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"I give tiefe Books
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ILLE3M..1i3Y
MARIE HILTON
"THERE is one in the world who feels for him who is sad a keener pang than he feels for himself ; there is one to whom reflected joy is better than that which comes direct; there is one who rejoices in another's honour, more than any which is one's own ; there is one on whom another's transcendent excellence sheds no beam but that of delight ; there is one who hides another's infirmities more faithfully than one's own; there is one who loses all sense of self in the sentiment of kindness, tenderness, and devotion to another—
that one is Woman.''—	Sill A'G TOA' I l'ING.
-/r_A4„t,,_ 4z(7)
MARIE HILTON
HER LIFE AND WORK
1821-1896
BY HER SON
J. DEANE HILTON
AUTHOR OF
" A DASH OF BITTER " "THE OFF-CHANCE "
" This woman was full of good works and alms-deeds which
she did."—AcTs ix. 36
LONDON
ISBISTER AND COMPANY LIMITED
15 & i6 TAVISTOCK STREET COVENT GARDEN
1897
1	•	•
•
*	1c)
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co. London and Edinburgh
NI ID
CONTENTS
CHAP.	PAGE
CHARACTERISTICS .	I
EARLY DAYS .	I0
BRIGHTON	22
LONDON	.	46
ALSATIA	•	52
DIALECT—MORAL DEGRADATION .	69
WAYSIDE BLOSSOMS	88
LIFE IN LIMEHOUSE—THE FRIENDS' MEETING HOUSE 108
SEWING CLASSES—SOUP KITCHENS	129
VISITING—THE DRINK CURSE	•	• 138
THE DRINK CURSE—(continued) .	. 157
FOUNDING THE CRÈCHE—THE INSTITUTION DESCRIBED 176
OTHER DESCRIPTIONS OF THE CRÈCHE	210
WHY THE CRECHE SUCCEEDED—THE PRINCESS CHRIS-
TIAN—CRECHES AT HOME AND ABROAD—THE EARL OF
SHAFTESBURY	. 224
vi	CONTENTS
CHAP.
ADDITIONS TO THE CRÈCHE-THE INFIRMARY-THE
COUNTRY HOME-THE TEMPORARY ORPHAN HOME .
FINANCIAL TROUBLES-THE BURDEN OF SYMPATHY-LOSSES AND CHANGES-ILLNESS .
THE LAST DAYS .
PAGE
248
264
288
INDEX .	299
CHAPTER I
CHARACTERISTICS
WHEN the history of the latter half of the nineteenth century comes to be written, one of the most remarkable features of the period will be found to be the extraordinary advance which woman has made in every department of life. Women have stormed the barriers of the universities ; they have obtained a firm footing on the press ; they have given more brilliant executants to art and literature than in any previous age ; they have won renown as explorers ; they have been admitted to membership of minor legislative bodies. But in no sphere of human effort has woman's influence been more potential than in philanthropy. Her labours in the fields of charity now meet with no opposition ; even those who are disposed to criticise sharply the interference of women in affairs which have hitherto been regarded as belonging exclusively to man's domain,
A
-,	MARIE HILTON
have nothing to say against her ministrations of love. In work among the poor, in relieving their necessities and teaching them thrift, in visiting the sick, and in the care of infants, no one will question woman's supremacy. In these departments her empire is unassailable. There can be no conflict of the sexes here. To quote Mrs. Browning :
" Women know
The way to rear up children (to be just).
They know a simple, merry, tender knack
Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes,
And stringing pretty words that make no sense,
And kissing full sense into empty words ;
Which things are corals to cut life upon,
Although such trifles ; children learn by such
Love's holy earnest in a pretty play.
And yet not over-early solemnised ;
But seeing as in a rose-bush Love's design,
Which burns and hurts not—not a single bloom,
Become aware and unafraid of love.
Such good do mothers."
People of every sect and of all shades of opinion can admire a great work accomplished by a woman which had for its object the salvation of infant life, and lightening the burdens of poverty-stricken mothers. The Creche system has now taken its place among the recognised institutions of Britain, and the woman to whose
CHARACTERISTICS	3
labours its introduction is due must be numbered among the benefactors of the time. Mrs. Marie
Hilton, the founder of the Stepney Creche, was in many respects a remarkable woman. Her administrative capacity was great ; her influence over the poorer classes, amongst whom so many years of her life were passed, was wonderful ; but she had personal characteristics still more rare, which I shall endeavour to describe in the ensuing chapters.
The introduction of an entirely new system into a country so essentially conservative in its habits as Britain, was in itself a momentous work, and my mother's name is chiefly associated with it, yet she was very far from being a person with one idea ; her life had many interests and objects of which the general public knew little. Although she was by no means opposed to the appearance of women upon the platform, she had an instinctive shrinking from such publicity, feeling that her work lay in other directions. It was only with much persuasion that she could be induced to take any part in public meetings ; when she did appear on the temperance platform, however, she always spoke with eloquence and force. The many demands upon her time ren-
4	MARIE HILTON
dered literary work almost impossible. Although possessed of a vivid and graphic style, and a natural eloquence which never failed to touch the sympathies of the public, Marie Hilton has left but little written work. The literary faculty was there ; but the ever-present cares of a family and the management of various philanthropic enterprises prevented its development.
There were two salient features in my mother's character which could not fail to make themselves manifest even to a casual acquaintance. She was distinguished for a breadth of view in her estimate of humanity, a universality of sympathy that rose above creed and ignored nationality ; also for a quality very rare among women, especially rare among philanthropists, a keen and never-failing sense of humour. In a life so full of trouble, difficulties, and exacting labour, I am sure that this faculty of seeing the whimsicalities and oddities of life was a sustaining influence, and often vanquished despair. It salted her conversation, made her, frequently in times of extreme physical pain, light-hearted, and the cause of gaiety in others. It taught her tolerance for human frailties, and made brightness in places where others, less happily gifted, could only see
CHARACTERISTICS	5
the shadows. She had the gift of youth in rich abundance. Even towards the close of her life, when the rush of the river sounded nearer as each day passed, her vivacity of spirits suffered no diminution ; perhaps her perfect faith that all would be well at last rendered her fearless and calm. It might be said in truth that she died young. There was none of the gloom and fretfulness which so often darken the latter years. To her grandchildren, and in fact to all children, she was to the last a playmate and a friend. The child's heart, such an insoluble mystery to most of us, she could read with an insight that was instinctive. Her own children found in her at all times a delightful companion and friend more youthful in heart than they.
In middle life she had the power of casting aside her anxieties at any moment, and becoming, from her wit and cheerfulness, the centre of gaiety in every circle she joined. She had wonderful personal magnetism. Young men, with whom she was very popular, enjoyed listening to her graphically told anecdotes and recollections from her varied experience, related in a humorous way that made them inimitable. She had few contemporary friends : she lived with and felt with the young.
6	MARIE HILTON
Of the quickness and depth of her sympathies it is hardly necessary to speak at this stage. It was the warmth of her great heart, her capacity to feel another's suffering so acutely that prompted her to devote her life to the helpless and the wretched. Long before she had charge of public money to distribute, and when her own means were small, her hand was ever open as the day. Perhaps generosity was her predominant characteristic. But there are many ways of giving ; some hard people can make a gift sting like an insult. It was always Marie Hilton's endeavour to avoid wounding self-respect in bestowing charity. She sought out the proud, uncomplaining poor, and relieved them in secret. Many who were making a brave fight, and hiding their poverty from the world, received help from her of which their neighbours knew nothing. She had sympathy for all shades of human feeling, and was as incapable of wounding the pride of even the very poorest as of inflicting physical pain upon them. She was a member of the Society of Friends, and held the office of overseer in that body for many years ; but in her social relations and in her dealings with the poor, she recognised no sect. She preached with passionate earnestness the
CHARACTERISTICS	7
universal brotherhood of man, the universal Fatherhood of God. Her friends were of all persuasions ; Quakers, members of the Established Church, Roman Catholics, and Jews were all equally welcome to her hospitality and her friendship. With the clergy of other denominations in the East End she maintained the most cordial relations, for hers was a work in which all could join on the broad ground of humanity. My mother's success in dealing with the roughest and most degraded natures was extraordinary. Perhaps nowhere in the world were there more depraved and violent people than some of the inhabitants of Ratcliff in the sixties ; but I am correct in saying that during her thirty years' work among the poor, no disrespectful word was ever spoken to her. She never shrank from the most degraded, never allowed them to think that she held them in contempt. To women who had plumbed the lowest depths of vice she would speak lovingly and tenderly, for who were in greater need of pity ? and they would stand before her softened and penitent. Of her wonderful physical courage I shall have several instances to give in their proper place. She was absolutely fearless ; not so much from a belief in miraculous
8	MARIE HILTON
intervention as from constitutional intrepidity. She visited unattended the sick and dying in a network of noisome courts adjacent to Brook Street —long since pulled down—where the police dared not venture except in strong force. She often carried with her a large sum of money for the purposes of relief ; but in times of the greatest peril she preserved an unfaltering calmness of demeanour. The group of gaunt, fierce-eyed women and half-savage men assembled at the entrance of the court or alley would draw back as she approached, and allow her to pass out unmolested. It is a true saying that fortune follows the brave, for courage always commands respect.
How long-suffering she was, how patient with ingratitude and oft-repeated offences, many who have fought their way upward and passed o'er " their dead selves to higher things," can testify. Her forgiveness lasted out even to seventy times seven, and often prevailed in the end. Her hold on those she sought to save was hard to loosen.
When the end came, and peace at last fell upon the wearied brain, and the great heart was stilled for ever ; when the days so full of loving labour, of devoted service, of glorious success were all told, and she had passed into the great silence, many
CHARACTERISTICS	9
poor women gathered round her grave and wept, sorrowing for the friend who knew them and understood their troubles, the friend whose place could never be filled. But if all the women and children whom Marie Hilton's life had benefited had come together, how great would have been the concourse !
The tears of the poor ! a more eloquent and blessed tribute to the memory of the dead than any epitaph carved in stone, and one that Marie Hilton would have loved best.
CHAPTER II
EARLY DAYS
MARIE HILTON was born in London on the i i th July in the year 1821. She was left an orphan at a very early age, her mother dying in giving her birth, and her father also passing away a few years afterwards. She had only a faint, shadowy recollection of his personality. He was possessed of considerable property, and made ample provision for her ; but, owing to circumstances, she was deprived of nearly all benefit from it. She was brought up by her maternal grandmother. Her guardian by appointment, who became the wife of an officer holding a high command in the Belgian army, left England to reside permanently at Brussels. She proposed to bring up her ward as her own daughter, but the child, who gave evidence early of that force of character and independence which distinguished her through life, elected to remain with her grandmother, and was
EARLY DAYS	II
allowed to have her way. By her choice her worldly prospects were doubtless sacrificed ; but there were weightier issues than personal ambition depending upon her decision. She stood at the parting of the ways ; this was the first step on the road which was to lead to the work prepared for her. Had she accepted her guardian's offer, this book would never have been written. Her life would probably, however, have inspired a work of a different description, for Marie Hilton would have been distinguished in any condition of life.
Her childhood was passed in the neighbourhood of Richmond in Surrey, in those days quite a rural district. She always had an affection for the banks of the Thames about Mortlake and Richmond, for the Roehampton meadows, and Bushey Park, and in after years it was a great pleasure to her to take her children there, and show them the scenes she remembered in the days of coaches and post-chaises. She told us how she had seen the wild Marquis of Waterford driving four in hand. He was clad in a parti-coloured suit, and an immensely wide-brimmed hat, with bundles of matches tied round the crown. She remembered, too, many of the royal visitors to Sheen House, in the days when the century was
12	MARIE HILTON
young. Though so many years of her life were passed in London, and in the least lovely part, too, of the great city, her heart always turned back to the country ; the haymaking and harvesting times were ever remembered amid the squalid surroundings of Limehouse and Ratcliff. It was her dream to go back to a quiet place in the country some day, and rest from her labours ; but the good time never came for her : she died near where she had toiled for so many years. Her intense love of flowers, more especially wild flowers, perhaps owed its origin to those early associations. No present was more highly valued by her than a bunch of spring blossoms. I suppose their perfume re-awakened her longing for the country, for I always noticed that she wiped away tears when she put them down.
Her childhood was not happy. I believe that few persons who are destined to do a great work in after-life are happy in their childhood. They are too often weighed down by thoughts too heavy for their years, with speculations that bewilder them. She had few companions of her own age, and often sank under a sense of loneliness and desolation. She never knew a mother's love, and it was that feeling of loss and unsatisfied
EARLY DAYS	13
yearning which filled her with such infinite compassion for all orphans, for all neglected children. My mother inherited a splendid physical organisation, combined with an exquisitely sensitive nervous temperament ; her childhood and youth passed without serious illness of any kind. It was her forlorn condition rather than the depression of a morbid habit that caused her to be dreamy, reflective, and sad. But 'she had compensations ; she developed a passionate love of reading at an early age, and this she was able to indulge, having the run of a library well stocked with the works of standard authors. She read extensively, but her favourite book must have been the Bible. She knew the New Testament by heart, also the Psalms and many of the books of the Old Testament. Her memory was wonderfully accurate, and though some of her recollections were dimmed by the crowding affairs of a busy life, she never lost her scriptural knowledge ; she could repeat chapter after chapter from the Gospels in the last year of her life. In the terrible illness which overtook her three years before her death, and when quite unconscious, the staff to which she had clung for more than sixty troubled years remained in her grasp still ; she kept repeat-
14	MARIE HILTON
ing the words, " Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe." At the present time, when so many are trying to steer without looking to the old landmarks of faith, Marie Hilton's attitude with regard to Christianity should be recorded. She was a woman of great intellectual power, but she fully accepted the Christian religion as her guide through life. It was her stay under trials and crosses greater than fall to the common lot of humanity. In seasons of the deepest tribulation, when the dark waters seemed to be closing over her, the promises kept her from utter despair ; she could always remember texts that gave her comfort and resignation. She was not taught the Scriptures, she learned them, and interpreted them in her own way. She never instructed her children in any doctrine, never spoke of future punishment, but pointed to the example of Christ's life, tried to make them comprehend His great love, and day by day preached by precept and practice the beauty of the law of kindness.
She remembered, while still a very young child, standing bare-headed in the fields one summer day, and a rush of emotions coming over her. She felt the insoluble mystery of life, and the question which will perplex humanity till the
EARLY DAYS	15
end of time troubled her : Why should some be permitted to suffer so dreadfully while others escape ? Then came a passionate longing to be able to lessen in some degree the sum of human misery. It was the first premonition of the work to which she was to be called in the years to come. The apparent injustice of life was always a sad riddle to her ; it gave rise to many conflicts between her reason and her faith, but faith always triumphed in the end. In the latter days she was content to leave the riddle to be read in God's good time. A few days before her death she talked for a long time on this subject with her youngest daughter, and finished by saying, " Of course we could not bear to live if we did not know it would all be made up to them some day." None knew better than she how cruel life can be to some. For years she had witnessed scenes of suffering almost daily, and suffering borne, too, with heroic patience ; these things had caused her frequent searchings of spirit.
In her girlhood Marie Hilton experienced the operation of an extraordinary gift, which remained with her in a more or less degree for the greater part of her life. A prophetic spirit seemed to
i6	MARIE HILTON
inspire her dreams. One feels naturally some hesitation in referring to such a subject in these days of almost universal scepticism. Modern science, having no explanation at hand for phenomena of this kind, rejects them altogether as being fictitious and unworthy of serious examination. I can offer no solution of the following mysterious events. I can only relate the facts, for they are facts beyond the possibility of doubt. She was a child when she dreamed one night that a Dissenting chapel in the neighbourhood was being repaired, and she saw the scaffolding give way, and through the accident two of the workmen were killed and one injured. The dream was remarkably vivid, and she told her friends, who said the chapel in question was in good condition, and would not need repairing for many years. She thought no more of the matter till she was about fifteen, when passing the chapel one day she saw the scaffolding up, just as she had seen it in her dream, and the platform which she had seen fall looked insecure. The men were of course only rough bricklayers, and she had not the courage to warn them, fearing that that they would resent her interference. She passed on her way, feeling very apprehen-
EARLY DAYS	17
sive. Within an hour the catastrophe happened ; the scaffolding gave way, two men were killed on the spot, and one was seriously injured. She was overwhelmed with remorse, feeling that she ought to have warned the men of their danger at any cost, and was only comforted when she heard that a gentleman had passed on horseback shortly before, and had called out to the men that the platform on which they stood was giving way, and his warning had been received with jeers and abuse.
This extraordinary gift had strange developments in the after years, and became a burden to my mother, which she prayed to have lifted. She never liked to speak of these dreams, and it was only after much persuasion that she was induced to furnish some particulars to the Society for Psychical Research. I believe her statement appeared anonymously in one of the Society's reports. The dream I have mentioned was one of many which she had in her girlhood and early womanhood, some of them equally startling in character. I will say no more of the visions of those days, but will pass to others of which I am able to speak from personal knowledge ; they occurred within the last twenty years. In her
i8	MARIE HILTON
dream she stood alone on a desolate moor in a dim light, and close to a road which stretched away to the horizon. Soon she heard the tramping of myriads of feet, and up there came out of the dim distance a vast body of people, whose tread seemed to shake the earth. They came marching down the road to where she stood ; people of all ages, men, women, youths, and maidens and tiny children. " What is this ? " she asked. " It is the march of the dead," replied a voice, but she could not see the speaker. She stood watching the procession till an impulse for which she could not account led her to single out one individual from the crowd, and call to him. The one called paused for a moment and looked steadily at her. " Who are you ? " she asked. He spoke his name in a loud voice, and passed on his way. Then she awoke. The following morning or at some time during the day she would hear of the death of the person she had seen. I can vouch for the absolute truth of this. It occurred not once, but many times, the dream in every instance being the same. In some cases the death was of one she had never seen, the name only being known to her, nor had she had the least intimation that the person was ill.
