
 mingled comforts, to which the gales of Araby the blest 
 offer no parallel, and the butcher's shop has a cairn and 
 concentrated sense of meatiness which is suggestive to a 
 robust appetite not already satiated with a chunk from 
 one of a whole squadron of soft, new currant-cakes. After 
 a peep at the large and busy laundry with its peculiar 
 moist atmosphere, the coal and beer cellars, the pumping 
 machinery and boiler-room may be passed by, and little 
 curiosity is excited by this long and convenient apart- 
 
WITH THEM WHO WERE READY TO PERISH. 71 
 
 ment where hot and cold baths are prepared to order at 
 a merely nominal charge. There is a door close by, how- 
 ever, where we stop instinctively, for there is a cheerful 
 light inside, and a sound of easy and yet interrupted con- 
 versation which can belong to only one department of 
 society. There can be no mistake about it — a veritable 
 barber's shop, and a gentleman with a preternaturally 
 clean chin complacently surveying himself in a looking- 
 glass of limited dimensions, while another waits to be 
 operated upon by the skilled practitioner who carries in 
 his face the suggestion of a whole ropery of 'tough yarns," 
 and was — or am I mistaken — tonsor to the Victory or to 
 some ship of war equally famous when the British seaman 
 shaved close and often, and pigtails had hardly gone out 
 of fashion. There is no time for testing the great artist's 
 skill this evening, though I could almost sacrifice a well- 
 grown beard to hear some rare old fo'c's'le story. But 
 no story could be more wonderful than the plain truth 
 that for all the generous provision in this excellent insti- 
 tution the rescued sailor brought within its wholesome 
 influence pays but fifteen shillings a week. Yes, men and 
 apprentices, fifteen shillings ; and officers, eighteen and 
 sixpence. 
 
 The evening lowers over the outer world of Mint Street 
 and Leman Street, and the great blank void of the Tower 
 ditch is full of shadow. Standing again in the large en- 
 trance hall, which reminds one more of shipboard, now 
 that the lights are dotted about it, leaving it still a little 
 dim, I hear the trickling of a drinking-fountain, and as- 
 sociated with its fresh plash hear as pleasant a story as 
 any yarn that ever the barber himself could have spun 
 for my delight. 
 
 The fountain, which is of polished Aberdeen granite, 
 
72 "ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS:' 
 
 was opened last November in proper style, a platform 
 being erected, and the chair being taken by the Secretary 
 to the " Metropolitan Drinking Fountains Association," 
 supported by several ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Lee 
 made an appropriate speech, and called attention to the 
 gift, and pointed to the inscription ; and it was quite an 
 emphatic little observance for the inmates who had 
 gathered in the hall on the occasion. And well it might 
 be, for the fountain bears this modest inscription: — "The 
 gift of William McNeil, Seaman, in appreciation of the 
 great benefits he has derived on the various occasions 
 during which he has made the Institution his Homc y for 
 upwards of 25 years. 
 
 I think very little more need be said for the Sailors' 
 Home than is indicated by this plain, earnest testimony 
 to its worth. Yet it is necessary to say one more word. 
 This Sailors' Home is in a way self-supporting, and at 
 present seeks only the kindly interest of the public in case 
 it should ever need another response to an appeal for ex- 
 tending its sphere of usefulness. Not a farthing of profit 
 is permitted to any individual engaged in it, and even 
 fees to servants are prohibited, though the crimps and touts 
 outside endeavour to bribe them sometimes, to induce 
 sailors to go to the common lodging-houses, where land- 
 rats seek their prey. All the profits, if there are any at all, 
 are placed to a reserve fund for repairs, improvements, or 
 extensions. At any rate, no public appeals are being made 
 just now. 
 
 But there is another institution next door — another 
 branch of the stem which has grown so sturdily from the 
 seed planted by the good captain — the Destitute Sailors' 
 Asylum. That is a place full of interest, though there is 
 nothing to see there. Nothing but a clean yard, with 
 
WITH THEM WHO WERE READY TO PERISH. 73 
 
 means for washing and cleansing, and a purifying oven 
 for removing possible infection from clothes, and a great 
 bare room, just comfortably warmed in winter, and hung 
 with rows of hammocks, like the 'tween-decks of a ship. 
 That is all ; but in those hammocks, sometimes, poor 
 starved and destitute sailors go to sleep, after they have 
 been fed with soup and warmed and comforted ; and in 
 the morning, when they turn out, they are fed again with 
 cocoa and bread, and if they are naked they are clothed. 
 There are not very many applicants, for, strange as it may 
 appear, since sailors' homes have come in fashion there 
 are but few destitute seamen ; but there need be no unre- 
 lieved destitute sailors at ail in London, for anybody can 
 send such a one to the Asylum in Well Street, London 
 Docks, and he will be admitted. Here then, is an insti- 
 tution that may claim support. 
 
CASTING BREAD UPON THE WATERS. 
 
 NE of the old Saxon commentators on the 
 Holy Scriptures, in referring to the passage, 
 " Cast thy bread upon the waters, and it shall 
 be found after many days," ventures to sug- 
 gest as a meaning—" Give succour to poor and afflicted 
 seamen." Whatever may be the conclusions of critical 
 Biblical expositors, there can be no doubt that the pious 
 annotator was right in a true — that is, in a spiritual inter- 
 pretation of the text. 
 
 Should it be necessary to appeal twice to the English 
 nation — which has, as it were a savour of sea-salt in its 
 very blood — to hold out a helping hand for those who, 
 having struggled to keep our dominion by carrying the flag 
 of British commerce all round the world, are themselves 
 flung ashore, weak, old, and helpless, dependent on the 
 goodwill of their countrymen to take them into some 
 quiet harbour, where they may, as it were be laid up in 
 ordinary and undergo some sort of repairs, even though 
 they should never again be able to go a voyage ? It is 
 with feelings of something like regret that an average 
 Englishman sees the old hull of a sea-going boat lie 
 neglected and uncared for on the beach. Not without a 
 pang can we witness the breaking-up of some stout old 
 
CASTING BREAD UPON THE WATERS. 75 
 
 ship no longer seaworthy. Yet, unhappily, we have 
 hitherto given scant attention to the needs of those old 
 and infirm seamen, who having for many years contri- 
 buted out of their wages to the funds of the Naval 
 Hospital at Greenwich, and having been again mulcted 
 of some subscriptions which were to have been specially 
 devoted to found an asylum for themselves, are left with 
 little to look forward to but the workhouse ward when, 
 crippled, sick, or feeble with age, they could no longer 
 tread the deck or crack a biscuit. 
 
 It is true that there are now hospitals or sick-asylums 
 in connection with some of the sailors' homes at our sea- 
 ports, and to the general hospitals any sailor can be 
 admitted if he should be able to procure a letter from 
 a governor. The 'tween-decks of the Dreadnought no 
 longer form the sole hospital for invalided merchant 
 seamen in the Port of London ; but even reckoning all 
 that has been done for sailors, and fresh from a visit to 
 that great building where three hundred hale and hearty 
 seamen of the great mercantile navy find a home, we are 
 left to wonder that so little has been accomplished for 
 those old tars who, having lived for threescore years or 
 more, going to and fro upon the great deep, can find no 
 certain anchorage, except within the walls of some union 
 where they may at last succeed in claiming a settlement. 
 Surely there is no figure which occupies a more pro- 
 minent place in English history than that of the sailor — 
 not the man-o'-war's man only — but the merchant sea- 
 man, the descendant of those followers of the great old 
 navigators who were called " merchant adventurers," and 
 who practically founded for Great Britain new empires 
 beyond the sea. In the poetry, the songs, the literature, 
 the political records, the social chronicles, the domestic 
 
76 " ABOUT M Y FATHER'S BUSINESS:' 
 
 narratives of England, the sailor holds a place, and even 
 at our holiday seasons, when our children cluster on the 
 shingly shore or the far-stretching brown sands of the 
 coast, we find still that we belong to a nation of which 
 the sailor long stood as the chosen representative. Nay, 
 in the midst of the life of a great city we cannot fail to 
 be reminded of the daring and the enterprise which has 
 helped to make London what it is. 
 
 The poet, who, standing on the bridge at midnight, 
 and listening to the chime of the hour, found his imagi- 
 nation occupied with serious images and his memory with 
 solemn recollections, would have been no less moved to 
 profound contemplation had he been a temporary occu- 
 pant of one of the great structures that span the silent 
 highway of the Thames. There is something in the 
 flow of a broad and rapid stream which has a peculiar 
 association with thoughts of the struggle and toil of 
 human life, and as we look on the ever-moving tide, we 
 ask ourselves what have we done for the brave old toil- 
 worn men who have seen the wonders of the great 
 deep for so many years, and have brought so much to 
 us that we can scarcely speak of food or drink without 
 some reminder of their toilsome lives and long voyages ? 
 Well, a little has been done, — very little when we reflect 
 how much yet remains to be accomplished ; and yet 
 much, regarded as a fair opportunity for doing a great 
 deal more. I have already recounted some part of the 
 sad story of what a provident Government did when it 
 thought to undertake the affairs of poor improvident 
 Jack. How it collected his money, and neglected to give 
 him the benefit of the enforced subscription ; how it 
 administered and laid claim to his poor little effects and 
 arrears of pay, if he died abroad and nobody came for- 
 
CASTING BREAD UPON THE WATERS. 77 
 
 ward to establish a right to them ; how it demanded 
 additional contributions from his monthly wages, in order 
 to show him how to establish a relief fund ; and how 
 somehow the scheme went " by the board " (of Trade), 
 and the balance of the money was lost in the gulf of the 
 estimates. 
 
 As long ago as i860 it became clear to a number of 
 leading merchants, shipowners, and officers of the mer- 
 cantile marine that nothing was to be looked for from 
 the State when the subject of making an effort to pro- 
 vide for aged and infirm sailors was again urgently 
 brought forward ; but it was determined to make a defi- 
 nite movement, and " The Shipwrecked Mariners' 
 Society," which had then 40,000 officers and seamen 
 among its subscribers, was appealed to as a body having 
 the power to form the required association. 
 
 It was not till 1867, however, that the actual work of 
 providing an asylum for old sailors was commenced. 
 The society had then put down the sum of ^"5,000 as a 
 good beginning, a committee had been appointed, of 
 which the late honoured Paymaster Francis Lean was 
 the indefatigable honorary secretary, and Captain Thomas 
 Tribe the secretary, whilst the list of patrons, presidents, 
 vice-presidents, and supporters included many eminent 
 noblemen and gentlemen who took a true interest in the 
 undertaking. 
 
 Several public meetings were held, and "a Pension and 
 Widows' Fund " was first established. Then the com- 
 mittee began to look about them for a suitable house in 
 which to begin their real business, and had their attention 
 directed to a large building at that time for sale, situated 
 on the breezy height above Erith, and formerly well 
 known as the residence of Sir Culling Eardley, who had 
 
78 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 named it Belvidere. The property, including twenty- 
 three acres of surrounding land, cost £12,148, and 
 £5,000 having already been subscribed, the balance of 
 £7,148 was borrowed at five per cent, interest. Not till 
 the 5th of May, 1866, however, was the institution inau- 
 gurated and handed over to a committee of management. 
 
 It is admirably suggestive of its present occupation, 
 this fine roomy old mansion, standing on the sheltered 
 side, but near the top, of the lofty eminence, whence 
 such a magnificent view may be obtained, not only of the 
 surrounding country, but of the mighty river where it 
 widens and rushes towards the sea. Here on the broad 
 sloping green, where the tall flagstaff with its rigging- 
 supports the Union Jack, the old fellows stroll in the sun 
 or look out with a knowing weather-eye towards the 
 shipping going 'down stream, or sit to smoke and gossip 
 on the bench beneath their spreading tree opposite the 
 great cedar, while the cow of the institution chews the 
 cud with a serious look, as though it had someway 
 caught the thoughtful expression that characterises 
 " turning a quid." A hundred infirm sailors, each of 
 whom is more than sixty years old, are serenely at their 
 moorings in that spacious square-built house, where the 
 long wards are divided into cabins, each with its neat fur- 
 niture, and many of them ornamented with the curious 
 knick-knacks, and strange waifs and strays of former 
 voyages which sailors like to have about them. There is 
 of course a sick-ward, where those who are permanently 
 disabled, or are suffering from illness, receive medical 
 attention and a special diet ; but the majority of the in- 
 mates are comparatively hearty still, though they are 
 disabled, and can no longer " hand reef and steer." 
 
 There are a hundred inmates in this admirable asylum, 
 
CASTING BREAD UPON THE WATERS. 79 
 
 and ninety pensioners who are with their friends at the 
 various outports of the kingdom, each receiving a pen- 
 sion of ^1 a month, called the "Mariners' National 
 Pension Fund," the working management of which, with 
 the " Widows' Annuity Fund," is made over to the 
 " Shipwrecked Mariners' Society." 
 
 A hundred and ninety worn-out and disabled seamen 
 now provided for or assisted, and a total of above 300 
 relieved since the opening of the institution. A good and 
 noble work truly. But can it be called by so great a name 
 as National, when we know how large a number of old 
 sailors are yet homeless, and that at the last election 
 there were 153 candidates who could not be assisted be- 
 cause of the want of funds to relieve their distress ? 
 Looking at the number of men (2,000 to 5,000) lost at 
 sea or by shipwreck every year, and at the inquiry which 
 has been made, through the efforts of Mr. Plimsoll and 
 others, with respect to the conditions under which the 
 service of the mercantile marine of this country is carried 
 on, is it not a reproach to us that during the nineteen 
 years since this institution was founded, so little has been 
 done ? Year by year it has been hoped that the Board 
 of Trade would relinquish its claim to take possession of 
 the effects of sailors dying abroad, and would transfer 
 the £ 1,200 a year represented by this property to the 
 funds of the society, but hitherto the committee have 
 waited in vain. The donations from all sources are com- 
 paratively few ; and though the annual subscriptions are 
 numerous, they are rapidly absorbed. 
 
 Many masters, mates, seamen, engineers and firemen 
 pay to this institution a subscription of five shillings a 
 year, for which they have a vote at each annual election ; 
 or any such subscriber may leave his votes to accumu- 
 
So "ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS:' 
 
 late for his own benefit when he shall have reached the 
 age of sixty years, and becomes a candidate for admis- 
 sion. 
 
 One-fifth of the candidates admitted are nominated by 
 the committee on the ground of their necessities or 
 special claims to the benefit of the charity, while general 
 subscribers or donors have privileges of election accord- 
 ing to the amount contributed. Perhaps one of the 
 most touching records of the subscription list is, that not 
 only did the cadets of the mercantile training-ship 
 Worcester contribute something like ^"ioo in one official 
 year, but that the little fellows on board the union 
 training-ship Goliath lying off Grays, have joined their 
 officers and their commander, Captain Bourchier, to 
 send offerings to the aid of the ancient mariners, of 
 whom they are the very latest representatives. On many 
 a good ship these small collections are made for the 
 same object, and at the Sailors' Home in Well Street 
 there is a box for stray contributions ; but much more 
 has yet to be done. Perhaps it is far to go to see this 
 great house on the hill, but most of us have caught a 
 glimpse of its tall towers and its flagstaff in our excur- 
 sions down the silent highway of London's river, and it 
 might be well to think how little effort is required to give 
 to each cabin its inmate, and to fill the dining-room with 
 tables, each with its "mess" of six or eight old salts, 
 who are ready to greet you heartily if you pay them a 
 visit, and to salute you with a grave seamanlike respect. 
 Would you like to know how this rare old crew lives in 
 the big house under the lee of the wind-blown hill ? To 
 begin with, the men who are not invalids turn out at 
 eight in winter and half-past seven in summer, and after 
 making beds and having a good wash, go down to prayers 
 
CASTING BREAD UPON THE WATERS. Sr 
 
 -and breakfast at nine' or half-past eight, breakfast con- 
 sisting of coffee or cocoa and bread-and-butter. 
 
 At ten o'clock the ward-men, who are appointed in ro- 
 tation, go to clean wards and make all tidy, each inmate 
 being, however, responsible for the neatness of his own 
 cabin, in which nobody is allowed to drive nails in bulk- 
 heads or walls, and no cutting or carving of woodwork is 
 permitted. The men not for the time employed in tidy- 
 ing up or airing bedding, &c, can, if they choose, go into 
 the industrial ward, where they can work at several oc- 
 cupations for their own profit, as they are only charged 
 for cost of materials. Dinner is served in the several 
 messes by the appointed messmen at one o'clock, and 
 consists on Sundays of roast beef, vegetables, and plum- 
 pudding, and on week-days of roast or boiled meat, soup, 
 vegetables, with one day a week salt fish, onions, pota- 
 toes, and plain suet-pudding, and in summer an occa- 
 sional salad. A pint of beer is allowed for each man. 
 The afternoon may be devoted either to work, or to re- 
 creation in the reading and smoking rooms, or in the 
 grounds. Tea and bread-and-butter are served at half- 
 past five in summer and at six in winter, and there is 
 often a supper of bread-and-cheese and watercresses or 
 radishes. The evening is devoted to recreation, and at 
 half-past nine in winter, and ten in summer, after prayers, 
 lights are put out, and every one retires for the night. 
 
 None of the inmates are expected to work in the indus- 
 trial wards, and of course there are various servants and 
 attendants, all of whom are chosen by preference from 
 the families of sailors, or have themselves been at sea. 
 The whole place is kept so orderly, and everything is so 
 ship-shape, that there is neither waste nor confusion, 
 and yet every man there is at liberty to go in and out 
 
 6 
 
82 "ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS? 
 
 when he pleases, on condition of being in at meal-times,, 
 and at the time for evening prayers, any one desiring to 
 remain away being required to ask permission of the 
 manager. It must be mentioned, too, that there is an 
 allowance of ninepence a week spending money for each 
 inmate. 
 
 The men are comfortably clothed, in a decent sailorly 
 fashion, and many of the old fellows have still the bright, 
 alert, active look that belongs to the "smart hands," 
 among whom some of them were reckoned nearly half 
 a century ago. The most ancient of these mariners 
 at the time of my first visit was ninety-two years old, 
 and it so happened that I saw him on his birthday. 
 He came up the broad flight of stairs to speak to me, 
 with a foot that had not lost all its lightness, while the 
 eye that was left to him (he had lost one by accident 
 twenty years before) was as bright and open as a sailor's 
 should be. This is a long time ago, and William Cover- 
 dale (that was his name) has probably gone to his rest 
 Significantly enough, at the time of my latest visit, 
 the oldest representative of the last muster-roll was 
 James Nelson, a master mariner of Downpatrick, eighty- 
 five years of age; while bo's'n Blanchard is eighty- 
 one; able seaman John Hall, eighty; William Terry 
 (A. B.), eighty-two, and masters, mates, quartermasters, 
 cooks, and stewards, ranged over seventy. With many 
 of them this is the incurable disability that keeps 
 them ashore ; the sort of complaint which is common to 
 sailors and landsmen alike if they live long enough — that 
 of old age. It will come one day, let us hope, to the 
 young Prince, whom we may regard as the Royal repre- 
 sentative of the English liking for the sea. For the 
 asylum for old and infirm sailors at Greenhithe has not 
 
CASTING BREAD UPON THE WATERS. 83 
 
 been called Belvidere for some years now. Prince Alfred 
 went to look at it one day, and asked leave to become its 
 patron, since which it has been called "The Royal Alfred 
 Aged Merchant Seamen's Institution" — rather a long 
 name, but then it ought to mean so much. 
 
 6-2 
 
WITH THE FEEBLE AND FAINT-HEARTED. 
 
 S there any condition wherein we feel greater 
 need of human help and true loving sym- 
 pathy than in the slow, feeble creeping from 
 sickness to complete convalescence, when the 
 pulse of life beats low, and the failing foot yet lacks 
 power to step across that dim barrier between health and 
 sickness — not far from the valley of the shadow of death? 
 In the bright, glowing summer-tide, when the sun 
 warms bloodless creatures into renewed life, our English 
 sea-coast abounds with visitors, among whom near and 
 dear friends, parents, children, slowly and painfully win- 
 ning their way back to health and strength are the ob- 
 jects of peculiar care. In all our large towns people who 
 have money to spend are, at least, beginning to make up 
 their minds where they shall take their autumn holiday ; 
 — in many quiet health-resorts wealthy invalids, and 
 some who are not wealthy, have already passed the early 
 spring and summer; — at a score of pleasant watering- 
 places, where the cool sparkling waves break upon the 
 " ribbed sea-sand," troops of children are already brown- 
 ing in the sun, scores of hearts feel a throb of grateful 
 joy as the glow of health begins to touch cheeks lately 
 pale, and dull eyes brighten under the clear blue sky. 
 
WITH THE FEEBLE AND FAINT-HEARTED. 85 
 
 Thousands upon thousands are then on their way to 
 that great restorer, the sea, if it be only for a few 
 hours by excursion train. England might seem to have 
 gathered all its children at its borders, and very soon we 
 hear how empty London is, while a new excuse for a 
 holiday will be that there is "nothing doing" and "no- 
 body is in town." And yet throughout the busy streets 
 a throng continues to hurry onward in restless activity. 
 Only well-accustomed observers could see any consider- 
 able difference in the great thoroughfares of London. 
 Shops and factories look busy enough, and if nothing is 
 doing, there is a mighty pretence of work, while the no- 
 bodies are a formidable portion of the population when 
 regarded in the aggregate. 
 
 Early in August the census of our large towns still 
 further diminishes. Prosperous tradesmen, noting the 
 decrease of customers, begin to prepare to take part in 
 the general exodus. " Gentlefolks " have concluded bar- 
 gains for furnished houses on the coast and put their 
 dining and drawing-rooms into brown holland. In West- 
 End streets and squares the front blinds are drawn, and 
 all inquiries are answered from the areas, where char- 
 women supplement the duties of servants on board 
 wages. " London is empty," the newspapers say, and in 
 every large town in the kingdom the great outgoing 
 leaves whole districts comparatively untenanted. Yet 
 what a vast population remains ; what a great army of toil- 
 ing men and women who go about their daily work, and 
 keep up the unceasing buzz of the industrial hive. What 
 troops of children, who, except for Sunday-school treats, 
 would scarcely spend a day amidst green fields, or learn 
 how to make a daisy-chain, or hear the soft summer wind 
 rustling the leaves of overhanging trees. 
 
86 <• ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS: 1 
 
 It would perhaps astonish us if we could have set 
 down for us in plain figures how many men and women in 
 England have never seen the sea ; how many people 
 have never spent a week away from home, or had a real 
 long holiday in all their lives. It may be happy for them 
 if they are not compelled by sudden sickness or accident, 
 to fall out of the ranks, and to leave the plough sticking 
 in the furrow. It is not all for pleasure and careless en- 
 joyment that the thousands of our wealthy brethren and 
 sisters go to the terraced houses, or handsomely ap- 
 pointed mansions, which await them all round the En- 
 glish shore. Into how many eyes tears must need 
 spring, when the prayers for all who are in sorrow, need, 
 or adversity are read in seaside churches on a summer's 
 Sunday. By what sick-beds, and couches set at windows 
 whence wistful eyes may look out upon the changeful 
 glory of wood and sea and sky, anxious hearts are 
 throbbing. What silent tears and low murmuring cries 
 on behalf of dear ones on whose pale cheeks the July 
 roses never more may bloom, mark the watches of the 
 silent night, when the waves sob wakefully upon the 
 beach. What thrills of hope and joy contend with ob- 
 trusive fears as, the golden spears of dawn break through 
 the impenetrable slate-blue sky, and a touch of strength 
 and healing is seen to have left its mark upon a brow on 
 which the morning kiss is pressed with a keen throb 
 that is itself almost a pang. 
 
 The first faltering footsteps back to life after a long 
 illness or a severe shock, how they need careful guidance. 
 Let the stronger arm, the helping hand, the encouraging 
 eye be ready, or they may fail before the goal of safety 
 be reached. 
 
WITH THE FEEBLE AND FAINT-HEARTED. 87 
 
 "All that is now wanted is strength, careful nursing, 
 plenty of nourishment, pure air — the seaside if possible, 
 and perhaps the south coast would be best." Welcome 
 tidings, even though they herald slow recovery, inch by 
 inch and day by day, while watchful patience measures 
 out the time by meat and drink, and the money that will 
 buy the means of comfort or of pleasure, becomes but 
 golden sand running through the hour-glass, which marks 
 each happy change. 
 
 Yes; but what of the poor and feeble, the faint-hearted 
 who, having neither oil nor wine, nor the twopence where- 
 with to pay for lodging at the inn, must need lie there by 
 the way-side, if no hand is stretched out to help them ? 
 
 While at those famous health-resorts, the names of 
 which are to be read at every railway station, and in the 
 advertisement sheets of every newspaper, hundreds and 
 thousands are coming back from weakness to strength, 
 there are hundreds and thousands still who are discharged 
 from our great metropolitan hospitals, to creep to rooms 
 in dim, close courts and alleys, where all the tending 
 care that can be given them must be snatched from the 
 hours of labour necessary to buy medicine and food. 
 How many a poor sorrowing soul has said with a sigh, 
 "Oh! if I could only send you to the sea-side. The 
 doctors all say fresh air's the great thing; but what's 
 the use ? they say the same of pure milk and meat and 
 wine." 
 
 It may be the father who has met with an accident, 
 and cannot get over the shock of a surgical opera- 
 tion — or rheumatic fever may have left mother, son, or 
 •daughter in that terrible condition of utter prostration, 
 when it seems as though we were in momentary danger 
 of floating away into a fainting unconsciousness, which 
 
88 " ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 not being oblivion, engages us in a struggle beyond our 
 waking powers. 
 
 Alas ! in the great summer excursion to the coast 
 these poor fainting brethren and sisters are too seldom 
 remembered. Here and there a building is pointed out 
 as an infirmary, a sea-side hospital, or even as a retreat 
 for convalescents, but the latter institutions are so few, 
 and the best of them are so inadequately supported, that 
 they have never yet been able to prove by startling 
 figures the great benefits which they confer upon those 
 who are received within their walls. 
 
 One of the oldest of these truly beneficent Institutions, 
 " The Sea-side Convalescent Hospital at Seaford," has 
 just completed a new, plain, but commodious building, 
 not far from the still plainer House which has for many 
 years been the Home of its grateful patients. So let us 
 pay a visit to the old place just before its inmates are 
 transferred to more ample quarters, to provide for which 
 new subscriptions are needed, and fresh efforts are being 
 made. The visit will show us how, in an unpretentious 
 way, and without costly appliances, such a charitable 
 effort may be worthily maintained. 
 
 Curiously enough, Seaford itself is an illustration of 
 declension from strength to weakness, and of the early 
 stages of recovery ; for though it is one of the famous 
 Cinque Ports, it has for nearly 200 years been an un- 
 noted retreat. 
 
 But it is still a place of old, odd customs, such as the 
 election of the chief of the municipality at an assembly 
 of freemen at a certain gate-post in the town, to which 
 they are marshalled by an officer bearing a mace sur- 
 mounted with the arms of Queen Elizabeth. It is fa- 
 mous, too, for Roman and other antiquities, and its queer 
 little church dedicated to St. Leonard, has some rare speci- 
 
WITH THE FEEBLE AND FAINT-HEARTED. 89 
 
 mens of quaint carving and a peal of bells which are pecu- 
 liarly musical, while the sounding of the complines on a 
 still summer's night is good to hear. In fact, for a mere 
 cluster of houses forming an unpretentious and secluded 
 town, almost without shops to attract attention, with 
 scarcely the suspicion of a high street, and destitute of a 
 grand hotel, Seaford is remarkably interesting for its 
 legendary lore, as a good many people know, who have 
 discovered its greatest attraction, and take lodgings at 
 the dull little place, where even the martello tower is de- 
 serted. The chief recommendation of the place, however, 
 is its healthfulness, and the grand air which blows off the 
 sea to the broad stretch of shingly beach, and the range 
 of cliff and down-land which stretches as far as Beachy 
 Head, and rises just outside the town into one or two bluffs, 
 about which the sea-gulls whirl and scream, as the even- 
 ing sun dips into the sparkling blue of the water. It is 
 just at the foot of the boldest of these ascents that we see 
 an old-fashioned mansion, once known as Corsica Hall, 
 but now more distinctly associated with the name of the 
 Convalescent Hospital, of which it has long been the 
 temporary home, the London offices of the charity being 
 at No. 8, Charing Cross, London. 
 
 The institution, which was founded in i860, has for its 
 president the Archbishop of Canterbury, and for its 
 patronesses the Duchess of Cambridge and the Duchess 
 of Teck, and it has done its quiet work efficiently and well, 
 under difficulties which must have required staunch in- 
 terest on the part of its committee. 
 
 It is difficult at first to understand that the big many- 
 roomed house just by the spur of the cliff, and peeping 
 out to see over the shingle ridge, is in any sense a hospital ;. 
 but here is a convalescent who will give us a very fair idea 
 
90 "ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS." 
 
 of the work that is being done ; a tall fellow who is but 
 just recovering from acute rheumatism, and is now able 
 to go about slowly but with a cheery, hopeful look in his 
 face. Presently, as one comes near the front door, a lad, 
 who having come from a hospital where he has been 
 attended for fractured ancle, has been sent here to re- 
 cover strength, is hobbling across a poultry- yard, where 
 a grand company of black Spanish, Polish, Cochin China, 
 and other fowls are assembled to be fed, and beneath a 
 pent-house roof in this same yard, on a bench, which 
 would be well replaced by a more comfortable garden- 
 seat if the funds would allow, there is a sheltered and 
 comfortable corner for the afternoon indulgence of a whiff 
 of tobacco. Twenty-five men and twenty-four women 
 are all the inmates, besides attendants, for whom space 
 can be found ; and an inspection of the airy and scru- 
 pulously clean dormitories, or rather bedrooms, on each 
 side of the building, will show that all the accommoda- 
 tion has been made available. It must be remembered, 
 however, that as the period of each inmate's stay is 
 but a month of twenty- eight days, fresh cases are con- 
 stantly admitted during all the summer months ; so that 
 though as late as at the end of March only fourteen men 
 and six women were distributed in the wards, the average 
 number admitted during the last official year has been 511 
 (an increase of twenty-four over the year before), while the 
 total number of cases received since the opening of the in- 
 stitution amounts to nearly 5,000. 
 
 There are evidences that in this old house, with its long 
 passages, and little supplementary stairs leading to the 
 bedrooms, economy has been studied, and yet all that 
 can be done to adapt the place to its purpose has been 
 effected. The sense of fresh air and cleanliness is the 
 
WITH THE FEEBLE AND FAINT-HEARTED. 91 
 
 first noticeable characteristic. There are no slovenly 
 corners ; in sitting-rooms, corridors, or dormitories, 
 whether the latter be little rooms with only two or 
 three beds, or either of the large apartments, with 
 their wide bay-windows looking forth upon the sea. 
 Plainly and even sparely furnished, they have an ap- 
 pearance of homelike comfort, and it is pleasant to 
 note that in the larger bright cheerful room devoted 
 to women patients there are evidences of feminine 
 taste and womanly belongings, even to the egg-cups 
 holding little posies of wild flowers and common garden 
 blooms that deck the broad mantelshelf in front of the 
 toilet glasses. The same home-like influences are to be 
 observed in other departments, and though this old coun- 
 try house — of which the institution holds only a short 
 term as tenants — is not altogether suited for the purpose 
 to which it has been applied, the arrangements are not 
 without a certain pleasant departure from the too formal 
 and mechanical routine which is observed in some estab- 
 lishments to have a peculiarly depressing influence on the 
 sick. 
 
 The kitchen is like that of some good-sized farm-house, 
 with brick floor, an ample " dresser," and a big range, 
 flanked with its pair of ovens, and just now redolent of 
 the steam of juicy South-down mutton and fresh vege- 
 tables about to be served for the patients' dinners. 
 
 It is a property of the Seaford air to make even 
 persons with delicate appetites ready for three plain 
 meals a day, with a meat supper to follow, and the con- 
 valescents are no exception to the rule. Tea and bread- 
 and-butter for breakfast, bread-and-cheese and ale for the 
 men, and cake and ale for the women as a snack in the 
 way of lunch, good roast meat and vegetables for dinner, 
 
92 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS. 1 ' 
 
 with occasional pies or puddings, with another half-pint 
 of ale ; tea as usual ; and a supper consisting of a slice 
 of meat, bread, and another draught of beer — this is the 
 most ordinary diet ; but in many cases milk is substituted 
 for ale, and there is also a morning draught of milk, or 
 rum-and-milk, a lunch or supper of farinaceous food, 
 and wine or special diet, according to the orders of 
 the house surgeon, who visits the patients daily, or 
 as often as may be required. Following the odour of 
 the roast mutton, we see the male patients preparing 
 to sit down to dinner in a good-sized room, where, 
 to judge from the pleased and grateful faces of men and 
 lads, they are quite ready to do justice to the repast. 
 Barely furnished, and with table appointments of the 
 plainest kind, the dining-room is not indicative of luxury ; 
 but the sauce of hunger is not wanting, and as we bow 
 our leave-taking, there are signs that the money spent at 
 this Seaford Hospital is well represented by the whole- 
 some but expensive medicine of pure food and drink in 
 ample quantities, prescribed under conditions which 
 build up the strength, and restore life to the enfeebled 
 frames of those to whom a month of such living must be 
 an era in their history. 
 
 The women's dining-room is, I am glad to see, more 
 ornamental than that of the men. The walls are bright 
 with gay paper, containing large and brilliantly coloured 
 scenery, while the wide windows look seaward, and fill 
 the large room with cheerful light. 
 
 This is all the more essential as there is no other 
 sitting-room for the female patients, and the more con- 
 venient furniture, especially a low wooden couch covered 
 with a mattress, is adapted to the needs of those who 
 require indoor recreation as well as frequent rest. The 
 
WITH THE FEEBLE AND FAINT-HEARTED. 93 
 
 men have a separate sitting-room in the basement, not a 
 very cheerful apartment, but one which in the warm 
 summer-time is cool, and adapted for the after-dinner 
 doze, or for reading a book when the weather is not 
 quite favourable for sitting out of doors. 
 
 There is, by the bye, a very decided need of enter- 
 taining and pleasant books for the patients' library at Sea- 
 ford, the few which are on the two or three shelves being 
 mostly old, and of a particularly dreary pattern. It is 
 obvious that, in an institution where, in order to meet the 
 constant needs of those who seek its aid, every shilling 
 must be carefully expended, only a small sum can be 
 devoted to literature ; but it may only have to be made 
 known that the convalescents really need a few cheerful 
 volumes to help them along the road from sickness to 
 health, and out of the abundance of some teeming 
 library the goodwill offering may be made. 
 