EARLY DAYS	'9
These dreams had invariably a terrifying effect upon her. She feared that the death of some one near and dear to her might be foreshadowed in this manner, and she prayed earnestly and often that the strange gift might be taken from her. It seemed that her prayers were answered, for after a time the visions ceased, and troubled her no more. She had vivid dreams, I admit, which were not fulfilled, but that particular dream, when she saw the march of the dead, was the sure presage of death. I cannot remember a single instance where it failed.
Marie Hilton's friends and relatives were all rigid members of the Church of England, and she was herself baptized and educated according to the tenets of the Established Church. One day, however, while still a girl, she chanced to enter a Congregational chapel, and was much impressed by the extempore prayers, which seemed to her to breathe more earnestness than those repeated by rote, to which she was accustomed. " Why," she said, " this is the way I pray myself." She resolved to attend this little country chapel regularly, and did so against the strong remonstrance of her friends. In those days there was, unhappily, much hostility between Dissenters and
20	MARIE HILTON
members of the Church of England, more especially in the rural districts of southern England; sectarian animosity was carried to a length which would hardly be credited in the present time of greater toleration. Attendance at a Dissenting place of worship involved a good deal of social obloquy. Much pressure was brought to bear upon Marie Hilton to induce her to return to orthodoxy ; but when once thoroughly convinced that she had chosen the right path, it was impossible to move her. Those who will think her mistaken in the choice she made will at least admire her constancy
and independence of spirit.	This tenacity of
purpose and disregard of adverse criticism while maintaining a principle or carrying on a work in the face of prejudice, enabled her to accomplish much at a later period of her life.
Before she had attained her twentieth year, her grandmother died, and Marie Hilton came to reside in London. Here she joined the Westminster Congregational Church, under the ministration of the eminent Samuel Martin, and soon established a reputation as a most active and enthusiastic Sunday school teacher. She next associated herself with a number of young people, of whom the late George Mudie, the librarian, was a sort of leader, who
EARLY DAYS	21
founded and maintained some large and flourishing Sunday schools at Westminster. Of this period of her life, so full of religious work and Christian experience, she had many deeply interesting particulars to relate. She had a keen eye for eccentric character, a loving appreciation of the quaintness of childish talk, and the sharp-witted London children who filled the Sunday school furnished her with delightful studies. She was a favourite teacher ; children of all sizes were instinctively attracted to her, and never felt in her presence the dread which the " grown-up person " often inspires ; with her they could be perfectly natural. Still remaining a member of the Congregational body, she passed some time at East Retford, and then in the year 1843 came to Brighton, which was to be her resting-place for a good many years.
CHAPTER III
BRIGHTON
AT Brighton my mother filled for some years the position of governess in the family of a wealthy resident, her enthusiasm as a Sunday school teacher suffering no abatement. On one occasion. with the purpose of gathering children to the school, she personally canvassed a poor district of the town, and obtained a great number of promises to attend from the children. On the following Sunday she called at the houses again, and marshalled her recruits, who all appeared to be happy and willing to follow her. Many of them did follow her for some distance, but one by one they began to desert, till by the time the destination was reached, she found herself to her great astonishment quite alone. No one was more capable of appreciating the humour of the situation than my mother, for she always enjoyed a laugh against herself equally with a laugh at the expense of another.
BRIGHTON	23
It was during these early years at Brighton that she felt drawn to the Society of Friends. Though actively participating in the work of a large chapel, and remaining on terms of close friendship with the minister and his family, her views regarding the ordinance of the Lord's Supper underwent a change, and for some years she felt it to be her duty to absent herself from that ceremony. Ultimately she left the Congregationalists and regularly attended the religious meetings of the Society of Friends. She became closely associated with several Quaker ladies in Christian temperance work, and while so engaged she met my father, Mr. John Hilton, who was working energetically in the same cause. My father came of Quaker stock, the family having been members of the Society of Friends for several generations. At the period of which I am writing, and, indeed, for a good many years afterwards, any member of the Society who married a non-member was immediately disowned. It was owing to this drastic regulation that the Society dwindled so rapidly. Many eminent men who would have been a source of strength to Quakerism had they remained in membership, were lost in this manner. The Right Hon. W. E. Forster,
24	MARIE HILTON
of whom Carlyle spoke as the " ex-Quaker," used to say that he had been disowned for the best action he had ever done. A more enlightened policy has now been adopted in time to save the Society from the dangers of extinction by waste and the physical and mental degeneration of consanguinity.
My father was happily prepared to bear the onus of disownment in so good a cause, and duly paid the penalty. But he was told that he had been put out of a wide open door, and his return would be welcomed. After a few years of exile among uncongenial religious surroundings, my father, with his wife and family, were received back into the society. John Hilton and Marie Case were so eminently suited to each other in their views of life, in their aspirations and their tastes, that they were inevitably drawn together, and their acquaintance soon ripened into a deep and lasting attachment. The marriage took place at Brighton in the spring of the year 1853. The union was made a source of strength to both. To mutual love and esteem was added a perfect community of feeling in all that concerned the welfare and upraising of the people. In the important progressive movements of the time they worked
BRIGHTON	25
side by side, in the great anti-slavery agitation, in the cause of temperance reform, and in various religious and philanthropic enterprises. Mr. John Hilton, now a recorded minister in the Society of Friends, and the well-known Parliamentary agent of the United Kingdom Alliance, survives his wife. Upon the extent of his loss it does not behove me to enlarge here. Through nearly fifty years of married life his wife was his loyal helper, his inspiration to greater efforts, to loftier purposes.
" The idea of her life shall sweetly creep
Into the study of his imagination ;
And every lovely organ of her life
Shall come apparell'd in more precious habit
Into the eye and prospect of his soul,
Than when she lived indeed."
Marie Hilton was not a philanthropist of the Mrs. Jellyby type. Her domestic arrangements would not at any time have furnished material for satire. Though engaged in the most exigent and complicated affairs, the direction of which would have strained the powers of many strong men, her home could challenge comparison with any in the land ruled over by ladies innocent of missions. Her home was her first consideration, and the fact of its suffering no loss of comfort from her
26	MARIE HILTON
outside labours is an evidence of her wonderful powers of management.
Between the years 1853 and 1861 five children were born ; Sarah Alice (Mrs. H. J. Gill, of Guildford), John Deane, James Arthur, Marie Elmore (the wife of Dr. T. Cromwell Winn), and Eva Elizabeth (Mrs. S. T. Dadd, of Lewisham) all of whom live to mourn their mother's loss. Although none of us can boast the matchless physical organisation which distinguished our mother, or even an approach to her marvellous energy, we grew up—with the exception of Alice, the eldest, who was weakly as an infant—free from illnesses serious enough to cause alarm. I remember a touching incident connected with my sister's illness which my mother was fond of relating. A lady, who affected to be something of a fine lady, called one day when she was nursing the child, who looked very wan and ill The visitor looked at the infant, and said in a very unfeeling way : " Poor little thing ! I can see it is sure to die. There's not a chance of its living." My mother was too sorrowful to resent the speech ; but the same day a coal-heaver was carrying sacks of coal into the house, and she went to the door to give him some directions.
BRIGHTON	27
The man looked pityingly at the child in her arms and said very tenderly, " You haven't much hope of raising that little one, have you, ma'am ? " Truly, there are very different ways of expressing the same thought. It pleased my mother to contrast the sympathetic manner of the rough labourer with the cruel directness of the lady.
During the years spent at Brighton my father was an enthusiastic temperance advocate, and was officially connected with the United Kingdom Alliance. Six-and-thirty years ago the Temperance movement, which has since attained such vast proportions, was yet in its infancy. To-day the principle of total abstinence has the sanction of many leading physicians and men of science ; its practice is encouraged by the chiefs of the Army and Navy ; the highest dignitary of the Church of England has endorsed it ; the great majority of the Dissenting clergy are preachers of temperance ; but in the years 1862-63 teetotalism was still regarded as a piece of pernicious fanaticism, and teetotalers came in for a considerable share of ridicule and abuse. Temperance meetings were often broken up by gangs of public-house rowdies, and the speakers subjected to rough handling. Mr. John Hilton and his
28	MARIE HILTON
wife remained loyal to the cause, which they lived to see make its way among the cultivated classes ; at that time the practice of total abstinence was confined almost exclusively to what are called the lower grades of society.
The supporters of the liquor trade were mad enough to think that they could destroy a popular movement by violence ; how miserably mistaken they were the intervening years have shown. I cite the following incident as an example of Marie Hilton's courage. The temperance people at Brighton used to hold a meeting every Sunday afternoon on the North Level. At a time when a prominent teetotaler had made himself very unpopular, by informing against a publican for some illegal practice, a violent mob, composed of the most disorderly elements in the town, determined to put an end to all open-air temperance meetings, and for several weeks in succession serious rioting took place. One Sunday afternoon, Marie Hilton saw the speakers who had
been driven off the Level surrounded by some hundreds of roughs, who were violently hustling
them. Without hesitating a moment, she made her way into the crowd, and asked the speakers to follow her. I suppose the latent chivalry of
BRIGHTON	29
the rough mob must have been stirred at the sight of a woman in their midst, for they fell back and allowed the hunted men to accompany my mother home without further molestation. The character of the mob may be guessed by the fact that the magistrates sent the chief officer of police to my father's house to ask as a favour that he would use his influence with the temperance people to induce them to refrain from holding the meetings, at least for a time. He assured my father that the mob was of such a desperate character that the police were unable to cope with it. On another occasion an attempt was made to hold an open-air temperance meeting at Lewes. The working men in that very conservative town resented the new gospel almost as hotly as a North Carolina crowd would at that time have resented the teaching of an abolitionist. My father, with a few friends, occupied an impromptu platform, and tried to address the people. But it was quite useless ; not a sound ever reached the ears of the crowd. The most powerful voice in the world would have been drowned by the loud and incessant bellowings of the sturdy brewery men. Through all the riot and uproar of that wild scene, Marie Hilton stood at her
3o	MARIE HILTON
husband's side —perhaps her presence there preserved him from personal violence. She used to tell how a huge fish-hawker got on the platform, and kept up a continual howling in her husband's ear, so as to drown his voice, stopping now and again, and saying to her in a hoarse, but not unkindly voice, " Don't you be afeard, marm, we ain't a going to hurt him, we are only making a jolly row so as they can't hear what he says." This person's objections to prohibition were strongly tinged with self-interest. At the commencement of my father's address he had interrupted him by asking indignantly, " If you shut up all the public-houses, how do you think I'm going to sell all my stale fish on a Saturday night ? "
I doubt not that these men were inspired with a genuine feeling of duty and patriotism. If teetotalism came in, they thought, manliness, pluck, and every British virtue would die out, and the power of the mighty British Empire would pass away. Such was the general opinion among English working-men at that time. Strong drink was closely associated in their minds with the pride of conquest, with personal prowess, with good fellowship, and naval and military glory. A
BRIGHTON	31
teetotaler was held to be a contemptible hypocrite, a sneak of the Stiggins type. How great a change has been wrought in forty years ! Now, every ship of war—thanks to the labours of Miss Agnes Weston—has a Temperance Society on board, and in the Army teetotalers are numbered by many thousands. Among the poorest workmen Temperance Societies have sprung up, such as the Sons of the Phoenix, the Sons of Temperance, the Rechabites, and the Independent Order of Good Templars.
Lewes had at that time an evil notoriety for the disgraceful rioting which took place every Fifth of November, when the " Bonfire Boys " held the town and defied the police. When the baffled teetotal orators were forced to quit the platform, foiled but unconquered, the spokesman of the crowd gave them some weighty advice, which
they were wise enough not to disregard.	You
may go now," he said, " but don't let us catch you on the Fifth of November."
Marie Hilton lived to make the acquaintance of characters compared with whom the roughs of Brighton and Lewes were cultured and urbane ; but at no time did she ever present anything but an unappalled front to physical danger.
32	MARIE HILTON
My own recollection of my mother dates from about the year 1859. There is, unfortunately, no portrait of her at that period. The photograph accompanying this work was taken in the year 1885 ; it gives a just idea of her at that time, and, in fact, it shows her very much as she was up to the time of her death ; for though she passed through two severe illnesses, she altered but very slightly in appearance. She was about the middle height, rather inclined to stoutness, with a look of intense vitality and perfect health. Her complexion was fair, her hair brown in colour and abundant ; her eyes were grey, except when she became excited at hearing some tale of cruelty or wrong, then they darkened strangely, and appeared to be almost black. Her hands were remarkably small and well-shaped. Her voice had not a note of harshness in it ; without approaching masculine strength, it had depth and resonance, and her utterance was always perfectly distinct. In my earliest recollection, I see her face lit up with vivacity and cheerfulness, her eyes sparkling with merriment. But as the years passed, her expression deepened to one of sweet serenity and gentleness. When a life so heavily burdened with care for others had lined her face, and whitened her
BRIGHTON	33
hair, she would often grow tired of reading, and sit in silence for a long time thinking of the vanished years, with a look of peace and contentment that seemed to tell of work accomplished and the reward awaiting. To the last her spirit was unquenched ; she could throw aside all heaviness of spirit, and her laugh would ring out as vigorously as in the old days. I never met any one else who could pass so rapidly from humour to pathos. She could make us laugh one moment with some quaint story, some wild extravagance of fancy, and the next have us weeping with her at a sorrowful tale. She always told us the day's news, and with the map of Europe before her tried to make us understand what was happening in the great world. I can remember well how earnestly she prayed for peace when the affair of the Trent seemed to point to the possibility of war with America, and a little later, her keen sympathy with the sufferers in the Lancashire famine. I cannot recall a time when she was entirely free from care. When she had no troubles of her own, there was always some great cause to agitate for, some miserable person to befriend. I could make a tolerably long list of the " victims of destiny " who were permitted at various times to stay at our house till the clouds
34	1.IARIE HILTON
rolled by. Some were without doubt unworthy of assistance, and my mother was deceived ; but the people who are never deceived do not represent the highest type of humanity. No matter how often she might be deceived, she never became cynical, never lost her generous impulses ; and her optimism was justified, for, after all, the impostors were in the minority.
The visitors at our house in those early days were of a character to impress themselves on the memory. Canon Babbington, who was interested in temperance, used frequently to ride up, and many people came who were connected in some way with progressive movements both at home and abroad. My father being in correspondence with the leaders of the Abolitionist party in America, many prominent Americans visited us. I remember General Riley, General Neal Dow, and I have also a dim recollection of a wild, stormy character who had some share in precipitating the great war in America, Colonel Richard Realf. Realf had certainly a streak of genius running through his nature, marred by a strange eccentricity, which finally developed into insanity. I believe he tried to emulate Byron and Poe in their least amiable qualities. As a
BRIGHTON	35
boy he had shown extraordinary precocity, corn-posing poems of some merit while cleaning knives and forks, for he was page-boy to Dr. Stafford, of Brighton. A volume of his poems was published at 5s., under the title of " Guesses at the Beautiful," while he was still a youth. This led to his emancipation from the knife-board, and introductions to Thackeray, Rogers, Harriet Martineau, and Lady Byron. The poems were certainly extraordinary productions coming from a poor, ignorant boy, the son of a Sussex policeman ; but as so often happens in cases of juvenile precocity, the promise of youth was not fulfilled. The young poet lacked the staying power and steadiness of purpose to achieve anything of permanent value. His career reads like a romance. He was a very handsome man, and in addition to his personal advantages he possessed great powers of natural oratory. Lady Byron made him a master of one of her country schools ; but teaching was a very uncongenial occupation to one of his turbulent disposition. He drifted to America, which offered a better field to his soaring ambition. The air was already heavy with sulphurous clouds, soon to burst in the desolation of civil war. Realf volunteered into
36	MARIE HILTON
the impromptu army which, under General Jim Lane, marched to the defence of the ballot-boxes in Kansas against the Missouri ruffians. He served as aide-de-camp in that army, and ever afterwards passed as " Colonel " Realf. His ballad, " The Defence of Lawrance," written with much force, is the finest of his poems. He was called the poet laureate of Lane's army. He made the acquaintance of John Brown, and attended the secret convention in Canada ; and it was owing to his extraordinary eloquence that it was finally decided to encourage John Brown's mad scheme. Realf came to England to collect money for the revolt among anti-slavery sympathisers, but his pretensions were not credited, and he became a professional temperance advocate ; and it was in that capacity that he visited at our house. John Brown evidently thought highly of him, for in the plan of the Black Republic which was to be founded, Realf's name appeared as Secretary of State. Brown's confidence was misplaced, for Realf failed to rally to his leader at Harper's Ferry ; but on the breaking out of the Civil War he returned to the States and fought gallantly against the South. About four-and-twenty years ago he paid us another visit, but
BRIGHTON	37
on that occasion I was in Scotland, and missed seeing him. He was still wonderfully handsome, with classic profile, bronzed face, and hair touched with grey. He had not many years of life in him. I think it was in the year 1878 that an accumulation of troubles, financial and matrimonial, unhinged his mind, and he died by his own hand. At the time of his death he filled an important position in the mint at San Francisco. I have only mentioned Richard Realf here because of the deep interest my mother took in him ; she had known him as a boy, and had hoped that he would have done better with his life. She was very fond of his poems, and one of them, " Mother's Remembrances," she used to repeat with touching pathos. There were other visitors at our house whose characters were less interesting ; but Marie Hilton's charity was free, and she never turned any one away. We learned from her that there was something sacred in poverty, and that we were never to appraise any one by his worldly possessions. In obedience to these precepts, it was her custom while we were children to invite some poor person on Christmas-day who would otherwise have had no share in the festivities of the season.