 It is time that we — that is to say, the kindly and judi- 
 cious secretary, Mr. Horace Green, the examining physi- 
 cian, Dr. Lomas, and the present writer — should yield to 
 the influences of the grand appetising climate of this airy 
 nook of the English coast, and after a short turn into the 
 poultry-yard, a glance at the deliberate cow, and a pass- 
 ing greeting to the great black cat with collar and bell and 
 a mew that is almost a deep bass roar, and to the most 
 exacting, ugly, and voracious pet dog it was ever my lot 
 to encounter — we accept the invitation to test the quality 
 of the Southdown mutton and other Seaford fare, with a 
 following of that delicately boiled rice and jam to which 
 the healthy palate returns with childlike appreciation. 
 
 On hospitable thoughts intent, the bright and active 
 lady who is superintendent matron of the hospital, has 
 for the time adopted us into her hungry family, and with 
 
94 " ABO UT MY FA THERS BUSINESS." 
 
 the knowledge of the effects of the breeze blowing 
 over that high bluff, and curling the waves along the 
 shingle ridge, has set out a repast in her own pleasant 
 parlour, where she does the honours of the institution 
 with a simple cheerful grace that speaks favourably 
 for the administration which she represents. But I should 
 now be writing in the past tense, for the larger building 
 is completed. The inmates will have a better appointed 
 home. 
 
 In order to maintain the objects of the charity, and to 
 ensure the comfort of those for whom its provisions are 
 intended, some well-considered regulations have to be 
 adopted and enforced ; and the most discouraging cir- 
 cumstances with which the committee and their officers 
 have to contend, are those which arise from the negli- 
 gence of subscribers nominating patients, or from the 
 demands made on the charity by those who constantly 
 expect more benefits from the institution than their con- 
 tributions would represent even if they were paid three 
 times over. 
 
 It is, perhaps, not to be wondered at that people, 
 anxious to secure for their proteges the advantages of such 
 means of recovery as are represented by a temporary 
 hospital where there has only been one death in five 
 years, should readily contribute their guinea for the sake 
 of gaining the privilege, even though they may add to 
 that small subscription the five shillings a week which is 
 the sum required with each patient. What has to be 
 complained of, however, is that constant attempts are 
 made to introduce cases which are so far from being con- 
 valescent, that they are still suffering from disease, and 
 require constant medical or surgical treatment. In order 
 to do this, nominations are frequently obtained from 
 
WITH THE FEEBLE AND FAINT-HEARTED. 95 
 
 country subscribers, and it has required the constant 
 vigilance of the examining physician and the committee 
 to avoid the distressing necessity of obtaining for such 
 patients admission to other hospitals, or sending them 
 back to their own homes, not only without having re- 
 ceived benefit from the institution, but perhaps injured 
 by the journey to and fro when they were in a weak and 
 suffering condition. 
 
 It should be remembered that the Seaford Hospital is 
 not for the sick, but for persons recovering from sickness, 
 —those for whom the best medicines are regular and 
 ample meals, grand bracing air, sea-baths, long hours of 
 quiet and restorative sleep, and that general direction of 
 their daily progress towards complete recovery, which 
 will often make them strong and set them up completely f 
 even in the twenty-eight days of their sea-side sojourn. 
 
 To send patients who require the medical care and 
 attendance which can only be provided in a hospital for 
 the special disorders from which they suffer, or who are 
 afflicted with incurable diseases, is unjust, both to the 
 poor creatures themselves and to the charity which can- 
 not receive them. 
 
 For consumptive patients, except in the early or 
 threatening stage of phthisis, Seaford is unsuitable, but 
 a month at the hospital for patients of consumptive ten- 
 dency has been known to produce remarkably beneficial 
 results. It is in cases of recovery after rheumatism and 
 rheumatic fever, or when strength is required after painful 
 or exhausting surgical operations, in nervous depression, 
 debility, pleurisy, and recovery from accidents, that the 
 fine air is found to be wonderfully invigorating ; for Sea- 
 ford is high and dry, the subsoil being sand resting on 
 chalk, so that there is little surface evaporation, while the 
 
c;6 " ABOUT MY FA THEKS BUSINESS." 
 
 shelter afforded by Beachy Head screens this little bay 
 of the coast from the east wind. 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and the late Bishop 
 of Winchester should have joined many of the London 
 clergy, and more than eighty of the most eminent phy- 
 sicians and surgeons connected with metropolitan 
 hospitals, to recommend this charity as one especially 
 deserving of public support. Those who are ever so 
 superficially acquainted with the homes and difficulties of 
 the poorer classes in London know that the period of 
 debility after sickness, when the general hospital has dis- 
 charged the patient, or when the parish doctor has taken 
 his leave, is a terrible time. Too weak to work, without 
 means to buy even common nourishment at the crisis 
 when plentiful food is requisite, and stimulated to try to 
 labour when the heart has only just strength to beat, 
 men and women are ready to faint and to perish unless 
 helping hands be held out to them. Try to imagine 
 some poor cabman or omnibus-driver, lying weak and 
 helpless after coming from a hospital ; think of the domes- 
 tic servant, whose small savings have all been spent in the 
 endeavour to get well enough to take another place ; of 
 the poor little wistful, eager-eyed errand-boy, scantily 
 fed, and with shaking limbs, that will not carry him fast 
 enough about the streets. Try to realise what a boon it 
 mustbetoaletter-carrier,slowly recovering from the illness 
 by which he has been smitten down, or to the London 
 waiter, worn and debilitated by long hours of wearying 
 attendance to his duties, to have a month of rest and, 
 re-invigoration at a place like this. In the table of in- 
 mates during the last few years are to be found a host 
 of domestic servants, mechanics and apprentices, 
 
WITH THE FEEBLE AND FAINT-HEARTED. 97 
 
 warehousemen and labourers, 36 housewives (there is 
 much significance in that word, if we think of the poor 
 wife or mother to be restored to her husband and chil- 
 dren), 46 needlewomen, 19 clerks, 15 teachers (mark that) 
 41 school-children, 9 nurses, 1 policeman, 3 seamen and 
 watermen, 1 letter-carrier, 4 errand-boys, 7 Scripture- 
 readers, and others of various occupations. 
 
 It is no wonder, I say, that the general hospitals 
 should regard this Convalescent Home at Seaford as a 
 boon ; but, unfortunately for the charity, the appreciation 
 which it receives from some of those wealthy and mag- 
 nificently-endowed institutions operates as a very serious 
 drain on its own limited resources, which are only sup- 
 plied by voluntary subscriptions, contributions, and 
 legacies. Every subscriber of a guinea annually, and 
 every donor of ten guineas in one sum, has the privilege 
 of recommending one patient yearly, with an additional 
 recommendation for every additional subscription of 
 one guinea, or donation of ten guineas. The payment 
 of five shillings a week by each patient admitted is also 
 required by the guarantee of a householder written on 
 the nomination paper, and the travelling expenses of the 
 patient must also be paid, the Brighton Railway Com- 
 pany most benevolently conveying patients to the hos- 
 pital by their quick morning train, in second-class car- 
 riages at third-class fare. 
 
 Now it is quite obvious that the five shillings a week, 
 though it removes the institution from the position of an 
 absolute charity, goes but a very short distance in pro- 
 viding for the needs of the inmates, and when the guinea 
 contribution is added to it, there is still a very wide margin 
 to fill before much good can be effected. Let us see, then, 
 what is the effect of every subscription of a guinea re- 
 
 7 
 
98 "ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 presenting a claim, as in the case of the patients sent 
 from the general hospitals. 
 
 The cost of those admirable medicines, food and drink, 
 wine, milk, and sea-baths, together with the expenses 
 of administration, and the rental will represent at least 
 £4 Ss. per head for each patient, and as Guy's, Bar- 
 tholomew's, St. Thomas's, and the London Hospitals,, 
 each subscribing their ten guineas annually, demand 
 their ten nominations in exchange, the account stands 
 thus : — 
 
 For each case, five shillings per week for four weeks, 
 and one guinea subscription =£2 is., which, deducted 
 from the actual cost {£4 Ss.), leaves £2 ys. to be paid out 
 of the funds of the Seaford Institution, which, on ten . 
 patients a year, represents £23 ic\r. as the annual contri- 
 bution of this poor little charity to each of the four great 
 charitable foundations of the metropolis. 
 
 But there is now an opportunity for acknowledg- 
 ing this obligation, and for recognizing the useful career 
 of this really admirable institution. The lease of the 
 present house has already expired, and the committee 
 have been obliged to give up possession. It is there- 
 fore necessary to support the new hospital for those who 
 need the aid that such a charity alone can give, and the 
 building has already been erected, only a few yards 
 further in the shelter of the bluff, where it has pro- 
 vided another home. With a commendable anxiety to 
 keep strictly within their probable means, the committee 
 have decided not to imitate a too frequent mode of pro- 
 ceeding, by which a large and splendid edifice would 
 saddle their undertaking with a heavy debt, and perhaps 
 cripple resources needed for carrying on their actual 
 work; but they have obtained from Mr. Griming, the 
 
WITH THE FEEBLE AND FAINT-HEARTED. 99 
 
 architect, a plain building which will provide for their 
 needs for some time to come, and may be hereafter 
 increased in accommodation by additions that will 
 improve, rather than detract from, its completeness. A 
 great establishment, with a hundred beds, laundries, 
 drying-houses, and hot and cold sea-baths on the pre- 
 mises, would cost £ 1 3,000 ; and as the actually available 
 funds in hand for building purposes were not more 
 than ;£5,ooo, with another probable £1,000 added by 
 special donations expected during the year, the com- 
 mittee, however reluctantly, folded up the original 
 plan, and estimated the cost of a plain unpretentious 
 building, calculated at first to receive thirty-three male 
 and thirty-three female patients, but capable of additions 
 which will raise its usefulness and completeness to the 
 higher demand, whenever there are funds sufficient to 
 pay for them. The expenditure for the new hospital 
 was about £7000, and, should the anticipated donations 
 be increased fourfold, there will be no difficulty in 
 crowning the work, by such provisions as will include 
 the full number of a hundred faint and failing men 
 and women within the retreat where they find rest 
 and healing. 
 
WITH THE LITTLE ONES. 
 
 |ES, and amidst the mystery of suffering and 
 pain, — the beginning of that discipline which 
 commences very early, and continues, for 
 many of us, during a whole lifetime, at such 
 intervals as may be necessary for the consummation 
 which we can only faintly discern when we begin to see 
 that which is invisible to the eyes of flesh and of human 
 understanding, and is revealed only to the higher reason 
 — the essential perception which is called faith. 
 
 I want you to come with me to that eastern district 
 of the great city which has for so long a time been 
 associated with accounts of distress, of precarious earn- 
 ings, homes without food or fire, scanty clothing, dilapi- 
 dated houses, dire poverty and the diseases that come of 
 cold and starvation. The place that I shall take you to 
 is quite close to the Stepney Station of the North 
 London Railway. The district is known as Ratcliff; 
 the streets down which we shall pass are strangely des- 
 titute of any but small shops, where a front " parlour " 
 window contains small stocks of chandlery or of general 
 cheap odds and ends. The doorways of the houses are 
 mostly open, and are occupied by women and children, 
 of so poor and neglected an appearance, that we need 
 
WITH THE LITTLE ONES. 101 
 
 no longer wonder at the constant demands made upon 
 the institution which we are about to visit. Just here 
 the neighbourhood seems to have come to a dreary ter- 
 mination at the brink of the river, and to be only kept 
 from slipping into the dark current by two or three big 
 sheds and wharves, belonging to mast, rope, and block- 
 makers, or others connected with that shipping interest 
 the yards of which are, many of them, deserted, no 
 longer resounding to the noise of hammers. The black 
 spars and yards of vessels alongside seem almost to 
 project into the roadway as we turn the corner and 
 stand in front of a building, scarcely to be distinguished 
 from its neighbours, except for the plain inscription on 
 its front, " East London Hospital for Children and Dis- 
 pensary for Women," and for a rather more recent ap- 
 pearance of having had the woodwork painted. But for 
 this there would be little more to attract attention than 
 might be seen in any of the sail-makers' dwellings, 
 stores, and lofts in the district ; and, in fact, the place 
 itself is — or rather was — a sail-maker's warehouse, with 
 trap-doors in the rough and foot-worn floors, steep and 
 narrow stairs, bulks and baulks of timber here and there 
 in the heavy ceilings and awkward corners, not easily 
 turned to account in any other business. Some of these 
 inconveniences have been remedied, and the trap-doors 
 as well as the awkwardest of the corners and the bulks 
 have been either removed or adapted to present pur- 
 poses, for the business is to provide a home and careful 
 nursing for sick children, and the long rooms of the 
 upper storeys are turned into wards, wherein stand rows 
 of Lilliputian iron bedsteads, or tiny cribs, where forty 
 boys and girls, some of them not only babes but suck- 
 lings, form the present contingent of the hundred and 
 
102 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS." 
 
 sixty little ones who have been treated during the year. 
 Not a very desirable-looking residence you will say, but 
 there are a good many inmates after all ; and the scru- 
 pulous cleanliness of the place, as seen from the very 
 passage, is an earnest of that plan of making the best 
 of things which has always been characteristic of this 
 hospital at Ratcliff Cross. Some eight or nine grown- 
 up folks, and from thirty to forty children, make a 
 bright, cheerful home (apart from the suffering and 
 death which are inseparable from such a place) in that 
 old sail-maker's warehouse, if brightness and cheerful- 
 aess are the accompaniments of good and loving work, 
 LS I thoroughly believe they are. 
 
 It was during the terrible visitation of cholera, nearly 
 twelve years ago, that this work of mercy was initiated, 
 and the manner of its foundation has about it something 
 so pathetic that it is fitting the story should be known, 
 especially as the earnest, hopeful effort with which the 
 enterprise began seems to have characterised it to the 
 present day. Among the medical men who went about 
 in the neighbourhood of Poplar and Ratcliff during the 
 epidemic, was Mr. Heckford, a young surgeon, who, 
 having recently come from India, was attached to the 
 London Hospital, and who took a constant and active 
 part in the professional duties he had undertaken. In 
 that arduous work, he, as well as others, received valu- 
 able and indeed untiring aid from the ready skill and 
 thoughtful care of a few ladies, who, having qualified 
 themselves as nurses, devoted themselves to the labour 
 of love amongst the poor. To one of this charitable 
 sisterhood, who had been his frequent helper in the time 
 of difficulty and danger, the young surgeon became 
 attracted by the force of a sympathy that continued 
 
WITH THE LITTLE ONES. 103 
 
 after the plague was stayed in the district to which they 
 had given so much care, and when they had time to think 
 of themselves and of each other. They went away to- 
 gether a quietly married couple ; both having one special 
 aim and object in relation to the beneficent career upon 
 which they had entered in company. Knowing from 
 hardly-earned experience the dire need of the dis- 
 trict, they at once began to consider what they could 
 do to alleviate the sufferings of the women and children, 
 so many of whom were sick and languishing, in hunger 
 and pain, amidst conditions which forbade their recovery. 
 If only they could make a beginning, and do something 
 towards arresting the ravages of those diseases that wait 
 on famine and lurk in foul and foetid alleys; — if they 
 could establish a dispensary where women — mothers too 
 poor to pay a doctor — could have medicine and careful 
 encouragement ; if they could find a place where, be- 
 ginning with a small family of say half a dozen, they 
 might take a tiny group of infants to their home, and so 
 set up a centre of beneficent action, a protest against the 
 neglect, the indifference, and the preventable misery for 
 which that whole neighbourhood had so long had an 
 evil distinction. 
 
 The question was, how to make a beginning : but the 
 young doctor and his wife had been so accustomed to 
 the work of taking help to the very doors of those who 
 needed it, that all they wanted was to find a place in the 
 midst of that down-east district where they could them- 
 selves live and work. Out of their own means they 
 bought the only available premises for their purpose — a 
 rough, dilapidated, but substantial, and above all, a ven- 
 tilable sail-loft with its adjacent house and store-rooms, 
 and there they quietly established themselves as resi- 
 
104 " ABO UT MY FA THEK'S BUSINESS:' 
 
 dents, with ten little beds, holding ten poor little patients 
 supported by themselves, in the hope that voluntary 
 aid from some of the benevolent persons who knew what 
 was the sore need of the neighbourhood would enable 
 them in time to add twenty or thirty more, when the 
 big upper storeys should be cleansed and mended and 
 made into wards. That hope was not long in being 
 realised, and on the 28th of January, 1868, after a de- 
 termined effort to maintain the institution and to devote 
 themselves to its service, a regular committee was formed 
 and commenced its undertakings, the founders still 
 remaining and working with unselfish zeal. From 
 twenty to thirty little ones were received from out that 
 teeming district, where a large hospital with ten times 
 the number of beds would not be adequate to the needs 
 of the infant population, the mothers of which have to 
 work to earn the scanty wages which in many cases 
 alone keep them from absolute starvation. The struggle 
 to maintain the wards in the old sail-lofts was all the 
 harder, from the knowledge that in at least half the 
 number of cases where admission was necessarily refused, 
 from want of space and want of funds, the little appli- 
 cants were sent away to die, or to become helpless inva- 
 lids or confirmed cripples, not less from the effects of 
 destitution — the want of food and clothing — than from 
 the nature of the diseases from which they were suffering. 
 The young doctor and his wife dwelt there, and 
 with cultivated tastes and accomplishments submitted to 
 all the inconveniences of a small room or two, from 
 which they were almost ousted by the increasing need 
 for space. With a bright and cheerful alacrity they 
 adapted those very tastes and accomplishments to sup- 
 plement professional skill and tender assiduous care 1 
 
WITH THE LITTLE ONES. 105 
 
 the lady — herself in such delicate health that her hus- 
 band feared for her life, and friends anxiously advised 
 her to seek rest and change — used books and music to 
 cheer the noble work, and always had a picture on her 
 easel, with which to hide the awkward bulges and pro- 
 jections, or to decorate the bare walls and brighten them 
 with light and colour. 
 
 It was at Christmas-tide seven years ago that I first 
 visited the hospital, and there were then very pleasant 
 evidences of the season to be discovered in all kinds of 
 festive ornament in the long wards, and especially in the 
 smaller rooms, where this loving woman had attracted 
 other loving women around her, as nurses to the suffering 
 little ones ; and was there and then engaged in the 
 superintendence of a glorious Christmas-tree. But the 
 time came when the hoped-for support having arrived,. 
 Mr. and Mrs. Heckford felt that they could leave the 
 family of forty children to the care of those who had 
 taken up the work with heartfelt sympathy. They had 
 laboured worthily and well, but, alas ! — the reward came 
 late — late at least for him, who had been anxious to 
 take his wife away to some warmer climate, in an endea- 
 vour to restore the strength that had been spent in the 
 long effort to rear a permanent refuge for sick children 
 in that dense neighbourhood. It was he who stood 
 nearest to shadow-land, — he who was soonest to enter 
 into the light and the rest that lay beyond. Mr. Heck- 
 ford died, I believe, at Margate, after a short period of 
 leisure and travel, which his wife shared with him. His 
 picture, presented by her to the charity which they both 
 founded, is to be seen in the boys' ward. Another por- 
 trait of him — a portrait in words written by the late Mr. 
 Charles Dickens, who visited and pathetically described 
 
106 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS." 
 
 the children and their hospital in December, 1868, con- 
 veys the real likeness of the man. 
 
 " An affecting play was acted in Paris years ago, called 
 the Children's Doctor. As I parted from my Children's 
 Doctor now in question, I saw in his easy black necktie, 
 in his loose-buttoned black frock-coat, in his pensive face, 
 in the flow of his dark hair, in his eyelashes, in the very 
 turn of his moustache, the exact realisation of the Paris 
 artist's ideal as it was presented on the stage. But no 
 romancer that I know of has had the boldness to pre- 
 figure the life and home of this young husband and 
 wife, in the Children's Hospital in the East of London." 
 
 What the hospital was then, it has remained — but with 
 such improvements as increased funds and a more com- 
 plete organisation have effected. It is still the ark of 
 refuge for those little ones who, smitten with sudden dis- 
 ease, or slowly fading before the baleful breath of famine 
 or of fever, or ebbing slowly away from life by the fatal 
 influences that sap the constitutions of the young in such 
 neighbourhoods, are taken in that they may be brought 
 back to life, or at worst may be lovingly tended, that the 
 last messenger may be made to bear a smile. 
 
 But the hope for the future of this most admirable in- 
 stitution has grown to fill a larger space. It is indeed 
 essential to any really permanent effort in such a district 
 that it should be increased, and the founders looked 
 forward with earnest anticipations of the time when, 
 gathering help from without, they could enter upon a 
 larger building, which will soon be completed, and will 
 be more adequate to the needs of such a teeming 
 population. The area embracing Poplar, Mile End, 
 Whitechapel, St. George's, Limehouse, Ratcliff, Shadwell, 
 and Wapping numbers some 400,000 inhabitants, and 
 
WITH THE LITTLE ONES. 107 
 
 strangely enough — as it will seem to those who have not 
 yet learnt the true characteristics of the really deserving 
 poor — many of the distressed people about that quarter 
 will conceal their poverty, and strive as long as they are 
 able — so that when at last they go to ask for aid the case 
 may be almost hopeless, and the delay in obtaining ad- 
 mission may be fatal. There are already so many more 
 applicants than can be received that it may be imagined 
 what must be the vast amount of alleviable suffering 
 awaiting the opportunity of wider means and a larger 
 building. It would be easy to shock the reader by detail- 
 ing many of the more distressing diseases from which the 
 poor little patients suffer, but on visiting the wards you 
 are less shocked than saddened, while the evident rest and 
 care which are helping to restore and to sooth the sufferers 
 ease you of the greater pain by the hope that they 
 inspire. 
 
 It is Sunday noon as we stand here in the dull street 
 where, but for the sudden opening of a frowsy tavern and 
 the appearance of two or three thirsty but civil customers, 
 who are not only ready but eager to show you the way 
 to the "Childun's 'orsepital," there would be little to dis- 
 tinguish it from a thoroughfare of tenantless houses. Rat- 
 cliff is at its dinner at present, but we shall as we go back 
 see the male residents leaning against the doorposts 
 smoking ; and the women and children sitting at the doors 
 as at a private box at the theatre, discussing the sordid 
 events of the streets and the small chronicles of their poor 
 daily lives. 
 
 But we must leave the cleanly-scrubbed waiting-room 
 and its adjoining large cupboard which does duty as dis- 
 penser's room. It is dinnertime here too, or rather it has 
 been, and there are evidences of some very jolly feasting, 
 
ioS " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS." 
 
 considering that, after all, the banqueters are mostly in 
 bed and on sick diet, which in many cases means milk, 
 meat, eggs, and as much nourishment as they can safely 
 take. Indeed, food is medicine to those who are turn- 
 ing the corner towards convalescence — food and air — of 
 which latter commodity there is a very excellent supply 
 considering the kind of neighbourhood we are in. Here 
 and there we see a little wan, pinched, wasted face lying 
 on the pillow ; a listless, transparent hand upon the coun- 
 terpane — which are sad tokens that the tiny sufferers are 
 nearing the eternal fold beyond the shadowy threshold 
 where all is dark to us, who note how every breath be- 
 speaks a feebler hold on the world of which they have 
 learnt so little in their tiny lives. There are others who 
 are sitting up with picture-books, or waiting to have their 
 abscesses dressed, and arms bandaged, or eyes laved with 
 cooling lotion. Hip-disease and diseases of the joints are 
 evidence of the causes that bring so many of the little 
 patients here, and there are severe cases of consumption 
 and of affections of the lungs and of the glands ; but as the 
 little fellow wakes up from a short nap, or catches the eye 
 of the " lady nurse " — a lively and thoroughly practical 
 Irishwoman, who evidently knows how to manage, and 
 has come here, after special training, for the love of doing 
 good — they show a beaming recognition which is very 
 pleasant to witness. With all the nurses it is the same. 
 
 They are young women who, receiving small pay, have 
 come to devote themselves to the work for Christ's sake 
 and the Gospel's — that is to say, for the love of humanity 
 and of the good tidings of great joy that announce the 
 love of Him who gave Himself for us. 
 
 In the girls' ward there is the same freshness and cleanli- 
 ness of the place and all its belongings, the same wonder- 
 
WITH THE LITTLE ONES. 109 
 
 ful patience and courageous endurance on the part of the 
 baby inmates, which has been my wonder ever since we 
 went in. Here is a mite of a girl sitting up in bed, hold- 
 ing a moist pad to her eye, her poor little head being all 
 bandaged. She never utters a sound, but the little round 
 face is set with a determined endurance. " What is she 
 sitting up for?" She is "waiting to see muvver." Another 
 little creature, who is suffering from abscesses in the neck, 
 submits to have the painful place poulticed only on the 
 condition that she shall decide, by keeping her hand 
 upon the warm linseed-meal, when it is cool enough to put 
 on. These are scarcely pleasant details, and there are 
 sights here which are very, very sad, and make us shrink 
 — but I honestly declare that they are redeemed from 
 being repulsive because of the evidence of love that is to 
 be witnessed, — the awakening of the tender sympathies 
 and sweet responses of the childlike heart. But for its 
 being Sunday — which involves another reason to be men- 
 tioned presently — the beds would be strewed with toys 
 and picture-books, while a rocking-horse, which is a part 
 of the hospital property, and a fit kind of steed to draw 
 the " hospital-carriage," which is represented by a peram- 
 bulator — would probably be saddled and taken out of 
 the stable on the landing. On the topmost storey we 
 come to the real infants, the little babies, one of whom 
 is even now in the midst of his dinner, which he takes 
 from a feeding-bottle, by the aid of an india-rubber tube 
 conveniently traversing his pillow. 
 
 Everywhere there are evidences of the care with which 
 the work is carried on, and as we descend to the waiting- 
 room again we have fresh proofs of the benefits that are 
 being effected in the great district, by the provision 
 made for the little creatures, many of whom would other- 
 
no " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 wise be left to linger in pain and want. For the waiting- 
 room is filled — filled with mothers and elder sisters and 
 little brothers, tearfully eager and anxious for the weekly- 
 visit to the fifty children upstairs. Here is the secret of 
 the brave little patient faces in the beds and cots above. 
 
 It is infinitely touching to think how the prospect of 
 " seeing muvver" sustains that chubby little sufferer, — 
 how the expected visit nerves the stronger ones to en- 
 durance, and sends a fresh throb of life through those 
 who are still too weak to do more than faintly smile, and 
 hold out a thin pale hand. 
 
 If Mr. Ashby Warner, the Secretary at this Hospital 
 for Sick Children at Ratcliff Cross, could but send some 
 responsive thrill into the hearts of those who, having no 
 children of their own, yet love Christ's little ones all over 
 the world, — or could bring home to the fond fathers and 
 mothers of strong and chubby babes the conviction that 
 to help in this good work is a fitting recognition of their 
 own mercies ; nay, if even to sorrowing souls who have 
 been bereaved of their dear ones, and who yet believe 
 that their angels and the angels of these children also, do 
 constantly behold the face of the Father which is in 
 heaven, there would come a keen recognition of the 
 blessedness of doing something for the little ones, as 
 unto Him who declares them to be of His kingdom — 
 there would soon be no lack of funds to finish building 
 that great new hospital at Shadwell, which is to take 
 within its walls and great airy wards so many more little 
 patients, to help and comfort by advice and medicine so 
 many more suffering mothers and sisters than could be 
 received in the old sail-loft and its lower warehouse at 
 Ratcliff Cross. For the hope of the founders and their 
 successors has at last being realised — a larger building 
 
WITH THE LITTLE ONES. in 
 
 than they had at first dared to expect is to be erected 
 on ground which has been purchased, still within the 
 district where the need is greatest — and when the time 
 comes that the last touch of carpenter and mason shall 
 have been given to the new home, and the picture of 
 Mr. Heckford shall be hung upon another wall, there 
 may well be a holiday " down east" — as a day of thanks- 
 giving and of gratitude, to those who may yet help in 
 the work by giving of their abundance. 
 
IN THE KINGDOM. 
 
 F such are the kingdom of heaven;" and "who- 
 soever 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 nur~ 
 ture 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 
 
IN THE KINGDOM. 113 
 
 of that old sail-maker's warehouse which has been con- 
 verted into a Hospital for Sick Children. There is some- 
 thing 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 mean- 
 ing 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 Creche." 
 
 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 kn©w 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 
 
 8 
 
1 14 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS." 
 
 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 percep- 
 tible 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 be- 
 come 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 fol- 
 lowing Monday morning. Do you feel inclined to ques- 
 tion 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 
 
IN THE KINGDOM. 115 
 
 care bestowed upon these babes of poverty is that of sus- 
 taining 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, some- 
 times shoeless, mostly with a ready appetite for break- 
 fast. 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 wel- 
 come little guests each morning. The rows of large 
 metal basins on the low stands are ready, and the morn- 
 ing's ablutions are about to commence, so we will return 
 presently, as people not very likely to be useful in the 
 
 8—2 
 
n6 "ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS." 
 
 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 in- 
 teresting, for on the ground-floor of these three houses 
 which form the Creche — 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 Creche, 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 mattrass. 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, neces- 
 
IN THE KINGDOM. 117 
 
 sarily 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 feed- 
 ing 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 un- 
 able 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 im- 
 measurable 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 
 
i iS "ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS." 
 
 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 senti- 
 mentality 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 Creche at Stepney Causeway the reasons of 
 the true childlike freshness, alacrity, and even the en- 
 gaging impetuosity and loving confidence which charac- 
 terise these little ones, is not far to seek. As you came 
 up you noticed row after row of blue check bags, hang- 
 ing 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 
 
IN THE KINGDOM. 119 
 
 changed with the morning's ablutions, and clean garments 
 substituted for them until the mothers come in the even- 
 ing 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 treat- 
 ment 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 feel- 
 ing, and the pretty rosy plump little creatures, or the quaint 
 expressive bright-eyed babies, who are called " Rosie," 
 u 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 insti- 
 tution, and in those of the nurses who tend them. Some- 
 times the names arise from some little incident occuring 
 when the children are first brought there, as well as from 
 the engaging looks and manners of the little ones them- 
 selves. " The King," is a really fine baby-boy, the re- 
 cognised 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 ade- 
 quately represent anything like the cost — is not easily 
 subtracted from the scanty earnings of poor women en- 
 
1 20 " ABO UT MY FA THER'S B US I NESS." 
 
 gaged 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 in- 
 mates, 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 
 
IN THE KINGDOM. 121 
 
 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 Creche, 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 Cause- 
 way 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 vegeta- 
 bles, 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 them- 
 selves 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 
 
122 " ABOUT M Y FA THERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 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 ter- 
 rible menace of a permanent " criminal class." 
 
 The policy of the authorities, says Mrs. Hilton, in 
 her interesting narrative of the Creche, in stopping out- 
 door relief to poor widows with children is causing much 
 sorrow. The 2s. 6d. or $s. received from the parish 
 secured their rent, and they managed, with shirt-making 
 or trouser-fmishing, 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 chidren. 
 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 in- 
 tervals snatched from work. Let them hear what such 
 
IN THE KINGDOM. 123 
 
 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 dis- 
 torted child mind disappears, and the pet name is be- 
 stowed 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 Creche 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 
 
124 " ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS" 
 
 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 g^d., 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 de- 
 scribe. 
 
WITH LOST LAMBS. 
 
 NLY quite lately I had to write about the old 
 French colony in Spitalfields, and of the 
 changes that have come over entire neighbour- 
 hoods 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 alto- 
 gether. 
 
 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 Shore ditch, 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 neighbour- 
 
126 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 hood," 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 corre- 
 spondent had not at that time penetrated. One good 
 work was effected by the attention of sanitary authori- 
 ties being called to the fever dens during a time of ter- 
 rible 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 authori- 
 ties 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 dis- 
 covered 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. 
 
 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 
 
WITH LOST LAMBS. 127 
 
 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 im- 
 portance to be dealt with by a magistrate. Let an in- 
 fancy of neglect and starvation lead to the reckless pil- 
 fering of a scrap of food from a counter, or the abstrac- 
 tion 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 re- 
 formatories 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 acknow- 
 ledged 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. 
 
128 " ABOUT MY FA THEKS B USINESS." 
 
 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 pre- 
 sence has long been a power among the poor of that dis- 
 trict, 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 in- 
 terests 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 coster- 
 mongers shared the cellars with their donkeys — insisted 
 on the surrounding streets being paved and drained, and 
 some of the houses being whitewashed and made weather- 
 proof. 
 
 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-deny- 
 ing work, until the plague began to be stayed. Then 
 
WITH LOST LAMBS. 129 
 
 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 friend- 
 less) 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 institu- 
 tions 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. Al- 
 most every brick was laid with thoughtful care, and 
 when subscriptions came slowly in, the funds were fur- 
 nished 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 foetid 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 
 
 9 
 
1 30 « ABOUT MY FA THEKS BUSINESS? 
 
 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 hun- 
 dred 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 Indus- 
 trial 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 organisation, 
 began to send cases to existing " Homes," only eight of 
 
WITH LOST LAMBS. 131 
 
 these institutions could receive the children, and in these 
 eight no more than forty- four vacancies existed for Pro- 
 testant 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 Lon- 
 don, 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 farm- 
 house-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 ; 
 
 9-2 
 
132 "ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS: 1 
 
 the discipline (one little rebel is already in bed, whither 
 she has been sent for misconduct, and an elder girl de- 
 murely 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 instruc- 
 tion in such domestic work as fits them for becom- 
 ing 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 
 
WITH LOST LAMBS. 133 
 
 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 
 
134 " ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS." 
 
 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 holi- 
 day 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 in- 
 crease the number of lambs rescued from the wolves of 
 famine and of crime. 
 
WI1H THE SICK. 
 
 ffe^^-/||HE memory of the pleasant summer holiday 
 5raffrai remains with many of us when we have come 
 |j§BSil back again to the duties of the work-a-day 
 
 world, and it will be good for us all if the 
 
 gentle thoughts which that time of enjoyment brought 
 with it remain in our hearts, to brighten our daily lives 
 by the influences that suggest a merciful and forbearing 
 temper. 
 
 It is perhaps remarkable that few of the charitable insti- 
 tutions at places to which holiday-makers resort are to any 
 commensurate extent benefited by the contributions of 
 those visitors who, while they are engaged in pursuing 
 their own pleasures, seldom give themselves time to think 
 that as they have freely received so they should freely 
 give. Considering that while we are engaged in the 
 absorbing business of money-making, or in the exacting 
 engagements of our daily calling, we can afford little 
 time for the investigation of those claims which are made 
 upon us to help the poor and the needy, it might not al- 
 together detract from the higher enjoyment of a period 
 of leisure if we devoted a few spare hours to inquiring 
 what is being effected for the relief of suffering in any 
 place wherein we take up our temporary abode. 
 
 With some such reflection as this I stand to-day on 
 
136 "ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 the spot which to ordinary Londoners is most thoroughly 
 representative of the summer "outing," without which 
 no true Cockney can feel that he is content — a spot, too, 
 which has become, for a large number of English men 
 and women, and notably for a whole host of English 
 children, the synonym for renewed health and strength 
 — the head of Margate jetty. 
 