38	MARIE HILTON
There was not a trace of what is called snobbery in her nature. She had no levelling theories, but she was one of the very few people who are entirely uninfluenced by rank. She had no desire to intrude among those of a higher social sphere than her own, and it was her rule never to visit at the house of any one who would not visit her in return ; the one thing she could not tolerate was patronage. I never heard her say a harsh word to a dependant, she never for a moment made them feel a sense of inferiority. One of the rare occasions when she was seriously angry with her children was when they conspired to play a foolish practical joke on a servant. She was more of a playmate to her children than most mothers are. No childish scheme was too wild for her to join in as heartily as the youngest. She would take a part in the nonsense talk which children so delight in, and go to greater lengths in comicality than any of us. Her laugh was ringing and contagious ; all within hearing felt compelled to join in the mirth. Our home was always bright when she was with us, and it was a black day indeed when she was called away for a few hours.
I remember once the bricklayers came to the
BRIGHTON	39
house to do some repairs. One of them was a coarse, repulsive looking man, with whom, to my surprise, my mother shook hands, and to whom she spoke very kindly. She told me the reason afterwards. The man had been with his wife in the dreadful Clayton tunnel railway accident. When the crash was over, he found his wife lying under a great heap of debris. He set to work to extricate her, throwing aside the masses of iron and timber ; but he found that across her chest lay a great beam that he could not move with his utmost efforts, so he knelt down beside her, holding her face between his hands till she suffered no more. Then he rose up, thinking not of his own sorrow, but of others, and in the dark tunnel, choked up with the dead and dying, wrought bright deeds of heroism. That was why my mother honoured the poor bricklayer.
Her indignation would flash out hotly whenever she heard sneering remarks made at the expense of the poor, for she had taken the trouble to understand them, and recognised the grandeur of their lives. Her intense sympathy with the poor was perhaps the reason why she loved the writings of Charles Dickens. He was her favourite novelist, and we were introduced to his immortal characters
40	MARIE HILTON
at a very early age. She read most of the novels to us before we could read ourselves, and our loyalty to the master has never wavered since those far-off days. The mingling of humour and pathos which distinguished Marie Hilton's character placed her en rapport with Dickens's genius she felt every line he composed, and we knew no greater pleasure than to hear her read " David Copperfield " and " Martin Chuzzlewit " aloud to
us.	A little later she read George Eliot's works, which we enjoyed, too, but no one was quite like dear Charles Dickens, and no one, in our opinion, ever read him as she did.
How patient she was with childish fears, how long-suffering with petulance and obstinacy, how infinitely tender in times of pain and sickness, how fertile of resource in devising new pleasures, how careful not to wound childish pride,—the full tale can never be told. Never was she known to forget a birthday, or to neglect to mark the day with just the present longed for. Her love for animals was another strong point in her character. I believe they came next to children in her regard. She used to contend in a half-serious way that they were destined for immortality like human beings.
BRIGHTON	41
My sister, Mrs. H. J. Gill, whose recollection reaches back a year farther than mine, writes :—
" The chief thing I think of in remembering my mother is how much wider and freer her judgment was about people and things than that of most people one meets. When she forgave an injury she did it utterly, and forgot it, and never liked to be reminded of all she had borne from the one she had forgiven. She used to say,
Don't remind me, I want to forget.'
" This perfection of forgiveness made it easy for my childish mind to understand how the Loving One (as we were taught to call God, for she never liked to hear the name of the Deity spoken without reverence) blots out our own transgressions. I remember one day toiling along carrying something to put in a room which had been taken and furnished by my mother's efforts, for a woman who had sinned and had to suffer. I was much puzzled by things I had seen and heard, and my mother said to my questioning,
Yes, dear, you do not understand ; but do not forget this—God punishes, we pity, and try to help back to God any who have wandered away.' One day this person was at our house on some business, and had to come in contact with some visitors. She burst into tears, and I saw my mother slip off her own wedding ring, put it on her finger and kiss her. I never forgot the
42	MARIE HILTON
incident, although at the time I had no clue to its meaning. Another thing that puzzled me as a child, was the number of queer people, old, plain, poor, and uninteresting, who came so constantly to our house and got, not only a hearing, but real love and sympathy, and the best our house afforded, and always a seat at our table. At Christmas time it was the invariable custom to invite some lonely soul, it might be a poor old man from the workhouse, or a person equally forlorn, to share our happiness. I asked one day if other people had such visitors, as I had never seen any at other houses. My mother explained
the	Inasmuch ' to me, and said Those who come to me in Christ's name, I treat as I would their Master, and so must you.' It was a lesson to be remembered, and that was the spirit in which my dear mother began and carried on the work she was enabled to do years after. She saw some good in every one, and the more wretched and miserable the people who came to her to be helped, the more time she gave, and the more she attended to them. No task was too unpleasant, no labour too great, and she would do what no one else would for those in trouble. I have seen worn faces grow brighter, and fancied I could see burdens roll off, and figures stand more erect after a little talk with her. She seemed to draw a curtain aside and show God's face, not as those poor wanderers had conceived it, but as it
BRIGHTON	43
looked to a child who had frequent glimpses of a father—not a cruel taskmaster, inflicting punishment for no adequate reason. I need not say that her love for little children was a passion ; that is sufficiently indicated by her work. She bore more than any one will ever know for the weary and sick little ones she cared for. What our mother was to her children it is impossible to say, she was nearly everything. Our father being so much away, she ruled our lives, and taught us to trust everything to the Loving One, who, she told us, cared for us more than she and our father, did ; and knowing what they were, it was easy to try and please God, who, hard to
believe, loved us more than they.	Like as a
father pitieth his children' and as one whom his mother comforteth' are blessed truths to us ; but to many, alas ! they convey very little comfort at all.
" I think that we children once fairly puzzled our mother. We were so strongly impressed with the idea that we ought to help poor people, that one day we found a dirty, rude, small child, and succeeded in dragging it home, and into the room where she sat working. Her astonishment was great, and we felt very indignant at being reproved. We said we thought she would like to keep it and give it some of our clothes. I do not remember now how the child's home was found, but I do not think there was much trouble
44	MARIE HILTON
in the matter, for it belonged to fairly decent people ; nothing, however, made us believe that it would not have been happier with us.
" There never was such a delightful dresser of dolls. We used to go to bed on Christmas eve, knowing that in the morning our doll's house would have fresh curtains and carpets, and small dolls in brand-new dresses would be looking out of the windows. Our mother was never too busy or too tired to do little things for us. How she ever got through her busy days puzzles me now more than ever, when my own children keep coming to mother, and I sometimes despair of satisfying all their demands. But I don't think she ever flagged or allowed herself to be too tired.
" Truly her children rise up to call her blessed."
My sister has referred to one instance of my
mother's kindness to a woman who had fallen. She had no scorn for such, only compassion. In the course of her life she rescued many, who, but for her help, would have sunk to the streets or plunged into the river.
During our residence at Brighton my father travelled much, advocating the principles of the United Kingdom Alliance. The work was very
BRIGHTON	45
onerous, and his health giving way in the year 1863, he accepted the position of private secretary to the proprietor of a large manufacturing establishment at Bromley, Middlesex, and the family removed to London.
CHAPTER IV
LONDON
THE change from Brighton to Bromley on the banks of the unsavoury river Lea was not pleasant, and we children sadly missed the pure, invigorating air of the south coast. Bromley was at that time in a half-settled state, all traces of the country were fading fast before the advance of bricks and mortar. The place was flat and uninteresting to a degree. A few flower-gardens and market-gardens still remained, however, and these we made the most of. The neighbourhood was rough. The local police force was insufficient. Daring and successful burglaries were frequent, and in the fields surrounding our house many brutal fights were brought off. There was nothing attractive in the locality, nothing to excite the imagination, alas ! no sea. Life was dull and colourless. A few drunken sailors from the docks sometimes wandered our way, and twice a week
LONDON	47
great droves of big-horned Spanish cattle came trampling along the road in clouds of dust. One day I remember a ragged tramp, encased in dirt from head to foot, came and lay down in a field close to the house. He was a strong man, but he seemed to be in the last stage of exhaustion. His bare feet were bleeding, and he lay there without speaking, looking at us with fierce eyes. He might from his appearance have been an escaped convict. We called our mother's attention to him, when she immediately told my sister and me to take milk and food out to him. I shall never forget how he clutched the glass and drained it, and, after a whispered " Thank you," devoured the food. After a few hours' rest, he rose up and staggered on his way, and we saw him no more.
During our residence at Bromley, we saw the terrible cholera visitation which swept over the east of London, when the Bow Road was filled every Sunday with an almost unbroken procession of hearses and mourning-coaches, bound for the Ilford cemetery. Our family escaped without a touch of the disease. But my mother suffered a long and dangerous illness. It was a severe attack of gastric fever, and for some time her life was in danger. This was the first illness she had
48	MARIE HILTON
ever had, and it left her weak for many months. While her recovery was yet uncertain, she suffered great anguish of mind on account of something that had occurred at Brighton. A noted agnostic had called at my father's house, and the conversation turned upon Christian evidences. The sceptic of course tried to prove that Christianity was founded upon a myth, and as he left the house, he said to my mother, " Ah, Mrs. Hilton, you are a far too sensible woman to be a Christian." These words, perhaps lightly spoken, troubled her for years. She felt she had been disloyal to her Lord in not immediately resenting a compliment to her intellect made at the expense of her faith. She was never harsh with unbelievers, feeling pity for them rather than anger, because of their exclusion from the happiness she herself found in religion. She did not attempt to combat their arguments, but strove to win them by tenderness and sympathy. From her bed she wrote the following letter to the sceptic :
" BRIGHTON COTTAGE, BROMLEY, MIDDLESEX,
"December lot 1863.
" MY DEAR SIR,
" Doubtless you will be surprised at receiving a.
letter from me ; but I know you will excuse my
LONDON	49
troubling you when I explain. You may remember calling on us at Brighton a good while ago, but perhaps you may have forgotten that on leaving the house you remarked, Ah, Mrs. Hilton, you are too sensible a woman to be a Christian.' I would have called you back to tell you how dear to me was the Christian's hope, and how I had trusted my all to Him who was slain on Calvary ; but I felt quite incapable of arguing with you at the moment ; yet I have always regretted that I allowed the remark to pass unanswered. I have been hoping to see you again, but I can no longer forbear writing to you. I have nothing to oppose to your knowledge, only I know that God is an ever-present help in trouble to me. I, who was left an orphan in childhood, have found in Him a father and a friend. The highest aspiration of my soul is to be made meet for His kingdom when I shall know Him as He is. I know you will pardon this letter, but your unanswered remark has been a great sorrow to me. I felt as if I, like Peter, had denied the Lord that bought me. May God bless you with a simple faith in His mercy before you shall be in the swellings of Jordan, and may we both meet in that city where there shall be neither sorrow,
5o	MARIE HILTON
care, nor anything which can disturb ; where the peace of God shall be ours, and His love our joy throughout that long time when death shall be swallowed up in victory.
" I remain, truly yours,
" MARIE HILTON."
To this letter no answer was ever received. Perhaps it was flung carelessly aside and forgotten ; but nevertheless my mother found great relief in writing it.
My parents had become connected with a nonsectarian church in a hall on the business premises, and for a year or more my mother laboured actively among the poor of the district ; but during her illness she had felt that if permitted to recover, it would be her duty to join the Society of Friends, her spiritual views being now in perfect accord with those of the Society. On her restoration to health she, with her family, attended Plaistow meeting. There was no conveyance in those days, so we had to walk across the desolate marshes every Sunday, when we used to see the cockney sportsmen popping at wild-ducks and sparrows.
My father's health being now re-established, he resumed his connection with the United Kingdom
LONDON	51
Alliance, and has remained with that association ever since. We quitted Bromley with no regrets, and moved into the adjoining parish of Bow, which, though close by, was in a more advanced state of civilisation than Bromley.
We now approach the period of Marie Hilton's work among the poor of Ratcliff, which was so greatly blessed, and fraught with results so important and far-reaching. Her service was varied in character, and covered a period of nearly thirty years. In the year 1868, a time of exceptional distress in the East End of London, she became so deeply interested in the poor suffering people in the riverside districts, that my father took up his residence within walking distance of Ratcliff, and the family regularly attended Ratcliff meeting. Before entering upon a detailed account of Marie Hilton's work, it may be advisable to give a description of the district as she found it in the year 1868.
CHAPTER V
ALSATIA
PREVIOUS to the year 1868, the East End of London was, comparatively speaking, a land unknown. Wapping, Ratcliff, Shoreditch, Stepney, Shadwell, and Limehouse were rarely heard of save in reports of police-court cases, or as nurture grounds for the cholera and other diseases. Society thought—and the belief still obtains—that the East End of London meant Ratcliff Highway. I do not remember one writer who, in dealing with the Eastern part of London, has made any reference to the great middle-class. That class has been dwindling gradually ever since the cholera visitation, some thirty years ago, but it still forms a powerful section of the population. It is a grievous mistake to suppose that the entire East End is an unredeemed mass of squalor and poverty.
With the great snobocracy it was, and is still,
ALSATIA	53
an article of faith to affect total ignorance of the vast region lying to the east and north-east of the City. Even those traders who had made fortunes in the east, when they retired to some genteel suburban paradise, dropped from their recollection that period of their lives of which they had most reason to be proud, and never acknowledged acquaintance with the Commercial Road or the docks. Some portion of the dark region was opened to polite investigation by Sir Walter Besant's amusing novel, " All Sorts and Conditions of Men." The intrepid explorer had actually penetrated as far east as Stepney, and outraged conventionality so far as to make that small dingy section of east London the scene of his story.
Sir Walter, a busy man of letters, necessarily wrote as a tourist. The point of view of those, whose occupation unfortunately made them denizens, was naturally widely different. Society was shocked at the state of things described in the novel, and munificently subscribed sufficient funds to make the novelist's dream of a People's Palace a reality. But Stepney, bad as its condition undoubtedly was and is, was a place of aristocratic exclusiveness and refinement compared with
54	MARIE HILTON
Ratcliff and Shadwell. The more degraded phases of East-end life had to wait for a new school of writers, the realists, to describe them adequately. Rudyard Kipling in " Badalia Herodsfoot," and Arthur Morrison in " Stories of Mean Streets," and the " Child of the Jago," have painted sombre pictures, true in one sense, of the nethermost strata—to the works of these brilliant writers I shall have occasion to refer more particularly at a later stage ; and Mr. Zangwill, writing from knowledge gained at first hand, has done justice tempered with mercy to the Jewish quarter in his masterly work, the " Children of the Ghetto." But to produce a realistic impression of Ratcliff in the sixties would require the Titanic strength of Zola. The riverside districts were inhabited by a swart, sturdy population, the majority of whom gained a livelihood in the shipbuilding yards on the banks of the river or in the docks. There were ballast-heavers, lumpers, coal-whippers, coal-backers, riggers, caulkers, shipwrights, stevedores, and dock labourers. There were also the workers in metal, men employed in the iron ship-building yards, boiler-makers, rivetters, fitters, and brass-finishers. Add to these a floating population of sailors, British and foreign, bargemen and lighter-
ALSATIA	55
men, and the ordinary operatives common to all localities.
The ship-building trade was the staple industry, and any depression in that trade meant hunger to thousands. The Thames had long been at a disadvantage in competing with the Tyne and the Clyde, which were in close proximity with the coal and iron centres, and when the demands of labour rose above a certain point, iron ship-building became impossible on the southern river. When this crisis arrived, the condition of the riverside districts can be imagined. I t is idle to talk of blame either on the part of masters or men ; moral responsibility finds no place in the direction of commercial enterprises ; trade is as pitiless as war. The masters could not be expected to carry on their business at a loss for the sake of the workmen ; and the men, following the instincts common to humanity, endeavoured to sell their labour at the highest possible price. I f the men were to blame, their sufferings expiated their fault ; but the greatest sufferers were the women and children. The loss of the ship-building trade, depression in the shipping trade generally, and inclement seasons, all combined to aggravate the distress. Thousands were literally on the verge
56	MARIE HILTON
of starvation. It is always difficult to convince the prosperous portion of the community that anywhere in England there can be people in danger of death by hunger. The unpleasant truth is put aside with some platitude about it being their own fault, or a reference to the workhouse, in the spirit of Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge. The late Mr. Montagu Williams knew the condition of the London poor from personal observation and, moreover, he was not a man given to sentimental exaggeration. Writing in 1891, he drew a vivid picture of the poverty existing in Bethnal Green and Shoreditch, and finished by saying, " And yet, forsooth, some one writes, amid the fashionable intelligence of a morning paper, that the winter sufferings of the East-end poor have been greatly exaggerated." Such optimistic assurances are not at all uncommon in papers written for the classes. Three-and-twenty years prior to the date under which Mr. Montagu Williams wrote, however, there was far more acute suffering among the people of Ratcliff than in the districts referred to by the learned magistrate. The real state of the people was made known through the medium of the public press, and in the reports issued by charitable societies ;
ALSATIA	57
and in course of time large sums of money were poured into the localities chiefly affected.