 It is a strange contrast, this moving crowd of people, 
 with their bright dresses and gay ribbons fluttering in 
 the breeze ; the smiling faces of girls and women amidst 
 a toss and tangle of sea-blown tresses ; the green sparkle 
 of the sea beneath the shining sky ; the voices of sailors, 
 the shrill laughter of boys and girls coming from the 
 sands below ; the gleam of white sails ; the flitting wings 
 of fisher-birds ; the gay tumult of the High Street ; 
 the traffic of hucksters of shells and toys — a strange 
 contrast to the scene which may be witnessed in and 
 around that large building which we passed only yester- 
 day as the Margate boat stood off from Birchington, and 
 passengers began to collect coats and bags and umbrellas 
 as they saw friends awaiting them on the landing-stage 
 of this very jetty. 
 
 It seems a week ago; and just as these few hours 
 seem to have separated us far from yesterday's work, and 
 the routine of daily life, does the short distance along the 
 High Street and past the railway station seem to sepa- 
 rate us by an indefinite distance from the sickness and 
 pain that is yet in reality so near. Even as we think of 
 it in this way, the division is less marked, the contrast 
 not so strange, for in that building Faith, Hope, and 
 Charity find expression, and bring a cheerful radiance to 
 those who need the care of skilful hands and the sym- 
 pathy of loving hearts. 
 
WITH THE SICK. 137 
 
 The name of the place is known all over England, for 
 within its walls are assembled patients who are brought 
 from the great towns of different shires, as well as from 
 mighty London itself, that they may be healed of that 
 dread malady, the most potent cure for which is to take 
 them from the close and impure atmosphere of their 
 crowded homes, and exchange the stifled breath of 
 courts and alleys for the boundless aether of the sea. 
 
 For the building, to visit which I am here to-day, is 
 the " Royal Sea-Bathing Infirmary, or National Hospital 
 for the Scrofulous Poor, near Margate," and there are at 
 this moment 220 men, women, and children within its 
 sheltering wards. Stay — let me be accurate. I said 
 within its wards ; but here, as I pass the gates and the 
 unpretentious house of the resident surgeon to the broad 
 sea front of the building, I note that under the protecting 
 screen of the wall that bounds the wide space of grass- 
 plot and gravel-paths a row of beds are placed, and in 
 each of them a patient lies basking in the warm sunlit 
 air ; while a little band of convalescents saunter gently, 
 some of them with the aid of crutch or stick, with the 
 enjoyment of a sense of returning strength. If I mistake 
 not, there are two or three " Bath chairs " crunching the 
 gravel paths a little further on, and down below upon 
 the space marked out and separated from the outer 
 world upon the beach, the two bathing-machines of the 
 establishment are occupied by those for whom convales- 
 cence is growing into health* 
 
 The full meaning of such a change can only be 
 realised by those who know how terrible a disease 
 scrofula becomes, not only in the deadly insidious form 
 of consumption, but in the various deformities and dis- 
 
 * This was written in the latter part of July, 1874. 
 
138 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS? 
 
 tortions of the limbs of which it is the cause ; and in 
 those cases where, to the pain and depression of the dis- 
 order itself is added some terrible affection of the skin, 
 which the sensitive patient knows can scarcely fail to be 
 repulsive to those who witness it, unless, indeed they 
 have learnt to regard it only as a reason for deeper com- 
 passion and for more earnest consolation. 
 
 Almost every form of. the disorder is to be seen out 
 here in the wide northern area of this inclusive building, 
 which has long ago been bought and paid for, along with 
 the three acres of freehold ground on which it stands. 
 
 Of the deep sympathy with which it has been sup- 
 ported by those who early learned to take an interest in 
 its beneficent work, the fountain which has been erected 
 in the centre of the green to the memory of the late Rev. 
 John Hodgson, one of its trustees, is a mute witness. Mr. 
 Hodgson laboured earnestly to secure those casual inte- 
 rests which might be obtained from the vast number of 
 persons who visit Margate every year. In order to make 
 the most of small regular contributions, he appealed for 
 "five shillings a year," and since his death in 1870 this 
 fund has increased, so that in one year nearly 6,000 sub- 
 scribers had contributed £1,405 Js. ^d. Never was holi- 
 day charity more appropriately applied, as anybody who 
 will visit the institution itself may witness in those long 
 wards beyond the open passage, to which the card of Dr. 
 Rowe, one of the three visiting surgeons, has directed 
 me. 
 
 Since the first establishment of the institution, seventy- 
 seven years ago, when sixteen cases were treated as a 
 beginning, above 29,000 patients, from London and all 
 parts of the country, have received relief; and to-day 
 the number in the institution (taking no account of a con- 
 
WITH THE SICK. 139 
 
 tingent of " out-patients") includes 42 men, 50 women, 
 and 120 children, none of whom are local cases, but all 
 from other parts of England, whence they come fre- 
 quently from a long distance. 
 
 In each of the six wards, of which four are on the 
 ground floor, there is a head-nurse and an assistant, with 
 six helpers for the children's, and four for the adult de- 
 partment, beside the night nurses, who sit up in case of 
 any emergency. There is accommodation for 250 suf- 
 ferers and for the 40 nurses, attendants, and domestics 
 required for the service of the hospital; so the 220 patients 
 there now, represent the approaching period when a new 
 wing will have to be added, even if only the urgent cases 
 are to be admitted. 
 
 The year's list of occupants of the 250 beds shows a 
 total of 721 patients, of whom 614 had been discharged 
 in January, 399 being either cured or very greatly bene- 
 fited, 171 decidedly benefited, and only 44 obviously 
 uncured; a very large amount of actual gain to. humanity, 
 when we reflect on the conditions of the disease to 
 remedy which the institution is devoted. 
 
 If out of 721 cases 399 are either cured or have 
 received such marked benefit as to render their ultimate 
 cure highly probable, it is an achievement worthy of the 
 earnest work of which it is the result, a contribution to 
 beneficent efforts well worth the £y,g66 which has neces- 
 sarily been expended in the provision, not only of the 
 appliances which give comfort and rest, but of the gener- 
 ous food and drink which, with the glorious air from the 
 sea, is the medicine necessary to build up the feeble 
 frames and renew the impoverished blood of those to 
 whom meal-times come to be welcome events in the day, 
 instead of merely languid observances. 
 
140 " ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS." 
 
 Down in the kitchen, with its great cooking range and 
 its capacious boilers, there are evidences of that " full 
 diet " which is characteristic of the place ; and it is diffi- 
 cult to decide which are the most suggestive, the long 
 row of covered japanned jugs which hang conveniently to 
 the dresser-shelf, and are used for the conveyance of 
 " gravy," or the mighty milk-cans standing in a corner, 
 ready to be taken away when the evening supply comes 
 in from the Kentish dairies. Half a pound of cooked 
 meat for dinner is the daily allowance for each man and 
 for every boy over fourteen years of age, while women 
 and girls receive six ounces, and children four ounces. 
 Breakfast consists of coffee and bread-and-butter, varied 
 in the afternoon by tea, and supper of bread and cheese 
 for adults, and bread and butter for children. Roast 
 and boiled meat is served on alternate days, with accom- 
 panying vegetables, and there are three " pudding days " 
 for those who can manage this addition to the fare ; 
 while every man and woman may have a pint of porter, 
 and each child a pint of table ale, at the discretion of the 
 doctors. This, of course, represents the ordinary diet, 
 in which specific differences are made for special cases 
 where other or daintier food is required. Perhaps I 
 should have said that this is the scale adopted in the re- 
 fectory, a large airy room, to the long table in which the 
 patients who are able to *' get about " are now advancing 
 with a cheerful premonition of dinner. There is no space 
 to spare, and there are at present no funds to spend in 
 additional building, so that this great airy refectory is 
 used as chapel and assembly room. The Bread of Life, 
 as well as the temporal bread, is distributed here ; and 
 those who would object to the necessity may either con- 
 tribute to build another room, or may come and learn 
 
WITH THE SICK. 141 
 
 how every meal in ^such a place, and for such a cause as 
 this, should become a sacrament. Many varieties of the 
 forms taken by scrofulous disease may be seen here ; 
 and yet the hopeful looks, the cheerful influence of the 
 bright summer weather, the green glimpses of the sea 
 through doors and windows, and the fresh bracing air, 
 impart to these sufferers an expressive lively briskness, 
 which somehow removes the more painful impressions 
 with which we might expect to witness such an assembly. 
 It is so perhaps in a still greater measure in these 
 large airy wards, where children sit or lie upon the beds, 
 some of them wholly or partially dressed, where the 
 disease has produced only deformities'^ under surgical 
 treatment, or such forms of skin disease as affect the face. 
 Of the latter there are some very severe and obstinate 
 cases, and from these the unaccustomed visitor can 
 scarcely help turning away, but often only to return, and 
 mark how cheerfully and with what a vivid alacrity the 
 little patients move and play, and look with eager interest 
 on all that is going on. For here — in the boys' ward — 
 there is no repression of youthful spirits, so that they be 
 kept within the bounds of moderate decorum, nor do the 
 patients themselves seem to feel that they are objects of 
 melancholy commiseration. To speak plainly, even the 
 worst cases are not reminded that there are people who 
 may be revolted at their affliction. Indeed I, who am 
 tolerably accustomed to many experiences that might be 
 strange to others, am rather taken aback by one little 
 " case," whose face and limbs, though apparently healed, 
 have been so deeply seamed and grooved by the disorder, 
 which must have claimed him from babyhood, that he 
 has evidently learned to regard himself as an important 
 surgical specimen, and, on my approach to his bed, begins 
 
142 " ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS:' 
 
 with deliberate satisfaction to divest himself of his stock- 
 ings, in order to exhibit his legs. Hip and spinal 
 disease are among the most frequent and often the most 
 fatal forms of scrofula. One boy, with delicate and regu- 
 lar features, his fragile hand only just able to clasp in 
 the fingers the small present I am permitted to offer him, 
 shows the shadow of death upon his face. In his case 
 the disorder has shown itself to be beyond medical, as it 
 has already been beyond surgical aid, and his short 
 hurried breathing denotes that before the summer days 
 have been shortened by the autumn nights, and the 
 leaves are lying brown and sere, he will be in a better 
 and a surer home, and healed for evermore. 
 
 It will be a peaceful end, no doubt, and he will yet 
 have strength enough to be taken home to die, where 
 other than strangers' hands will minister to him at the 
 last, but not more tenderly, it may be, than those that 
 smooth his pillow to-day. 
 
 As we leave the boys' wards — clean, and bright, and 
 fresh as they are — we encounter a cosy little party of 
 juvenile convalescents, who are comfortably seated on 
 the door-mat, engaged in a stupendous game of draughts. 
 There is more of beauty than deformity, more of life 
 than of death, more perhaps of living eager interest than 
 of sadness and sorrow to be seen here, after all ; and this 
 is particularly remarkable in the large-windowed spacious 
 ward where the girls can look fairly out upon the gleam- 
 ing sea. Properly enough, the room occupied by these 
 young ladies has been made more ornamental than that 
 of the boys. The walls are gay with coloured prints, 
 and there are flowers, and a remarkably cheerful three- 
 sided stove, which gives the place an air of comfort, 
 though, of course, it has now no fire in it. Then some of 
 
WITH THE SICK. 143 
 
 the girls (with those thoughtful delicate faces and large 
 wistful inquiring eyes which are so often to be observed 
 among lame people) are engaged in fancy needlework as 
 they lie dressed upon the beds to which they are at pre- 
 sent mostly confined, because of deformities of the feet 
 or legs requiring surgical treatment. There is a library 
 (which needs replenishing), from which patients are 
 allowed to take books ; and those children who are able 
 to leave the wards, and are not suffering from illness, are 
 taught daily by a schoolmaster and a schoolmistress, 
 while a visiting chaplain is of course attached to the 
 hospital. 
 
BLESSING THE LITTLE CHILDREN. 
 
 CANNOT yet leave that sea-coast where so 
 great a multitude go to find rest and healing- 
 The Divine Narrative may well appeal to us 
 in relation to such a locality, for it was by 
 the sea-shore that the Gospel came to those who went 
 out to seek Jesus of Nazareth ; it was there that the poor 
 people heard Him gladly ; there that the sick who were 
 brought to Him were made whole : there that He fed 
 the great company who lacked bread. 
 
 All the deeds of humanity were recognised by Him 
 who called himself the " Son of Man." The blessing of 
 little children is one of those needs of true human life 
 which the Lord recognised gladly. He recognises it 
 still ; and His solemn mingling of warning and of pro- 
 mise with regard to its observance, has an intensity that 
 may well appeal to us all, now that, after eighteen cen- 
 turies of comparative neglect and indifference, we are 
 discerning that the only hope of social redemption is to 
 be found in that care for children which shall forbid their 
 being left either morally or physically destitute. 
 
 There is a house, standing high above the sea, in that 
 great breezy suburb of Margate, known as Cliftonville — 
 to which I want you to pay a visit when the bright, 
 
• 
 
 BLESSING THE LITTLE CHILDREN. 145 
 
 cheerful, airy wards, the light, spacious dining-room, and 
 comfortable, home-like enlivening influences of the place 
 will entitle it to be regarded as the fitting consumma- 
 tion of two other admirable institutions for the nurture 
 and maintenance of orphan and fatherless children. 
 
 The modest little building referred to is named " The 
 Convalescent and Sea-side Home for Orphans," Harold 
 Road, Margate. The parent institutions are "The 
 Orphan Working School," at Haverstock Hill, and that 
 most attractive series of pretty cottages on the brow of 
 the hill at Hornsey Rise, which have been more than 
 once spoken of as " Lilliput Village," but the style and 
 title of which is "The Alexandra Orphanage for 
 Infants " — a name, the distinguishing feature of which is 
 that it is immediately associated with its first patroness, 
 the Princess of Wales. 
 
 Of the Home at Margate I need not now speak 
 particularly, except to note that it is for the recep- 
 tion of the little convalescents, who — suffering, as many 
 of them do, from constitutional and hereditary weakness, 
 which is yet not actual sickness, and recovering, as many 
 of them are, from the feeble condition which has been to 
 some extent remedied by the careful nurture, good food, 
 and healthy regimen, of the large institutions near Lon- 
 don — are not fit patients either for their own or any other 
 infirmary wards, and yet require to be restored to 
 greater strength before they can join the main body of 
 their young companions in the school or the playground. 
 Enough that it is picturesque and substantially pretty, 
 as becomes a place which is to become the home of thirty 
 children, taken from among nearly six hundred, the 
 parents of nearly half of whom have died of consumption, 
 and so left to their offspring that tendency to a feeble 
 
 10 
 
146 "ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS: 1 
 
 constitution which can be best remedied by the grand 
 medicine of sea-air, wholesome nutritious food, and a 
 judicious alternation of healthful exercise and rest. 
 
 It is to Mr Joseph Soul — the late indefatigable secretary 
 of the Working School, with which he has been connected' 
 for nearly forty years, and the honorary secretary of the 
 Alexandra Orphanage, of which he may be regarded as 
 the virtual founder — that the proposal to establish this 
 Convalescent Home was due, and its affairs are adminis- 
 tered at the office of the two charities, at 63, Cheapside. 
 
 But it is necessary to tell as briefly as possible the story 
 of the oldest of the two institutions of which this building 
 is to be an accessory — not only the oldest of these two, but 
 probably the oldest voluntarily supported orphan asylum 
 in London, since it dates from 116 years ago, when 
 George II. was King, when Louis XV. was scandalising 
 Europe and preparing the Revolution, when Wesleyan 
 Methodism was commencing a vast religious revival, 
 when Doctor Johnson had but just finished writing his 
 dictionary, and when William Hogarth was painting 
 those wonderful pictures which are still the most instruc- 
 tive records of society and fashion as seen in the year 
 1758. 
 
 It was in that year, on the 10th of May, that fourteen 
 periwigged and powdered gentlemen met at the George 
 Inn, in Ironmonger Lane, in order to discuss how they 
 might best found an asylum for forty orphan children — 
 that is to say, for twenty boys and twenty girls. 
 
 They soon came to a solemn decision that there was a 
 u sufficient subscription for carrying the scheme into exe- 
 cution," and a record to that effect was soberly entered 
 in the very first clean page of the first minute-book of the 
 Charity, with the additional memoranda that a committee 
 
BLESSING THE LITTLE CHILDREN. 147 
 
 was chosen, and a treasurer appointed to collect and take 
 care of the money necessary to support the undertaking. 
 
 The early minute-books of this charity, by the way, 
 are models of serious penmanship. Grave achievements 
 of caligraphy, with engrossed headings, elaborate 
 flourishes, and stiff formal hedge-rows • of legal verbiage, 
 suggestive of the fact that the secretaries were either 
 attorneys or scriveners, and regarded the entries in a 
 minute-book or the opening of a new account as very 
 weighty and important events not to be lightly passed 
 over. In this they were probably right : and, at all 
 events, just so much of the old methodical exactitude 
 has come down to the present day in the history of the 
 institution, that the published accounts of the Orphan 
 Working School have been referred to by the Times 
 as models of condensation with a clearness of detail, 
 which may be regarded as the best indication of a well- 
 ordered and economical administration. 
 
 It might not be too much to say that the old principle 
 of carrying a scheme into execution only when there 
 are sufficient subscriptions still characterises the opera- 
 tions of the institution. At all events, Mr. Soul had 
 secured enough money for the completion of the new 
 building at Margate before the actual work commenced, 
 and his experience told him that funds would be forth- 
 coming to maintain it. 
 
 The founders of the original Orphan Working School, 
 however, laid their wigs together to obtain a house ready 
 built, and at last found one adapted to the purpose, in 
 what was then the suburban district known as Hogsden 
 — since gentilised into Hoxton. Like all really good 
 work, the enterprise began to grow — there were so many 
 orphans, and this was still the only general asylum main- 
 
 10—2 
 
148 "ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS: 7 
 
 tained by subscriptions — so that, as funds came in, two 
 other adjoining houses were rented, and in seventeen 
 years the number of inmates had increased from forty to 
 165. 
 
 Reading the formal and yet most interesting re- 
 cords of this parent institution for the care of the 
 orphan and the fatherless, I fall into a kind of wonder at 
 the enormous change in the method of " nurture and ad- 
 monition," of teaching and training, which has taken 
 place in the past eighty years. Even in this house at 
 Hoxton, whereof the founders appear to have been kindly 
 old gentlemen, the discipline was enormously suggestive 
 of that stern restriction and unsympathetic treatment 
 which was thought necessary for the due correction of 
 the " Old Adam " in the young heart. We know how 
 great an outcry has quite lately been made at the dis- 
 covery of the remains of that mode of chastisement 
 which seems to have been abandoned almost everywhere, 
 except by a special revival in gaols, and at two or three 
 of the public schools to which the sons of gentlemen are 
 consigned for their education. 
 
 The discipline at the Orphanage at Hogsden was cold 
 and repellent enough, perhaps — had very little about it 
 to encourage the affections, or to appeal to the loving 
 confidence of a child — but it was less barbarous than the 
 code which at that time found its maxim in the saying, 
 " Spare the rod, spoil the child." Only very flagrant 
 disobedience, persistent lying and swearing, were punished 
 with public whipping. But even in the case of ordinary 
 falsehood, a child was placed with his face to the wall at 
 meal-time, with a paper pinned to his back with the word 
 " Lyar " written on it, till he was sufficiently penitent to 
 say, in the presence of all the rest of the children, " I 
 
BLESSING THE LITTLE CHILDREN. 149 
 
 have sinned in telling a lie. I will take more care. I 
 hope God will forgive me." 
 
 The name, " Working School," was then interpreted so 
 strictly, that there was comparatively little margin for 
 education. Arithmetic appears to have been regarded 
 with peculiar jealousy by the founders of this institution, 
 who, being perhaps bankers, accountants, and capitalists, 
 looked upon such instruction as calculated to give the 
 poor little boys and girls notions beyond their station. 
 
 For ten years the teaching of figures was altogether 
 ignored ; and it was only when some of the children, 
 having heard that there was a science called " summing!" 
 known to the outer world, begged to be taught, that a 
 solemn meeting of the Governors was called to consider 
 the question, when it was conceded, after great delibera- 
 tion, and no little opposition from the anti-educational 
 part of the Committee, that arithmetic should be per- 
 mitted to be taught, as far as addition. 
 
 Thus, to their few and rigidly ordered recreations, 
 their hours of manual labour in making nets, list-carpets, 
 slippers, and other cheap commodities, to their instruction 
 in plain reading, and to their times for partaking of plain 
 and even coarse food, served in not too tempting a way, 
 was added the art of writing, and of the first two rules of 
 arithmetic. 
 
 This was the condition of the orphans in 1775 ; but still 
 the charity grew — grew out of house-room ; and as the 
 funds grew also, it was determined that it should have a 
 building of its own, on a plot of ground in the City Road, 
 where, improvements having set in, the grand old charity 
 moved with the march of modern improvement. Life 
 became less hard, and instruction more extended. The 
 influences of modern thought and education had super- 
 
1 50 "ABO UT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS." 
 
 seded the old severity, and new Governors succeeded 
 the bewigged and powdered founders, who had, after all, 
 so well ordered their work, that it increased with the 
 growth of intelligence. 
 
 During the seventy-two years from 1775 to 1847, the 
 institution had received 1,124 orphans; and again the 
 dimensions of the house were unequal to the demands of 
 the inmates ; while the house itself, and the ground on 
 which it stood, had become so valuable, that it was deter- 
 mined to buy a plot of land at Haverstock Hill, and 
 there to found a truly representative Home for 240 orphan 
 boys and girls — a number which has now increased (as 
 the building itself has been extended) till 400 orphans are 
 taught, fed, and clothed in one of the most truly repre- 
 sentative charities in all great London. 
 
 The obvious distress and suffering of those who are 
 destitute, and whose claims are constantly before us, may 
 lead us to forget the frequent needs of a large number of 
 people who represent uncomplaining poverty. There is 
 a tendency to identify general appeals to benevolence 
 with efforts for the relief of that extreme necessity which 
 demands immediate and almost undiscriminating aid, 
 and requires the prompt distribution of alms or the pro- 
 vision of a meal, warmth, and shelter. Doubtless, the 
 actually homeless and destitute claim our first attention 
 — especially in thecase of deserted and neglected children 
 — and I have tried to show what is being done for those 
 little ones, whose presence in the streets of this great 
 wilderness of brick and stone should of itself be an appeal 
 strong enough to move the heart of humanity in their 
 behalf. 
 
 There is, however, another class of poverty, which 
 makes no sign, and bears distress dumbly. There is a 
 
BLESSING THE LITTLE CHILDREN. 151 
 
 need, which, without being that of actual destitution, 
 requires a constant struggle to prevent its representing 
 the want of nearly all the luxuries, and some of those 
 things which most of us regard as the necessaries of 
 life. 
 
 We find this among that large section of the middle 
 class represented by persons holding inferior clerkships, 
 small official appointments, and situations where the 
 salaries are only sufficient to yield a bare subsistence, 
 and there is little or no probability of their improvement, 
 because, among the number of candidates who are eager 
 to fill such positions, there exists a degree of distress not 
 easily estimated, even by the appearance of those who 
 •are the sufferers. Of course, relief cannot reach such 
 people through the poor-law, or by any direct legislation. 
 They are far above the reach of almsgiving, or even of 
 societies for distributing bread and coals. They have a 
 just pride in maintaining a position of independence; and 
 though they may sometimes look with a feeling too near 
 to envy at the more prosperous mechanic or the skilled 
 artisan, who can earn " good wages," dress in fustian 
 or corduroy, send his children to the Board School, and 
 regulate working hours and weekly pay by the rules of a 
 Trade Union, they mostly keep bravely on, hoping that 
 as the children grow up, they may get the boys " into 
 something," and find some friend to help them to place 
 the girls in situations where they may partly earn their 
 own living. 
 
 With rent and taxes often absorbing a fourth part of 
 his entire income, with market cliques combining against 
 him to keep up the prices of food, with dear bread, dear 
 potatoes, boots and shoes always wearing out, and re- 
 spectability demanding cloth clothes, even though they 
 
1 52 " ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS:' 
 
 be made of " shoddy," how is the clerk, the employe, the 
 small tradesman, the struggling professional man, to follow 
 the prudent counsel which wealthier people are always- 
 ready to bestow upon him — and " lay by for a rainy day ?"" 
 Rainy day ! why his social climate may be said to re- 
 present a continual downpour, so far as the necessity for 
 pecuniary provision. He lives (so to speak) with an 
 umbrella always up, and it is only a poor shift of a 
 gingham after all. The half-crown which is in his pocket 
 to-night is already bespoken for to-morrow's dinner. As 
 he listens to the account of the week's marketing, and 
 knows that his wife and children have been living for 
 three days out of seven upon little better than bread and 
 dripping, he feels like an ogre as he thinks of the seven- 
 penny plate of meat that he consumed at one o'clock, 
 because it was only " a makeshift " at home. 
 
 How is he to pay even the smallest premium to insure 
 his life, when he is obliged to meet ordinary emergencies 
 by a visit to the pawnbroker after dark ? 
 
 Insure his life ! Ah, the time may come when the hand 
 of the bread-winner is still, when the little money left in 
 the house is scarcely sufficient to pay for the " respectable 
 funeral " which is the last effort of genteel poverty, when 
 the red-eyed widow gathers her fatherless children about 
 her, and wonders amidst her stupor of grief what is to* 
 become of the younger ones who yet so need her care 
 that she will not be able to go forth to seek the means- 
 of living. To what evil influences may they be exposed 
 while she is absent striving to earn their daily food ? — 
 the temptations of the streets for the boys : the certainty 
 that the elder girls must either starve at home to mind! 
 the little ones, or must become drudges before they have 
 learnt more than the mere rudiments of what they should! 
 
BLESSING THE LITTLE CHILDREN. 153 
 
 be taught. It is then she feels that dread of degradation, 
 which is amongst the sharpest pangs of the poverty which 
 would fain hide itself from the world. 
 
 It may be that the children are left a parentless little 
 flock, huddling together in the first dread and sorrow of 
 the presence of death, and the sense of utter bereavement, 
 and awaiting the intervention of those who are sent by 
 the Father of the fatherless. Then, indeed, prompt and 
 certain help is needed — help efficient and permanent — 
 and such aid can seldom be secured except by organised 
 institutions. 
 
 But let us see to what that Orphan Working School, 
 established in 1758, has developed in 1874. We have 
 but to take a short journey to the foot of Haverstock 
 Hill, and there, in that pleasant locality named Maitland 
 Park, part of which is the property of the Institution, we 
 shall see the successor of the old house in Hogsden Fields, 
 while its plain but large and lofty committee room is the 
 modern representative of the parlour of the George Inn, 
 Ironmonger Lane, where plans were first laid for the 
 maintenance of forty orphan children. 
 
 This wide and lofty building, with its handsome front 
 entrance and its less imposing side gate in the wing, is 
 the home for nearly three hundred boys, and nearly two 
 hundred girls, when its funds are sufficient to keep each 
 of the long rows of neat beds in the great airy wards 
 appropriated to a little sleeper. 
 
 I mention the dormitories first, because both on the 
 girls' and on the boys' side of the building these are 
 illustrative of the complete orderliness and excellent 
 management of the Institution — illustrative of what 
 should always be the first consideration, namely, to 
 bring comfort to the child's nature, to join to necessary 
 
154 "ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS? 
 
 discipline a sense of real freedom and happy youthful 
 confidence without dread of repression and the constant 
 looking for of punishment. 
 
 As to the appliances that belong to the building, they 
 are such as might almost raise a doubt in some prejudiced 
 minds whetherweare notdoingtoo muchforchildren inthe 
 present day, and thinking too constantly of their comfort. 
 But, alas ! it needs many compensations to make up for 
 the loss of parents ; and in any such an Institution where, 
 400 children form the great family, the arrangements 
 must be on a large scale, so that it is only a matter of 
 experienced forethought to combine a generous liberality 
 with the truest economy. Thus, there are baths, and 
 long well-ordered lavatories, to each wing, even to a 
 large plunge bath for each side ; and there is a great 
 laundry, where the girls are taught to wash, clear-starch, 
 and iron, not in the regular patent steam-heated troughs 
 only, but in genuine homely tubs. There is a great 
 handsome dining-hall, with a painted ceiling, wherein the 
 vast troop of quiet, orderly, and happy-faced children 
 sit down to well-cooked wholesome meals of meat and 
 pudding. There are two great school-rooms, one divided 
 into class-rooms for the girls, and another wherein the 
 boys assemble to be taught, not in the narrow spirit of 
 the first directors of the old building in the City Road, 
 but with a full appreciation of the duty of giving these 
 young minds and hearts full opportunity to expand. 
 Next to the admirable evidences of family comfort, and 
 bright domestic influences, which pervade this place, we 
 may regard the efficient education of the children as the 
 truest sign of its liberal and enlightened management. 
 Not only the three R's to the extent of practised elocu- 
 tion, caligraphy worthy of the old minute books of the 
 
BLESSING THE LITTLE CHILDREN. 155 
 
 first scrivening secretaries, and the lower mathematics, — 
 but history, geography, the elements of physical science, 
 French, drawing, and vocal music, are among the subjects 
 thoroughly studied. It only needs a perusal of the 
 reports of the educational inspectors and examiners to 
 see that the work of this great hive goes on healthily. 
 The boys have already achieved a great position in taking 
 Government prizes for drawing at South Kensington ; 
 and the girls are celebrated for their beautiful needle- 
 work. There is but little time to walk through all the 
 departments of this great home — the kitchens with their 
 spacious larders, and store-rooms, and mighty cooking 
 apparatus ; the great airy playgrounds ; the large and 
 handsome room used as a chapel (for those who do not 
 go out to evening service), and containing its convenient 
 reading desk, and sweet-toned organ. Let us not forget, 
 however, that many of the things which add so vastly to 
 the beauty and completeness of the building and its 
 various departments are themselves gifts from loving and 
 appreciative supporters of the Institution. 
 
 But we are due at that Lilliput village on the brow of 
 Hornsey Rise — that series of cottage homes, where, on 
 each lower and upper storey, with their exquisitely clean 
 nursery cots and cradles, and their tiny furniture, a neat 
 nurse is to be seen like a fairy godmother, with a family 
 of chubby babies, or a more advanced charge of infants 
 able to run like squirrels round the covered playground 
 or to spend the regulation hours in that great glorious 
 school-room, where learning is turned into recreation, and 
 lessons are made vocal, gymnastic, zoological, picturesque, 
 or even fictional, as the times and circumstances may 
 dictate. " The Alexandra Orphanage for Infants " has 
 become so well-known amidst the numerous institutions 
 
156 " ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS" 
 
 which have been established for the care of [the orphans 
 and the fatherless, that one might think it would be full 
 of eager admirers who on visiting days go to see the two 
 or three hundred. Why are not all the cottages full, and 
 each little toy bedstead complete with its rosy, tiny 
 sleeper, who, from earliest infancy to the maturer age of 
 eight years form the assembly for which Mr. Soul set 
 himself to provide by public appeal ? 
 
 These, then, are the two institutions to which that 
 modest little convalescent home in Harold Street, 
 Margate, is a worthy appanage, and they may well 
 find support among those whose maxim it is to do with 
 all their might what their hands find wants doing. 
 
WITH THEM THAT FAINT BY THE WAY. 
 
 B^^PH HERE are perhaps few conditions demanding 
 pml3» ; greater sympathy and more ready aid than 
 H RZp iti; tnat of poor women who, from temporary 
 
 sickness or the weariness that comes of hope 
 
 deferred, are unable to follow the employments, often 
 precarious and yielding a bare subsistence, by which 
 they strive to be independent of charitable aid. It is 
 only those who know to what extremities of need they 
 will submit for shame of making their poverty known, 
 and what mental suffering they will endure as they find 
 their scanty savings dwindling day by day, and their few 
 household goods, or even their clothing, and the little 
 family mementoes, which they can only part with as a 
 last resource, going piece by piece, who can fully 
 realise all that is meant by the genteel phrase, " very re- 
 duced circumstances," as applied to women of refined 
 I feelings, and frequently of gentle nurture, who find them- 
 selves without the means of obtaining necessary food and 
 medical care when health and strength give way, and they 
 can no longer work at those few callings by which they 
 can earn enough to enable them to avoid a dreaded 
 "application to friends." 
 
 Quite lately, the subject of some kind of provision for 
 
158 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS." 
 
 poor governesses who are sick, or have to subsist during 
 long holidays on the small balance of their quarterly 
 wages, has occupied public attention, and it would be 
 well indeed if means could be found for giving the healthy 
 temporary employment, and the weakly a quiet home 
 where their strength might be restored without the sacri- 
 fice of independence. 
 
 There are others, however, for which such help is 
 equally needed — the dressmaker, or the shop-woman, on 
 whom long hours of tedious and often of exhausting toil 
 in an unhealthy atmosphere, has begun to tell too 
 severely ; the servant of good character and respectable 
 habits, who is not so ill as to be admitted to a hospital, 
 and yet is breaking down in strength, and regards with 
 dread the necessity for going into some obscure lodging, 
 where her surplusage of wages will barely pay for rent 
 and food during two or three weeks enforced idleness ; 
 the girl who has learnt some ill-paid business, which 
 affords her no more than a mere contribution to the 
 family funds, and leaves no margin for extra food or me- 
 dicine; or the fresh air that is as important as either. 
 
 Any careful observer standing at the door of a general 
 hospital, and watching the throng of out-patients waiting 
 wearily to see the doctor, will be able to distinguish a 
 score of cases for which a temporary rest with wholesome 
 food and the sympathy and loving-kindness that refresh 
 the soul would bring true healing. 
 
 No large establishment in the nature of a hospital or a 
 refuge affords the kind of help for such distress as theirs. 
 They cannot be dealt with as occupants of wards ; for 
 they have either recovered from the actual crisis of some 
 serious disorder, or are pining in a depressed condition to 
 which no definite name can be given to classify it for 
 
WITH THEM THAT FAINT BY THE WA Y. 159 
 
 admission to any public establishment for the cure of 
 disease. To many of them the idea of entering a large 
 charitable refuge — and I know of none in London 
 adapted to such needs as theirs — would be repulsive, as 
 suggesting that horror with which persons even of a lower 
 grade regard the union workhouse ; what they need is a 
 temporary home, and if ever the time should come when 
 a well-supported scheme for such a provision should be 
 adopted, it will have to take the form of what is now known 
 as the " cottage system." Indeed, in hospitals, as well 
 as in other large charitable institutions, the defects of the 
 old plan of maintaining a great number of adult persons 
 in one vast building have been recognised. The immense 
 ward with its long rows of beds, the divided and neces- 
 sarily confusing duties of attendants, the ill-served meals 
 at a great dinner-table where there is no possibility of 
 escaping from a too rigid routine, the depressing, not to 
 say degrading, influence, resulting from the loss of indi- 
 viduality, would make any vast institution for convales- 
 cents or invalids far less effectual in its operation. I 
 make this reference only with regard to the probable in- 
 auguration of homes for' invalid women in or near Lon- 
 don, and because I have just visited one, which, although 
 it is not on the cottage system, but is established in a 
 rare old mansion of the period of Queen Anne, has yet 
 the happy characteristic of being a family whose scanty 
 means is largely increased by loving gifts, instead of an 
 institution every corner of which bears a reminder that 
 it is " supported by charity." 
 