For the causes of the chronic wretchedness into which a great population was plunged—for poverty is indigenous to the East End, and prevails unaffected by the fluctuations of the labour market—one must look deep into the character of the English and Irish peoples. Special causes have perhaps tended to make the Irishman averse to sustained laborious effort ; but the English have ever been distinguished among the peoples of Europe for recklessness, gluttony, drunkenness, and want of thrift. They have not for many years suffered, like continental nations, the grinding tyranny of excessive taxation, nor learned by bitter experience the value of small things. They take no thought for the morrow. In seasons of prosperity they are never more than a day or two ahead of starvation. There were families in Ratcliff, and no doubt there are still, who would spend the week's earnings in a " gorge," after the manner of their rude ancestors, extending from Saturday night till Tuesday morning, and then be forced to beg, borrow, or steal until Saturday night came round again.
The peasantry and workmen of France and
58	MARIE HILTON
Belgium are models of frugality. One sees women of the poorest class always clean and neat, and spending every spare moment in knitting, But here not one woman in a hundred could knit, very few were able to sew with any practical result. They bought their own and their children's clothing at the " slop shop," or the " leaving shop." Cooking was hardly practised at all, save in the most elementary manner ; few savage tribes exist who have less skill in the culinary art. Man has been described as a cooking animal, but in Ratcliff the definition would not hold good.
The arts of civilisation were dying out among these people ; the whole population seemed to be lapsing into barbarism. Waste, waste was everywhere. A French peasant would have lived on what some of these half-starving families threw away. Sacks of oatmeal were sent down by the charitable for distribution ; but the London poor would not touch Scotland's national food, not from prejudice, but because " they couldn't do nothing with it." Make porridge of it, it was suggested. They had never heard of porridge, and had no saucepans to make it in. They lived from hand to mouth ; when they wanted a hot
ALSATIA	59
meal they went to the fried-fish shop. In many of the tenements Marie Hilton visited no cooking utensils of any description were to be found ; but for a chair or two and a heap of rags, the rooms were bare.
It will be seen that no small share of the poverty and suffering some of these people endured was preventable. But they sinned in darkest ignorance. In thousands of cases, too, men could not earn enough money to buy even bread for themselves and their children. The sufferings of the people were genuine enough, and assistance could not be refused on the ground that the remedy for poverty lay in the people's own hands. It would be the height of injustice to hold the present generation responsible for the accumulated sins of the past. Through long neglect the people had fallen into this deplorable condition. The State and the Church had allowed them to sink unheeded into a slough of ignorance and vice. Untaught and uncared for, and with no traditions, they had become savage.
Improvement could only be effected by degrees; a whole population, though composed of willing learners, cannot be instructed in habits of thrift in a few years. The School Board is now
6o	MARIE HILTON
attempting to teach the rising generation the arts of sewing and cookery in the intervals of time that can be spared from the study of the French language. Posterity may perhaps reap the benefit of this belated instruction.
The dirt among these people was horrible, almost incredible ; every law of hygiene and sanitation was persistently violated. But the people were not wholly to blame. It is easy to say that cleanliness is next to godliness, or to remark cynically that soap and water are cheap ; but necessity has a rough-and-ready way of dealing with moral precepts. Consider for one moment the conditions under which these people lived. Take a house, say of eight rooms, every room holding a separate family, in some cases two families—and among the destitute, a family generally means six or eight children. When every penny has to be saved for bread or to buy a handful of coals, soap is an unobtainable luxury. The water supply for the entire house is by a small tap in the scullery or kitchen. Imagine what life in such a house as this must be. Under these conditions, what becomes of cleanliness, of health, of ordinary human decency ? In the prolonged drought of 1896, owing to the triumph
ALSATIA	6r
of red-tape and officialism, even this meagre supply of water was cut off, save for one hour out of the twenty-four. One often hears people living in comfortable villas, with a large bathroom supplied with hot and cold water, say that the poor ought to be clean. They ought, and perhaps if they could be they would. In some of the Ratcliff houses, not only the rooms, but the cellars and passages were full. Humanity, dirty, diseased, half-naked, and hungry, swarmed in the squalid tumble-down houses like ants. With a people so long accustomed to barbarism, improvement must necessarily be slow. Attempts to ameliorate their surroundings often fill the benevolent with despair. I was once permitted to see a model dwelling-house after some of the poorest people had occupied it. The place was wrecked ; every iron fitting, locks, bolts, and door-handles had been removed and sold ; the ceilings had been scraped away, and the laths used as firewood ; the wooden balusters had also been sacrificed ; even the doors were demolished. Tenants for model dwellings have to be carefully selected.
Marie Hilton used to tell of an Irishman who applied for relief saying that he could make a good living for his wife and family if he only had
62	MARIE HILTON
a donkey and truck. He proposed to sell coal or coke in small quantities. It was always the object of the Society of Friends when administering relief to aid the poor permanently, to lift them, if possible, out of their surroundings. A donkey and truck were accordingly purchased, and the Irishman commenced business. One evening, in the course of a round of visits, Marie Hilton called on the small coal merchant, and found the family sharing the apartment with the donkey, the children lying beside the animal in perfect content. Necessity is said to introduce us to strange bedfellows, but the Irishman did not appear to see anything unusual in the arrangement, taking it quite as a matter of course.
The state of many of these Ratcliff hovels was shocking, loathsome ; vermin, of varieties unclassified by the entomologist, bred and multiplied with tropical fecundity. The visitor in those days had to endure discomforts and witness scenes hideous, abominable, not to be described. What to do with a population plunged in this awful state of filth, depravity, and ignorance seemed an insoluble problem. Remedial work, in face of the stupendous necessity, seemed hopeless ; the hearts of all but the most enthusiastic were
ALSATIA	63
filled with despair after a brief experience of the district. Anything beyond temporary relief, with the limited means at disposal, was impossible. Habits of cleanliness, industry, and thrift could only be taught to a new generation. East London in the sixties was a satire upon civilisation and upon Christianity.
Amongst the very poorest were the Irish. These unhappy people had left Ireland in the hope of bettering their miserable lot, and had been stranded, helpless and wretched, on the banks of the Thames. Hunger had driven them from their own beautiful land, and hunger awaited them in the foul alleys and courts of Ratcliff. In the economy of London life these poor people were superfluous. The men had no trade, no handicraft ; the women were shiftless, inclined to be idle, and improvident.
Natives of Scotland were very rare indeed. With the Scotch, thrift is an instinct ; only those in whom the national characteristics had become thin to the point of extinction were found in the inferno of Ratcliff. How did it happen, it will be asked, that a population equal in size to that of some of our great provincial towns fell into this state of brutal
64	MARIE HILTON
ignorance and improvidence ? The hideous result was not achieved in one generation or two ; these people had gravitated downwards by a natural process of filtration, and formed the dregs of the social system. They had no traditions of better things. The School Board had not yet begun its work ; the illiterates were legion. The ignorance of the people was limitless. Of their total intellectual darkness Marie Hilton had many amusing instances to relate. Their knowledge of the world was bounded by the local streets ; few of them had any idea that they lived upon an island. They were equally ignorant, too, upon general subjects. One of the maids employed at the Creche was reproved for wasting the gas. She looked astonished, and said : " Wastin' ? I never knowed you paid for it ! I thought you made a hole in the wall, and it come ! " To this low level of intelligence among these suffering people the safety of the wealthier portion of the town from spoliation may be ascribed. Their ignorance of their own strength, and their incapacity to combine for a set purpose, rendered them impotent. The cleverest demagogue would have found them too dense and stolid to be roused into action. Socialism, with its fallacious
ALSATIA	65
reasoning and glittering promises of an impossible Utopia, had not yet reached them.
The Irish, however, with whom a sense of bitter wrong is hereditary, were more inflammable. The district was honeycombed with Fenianism—in fact, a large quantity of arms was seized by the police in a house in Stepney Causeway about this time. This lambent flame of rebellion gradually subsided. There was no truth in the tale persistently circulated that the Irish illuminated their windows when the Phoenix Park murders were perpetrated. Whatever their feelings might have been, they had no money to spend upon such luxuries as illuminations.
Whether a revolt of the London poor will ever take place is a question I should not like to answer. The two men who knew most about the hidden influences at work among the submerged thousands—Cardinal Manning and the Earl of Shaftesbury—were never free from the haunting terror of such a frightful catastrophe. The condition of the riverside districts has een vastly improved in the last thirty years ; the dense population has been thinned by migration and emigration. Model dwellings have to a certain extent replaced the old rookeries but
66	MARIE HILTON
even now there are places in London where a state of things exists equally atrocious with that of Ratcliff in the sixties, places whose unredeemed wretchedness is only now being brought home to a sceptical public. In parts of Bethnal Green may be found the lowest and worst specimens of humanity—a migratory population who live in miserable, rack-rented tenements, where the rent is paid by the day. Here, in filthy garrets and reeking cellars, women are working eighteen hours a day, making match-boxes at 2/d. the gross—the much-vaunted British labour ! The acutest poverty is dumb. These women suffer in silence. They cannot make terms with their employers ; they have no trades-unions ; they have no time to spare for Hyde Park demonstrations. Unnoticed and unpitied, the iron wheel of necessity crushes them. Let us hope that the poor will ever continue patient.
In her daily visiting among the poor, Marie Hilton found but few who had fallen from a higher social sphere. Those who had so fallen were the most to be pitied. One man whom she found in the direst poverty had been educated at Harrow. He was dying of consumption, brought on by privation, exposure and dissipation. For a time
ALSATIA	67
employment was found for him as gate-keeper at the Friends' Meeting-house. He had some knowledge of the classics, and was always ready to cap quotations with any visitor who challenged him. His wife, though dressed in rags, was yet ladylike in her manner and speech, and the children had a refined and intelligent look. Marie Hilton visited this man shortly before his earthly penance ended; she saw him dead. Years did not dim the recollection of that scene, she could never refer to it without tears. The dead man lay on the naked boards of a miserable garret, his head pillowed on his old cap. The room was without furniture. In that blank, sordid chamber the old Harrovian had died. It was a scene worthy of Hogarth's pencil. Marie Hilton was overwhelmed with the terrible pathos of this wasted life. She thought of his early surroundings, of his happy school days, and the end here so utterly desolate, so degraded. His wife and children were not forgotten he had dragged them down to the lowest depths, his death set them free. They were helped upwards to a respectable position. Drink had caused this man's ruin. By his habits of intemperance he had lost his occupation, estranged his friends, and come to beggary. Another case
68	MARIE HILTON
was that of a Scottish Highlander, who had been a shorthand-writer. He, too, was rescued from the Inferno, and afterwards did well in a situation found for him. But, as I have said, such cases were extremely rare. The vast majority of the poor were spared the " sorrow's crown of sorrow, remembering happier things."
CHAPTER VI
DIALECT-MORAL DEGRADATION
THE spoken language of the lowest class in London cannot be described. No attempt at reproducing the habitual conversation of the East-end rough would be permitted to appear in print, at least in this country. The readings of a phonograph that had been left in a Ratcliff beer-house for a few hours would scare the pseudo realists of the " Yellow Book," and thrill Ibsen with the humiliating feeling that he was but a conventional, modest writer after all. Every sentence one hears in certain parts of East London is loaded with obscenity and blasphemy, the sulphurous and sanguinary adjectives being so lavishly used that all emphasis is lost. Both the novelist and the actor, while professing to depict the London larrikin, are obliged to create a conventional type, which passes for a realistic study. Low life in London can no more be
70	MARIE HILTON
described truthfully than can some phases of high life. We play at realism, but no one dares to lift the dark curtain which hides the hideous barbarisms of civilisation. Only unrealistic realism is tolerated. In very few cases is any offensive significance attached to the foul words which garnish social intercourse and business transactions alike. Many of the people expressed the utmost astonishment when remonstrated with for swearing. They were only speaking their dialect; and perhaps no more blame attached to them than to people in society who use the ephemeral slang of the season. There is but little distinction between the style of speech used in friendly converse and that used in quarrelling ; certain words are spoken with more passionate emphasis, that is all. In one of her reports Marie Hilton wrote :
" One dear child, who was absent from the Creche for four weeks, on his return made use of such fearful language that it was impossible to retain him. His age was four years and three months. We sent for his mother, who said, ' Oh, I thought I should be sent for. I've beat him cruel, but I can't stop his swearing : the street is full of it. If I keep him indoors, it comes in at
DIALECT-MORAL DEGRADATION 71
the window ; and so it's no use trying to stop him.' We hope to have the dear child back again soon. He is quite aware of the reason of his being sent home. When passing the house, he called out,
I don't swear now, and I'm coming back soon.' "
Some of the language used would interest a student of philology. Owing to the presence of foreign sailors from all parts of the world, a large number of strange, uncouth words, mutilated no doubt in transition, have worked their way into popular usage. Foreman-printers, cattle-dealers, Billingsgate fish-porters, boatswains in the mercantile marine, military riding instructors, and ballet-masters have, justly or unjustly, gained a character for profane eloquence, but for sustained flights of vile oratory the denizens of the wild fat east would be hard to beat. I once saw a gentleman being removed to the police-station by seven stalwart constables, who had all their work to do to get him there. He swore at large during the twenty minutes' journey to the place of durance. The foul stream never stopped ; and the repetitions were wonderfully rare. The extraordinary richness and variety of the English tongue burst upon me in its imprecatory affluence for the first time. The
72	MARIE HILTON
reserved strength of the language hidden away in forgotten receptacles bewildered me. The cursing of Timon of Athens, the vituperation of the Restoration dramatists, the rude oaths of Smollett, the celebrated swearing passage in " Pelham " all seemed weak and tame in comparison with the lava stream of condemnation that poured from the mouth of this half-drunken labourer. Not content with putting an abominable adjective or participle before every substantive, he paused in the middle of a compound word to drop in another filthy adjective. Into what unknown fields of eloquence he might have strayed I know not, had not his oratory been cut short by the " frog's march," which became necessary when the station came in sight. I am bound to say, however, in justice to the surrounding population, that this gentleman's powers were exceptional. The crowd followed in respectful silence, like amateurs hanging on the words of a great professional genius.
Among the people whom Marie Hilton visited, the Irish of course retained their rich native brogue and eloquence in blessing and cursing. The English spoke a kind of dialect, differing widely in character from that put forward as correct East End by contemporary novelists,
DIALECT—MORAL DEGRADATION 73
comic journalists and music-hall singers. The London dialect has materially altered since the days of " Pickwick." The Wellers, it will be remembered, used v for w, and w for v. The origin of this peculiarity has been attributed by some writers to the example of the French weavers, who settled in the East End in large numbers. That form of mispronunciation has disappeared ; it only survives in the pages of American and provincial novels, whose authors know nothing of London life. I have not heard the v used in place of w in London for five-and-twenty years ; but the w in place of v dies harder ; a few people may still be found who talk of a coal-wan or a weal-pie. The abuse of the aspirate unhappily continues, though hardly to the extent insisted on by novelists and comic journalists. The h in what, when, and where is always silent ; what is pronounced woi. One hears chube for tube, chimbley for chimney. With regard to the final ing, the East-ender is in the fashion ; in fact, society followed the Eastern custom, though a little late in the day : " Who are you talkin' to ? " " Who are you gettin' at ? " is spoken quite in the Pall Mall style. The letter u is shamefully maltreated : new is noo, tune is loon.. But in some
74	MARIE HILTON
respects the East-ender is libelled. He does not invariably pronounce " lady" as if it were spelt lidy; the sound is generally more like lai dy. This peculiarity, which is so popular with contemporary writers, is of recent origin. Charles Dickens knew nothing of it ; it does not occur anywhere in his studies of low life in London. Sir Walter Besant failed to notice it when collecting materials for " All Sorts and Conditions of Men." It is not found anywhere in Arthur Sketchley's once popular " Brown Papers." I think the responsibility for introducing it rests with Mr. G. R. Sims. " Dagonet " knows underground London as well as any living writer, perhaps better than any ; but he is a humorist, and in this he has given way to exaggeration. That this peculiarity is current among Londoners, I admit ; but it does not prevail to the extent insisted on. You might talk to thousands of East-end men and women, and not hear one say " I'll tike you there." The costermongers may speak something like that, but they form only a very small portion of the London population. In the " Ebb Tide," by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, a cockney clerk is introduced, who says " somethink," and calls the Yankee skipper, " Captain Divis." I doubt if it would be
DIALECT-MORAL DEGRADATION 75
possible to find even a bookmaker's clerk in London who spoke in this style. Such peculiarities of speech belong to a much lower social grade. Mistakes equally glaring would doubtless be made by a south-countryman who attempted to write " good Galloway Scots." No dialect is less understood than the London ; its essential characteristic is as much in the tone as in the accent. A conventional and unreal form of speech has been adopted by those writers who are too busy to study the spoken dialect at first hand. A few months ago I read a short story in Chafiman's Magazine in which an East-end workman is made to call for a pint of " staght." The writer meant stout ; the workman would in reality have said " start." The popular " garn," a supposed corruption of the words " go on "—a modern form of " go to "—is not used in every sentence, as some humorists would have us believe. Many of the most distinctive idioms of low London speech never appear in print. I will mention a few : the cockney cannot possibly utter the aw sound, a saw is always a saw-er. " I saw him," sounds like " I sor 'im." One hears, " I'll taike the lore of you ; " " I'll give yer one on the jaw-er." Also, " I'll taike the shoine outer yer ; "
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" Dontcher year the kid a croyin'." Borrow and sorrow are spoken " borrer " and " sorrer." The a in such words as man, cab, tan, is narrowed. To the ears of north-countrymen the Londoner seems to say, men, ten, caeb. I remember, a good many years ago, a certain sentimental song being very popular in the East End. It was howled through the streets at all hours of the night by gangs of youths and maidens, and we suffered acutely from it during the whole of one summer. The people believe that the perfection of vocal science consists in making a song last as long as possible. Every note is dragged out to an excruciating extent. Any ordinary singer would be able, in sporting phrase, to give an East-end vocalist a start of half the song, and then get home first easily. The song I refer to went like this in the local dialect :
" Darn the lane, oe-ver the stoile,
Under the hold oak tree,
Clocks stroikin' noin, stars brightly shoine,
Somebody's waitin' for me."