 In the pleasant airy High Street of Stoke Newington, 
 and within a stone's throw of the famous Cedar Walk of 
 Abney Park — that locality made famous by the prolonged 
 visit of Dr. Watts, who went to spend a week with Sir 
 
160 " ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS." 
 
 Thomas Abney, and remained for the rest of his long 
 blameless life the honoured guest of the family — is the 
 house I speak of, " The Invalid Asylum for Respectable 
 Females in London and its Vicinity,''' superintended by 
 a ladies' committee, and with weekly visitors, and a 
 matron to carry on the practical work of the executive. 
 
 There is nothing remarkably picturesque, nothing very 
 striking about this home for thirty respectable invalid 
 women employed in dependent situations, to whom it 
 affords a temporary asylum, widely differing from the 
 crowded receptacles for the sick in the metropolis. One 
 of its peculiarities is, that the purity of the family circle 
 is maintained, by the fact that no patient is admitted 
 without a certificate of conduct signed by two house- 
 keepers or by an employer, while her case is also recom- 
 mended by an annual subscriber or life governor ; and 
 there is a sense of repose and quiet confidence about the 
 inmates which is particularly suggestive of the care taken 
 to recognise their individual claims, and the interest 
 which is manifested in them during the time of their 
 sojourn. 
 
 This very quietude and sense of rest, and gradual 
 renewal of health and strength in a serene retreat is, in 
 fact, the feature which attracts my attention. It is not 
 too much to say that I am ready to attribute much of 
 such influences to the fact that the institution was origin- 
 ally established by ladies representing the unobtrusive 
 beneficent work of the " Society of Friends," and that the 
 order and peace which is its delightful characteristic, 
 may in a great measure be traced to that foundation. At 
 any rate, these qualifications so identify it that I feel 
 justified in regarding it to some extent as a worthy 
 example of the method to be adopted in any institution, 
 
WITH THEM THAT FAINT BY I HE WAY. 161 
 
 which, without being altogether a free "charity," takes 
 only such a small sum from the patient or her friends 
 as suffices to keep away thfc degrading feeling of 
 pauperism, or of utter dependence on the bounty of 
 strangers. It is true that the principal life-governorships 
 include the privilege of sending entirely gratuitous 
 patients, but in ordinary cases the annual subscriber of a 
 guinea recommends the case, and when the patient is ad- 
 mitted, the sum of twenty shillings is received for the 
 month's medical attendance, lodging, and full board, 
 " including tea and sugar," for a time not exeeding one 
 month, after which, should the case require a longer 
 stay, the ticket must be renewed by the same or another 
 subscriber, on the further payment of twenty shillings. 
 If the patient be in the employment of the subscriber, the 
 payment of this sum will suffice, without the renewal 
 ticket, an arrangement which should commend the insti- 
 tution to every benevolent employer of female labour. 
 
 It need hardly be said that no cases of infectious 
 disease are admitted, and that every applicant is examined 
 by the medical attendant. No patient is admitted who 
 is not above ten years of age ; and neither ei private 
 cookery," nor the introduction of spirituous liquors by 
 visitors, is permitted, any more than gratuities to servants 
 of the Institution. 
 
 It may be remarked that though a large number of 
 cases are received during each year, the very fact of 
 contributions being made by the patients themselves, 
 who are thus relieved from the sense of utter depend- 
 ence, appears to have prevented the Institution from 
 receiving as large a degree of public support as it might 
 command if it were an ordinary charity. This is to 
 be lamented, for the Institution is, after all, less a hos- 
 
 ii 
 
162 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS." 
 
 pital than a temporary home, and it appeals on behalf 
 of a peculiar form of distress, the claims of which 
 are of a specific and none the less of a very urgent 
 character. But in order to realise the kind of work that 
 is most needed, and is here being accomplished, let us 
 pay a visit to the house itself. We have been hitherto 
 standing on the broad flight of steps inside the tall iron 
 gates, and have hesitated to sully their hearthstone 
 purity, for it is Saturday, and we may well have an in- 
 convenient sense that the short hand of the clock is 
 already close to the dinner-time of the institution. 
 
 With a long experience of paying unexpected visits, I 
 am prepared to encounter remonstrance, even though it 
 only take the form of a critical glance at my boots as a 
 means of possible maculation of the newly-cleaned hall 
 and passages. Conscious of having judiciously employed 
 a member of the shoe-black brigade, I can endure this 
 scrutiny, and, with a few words of explanation, am con- 
 ducted, by the matron herself, over the grand old house, 
 whose broad staircase and elaborately carved balusters of 
 black oak at once attest not only its antiquity but also 
 its aristocracy. I have already said that there is nothing 
 here on which to found a "picturesque description," and 
 yet the air of repose, the sense of almost spotless cleanli- 
 ness, the freshness of the large lofty rooms containing 
 from three to five or six comfortable beds with their 
 snowy counterpanes, the general order and pleasant seclu- 
 sion, are remarkably suggestive of the intention of the 
 place. Two of the patients, to whom I make my re- 
 spects, are not yet sufficiently recovered to join the daily 
 dinner-party in the neat dining-room. One of them, an 
 elderly lady, who has only just been brought here, is 
 slowly recovering from very severe illness, and cannot 
 
WITH THEM THAT FAINT BY THE WA V. 163 
 
 even sit up in the bed, whence she regards me with an 
 expression which seems to intimate that she has reached 
 a haven of rest. Her companion, a young woman — also 
 in bed in the same room — is sitting very upright, cheer- 
 fully engaged in some problem of needlework, and 
 responds with. a hopeful smile to the declaration of the 
 matron, that they " mean to make a woman of her if she 
 is good." 
 
 Close to this room is the neat lavatory with its bath, 
 supplied with hot and cold water, and on the landing I 
 note another bath, on wheels, for use in any part of the 
 house where it may be required. All the accessories are 
 home-like ; and in the invalid sitting-room, on an upper 
 storey, where two convalescents, not yet able to get down- 
 stairs, greet me from a pair of easy chairs, there is the 
 same pervading influence which distinguishes the house 
 from those large institutions where everything is charac- 
 terised bya depressing mechanical dead level. The library 
 — a pleasant cheerful room — is in course of refurnish- 
 ing ; and I am glad to learn that our best known 
 periodicals find a place there, while the stock of books, 
 either gifts or loans, are likely soon to be replenished, 
 a matter wherein extra aid would be appreciated, and 
 could readily be afforded by those who have volumes tc 
 spare. 
 
 Already the cloth is laid in the dining-room, and 
 dinner itself consists of hot meat with the usual acces- 
 sories every day, except on Sundays, when there is a cold 
 dinner, while, of course, the invalids who are ordered 
 medical diet have fish, custards, or other delicate fare 
 specially provided. Each patient has a pint of ale or 
 beer daily, and wine as a remedial stimulant, according 
 to the doctor's orders. 
 
 11 — 2 
 
164' " ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 There is just time before dinner is served to walk 
 through the room into the grand old garden which 
 extends from a pleasant sheltered lawn and flower- 
 garden, with a glorious fig-tree in full leaf and fruit 
 against the sunny wall, to a great kitchen-garden and 
 orchard, with a wealth of fruit and vegetables (and notably 
 a venerable and prolific mulberry tree), and extending 
 in a pleasant vista of autumn leaves. On the other 
 side of the high wall is the Cedar Walk already men- 
 tioned ; and the whole place is so still and balmy on this 
 autumnal day, that we may go away with a very distinct 
 appreciation of the rest and peace which, with regular 
 nutritious food, rest, and medicine, may bring restoration 
 to the physical health, just as the hopeful ministrations 
 of good and pious women who visit the home daily may 
 bring a sense of peace and comfort to many a weary 
 spirit and burdened heart. 
 
'IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH" 
 
 ^■P5|f HERE are some of whom we might be ready 
 OSr *° sa y* ^ e y dwell in that valley ; — that the 
 |g||| : ;: shadow of death lies darkling before them, 
 
 constantly enwrapping them, — enshrouding 
 
 them in gloom. We are accustomed to think so of per- 
 sons suffering from what we call incurable diseases, some 
 of which are painful, occasionally agonising, others sus- 
 ceptible of relief from the suffering that attends them. 
 
 We are so apt to forget that we are every one of us 
 incurable. Though we may not at present be aware of 
 the disease that will bear us farther and farther into that 
 valley, where the wings of the great angel, so seeming 
 dark as to overshadow all things, may yet be re- 
 vealed to us as glowing with the brightness of the light 
 which our unaccustomed eyes cannot behold, we are 
 none the less certain to succumb to it. It may be that 
 some of us will live to be conscious of no other than the 
 most fatal of all diseases — because no mortal cure has 
 been or ever will be found for it — incurable old age. 
 There have been those who lived long enough to look 
 calmly at the slowly lengthening shadow in the valley, and 
 almost to wonder if Deathhad forgotten and were depart- 
 ing from them, leaving only the black trail behind; but the 
 
1 66 " ABOUT M Y FA THERS BUSINESS: 1 
 
 time at last came, perhaps when they had learnt to see 
 more than shadow, to catch the glint of the heavenly- 
 glory beyond. 
 
 It is a happy thought that many poor afflicted children 
 of God have seen this too, and continue to see it daily, 
 although, like St. Paul, they also die daily. It is com- 
 forting to believe that many who know what their dis- 
 ease is — who are pronounced to be " hopelessly incur- 
 able " in a rather different sense to that in which we may 
 all be declared to be hopelessly incurable also — do not 
 dwell perpetually in the Valley of the Shadow. Christ 
 has come to them and taken them out of it, that even in 
 this life, where He is they may be also, secure in the love 
 of the Father, having already, if one may so speak, 
 overcome death through Him who is the Resurrection 
 and the Life. The great, the essential difference between 
 these sufferers and the rest of mankind is that they are 
 almost always conscious of the disease which is incurable 
 because of its accompanying pain, and that they are dis- 
 qualified for many of the ordinary uses, and also most of 
 the ordinary enjoyments of life. Perhaps the chief poig- 
 nant sense of their condition is that they are no longer 
 capable of fulfilling the ordinary duties of life either. 
 They must be dependent always ; and to many souls the 
 suspicion that they may live only to be a burden on 
 others, to take instead of giving, to lean upon instead of 
 supporting, is itself almost intolerable, until they learn 
 to look higher, and acknowledge that not only all the 
 things of the world, but we ourselves, they and theirs, 
 belong to God, and that life and death, height and depth, 
 principalities and powers, are but His creatures, incapable 
 of separating us from His love. The same reflection, 
 coupled with that of our own incurability and our own 
 
" IN THE VALLE Y OF THE SHADO W OF BE A TH." 1 67 
 
 constant liability to be stricken down with hopeless and 
 painful malady, should surely lead us to recognise the 
 duty of helping some among the thousands who have 
 not only lost health, but with it the means of maintaining 
 life, and, more sadly still, the hope of restoration to 
 former strength, or oven temporary recovery. 
 
 I have already spoken of the work done by convalescent 
 homes and hospitals ; but there are those who, being sick 
 unto death, yet do not soon die — those who must be dis- 
 charged from hospitals uncured,in order to make room for 
 the curable, and who, unable to work, unaccustomed to beg, 
 and almost ready to meet death itself rather than sink 
 into sordid abject pauperism, know not whither to turn 
 in their dire necessity. It was to aid these that an appeal 
 was written twenty years ago, asking for funds to estab- 
 lish an institution for the reception of those suffering 
 from hopeless disease. It is to see what has been the re- 
 sult of that appeal that I visit the Royal Hospital for 
 Incurables at Putney Heath to-day. 
 
 It was in 1854 that Doctor Andrew Reed — to whose 
 indicating hand we are indebted for the installation of 
 many of our noblest charities — made an urgent appeal on 
 behalf of those who, being discharged as incurable from 
 various hospitals, were left helpless, and often destitute, 
 since, amidst all the institutions which beneficence had 
 founded, there was none to which they could prefer a 
 claim. 
 
 Let us see what has been done in twenty years to alle- 
 viate what might seem to be almost hopeless suffering. 
 
 Let us, coming face to face with the mystery of pain, 
 and looking as it were from afar on that dark shadow 
 which yet always lies so near to every one of us, note 
 how in the heart of the mystery there is hidden a joyful 
 
1 68 " ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS." 
 
 hope for humanity, how in the very shadow of death 
 there is a light that never yet has shone on land or sea. 
 
 It is a still autumnal day, and, as we turn up the 
 wooded lane on the left of the hill leading from the Put- 
 ney Railway Station to Wimbledon, a tender gleam in 
 the grey clouds betokens coming rainfall. A light, 
 hanging drift descends upon the distant hills, and breaks 
 into pale vaporous shapes amidst the wooded slopes and 
 valleys. The yellow leaves that strew the ground lie 
 motionless, as though they waited for their late com- 
 panions to fall gently from the branches overhead and 
 join their silent company. 
 
 Coming into a broader roadway, and passing through 
 the gate of a lodge, we come almost suddenly upon a 
 glorious sloping lawn, adorned with goodly trees, worthy 
 of the great.. building — meant for a ducal residence, and 
 now put to nobler uses — which, for all its stately look, 
 has about it a home-likeness that is full of promise. Even 
 the matchless landscape lying around it — the expanse of 
 wood and dale, the soft slopes of Surrey hills, the deep- 
 embowered glades where the bronze-and-gold of moving 
 tree-tops takes a changeful sheen from slowly-drifting 
 clouds, or reflects strange gleams of colour from the 
 glistening silver of the rain — will not hold us from the 
 nearer glow of windows bright with flowers, which give a 
 festal look to the place, although it is so quiet that we 
 stand and imagine for a moment what it is that we 
 have come to see. For this great mansion, with its long 
 rows of windows and wide-spreading wings, is the home 
 of a hundred and fifty-four men and women, some of 
 whom have been suddenly stricken down, others having 
 slowly fallen day by day into a condition of incurable 
 disease, and, in many cases, also into a condition of 
 utter bodily helplessness. They, and the attendants 
 
" IN THE VALLE Y OF THE SHADO IV OF DEA TH:' 169 
 
 whose constant kindly services are essential for their 
 relief, constitute the family of what is known, plainly 
 enough, as "The Royal Hospital for Incurables." There 
 are no distinctions among its members, though in their 
 previous lives they have belonged to various grades— no 
 distinctions, at least, except those which arise from per- 
 sonal qualifications. 
 
 The claim for election to the benefits of the charity is 
 the necessity which is implied in the name of the institu- 
 tion itself: and once within its sheltering walls the pa- 
 tients, whose failing eyes brighten, and whose wan cheeks 
 flush with every loving mention of it as their home, are 
 all alike sharers in its benefits. 
 
 Not only the 154 at present within its walls, however, 
 but 327 of those who, having family and friends with 
 whom to dwell, receive pensions of £20 a year each, and 
 so cease to be a heavy burden to others. 
 
 Do you think at first sight, and from the external 
 appearance of the building, that charity here has gone 
 beyond precedent in providing such a place — a palatial 
 pile standing amidst scenery that one might well come 
 far to see ? Remember what is the need of those who 
 have to be lifted out of the dark, hopeless depths of 
 what is almost despair ; of those who, finding themselves 
 banished from hospital wards, unable to earn their bread, 
 feeling themselves a burden upon those for whom they 
 would almost consent to die rather than live upon their 
 poverty; of those who, in the midst of hourly pain, have 
 the mental anguish of knowing that the long calendar of 
 darkening days may find them utterly dependent on the 
 toil of others most dear to them, and whose few expe- 
 dients can bring little ease, and will not serve to hide 
 the ever-present sense of disappointment and distress. 
 
1 70 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 Think how much wealth is wasted daily in the world, 
 and what a small part of it suffices to lighten by every 
 available means the burden of such lives as these ; the 
 sorrow of those who, in the dreadful deprivation of what 
 to us seems almost all that makes life dear, have no 
 resource between that provided for them in such a place 
 as this and the infirmary-ward of a workhouse, amidst 
 sordid surroundings and the hard, mechanical, unfeeling 
 officialism which in such cases is little more than organ- 
 ised neglect. 
 
 There are people who would reduce all charitable in- 
 stitutions — yes, even such as this, of which living per- 
 sonal interest and the care that comes of more than 
 merely casual benevolence are the very foundation and 
 corner-stone — to a dead level of official rule, in which 
 benevolence should be represented by a mechanical de- 
 partment, and the sentiment of charity by a self-elected 
 board of control, dealing with public subscriptions as 
 though they were a poor-rate, and recognising neither 
 individual interest nor the right of contributors to give it 
 expression. Such a system would lack the very qualifi- 
 cation most needed here, and to be found only in that 
 voluntary personal interest that brings to the recipients 
 of bounty more than the mere bounty itself, the heart- 
 throb of sympathy, the feeling that the gift means more 
 than the cold official recognition of a national duty, that 
 it is the expression of loving-kindness ever active and 
 living; and so making for the helpless, the destitute, and 
 the dying, not a mere asylum, but a home. 
 
 The entrance into thehallof a cheerful, genial gentleman, 
 with a kindly, brisk manner, and a reassuring expression 
 of deliberation and repose in his observant face and easy 
 bearing, rouses us from melancholy fancies, and with a 
 
« IN THE VALLE Y OF THE SHADO W OF DEA TH? 1 7 1 
 
 few words of courteous welcome we are at once conducted 
 to the door that is to open to us the first scene in this 
 wonderful visit. 
 
 A spacious assembly room — let us call it by the good 
 old name of" parlour," for there is much quietly animated 
 talk going on — talk, and needlework of all kinds, from 
 the knitting of a warm woollen shawl to the manipula- 
 tion of delicate lace, and the deft handling of implements 
 for making those exquisite tortures of society known as 
 antimacassars. With ever so wide an experience of 
 halls, salons, suites, or drawing-rooms, the visitor can see 
 nothing resembling this wonderful parlour elsewhere. A 
 room of noble proportions, one end of which is occupied 
 by an organ ; the great windows reaching almost from 
 floor to ceiling, and overlooking a broad expanse of lawn, 
 with a glorious view of hill and woodland beyond ; on the 
 tables flowers, books, ornaments ; in every kind of couch 
 and chair — many of which are comfortable beds on wheels 
 and springs — a company of women, with bright, cheerful, 
 intelligent faces, full of a recent interest, and, even in 
 cases where some paroxysm of pain is passing, with a 
 certain serene satisfaction which it is infinitely good to see. 
 
 There has been a morning service, conducted by a 
 visiting clergyman, and there is a general expression of 
 approval which, if the reverend gentleman himself were 
 present to witness it, would surely prove highly grati- 
 fying. The congregation has settled down to easy talk, 
 and has resumed its occupation of plain and fancy needle- 
 work. Here is an old lady whose silver hair adds to her 
 natural grace and dignity, who is busy with wool-knit- 
 ting, and at the same time engages in a discriminating 
 criticism of the address to one of the many visitors who 
 sit and spend an hour of their afternoon in agreeable chat. 
 
172 "ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS:' 
 
 There is a pretty but rather sad-eyed mignon lady, whose 
 excellently-fitting silk dress, delicate hands, and general 
 " niceness " of appearance, quite prepare us to see the 
 beautiful examples of all kinds of fancy work of which 
 she never seems to tire. Every year, in June, they hold 
 a grand bazaar at the hospital, so that those who are 
 skilful and capable are able to earn enough money to 
 clothe themselves as they please — everything except 
 clothing being found by the charity, except to two or 
 three inmates who are able to pay for their own main- 
 tenance. Now we hear the low tones of cheerful talk, 
 the pleasant ripple of laughter — note the brightening 
 glance, the quick smile, the feeble but earnest finger-clasp 
 which greets the cheerful salutation of the house governor, 
 Mr. Darbyshire, or the presence of his wife, the lady 
 matron of this great happy family of incurables, we begin 
 to wonder at our gloomy estimate of the place before 
 this visit. 
 
 Nor is the revelation of cheerfulness, of light in 
 shadow, less remarkable in the dormitories themselves. 
 But then what rooms they are ! Each bed is, as it 
 were, set in an alcove of its own snow-white hang- 
 ings, relieved by bits of colour which would delight an 
 artist's eye — pieces of embroidery, framed illuminated 
 texts, bright flecks of Berlin woolwork, or glistening 
 designs in beads, or deep glowing knick-knacks wrought 
 in silk and lace. Each little bedside table, though it 
 may hold medicine and diet — drink and requisites for 
 the sick — is decked with flowers and little framed pic- 
 tures, gaily-bound books, and bright-hued toys and trifles, 
 that make it look like a miniature stand at a fancy fair. 
 In some cases the sense of combined purity and glow of 
 colour is so great, that it is difficult to realise that we 
 
"IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH." 173 
 
 are in one or other of a series of sick-rooms. Every thino- 
 is so spotless, so exquisitely clean and orderly, that 
 nothing less than perfect nursing could explain it — for be 
 it remembered that the place is open to visitors every 
 day — and amidst some of the most terrible afflictions 
 from which humanity can suffer there is nothing revolting. 
 Expressions of pain and of utter prostration and weakness 
 there are, of course ; but even these are only alternative 
 with the general placid contentment and thankfulness 
 that is the prevailing characteristic. 
 
 Even in two severe cases of cancer the terrible effects 
 of the malady are less notable, because of the surround- 
 ing conditions. A sprightly and engaging girl, with 
 features and social life alike marred and obliterated by 
 this dreadful malady, is surely one of the saddest of all 
 the sad sights in such an institution ; but here the bright- 
 ness and genial influence of the place, and of those who 
 are its ministrants, have had their effect, and even the 
 half-obliterated features gain a grateful, loving, cheerful 
 expression ; the poor eyes beam with pleasure as the 
 governorstarts some reminiscence of that pleasant summer 
 water-party of his, in which one of the two sufferers had 
 to be carried to the boat in his arms, and both of them, 
 deeply veiled, were rowed by those same guarding arms 
 for a glorious voyage on the river, where the summer's 
 sunshine and gladness stole into the hearts of the sufferers, 
 and left a halo of remembrance that is not perhaps so 
 very far from the anticipations of that stream which 
 maketh glad the children of God. 
 
 Here are rooms wherein only two or three beds are 
 placed, while few of them contain more than six, but all 
 of them are bright, airy, lofty, full of space, and with the 
 same sense of purity. And from every window some 
 
1 74 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 fresh and lovely view of the surrounding landscape, with 
 all its changeful aspects, may be seen — the beds being 
 so placed that every patient has her own special expanse 
 of territory to solace her waking hours, even though she 
 be unable to go down to the assembly-room. Here, in a 
 room particularly bright and cheerful, lies a young woman 
 with a wealth of dark hair on the pillow where her in- 
 telligent face beams with a certain courage, although her 
 body and limbs have been for years immovable — only 
 one arm, for an inch or two, and three fingers of the right 
 hand, can be stirred — and yet, as we stand and talk with 
 her, some small simple jest about her own condition causes 
 her to laugh till the bed shakes. She has learnt to write 
 by holding a pencil in her mouth, and inscribes neat and 
 legible letters on paper placed on a rest just in front of 
 her face. She is not only cheerful, but actually hope- 
 ful, though she has been for years in this condition ; and 
 her relations, great and small, visit her, to find her always 
 heartily determined to look on the bright side. At the 
 foot of her bed, near the window, is a swing looking-glass 
 on a pedestal, and in this she sees reflected the distant 
 prospect of autumn wood and field, extending miles 
 away. Judging from her nobly equable and smiling face, 
 she must be the life of the room of which she has been 
 so long an occupant. In another apartment a poor 
 schoolmistress suffering from hemorrhage of the lungs 
 lies reading for many hours a day, her face bearing a 
 painful expression, her manner eager, her constant craving 
 to work on, by the study of books concerning the problems 
 of this earthly life and the sciences that strive to demon- 
 strate them and yet only bring us to the barrier of the 
 eternal world. She yearns for one more day amidst her 
 classes, and for the opportunity of testing the results of 
 
" IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH." 175 
 
 sick-bed thoughts on a method of education which should 
 adapt itself to the individual temperament and mental 
 peculiarity of each child. Amidst a troubled tide of 
 thoughts that are perhaps sometimes too much 'for the 
 weary brain, she may learn to recognise the rest that 
 comes after hearing the Divine voice say, " Peace ! be 
 still ;" and so a great spiritual calm may fall upon her, 
 and give her rest. 
 
 Yet another visit, and we find a girl who, from an acci- 
 dental fall, is as immovable as a statue, her dark ques- 
 tioning eyes and mobile face alone excepted. Yet she is 
 sometimes lifted into a wheel-chair that stands stabled 
 by her bedside, and joins the company in the great par- 
 lour downstairs. There is another little parlour, with 
 quite a select coterie, under the presidency of an elderly 
 gentlewoman, who is busily knitting at a table, while her 
 friends recline at the windows, on their special couches ; 
 and in several of the dormitories patients are sitting up, 
 reading, working, or looking at the fitful aspect of earth 
 and sky on this October afternoon. Sufferers from heart- 
 disease, with that anxious contracted expression so indi- 
 cative of their malady, are numerous ; but the larger 
 number of the patients seem to suffer from rheumatism, 
 or paralysis — among them one lady, with silvered hair, 
 and yet with bright expressive eyes, and still bonny face, 
 who was once a a well-known singer in London. She is 
 unable to rise from couch or bed, but the readiness of repar- 
 tee, the bright inquiring look, the quick appreciation and 
 retort, remain, as do a certain swift expressive action of 
 head and hands, which is marvellously suggestive of dra- 
 matic gesture ; for, happily, her hands and arms are still 
 capable of movement, and she has several periodicals on 
 the coverlet — among them the latest monthly part of 
 
176 " ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS: 1 
 
 a magazine, in one of the stories in which she is evi- 
 dently interested. She, with two or three others, are in- 
 mates of the hospital at their own charges. 
 
 We have but little time to devote to the men's side 
 of this great institution ; but its dormitories and furni- 
 ture, its large day-room, where daughters sit talking in 
 low voice to fathers, sisters to brothers, wives to husbands 
 — its pleasant out-door contingent, who have just returned 
 from slowly perambulating the grounds in wheel-chairs, 
 or sit basking outside in the latest gleam of sunshine — 
 its club in the rustic hut especially appointed for this 
 purpose — all might bear comment. Here is a sturdy 
 youth, who, falling from a tree, and alighting on his heels, 
 incurably injured his spine, and now lies all day, mostly 
 out of doors, and without a coat, frequently engaged in 
 knitting. There is a poor gentleman, who has for six- 
 teen years been almost immovable, from rheumatism, 
 even his jaw being so fixed that he takes food through an 
 aperture in the teeth. He has been through two or three 
 hospitals, and under the care of the most eminent sur- 
 geons, and has come here now as to an ark of refuge, 
 where he can read and talk, and be wheeled about 
 the neighbourhood on occasional visits. Only one case 
 of all those that we witness is startling in its melancholy 
 sense of terrible loss and incurability ; that rigid, grimly- 
 set face, in the ward where the corner bed in which the 
 grizzled head lies is the only one occupied this afternoon. 
 The body belonging to that face is almost immovable — 
 the ears are deaf, the tongue is mute, the eyes are nearly 
 sealed — not by sudden calamity, but by gradual yielding 
 to decay or disease. He has been an inmate several 
 years, and is the one case here before which we may 
 almost quail in our solemn sense of affliction ; and yet 
 
" IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH." 177 
 
 and yet, to the touch of certain loving hands that dead 
 face kindles ; that mind, seemingly locked in stupor, 
 wakes to life ; that intelligence, encased in a casket iron- 
 bound and motionless, can understand the signs that are 
 made upon his own hands or forehead, and interpret them 
 so as to give some kind of grateful answer. It needs the 
 touch of the lady nurse to bring out this strange music 
 from an instrument so unstrung ; but that it should be 
 done at all is an evidence of the hold that loving sym- 
 pathy and some subtle influence almost beyond mere 
 bodily capacity of expression has taken in these dear souls 
 of the sick and the afflicted. That is where the shadow 
 lifts, even in the darkness of the valley ; that is how the 
 Spirit of Christ may abound; and the soul, in recognizing 
 the work of the disciple, may recognise the Lord therein, 
 and remember the Living Word — "Though I walk through 
 the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for 
 Thou art with me." 
 
 12 
 
WITH THE HALT AND THE LAME." 
 
 SUPPOSE there are few people in England, 
 who are at all accustomed to keep Christmas 
 amidst a loving" family circle, who have not 
 during the sacred festivities of the season, 
 and all the household sentiments with which they are in- 
 separably associated, made some reference to the "Christ- 
 mas Carol," that famous story of the great novelist whose 
 presence in the spirit of his books has brightened so many 
 a Christmas hearth, and moved so many gentle hearts to 
 kindly thoughts and words of loving cheer. 
 
 Amongst all the well-known characters to which Mr. 
 Dickens introduced thousands of readers — characters 
 who, to many of us, became realities, and were spoken 
 of as though they were living and among our ordinary 
 acquaintances — there have been none, except perhaps 
 
 (little Nell, who have evoked more sympathetic recogni- 
 tion than Tiny Tim, the poor crippled child of Bob 
 Cratchit — the child, the sound of whose little crutch 
 upon the stair was listened for with loving expectation — 
 the shadow of whose vacant chair in the "Vision of 
 Christmas," gave to the humbled usurer as keen a pang 
 as any sight that he saw afterwards in that strange 
 dream of what might come to pass. So completely do 
 
" WITH THE HALT AND THE LAME" 179 
 
 we share the anxiety of Scrooge in this respect, that we 
 can all remember giving a sigh of relief when, at the end 
 of the story, we learn that the poor crippled boy remains 
 to bless the fireside where even his afflictions were felt 
 to be a hallowing influence to soften animosities, and to 
 draw close the bonds of family love. 
 
 "Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself" 
 (says Bob Cratchit), "and thinks the strangest things 
 you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he 
 hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was 
 a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember 
 upon Christmas-day who made lame beggars walk and 
 blind men see." 
 
 If I needed an excuse for so long an allusion to that 
 pathetic story, which has stirred so many hearts through- 
 out England, I might find it in the passage I have just 
 quoted; but I seek none. I refer to the "Christmas 
 Carol," because in it the figure of the crippled boy, occu- 
 pying so small a space, yet is such a living, touching 
 influence as to be one of the household fancies that asso- 
 ciate themselves with our thoughts of Christmas-tide in 
 poor homes ; because there are so many little crutches 
 the sounds of which are heard — though fewer than there 
 used to be before ortJwpcsdic surgery became a special 
 branch of study, and hospitals were founded for its prac- 
 tice ; because, though Tiny Tim may represent so many 
 crippled children who are the helpless members of poor 
 families, where they are tended with as kindly care as 
 working fathers and mothers can find time for — there 
 are hundreds of other deformed or maimed lads whose 
 lot is made the harder because of the want of sympathy 
 and ready a;d that would lift them out of utter helpless- 
 ness, or give them such light labour to perform as would 
 
 12 — 2 
 
180 "ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS." 
 
 diminish their sense of dependence. Finally, because I 
 desire you to bear me company to one place in London 
 where this last need is recognised, and where forty crip- 
 pled boys, suffering from various incurable deformities, 
 which yet have left them the use of their hands, are not 
 only taught a trade, but are encouraged, fed, and nur- 
 tured for the three years during which they are inmates 
 of the home — "The National Industrial Home for Crip- 
 pled Boys." 
 
 Alighting from the railway carriage which conveys us 
 from Mansion House Station to the pleasant old High 
 Street of Kensington, we are close to the place that we 
 have come to see, for the building itself — a quaint old 
 house, with a central doorway between two projecting 
 deep bay-windowed fronts, and built of the reddest of 
 red brick — stands at the end of Wright's Lane, looking 
 us full in the face as we approach it to read the style and 
 title plainly painted across its upper storey. 
 
 The house has good reason for looking the world thus 
 bluffly in the face, for it is an independent building, 
 bought and paid for : hearth-stone, roof tree, and chim- 
 ney, freehold, and without debt or mortgage. Till this 
 was done, all thought of considerable extension was put 
 aside. The question was how to provide, out of voluntary 
 subscriptions and contributions, for the fifty inmates who 
 could be admitted within those sheltering walls. It must 
 be premised, however, that ten pounds a year has to be 
 paid for each boy who is accepted, during the three years 
 that he remains there, to be taught in the evening school 
 and in the workshop, not only how to read and write and 
 cipher, but to become a good workman at tailoring, car- 
 pentering, or die-engraving and colour-stamping. 
 
 These are at present the only three trades taught in 
 
" WITH THE HALT AND THE LAME." 181 
 
 this truly industrial home, but they appear to be very 
 admirably suited to the cases of those who are deformed 
 or crippled in various ways ; and they are taught well, as 
 an inspection of the work accomplished will prove. For 
 the workshops are real workshops, where the boys do not 
 play at work, but are taught their trades in a way that will 
 enable them when they leave the institution to gain a de- 
 cent livelihood, or even, if they can save a little money, 
 to go into business for themselves. 
 
 This has been lately done, in fact, by two youths, who, 
 having thoroughly learnt the relief-stamping process, have 
 contrived to buy a press and the materials for their trade, 
 and are now in partnership in a country town, and earn- 
 ing a respectable maintenance. Of sixteen lads who left 
 during the year, twelve were doing well as journeymen 
 at the industries they had learnt ; one had set up in busi- 
 ness for himself (the relief-stamping gives the greatest 
 facility for this) ; and two had returned to their friends 
 because of ill health, while one had not reported himself 
 But during the same period forty of the former inmates 
 had been to visit the old home, and gave a very encourag- 
 ing account of themselves. Let us add, in a whisper, 
 that amongst these visitors were a " team''' of old boys 
 who had come to accept the challenge of a " team" of 
 the new boys, to play a match at cricket. Yes, and that 
 these teams of cripples have, over and over again, carried 
 off their bats against opponents who, if they expected an 
 easy victory, found themselves to have been most amaz- 
 ingly mistaken. I don't think this is mentioned in the 
 Report, but it is well to know it, because it serves to prove 
 how truly beneficent a work is being done here, in re- 
 moving boys from a too often almost " hopeless" condi- 
 tion to one of useful, intelligent, skilled labour, and to 
 
182 " ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 healthy self-forgetfulness and association in the ordinary 
 duties and recreations of their fellows. It must be re- 
 membered that every boy there is, in a certain sense, in- 
 curable. After having been nominated by the person 
 willing to contribute the annual payment of ;£io, the 
 medical officers of the institution (or if in the country, 
 some qualified practitioner) examine the candidate, who 
 must be above twelve and less than eighteen years of age, 
 and neither blind, deaf and dumb, nor without the use of 
 his hands. The name of the candidate is then added to 
 the list of those waiting for admission — of whom there 
 are now, unfortunately, above seventy — and when there 
 is a vacancy, and funds are sufficient to maintain the full 
 number of inmates, these candidates are taken in suc- 
 cession, without voting, by order of the Committee of 
 Management, of whom the President is the Earl of 
 Shaftesbury, and the Honorary Secretary Mr. S. H. 
 Bibby, of Green Street, Grosvenor Square. There is 
 also an efficient Ladies' Committee for the household 
 management and for advising as to the education of the 
 boys, the visits of the friends of the inmates, and the 
 domestic affairs of the Home generally. There are some 
 severe cases of deformity here — club-foot, spinal curva- 
 ture, and various distortions of the legs — and in many 
 cases instruments are worn, but the Institution does not 
 profess to provide these. Frequently they are procured 
 by special contributions, and among the latest gifts of 
 this kind is a serviceable wooden leg or two, which have 
 had the happy effect of relieving their recipients from the 
 necessity of using crutches ; but it is distinctly insisted 
 on that the Home is not a hospital, and is only curative 
 in the sense of improving the condition of those who, 
 having been pronounced incurable, are yet capable of 
 
" WITH THE HALT AND THE LAME." 1S3 
 
 greatly increased activity and strength by means of 
 nourishing and regular food, interesting occupation, and 
 healthy exercise with companions who themselves are to 
 be numbered among the halt and the lame, and yet are, 
 in a very certain sense, made to walk and to leap and to 
 praise God. For see, at the very moment that I am 
 speaking, a little figure darts out of the passage yonder 
 and scampers across the large open green space at the 
 back of the house on his way to the new range of work- 
 shops that are now nearly completed, and are also paid 
 for. Is it possible to apply the term cripple to such an 
 elf, who is out of reach before one can ask his name ? 
 Yes ; that very elf-like look is the result of a deformity 
 which stops growth, though it leaves the limbs as active as 
 you see them. But come up-stairs to the first of the 
 present workshops, and you may note among the colour- 
 stampers, sitting on their high stools before the dies and 
 presses, cases of more decided deformity or of crippling 
 by accident. These boys follow an artistic, pretty busi- 
 ness, and visitors may do worse than give a small or a 
 large order for notepaper and envelopes, stamped with 
 crest, motto, or quaint design. So well is the work exe- 
 cuted, that the Home has orders constantly in hand for 
 the trade, and some of the dies are really beautiful 
 examples of engraving. I think that in this long pleasant 
 upper room, with its high bench running along the window, 
 fitted with the presses and implements for the work, there 
 are more severe cases of deformity than will be seen 
 in either in the tailors' department on the same floor , 
 or the carpenters' shop below. One reflects on the 
 numerous accidents to which the children of the poor are 
 liable, such as falls down flights of stairs ; to the in- 
 human neglect of old wo men who are paid as "minders' 
 
184 "ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 by mothers compelled to go out to work in neighbour- 
 hoods where no infant creche, no babies' cradle home, has 
 yet been established, or in country towns where such in- 
 stitutions have scarcely been heard of. One remembers 
 with pity the scores of poor little creatures who have to 
 nurse and tend children almost as big as themselves, so 
 that they and their charges too often become deformed 
 together, the nurse with lateral curvature of the spine and 
 the baby with vertical curvature or with deformities of 
 the feet or legs. One thinks, in short, of the many perils 
 to healthy life and well-formed limb that beset the child- 
 ren of the poor, and then coming back to the figures of 
 this National Home, which yet, with careful manage- 
 ment and due economy, can only receive forty or fifty 
 crippled boys — wonders how long it is to be before the 
 ruddy old house in Wright's Lane will expand its broad 
 bosom and stretch out long arms on either side to embrace 
 three-score more lads, taken from present neglect and 
 want and probable ill-usage, to be fed and taught and nur- 
 tured for three years, during which the whole future will be 
 changed for them, and their lives redeemed from the de- 
 gradation that had threatened them just as their bodies 
 expand with renewed health and strange developments of 
 unsuspected strength,'and their souls are lighted with hope 
 and the sympathy of loving words and hearty manly en- 
 couragement. 
 
 Abeginning has been made already; for that munificent 
 anonymous benefactor, whose thousand-pound cheques 
 have helped so many of our deserving charities, showed 
 his usual nice discrimination by taking a walk in the di- 
 rection of Wright's Lane. The result of this has been 
 the erection of those long workshops which extend across 
 one side of the wide green area, with its ornamental 
 
" WITH THE HALT AND THE LAME." 185 
 
 trees, at the back of the building — an area which is 
 a good part of the acre on which the property stands, 
 and forms a capital recreation-ground, without quite 
 leaving out of sight the pleasant kitchen-garden be- 
 yond, or the little building in the further corner, which 
 is intended as a cottage- infirmary in cases of sickness. 
 There are the workshops, quite ready for another con- 
 tingent of lads, such as are now busily at work in the 
 tailoring department, where they are sitting on the board 
 in the proper tailor-fashion, sewing away at one or other 
 of the many private orders for gentlemen's clothes, or 
 "juvenile suits," which are the better appreciated because 
 they are hand-sewn, instead of being made with that 
 machine, at the end of the room, to learn the working of 
 which is, however, a necessary part of the modern tailor's 
 trade. Quite ready, also, for our friends the relief-stampers, 
 and for an additional crew of young carpenters to join 
 those who are now busy below amidst a fine odour of 
 fresh deal and the cheery sound of hammer, chisel, and 
 plane. One of our young friends of the wooden legs — - 
 a strapping fellow of seventeen — is just deftly finishing 
 off a very attractive chest of drawers, which will only 
 need to be taken to the painting and varnishing rooms 
 that form a part of the new building to be a very 
 capital example of the workmanship of the establish- 
 ment. For it cannot be too strongly insisted on that the 
 customers of the Industrial Cripples get value for their 
 money, whether it be in ornamental stationery, in plain 
 furniture, packing cases, boxes, and general carpentry, or 
 in " superfine suits" to order, or "own materials made up 
 and repairs neatly executed." It is no sham industrial 
 school, but a real practical working establishment, and 
 when the new buildings are quite completed, and the 
 
iS6 "ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS:' 
 
 dwelling-house has that other wing added to it, in order 
 to provide proper dormitories and a school-room, dining- 
 room, and lavatory, at all in proportion to the number 
 
 of boys who are waiting anxiously for admission 
 
 Ah ! but the question is, When shall this be ? Not 
 till another £5,000 is added to the funds, I am told — 
 about as much money as is sometimes spent in some 
 public display which lasts three or four hours, and going 
 to look at which probably half a dozen men, women, or 
 children are lamed and crippled in the crowd. Judging 
 from the present arrangements, with very little room to 
 spare, and a not very conveniently-adaptable space, the 
 money would be carefully spent ; for there is no tendency 
 to undue luxury, and the present household staff would 
 still be sufficient for providing meals and looking after 
 the family needs of these robust and independent young 
 cripples. That it would be a work all the more bene- 
 ficial, because of this very independence with which it is 
 associated, it needs few arguments to prove ; but, 
 should reasons be asked for, let us take three cases for 
 which the benefits of the Home are earnestly sought, 
 and they will speak in suggestive accents of the need of 
 that extension for which an appeal is being made. I 
 need not tell you the names either of those who nominate 
 the cases or the boys themselves ; but be assured that 
 the former would be sufficient guarantee of the need which 
 it is sought to relieve : — 
 
 No. 1.— "The father is paralysed, and can do no work. The 
 mother is not a very satisfactory person. Family consist of— 
 
 1. The eldest, a boy of twenty, who does odd jobs. 
 
 2. The cripple. 
 
 3. Boy, works, and gets 5s. 
 
 4. Boy, sells lights in the City. 
 
 There are four little girls at home besides. 
 
" WITH THE HALT AND THE LAME." 1S7 
 
 The cripple is in a very wretched state from want of food, but he 
 has the use of his hands." 
 
 No. 2 (Edinburgh). — " Was never at school more than a year 
 in his life, and never attended regularly two months together. He 
 can neither read nor write, and has been neglected and often half- 
 starved by his dissipated parents. His mother pawns everything 
 she can get to buy drink, and the boy has little benefit from the 
 wages he makes, which are about 5s. per week. Their house is 
 miserably dirty, Mrs. (the mother) being always drunk or in- 
 capable on the Saturday and Sunday. The boy works at Mr. 
 
 B 's Pottery, P . He is honest and industrious. He is 
 
 more miserable at home of late since he is left alone with his mother. 
 It would be a great advantage to the boy if he could be admitted to 
 the Industrial Home at Kensington, where he would be well trained,, 
 and where he would be quite beyond his mother's reach." 
 
 No. 3 (recommended by a Clergyman). — " Has been very regular 
 at our school, and has been attentive and got on very well. His 
 mother, a widow, lives with her sons, all of whom she has brought 
 up well. She is an industrious, honest woman, and receives no help 
 from the Board of Guardians excepting an allowance made for the 
 maintenance of the cripple, and which, in case of his being accepted 
 at the Home, they have promised to continue to pay for his main- 
 tenance. I may add that the Board, when he was called before them 
 the other day, gave great praise to his mother for the cleanliness and 
 respectability of his appearance." 
 
 Poor, depressed, starved, neglected, hopeless crippled 
 boys, how long will it be before they come here for 
 shelter, for hope, and renewal of life ? I should ask the 
 question — though the answer could only be a guess — but 
 I am suddenly diverted by the tremendous ringing of a 
 hand-bell, on which one vigorous young cripple is ringing 
 a peal, which is almost loud enough to announce to all 
 Kensington that it is "tea-time." The sound has the 
 effect of bringing all the forty from their work — a con- 
 tingent of young carpenters staying behind for a little 
 while to dispose of some waste shavings which have been 
 swept out of some corner where they may have been in 
 
1 88 "ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS: 7 
 
 the way. Then they come trooping into the big room, 
 where they present so strange a variety of height and 
 appearance, and also so remarkable a diversity of twist 
 and lameness and distortion, that we are impressed at 
 once with the melancholy fact that every boy there is in 
 reality a cripple, and yet with the cheering reflection, in- 
 spired by some of the lively smiling faces, that there are 
 vast mitigations of such afflictions — mitigations that come 
 so near to cures as to make our neglect of them a very 
 serious evil, when the means lie near at hand. 
 
 In this big room, which is neither dining-room, nor 
 kitchen, nor refectory, but a homely combination of all 
 three, there is no ornament, no sign of luxury, or of un- 
 necessary expenditure — plain deal forms or stools at 
 plain deal tables, on which are arranged a regiment of 
 full-sized mugs of good sound tea, and plates, each con- 
 taining a substantial half-pound slice of bread from a 
 homely two-pound loaf, spread with butter or dripping. 
 For breakfast the same quantity is provided, with the 
 substitution of coffee for tea ; and dinner consists of a 
 half-pound of roast or boiled meat, with plenty of vege- 
 tables, and dumplings, pies, or puddings ; while bread 
 and cheese, or bread and butter, is served for supper. 
 For it must be remembered that these are working lads, 
 and that they require to be substantially, and, from the 
 nature of their bodily affliction, even generously fed, so 
 that these supplies of pure plain diet are not by any 
 means excessive ; and they are such as one very ordinary 
 kitchen can supply — a kitchen, by the bye, which will 
 probably be superseded by a more convenient one when 
 the new wing shall be finished. Yet there is something in 
 these unadorned, bare, almost too plainly appointed 
 places, which brings with it a reassuring conviction that 
 
" WITH THE HALT AND THE LAME? 189 
 
 the institution has never been pampered. The dining- 
 room, which has to do duty for a school-room also — the 
 play-room, which is a rather dim kind of retreat on this 
 November evening — and the plain, rather bare, but still 
 clean and airy dormitories (especially those in the big bay- 
 windowed front rooms of the old red brick house), are 
 evidences that the place does not belie its name ; that 
 it is really a home, but essentially an industrial home, 
 where work goes on as part of each day's blessing, and 
 the title to play freely and with a light heart is thereby 
 ensured. 
 
WITH THEM WHO HA VE NOT WHERE TO LAY 
 THEIR HEADS. 
 
 HERE is a degree of poverty which, while it is 
 not absolute pauperism, often has deeper needs 
 than those which are alleviated by parochial 
 relief — a destitution which is none the less 
 bitter because those who suffer it cannot stoop to actual 
 mendicancy, and shrink from the degradation of the 
 casual ward and its contaminating influences. 
 
 Those of us who at this season of the year are surrounded 
 with comforts, and can meet together to enjoy them, 
 should feel that there is no sadder phase of the life of 
 this great city than that to which our attention is called 
 by the statistics of those same casual wards, and the ac- 
 companying certainty that every night there are men, 
 women, and children, who, amidst surrounding luxury 
 and splendour, have not where to lay their heads, and for 
 whom the repellent door of the nearest union workhouse 
 is closed, even if they could summon such courage as 
 comes of desperation, and dared to enter. 
 
 Happily, the numbers of those who seek what is called 
 casual relief have diminished in proportion to the general 
 abatement of pauperism ; and it is perhaps encouraging 
 to know that the applicants for nightly shelter at Refuges 
 
NOT WHERE TO LAY THEIR HEADS. 191 
 
 for the homeless and destitute are fewer than they were 
 three or fouryears ago. This is a fact which should be made 
 public, because some of these Refuges have been accused 
 of offering inducements to casual paupers to seek food 
 and shelter provided by charitable subscriptions, instead 
 of betaking themselves to the night-wards provided 
 for them at metropolitan workhouses. The complaint 
 was made on altogether insufficient grounds, at a time 
 when, during a hard winter, and with a fearful amount 
 of distress among the poorest class of the community, the 
 workhouse night-wards themselves were frequently inade- 
 quate to the demands made upon them ; while, apart 
 from the persons who were known as casual paupers, 
 there were hundreds of unfortunates suffering from 
 temporary starvation and the want of a place in which to 
 find a night's lodging, who yet were altogether removed 
 from what is known as pauperism, and dreaded the 
 abject hopelessness which they associated with "the 
 Union." 
 
 It should not be forgotten, either, that the task which 
 is, and was then, imposed upon the pauper on the morning 
 following his night's lodging and its previous dole of 
 gruel and bread, renders it almost impossible for the 
 recipient to obtain work. Before his job of stone-breaking 
 or oakum-picking is accomplished, the hour for com- 
 mencing ordinary labour outside the workhouse walls has 
 passed, and his hope of resuming independent employ- 
 ment, and the wages that will provide food and lodging 
 for the next four-and-twenty hours, has passed also. 
 This alone is always sufficient to make a very marked 
 distinction between the regular casual pauper and the 
 temporarily unfortunate man or woman who, having 
 failed to get work, and seeking only the aid that may 
 
j 92 WITH THEM WHO HAVE 
 
 give rest and strength for a renewed effort, might look 
 in vain for succour but for the existence of places like 
 that admirable Institution to which I wish to take you 
 to-night. 
 
 The shameful spectacle of groups, and, in many- 
 instances, of crowds, of houseless, starving, and half- 
 naked creatures huddled about the doors of casual wards, 
 to which they had been refused admission in direct 
 defiance of legislation, led to the establishment of Night 
 Refuges. There was then no time to dispute. While 
 boards and committees were squabbling and vilifying 
 each other, the poor were perishing. But even now that 
 abettersystem prevails, and pauperismhas so considerably 
 diminished, there is much necessity for the continuance of 
 these institutions and their adaptation to the relief of that 
 kind of distress which is all the more poignant because 
 it is at present only temporary, but would receive the 
 brand and stamp of permanence if it could find no other 
 mitigation than that secured by an appeal to workhouse 
 officials, the shelter of the casual shed, the union dole, 
 and the daily task required in return. 
 
 At the time that Night Refuges were first founded, in 
 consequence of the failure of the Houseless Poor Act, 
 there were one or two institutions which went on the plan 
 of offering no inducement whatever to those who sought 
 shelter within their walls. The provisions were barer, 
 the beds harder, the reception little less cold and un- 
 sympathetic than they would receive at any metropolitan 
 union. 
 
 Those of my readers who remember the Refuge for the 
 Houseless Poor which once stood in Playhouse Yard, 
 close to that foul tangle of courts that still exists 
 between Barbican and St. Luke's, and is known as " The 
 
I 
 
 NOT WHERE TO LAY THEIR HEADS. 193 
 
 Chequers," will understand me when I say that there were 
 no alluring inducements for the houseless and the desti- 
 tute to seek its aid. 
 
 I have seldom seen a more painfully suggestive crowd 
 than that which waited outside the blank door of that 
 hideous building on a cold drizzly evening when I paid the 
 place a visit, only a short time before it was finally closed. 
 I cannot deny, however, that the applicants for admission 
 consisted of those persons for whom the institution 
 seemed to be especially designed. The very lowest class 
 of poverty, the representatives of sheer destitution, made 
 up the 350 men and the 150 women who were to occupy 
 the bare wooden bunks in the two departments of the 
 building that night, and to accept, as a stay against 
 starvation, the half-pound of dry bread and the drink of 
 water. What I would call emphatic attention to, is the 
 fact that this place was filled nightly at that time, 
 because the inmates could leave early in the morning to 
 seek a day's work, and so rise out of that depth of desti- 
 tution which was represented by the nightly return to the 
 casual ward. But let us remember that, though this 
 Institution could scarcely be characterised by the warm 
 name of " charity," it received all applicants who were 
 not suffering from infectious diseases, and therefore its 
 policy was deterrent. In order to separate itself from 
 the idle casual, it made its provisions little short of penal, 
 and, indeed, very far short of those common comforts that 
 are to be found in prison. 
 
 But the Refuge in Newport Market was one of those 
 which had been founded on a different principle. It was 
 never intended as a supplement to the casual ward, or as 
 having any relation to poor-law relief: though, during 
 the terrible distress that overtook the houseless in that 
 
 13 
 
i 9 4 WITH THEM WHO HAVE 
 
 severe winter when our poor-law arrangements broke 
 down utterly, it was impossible for any place founded in 
 the name of Christian love and charity to be very par- 
 ticular in excluding famishing and frozen men and women 
 on the suspicion that they had already somehow obtained 
 parochial relief the night before. 
 
 This " Refuge " was originally established by the in- 
 fluence and the personal exertions of Mrs. Gladstone, and 
 a few ladies and gentlemen who, knowing of the extreme 
 distress that prevailed in all that poverty-stricken neigh- 
 hourhood about Seven Dials, around the alien-haunted 
 district of Soho, and in the purlieux of Drury Lane, and 
 the courts of Long Acre, set about providing some 
 remedy for the misery that homeless, destitute men, 
 women, and children had to suffer during the bitter 
 nights of winter. First, a regular mission was established 
 in an ordinary room, and, after a time, space was secured 
 to make a Refuge — first for six, then for ten, and after- 
 wards for twenty of the most destitute cases which came 
 under the notice of the mission-woman. This went on 
 till the funds were sufficient to warrant a very earnest 
 desire to obtain larger premises, and at last to make a 
 bid for that queer ramshackle old slaughter-house, which 
 was the rather too indicative feature of the locality. The 
 landlords of this place were fully alive to the value of 
 any property rising in proportion to the anxiety of some- 
 body to become its tenant, and they demanded a high 
 rent accordingly. Still, the work had to be done, and 
 the slaughter-house— cleansed, repaired, whitewashed, 
 and divided into several queer, irregular- shaped wards 
 and rooms, which were reached by strange flights of 
 steps and zig-zag entries — was opened with cheerful con- 
 fidence and hope, under the earnest superintendence of 
 
NOT WHERE TO LAY THEIR HEADS. 195 
 
 the Rev. J. Williams, who was at that time incumbent of 
 the parish of St. Mary, Soho. It was at that period that 
 I first made acquaintance with the Institution, and with 
 the quiet, undemonstrative work of charity which was 
 carried on there, and is continued to this day, though it 
 is less arduous now that the neighbourhood itself has felt 
 the influence of such an organization — not so much in 
 the diminution of actual poverty, as in the humanising 
 and constantly suggestive presence of men and women 
 who have brought a gospel to those who were hopeless, 
 and seemed to have none to care for them. 
 
 The need to receive numbers every night to the utmost 
 limits of the Institution has passed now, except occasion- 
 ally during very severe weather ; and though the cases 
 admitted are still those where deep, and sometimes ap- 
 parently almost fatal, misfortune is the claim, there is no 
 longer the urgency which forbade a too discriminating 
 selection, and the regular casual stands no chance under 
 the quick and experienced eye of the superintendent, 
 Mr. Ramsden, whose military tone and manner are, 
 by the way, modulated so as to carry the sense of detec- 
 tion to the pretender, and to support and give courage 
 to the weak and faint-hearted. 
 
 The same complete, quiet method of receiving appli- 
 cants who await admission enables me to repeat the 
 impression which I received during the time that the 
 demands upon the night Refuge were more urgent. The 
 experienced visitor who stands at the gate of this rehabili- 
 tated building that was once the old slaughter-house, and 
 who watches the people go in one by one, and listens to 
 their low-voiced pleas for food and shelter, cannot mis- 
 take them for casual ward cases. Just as, in some other 
 Institutions, the pain of the spectacle is the degraded 
 
 13—2 
 
196 WITH THEM WHO HAVE 
 
 poverty of those who seek aid, the most affecting ele- 
 ment here is utter destitution, without that accustomed 
 debasement which would find a fitting resource at the 
 workhouse door, leading to the night shed. 
 
 These are broken-down men and women ; old men 
 beaten in the battle of life, and full of present sorrow ; 
 young men who have fought and failed, or who have 
 eaten of the husks, and seek occasion to rise to a better 
 mind; middle-aged men not altogether crushed or hope- 
 less, but in sore want, and needing the sound of a kindly 
 voice, the touch of a friendly hand; women who have 
 lost youth and worldly hope together — women who, 
 more weak than wicked, and without resource, need some 
 stay alike for fainting bodies and for wandering souls ; 
 women worn and hungry, because of the lack even of ill- 
 paid work, and asking for rest and food till they can seek 
 employment : some who will go forth in the morning and 
 set out afresh ; others who, if they can secure two or 
 three nights' lodging, with a mouthful of food and drink 
 morning and evening, have a good hope of doing better 
 in the future. 
 
 To. those who know how the demand for certain kinds 
 of labour varies, and frequently slackens towards the 
 winter months, when need is sorest, this latter most mer- 
 ciful provision comes with a sense of truest charity. 
 Tickets of admission are issued to friends and visitors of 
 the Institution (and any one may be a visitor who chooses 
 to ring at the bell of the old slaughter-house), entitling 
 the holder to admission after the regular evening hour of 
 half-past five to six, so that in bestowing one of these 
 the judicious subscriber (not necessarily, but surely from 
 sympathy a subscriber) can [be a true benefactor. For 
 these tickets will admit the really deserving nightly for a 
 
NOT WHERE TO LAY THEIR HEADS. 197 
 
 week, with supper of bread andxoffee or cocoa, or occa- 
 sional savoury soup, and breakfast of bread and coffee. 
 And even this time is occasionally extended, if there be 
 a reasonable prospect of obtaining work. Not only 
 ticket-holders, but every applicant, may have the same 
 privilege, if it can be shown that he or she is really likely 
 to obtain employment. But there is more than this. 
 There are men here — truest of gentlemen, beyond that 
 social stamp of rank which rightfully belongs to them — 
 who, with a real, manly instinct, know how to take 
 poverty by the hand without offensive patronage or un- 
 timely preaching. There are ladies who, in their true 
 womanhood, can see the contrition in faces bowed down 
 — the shame that is caused, not by evil doings, but by 
 the feeling of dismay which comes of having to ask for 
 charity — can sympathise with broken fortunes, with 
 gentle nurture — cast upon a hard, relentless world, with 
 that poverty which is " above the common." 
 
 More still. Among the supporters and the constant 
 visitors are those who can use special influence for cases 
 that need it most, and obtain for them admission to 
 hospitals and other asylums, or introduce to situations 
 those who by sudden calamity have been deprived of the 
 means of living. 
 
 Yes, even in their deepest need, poor, wandering, home- 
 less women may come here and find help, for in that 
 large, lofty, yet warm and well-lighted room, the women's 
 dormitory — one side of which is composed of a series of 
 niches where the comfortable beds are placed — there are 
 to be seen a row of doors, which seem to belong to a 
 series of cabins, as, indeed, they do. Each door opens 
 into a small bed-room — small, but with room for a chair, 
 a tiny table, and the neat bed. They are the lodgings 
 
198 WITH THEM WHO HAVE 
 
 set apart for women, who, in the midst of their poverty 
 and destitution, are looking forward fearfully to the time 
 when children will be born to them, and so to a period 
 of weakness, and of the sad mingling of maternal pity 
 and desponding sorrow Let me say, in one line from the 
 Report, that last year eight young women were received 
 into the Refuge some time before their confinement, were 
 passed on to Queen Charlotte's Hospital, and were helped 
 until such time as they were able to help themselves. 
 
 I think the knowledge of this is so cheerful an instance 
 of the value of this most representative Refuge, that even 
 the sight of the bright, warm, glowing kitchen, with its 
 great boiler of hot coffee, and its noble kettle of soup 
 occupying the jolly range, scarcely imparts an extra 
 beam to the picture; while the long rows of white mugs, 
 the pleasant, clean, fragrant loaves, the big milk-cans, 
 the courteous chef, who has a true and pardonable pride 
 in his surroundings — no, not even the cosy, rug-covered 
 berths and bunks in the dormitories, nor the quaint little 
 corner-room to which I have to climb a crooked staircase 
 to shake hands with the sister who is in charge, nor the 
 equally quaint and corner}', not to say inconvenient, 
 sitting-room of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsden, who have left their 
 tea unfinished to do the honours of the Institution — can 
 suggest to me a better word to say than that which is sug- 
 gested by the picture of the poor wandering, wear}', fainting 
 women, who, almost in despair, not only for a real, but 
 for an expected life, come here to find rest and peace. 
 
 Stay ; one word more. Who are the class of people 
 for whom the Refuge doors are ordinarily open ? Let 
 us see what were the most numerous cases among the in- 
 mates who during the year received 6,669 nights' lodgings, 
 and 16,889 suppers and breakfasts. Among the men. 
 
NOT WHERE TO LAY THEIR HEADS. 199 
 
 "labourers," of course, are most numerous; then dis- 
 charged soldiers — poor fellows who have perhaps fool- 
 ishly snatched at liberty when offered, and foregone the 
 advantages of re-engagement and a pension ; next in 
 numerical order come clerks — a very painfully suggestive 
 fact, especially when read by the light of the advertise- 
 ment-columns of our newspapers, and the sad story of 
 genteel poverty in that great suburban ring which encir- 
 cles the wealthiest city in the world. Of house-painters 
 there were 24; of servants, 21; of tailors, 13 ; of seamen, 
 8 ; and other callings were represented in remarkable 
 variety, including 1 actor, 6 cooks, 1 schoolmaster, 2 sur- 
 veyors, and 1 tutor. Among the women, 199 servants — 
 show sadly enough the truth of the old adage, " Service 
 is no inheritance ;" while in numerical succession there 
 were, 55 charwomen, 41 laundresses, 37 needlewomen, 
 31 tailoresses, 27 dressmakers, 26 machinists (alas! how 
 many women still utterly depend on "the needle " for a 
 subsistence !), 24 cooks, 20 ironers, 16 field-labourers. 
 There were 4 governesses, 1 actress, 1 mission-woman, 
 and 1 staymaker, the rest being variously described. 
 
 From among these, 94 men and 193 women obtained 
 employment, JJ women having been sent to Peniten- 
 tiaries and Homes, while 18 were supported in the 
 Refuge or elsewhere by needlework, 13 were sent to 
 their friends, 60 obtained permanent work, and 14 girls 
 of good character were sent to Servants' Homes. 
 
 But I have left out one thing now. Among this great 
 representative company of refugees were 60 children, 
 of whom 37 were sent to nurse or to school, while those 
 
 who were old enough Well, just listen to that 
 
 burst of military music in a distant upper-room of the 
 old slaughter-house. I must tell you something about 
 the Newport Market boys in another chapter. 
 
TAKING IN STRANGERS. 
 
 ES ; listen to that startling clangour of military 
 music coming from an upper room. We are 
 standing, you know, in the cheerful kitchen 
 of that Refuge for the Homeless in the reno- 
 vated old slaughter-house in Newport Market, and I 
 want you to come with me to see the boys' school, which 
 occupies a very considerable portion of that weatherproof 
 but ramshackle building. 
 
 Only those who are acquainted with the poverty and 
 the crime of this great metropolis can estimate the deep 
 and urgent need that still exists for refuges in which 
 homeless, destitute, and neglected children can be received 
 for shelter, food, and clothing. Only the practical 
 student of the effect of our present administration of the 
 Education Act can calculate how vast a necessity is likely 
 to exist for the reception and instruction of the children 
 of the poorest, even when all the machinery of the present 
 School Board is put in motion for vindicating the compul- 
 sory clause. 
 
 Let that clause be interpreted in the most liberal 
 manner — which would be in effect to provide State 
 education without cost to the parents — and the Act will 
 still leave untouched a vast number of children for whom 
 
TAKING IN STRANGERS. 201 
 
 nothing can be done until their physical necessities are 
 provided for — children who are perishing with cold, 
 starving for want of food. A visit to some of the big 
 buildings recently erected by the London School Board 
 will reveal the fact that there are many such children 
 now in attendance ; neglected, barefoot, half-clothed, 
 hungry, and with that wistful eager look, sometimes 
 followed by a kind of stupefaction, which may be 
 observed in the poor little outcasts of the streets. There 
 is no reasonable hope of doing much with these little 
 creatures till the " soup-kitchen " and the "free break- 
 fast" are among the appliances of education, where the 
 necessity is most pressing, and the children perish for 
 lack of bread as well as for lack of knowledge. 
 
 As it is — I need not refer again to the escape which is 
 always open from the streets to the prison. The few 
 Government industrial-schools to which magistrates 
 occasionally consign young culprits brought before them 
 are intended only for those who come within the cogni- 
 sance of the law. 
 
 The operations of these reformatory-schools are suc- 
 cessful so far as they go. They represent seventy-five 
 per cent, of successful reformatory training as applied to 
 juvenile transgressors committed by magistrates to their 
 supervision. 
 
 Perhaps, when we are fully impressed with the mean- 
 ing of the statistics which are published each year in 
 the Report of the Inspectors of Certified Schools in Great 
 Britain, we shall begin to consider how it will be possible 
 to regard destitute children in relation to the guardian- 
 ship of the state before they qualify themselves for 
 Government interposition by the expedient of committing 
 what the law calls a crime. 
 
202 « ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS? 
 
 The last Report states distinctly that the sooner crimi- 
 nal children are taken in hand, the more complete is their 
 reformation. There are fewer " criminals " of less 
 than ten years of age than there are hardened offenders 
 of from twelve to sixteen. This is, so far, satisfactory ; 
 but when we consider that (including Roman Catholic 
 establishments) there are but fifty-three reformatories in 
 England, and twelve in Scotland (thirty-seven of those 
 in England and eight in Scotland being for boys, and 
 sixteen in England and four in Scotland for girls), and 
 that in 1873, when the Report was issued, the sum-total 
 of children in all these institutions was but 5,622, of 
 whom one-fourth were in the Roman Catholic schools — 
 we cease to wonder at the vast number of homeless, 
 neglected, and destitute children in London alone — a 
 number which, notwithstanding the efforts of philanthropy 
 and the activity of School Board beadles, exceeds the 
 total of all the inmates of the State reformatories 
 throughout the kingdom. 
 
 This refuge at Newport Market had included destitute 
 and starving boys among those who were brought to its 
 shelter from the cruel streets, the dark arches of railways 
 and of bridges, and the miserable corners where the 
 houseless huddle together at night, long before its sup- 
 porters could make provision for maintaining any of the 
 poor little fellows in an industrial-school. But the work 
 grew, and the means were found, first for retaining some 
 of the juvenile lodgers who came only for a night's food, 
 and warmth, and shelter, and afterwards for receiving 
 them as inmates. 
 
 Some of these are sent to the Refuge by persons who 
 are furnished with printed forms of application, or by 
 mothers who can afford evident testimony that they can 
 
TAKING IN STRANGERS. 203 
 
 scarcely live on the few shillings they are able to earn by 
 casual work as charwomen, or by the no less casual em- 
 ployments where the wages are totally inadequate to 
 support a family ; while a few lads have themselves 
 applied for admission because they were orphans, or 
 utterly destitute and abandoned by those on whom they 
 might be supposed to have a claim. 
 
 A portion of the old building, which has been adapted to 
 the purpose, and has been added as the need for increased 
 space became pressing, is now devoted to the dormitories, 
 play-room, and school-room of some fifty to sixty of this 
 contingent of the great army of friendless children ; and 
 at the time of the last 4 Report fourteen had but just left 
 to be enlisted in military bands ; two had become mili- 
 tary tailors ; situations had been found for others ; 
 while one had been regularly apprenticed to a tailor in 
 London. 
 
 There are frequently several boys ready for such 
 apprenticeship, for tailoring is the only regular trade 
 taught, the time of the lads being occupied in learning to 
 read, write, and cipher, to acquire the outlines of history 
 and geography, and to take a place in the military 
 band which is at this moment making the cranky old 
 building resound with its performance on clarinets, haut- 
 boys, cornets, "deep bassoons," and all kinds of 
 wind instruments, under the direction of an able band- 
 master, who keeps the music up to the mark with a 
 spirit which bespeaks confidence in the intelligence of 
 his pupils. 
 
 This confidence is not misplaced, for during the past 
 year eleven youthful recruits have been drafted from 
 among these boys into the bands of various regiments,, 
 while there are above ninety applications still on the 
 
204 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS: 7 
 
 books for more musicians who have chosen this branch 
 of the military service. It is a matter of choice, of course ; 
 and there are some who prefer to become sailors, or to go 
 into situations and learn the trade of tailoring, that their 
 instructors may be able to recommend them to respect- 
 able masters as apprentices. 
 