The local eccentricities of pronunciation appear to be ineradicable. The children in the Board Schools who succeed in passing the highest standards show no improvement in their speech ;
DIALECT-MORAL DEGRADATION 77
and indeed many of the teachers still speak the language of their parents. The double negative is universal, as " We ain't got no grub ; " " We haven't never 'eard nothing abart it ; " " I shan't give you no more if you don't 'old yer noise."
I have only noticed a few of the most characteristic points of the London dialect ; a small volume might be written on the slang, the idiom and the accent of Cockaigne.
In any description of the East End the wit and humour of the people should not be forgotten. The gift of caustic repartee and humorous exaggeration is the birthright of the London rough. Irish wit is often extolled at the expense of English ; we are always hearing of the quick-witted Celt and the slow Saxon ; but in the verbal contests of the streets the native-born Cockney is more than a match for the exile of Erin. Marie Hilton had numberless instances of the people's wit which she used to relate, but unfortunately she kept no record of them. At one time there was a scare of a ghost in Brook Street, Ratcliff. Many of the people were grossly superstitious, and were quite as ready to believe in the ghost as though they had been a set of highly cultivated Theosophists. A woman came
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to Marie Hilton and assured her that she had seen the evil thing plainly at about four o'clock in the morning. My mother, hoping to use the woman's superstition against her, told her she must have been mistaken, for all respectable ghosts disappeared earlier than that. " Ah, but you see," said the woman with a laugh, " he might have been making a bit of overtime." The people are chronically humorous ; in times of distress, in the presence of a calamity they can always find something to laugh at. In a street fight, at a fire, at a political meeting, or a breakdown in the road, you will hear more genuine wit in five minutes than the wigged humorists of the courts could furnish forth in a year. There may be coarseness and brutal innuendo sometimes, but the wit is genuine and undeniable. " Sit down, can't cher ; this year place ain't a blind asylum," I heard a man say to another who was obstructing his view at a place of amusement. A painter at work in a house complained of one of the servants singing out of tune. " Tell her to stow it," he said to the other servant ; " I can't stand it no longer. It's my belief it's only spite and malice wot's kept 'er art of Drury Lane." Ferocious irony of this sort is very characteristic of East-end humour. I
DIALECT-MORAL DEGRADATION 79
was on a Blackwall omnibus on one occasion, when a large dog ran up and barked savagely at the conductor. " Never mind," said an Irishman, who was riding on top, " dogs don't bite fools." " Don't they," replied the conductor, " then you're jolly well safe, old man ; " only he used a rather stronger word than " jolly."
The Jews, or " Reach-me-downs," or "Sheenies," as they are called in the East End, justly enjoy a reputation for humour. A pig escaped from a herd that was being driven up the Whitechapel Road, and ran squealing into an old-clothes shop. The German Jew, who was standing at the door, remarked with a grin : " He know ware he wos safe."
I will now lay before the reader a few authentic instances of the brutality and lawlessness that prevailed in Ratcliff in 1868, and indeed for many years after that date. Even now, when many skilfully organised missions have been at work for years in the district, there still remains a mass of vicious people whom nothing seems to reach, and who live to hand down the evil traditions of the past.
The moral condition of the people matched the physical. Crimes of violence were of frequent
8o	MARIE HILTON
occurrence, and of these dark deeds no record was kept. In this Alsatia it was held to be bad form to invoke the aid of the police. The men fought like wild beasts, ignoring the unwritten laws of fair play. The boasted British fair play is a myth, save in places where the traditions of the prize-ring survive. That institution, with its manifold evils, had one crowning virtue : it taught respect for a fallen foe. The prize-ring rules were framed in the interests of sport rather than from any regard to chivalry, yet the effect was good. So long as the ring endured, it was held to be unmanly and un-English to take advantage of the fallen.
When a man went down on the stones the cry was, " Boot 'im !" or " Bash his 'ead on the kerb !" Amongst the women, poker-fights and hairpin-fights were not uncommon. In the latter form of combat the middle finger is closed downwards through the fork of the hairpin, the hand is clenched, leaving two formidable prongs projecting. The plan is to go for your antagonist's eyes. One woman presented herself at the sewing-class with her face in a condition that would have roused the envy of a German student. It was scarred all over with innumerable scratches, while one of her eyes was a mere mass of blood ;
DIALECT-MORAL DEGRADATION 8i
she had been worsted in one of these hairpin-fights.
Some of the women, however, could use their fists in the classic method approved by patrons of the fancy. Many would come to the sewing-class with black eyes scientifically bestowed either by their husbands or female acquaintances. Marie Hilton was often amused by the outrageously farfetched tales they would tell to account for these decorations. These little affairs were taken quite as a matter of course, and the person would have been deemed mean indeed who made a police-court business of an assault ; besides, summary vengeance would inevitably have been wreaked upon the litigant. Thus it was that on paper the district had a higher character for peace and order than it merited.
Writing in 1872, Marie Hilton thus describes the bearings of a street-fight :
" I was much discouraged one Sunday morning, on going into the district, to find that two of my mothers had been fighting, or rather helping one another to do battle with a man with whom they had quarrelled. When I went over, on Monday morning, I sent for the mother of our little ' May
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Queen ' (a child in the Creche), who I heard was ill, she being one of the women in question. She was quite young. Her husband was in prison for six months for beating her with a poker and inflicting other cruelties on the children. The woman was most industrious, getting a living for herself and four children by making feather dusting-brushes and selling them in the streets, frequently walking many miles in a day. When she entered, I looked grave, and commenced talking to her on the subject of the fight, speaking strongly of women giving way to such violence of language, and pointing out how injurious it might be to the dear little one. She looked quite sullen and said, Surely, Mrs. Hilton, you're not a-goin' for to blame me ! Was I to stand by and year my husband's name called along the street just because I chose to lock him up, and he a-trying all he can to be a better man, and never would have thought of hurting of us if it hadn't been for the drink ? Would any woman like it, if her husband was locked up, to hear his name called along the street ? ' I confessed, of course, that she would not ; but asked what had induced her to fight.
Oh,' she replied, to take my own part. If I hadn't been and fought, where should I have
DIALECT-MORAL DEGRADATION 83
been now, I should like to know ? ' I asked her if she was hurt. ` Oh no ! ' she answered, I took my blows like this,' placing her arm, which, I noticed, was much bruised, across her face. I then referred to the horrible language she had used. She looked surprised at this and said,
Langwidge ! I don't know what you means about langwidge. It ain't no use talking to them as you're talking to me now. They wouldn't no more understand what you means than nothing.' I could only then express my regret that she had so failed to gather the meaning of the many lessons of love and charity that she had so con-
tinually listened to.	Ah, now,' she said, I often
sez, Oh, if Mrs. Hilton could keep us with her, we might be better ; but with our own set, what can us poor women do ? ' She seemed to feel that it was a matter for rejoicing that they had completely conquered their enemy, and would now be enabled to live in peace. In a few minutes the other woman, Pet's mother, came into the
room, looking quite buoyant and gleeful.	Of
course, ma'am, you've heerd of our battle, yesterday,' she said. I told her I had, and had been very shocked. Well, ma'am,' she said, you wouldn't have liked little May's mother to have
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been killed, would you now ? ' I asked her how
she came to be concerned in the affair.	I'll tell
you,' she said, how I was mixed up in it. I was walking along with Pet in my arms, when I see what was going on. I give Pet to a woman, and told her that, if I was hurt, she was to be sure to carry Pet to Mrs. Hilton, and in I went and helped her, and we soon mastered him.' I mildly suggested that the best thing would have been to have sent for a policeman. She replied, Oh no, we never does that when we can take our own parts ; and besides, she might have been killed, as them police is shy of a fight.'
" When they had gone I reflected that there were two ways of viewing a street-fight. In this case one woman had fought to defend her husband's name, and the other to protect a friend. I am happy to be able to add that the May Queen's ' father came out of prison with better feelings. Very soon after the mother came to say that the licence for hawkers was more than she could pay, and that they would like to emigrate. I sent them to the Hon. Mrs. Hobart, who kindly arranged for their passage to Canada. They took tea at the Mission House, and amid many tears and prayers they left us. Several months
DIALECT-MORAL DEGRADATION 85
have elapsed ; they are doing well, and in her letter to me the poor woman expresses herself thus : We have never been hungry since we got here ; your little May is playing in a garden of my own before the door. We have nothing to do with the drink ; father is kind to me and the children, and we gets into no rows. And, Mrs. Hilton, oh, we will try, with God's help, to find our way to heaven. God for ever bless all them as was good to us."
The following cases of brutality came under Marie Hilton's personal notice. They are described in her own words :
" A dear child of eight months was at the Creche, and, like one of old, he was blind from his birth. One bitter night in winter he was sent home well wrapped in warm clothing, and a message was given that he was ill and was to be kept from the air. His young mother took him home, and found her husband intoxicated. On telling him that the child was to be kept warm, he took off its wraps, opened the window and raked out the fire, and obliged both mother and child to sit all night exposed to the frosty air."
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" Another—this was one of our exceptional cases. The mother was out of a situation, and she and her child were not welcome guests at her father's house ; he was an intemperate man, and usually came home drunk and ill-used his wife and daughter. The poor girl brought the dear child to me one morning, saying : Oh, Mrs. Hilton, my father is so violent ; he knocked me down last night with baby in my arms, and I think he has frightened little Georgie to death.' The little hands were trembling, the breathing laboured, and the eyes, oh, so wistful ! I knew it was dying, and at midnight death came, and took the little tired traveller into the haven of rest, adding one more to the many thousands who are offered up as sacrifices to our drinking customs.
" When looking at our little ones in our Creche and home, and seeing how bright and joyous they are, we forget sometimes from what a life some of them have been rescued ; and we hope that the present brightness has blotted out the pain of the past ; but it is not so. A little child of five years of age, sitting with her arms round a nurse's neck, replied to a remark, This is how mothers love,' Not my mother ; she never loved me ; she
used to beat me.'	Well, then,' said the nurser
DIALECT-MORAL DEGRADATION 87
' like fathers love.'	No,' said the child, ' my
father and mother used to fight. Once father came home to supper, and brought a loaf with him. He cut a slice off, and threw the rest on the fire, and when mother cried because she was hungry, he hit her, and in the morning her face was so black."
After many years' experience of the people, Marie Hilton wrote :
" I speak advisedly when I say that I believe many children are actually frightened to death by the violent scenes that take place in their homes ; for to delicate little ones just recovering from illness, rest and quiet are their only chances of life, and they die from any shock."
CHAPTER VII
WAYSIDE BLOSSOMS
IN the foregoing chapters I have attempted to give the reader, who may be unacquainted with London east of the City, some conception of what life was in the districts where Marie Hilton laboured for so many years. The description I have been able to give is necessarily feeble and inadequate , a realistic picture would require a far stronger and more eloquent pen than mine. Rat-cliff and the surrounding parishes comprised a dreary sombre region, in which the casual visitor could only see unmitigated evil, vice, depravity and brutality beyond the hope of amendment. But the picture, gloomy as it was, had a reverse side. There were bright spots for those who could see them. There existed pure affection, gratitude, self-sacrifice and heroism in a degree that would have adorned the highest civilisation. If many of the crimes committed by these poor
WAYSIDE BLOSSOMS	89
ignorant people went unrecorded, their acts of Christlike mercy and charity were also unknown to the world. Had there not been traces of the Divine still animating the darkest characters ; had there not been some evidences of a capacity for better things observable among these people, Marie Hilton would hardly have been able to continue her work among them for nearly thirty years. She laboured on, never entirely without hope, never despairing of even the most degraded. Few people in this generation were better entitled to speak with authority respecting the lowest class of London poor, and she always maintained that in the virtues of charity, self-sacrifice and patience they showed a grand record. She often said, when hearing of some remarkable case of unselfishness : " Could I have done as much, had I been in the same position ? " Her knowledge of what are termed the criminal classes left her with no feeling of superiority. She admired them cordially, and would never hear them abused or sneered at by superior persons without a protest.
" I fear," she wrote, " that many will feel that these women belong to a class that it is hardly pleasant to hear about ; but my design in mentioning these cases is to show that they are
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better than their surroundings, and that when removed from, and placed in other circumstances, they rise from their degradation and struggle for the maintenance of the good and true.
" We are still meeting with cases of love and kindness from the poor to the poor, which always richly abound in these neighbourhoods. I sometimes read articles about the sin and vice of the East End, written by people who do not look below the surface, and cannot see the fine gold amid the dross. In spite of the pollution incident to the condition of the neighbourhood, many strive, and strive not in vain, to keep themselves unspotted from the world. Some of those whose lot is cast amid scenes of culture and refinement know what it is to wage fierce conflict with evil tendencies, inherited or acquired, and they will know how to appreciate the victory of these sorely pressed souls."
Mr. Thomas Archer, who wrote an article in the Quiver describing the Creche work, paid a high tribute to the motherly instincts of the poor East-end mothers :
" Each day, from twelve to five o'clock " [he wrote], " visitors are welcomed, except on Satur-
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days, when the closing hour is two o'clock, as, even in some of the factories down east, the half-holiday is observed, and poor women, working at bottle-warehouses and other places, have the happiness of taking home their little ones, and keeping them to themselves till the following Monday morning. Do you feel inclined to question whether these poor toil-worn women appreciate this privilege ? Are you ready to indulge in a cynical fear that they would rather forego the claim they are expected to assert ? Believe me, you are wrong. One of the most hopeful and encouraging results of the tender care bestowed upon these babes of poverty is that of sustaining maternal love, and beautifying even th-,, 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."
The poor are the greatest friends of the poor. Of the unostentatious heroisms of everyday life fame utters no word. We read of savage fights and brutal assaults, but no record on earth is kept of the small loaf shared, the meal foregone, the blanket resigned to one whose need is greater.
The casual visitor notes the coarseness, the vulgarity, the unloveliness and dirt of the people ; and, indeed, no special powers of insight are
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needed to see these defects ; but it is only those who dwell among them and study them in times of sickness and sorrow who can testify to their nobility of character. Marie Hilton was a daily visitor among the poor of Ratcliff for years, and she lived to see promise of harvest from the seed she had sown. Her work in establishing the Creche has received such world-wide recognition that the exacting labour of her earlier years in the district has escaped notice. Those early years were necessary in preparing the way, in learning the needs of the people and gaining the confidence of the mothers for the fulfilment of her life's crowning work.
It has become the fashion to adopt a tone of pessimism when writing of the London poor, to represent them as monsters of iniquity in whom every human instinct is dead. Upon this point Marie Hilton's testimony may perhaps have some value. Her experience went to show that the women of the East End loved their children as fondly as did the women of the classes. In the twenty-five years that the Creche has been open how many infants, think you, have been left at the institution unclaimed ? Not one. In the course of twenty-five years three infants only
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were left in the open door of the Creche ; the parentage of these little waifs was never discovered. When the scheme of the Creche was first promulgated, many clever, cynical pessimists, who knew absolutely nothing about the people they slandered, declared that scores of infants would be left on the hands of the management. The result has proved that all wisdom is not with the cynics. The poor have been, and still are, grossly libelled by a certain type of superior persons. The absurd legends, which found such ready credence, told by unscrupulous charity-mongers and sensational newspaper writers, of children being allowed by their mothers to wander off into the streets as soon as they could walk, to live like Arabs, have no foundation in fact. These people would degrade humanity below the level of the brutes. People moving in the upper circles like to believe that they belong to a different race from the inhabitants of the slums. In this age of almost universal literary pessimism the poor have no apologists. According to modern criticism, Charles Dickens, who really did understand the poor, is voted shallow, superficial, blinded by his " cheery optimism." We are told that Nancy is an impossible character
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because she was not entirely without good instincts, that Bill Sykes is an impossible character
because he had no good instincts. Bret Harte is also held to be a sinner in this respect. He was taken to task sharply by a recent critic for making " Mother Shipton" starve herself to death for the sake of the girl, Piney Woods, in his exquisite story, " The Outcasts of Poker Flat." " Mother Shipton," this far-seeing critic maintained, would have been more likely to commit an act of cannibalism. Such dicta are passed by those critics who look at the world from the club window ; they are the snobs of criticism. Dickens and Bret Harte studied human nature at first hand, and saw at large. In a polite crowd nature is smothered with conventionality ; but go among the people, the wild, uncontrolled people, who act and speak from impulse, and you will find the estimate of the shallow optimists justified, you will find here and there rare gold sparkling amid the dross.