 But let us walk through the kitchen, and ascend the 
 short zig-zag stairs which lead us by a passage to the 
 school-room, where most of the boys are at work with 
 their slates. Very few of the little fellows are more than 
 thirteen years old, and some of them have been but a 
 short time at school ; but even those who came here 
 totally uninstructed have made admirable progress, and 
 some of the writing-books containing lessons from dicta- 
 tion are well worth looking at for their clean and excel- 
 lent penmanship and fair spelling ; while in arithmetic 
 the boys who have been longest under tuition have 
 advanced as far as " practice." There is nothing super- 
 fluous in school-room, work-room, or play-room — indeed, 
 one might almost say that they are unfurnished, except 
 for desks and forms and plain deal tables. The play- 
 room is a lower portion of the old slaughter-house, 
 with a high ceiling, to a beam in which is fixed a 
 pair of ropes terminating in two large wooden rings by 
 which the youthful gymnasts swing and perform all 
 kinds of evolutions, while a set of parallel bars are among 
 the few accessories. 
 
 It is evident that nothing is spent in mere ornament, 
 and that the expenditure is carefully considered, though 
 recreation, and healthy recreation too, is a part of the 
 daily duty, which is regulated in a fashion befitting the 
 rather military associations of the place. Even now, as 
 the cheery superintendent, Mr. Ramsden, who was lately 
 
TAKING IN STRANGERS. 205 
 
 quartermaster-sergeant of the 16th Regiment, calls 
 " Attention !" every boy is quickly on his feet and ready 
 to greet us ; and what is more, the boys seem to like 
 this kind of discipline, for it is kind in its prompt demand 
 for obedience, and the regularity and order includes a 
 kind of self-reliance, which is a very essential part of 
 education for lads who must necessarily be taught what 
 they have to learn in a comparatively short time, and are 
 then sent out where order and promptitude are of the 
 utmost service to them. Economy is studied, but the 
 recollection of the cheery kitchen suggests that there is 
 no griping hard endeavour to curtail the rations neces- 
 sary to support health and strength. In fact, the boys 
 are sufficiently fed, warmly clothed, and are encouraged 
 both to work and play heartily. Breakfast consists of 
 bread and coffee ; dinner of meat and vegetables three 
 days in the week, fish on one day (Wednesday), pudding 
 on Monday, soup on Friday, meat and cheese on Satur- 
 day ; tea or coffee with bread and dripping, while on 
 Sundays butter is an additional luxury both at break- 
 fast and tea ; and on Thursdays and Sundays tea is sub- 
 stituted for coffee at the evening meal. All the boys are 
 decently and warmly clothed, and though only some of 
 their number " take to music " as a profession, and choose 
 to go into the military bands, they all receive instruction. 
 They are taught to keep their own bunks and dormi- 
 tories neat, and, in fact, do their own household work ; 
 while, morning and afternoon, personal trimness is pro- 
 moted by the military "inspection" which is part of the 
 discipline. There is half an hour's play after breakfast, 
 another quarter of hour before dinner, three-quarters of 
 an hour for " washing and play " after dinner, a quarter 
 of an hour before tea, and from an hour and a half to two 
 
206 "ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 hours for boot-cleaning and play before bed-time, besides 
 out-door exercise daily, except in wet weather, when 
 drill and gymnastics take its place. They also go to 
 Primrose Hill on Tuesday and Saturday afternoons, 
 there to run in the fresh air and disport themselves in 
 cricket, or such games as they can find the toys for, by 
 the kindness of the committee or generous visitors. Even. 
 with these recreations, however, they find time to go 
 through a very respectable amount of work in the four- 
 teen hours between rising and bed-time ; and the letters 
 received from lads who have left the school are an evi- 
 dence that they remember with pleasure and with grati- 
 tude the Refuge that became a home, and to which they 
 attribute their ability to take a place which would have 
 been denied to them without the aid which grew out of 
 pity for their neglected childhood. 
 
 Here is a short epistle from one of the juvenile band, 
 at Shorncliffe Camp, written a year or two ago : — 
 
 " I now take the pleasure of writing these few lines and I hope all 
 the boys are all well, and all in the school and please Mr. Ramsden 
 will you send me the parcel up that I took into the school it was 
 laying in the bookcase in the school-room and I hope that all the 
 boys are all getting on with their instruments and the snips with their 
 work and I should like you to read it to the boys and I wish that 
 you would let answer it and I am getting on with my instru- 
 ment very well, and I will be able to come and see you on Crista- 
 mas season." 
 
 This is a characteristic schoolboy letter, which shows 
 how much boys are alike in all grades. The following is 
 another letter from ShornclirTe : — 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 " I received your kind and welcome letter along with mothers, 
 and I wrote back to tell you we have all been enlisted and sworn in, 
 and we expect to get our clothes next week and we all feel it our 
 duty to express our deeply felt gratitude to you Mr. Dust and the 
 
TAKING IN STRANGERS. 207 
 
 Committee, and we are all very happy at present please give our 
 respects to Mrs. Ramsden Sister Zillah Mr. McDerby Mr. Mason 
 Mr. Goodwin Miss Cheesman and please remember us to all the 
 boys. Leary is on sick furlough since the 15th of Deer, and has not 
 returned yet and Brenan, Lloyd Graham McCarthy Henderson and 
 all the others are very jolly at present and been out all the afternoon 
 amongst the snow. So I conclude with kind thanks to one and all 
 and believe me to be Dear Sir 
 
 " Your late pupil 
 
 " Band Regt.' ; 
 
 The following will show how the memory of the old 
 slaughter-house and the school in Newport Market 
 remains after the boys have left and have entered on a 
 career. It is addressed from Warley Barracks : — 
 
 " Dear Sir 
 
 " I now take the opportunity of writing to you hoping you 
 and all the rest of the school and the sister also. It is a long time 
 since I left the school now and I dont suppose you would know me 
 if I was to come and see you I was apprenticed out off the school 
 
 along of J R to Mr W in 1869 I think it was as a 
 
 Tailor. I should like you to write and tell me if you know what 
 
 rigment J H belong to his school number was 34 and 
 
 mine was 35 me and him was great friends when we were in the 
 school and I should like to know very much were he is. When I 
 left the School Mr. L was Supperintendant and I dont sup- 
 pose I should know you sir if I was to see you I shall try to come 
 down and see the School if I can on Christmas for I shall be on 
 pass to London for seven days and I should like to know where 
 
 J H is so as I should be able to see him. I have a few 
 
 more words to say that is the school was the making of me and I 
 am very thankful to the school for it so with kind love to you all 
 " I remain your humble servant, 
 
 " Band Regiment, 
 
 " Warley Barracks, Essex. 
 
 "J H number was 34 and mine was 35. 
 
 "Excuse me addressing this Letter to you as I dont know any- 
 thing about you sir." 
 
 There is something pleasant indeed in letters like 
 
208 "ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS? 
 
 these ; and I for one am not surprised that the boys 
 should go to their musical practice with a will. 
 
 They are just preparing to play something for our 
 especial delight now, and so burst out, in a grand 
 triumphant blast, with " Let the Hills Resound," after 
 which we will take our leave, and, we hope, not without 
 melody in our hearts. Just one word as we go through 
 this kitchen again. Two West End clubs supply the 
 Newport Market Refuge with the remnants of their 
 well-stocked larders. Did it ever occur to you how 
 many hungry children and poor men and women could be 
 fed on the actual waste that goes on in hotels, clubs, inns, 
 dining-rooms, and large and ordinary households every 
 day ? M. Alexis Soyer used to say that he could feed 
 ten thousand people with the food that was wasted in 
 London every day ; and I am inclined to think he was 
 not far wrong. At all events, an enormous salvage of 
 humanity might be effected if only the one meal daily 
 which might be made of " refuse " pieces of meat and 
 bread, bones, cuttings of vegetables, cold potatoes, and 
 general pieces — was secured to the thousands to whom 
 " enough " would often indeed be " as good as a feast." 
 To people who know how much that is really good for 
 food — not the plate-scrapings and leavings, but sound 
 and useful reversions of meat and bread and vegetables, 
 bones, and unsightly corners of joints — is either suffered 
 to spoil or is thrown at once into the waste-tub, both in 
 hotels and private houses, the additional knowledge that 
 there are hungry children in every district in London to 
 whom a bowl of nourishing soup or a plate of minced 
 meat and vegetables would be a boon, may easily be 
 a pain, because of the inability to suggest how to 
 organise the means of utilising what one is tempted to 
 call undeserved plenty. 
 
FEEDING THE MULTITUDE, 
 
 SUPPOSE there are people still to be found 
 who have but a vague notion of what it is to 
 be really hungry. They may be conscious 
 of possessing a good appetite now and then, 
 and having the means of obtaining food, and to a certain 
 extent of choosing what they will eat, regard being rather 
 " sharp set " as a luxury which gives additional zest to a 
 dinner, enabling them to take off the edge of their craving 
 with a plate of warm soup, and to consider what they 
 would like " to follow." 
 
 Of course we most of us read in the papers of the dis- 
 tress of the poor during the winter, of the number of 
 children for whom appeals are made that they may have 
 a meal of meat and vegetables once or twice a week, of 
 the aggregate of casual paupers during a given period, 
 and of cases where " death accelerated by want and ex- 
 posure " is the verdict of a coroner's jury ; but we do not 
 very easily realise what it is to be famished ; have perhaps 
 never experienced that stage beyond hunger — beyond 
 even the faintness and giddiness that makes us doubt 
 whether we could swallow anything solid, and would 
 cause us to turn hopelessly from dry bread. There is no 
 need here to detail the sufferings that come of starvation. 
 
 14 
 
2 io "ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS." 
 
 They are dreadful enough ; but if our chanty needs the 
 stimulus of such descriptions we are in a bad way, and 
 are ourselves in danger of perishing for want of moral 
 sustenance. 
 
 Those who need assurance of the hunger of hundreds 
 of their poor neighbours need not go very far to obtain 
 it. A quarter of an hour at the window of any common 
 cook-shop in a " low neighbourhood," at about seven 
 o'clock in the evening, when the steam of unctuous 
 puddings is blurring the glass, and the odour of leg-of- 
 beef soup and pease-pudding comes in gusts to the'chilly 
 street, should suffice. There is pretty sure to be a group 
 of poor little eager-eyed pinch-nosed boys and girls 
 peering wistfully in to watch the fortunate possessor of 
 two-pence who comes out with something smoking hot 
 on a cabbage-leaf, and begins to bite at it furtively before 
 he crosses the threshold. 
 
 Of course, according to modern social political economy, 
 it would be encouraging mendicity, and sapping the 
 foundations of an independent character, to distribute 
 sixpenny pieces amongst the juvenile committee of taste 
 who are muttering what they would buy if only some- 
 body could be found to advance " a copper." But it is to 
 be hoped or feared (which ?) that a good many people 
 yet live who would instinctively feel in their pockets for 
 a stray coin to expend on a warm greasy slab of baked 
 or boiled, or on half a dozen squares of that peculiarly 
 dense pie-crust which is sold in ha'porths. This is a 
 vulgar detail ; but somehow poverty and hunger are 
 vulgar, and we should find it difficult to get away from 
 them if we tried ever so hard. Even School Boards, 
 peeping out upon the children perishing for lack of know- 
 ledge, find themselves in a difficulty, because there is no 
 
FEEDING THE MUL TITUDE. 2 1 1 
 
 provision under the compulsory or any other clause for 
 the children who are also perishing for lack of food. The 
 Board beadle does not at present go about with soup- 
 tickets in his pockets ; and for the poor shivering shoeless 
 urchins who are mustered in the big brick-built room 
 where they assemble according to law there is no free 
 breakfast-class. 
 
 It must one day become a question how they are to 
 learn till they are filled. Grown people find it hard 
 enough to fix their attention on the best advice or the 
 most saving doctrine while they suffer involuntary hunger. 
 The multitude must mostly be fed before they are taught. 
 Even disciples have had a revelation of the Bread of Life 
 in the breaking of bread that perishes. Do we still need 
 a miracle to teach us that ? 
 
 Happily, efforts are made to give meat to the hungry. 
 During the winter weather food is distributed in various 
 ways amidst some of those poverty-stricken neighbour- 
 hoods to which I am obliged to take you during our ex- 
 cursions ; but the demand far exceeds the supply, and 
 people suffer hunger at all seasons, though most of all in 
 the time of bleak winds and searching cold. 
 
 I want you to come to-day to a kitchen which is open 
 all the year round — the only kitchen of the kind in Lon- 
 don which does not close its doors even when the spring- 
 tide brings buds of promise on the shrubs in Leicester 
 Square, and the London sparrow comes out from roofs 
 and eaves, and preens his dingy plumage in the summer 
 sun, as though Great Windmill Street had something in 
 common with its name, and sweet country odours came 
 from the region of the Haymarket. 
 
 For, you know, we are still in the district of Soho. I 
 have but just now brought you out of Newport Market, 
 
 14 — 2 
 
212 "ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS: 1 
 
 and now we are in a very curious part of this vast strange 
 city. The streets are dim and dingy, but not so squalid 
 as you might have imagined. They are still and silent, 
 too, as of a. neighbourhood that has seen better days, and 
 even in its poverty has a sense of gentility which is 
 neither boisterous nor obtrusive. 
 
 You will remember that I referred to this neighbour- 
 hood of Soho when I spoke of those old French refugees 
 who came and made industrial colonies in London after 
 the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. This is the only 
 really foreign quarter of London which has lasted until 
 to-day ; but that is to be accounted for by the fact that 
 it became representative of no particular industry, and 
 that, probably from the fact of many of the patrons of 
 literature and art having then town houses about Leicester 
 and Soho Squares, the more artistic refugees took up 
 their abode in the adjacent streets. 
 
 From the time when William Hogarth painted his pic- 
 ture of the Calais Gate till only a short time ago, when 
 refugees fled from besieged Paris to find some poor and 
 wretched lodging in the purlieus of Cranbourne Street, 
 where they might live in peace and hear their native 
 tongue, this has been the resort of poor foreigners in 
 London. It almost reminds one of some of the smaller 
 streets of a continental city ; and as we look at the queer 
 shabby restaurants, and the shops with strange names 
 painted above them in long yellow letters, we almost ex- 
 pect to find the pavement change to cobble-stones, and 
 to see some queer wooden sign dangle overhead, so like 
 is the place to the small bourgeois quarter that in our 
 earlier days lay behind the Madeleine and the Porte St. 
 Denis. 
 
 For here is an actual cremerie — a queer compound of 
 
FEEDING THE MULTITUDE. 213 
 
 cook-shop and milkseller's — with a couple of bright dairy 
 cans outside the door, and a long loaf or two amidst the 
 cups and plates and sausages in the dingy window. 
 Over the way you see " Blancliisscuse " in large letters ; 
 and next door is a laiterie, which differs from a cremerie 
 as a cafe alone differs from a cafe restaurant with its 
 " commerce de vins " painted in big capitals in front of a 
 long row of sour-looking bottles and a green calico cur- 
 tain. It is a quaint jumble, all the way to Dean Street, 
 and till we reach the edge of the Haymarket — a jumble 
 of Brown and Lebrun, of Jones and Jean, of Robin (fils) 
 and Robinson ; but for all the little musty-smelling 
 cafe's, the blank bare-windowed restaurants, the cremeries, 
 and the boulangcries, there is nothing of a well fed look 
 about the district, especially just at this corner, leading 
 as it seems to a stable-yard or the entrance to a range of 
 packers' warehouses. There is one open front here — is 
 it a farrier's or a blacksmith's shop ? — where they appear 
 to be doing a stroke of business, however, for there is a 
 clinking, and a fire, and a steam ; but the steam has a 
 fragrant odour of vegetables — of celery and turnips, of 
 haricots and gravy — the clink is that of basins and 
 spoons getting ready, and the fire is that of the boiler 
 which simmers two mighty cauldrons. 
 
 Step to the front, and you will see in big white letters 
 right across the house, "Mont St. Bernard Hospice." 
 You may well rub your eyes, for you are in the heart of 
 London, and stand in Ham Yard, Leicester Square, be- 
 fore the soup-kitchen that is open all the year. 
 
 There is something very appetising in the steam that 
 arises from both these huge cauldrons, one of which is 
 the stock-pot, containing bones, remnants of joints (not 
 plate-clearings), and reversions of cold meat, &c, from 
 
214 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS." 
 
 two West End clubs. To this are added vegetables — 
 celery, haricot beans, or barley — making it a fresh palat- 
 able stock, not remarkable for meatiness, but still excel- 
 lent in flavour, as you may find for yourself if you join 
 me in a luncheon here. But the real strengthening 
 gravy has yet to be added, and the cauldron on the left 
 hand is full of it — real, genuine gravy soup, made from 
 raw meat and bones purchased for this purpose. As 
 soon as this has simmered till it is thoroughly ready, the 
 contents of the two cauldrons are mixed, and the result 
 is a delicious stew, which is ready to be turned out into 
 these yellow pint basins, for the hungry applicants, who 
 will sit down at one of these two deal tables, each of 
 which has its rough clean form, or to be dispensed to 
 those who bring jugs, bowls, cans ; saucepans, kettles, 
 pipkins — any and almost every receptacle in which they 
 can carry it steaming away to their families. 
 
 Let us stand here and see them come in. Here is a 
 poor famishing fellow, who looks with eager eyes at the 
 savoury mess. He has evidently seen better days. 
 There is an unmistakable air of education about him, 
 and as he sits down with his basin and spoon, and the 
 handful of broken bread, which is added to the soup from 
 one of a series of clean sacks emptied for the purpose, 
 the superintendent, Mr. Stevens, scans him with a quick 
 eye, and will probably speak to him before he leaves. 
 There is a foreigner — an Italian, by the look of his oval 
 olive face — who takes his place very quietly, and as 
 quietly begins to eat ; and yonder a famished-looking, 
 rough fellow, who has already devoured the basinful with 
 his eyes, and is evidently in sore need. Men, women, 
 and children, or, at all events, boys and girls, come and 
 present their tickets, and receive this immediate relief, 
 
FEEDING THE MULTITUDE. 215 
 
 •against which surely not the most rigorous opponent to 
 mendicancy can protest. The cadger and the profes- 
 sional beggar do not go to the soup-kitchen where 
 nothing is charged, for they do not need food, and will 
 •only see a ticket where it is likely to be accompanied by 
 the penny which will buy a quart. Be sure that there are 
 few cases here which are not so necessitous that they are 
 not far from starvation ; and many of them represent 
 actually desperate want. 
 
 The tickets for obtaining this prompt relief — often only 
 just in time to save some poor creature from utter desti- 
 tution and crime, and as often administered when a 
 family is without food, and yet clings to the hope of 
 finding work to prevent that separation which they must 
 submit to by becoming paupers — are placed in the hands 
 of clergymen, doctors, district visitors, Bible-women, and 
 those who know the poor, and can feel for them when in 
 hard times they pawn furniture, tools, and clothes, and 
 suffer the extremity of want, before they will apply for 
 parochial relief, and have offered to them the alternative 
 of " going into the house." 
 
 The annals of the poor, from which extracts occasion- 
 ally appear in the newspapers in the accounts of coroners' 
 inquests, prove to what dreadful sufferings many decent 
 but destitute people will submit rather than become re- 
 cognised paupers ; and no system of charitable relief out- 
 side the workhouse walls will be effectual or useful which 
 does not recognise and respect this feeling. Who would 
 let the possible accident of some unworthy person getting 
 a gratuitous pint of soup stand in the way of a work 
 such as we see going on here, where one year's beneficent 
 action includes above ten thousand persons relieved ? — 
 a large number of whom are temporarily taken into 
 
216 " ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS!' 
 
 the Hospice, as we shall see presently, while a great con- 
 tingent is represented by the family tickets, which enable 
 poor working men and women from various districts in 
 London to carry away a gallon of strong nourishing soup,, 
 and an apronful of bread to their hungry little ones. 
 You see that"great heap of pieces of fine bread — slices, 
 hunches, remnants of big loaves, dry toast, French bread, 
 brown bread, and rolls — all placed in a clean wooden 
 bin, they also come from the two great West End clubs 
 before mentioned, and are so appreciated by the appli- 
 cants for relief (they being usually good judges of quality) 
 that you may note a look of disappointment if the stock 
 of club bread has been exhausted, and a portion of one 
 of the common loaves bought for the purpose is substi- 
 tuted. The small broken bread in those clean sacks is 
 club bread also — the crumbs from rich men's tables, but 
 clean, and thoroughly good, fit for immediate addition to* 
 the soup, which a hungry company of diners consume m 
 a painfully short space of time. 
 
 They are not inhabitants of this district, either ; com- 
 paratively few come from the immediate neighbourhood, 
 though, of course, some poor families of the adjacent 
 streets and alleys, and occasionally foreign workmen — 
 many of them adepts in artistic employments, who are 
 in the land of the stranger and in want — come here and 
 have not only the help of a meal, but the kind inquiry, 
 the further aid that will sustain hope, and enable them to 
 look for work, and find the means of living. Londoners- 
 from Kentish Town, Lambeth, Shoreditch, and Chelsea 
 — poor hungry men and women from all parts of the 
 great city — find their way here to obtain a dinner ; and 
 it is extremely unlikely that they would leave even the 
 least profitable employment and walk so far for the sake 
 
FEEDING THE MULTITUDE. 217 
 
 of a basin of soup. Food alone is offered, not money, 
 and there is little probability of imposition when there is 
 so little to be gained by the attempt. But while the 
 great cauldrons are being emptied, let us hear what they 
 do at this " Mont St. Bernard Hospice" at the Christmas 
 season. 
 
 Here is a list of good things that were sent at Christ- 
 mas-tide for a special purpose : — A noble earl sent a 
 sheep, if not more than one, and other generous givers in 
 kind — many of them manufacturers of or dealers in the 
 articles they contributed — forwarded loaves, biscuits, 
 hams, rice, flour, currants, raisins, ale, porter, cocoa, peas, 
 and other comfortable meats and drinks, so that there 
 was a glorious distribution to the poor on Christmas Eve, 
 when 936 families were provided with a Christmas dinner, 
 consisting of 4 lbs. of beef, 3 lbs. of pudding, bread, tea, 
 and sugar, together with such other seasonable and most 
 acceptable gifts as were apportioned to them in accordance 
 with the number of their children and the quantity of mis- 
 cellanous eatables and drinkables available for the purpose. 
 But we have not quite done with it yet, for it is a hos- 
 pice in fact, as well as in name. Just as in the Newport 
 Market Refuge, the houseless and destitute are received 
 with little question — the homeless and friendless are 
 here taken in after little inquiry, even the subscriber's 
 ticket for admission being occasionally dispensed with, 
 when Mr. Stevens, the superintendent, sees an obviously 
 worthy case among the applicants who come to ask 
 for a meal. It must be remembered, however, that an 
 experienced eye can detect the casual very readily, 
 and that Mr. Stevens, who served with his friend Mr. 
 Ramsden, of Newport Market, when they were both in 
 the army, is as smart a detective as that shrewd and 
 
2 1 8 "ABOUT MY FA THER'S B US I NESS." 
 
 compassionate officer. It is so much the better for those 
 who are really deserving — so much the better even for 
 those who, being ashamed to dig, are not ashamed to beg 
 — the ne'er-do-weels who, even in the degradation of 
 poverty brought about by idleness and dissipation, come 
 down to solicit food and shelter, and find both, together 
 with ready help, if they will mend their ways. There 
 are some such, but not many : more often a man of edu- 
 cation, broken by misfortune, and perhaps by the loss of 
 a situation through failure or accident beyond his control, 
 finds himself starving and desolate. Such men have 
 come here, and found, first, food, then a lavatory, then a 
 bed in a good-sized room, where only seven or eight per- 
 sons are received to sleep, then a confidential talk, advice, 
 the introduction to people willing and able to help them 
 among the committee and subscribers of the Institution. 
 
 It may be a French tutor destitute in London, but 
 with his character and ability beyond doubt ; it may be, 
 it has been, a young foreign artist ; a skilled labourer 
 from the country, who has come to London to find work 
 and finds want instead ; a poor school-teacher who, 
 having lost an appointment, and being unable to work 
 at any other calling, is in despair, and knows not where 
 to turn ; an honest fellow, ready and willing to turn his 
 hand to anything, but finding nothing to which he can 
 turn his hand without an introduction. Such are the 
 cases which are received at this hospice in Ham Yard, 
 where they are permitted to remain for a day or two, or 
 even for a week or two, till they find work, or till some- 
 body can make inquiries about them and help them to 
 what they seek. 
 
 About seven men and eight women can be received 
 within the walls, but there are seldom the full number 
 
FEEDING THE MULTITUDE. 219 
 
 there, because it is necessary to discriminate carefully. 
 The object is to relieve immediate and painful distress, 
 and to give that timely aid which averts starvation by 
 the gift of food, and prevents the degradation of pau- 
 perism by means of advice, assistance, and just so much 
 support as will give the stricken and friendless men or 
 women time to recover from the first stupor of hopeless- 
 ness or the dread of perishing, and at the same time 
 afford the opportunity of proving that they are ready 
 and willing to begin anew, with the consciousness that 
 they have not been left desolate. 
 
GIVING REST TO THE WEARY. 
 
 E have not yet done with this wonderful dis- 
 trict of Soho. It is one of those attractive 
 quarters of London, which is interesting 
 alike for its historical associations and for 
 memorable houses that were once inhabited by famous 
 men. In essays, letters, fiction — all through that period 
 which has been called the Augustan age of English 
 literature — we find allusions to it ; and after that time 
 it continued to be the favourite resort of artists, men 
 of letters, wealthy merchants, and not a few states- 
 men and eminent politicians. In Leicester Square, Ho- 
 garth laughed, moralised, and painted. The house of 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds stands yet in that now renovated 
 space, and a well-known artist has a studio there to-day. 
 But the tide of fashion has receded since powdered wigs 
 and sedan chairs disappeared. The tall stately houses 
 are many of them dismantled, or are converted into 
 manufactories and workshops. The great iron extin- 
 guishers which still adorn the iron railings by the door- 
 steps have nearly rusted away. It must be a century 
 since the flambeaux carried by running footmen were 
 last thrust into them, when great rumbling, creaking 
 coaches drew up and landed visitors before the dimly- 
 
GIVING REST TO THE WEARY. 221 
 
 lighted portals. Silence and decay are the characteris- 
 tics of many a once goodly mansion ; and the houses 
 themselves are not unfrequently associated with the relief 
 of that poverty which is everywhere so apparent as to 
 appeal to almost every form of charity. Before one such 
 house we are standing now, its quietly opening door re- 
 vealing a broad lofty hall, from which a great staircase, 
 with heavy baluster of black oak and panelled walls leads 
 to the spacious rooms above. This mansion is historical, 
 too, in its way, for we are at the corner of Soho Square, 
 in Greek Street, and are about to enter what was once the 
 London residence of the famous Alderman Beckford, and 
 his equally famous son — the man who inherited the mys- 
 terious and gorgeously furnished palace at Fonthill, the 
 author of " Vathek," the half-recluse who bought Gib- 
 bon's extensive library at Lausanne, that he might have 
 " something to amuse him when he went that way," and 
 afterwards went that way, read himself nearly blind, and 
 then made a friend a present of all the books, sold Font- 
 hill, went abroad, and set about building another mys- 
 terious castle in a strange land. 
 
 In that big committee-room on the first floor, which 
 we shall visit presently, there was to be seen, four or five 
 years ago, a stupendous chimney-piece of oak, elabo- 
 rately carved, and said to have been a masterpiece of 
 Grinling Gibbons. It was taken down and sold for a 
 handsome sum of money, to augment the funds of the 
 Institution which now occupies the old mansion, for the 
 door at which we enter receives other guests than those 
 who once thronged it — suffering, depressed, poverty- 
 stricken, weary men and women, who come here to seek 
 the rest that is offered to them in the quiet rooms — the 
 restoration of meat and drink and refreshing sleep, the 
 
222 " ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 comfort of hopeful words and friendly aid. It is named 
 " The House of Charity/' and the work that its sup- 
 porters have set themselves to do is carried on so 
 silently — I had almost said so secretly — that the still- 
 ness you observe within the building, as we stand here 
 waiting for the lady who superintends the household, 
 is suggestive alike of the repose which is essential to 
 the place, and of a severe earnestness not very easy to 
 define. 
 
 Members of the same committee, whose earnest hearty 
 work is apparent at Newport Market and at the Soup 
 Kitchen in Ham Yard, are helping this House of Charity, 
 which has the Archbishop of Canterbury for its patron 
 and the Bishop of London for its visitor. 
 
 Here, in the two large sitting-rooms opening from the 
 hall, we may see part of what is being done, in giving 
 rest to the weary and upholding them who are ready to 
 faint. One is for men, the other for women, who have 
 been received as inmates, for periods extending from a 
 fortnight to a longer time, according to the necessities of 
 each case, and the probability of obtaining suitable em- 
 ployment. Of course the aid is intended to be only 
 temporary — though in some peculiar cases it is continued 
 till the applicant recovers from weakness following either 
 uninfectious illness or want. There can be, of course, 
 no actual sick-nursing here ; but in a warm and comfort- 
 able upper room, near the dormitory, which we shall see 
 presently— a room which is the day-nursery of a few 
 children who are also admitted— I have seen young 
 women, one who was suffering from a consumptive 
 cough, another an out-patient at an hospital for disease 
 of the hip, and wearing an instrument till she could be 
 admitted as a regular case. They were both sitting 
 
GIVING REST TO THE WEARY. 223 
 
 cosily at their tea, and were employed at needlework, as 
 most of the women are who find here a temporary home. 
 For it is one of the beneficent results of an influential 
 committee, that a number of cases are sent to hospitals 
 or to convalescent homes, and so are restored ; but till 
 this can be done they are fed and tended — fed with food 
 more delicate than that of the ordinary meal — and are 
 allowed to rest in peace and to regain strength. 
 
 But we are still in the men's sitting-room, where 
 several poor fellows are looking at the lists of adver- 
 tisements in the newspapers for some announcement of 
 a vacant situation. A supply of books is also provided 
 both for men and women, and the latter are just now 
 engaged in mending or making their clothes.] 
 
 Between thirty and forty inmates can be received at 
 one time, and those who are in search of employment, or 
 who require to go out during the day, may leave the house 
 after breakfast, and return either to dinner or to tea. 
 There are, indeed, few restrictions when once prelimi- 
 nary inquiries and the recommendation of a member of 
 the committee result in the admission of an applicant; 
 and it is easy to see how deeply and thankfully many of 
 these poor depressed men and women, beaten in the 
 battle of life, with little hope of regaining a foothold, 
 weak, dispirited, destitute, and with no strength left to 
 struggle under the burden that weighs them down, 
 find help and healing, food and sleep, advice, and very 
 often a recommendation which places them once more in 
 a position of comfort and independence. A large propor 
 tion of those who are admitted are provided with situa 
 tions either permanently or for a period long enough to 
 enable them to turn round the difficult corner from 
 poverty and dependence to useful and appropriate 
 
224 " ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS:' 
 
 employment. Some are sent to Homes, hospitals, or 
 orphanages, and many return to their own homes. From 
 those homes they have wandered, hoping to find the 
 world easier than it has proved to be, and in going back 
 to them they have fallen by the wayside. 
 
 There are sometimes remarkable varieties here — 
 emigrants waiting for ships to sail that will bear them 
 to another land ; men of education, such as tutors, 
 engineers, engravers, and professional men, who have 
 been unsuccessful, or have lost their position, often 
 through no immediate fault of their own. Of course, 
 the large class of genteel poverty is largely represented 
 in the five or six hundred cases which make the average 
 number of yearly inmates. Clerks, shopmen, and tra- 
 vellers are about as numerous as servants, porters, and 
 pages. Poor women, many of whom are ladies by birth 
 or previous position and education, find the House of 
 Charity a refuge indeed, and feel that the person who 
 has charge of the household arrangements, as well as 
 those who have charge of the inmates, the accounts and 
 correspondence, may be appealed to with an assurance 
 of true sympathy. Here, beside the two sitting-rooms, 
 is a large room which we will call the refectory ; it is 
 plainly furnished, with separate tables for men and 
 women, and the quantity and description of the food 
 supplied is such as would be provided in a respectable 
 and well-ordered family — tea or coffee and plenty of 
 good bread-and-butter morning and evening, meat, 
 bread and vegetables, for dinner, and a supper of 
 bread and cheese. There are no " rations," nor any 
 special limit as to quantity, and if one could forget the 
 distress which brings them hither, the family might be 
 regarded as belonging to some comfortable business 
 
GIVING REST TO THE WEARY. 225 
 
 establishment, with good plain meals and club-room on 
 each side the dining-hall for meeting in after working 
 hours. 
 
 Let us go upstairs, and look at the dormitories, which 
 occupy respectively the right and left side of the build- 
 ing, and we shall see that they are so arranged as to 
 secure that privacy, the want of which would be most 
 repulsive to persons of superior condition. Each long 
 and lofty room is divided into a series of enclosures or 
 cabins by substantial partitions about eight feet high, 
 and in each of these separate rooms — all of which are 
 lighted by several windows or by gas-branches in the 
 main apartment — there is a neat comfortable bed and 
 bedstead, with space for a box, a seat, and a small table 
 or shelf. 
 
 A resident chaplain or warden conducts morning and 
 evening prayer in the chapel, which is built on part of 
 the open area at the back of the building ; and I would 
 have you consider, not only that to many of these weary 
 souls this sacred spot may come to be associated with 
 that outcome to renewed life for which their presence 
 in the Institution gives them reason to hope, but that it 
 is most desirable for the invalids, who frequently form so 
 large a portion of the congregation, to be able to attend 
 worship without practically leaving the house. 
 
 Not only because of the sick and the physically feeble, 
 however, does the House of Charity represent a work 
 that needs vast extension. 
 
 The case-book would reveal a series of stories none 
 the less affecting because they are entered plainly, briefly, 
 and without waste of words. They need few touches of 
 art to make them painfully interesting. They tell of 
 ladies, wives of professional men, brought to widowhood 
 
 15 
 
226 " ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS." 
 
 and sudden poverty ; of men of education cast adrift 
 through failure or false friendship, and not knowing 
 where to seek bread ; of children left destitute or de- 
 serted under peculiar circumstances ; of women removed 
 from persecution, and girls from the tainted atmosphere 
 of vice ; of weary wanderers who, in despair of finding 
 such a shelter, and dreading the common lodging-house, 
 have spent nights in the parks ; of foreigners stranded 
 on the shore of a strange city ; of ministers of the gospel 
 brought low ; of friendless servant-girls, ill-treated, de- 
 frauded of their wages, or discharged almost penniless, 
 and cast loose amidst the whirlpool of London streets. 
 
 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 cir- 
 cumstances make such a search difficult — for bereaved 
 and impoverished ladies, and for educated men, as well 
 as for domestic servants and ordinary employes. 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. 
 
 LL hope abandon, ye who enter here," would, 
 as we might fancy, be an appropriate in- 
 scription for many a wretched court and 
 
 1 alley in the greatest and most opulent city 
 in the world — a city distinguished for its claims to be re- 
 garded 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 ; philan- 
 thropy almost stands appalled at the difficulty of dealing 
 with a chronic necessity so widely spread, a misery and 
 ignorance so deep and apparently impregnable ; senti- 
 men^ahsm^sighs and t urns away wi th a shiver^or is 
 touched to the extent 67 relieving "Its overcharged sus- 
 ceptibilities by the comfortable expedient of the smallest 
 subscription to some association in the neighbourhood. 
 True, active, practical religion alone, of all the agencies 
 
 15—2 
 
228 "ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS!' 
 
 that have operated in these places, gains ground inch by 
 inch, and at last exercises a definite and beneficial in- 
 fluence, 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 ope- 
 rate 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 dis- 
 miss 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 com- 
 passion. 
 
 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. 
 
WITH THE POOR AND NEEDY. 229 
 
 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 autho* 
 
230 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS? 
 
 rities 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 land- 
 lords 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 Parlia- 
 ment " 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 foetid 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 dis- 
 trict 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 des- 
 titute 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 
 
WITH THE POOR AND NEEDY. 231 
 
 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 h elpful 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 neigh 
 bourhood of aristocratic mansions and quiet suburban 
 retreats, where the garotter skulks and the burglar finds 
 refuge ; further towards the centre of the town, in West- 
 minster, not a stone's- throw from the great legislative 
 assembly, which, while it debates in St. Stephen's on sanita- 
 tion and the improvement of dwellings, scarcely remem- 
 bers 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 metro- 
 politan 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 
 
232 « ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS: 1 
 
 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 house- 
 less ? 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 cover- 
 ing 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, be- 
 cause 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. 
 
 I 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 Charter- 
 house 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 
 
WITH THE POOR AND NEEDY. 233 
 
 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 costermon- 
 gers, French-polishers, dock-labourers, chair-makers, 
 workers at all kinds of underpaid labour and poor handi- 
 crafts. 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 mendi- 
 
234 " ABOUT M Y FA THERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 cants, 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 mono- 
 tonous 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 popu- 
 lation ; have lived amidst the slums of Spitalfields, and 
 passed nights " Whitechapel way ;" but never in any un- 
 broken 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 sur- 
 rounded 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. 
 
WITH THE POOR AND NEEDY. 235 
 
 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 1 841 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 simultane- 
 ous 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, stand- 
 ing 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," 
 
236 " ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS:' 
 
 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 foetid 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 
 &mong the people, and strove to fix their attention on the 
 message that she carried. The religious services com- 
 menced 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 
 
WITH THE POOR AND NEEDY. 237 
 
 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 ques- 
 tion 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 re- 
 covered, 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. 
 
233 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS? 
 
 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 neigh- 
 bourly congregation assembled there. There are even- 
 ings, 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 de- 
 vious entrance to another more foul and forbidding, we 
 leave the "Hope-for-All" Mission Room resounding with 
 
WITH THE POOR AND NEEDY. 239 
 
 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 in- 
 fluences 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 neighbour- 
 hood. 
 
 But we have strange sights yet to see, so let us con- 
 tinue 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 
 
240 " ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS." 
 
 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 philan- 
 thropists or speculators — and they are not likely to be 
 the latter — can never see a return of any profitable per- 
 centage 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 
 
WITH THE POOR AND NEEDY. 241 
 
 for two to eight-and-sixpence for three rooms. The con- 
 sequence 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 deplor- 
 able 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 sick- 
 ness, 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." 
 
 16 
 
242 <•' ABO UT MY FA THERS B USINESS* 
 
 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. u 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 u Mr. 
 Orsman's Mission to the Costermongers." Perhaps these 
 words scarcely denote the scope of the work; but coster- 
 
WITH THE POOR AND NEEDY. 243 
 
 mongers 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 
 
 16 — 2 
 
244 ''ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS: 1 
 
 an endeavour to redeem the whole social life of the dis- 
 drict. Wisely enough, the School Board accepted the aid 
 which this free day-school for ragged and nearly desti- 
 tute children affords to a class which the Education Act 
 has not yet taught us how to teach. 
 
 In four years, out of ninety-five boys and girls who 
 entered situations from this school, only one was dis- 
 missed for dishonesty, and it was afterwards found that 
 he was the dupe of the foreman of the place at which he 
 worked. 
 
 Well may Mr. Harwood, the school superintendent, 
 be glad in the labour that he has learnt to love in spite of 
 all the sordid surroundings. There is life in the midst 
 of these dim courts — a ragged-school and a church, 
 which is poor, but not, strictly speaking, ragged. In fact, 
 " the patching class " for ragged boys, which meets on 
 Thursdays, from five to seven in the afternoon, remedies 
 even the tattered garments of the poor little fellows, who, 
 having only one suit, must take off their habiliments in 
 order to mend them. Occasional gifts of second-hand 
 clothes are amongst the most useful stock of the school- 
 master, as anybody may believe who sees the long rows 
 of children, many of them, like our juvenile guide, with 
 two odd boots, which are mere flaps of leather, and attire 
 which it would be exaggeration to call a jacket and 
 trousers. 
 
 The school-room is also the church and the lecture- 
 hall. It will hold 300 people ; and the Sunday-evening 
 congregation fills it thoroughly, while, on week-nights, 
 special services, and frequently lectures, entertainments, 
 and attractive social gatherings bring the costers and 
 their friends in great force. 
 
 The chief of the costermongers is the Earl of Shaftes- 
 
WITH THE POOR AND NEEDY. 245 
 
 bury; and here, standing as it were at livery in a quiet 
 corner of a shanty close to the coal-shed, is the earl's 
 barrow, emblazoned with his crest. This remarkable ve- 
 hicle, and a donkey complimentarily named the "Earl," 
 which took a prize at a Golden Lane donkey show, desig- 
 nate his lordship as president of the " Barrow Club," a 
 flourishing institution, intended to supersede the usurious 
 barrow-lenders, who once let out these necessary adjuncts 
 to the costermongering business at a tremendous hire. 
 Now the proprietors of the barrows, going on the hire 
 and ultimate purchase-system, are prospering greatly. 
 There are free evening classes, mothers' meetings, a free 
 lending library, a free singing class, a penny savings 
 bank, dinners to destitute children, numbering more than 
 10,000 a year, a soup-kitchen, tea-meetings, and other 
 agencies, all of which are kept going morning, noon, and 
 night, within the narrow limits of these two houses made 
 into one. It is here, too, that the annual meeting is held, 
 an account of which every year filters through the news- 
 papers to the outer world — "The Costermongers' Annual 
 Tea-Party." The records of this united and earnest 
 assembly have been so recently given to the public, that 
 I need not repeat them to you as we stand here in the 
 lower rooms, whence the big cakes, the basins of tea, the 
 huge sandwiches of bread and beef, were conveyed to 
 the 200 guests. But as we depart, after shaking Mr. 
 Harwood by the hand, let me remind you that it has 
 been by the hearty, human, living influence of religion 
 that these results have been effected. The stones of 
 scientific or secular controversy have not been offered 
 instead of food spiritual and temporal. The mission- 
 hall has been made the centre ; and from it has spread 
 various healing, purifying, ameliorating influences. From 
 
246 " ABOUT MY FATHERS BUSINESS." 
 
 this we may well take a lesson for the benefit of another 
 organised effort which appeals to us for help — that of 
 the London City Mission. This institution is trying to 
 effect for various districts and several classes of the poor 
 and ignorant in and about London that introduction of 
 religious teaching which Mr. Orsman began with amongst 
 the costermongers and others in the benighted locality 
 where now a clear light has begun to shine. 
 
 At a recent meeting of the promoters of the City Mis- 
 sion work, held at the Mansion House, it was stated that 
 the 427 missionaries then employed by the society were 
 chosen without distinction, except that of fitness for the 
 office, from Churchmen, Presbyterians, Congregation- 
 alists, Wesleyans, and Baptists, while the examining and 
 appointing committee were composed of thirteen clergy- 
 men of the Established Church and thirteen Dissenting 
 ministers. 
 
 Anybody who is accustomed to visit the worst neigh- 
 bourhoods of London will know that these missionaries 
 go where the regular clergy cannot easily penetrate, and 
 where even the parish doctor seldom lingers. Every 
 missionary visits once a month about 500 families, or 
 2,000 persons. They read the Scriptures, exhort their 
 listeners, hold prayer and Bible meetings, distribute 
 copies of the Scriptures, see that children go to school,, 
 address the poor in rooms when they cannot persuade 
 them to go to church, visit and pray with the dying, 
 lend books, hold open-air services, endeavour to reclaim 
 drunkards (1,546 were so restored during the last year), 
 admonish and frequently reclaim the vicious, raise the 
 fallen, and place them in asylums or induce them to 
 return to their homes, and work constantly for the great 
 harvest of God to which they are appointed. 
 
WITH THE POOR AND NEED Y. 247 
 
 Then there are special missionaries appointed to visit 
 bakers, cabmen, drovers, omnibus men, soldiers, sailors, 
 and foreigners of various countries. They also go to 
 tanneries, the docks, workhouses, hospitals, and other 
 places ; and there is a vast harvest yet, without a sickle 
 to reap even a single sheaf. When will the time come, 
 that, to the means for carrying the sustaining comfort of 
 the Word to men's souls, will be added some means of 
 helping them to realise it by such temporal aid as will 
 raise them from the want which paralyses and the degra- 
 dation which benumbs? 
 
GIVING THE FEEBLE STRENGTH. 
 
 HAVE had occasion lately to take you with 
 me to some of the worst "parts of London.' 
 The phrase has become so common, that 
 there is some difficulty in deciding what it 
 means ; and we are obliged to come to the conclusion, 
 that in every quarter of this great metropolis, large and 
 lofty buildings, splendid mansions, gorgeous shops, and 
 even stately palaces, are but symbols of the partial and 
 imperfect development of true national greatness, and 
 can scarcely be regarded as complete evidences of 
 genuine civilisation, if by that word we are to mean more 
 than was expressed by it in heathen times, and amidst 
 pagan people. Perhaps there is no more terrible reflec- 
 tion, amidst all the pomp and magnificence, the vast 
 commercial enterprise and constantly accumulating 
 wealth of this mighty city, than that here we may also 
 find the extremes of want and misery, of vice and poverty, 
 of ignorance and suffering. Side by side with all that 
 makes material greatness — riches, learning, luxury, extra- 
 vagance — are examples of the deepest necessity and 
 degradation. " The rich and the poor " do indeed 
 " meet together " in a very sad sense. It would be well 
 
GIVING THE FEEBLE STRENGTH. 249 
 
 if the former would complete the text for themselves, 
 and take its meaning deep into their hearts. 
 
 There is reason for devout thankfulness, however, that 
 here and there amidst the abodes of rich and poor alike, 
 some building with special characteristics may be seen ; 
 that not only the church but the charity which represents 
 practical religion does make vigorous protest against the 
 merely selfish heaping-up of riches without regard to the 
 cry of the poor. There are few neighbourhoods in which a 
 Refuge for the homeless, a soup-kitchen, a ragged-school, 
 a " servants home," an orphanage, a hospital or some 
 asylum for the sick and suffering, does not relieve that 
 sense of neglect and indifference which is the first pain- 
 ful impression of the thoughtful visitor to those " worst 
 quarters," which yet lie close behind the grand thorough- 
 fares and splendid edifices that distinguish aristocratic 
 and commercial London. 
 
 I have said enough for the present about those poverty- 
 haunted districts of Shoreditch, Spitalfields, and Bethnal 
 Green, to warrant me in taking you through them 
 without further comment than suffices to call your atten- 
 tion to the poorly-paid industries, the want and suffering, 
 and the too frequent neglect of the means of health and 
 cleanliness which unhappily distinguish them and the sur- 
 rounding neighbourhoods lying eastward. The weaver's 
 colony can now scarcely be said to survive the changes 
 wrought by the removal of an entire industry from Spital- 
 fields to provincial manufactories, and the vast importa- 
 tions of foreign silks, and yet there is in this part of 
 London a great population of workers at callings which 
 are scarcely better paid than silk weaving had come to 
 be, previous to its comparative disappearance. 
 
 Marvellous changes have been effected in the way of 
 
2lo "ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS* 
 
 buildings and improvements during the last thirty years, 
 but much of the poverty and sickness that belonged to 
 these neighbourhoods remain. The looms may be silent 
 in the upper workshops with their wide leaden casements, 
 but the labour by which the people live seldom brings 
 higher wages than suffice for mere subsistence. The 
 great building in which treasures of art and science are 
 collected is suggestive of some kind of recognition of the 
 need of the inhabitants for rational recreation and in- 
 struction, and what is perhaps more to the purpose, it is 
 also a recognition of their desire for both ; but it cannot 
 be denied that the recognition has come late, and has 
 not been completely accompanied by those provisions 
 for personal comfort, health, and decency, which a 
 stringent application of existing laws might long ago 
 have ensured in neighbourhoods that for years were 
 suffered to remain centres of pestilence. 
 
 The greatest change ever effected in this quarter of 
 London was that which followed the formation of 
 Victoria Park. That magnificent area, with its lakes and 
 islands, its glorious flower-beds and plantations, its 
 cricket-ground and great expanse of open field, made 
 Bethnal Green famous. There had always been a fine 
 stretch of open country beyond what was known as " the 
 Green," on which the building of the Museum now 
 stands. A roadway between banks and hedges skirting 
 wide fields led to the open space where a queer old 
 mansion could be seen amidst a few tall trees, while 
 beyond this again, across the canal bridge, were certain 
 country hostelries, one of them with what was, in that 
 day, a famous u tea-garden ;" and, farther on, a few 
 farms and some large old-fashioned private residences 
 stood amidst meadows, gardens, and cattle pastures, on 
 
GIVING THE FEEBLE STRENGTH. 251 
 
 either side of the winding road leading away to the 
 Hackney Marshes and the low-lying fields beyond the 
 old village of Homerton. It was on a large portion of 
 this rural area that Victoria Park was founded. Tavern 
 and farmhouse disappeared; the canal bridge was made 
 ornamental ; and just beyond the queer old mansion that 
 stood by the roadway, the great stone and iron gates of 
 " the people's pleasure-ground " were erected. 
 
 Now, the mansion, to which I have already twice 
 referred, was in fact one of the few romantic buildings 
 of the district, for it was what remained of the house of 
 the persecuting Bishop Bonner, and the four most pro- 
 minent of the tall trees — those having an oblong or pit 
 excavation of the soil at the foot of each — were tradition- 
 ally the landmarks of the martyrdom of four sisters 
 who were there burnt at the stake and buried in graves 
 indicated by the hollows in the ground, which popular 
 superstition had declared could never be filled up. 
 
 That they have been filled up long ago, and that on 
 the site of the ancient house itself another great building 
 has been erected, you may see to-day as we stand at the 
 end of the long road leading to the entrance of " the 
 people's park." 
 
 The abode of cruelty and bigotry has been replaced 
 by one of the most truly representative of all our bene- 
 volent institutions. The graves of the martyred sisters- 
 might well take a new meaning if the spot could now be 
 discovered in the broad and beautifully planted garden, 
 where feeble men and women sun themselves into re- 
 turning life and strength amidst the gentle summer air 
 blowing straight across from the broad woods of Epping 
 and Hainault miles away. 
 
 The people's playground is fitly consummated by the 
 
252 " ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS:' 
 
 people's hospital. That the City of London Hospital for 
 Diseases of the Chest, Victoria Park, might well be called 
 "the people's," is shown, not because it is supported by 
 state aid or by charitable endowment, on the contrary, it 
 depends entirely on those voluntary contributions and 
 subscriptions which have hitherto enabled it successfully 
 to carry on a noble work, but yet have only just sufficed 
 to supply its needs, " from hand to mouth." Yet it is 
 essentially devoted to patients who belong to the working 
 population. Like the park itself it attracts crowds of 
 visitors, not only from the City, from Bethnal Green, 
 Mile End, Poplar, Islington, Camden Town, and other 
 parts of London, but even from distant places whence 
 excursionists come to see and to enjoy it. This hospital 
 receives patients from every part of London, and even 
 from distant country places. There were seven inmates 
 from York last year, as well as some from Somerset, 
 Hereford, Derby, Lincolnshire, Lancashire, Norfolk, 
 Suffolk, Huntingdon, Northampton, Wiltshire, and other 
 counties ; so that in fact the districts of Bethnal Green, 
 Spitalfields, and Shoreditch, represented only a very 
 small proportion of the 781 in-patients and the 13,937 
 out-patients, who were admitted to medical treatment 
 during the twelve months. More than this, however, 
 amongst the contributions which are made for the 
 support of this hospital, there must be reckoned those 
 collected by working men of the district in their clubs 
 and associations, in token of the appreciation of benefits 
 bestowed by such an institution to failing men and 
 women, wives and shopmates and relatives, who being 
 threatened or actually stricken down with one of those 
 diseases which sap the life and leave the body prostrate, 
 require prompt skill and medical aid, even if they are 
 
GIVING THE FEEBLE STRENGTH. 253 
 
 not in absolute need of nourishing food and alleviating 
 rest. 
 
 Standing here, in front of this broad noble building, with 
 its many windows, its picturesque front of red brick and 
 white stone, its central tower, its sheltered garden-walks, 
 and pleasant lawn, we may well feel glad to hear that 
 the work done within its wards is known and recognised. 
 What a work it is can only be estimated by those who 
 remember how fell is the disease from which so many of 
 the patients suffer, and how great a thing it has been, 
 even where cures could not be effected, usefully to pro- 
 long the lives of hundreds of those who must have died 
 but for timely aid. Nay, even at the least, the allevia- 
 tion of suffering to those on whom death had already 
 laid his hand has been no small thing ; and when we 
 know that of 240,000 out-patients who have received 
 advice and medicines, and 10,400 in-patients whose 
 cases have warranted their admission to the wards, a 
 large number of actual cures have been effected since the 
 establishment of this hospital, we are entitled to regard 
 the institution as one of the most useful that we have 
 ever visited together. 
 
 Let us enter, not by the handsome broad portico in the 
 centre of the building, but at the out-patients' door, in 
 order that we may see the two waiting-rooms, where 
 men and women bring their letters of admission, or attend 
 to see one of the three consulting physicians. Of these 
 three gentlemen the senior is Dr. Peacock, of whom it 
 may be said that he is the organiser of the hospital, the 
 efficiency of which is mainly due to his direction. This 
 is no small praise, I am aware, but there are so many 
 evidences of thorough unity and completeness in all 
 the details of management that, considering how great 
 
254 " ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS:' 
 
 a variety of cases are included under " diseases of the 
 chest/' from the slow insidious but fatal ravages of con- 
 sumption to the sudden pang and deadly spasm of heart 
 disease, and the various affections of throat and lungs, 
 it may easily be seen how much depends upon the adop- 
 tion of a system initiated by long study and experience. 
 The perfect arrangements which distinguish this hospital 
 are doubtless rendered easier by ample space and admi- 
 rable appliances. Plenty of room and plenty of air (air, 
 however, which has been warmed to one even tempera- 
 ture before it enters the wards and corridors where the 
 patients eat and drink, sleep and walk) are the first 
 characteristics of the place, while a certain chaste sim- 
 plicity of ornament, and yet an avoidance of mere utili- 
 tarian bareness, is to be observed in all that portion of 
 the structure where decoration may naturally be ex- 
 pected. 
 
 The board-room, the secretary's room, and the various 
 apartments devoted to the resident officers on the ground- 
 floor, are plain enough, however, though they are of good 
 size and proportions, the only really ornamental article 
 of furniture in the board-room being a handsome semi- 
 grand piano, the gift of one of the committee. This is a 
 real boon to such of the patients as can come to practise 
 choral singing, as well as to those who can listen delight- 
 edly to the amateur concerts that are periodically per- 
 formed, either in the hospital itself or in one of the wards. 
 For they have cheerful entertainments in this resort of 
 the feeble, where, to tell the truth, food is often the best 
 physic, and sympathy and encouragement the most 
 potent alleviations. 
 
 As to the actual physic — the employment of medicines 
 — it is only in some of the large endowed hospitals that 
 
GIVING THE FEEBLE STRENGTH. 255 
 
 we can see such a dispensary as this spacious room, 
 with its surrounding rows of bottles and drawers, its two 
 open windows, one communicating with the men's and 
 the other with the women's waiting room, its slabs, and 
 scales and measures, on a central counter, where 380 pre- 
 scriptions will have to be made up to-day before the alert 
 and intelligent gentleman and his assistants who have 
 the control of this department, will be able to replace the 
 current stock out of the medical stores. 
 
 These small cisterns, each with its tap, occupying so 
 prominent a place on the counter, represent the staple 
 medicine of the establishment, pure cod-liver oil, of which 
 1,200 gallons are used every year, and they are con- 
 stantly replenished from three large cylinders, or vats, 
 containing 800 gallons, which occupy a room of their own 
 adjoining the dispensary and the compounding room, the 
 latter being the place where drugs are prepared, and the 
 great art of pill-making is practised on a remarkable 
 scale. 
 
 Continuing our walk round the hospital, we come to 
 the consulting-rooms, where the physicians attend daily 
 at two o'clock, each to see his own patients, and the re- 
 ception-room, where an officer takes the letters of intro- 
 duction, and exchanges them for attendance cards. This 
 is the door of the museum ; and though we shall be 
 admitted, if you choose to accompany me, it is, like other 
 surgical museums, of professional more than general in- 
 terest, and not a public portion of the hospital. Turning 
 into the great main corridor, with its peculiar honey- 
 combed red-brick ceiling and pleasant sense of light and 
 air, we will ascend the broad staircase to the w 7 ards, those 
 of the women being on the first floor, while the men 
 occupy a precisely similar ward on the second. These 
 
256 "ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS:' 
 
 wards consist of a series of rooms of from two to six, 
 eight, and twelve beds each, so as to afford opportunity 
 for the proper classification of the cases. A day-room is 
 also provided for each set of wards, so that those patients 
 who are well enough to leave their beds may take their 
 meals there, or may read, play at chess, draughts, or 
 bagatelle, or occupy themselves with needlework. These 
 wards and their day-rooms all open into a light cheerful 
 corridor, with large windows, where the inmates may walk 
 and talk, or read and rest, sitting or reclining upon the 
 couches and settees that are placed at intervals along the 
 wall. All through these rooms and corridors the air is 
 kept at a medium temperature of from fifty-five to sixty 
 degrees, by means of hot-air or hot-water apparatus, 
 the latter being in use as well as the former. You 
 noticed, as we stood in the grounds, a large square struc- 
 ture of a monumental character ; — that was in fact the 
 chamber through the sides of which draughts of air are 
 carried to channels beneath the building, there they are 
 drawn around a furnace, to be heated, and to escape 
 through pipes that are grouped about the entire building, 
 In order to ensure the necessary comfort of patients 
 requiring a higher temperature, each ward is provided 
 with an open fire-place. 
 
 It is now just dinner-time. The ample rations of meat 
 and vegetables, fish and milk, and the various " special 
 diets," are coming up on the lift from the kitchens, and in 
 the women's day-room a very comfortable party is just 
 sitting down to the mid-day meal. Here, as elsewhere, 
 greater patience and more genuine cheerfulness are to be 
 observed among the women, than is as a rule displayed 
 by the men, and there are not wanting signs of pleasant 
 progress towards recovery, of grateful appreciation of the 
 
GIVING THE FEEBLE STRENGTH. 257 
 
 benefits received, and of a hopeful trusting spirit, which 
 goes far to aid the doctor and the nurse. There are, of 
 course, some sad sights. Looking into the wards, we 
 may see more than one woman for whom only a few 
 hours of this mortal life remain ; more than one child 
 whose emaciated form and face looks as though death 
 itself could bring no great change. Yet it must be re- 
 membered that cases likely soon to terminate fatally are 
 not admitted. The severity of the diseases and their 
 frequently fatal character under any condition will 
 account for the large proportion of sickness unto death 
 which finds here alleviation but not absolute cure ; 
 though, of course, the sufferers from heart disease, who 
 are on the whole the most cheerful, as well as those whose 
 affections of the lungs can be sensibly arrested, if not 
 altogether healed, are frequently restored to many years 
 of useful work in the world. On this second storey, in 
 the men's ward, there are some very serious cases, and 
 some sights that have a heartache in them ; yet they are 
 full of significance, for many of them include the spec- 
 tacle of God's sweet gift of trust and patience — the 
 mighty courage of a quiet mind. Yonder is a courageous 
 fellow, who, suffering from a terrible aneurism, had to 
 cease his daily labour, and now lies on his back, hopeful 
 of cure, with a set still face and a determined yet wistful 
 look at the resident medical officer, or the nurse who 
 adjusts the india-rubber ice-bag on his chest. Here, 
 near the door, is that which should make us bow our 
 heads low before the greatest mystery of mortal life. 
 Not the mystery of death, but the mystery of meeting 
 death and awaiting it. A brave, patient, noble man is 
 sitting up in that bed, his high forehead, fair falling hair, 
 long tawny beard, and steady placid eye, reminding one 
 
 17 
 
. 
 
 258 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS." 
 
 of some picture of Norseman or Viking. Lean and 
 gaunt enough in frame, his long thin hand is little but 
 skin and bone, but it is clasped gently by the sorrowing 
 wife, who sits beside him, and glances at us through 
 tearful eyes as we enter. One can almost believe that 
 the sick man who is going on the great journey whither 
 he cannot yet take the wife who loves him, has been 
 speaking of it calmly, there is such an inscrutable look of 
 absolute repose in that face. He is a Dane, and the 
 doctor tells us has borne his illness and great pain 
 with a quiet courage that has challenged the admir- 
 ation of those about him — a courage born of simple 
 faith, let us believe, a calm resting on an eternal founda- 
 tion of peace. Here, in the corridor, is a party, some of 
 its members still very weak and languid, who, having just 
 dined, are about to take the afternoon lounge, with book 
 or newspaper, and, leaving them, we will conclude our 
 visit by descending to the basement, whence the chief 
 medicine comes in the shape of wholesome nourishing 
 food, of meat and fish, of pure farina, of wine, and milk, 
 and fresh eggs, of clean pure linen, and even of ice, for 
 ice is a large ingredient here, and several tons are con- 
 sumed every year. The domestic staff have their apart- 
 ments in this basement portion of the building, another 
 division of which is occupied by the kitchens and store- 
 rooms, while lifts for coal and daily meals and every 
 other requisite, ascend to the upper wards, and shoots or 
 wells from the upper floors convey linen and bedding 
 that require washing, as well as the dust and refuse of 
 the wards, to special receptacles. 
 
 The kitchen itself is a sight worth seeing with its wide 
 open range, where prime joints are roasting, or have been 
 roasted, and are now being cut into great platefuls for 
 
GIVING THE FEEBLE STRENGTH. 259 
 
 the ordinary full-diet patients. In the great boilers and 
 ovens, vegetables and boiled meats, farinaceous puddings, 
 rice, tapioca, fish, and a dozen other articles of pure diet 
 are being prepared, while a reservoir of strong beef-tea 
 represents the nourishment of those feeble ones to whom 
 liquid, representing either meat or milk, is all that can be 
 permitted. We have little time to remain in the separate 
 rooms, which are cool tile-lined larders, where bread and 
 milk and meat are kept, but among the records of dona- 
 tions and contributions to the hospital it is very pleasant 
 to read of the multifarious gifts of food and other com- 
 forts sent from time to time by benevolent friends. 
 They consist of baskets of game, fruits, rice, tea, flour, 
 books, warm clothing for poor patients leaving the hospi- 
 tal, prints, pictures, fern-cases, all kinds of useful articles, 
 showing how thoughtful the donors are, of what will be a 
 solace and a comfort to the patients, while not the least 
 practically valuable remittances are bundles of old linen. 
 Still more touching, however, are the records of gifts 
 brought by patients themselves, or by their friends. 
 
 " I was a patient here four years ago," says a man who 
 has made his way to the secretary's room, " and I made 
 up my mind that if ever I could scrape a guinea together 
 I should bring it, and now I have, and here it is, if you'll 
 be so good as to take it, for I want to show I'm truly 
 grateful." 
 
 " If you'll please accept it from us ; my husband and 
 I have put by fifteen shillings, and want to give it to the 
 hospital for your kindness to our son, who was here 
 before he died." 
 
 These are the chronicles that show this to be a people s 
 hospital indeed, and that should open the hearts of those 
 who can take pounds instead of shillings. In such cases 
 
 17 — 2 
 
26o " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS." 
 
 the secretary has ventured to remind the grateful donors 
 that they may be unable to afford to leave their savings, 
 but the evident pain, even of the hint of refusal, was 
 reason for accepting the poor offering. Poor, did I say ? 
 nay, rich — rich in all that can really give value to such 
 gifts, the wealth of the heart that must be satisfied by 
 giving. 
 
 There is one more adjunct to this great human conser- 
 vatory which we must see before we leave. Down four 
 shallow stone steps from the corridor, and along a cheer- 
 ful quiet sub-corridor, is the chapel. A very beautiful 
 building, with no stained glass or sumptuous detail of 
 ornament, and yet so admirable in its simple archi- 
 tectural decoration and perfect proportions, that it is an 
 example of what such a place should be. It is capable 
 of seating three or four hundred persons, and visitors are 
 freely admitted to the Sunday services when there is 
 room, though of course seats are reserved for the patients, 
 who have " elbows " provided in their pews, that they 
 may be able to lean without undue fatigue. The chapel 
 itself was a gift of a beneficent friend, and was presented 
 anonymously. One day an architect waited on the com- 
 mittee, and simply said that if they would permit a 
 chapel to be erected on a vacant space in their grounds, 
 close to the main building, he had plans for such a struc- 
 ture with him, and the whole cost would be defrayed by a 
 client of his, who, however, would not make known his 
 name. The gift was accepted, and the benevolent con- 
 tract nobly fulfilled. I should be glad to hear that some 
 other charitable donor had sent in like manner an offer 
 of funds to fill those two great vacant wards. which, wait- 
 ing for patients, are among the saddest sights in this 
 hospital. 
 
HEALING THE SICK. 
 
 MIDST the numerous great charities which 
 distinguish this vast metropolis, hospitals 
 must always hold a prominent if not pre- 
 eminent place. Helpless infancy, the weak- 
 } ness and infirmity of old age, and prostration by sudden 
 accident, or the ravages of disease, are the conditions 
 that necessarily appeal to humanity. The latter espe- 
 cially is so probable an occurrence to any of us, that we 
 are at once impressed by the necessity for providing 
 some means for its alleviation. Helpless childhood has 
 passed, old age may seem to be in too dim a future to 
 challenge our immediate attention ; but sickness, sudden 
 disaster,, who shall be able to guard against these, in a 
 world where the strongest are often smitten down in the 
 full tide of apparent health ; where, in the streets 
 alone, fatal accidents are reckoned monthly as a special 
 item in Registrars' returns, and injuries amount annually 
 to hundreds ? 
 
 The great endowed hospitals, therefore, those magni- 
 ficent monuments of charity which have distinguished 
 London for so many years, and the value of which in ex- 
 tending the science of medicine can scarcely be overrated, 
 are regarded by us all with veneration. At the same 
 
262 " ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS:' 
 
 time we ought to feel a certain thrill of pleasure, a 
 satisfaction not far removed from keen emotion, when we 
 see inscribed on the front of some building, large or 
 small, where the work of healing is being carried on, 
 the words, " Supported by Voluntary Contributions." 
 One other condition, too, seems necessary to the complete 
 recognition of such a charity as having attained to the 
 full measure of a truly beneficent work — admission to it 
 should be free : free not only from any demand for 
 money payments, but untrammelled by the necessity for 
 seeking, often with much suffering and delay, a governor's 
 order or letter, by which alone a patient can be received 
 in many of our otherwise admirable and useful institu- 
 tions for the sick. It should be remembered that imme- 
 diate aid is of the utmost importance in the effort to heal 
 the sick, and that delays, proverbially dangerous, are in 
 such cases cruel, often fatal, always damaging to the sense 
 of true beneficence, of the extension of help because of the 
 need rather than for the sake of any particular influence. 
 It would seem that we have no right to hesitate, or to 
 insist on the observance of certain forms, before succour- 
 ing the grievously sick and wounded, any more than we 
 have to withhold food from the starving till ceremonial 
 inquiries are answered, and certificates of character 
 obtained. There are cases of poverty, and even of 
 suffering, where inquiry before ultimate and continued 
 relief may be useful, and personal influence may be neces- 
 sary, but extreme hunger and nakedness, cold and 
 houselessness, sudden injury or maiming, the pain of 
 disease, the deep and touching need of the sick and 
 helpless, are not such. Prompt and effectual mea- 
 sures for relief, and, if necessary, admission to the place 
 where that relief can alone be afforded, will be the only 
 
HEALING THE SICK. 263 
 
 means of completely meeting these wants. Free hospitals, 
 freer even than workhouses, are what we need, and I am 
 about to visit one of them to-day which rejoices in its 
 name, "The Royal Free Hospital," now in its forty- 
 seventh year of useful and, I am glad to say, of vigorous 
 life. 
 
 To anyone acquainted with that strange neighbourhood 
 which is represented by Gray's Inn Lane and all the 
 queer jumble of courts and alleys that seem to shrink 
 behind the shelter of the broad thoroughfare of Holborn, 
 there is something consistent in the establishment of 
 such a noble charity as this hospital in Gray's Inn Road. 
 Its very position seems to indicate the nature and extent 
 of its duties. Near the homes of poverty, the streets 
 where people live who cannot go far to seek aid in 
 their extremest need, it receives those who, breaking 
 down through sudden disease, or requiring medical and 
 surgical skill to relieve the pain and weakness of re- 
 current malady, have no resource but this to enable them 
 to fulfil their one great desire " to get back to work." 
 The causes of much of the sickness which sends patients 
 thither may be preventable : they may be found in foul 
 dwellings, impure water, insufficient clothing, want of 
 proper food, k alternate hunger and intemperance ; but 
 whatever may be its occasion, a remedy must be found 
 for it. Till all that is preventable is prevented, the con- 
 sequences will have to be mitigated, the fatal results 
 averted where it is possible ; and when boards of health 
 and sanitary measures have done, there will still be sick 
 men to heal, failing children to strengthen, weak and 
 wasting women to restore. 
 
 It is well, then, that this Institution should stand as a 
 landmark of that free charity which takes help where it 
 
264 " ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS:' 
 
 is needed most ; and this qualification is the more ob- 
 vious when we turn from the sick wards to the accident 
 wards, and remember that three great railway termini 
 are close at hand, and others not far off; that all round 
 that teeming neighbourhood men, women, and even 
 children, are working at poor handicrafts, which render 
 them liable to frequent injuries, and that in the crowded 
 streets themselves — from the great busy thoroughfare 
 of Holborn, to the bustle and confusion of the approaches 
 to the stations at King's Cross — there is constant peril 
 to life and limb. 
 