Many books showing extraordinary literary ability have been written about the East End, but all have been vitiated by the limited experience and the narrow outlook of the writers ; to quote a popular cant phrase, they have had little
WAYSIDE BLOSSOMS	95
value as human documents. The pictures presented have been one-sided, have been, in fact, revelations of the writer's prejudiced point of view. From the conditions under which the books were written the most glaring errors of treatment were inevitable. What success could a novelist from the London suburbs hope to achieve after a few weeks' or even months' invasion of the country of Thomas Hardy, of S. R. Crockett, or of J. M. Barrie ? His work might possibly be called smart and brilliant, but it would necessarily be full of errors, his characters would be caricatures, his local colour would be discordant. But a very short time is held to be quite sufficient to give a writer a thorough knowledge of life and character in the London slums. To those who have had thirty years' close acquaintance with East London, the work of some of these inspired tourists looks faulty and superficial. In Arthur Morrison's " Stories of Mean Streets " and " The Child of the Jago," in Rudyard Kipling's " Badalia Herodsfoot," what has been shown beyond the brutal and disgusting side of East-end life ? The characters are, after all, no more than profiles. The poor have had no friend in literature since the pen fell
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from the hand of the people's novelist, Charles Dickens.
Arthur Morrison, however, is not to be included among the tourists, for he has had an extended experience of East-end life. He has been attacked, since the publication of " The Child of the Jago," on the ground that he has exaggerated the brutality of the people. I do not think he has gone beyond the truth in any of his descriptions ; but where he has been at fault is in presenting only one side of the picture. There are doubtless people in London quite as bad as any that appear in his books ; but he has persistently looked at the darker side, he has seen no gleam of hope, no possibility of regeneration. I am aware that others who have worked in the East End have taken equally pessimistic views. One clergyman candidly confessed that he could see no results which encouraged him to continue his labours, though he had worked loyally and hard. Marie Hilton's experience was very different. She maintained that even the lowest were not entirely without aspirations towards better things. The following is a striking example. A woman of most repulsive appearance asked permission to join the sewing-class. The class was very full at the time, the room being crowded
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to inconvenience, but Marie Hilton felt that she could not refuse the woman a place, and she was
admitted. It was found that she had led a life of hideous depravity for years. She stood in the lowest ranks of humanity, there were none beneath her. She was notorious for her violent behaviour, and the missionary said that when she was roused in anger, or furious with drink, it was as if the mouth of hell was opened, so horrible was her language. Yet there was hope even for her. She gave up the drink, and abandoned her infamous life.
At that time the Friends used to take houses and pay a part of the rent, so that the poor people could occupy rooms at a small charge. The tenants of these' houses were carefully selected, and order and cleanliness were maintained. A room was found in one of the houses for this woman. For years she regularly attended the religious meetings at the Friends' Meeting House and lived an exemplary life. She was always eager for tracts, and it was discovered that she would, visit her old haunts, not without some risk, and would read the tracts to the people. She confessed to Marie Hilton that on the day she entered the sewing-class she was on her way to
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jump in the river, where so many of her fallen sisters had found forgetfulness ; but she resolved to apply for admission, and if refused she was determined to take her life. After some years she became enfeebled in health. My parents were just leaving London for the Isle of Wight one summer, and before their departure they called upon her. They found her weak, but they had no suspicion that the end was so near. She was in a serene frame of mind, and the burden of her many sins seemed to be lifted from her. A few days afterwards she passed peacefully away, and the shopkeepers in the neighbourhood, who knew her history, and how she had struggled up from a life of vice to one of unobtrusive usefulness, put up their shutters as a mark of respect. This case may appear to be overstated. It is, I know, opposed to the tenets of modern pessimism ; but I can vouch for its truth in every particular. This woman had nothing to gain from a material point of view by her change of life, neither was she a recipient of charity, she maintained herself by hard work. The mark of respect shown to her memory by the shopkeepers was a gratuitous act, and was done in my mother's absence from London.
Marie Hilton was constantly coming across
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instances of devotion and self-sacrifice among the very poorest of the people, from which she drew strength and encouragement to continue her labours. While such flowers could bloom in a soil so hard and barren there was surely hope yet. It was one of the many unfulfilled purposes of her life to have published a collection of these cases under the title of " Wayside Blossoms," but, alas ! the work in which she was engaged left her no leisure. We should have been the richer for such a book ; it might have taught many shallow pessimists a lesson. I will close this chapter with a few instances of how the poor help each other in times of trouble ; they go to prove that in the very lowest grades of society human nature is very far from being all corrupt.
" One morning," Marie Hilton writes, " `King' (one of the Creche children) and his brother came in hand-in-hand. King's' happy face was clouded, and they both said, with a sad wail, Mother's been fighting, and she's locked up.' On inquiry we found that such was indeed the case ; she was locked up for six weeks. About two o'clock Pet's mother came to ask if we could let the dear children sleep at the Creche, and the women at the warehouse would pay for them. We readily
zoo	MARIE HILTON
agreed to this arrangement. There are twelve women in this department of the warehouse, and they sent two shillings per week for six weeks. Their mother came to the Creche as soon as she was at liberty, full of repentance and gratitude. We do trust that this separation from her dear children will cause her to restrain the violence of her temper. May our Heavenly Father visit her with His grace, for without it we are but as waves of the sea, tossed by every tempest. Yet it is blessed to feel that humanity, even in its lowest estate, is not without touches of the divine hand."
These women worked long hours for a pittance hardly sufficient to keep life in them ; their charity must have cost them many a pang of hunger.
" One of our Creche mothers had a new-born baby, and her room was destitute of fire, food and clothing. This was her second baby, and she was barely twenty-one. She had been in delicate health for some time, but she had worked on bravely as her husband was out of work, and on her rested the burden of keeping the home together.' A few days after, another case was reported with almost the same pitiful details. I need not say what joy we felt in being privileged to send warmth and comfort to these homes. In
WAYSIDE BLOSSOMS	lox
one of these cases, however, some one had been beforehand with us. When our visitor arrived, she found that a poor widow, who occupied the next room, was trying to kindle a fire with a few sticks that she could ill spare from her own scanty store. She had heard of her neighbour's distress, and with the ready sympathy which is so beautiful to notice in the poor, she had ' of her poverty, given all that she had ' to help her."
"It is touching to note the admirable way in which many poor women live. Although their own lives are one long sacrifice, they will cheerfully undertake any service for one who appears to be in greater suffering. One of our mothers, a widow with four children, took into her room a newly made widow with two little ones. When asked how she would manage, she said, ' Oh, very well, I think. You see she is new to her trouble yet , but God always fits the back to the burden.' We watched closely to see that extreme want should not touch them, yet we were careful not to tarnish the beauty of the deed by any display of charity. Such acts as these are frequent, and their most striking feature is the perfect unconsciousness of those who perform them that they have done anything extraordinary."
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The following letter was addressed to the Morning- Star by my father, Mr. John Hilton,
and appeared in that journal on February 4, 1869 :
" A HEROINE.
" SIR,—In a sewing-class held at the Friends' Meeting House, Ratcliff, under the direction of my wife, there is a young woman named E. H. Her husband, a labourer, has been out of work for three months. When taken into the class, she and her husband were living in a six-roomed house, 7 Dunstan's Place, Ratcliff, in which dwelt six families, comprising thirteen adults and seven children—in all, twenty ! At the top of the house, in the front room, were an old man and his son ; in the back, a young couple ; in the first-floor front, the man who hired the house and let out the rooms to others, his wife, who had been bedridden for sixteen years, a son aged seventeen, a daughter aged nineteen, a widowed daughter whose husband recently died of fever and four children ; in the back room on this floor a young couple lived ; on the ground-floor front, E. H. and her husband ; and in the back, a man and his three daughters. On Tuesday morning, January 19, about four o'clock, hearing moaning in the first-floor front room, E. H. got
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up, and knowing the man to be suffering from fever, lighted her own fire and made some tea, which she carried up to the sick-room. She found the place in the most offensive condition. The man and his son and daughter were very ill ;
M	, the man, with his bedridden wife, occupied
a bed, the son and daughter lay on a mat, none of them had any covering ; the widow and her children had left, after a three weeks' residence in the room. The terror which fever now excites in Ratcliff had caused all the other inhabitants of the house to remove the day before, and but for the charitable intervention of the young woman who remained, the landlady would have found a room full of putrid corpses when she called for her rent the next Monday. After doing what she. could to comfort and help the suffering family, E. H. lay down to rest till awakened by the postman, who brought a letter announcing the death from fever of another member of the sick family. She then lighted a fire in the sick-room,. and ran to get a doctor's order from the Ratcliff Guardians' office. The doctor called in due time, but seemed too horrified with the stench in the room to examine the patients at that time, though he speedily sent in some bread and meat. The poor man had been taken ill on Saturday, and did not taste food or drink from that time till Tuesday morning at four o'clock, when E. H. paid her first benevolent visit with a cup of tea in her
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hand. It would be utterly impossible for me to describe the condition of the room or of the bedridden patients. Having done her best to cleanse the place, E. H. went again to the doctor, who called, and ordered the son and daughter to the fever-house. Seeing that the poor man was nearing his end, the thought came into her head that he ought to see a minister, so she went to the clergyman, who came at once and read to the dying man. He came again in the evening. The poor fellow had kept out of debt, but before he died he seemed to be trying to say something. E. H. thought he pointed to the rent-book. She looked into it, and when he had been shown that there was no rent due till Monday he seemed satisfied. He passed away on the morning of Thursday, the 21st. On the return of E. H. from the Ratcliff Guardians' office, where she had been to urse the removal of the now widowed and helpless bedridden woman, she heard loud cries sounding through the house. She hastened, and found the wretched woman on the floor, with her arm much burned. The only explanation she could elicit was that the woman, almost demented with misery, wanted to be burned to death. She had no clothing on but an old woollen skirt, or her wish might have been realised. Five times E. H. went to beg the parish officers to remove the woman, but it was not till nine o'clock at night that a cab came for the purpose. Then
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E. H. had to carry her downstairs. She rode with her to Stepney Union-house, holding her all the way to comfort her, though she was filthy, covered with vermin, and almost in a state of nudity. The attendants refused to touch her on account of her loathsome condition, so E. H. had to carry her in and put her on a bed. She next called on the inspector of nuisances to report the state of the room, that the accumulated filth might be removed. E. H. understood from the doctor that the complaint the family suffered from was spotted fever, and such was the alarm of the neighbours that they shrank from her as from the pest, and closed their doors against her. All this heroic and self-sacrificing work being over, E. H. quietly went back to her own poor lodging, and in the midst of her own poverty and privation seemed satisfied with the reward of a good conscience. The relieving officer, however, whose kindness she warmly eulogises, told her to go to the guardians for some payment. Being very much in need she went, and after waiting from two o'clock till four -, had an interview, when she was pointedly reminded that no one had told her to do the work,' and told to come again on Saturday. She did, and received the munificent reward of eight shillings ! She had probably saved two or three lives, had comforted the last hours of a man who worked till almost the day of his death, used her own tea, coals and chloride of
io6	MARIE HILTON
lime, risked her life by nursing patients suffering from putrid fever, lost several days' work, and received about enough to recoup her actual loss and costs. She seems satisfied, and expects no more.
" Yours truly,
" JOHN HILTON.
" BURDETT ROAD, Bow, E."
A little boy of about nine years of age, whose mother was a widow, fell from one of the wharves into the river and was drowned. The body could not be recovered at the time, at which the poor woman was in an agony of distress. Three rough waterside men, seeing how she was taking on, promised to spend the night dragging for the body. These men were hard workers, but not exemplary characters by any means ; they would knock you down as soon as look at you, if you assumed any airs of superiority ; but they cheerfully gave up their hard-earned rest, and, 'mid cold and damp, and many discomforts, kept the drags at work through the live-long night. They did this with no hope of reward, for the widow was very poor. Is there not hope for men who can act with such chivalrous self-sacrifice as this,. although they do live in mean streets ?
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These are but a few instances of the shining deeds of the poor, out of the many hundreds that came under Marie Hilton's notice. I shall have others to give when I come to deal with the work of the Creche.
CHAPTER VIII
LIFE IN LIMEHOUSE-THE FRIENDS' MEETING
HOUSE
AT the beginning of the work at Ratcliff my father occupied a house in Burdett Road—named after the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. The road runs north and south, connecting the two great eastern thoroughfares, Commercial Road and Mile End Road. It was a little over a mile from the street where the Creche was afterwards established, and, compared with some parts of the East End, the locality might be said to be select. But life was anything but enjoyable in the Burdett Road, which, though it was on the verge of the town, was still a long way from the country. Bow Common, rural in name but not in reality, was not yet built over, and lay at the mercy of the lime-burner and the brickmaker. On the portions yet unappropriated, large numbers of unemployed labourers played rounders. The neighbourhood
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was very rough ; every Sunday morning we used to see a track of blood on the pavement where some injured man had staggered along. The place was not, however, entirely without interesting, and even picturesque, sights. The Thames, a never-failing source of pleasure, was less than a mile distant, and the great East and West India Docks, " with the beauty and mystery of the ships," were within an easy walk. Here we could see the mighty Australian sailing ships, the swift clippers of the China tea trade, and the West India sugar ships, and revel in the hurry and bustle of loading and unloading. The East India Docks, which have changed in few respects during the present century, were then as now one of the most interesting sights of London. Our near neighbour and friend in these early days was Captain Campbell, R.N.R., an owner of ships engaged in the West Indian trade, and at that time one of the leading men in the East of London. He was a zealous philanthropist and temperance worker, and conducted a mission at the Burdett Hall. The greatest discomfort to be endured in this part of Limehouse was the horrible nauseating odours emanating from the factories round about. A little further east was
iio	MARIE HILTON
a place most suitably named " Stink House Bridge," where the Fish Bone and Blood Manure Company worked its wicked will upon the olfactory nerves of the community, offering up daily a choice assortment of very ancient and fishlike smells. There were also chemical works, which sent forth the most blighting and searching stenches. We stood in no need of a weathercock to tell us when the wind was in the east, for we were apprised of the fact by the arrival of a bouquet of smells, the fishlike predominating, from which there was no escape. Had Mr. J arndyce lived here, one could have excused him for being out of temper when the eastern breezes blew. Often in a still summer night one would be awakened by a smell almost strong enough, so to speak, to wake the dead ; one seemed to be assailed by a real material substance. To the south of us was a great pickle factory, the sharp acid odour from which would sometimes bring the water into the eyes and mouth. With a gentle western wind we would hear in the dead of night the solemn boom of Big Ben, the sound rolling down the river.
The dingy streets of Limehouse and Poplar were never without a little relief in the way of
LIFE IN LIMEHOUSE	in
colour and bizarre character, for the sailor men from far across the sea, bronzed and gaily hand-kerchiefed, were to be seen strolling leisurely along in their sea roll and chewing reflectively. One cannot help wondering what sort of an account these foreign seamen give of London when they return to their native land. They come ashore at the East or West India Docks, inhale the sweet breezes of Poplar and Limehouse, and, after walking perhaps a mile up the Commercial Road, they return to their ships, thinking no doubt that they have seen London. The variety of race one sees is astonishing. There are Lascars, with slim, monkey-like bodies, cocoanut shaped heads, blue-black hair and glittering black eyes. They are invariably courteous, and acknowledge a salutation with profound respect. They are ready to do a little trade, too, with parrots, monkeys, or heavy knobbed sticks, popularly called " Penang lawyers." Chinamen, with their pigtails carefully concealed under their caps, lest the barbarous Christian youths should use those appendages as bell-pulls. The opium-dens and lodging-houses used by the Celestials are places not easily forgotten when once seen. There is a mission now to Chinese sailors directed
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by a gentleman who resided in China for forty years, and who has translated the " Pilgrim's Progress " into Chinese. Norse seamen in clumsy sea-boots and heavy serge clothing ; lively, chattering swarthy men from Southern Europe, " Spanish sailors with bearded lips," negroes, Dutchmen, Yankees and Germans—a motley collection indeed ! These sailors, Oriental and Occidental alike, are well-behaved as a rule ; but the brutality of the young East End roughs towards the Chinese sometimes leads to trouble. After seeing how some of the Celestials are treated in London, one is not surprised to hear of British subjects experiencing annoyance in China. The Asiatic Home, in the West India Dock Road, an excellent institution, receives Asiatic seamen, and there are now missions to sailors of all nationalities.
Our first experience of the Ratcliff poor was not at all propitious. When my father paid his first visit to the Friends' Meeting House, about the year 1867, the popular disapproval of tall hats was expressed by a shower of cabbage-stumps and other malodorous missiles. The people didn't know who he was, and didn't care ; being better dressed than themselves was held to be a sufficient
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justification for assault. How great a change was wrought in the course of a few years ! The people would have protected John Hilton and his wife with their lives. When, a good many years afterwards, Cardinal Manning was about to deliver a temperance address to a large gathering of Roman Catholics one Sunday in the streets of Ratcliff, he invited my father and mother to occupy seats beside him on the temporary platform. The Cardinal knew and appreciated the work the Friends were doing in the district. They were driven to the place of meeting in a cab. Some people far back in the crowd, seeing a cab, and not recognising its occupants, threw some refuse in at the window. Such a thing had not happened for years, and Marie Hilton was very much astonished. On the following day, however, on paying her usual visit to the Creche, a deputation from the courts at the back of Brook Street waited upon her. The spokesman, with deep respect and perfect gravity, delivered his message. He evidently supposed that my mother was thirsting for the wild justice of revenge. " We 'eard, my lady," he said, " as how you and Mr. Hilton was a-drivin"ere yesterday, and wos assaulted with 'avin' some taters throwd at you.
H
"4	MARIE HILTON
Now if you can only tell us who it was as did it, me and my friends year will bash 'em for you, and be proud to do it." Her first inclination was to laugh, the men's ideas of the relative values of things were so grotesquely disproportionate ; but it would not have been wise : they were in sober earnest, and ridicule would have hurt them. She thanked them for their kind intentions, and tried to make them understand how repugnant any acts of violence would be to her ; how that revenge had no place in her scheme of life. This incident may appear extravagant, but from my knowledge of the people, I have not the slightest doubt that these men were prepared to make their words good.
To reach the Friends' Meeting House, Brook Street, Ratcliff, where Marie Hilton began her mission work, we had to walk through a network of small streets extending over parts of Limehouse and Stepney, till Stepney Causeway, a small turning running south from the broad Commercial Road, was reached. The Causeway was a squalid dirty little street in 1868, and has by no means an inviting aspect even to-day. But the street has known better days. The houses were built about a hundred and fifty years ago, and are of sub-
LIFE IN LIMEHOUSE	ir5
stantial structure, with' doors of solid oak, carved mantelpieces, hearth-stones of marble, and fireplaces ornamented with Dutch tiles. The fastenings of the doors are decorated with those elaborate brass fittings so eagerly sought after now by collectors. One or two houses in the street are detached, and years ago had no doubt an imposing appearance. In the early days of the century these houses were inhabited by rich merchant captains, superannuated servants of the old East India Company, and retired traders, who used solid silver teapots, and drank their tea out of rare old china, and on warm summer evenings sat and smoked on Blackwall Pier, watching the ships go by. How are the mighty fallen ! Most of the houses at the time of which I am writing had a different family in every room. Stepney Causeway runs into Brook Street, and about fifty yards from the end stands the old Friends' Meeting House.
It is thirty years ago since I first saw the streets of Ratcliff, and the impression I received has never been effaced. It was a hot Sabbath evening. The streets swarmed with humanity, the whole population seemed to have abandoned their houses for the pavement and the roadway, and
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were sitting about in groups. Hordes of barefooted, frowsv-headed children, who looked as if they had not been washed since their birth, sported about, and kept up a constant yelling. The strife of tongues was acute and incessant ; voices, either in heated controversy or friendly converse, were pitched in the highest key. A stranger would suffer no annoyance from the adults beyond frankly expressed opinions upon his personal appearance, but the children were more practical. These ragged battalions would follow him, their bare feet making no sound on the stone pavement, and after the momentary surprise had worn off, they would utter yelps of defiance, and fling anything from the gutter that came to hand, and then vanish phantom-like up a court. These troops of barefooted children are now seen no more. Whether times are really better, or whether the School Board has shamed the parents into stinting the publican, and providing boots for their children, I know not ; but it is a fact that it would be hard to find a group of unshod children anywhere in East London to-day. But though boots are worn, and though the School Board has been many years at work, there is little improvement visible in the manners of the children. In December,
LIFE IN LIMEHOUSE	ii7
1896, a number of boys and girls were brought up at the Thames Police Court charged with disorderly conduct on Sunday night. An inspector informed the magistrate that it was the custom of these young people to go about in rowdy gangs, one of them playing a mouth-organ, and the others dancing on the pavement and pushing respectable people into the road. The previous Sunday a gang of them gathered near Stepney Causeway and threw balls made of dirty rags dipped in mud at the clothes and faces of passers-by. Others lay on the pavement in dark parts of the road and attempted to trip up foot-passengers.
But to return to the meeting-house. It stood, a gaunt building, blackened by smoke, and surrounded by a high wall, at the corner of Schoolhouse Lane. It might have been a gaol or a monastery for anything the people knew to the contrary. It remained a strange survival of a more strenuous age , an oasis of silence and peace in a desert of blatant noise. The meeting-house consisted of a large hall, with a deep gallery running round three sides of it, all massively built. The walls, as in all Quakers' meeting-houses, were bare, and the strong, heavy benches on which several generations of Friends had sat and worshipped were
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untouched by paint or varnish. " Plain as the pikestaff which I carried in America ; plain as a Quaker's meeting-house," William Cobbett is made to say in " Rejected Addresses." Less than a century ago the place was well attended by people in good worldly circumstances. A long row of carriages drew up outside at the approach of " breaking-up " time to carry the Friends home. Where are the carriages now ? They have rolled into the night. Where they once stood, now stands the barrow of the winkle merchant and the whelk-stall. " Sic transit gloria." Year by year the company of silent worshippers dwindled and dwindled. In the half acre of turf-covered ground attached to the meeting-house lie three layers of dead Quakers wrapped in eternal silence. They have passed utterly from human knowledge and memory. No grave-stones mark where they lie ; only by taking certain measurements from the walls is it possible to verify the exact position of the bodies. So rapidly had the decline operated through death, or removal, or resignation from the Society, that in the year 1868 the number of attenders at this large, empty, echoing building had sunk to little more than a dozen. On two days in the week the great gates were opened
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on Sunday in the morning and evening, and on Wednesday in the morning ; during the rest of the week the place was tenanted only by the wind. Twice a week a few grey people, clad in sad coloured garments came together, and sat for an hour or so in dead silence. What a contrast was here ! The teeming life, the boisterous noise, the wild force and ruffianism without ; and the stillness, the somnolent silence within those bare walls.
" The Abbey Church of Westminster hath nothing so solemn, so spirit-soothing, as the naked walls and benches of a Quaker's meeting._ Here are no tombs, no inscriptions,
. . . . sands, ignoble things,. Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings ;
but here is something which throws antiquity herself into the foreground—silence, eldest of things, language of old Night, primitive discourser, to which the insolent decays of mouldering grandeur have but arrived by a violent, and, as we may say, unnatural progression.
How reverend is the view of these hush'd heads Looking tranquillity.
Nothing plotting, nought caballing, unmischievous synod ; convocation without intrigue ; parliament
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without debate ; what a lesson dost thou read to council, and to consistory ! "
But the silence which Charles Lamb admired so much was not in this case the silence of gathering strength or mental recuperation ; it was the stillness of decay and death. In a few years, had not John Hilton chanced to visit the place, the old meeting-house would have been closed. At that time it seemed as though the message of Quakerism had been finally spoken. The fiery enthusiasm and aggressive force which characterised the Society's early days had faded down into inanition, and little now remained but a sleek bourgeoise conservatism, rapidly sinking into mere formalism. The Quakers sat in their meeting-houses, in many cases in unbroken silence, maintaining an attitude of dignified aloofness from sinful and suffering humanity. Not that they were selfish or unsympathetic ; no more munificent givers to charitable institutions exist anywhere than the silent, austere, self-contained Quakers. They form the aristocracy of the manufacturing trade, and loyally live up to the motto, " Noblesse oblige." They give with a lavishness unequalled by any territorial nobility in the world, unequalled by the members of any
LIFE IN LIMEHOUSE	121
other religious sect. True to their traditions, they live the life of ideal citizens—orderly, thrifty, loyal to the Crown and Constitution, moderate in their demands for reform, open-handed to the poor. Steadfast in adversity, and how courageous they can be in maintaining their principles the annals of the early persecutions give ample testimony. But thirty years ago they did not see their way to promoting active evangelistic work among the poor. They attended their own meetings, and if the unregenerate did not choose to come in and sit in silence with them, so much the worse for them. How great a departure this attitude of supineness was from the early habit of the Quakers, all who are acquainted with the history of the Society will see at once. In recent years, however, Quakerism has known a great revival ; the dry bones have been stirred ; the old impotent conservatism has completely passed away. The Society is giving evidence of vigorous life ; the membership is increasing, and every meeting-house is a centre of mission work. The following brief account of Ratcliff Meeting House is extracted from " The London Friends' Meetings," by William Beck and T. Frederick Ball :
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" The meeting at Mile End Green was removed to its present position at Ratcliff about the year 1666 or 1667. We may here remark, in passing, that some of the earliest marriages amongst us were, as shown by the registers, solemnised at James Brock's house. But the meeting had now outgrown its accommodation, and in 1666 Thomas Yoakley, on behalf of Friends, bought some land situated at the corner of Schoolhouse Lane and Brook Street, in Ratcliff. This land was originally copyhold, but was enfranchised in 1734 for
On a part of the portion of land referred to, Friends erected a meeting-house ; the remainder was made use of as a burial-ground. Hither, however, the implacable Sir John Robinson* tracked them out, and especially in the year 167o he seems to have spared no pains to break up the meeting. He kept them out of their premises, and in June 167o, fined William Simpson £20 for preaching in the street. In August he sent his soldiers and carried away or destroyed sixty-one forms and two tables. But Friends still met all the same, though having nothing to sit upon, and Sir John again came down and dispersed them. His followers were so indignant at the worshippers keeping their heads covered in his presence that they snatched away Friends' hats
* Governor of the Tower (temp. Charles II.). He earned an evil notoriety by his cruel persecution of the sectaries within his jurisdiction.
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and threw them over the wall into the adjacent street, where the rude people outside were only too glad, as we are informed, to have ' the opportunity of exchanging bad hats for good ones.' All this, and other suffering, Friends bore with such meekness that one of the trained-bands men who stood near, named Benjamin Bangs, felt so drawn to them by their conduct here and elsewhere that he joined the Society, and became an eminent minister of the Gospel.
" But neither the loss of their forms nor their hats could prevent Friends from meeting in Brook Street, Ratcliff, so Sir John determined to have the place itself destroyed. He sent on the 2nd of September his soldiers, who for a day and a night toiled at the work, and carried away twelve cart-loads of doors, windows, floors, glass, lead, &c., and also made ruinous work of the tiles, and other easily destructible portions of the building.
" The persecuted ones, nothing daunted, met upon the ruins until they had again restored their premises ; and the meeting was always kept up, though maltreatment and arrest continued during the era of persecution to be the frequent lot of the zealous worshippers.
" In 1681 we find that a gallery was added to the meeting-house, but it is not certain whether this was what we now call a minister's gallery or extra accommodation for worshippers. In the same year some further alterations were ordered
124	MARIE HILTON
to be made, and we transcribe the minute of the monthly meeting, as it gives us some idea of the edifice. It was in the third month (March) 1681, that some Friends were appointed to contrive to let ayre into the uper and lower meetings on each side of the chimney, if there be neede, and on window on the side of the back door in the lower meeting, and by taking downe the uper parte of the glace windows above and below where they shall see meet, and make new casements and put up a new piller in ye meeting.'
" We see from the foregoing minute that Friends had begun to call the building in which they met a meeting, just as their Episcopalian neighbours called the place in which the Church met a church. Passing over various minor alterations, including the making in 1693 of a little seat for children to sitt on in the gallery,' we find that in 1712 the meeting-house was much out of repair, and about ‘33o was spent in improvements and reparations. The six weeks' meeting had promised £30 towards the expense, but the anticipated cost had been doubled, and, considering that the work was done so substantially, they increased their grant to ‘ioo, with the understanding that the arrangement was not to form a precedent.
" With necessary repairs from time to time, the meeting-house, thus renovated, lasted till 1797, at which date it was rebuilt on an enlarged scale at a cost of nearly £2200. This is the present
LIFE IN LIMEHOUSE	125
building, and was opened for divine worship in the eighth month (August), 1798. During the process of demolition and rebuilding, Friends' meeting was temporarily transferred to a commodious room near Ratcliff Cross, which was rented at ‘16 per annum.
" The remainder of the estate purchased by Thomas Yoakley and others at Ratcliff was used till 1857 as a burial-ground. It was at first only an enclosed piece of a field, and was levelled in 1686. At that time the meeting found it necessary to order the gravemaker not to put more than three corpses in one grave. Such was at that time the population of the monthly meeting, that in 1689 complaint was made of more room being wanted on account of there being so many interments. Further accommodation seems to have been obtained by raising the ground. A list of the burials from 1789 to 1857 is preserved, in which there are about four hundred names, forming doubtless only a small proportion of the total number interred in this place. The ground has. been buried in over and over again, and in the more recent interments the digging was frequently obstructed by the lead coffins of a past era.
" Before passing from the subject of burial, we may quote a minute of the monthly meeting, dated seventh month, 19, 1683, illustrative of the primitive manners of that early time. It read as follows :
126	MARIE HILTON
It is desiered that Friends be spoken to the next monthly meeting concerning the carrying the corpses to the ground, that they may be desiered to corn timly at the hours appoynted, and to set a helping- hand to ye finshing ye same."
John Hilton, seeing the suitability of the place for mission work, wished to start services for the people at once, but he was met with the most strenuous opposition from the old attenders. That the vulgar feet of the roughs should desecrate the sacred precincts and soil the spotless boards was in their view a kind of profanation. They were the narrowest of Conservatives, clinging tightly to the forms of Quakerism, the archaic phraseology, and the peculiar costume ; they had not a spark of the spirit which had animated the early reformers. It was only after an arduous campaign and an appeal to the Monthly Meeting, that permission was at length granted to hold mission services in the old building where silence had so long held reign. On Sunday evening the place was crowded by the poorest people anxious to be preached to. In the afternoon the barefooted, ragged children swarmed by hundreds into the Sunday school. The barriers of prejudice and conventionality were broken down, and the
LIFE IN LIMEHOUSE	127
'mission work at Rateliff was fairly under weigh. The meeting-house was made the centre for the distribution of relief, which, since the bitter need of the neighbourhood had been advertised, now flowed in plentifully from all parts of the country. The Bedford Institute opened a Ratcliff branch, with which Marie Hilton • actively co-operated. The rooms of the meeting-house were utilised for sewing classes, mothers' meetings, temperance meetings, and religious services. In the hot summer evenings open-air meetings were sometimes held in the burial ground. The rush on to the grass when the doors were first thrown open was 'a sight to see. The ragged children revelled in the unwonted luxury. I believe the majority of them had never trod grass before. It was long before such things as fresh-air funds and day trips were thought of. Some difficulty was experienced at first in finding suitable speakers. On one occasion a temperance advocate, who had been a professional pugilist, was announced to give an address. The people came in large numbers. The democracy regard a pugilist very much as people in a higher walk of life regard a Nansen, a Stanley, or a specially meritorious holder of the V.C. The men listened and looked,
128	MARIE HILTON
and remained sceptical ; the speaker wore a black coat, and was, moreover, very fluent. One heard exclamations of incredulity such as, " He aint no pug" (pugilist) ; " It's a blooming fake ; " " Looks more like a undertaker." But when, in illustrating one of his experiences, the speaker put up his hands, or his " dukes," as his hearers would have said, all doubts were removed, and he was heard in patience. There was no mistaking the practised ease of attitude and movement of the trained gladiator. Then, of course, the verdict was : " A man as is game and clever ought to be listened to respectful ; " and he was. At another time an eminent minister in the Society of Friends, Robert Alsop by name, came down to show by chemical analysis how little real nourishment is contained in beer. The people at once jumped to the conclusion that the lecturer was the celebrated brewer, Allsopp. They said, " 'Ere's a lark, 'ere's hold Hallsopp goin' to show what he puts into his own beer." There was a large audience on the occasion of the lecture, but I am afraid that many went away disappointed. The chemist was nowhere in the matter of popularity compared with the prize-fighter.
CHAPTER IX
SEWING CLASSES-SOUP KITCHENS
THE most laborious and exacting work ever undertaken by Marie Hilton was the direction of the large sewing classes at the meeting-house. These were established with the view of helping the women, and at the same time preserving their self-respect. They were permitted to believe that they had earned the money they received. In times of extreme cold, a substantial meal was provided for each woman, in addition to the sixpence or nine-pence paid in money. The classes were held several times a week, and as nearly three hundred women attended, immense quantities of material had to be purchased and prepared. All this of course, involved tremendous labour. Very often Marie Hilton would leave home soon after breakfast, and not return until past ten at night. Remaining for so many hours in foetid atmosphere, and subject to the worry of petty cares and annoyances,
1
130	MARIE HILTON
involved a physical strain which only the strongest constitutions could have withstood. The burden appeared to be carried lightly at the time, indeed none suspected its heaviness, but the wear and tear and the exhaustion had to be paid for in the after years. The strain and stress of that hard time set an indelible mark upon her, though she knew it not. More than twenty years afterwards, in the severe illness from which she suffered three years before her death, when she lay in delirium for days together, the intervening years were cancelled, and she was back at the sewing classes. Some mysterious reflex action of the mind was at work, the watchers saw her through the long hours of the night, sitting up in bed with closed eyes, going through the action of cutting out and preparing the work for the classes. This appeared to presage the final breakdown of her powers, mental and physical, but she was to be spared for three years yet for the work she loved, and for the love of her family. While the women were at work, my mother read to them, or tried to teach them the rudiments of domestic management. The women were of the roughest class, and she was among them quite unprotected, with a large sum of money on the table before
SEWING CLASSES-SOUP KITCHENS 131
her ready for payment ; but owing to her capacity for control, which seemed almost like the power of hypnotism, there was never the least disorder, never a moment's difficulty. On one occasion a woman who bore an evil reputation for violence, even in Ratcliff, where violence is only too common, invaded the sewing class to take vengeance on one of the women who had offended her. Not long before, this person had lain in wait for a woman against whom she had a grudge, and had cut her horribly about the face with a chopper. She entered the meeting house blaspheming, and ripe for any atrocious act. Marie Hilton without faltering met the furious creature ere she had advanced many steps into the room, and firmly asked her to leave. For a few seconds the two women regarded each other in silence. Many present were in terror, knowing the character of the intruder ; they feared almost for my mother's life. But the firm will and dauntless courage prevailed, the woman turned as wild animals will sometimes before a calm, fearless demeanour, and left the place. Another instance of Marie Hilton's personal courage and power over the people occurred soon after. It was a Sunday morning, and she was entering the
132	MARIE HILTON
meeting-house, when she was told that two of the women belonging to her sewing-class were fighting with pokers in one of the streets close by. Not hesitating a moment, she turned from the door and went back. A little way up one of the turnings out of Brook Street was a mob of fierce, wrangling men and women. There were sickening sounds of heavy blows, and hideous shrieked-out blasphemies. Perhaps nowhere in the world would it be possible to find more vile and degraded creatures than the people who formed this crowd. No policeman would have dared to interfere at such a time as this, it would have been at extreme peril of his life. Marie Hilton walked in among the people as calmly as if they had been Sunday-school children, as fearlessly as she would have faced levelled rifle barrels had duty called. Way was made for her, and she passed into the heart of the crowd. Had her courage failed for an instant, had her tact and knowledge of character been at fault, the consequences might have been terrible. No power on earth could have saved her life, if her intrusion had been resented. But such was her extraordinary influence that no sooner did the two furious, unsexed creatures see her, than they dropped their weapons and turned away
SEWING CLASSES-SOUP KITCHENS 133
in shame. She spoke to them for a few moments without any anger, her words being listened to by the crowd in respectful silence. Her influence was great, but it had its limits ; the greatest concession she could obtain from the combatants was a promise to preserve a truce till two o'clock. How the battle went, I am unable to say, but I believe that one of the Amazons ultimately became a respectable and industrious character.