 There is something so remarkable in the external 
 appearance of the building, such a military look about 
 its bold front, such a suggestion of a cavalry yard about 
 the broad open area behind this tall wooden entrance 
 gate, that you begin to wonder how such a style of 
 architecture should have been adopted for a hospital. 
 The truth is that like many — nay, like most of our 
 noblest work — this great provision for healing the sick 
 began by not waiting for full-blown opportunities. The 
 need was there, and the means that came to hand were 
 used to meet it. This building was originally the bar- 
 racks of that loyal and efficient regiment, the " Light 
 Horse Volunteers," and so excellently had those gallant 
 defenders of king and constitution provided for their 
 own comfort and security, that when in 1842 the premises 
 were vacant, and the lease for sale, the governors of the 
 Royal Free Hospital became the purchasers, the long 
 rooms were easily turned into ample, cheerful, and well- 
 ventilated wards, and the various outbuildings and offices 
 were quickly adapted to the reception of patients. 
 
 But the hospital had at that date been working quietly 
 and effectually for above fourteen years. Fourteea 
 
HEALING THE SICK. 265 
 
 years before its inauguration in Gray's Inn Road, this 
 "free" hospital, which was not then "royal," had been 
 commenced in Greville Street, Hatton Garden, and the 
 immediate incident which led to its foundation is so 
 suggestive, so inseparable from the recollection of the 
 want which it was designed to alleviate, and from its 
 own generous recognition of the unfailing freedom of 
 true charity, that it might well be the subject of a me- 
 morial picture. Alas ! it would be a tragic reminder of 
 those days before any provision was made for extending 
 medical aid to sufferers who had no credentials save 
 humanity and their own deep necessity. It would be a 
 grim reminder to us, also, that some of our great chari- 
 ties established for the relief of the sick are still tram- 
 melled with those restrictions which demand recom- 
 mendations, to obtain which the applicant is often con- 
 demned to delay and disappointment. It would show 
 us that our hospitals are not yet free. 
 
 Those of my readers who can remember the entrance 
 to the broad highway of Holborn nearly fifty years ago 
 — stay, that is going back beyond probable acknowledg- 
 ment, — let me say those of us who knew Smithfield when 
 it was a cattle market, who had heard of " Cow Cross," 
 and been told of the terrible purlieux of Field Lane ; 
 who had occasionally caught a glimpse of that foul 
 wilderness of courts that clustered about the Fleet Ditch; 
 had read of Mr. Fagin, when "Oliver Twist" was first 
 appearing in chapters, and had dim recollections of 
 nursery tales about Bartlemy fair and " hanging morn- 
 ing " at the Old Bailey ; those of us who remember the 
 cries of drovers, and the lowing and bleating of herds 
 and flocks in the streets on Sunday nights ; the terrible 
 descent of Snow Hill ; the confusion and dismay of 
 
266 '• ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS* 
 
 passengers and vehicles on the steep incline of Holborn 
 Hill ; the reek of all that maze of houses and hovels 
 that lay in the valley ; those of us, in short, who can 
 carry our memories back for a few years beyond the 
 time when the new cattle market was built at Islington, 
 the pens and lairs of Smithfield demolished, the whole 
 Holborn valley dismantled, only a remnant, a mere 
 corner, of Field Lane being left standing after the great 
 viaduct was built — can imagine what the church of St. 
 Andrew was like w r hen, with its dark and dreary church- 
 yard, it stood on the slope of Holborn Hill, instead of 
 being as it now is in a kind of subway. That church- 
 yard, with its iron gate, was reached by stone steps, 
 which were receptacles for winter rain and summer dust, 
 the straw from waggons, the shreds and sweepings from 
 adjacent shops, the dirt and refuse of the streets. 
 
 On those steps a young girl was seen lying one night, 
 in the winter of 1827 — lying helpless, lonely, perishing 
 of disease and famine. 
 
 The clocks of St. Andrew, St. Sepulchre, St. Paul, 
 had clanged and boomed amidst the hurry and the tur- 
 moil of the throng of passengers ; had clanged and 
 boomed till their notes might be heard above the sub- 
 siding roar of vehicles, and the shuffling of feet, till 
 silence crept over the great city, and more distant chimes 
 struck through the murky air, tolling midnight. Still 
 that figure lay upon the cruel stones, under the rusty 
 gate of the churchyard, as though, unfriended and un- 
 pitied by the world, she waited for admission to the only 
 place in which she might make a claim in death, if not 
 in life. 
 
 Not more than eighteen years old, she had wandered 
 wearily from some distant place where fatal instalments 
 
HEALING THE SICK. 267 
 
 of the wages of sin had done their work. She had come 
 to London unknown, unnoted, to die. That she had come 
 from afar is but a surmise ; she may have been a dweller 
 in this great city, lost amidst the stony desert of its 
 streets, friendless with the friendlessness of the outcast 
 or the wretched, to whom the acquaintances of to-day 
 have little care or opportunity to become the solacers 
 of to-morrow ; she may have crept to that dark corner 
 by the churchyard gate, amongst the rack and refuse of 
 the street, as a place in which she, the unconsidered 
 waste and refuse of our boasted civilisation, could most 
 fitly huddle from the cold. She was not left actually to 
 die there, but two days afterwards she passed out of the 
 world where she had been unrecognised. Not without 
 result, however. 
 
 Among those who had witnessed the distressing oc- 
 currence was a surgeon, Mr. William Marsden, who for 
 some time before had repeatedly seen cause to lament, 
 that with all our endowed hospitals, our great medical 
 schools, and the advance of scientific knowledge, the 
 sick poor could only obtain relief by means of letters of 
 recommendation and other delay, until the appointed 
 days for admission. The sight that he had witnessed 
 awoke him to fresh energy. He determined to establish 
 a medical charity, where destitution or great poverty 
 and disease should be the only necessary credentials for 
 obtaining free and immediate relief. His honest bene- 
 volent purpose did not cool ; in February in the follow- 
 ing year (1828), the house in Greville Street was open 
 as a free hospital, and it was taken under the royal 
 patronage of George IV., the Duke of Gloucester becom- 
 ing its president. 
 
 King William IV. succeeded George IV. as the patron 
 
26S " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS:' 
 
 of this free hospital, and one of the earliest manifesta- 
 tions of the interest of our Queen in public charitable 
 institutions was the expressed desire of her Majesty to 
 maintain the support which it had hitherto received, 
 and to confer upon it the name of the Royal Free Hos- 
 pital. 
 
 It need scarcely be said that the late Duke of Sussex 
 took a very strong- interest in this charity, and at his 
 death it was determined to erect a new wing, to be 
 called " the Sussex " wing. This work was completed 
 in 1856 ; and in 1863, by the aid of a zealous and inde- 
 fatigable chairman of the committee, above £5,000 was 
 raised by special appeal for the purposes of buying the 
 freehold of the entire building, so that it is now, in every 
 sense, a free hospital, with a noble history of suffering 
 relieved, of the sick healed, the deserted reclaimed, the 
 sinful succoured, and those that were ready to perish 
 snatched from the jaws of death. 
 
 Since the foundation of the modest house in Hatton 
 Garden in 1828 above a million and a half of poor sick 
 and destitute patients have obtained relief, and the 
 average of poor patients received within its wards is 
 now 1,500 annually, while 45,000 out-patients resort 
 thither from all parts of London. The relief thus 
 afforded costs some £8,000 a year, and this large sum 
 has to be provided by appeals to the public for those 
 contributions by which alone the continued effort can 
 be sustained. 
 
 Standing here within the " Moore " ward, so called 
 after the energetic chairman before referred to, I cannot 
 think of any appeal that should be more successful in 
 securing public sympathy than these two statements — 
 First, that many of the inmates have been immediately 
 
HEALING THE SICK. 
 
 169 
 
 received on their own application"; and secondly, that, 
 bearing in mind the sad story which is, as it were, the 
 story of the foundation of the hospital, this ward is oc- 
 cupied by women. Many of them are persons of educa- 
 tion and refinement, who yet would have no asylum if 
 they had not been received within these sheltering walls, 
 others may be poor, ignorant, and perhaps even degraded, 
 but divine charity is large enough to recognise in these 
 the very need which such an effort is intended to alle- 
 viate. Here at least is a peaceful retreat, where in quiet 
 reflection, in grateful recognition of mercies yet within 
 reach, in the sound of pitying voices, and the touch of 
 sympathetic hands, the weary may find rest, the throes 
 of pain may be assuaged. 
 
 Here are the two fundamental rules of the hospital, 
 and they form what one might call a double-barrelled 
 appeal not to be easily turned aside : — 
 
 IN-DOOR PATIENTS. 
 
 Foreigners, strangers, and 
 others, in sickness or disease, 
 having neither friends nor homes, 
 are admitted to the Wards of 
 this Hospital on their own ap- 
 plication, so far as the means 
 of the charity will permit. 
 
 OUT-DOOR PATIENTS. 
 
 All sick and diseased persons, 
 having no other means of ob- 
 taining relief, may attend at 
 this Hospital every day at Two 
 o'clock, when they will receive 
 Medical and Surgical Advice 
 and Medicine free. 
 
 Even while I read the latter announcement the out- 
 patients are assembling in the waiting-room, on the 
 right of the quadrangle ; the dispenser, in his repository 
 of drugs, surrounded by bottles, jars, drawers, and all 
 the appliances for making up medicines, has set his 
 assistants to work, and is himself ready to begin the 
 afternoon's duty; the consulting-physician of the day 
 has just taken his seat in one plain barely-furnished 
 
270 " A BO UT M Y FA THER'S BUSINESS." 
 
 apartment, the consulting-surgeon in another, while the 
 resident house-surgeon has completed his first inspection 
 of in-patients, and is ready with particulars of new cases. 
 
 These rooms, where patients assemble, and doctors 
 consult, are on the right of the pleasant quadrangle, with 
 its large centre oval garden plot, containing a double 
 ring of trees ; and here also is the reception room for 
 " accidents " and urgent cases — a very suggestive room, 
 with styptics, immediate remedies, and prompt appliances 
 ready to hand, but like all the rest of the official portion 
 of the building, very plain and practical, with evidence 
 of there being little time to regard mere ease or orna- 
 ment, and of a disregard of anything which is not asso- 
 ciated with the work that has to be done. It is the 
 same with other apartments, where it is obvious that no 
 unnecessary expenditure is incurred for mere official show. 
 
 The business of the place is to heal by means of food, 
 of rest, and of medicine, and there, on the left of the 
 quadrangle, a flight of steps leads downwards to a wide 
 area, where, in the kitchens, the domestic servants are 
 busy clearing up, after serving the eighty-eight rations 
 which have been issued for dinner — rations of fish, flesh, 
 and fowl, or those " special diets " which are taken under 
 medical direction. There is something about this kitchen, 
 the store-rooms, and offices, with the steps leading thereto, 
 and the cat sitting blinking in the sun, which irresistibly 
 reminds me of the heights of Dover and some portion of 
 the barrack building there ; the old military look of the 
 place clings to this Gray's Inn Road establishment still, 
 and the visitor misses the wonderful appliances and 
 mechanical adaptations of some more modern institu- 
 tions, not even lifts to convey the dinners to the wards 
 being possible in such an edifice. 
 
HEALING THE SICK. 271 
 
 There is some compensating comfort in noting, how- 
 ever, that the nursing staff is so organised as to secure 
 personal attention to the patients, and that the arrange- 
 ments are touchingly homely, not only in regard to the 
 simple furniture, the few pictures and engravings, and 
 the little collection of books that are to be found in the 
 wards, but also in the matter of sympathetic, motherly, 
 and sisterly help, which is less ceremonious, but not less 
 truly loving, than is to be found in some places of higher 
 pretensions. 
 
 Here, on the ground floor, the twenty-two beds of the 
 men's severe accident ward are always full, and some of 
 the cases are pitiable, including maiming by machinery, 
 railway accidents, or injury in the streets. The "Marsden 
 Ward," adjoining is devoted to injuries of a less serious 
 kind, so that there many of the patients can help them- 
 selves. In the women's accident ward there are three or 
 four children, one of whom, a pretty chubby-faced little 
 girl of five years old, has not yet got over her astonish- 
 ment at having been run over by a cab the day before 
 yesterday, picked up and brought into this great room 
 where most of the people are in bed, only to hear that 
 she is more frightened than hurt, and is to go home to- 
 morrow. There are some other little creatures, however, 
 suffering from very awkward accidents, and they seem to 
 be petted and made much of, just as they are in the 
 women's sick ward above, where a delicate-faced intelli- 
 gent girl, herself improving greatly under prompt treat- 
 ment for an early stage of phthisis, is delighted to have a 
 little companion to tea with her at her bed-side, the 
 child being allowed to sit up in a chair, and the pair of 
 invalids being evidently on delightfully friendly terms. 
 There is a lower ward, with half a dozen little beds 
 

 272 " ABOUT MY FA THERS BUSINESS: 1 
 
 devoted solely to children, who are, I think, all suffering 
 from some form of disease of the joints. Alas ! this 
 class of disease comes of foul dwellings, of impure or 
 stinted food, of want of fresh air and water ; and it brings 
 a pang to one's heart to note the smiling little faces, the 
 bright beaming eyes, the pretty engaging grateful ways 
 of some of these little ones, and yet to know how long a 
 time it must be before the results of the evil conditions 
 of their lives will be remedied at the present rate of pro- 
 cedure ; how difficult a problem it is to provide decent 
 dwellings for the poor, in a city where neighbourhoods such 
 as that which we have just traversed have grown like 
 fungi, and cannot be uprooted without pain and loss which 
 social reformers shrink from inflicting. Thinking of this, 
 and of all that I have seen in this Royal Free Hospital, 
 I am glad to carry away from it the picture of this child's 
 ward and its two young nurses, though I could wish that 
 the walls of that and all the other wards were a little 
 brighter with more pictures, that a fresh supply of books 
 might soon be sent to replenish the library, and that the 
 flowers, that are so eagerly accepted to deck the tables 
 of those poor sick rooms, and carry thither a sense of 
 freshness, colour, and beauty, may come from the gardens 
 and greenhouses of those who can spare of their abun- 
 dance. To keep the eighty-eight beds full requires con- 
 stant dependence on public contributions, and yet when 
 we think of the work that is going on here, not the 
 eighty-eight only, but the whole number of 102 should 
 be ready for applicants, who would, even then, be far too 
 numerous to be received at once in a hospital which, 
 with a royal freedom of well-doing, sets an example that 
 might be hopefully followed by other and wealthier 
 charities for healing the sick. 
 
WITH THE PRISONER. 
 
 HAT is the first greeting which a convict re- 
 ceives when he or she is discharged from 
 prison ? 
 
 - Imagine, if you can, the shivering, shrink- 
 ing, bewildered feeling of the man or woman who, after, 
 undergoing a term of penal servitude, some of it passed in 
 hours of solitary confinement, has all this great city sud- 
 denly opened again, with its wilderness of streets, its 
 crowd of unfamiliar faces, its tremendous temptations, its 
 few resources for the friendless and the suspected, its 
 great broad thoroughfares, where on every side may be 
 seen evidences of wealth and plenty ; where the tavern 
 and the gin-shop offer a temporary solace to the wretched ; 
 and where, also, in every neighbourhood, there are evil 
 slums in which vice finds companionship, and the career 
 of dishonesty and crime can be resumed without difficulty 
 or delay. 
 
 Those who have stood outside the walls of Clerken- 
 well or Coldbath Fields prison, and have watched the 
 opening of the gates whence prisoners emerge into a 
 freedom which is almost paralysing in its first effects, 
 will tell you how the appearance of these poor wretches 
 is greeted in low muttered tones by silent slouching men 
 
 iS 
 
274 " ABOUT MY FA THEKS BUSINESS:' 
 
 and women who await their coming. How, after very- 
 few words of encouragement and welcome, they are taken 
 off to some adjacent public-house, there to celebrate 
 their liberation ; and how, almost before a word is spoken, 
 the male prisoner is provided with a ready-lighted pipe 
 from the mouth of one of his former companions, in order 
 that he may revive his sense of freedom by the long-un- 
 accustomed indulgence in tobacco. 
 
 I should be very sorry to cavil at these marks of 
 sympathy. They are eminently human. They do not 
 always mean direct temptation — that is to say, they 
 are not necessarily intended to induce the recipient to 
 resume the evil course which has led to a long and severe 
 punishment. That the result should be a gradual, if not 
 an immediate, weakening of that remorse which is too 
 -frequently sorrow for having incurred the penalty rather 
 <han repentance of the sin that led to it, is obvious 
 enough ; but what else is to be expected ? Not many 
 men or women come out of gaol with a very robust 
 morality. Without entering into the question how far 
 our present system of prison discipline and management 
 is calculated to influence the moral nature of culprits 
 who are under punishments for various crimes, scarcely 
 ever classified, and never regarded in relation to the 
 particular circumstances under which they are committed 
 or the character and disposition, the social status, or the 
 mental and moral condition of the offender, it may be 
 broadly and barely stated that our penal legislation is 
 not effectual in promoting the reclamation of the 
 criminal. 
 
 Even if some determination to begin life anew, to 
 avoid associations that have led to infamy and disgrace 
 to accept any labour anywhere in order to obtain an 
 
WITH THE PRISONER. 275 
 
 honest subsistence, has been working in the mind of a 
 convict during the period of imprisonment, and under 
 the advice and remonstrance of the chaplain and the 
 governor, what is to sustain such half-formed resolutions? 
 Supposing even that the discharged prisoner has been so 
 amenable to the regulations of the gaol that he or she 
 has had placed to the credit account that weekly " good- 
 conduct money," which, when the term of punishment 
 has ended, amounts to a sum sufficient to provide for 
 immediate necessities, where is employment to be looked 
 for ? In what quarter is the owner of a few shillings — 
 which may have to last a week or more — to seek a lodg- 
 ing and a meal, and that companionship which must be 
 one of the keenest longings of the newly-released and 
 yet solitary and half-dazed creature, who is ready to re- 
 ceive with grateful avidity any friendly greeting that 
 promises relief from the long monotony of the gaol ? 
 
 Surely, then, there can be few conditions which appeal 
 more forcibly to Christian beneficence than that of the 
 captive who is released after having undergone a sentence 
 of penal servitude, part of which has been passed in 
 solitary confinement. Whatever may have been the 
 impressions made upon the mind during the period of 
 punishment, and the influence exercised by instruction 
 or exhortation, the very fact of regaining liberty, the 
 excitement of freedom, and the uncertainty of the first 
 steps a man or woman is to take outside the prison walls, 
 will always involve a danger, before which a very large 
 proportion of released convicts will succumb. 
 
 What, then, is being done in order to extend a help- 
 ing hand to these, who are among the most destitute 
 and unfortunate ; who, even if they have relatives, may 
 be ashamed to seek their aid, or are doubtful of the re- 
 
 18—2 
 
276 " ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS." 
 
 ception that awaits them, while the only companionship 
 which they can claim at once, and without question, is 
 that which will surround them with almost irresistible in- 
 centives to a lawless life ? 
 
 In the very centre of this vast metropolis, at the point 
 where its great highways converge, and yet in a modest 
 quiet house standing a little back from the roar and tur- 
 moil of the main street, we shall find what we seek. 
 Here, on the doorpost of No. 39, Charing Cross, is the 
 name of " The Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society," and 
 in two or three offices on the first floor — one of which is, 
 in fact, a reception-room for the discharged prisoners 
 themselves — the w r ork for which there is such a con- 
 stant and pressing need is steadily carried on, under the 
 direction of a very distinguished committee, of whom 
 the treasurer is the Hon. Arthur Kinnaird, and the first 
 honorary secretary, Mr. W. Bayne Ranken, who is assisted 
 by Mr. S. Whitbread and Mr. L. T. Cave. In looking 
 at the names of the gentlemen who are concerned in 
 this admirable effort, you will have noticed that some of 
 them are also associated with other charitable organisa- 
 tions which we have visited together, and notably with 
 those of that Soho district where we last joined in the 
 musical diversions of the Newport Market Refuge. As 
 we enter this front office at Charing Cross, we have a 
 pleasant reminder of that occasion, for we are welcomed 
 by the indefatigable performer on the cornet, who, when 
 we last met him, was making " the hills resound" in the 
 upper room of the old slaughter-house, and carrying all 
 his juvenile military band with him in one resonant out- 
 burst of harmony that awoke the echoes as far as Seven 
 Dials. To-day he is carrying out his ordinary secretarial 
 and managerial duties, as officially representing the 
 
WITH THE PRISONER. 277 
 
 Society, about which he can give us some information 
 worth hearing. 
 
 But there are other visitors for whom preparation has 
 already been made in the next room — men dressed de- 
 cently, and yet having a certain furtive, unaccustomed 
 bearing, as though they were not at the moment quite 
 used to their clothes or to public observation. Some of 
 them are not without a truculent half-defiant expression 
 lurking beneath their subdued demeanour; others have 
 an open, keen outlook ; and a few others, again, both in 
 the shape of their head and the peculiar shifty expression 
 of eye and mouth, and one might also say of hand, 
 would at once be characterised by the experienced ob- 
 server of London life as men who had " been in trouble " 
 more than once. On the table of the front office the 
 object which has at once attracted our attention is a per- 
 fectly new carpenter's basket containing a decent set of 
 tools, and the man for whom it is intended will be here 
 for it by-and-by to take it away, just as the shoemaker 
 who has just gone out has carried with him "a kit," with 
 which, in addition to a little stock of money, he is about 
 to begin the world afresh, under the auspices of his friends, 
 one of whom — either a member of the committee, or the 
 secretary, or one of the visiting agents— will keep him 
 in view, and give him an occasional encouraging call 
 while he remains in the metropolitan district. If a situa- 
 tion should be found for him in the provinces, either 
 the clergyman of the district, or some other friend of the 
 Society, is informed of his previous history, and has a 
 sincere interest in his well-doing. In no case have the 
 London police anything whatever to do with watching 
 or inspecting discharged prisoners under the care of the 
 
2 78 " ABO UT M Y FA THER'S BUSINESS:' 
 
 Society ; and, on the other hand, it is a standing rule 
 that where situations are found for these men and women, 
 the employers are informed of their previous] history, 
 though any recommendation of the Society may be re- 
 garded as a strong inference that \hz\r prottge is trying to 
 redeem lost character. 
 
 It must be remembered that a report of each of those 
 who are under the care of the Society is made at the 
 office once a month, either by the man or woman in per- 
 son, or by one of the visiting agents or correspondents 
 of the committee of management ; and that, though 
 the police are forbidden to interfere with them, except 
 on strong suspicion that they are about to commit a 
 crime, the most accurate and careful record of their mode 
 of life and conduct is kept at the offices of the Society. 
 Should they fail to observe the regulations which the 
 Society demands, they are liable to police surveillance 
 instead of friendly, encouraging, and confidential visita- 
 tion ; and it needs scarcely be said that this liability is 
 often of itself sufficient to make them desire to retain 
 the aid and protection which has been extended to them. 
 
 From a long and tolerably intimate observation of the 
 lower strata of the London population, and of the re- 
 sults of various methods adopted to check the progress 
 of crime, I am convinced that what is called police sur- 
 veillance, as it is conducted in this country, is altogether 
 mischievous in relation to any probable reformation of 
 the offender. Even if it be denied (as it has been) that 
 it is a practice of police-constables to give to persons 
 employing a discharged prisoner, information conveyed 
 in such a way as to lead to the loss of employment and 
 despair of obtaining an honest living, it is quite certain 
 that the constant dread of being branded as a returned 
 
WITH THE PRISONER. 279 
 
 felon, and the hopeless dogged temper which such a con- 
 dition produces, must be enormous obstacles to true re- 
 clamation. The man who could really surmount them 
 must, whatever may have been his casual crime, be pos- 
 sessed of a hardy and indomitable desire for virtue 
 which should challenge our profound respect. 
 
 But, apart from what may be called legitimate surveil- 
 lance of convicts by the police, it is unfortunately no- 
 torious that members of "the force," who occupy positions 
 as detectives, or " active and intelligent officers," employ 
 agents of their own to bring them information, and that 
 these agents, being men of bad character — frequently 
 thieves — are interested for their own safety's sake in pro- 
 viding " charges," or " putting up cases," by conveying 
 information of suspected persons. This is according to 
 the old evil traditions that have descended to constables 
 from the time of Jonathan Wild, and probably earlier ; 
 but it is obvious that where such nefarious tools are em- 
 ployed for obtaining evidence which will suffice to sustain 
 a charge and convict a prisoner, there is constant danger 
 to those who, having been once sentenced for crime, are 
 not only peculiarly liable to be drawn into fresh offences, 
 but are, from their position, easily made the victims of 
 cunningly-laid traps for their re-arrest, on a suspicion 
 that is readily endorsed, because of their previous convic- 
 tion and the knowledge of all their antecedents. 
 
 It is the removal of discharged prisoners from this pro- 
 bability, and from the kind of interposition that forbids 
 their return to the paths of honesty, and so actually pro- 
 duces " a criminal class," that is, in my opinion, the best 
 distinction of a Society like this. 
 
 Some of the volumes of interesting records which are 
 preserved here would probably doubtless confirm this 
 
2 8o "ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS." 
 
 view. Let us refer to one only, where a nobleman 
 residing in London had engaged a butler who went to 
 him with a very excellent character, and in whom he had 
 the greatest confidence. Happening to have occasion to 
 employ a detective constable on some business, his lord- 
 ship was dismayed at receiving from that astute officer 
 the intelligence that his trusted servant had once been 
 sentenced to five years' penal servitude for some dis- 
 honest act, but had been liberated on a ticket-of-leave. 
 Puzzled how to proceed, the nobleman had the good 
 sense to apply for advice to this Society, where it was 
 discovered that the representation of the detective was 
 true enough, and that the man had been recommended 
 to a situation by the Society itself, an intimation of his 
 antecedents being given to the employer. In that situa- 
 tion he had remained for several months, without the 
 least fault being brought against him, and he then 
 applied for and obtained the vacant and more lucrative 
 appointment in the family of his lordship, who, though he 
 acknowledged he should not have engaged him had he 
 known of his previous fault and its punishment, kept his 
 secret, and retained him in his service, where he re- 
 mained at the time of the last report, respected by the 
 household, and faithfully fulfilling his duties. 
 
 Probably this was one of those cases where, yielding 
 to sudden temptation, a man incurs for a single crime 
 punishment that awakens moral resolution ; and it must 
 be remembered that there are many convicts who, while 
 in prison they are practically undistinguished from the 
 habitual or the repeated criminal, or from the convict of 
 brutalised, undeveloped, or feeble moral nature, are in 
 danger of being utterly ruined because of a single and 
 perhaps altogether unpremeditated offence, of which. 
 
WITH THE PRISONER. 281 
 
 they may bitterly repent. The feeling of shame, of 
 humiliation, of doubt as to any but a cold and deterrent 
 reception by former friends, the dread of scorn, derision, 
 or abhorrence, may lead such men or women to abandon 
 as hopeless any expectation of resuming their former 
 avocations, or even of once more attaining a respectable 
 position. To such as these the Society offers such aid 
 as may keep them from the despondency that destroys ; 
 and in every case, even in that of the wretch who has 
 been convicted again and again, it holds out some 
 hope of reformation. That there is some such hope 
 may be learned from the fact, that even thieves — 
 "habitual criminals" — do not, as a rule, bring their own 
 children up to dishonesty, and are often careful to con- 
 ceal from them the means by which they live. The 
 ranks of crime are not so largely augmented from the 
 children of dishonest parents (though, of course, evil 
 example bears its dreadful results) as from the neglected 
 children of our great towns. 
 
 But let us see what are the means adopted by the 
 Society for helping discharged prisoners. Of course the 
 procedure must begin with the prisoners themselves, in 
 so far that they must express their willingness to accept 
 the aid offered to them, and make known their decision 
 to the governor of the prison where they are confined, 
 and where the rules and provisions of the Society are 
 displayed and explained. 
 
 This refers to the convict prisons, since only these are 
 eligible, the prisoners from county gaols being assisted 
 by other organisations ; therefore, discharged convicts 
 from Millbank, Pentonville, Portland, Portsmouth, Chat- 
 ham, Parkhurst, Dartmoor, Woking, and Brixton, are 
 able to seek help ; and it is gratifying to know that, 
 
282 " ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS:'' 
 
 according to the prison returns, of 1,579 m ^le prisoners 
 discharged from these places in one year, 796 sought aid 
 from this and local provincial societies having the same 
 object, the number of applicants to the London Society 
 being 524, or nearly two-thirds of the whole. 
 
 On any convict, male or female, accepting the offer of 
 the Society, and making that decision known to the 
 governor of the prison, the latter forwards to this office 
 at Charing Cross a printed document, or recommenda- 
 tion, stating full particulars of the prisoner's age, date of 
 conviction, number of previous convictions (if any), de- 
 gree of education, religion, former trade or employment, 
 ability to perform labour, and general character while in 
 prison, together with the amount of good-conduct money 
 which is to be allowed for work performed duringthe period 
 of incarceration. This good-conduct money may amount 
 to a maximum sum of £3, and the Society takes charge 
 of it for the benefit of the prisoner, disbursing it only as 
 it may be required, and supplementing it, when necessary, 
 by a further grant of money, or even by advances or 
 loans as may be deemed desirable in certain cases. 
 
 These reports from the prison governor reach the office 
 about six weeks before the discharge of the convicts 
 named in them, and following them come other papers, 
 each of which contains a graphic personal description of 
 the prisoner referred to, and a fairly-executed photograph, 
 which is usually not without certain striking characteris- 
 tics, though you will be surprised to find how often you 
 fail to discover the lineaments which you have associated 
 in fancy with lawlessness and crime. At the time of 
 their discharge, the men and women are conducted hither 
 by a plainly-clothed messenger from the prison, appointed 
 for the purpose, and take their places in yonder back 
 
WITH THE PRISONER. 283 
 
 room, where they are immediately identified by means of 
 the descriptions and photographs, and are then questioned 
 as to their capabilities and the particular employment in 
 which they desire to engage. It is manifestly impossible 
 that the Society can provide them with employment in 
 the particular trades which they may previously have 
 followed, since there may be no openings in those indus- 
 tries, or they may be such as would be obviously unsuit- 
 able for persons who are still on probation. 
 
 Should the prisoner have friends or relatives able and 
 willing to receive or assist him, they are communicated 
 with, but should he be entirely dependent on personal 
 exertion, the agent or secretary at once procures for him 
 a decent outfit of clothes, and a lodging as far as possible 
 from the scene of his former companions. A small sum 
 of money is advanced for immediate subsistence, and he 
 usually has employment provided for him, either in a 
 situation, at manual labour, or by being set up in a 
 small way at shoemaking, tailoring, or carpentering, either 
 as journeyman, or, where possible, on his own account. 
 
 From six to twenty prisoners at a time are discharged 
 from one or other of the convict establishments and 
 brought to the Society's offices, and of the younger men 
 a considerable proportion are assisted to go to sea, others 
 — but, alas ! too few — to emigrate, while a number obtain 
 work as builders and contractors' labourers ; and others 
 again resume former occupations, as potmen, waiters, or 
 employes in various situations, where the masters are 
 always (if they take them on the recommendation of the 
 Society) fully apprised of their position. A good many 
 are set up again as costermongers, and in that case the 
 agent of the Society quietly accompanies them to market, 
 and advances the money for their first purchases ; others 
 
284 " ABOUT MY FA THER'S BUSINESS: 1 
 
 go into the country and obtain work, and not a few of 
 the better-educated or more skilled soon obtain engage- 
 ments of various kinds, by personal application, and 
 without reference to the Society, though they continue to 
 report themselves, and to be kept in view by the agents, 
 and, being separated from evil companionship, and feeling 
 that they are not altogether friendless, retrieve their 
 position and regain an honourable reputation. 
 
 Of 514 men and women who were received by the 
 Society during the year, 180 obtained employment in 
 London and are doing well; 156 were sent to places 
 beyond the metropolitan district, and were placed under 
 the supervision of the local police; 32 were sent to relatives 
 and friends abroad ; 57 obtained berths on board ship; 50 
 had failed to report and notify their change of address 
 as required by Act of Parliament ; 23 had been re-con- 
 victed ; 6 were not satisfactorily reported on ; one had 
 died ; and 9, who had been recently discharged at the 
 end of the year, were waiting for employment at the time 
 of the Report. To read the Report Book, recording the 
 visits of the agents or secretary to men employed in 
 various avocations, and to their friends or relatives, is 
 very encouraging, for it shows that of a large proportion, 
 say seventy per cent, there is a good hope of recla- 
 mation by their long continuance in industrious efforts to 
 retain their situations and to work honestly in various 
 callings ; while the reports of country cases by clergy- 
 men in the provinces is equally satisfactory, especially as 
 they frequently record the return of the former convict 
 to his family and friends, amidst whom he earns an 
 honourable subsistence. 
 
 The female convicts, who are also received at the office, 
 are, if they cannot be sent to relatives and friends,. 
 
WITH THE PRISONER. 285 
 
 mostly taken to a Refuge, which has been established by 
 the Society at Streatham, where they find a home until 
 situations can be obtained for them ; and it is to the 
 credit of some earnest ladies who are willing to engage 
 these discharged prisoners as domestic servants that the 
 result is often most favourable. A very large proportion 
 of the women return to friends, however. Of 53 who 
 left the Refuge at Streatham last year, 30 were received 
 by friends, 18 obtained situations, 3 returned to Millbank 
 Penitentiary, 1 emigrated, and I died, 25 remaining at 
 the Refuge at the time of the report. 
 
 In the case of these discharged female prisoners, as 
 well as for the sake of those men who would eagerly 
 seize an opportunity of beginning life anew in a new 
 country, it would be most desirable if greater facilities 
 existed for promoting and assisting the emigration of 
 such as gave satisfactory evidence of reformation of 
 character. The Society finds its own funds, supported 
 by contributions from the public, barely sufficient to 
 maintain, and insufficient largely to extend its useful 
 work. One of the committee, a resident in Canada, has 
 rendered invaluable assistance to emigrants recommended 
 to his notice by the Society. The governor of Dartmoor 
 Prison in his Report, says : — 
 
 " I cannot too strongly again express my conviction 
 that an emigration scheme connected with the Aid 
 Societies would be an invaluable aid to the restoration of 
 many casual criminals to a position of respectability and 
 honesty. It would be especially appreciated by those 
 (unfortunately a too numerous class) who had incurred 
 the shorter sentences of penal servitude as punishments 
 for breaches of trust of various kinds. These men are 
 often cast off by their respectable friends, and, from the 
 
286 " ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS? 
 
 shortness of their sentences, are unable to earn the addi- 
 tional gratuity. With no lasting means of subsistence, 
 and an overstocked market for their labour, it is not to 
 be wondered at if such men speedily add a second 
 conviction to their criminal career." Let us trust that 
 practical steps will be taken to remove this difficulty. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, SURKEY- 
 
January, 1876. 
 
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