It was during this time of close association with the people that a perfect knowledge of their character and needs was gained. When the Creche came to be founded it was instantly successful because it was exactly adapted to meet the requirements of the neighbourhood, and because the people had perfect faith in the motives and objects of the founder.
About this time a house was taken in Stepney Causeway and furnished as a mission institute and free reading-room. The reading-room was not an immediate success ; the men came in twos and threes, and seemed to be ashamed of themselves. The habits of a lifetime cannot be broken down in a few months. Successful rivalry with the public-house would have required the expenditure of far more money than the mission at that time
134	MARIE HILTON
had at command. The lower rooms of the house were used as soup-kitchens. In the freezing weather a meal of soup and bread was given several days a week to large numbers of the hungry of both sexes. On the days when the soup was given away, the waiting crowd outside the door was a pitiful sight. It was composed mostly of men ; gaunt, hollow-eyed, ragged, they stood there almost shoeless in the half-frozen slush, waiting patiently for the chance of a meal. Some of them had tramped hither for miles ; the news of free victuals travels fast and far. I was present one day, I suppose it must have been in the holidays, and was allowed to see the steaming cauldrons of soup, and the hungry people at the door. Alas ! the supply of food gave out long before half the crowd had been supplied. The police guarded the entry, but they were not really needed. The men were cold and hungry, but they had learned to endure, their silent submission to the inevitable was sorrowful to see. When the time came to tell the people there was no more food, my mother's self-command broke down. She stood at an upper window and looked out upon the faces below, all wearing the same expression, a look of eager, painful longing on the cold-nipped
SEWING CLASSES-SOUP KITCHENS 135
features. Her sympathy went out to them mightily, and for some minutes she could not speak for weeping. Her great heart sank under the burden of the terrible cruelty of life. There was no pretence of poverty here ; there was no mistaking the handwriting of famine. The police told the people that all the food was gone, and that it was no use waiting any longer. Many turned, and without a word went with bowed head heavily on their way. Some still lingered, unable to abandon hope. My mother remembered that there was a quantity of beef from which beef-tea for the invalids had been made ; the meat was boiled to rags, but she gave orders that it should be served up. This, with a few crusts of bread provided a meal for perhaps twenty more. The first twenty men in the crowd struggled in, and devoured the improvised repast as ravenously as wolves. We often read of hunger and poverty as something far off. We do not realise what the words mean, for the actuality is rarely brought before us. Seeing those ragged men eat was a new experience to me. I had never seen starving human creatures before, nor have I any wish to see the like again. It was a mournful sight, speaking eloquently of the tragedy of failure, of
136	MARIE HILTON
the mercilessness and injustice of life. No wonder my mother's tears fell. Her extreme sensitiveness, and her desire instantly to alleviate suffering, either of mind or body, were never lessened in all the years she spent among the poor. She never grew hard in the least degree, nor cynical, though she had looked on every phase of human suffering for more than thirty years. Up to the last her pity was as spontaneous, her sympathies as quick, as when she commenced the work. The great strain of her life was having to refuse help in cases of extreme distress. The sense of impotence in the presence of suffering was an ever-present burden to her, causing her to suffer many hours of agonised depression. The funds she had at command were very limited ; and there were many sound business people among her subscribers who were ready to quote some of the golden rules of commerce, texts from the book of Mammon, when a balance appeared on the wrong side. They little knew what painful self-restraint Marie Hilton had to exercise constantly to make both ends meet. She spent her life in attempting to lessen the sum of human misery, and it was given to her to accomplish much ; but in her own estimation how little it seemed ! She saw the great river of
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sin and sorrow rolling ever past her in a mighty volume, and what she had done to stem its flow appeared infinitely little in comparison with all that remained. Others saw the results of her labours and wondered at her success ; only the worker herself knew of the mass beyond who had known no relief in their hour of need.
CHAPTER X
VISITING-THE DRINK CURSE
IN a few months Marie Hilton obtained a perfect understanding of the people, and learned to discriminate between the genuine cases of distress and the fictitious. She found many people in the district who would never do a stroke of work so long as a meal could be got either by fraud or by begging, and who were adepts in all the arts of imposture. No doubt her naturally keen perception of character kept her from being as grossly deceived as others might have been, and a few months' experience enabled her to judge pretty accurately between real and simulated poverty. Subordinate visitors were employed constantly going about among the people, verifying cases, and seeking out the silent, unostentatious sufferers. The relieving officer kindly rendered every assistance, his great experience being of the utmost value. The amount of ingenuity displayed by
VISITING—THE DRINK CURSE	139
some of the impostors was astonishing , they had at command eloquent and moving appeals full of harrowing details with which to assail the benevolent, and would tell their pitiful tales with a rare feeling for dramatic effect. One day a boy of between eight and nine saw Marie Hilton approaching his mother's dwelling, and thinking himself unobserved, he ran indoors, and was on his knees putting up a prayer for " just one slice," when the visitor entered. The young reprobate had been carefully trained in the paths of deception. In another instance a woman heard that a supply of food was to be sent to a starving family in a certain house. She hurried off, entered the passage, received the parcel from the messenger with effusive thanks, then closed the door, and as soon as the messenger had got well out of the street, she decamped with the spoil.
I believe it was in the year 1869 that Mr. Archibald Forbes, who has since won such splendid renown as a war correspondent, spent a day at Ratcliff, and accompanied Marie Hilton into some of the worst habitations. An account of the day's visit appeared in the Daily News ; but I have not been able to fix the exact date. Mr. Forbes was struck with the fearful overcrowd-
14o	MARIE HILTON
ing of the people, and the way the houses were crammed into a limited space ; the fronts of some of the houses he entered were only the length of his walking-stick away from the great brick arches of the Great Eastern Railway.
For an extended period Marie Hilton paid daily visits to the most noisome hovels, distributing relief, and comforting the sick and dying. At one house where she went to see a dying man, she mistook the room, and entered another apartment, where a number of men of forbidding appearance were lying upon mattresses. She saw her mistake at once, and hurried out. Afterwards she heard that these men were a gang of notorious housebreakers and robbers, who were shortly after apprehended and consigned to penal servitude. The relieving officer assured her that she had been in the greatest danger. In that house, he said, every crime including murder had been committed. In addition to the relief administered by sewing-classes and soup-kitchens, a large number of coupons were given away ; these entitled the holder to receive a specified quantity of bread, grocery or coals. This was no doubt an excellent mode of relieving distress, being free from the abuses which so often attend the dis-
VISITING-THE DRINK CURSE	'4'
tribution of money the tickets could not be turned into drink. But even these harmless looking relief tickets could be put to uses never intended or indeed dreamed of by the donors. Marie Hilton chanced to be in a grocer's shop in Brook Street one day, when a woman of rather repellent appearance came in with a sheaf of tickets, and wanted the face value of the lot in shag tobacco. This was abusing charity to some purpose. Marie Hilton told the grocer to refuse all such applications in future, and despite the angry remonstrances and threats of the woman, she took charge of the tickets, and sent them back to the charitable agency whence they came.
Other missions besides the one controlled by the Society of Friends were soon in active operation in Ratcliff and the adjoining parishes, mitigating the rigours of cold and hunger, and preaching the Gospel to the heathen. In a few years, too, the congestion had materially decreased by the action of natural laws, and the acute stage of physical distress passed away. But the neighbourhood still remains in a chronic state of want, viciousness, and brutality. Many of the worst houses have been pulled down, and in their place vast model dwelling-houses have been erected,.
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with but disappointing results. There is, however, this much to be said, if epidemics are more frequent than formerly through the association of children in these huge blocks of buildings, there is an improvement in the sanitary arrangements and the water supply ; cleanliness and decency are at least made easier.
At the present time, when the licensed trade in intoxicating liquor is upon its trial, and when inquiries are being made on every hand as to the influence the public-house has upon the morals of the people, Marie Hilton's testimony upon the subject may be not without value. It may be urged that her testimony is discounted by the fact of her being a teetotaler ; but her experience of thirty years among the poor tended to strengthen her teetotalism. She joined the temperance movement in the year 1848, and remained throughout her life a loyal and consistent supporter of the principle of total abstinence. In company with Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucas, she took part in a great Temperance Conference at Newcastle in 1878, and in the evening addressed a public meeting presided over by the Sheriff of Newcastle. In the course of her speech, the following passage occurred :
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" I ask you men of the North if you have ever reflected on the splendid material that is being wasted by the drink. For years I have spent part of almost every day among the people. I have gone down to give them all I had of love and sympathy. I have gathered and sheltered their babes ; but many a time I have sat at their feet in their sorrow, humbled at the magnitude of their endurance and the might of their love ; while the drink, like some foul monster, has snatched from my grasp the young men and maidens who have gone over into the great eternity."
The terrible evils she saw caused directly by the use of alcohol would have made her a strong advocate of total abstinence whatever her previous practice had been. She taught by example as well as by precept ; she never recommended even the poorest to do anything she was not prepared to do herself. Her friends would sometimes say, teetotalism may be necessary for the poor, but people in our position are not called upon to deprive ourselves. But Marie Hilton argued, if alcohol is a good thing, a real comforter and stay, how much more do these people stand in need of it than I ? She was convinced, however, that
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alcohol was a superfluity and an evil. She saw desolation, poverty, and the most horrible crimes of violence, for which strong drink was directly responsible, and she was compelled by the irresistible logic of facts to preach total abstinence with all the strength of which she was capable.
It will be admitted that the drink question is the most complicated and difficult problem with which modern statesmanship has to deal. The theories upon the subject, few of them deduced from actual experience of the people's habits, are legion. On few questions of the day are the opinions of men more divergent ; the differences are fundamental. The average teetotaler says alcohol is essentially bad, its influence is malign ; it causes the greater part of the crime, poverty, and disease of the country ; and in this view, which I am not concerned to advocate here, he is supported by the most eminent judges, and by physicians of the standing of Sir Andrew Clark and Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson ; therefore, says the teetotaler, I will not touch it, and I will discountenance its use generally. Even admitting that alcohol may be beneficial in certain cases, the risk of using it, and the manifold evils admittedly flowing from it, infinitely outweigh its
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advantages. Teetotalers of this way of thinking are in a small minority. The immensely preponderating custom of all classes in this country, from the peer to the peasant, is in direct opposition to their principles. Britain, by her practice, says alcohol is good ; the evil of drunkenness comes from the abuse of a good article. Certain breezy optimists declare that there is little drunkenness in our country ; that we lead the way in the matter of sobriety. Sir Walter Besant shows by statistics that we are the soberest people in the world. Other theorists maintain that drunkenness is not attributable to alcohol, but to a sympathetic tendency towards insanity in the consumer ; that drink is not the cause of insanity, but that only the semi-insane take to drink. While others again assert that alcohol is harmless in itself, the place where it is consumed being responsible for the mischief. In furtherance of this last theory, a clergyman of the Church of England has recently set up a drinking-bar in a club he has opened for the working classes in the West End of London. To abolish drunkenness, say these visionaries, you must change the character of the public-houses ; you must make them artistic, or introduce the Con-
ic
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tinental cafe system. In this state of confusion in which the subject is involved any practical scheme of improvement seems hopeless at present. Through the operation of the present system of licensing sanctioned by the Legislature, public-houses are set up without the least regard to the wishes or requirements of the people ; indeed, they are often set up in direct opposition to the strongly expressed wishes of the people, and there is no possibility of redress. The innate conservatism of Britons resents any interference with the licensing system. The fondest and holiest sentiments of our nature appear to cling around that ancient tree. The boldest statesmen drop the axe in terror when they realise the full extent of the love and reverence the people feel for the public-house. The divine right of magistrates is an article of faith with millions of our countrymen. " Touch the Commons, and down comes the nation," said Mr. Spenlow to David Copperfield. Our rulers are all Spenlows in this respect. But time is moving on ; the present anomalous system will have to be dealt with sooner or later. The people are now trusted with so much, that it is strange they are not allowed to have a voice in a matter which concerns them so nearly as the liquor traffic.
VISITING-THE DRINK CURSE	i47
Marie Hilton would not have maintained that the elimination of the drink from Ratcliff would have transformed the place immediately into a kind of Arcadia, but it would have unquestionably made it a far more habitable spot, and poverty and crime would have been decreased to an enormous extent. Charles Dickens, with many other social reformers, held that teetotalers were going the wrong way to work ; that if the people's lives could be brightened, and their homes made more attractive, they would not go to the public-house. The millennium that Dickens pictured is still afar off. We have to deal with the world as we find it. If we are to wait until every workman has a nice comfortable home fitted with every modern improvement, sobriety will not come in our time. The money which the working classes spend in drink would, if properly applied, render their homes comfortable. They spend enormous sums on alcoholic indulgence. An artisan or a labourer will often spend half or two-thirds of his income on drink. Imagine what this would mean to a man occupying a higher social position. Imagine a man whose income was £600 a year, expending £300 or £450 a year on wines and spirits ! The very small sum per head per day which statisticians show the British people spend
148	MARIE HILTON
on drink applies to the millions of men whose earnings are counted by shillings, as well as those whose incomes are reckoned by pounds. But statistics are simply balls for the skilful juggler to play with. In the poorest parts of London the most splendid gin-palaces are erected, and their proprietors amass fortunes. Marie Hilton contended that these places made the people poor, kept them poor, and helped them along the road to the treadmill and the gallows. She lived without alcohol herself while doing the hardest work imaginable, and she preached total abstinence as the only means of salvation in a place full of temptations. But is the public-house a temptation ? Many superior persons declare that it is not. We are supposed to have outgrown our old friend, How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done." We are assured that the more public-houses there are, the less drunkenness there will be ; that people who want to get drunk will get drunk whether there be any public-houses in their way or not. Let us take, for instance, the case of a man who earns less than a pound a week as a labourer. He finishes his work at six o'clock, and ought of course to go straight home. What is his home ? A small
VISITING-THE DRINK CURSE	149
room up a long flight of stairs ; a line is stretched across the room on which some rags are drying ; a few coals are smoking in the grate ; a tallow candle thrust into a ginger-beer bottle flickers on the mantelpiece ; a gaunt, hollow-eyed woman sits rocking herself to and fro, with a baby in her arms ; three or four dirty, unkempt children are playing noisily about the room. Outside the night is cold, the streets are black with sooty slush, the sleet is falling. The public-house shines out in the darkness with splendid brightness, inviting the tired labourer in, with light, warmth, friends and drink. Can you wonder that he goes in, and that one glass leads to another ? It is the publican's business to get hold of such as he. Late in the evening he becomes quarrelsome, whereupon the bully of the house has him out with a celerity only acquired by long practice. He reels home ; his wife, poor wretch, remonstrates ; she is silenced with a blow of his cast-iron fist and subsides into tears. The man falls into a swinish sleep. The children are fortunate if they are not booted round the room or thrust out in the cold. Is this an exaggerated picture ? Would that it were ; such things are happening around you on every side. The money this
Iso	MARIE HILTON
ignorant boor spends at the public-house would lift his family from misery to comparative comfort.
But teetotalism is absurd and illogical. A teetotaler is a fanatic, a moral invalid ; you should teach people to be strong. Cant, my dear sir, the very worst form of cant, of which you would do well to clear your mind at once. Dr. Johnson, who was no moral invalid, once said : " I can abstain, sir, but I cannot be moderate." The people themselves would laugh at the man who said : " Go to the public-house by all means, my good fellow, but be sure you stop at the second or the third glass." Those who utter these pestilent absurdities can know nothing of the people. That men doing the roughest kind of work can be healthier without alcohol than with it is proved beyond the possibility of doubt by the returns of the teetotal sick benefit clubs, such as the Sons of the Phoenix. They are better citizens, cleaner livers, and more prosperous in every way than their brothers who frequent the public-house. Marie Hilton found many families sunk in the direst poverty who owed their downfall entirely to drink When the husband had been induced to become a teetotaler, he was able
VISITING—THE DRINK CURSE	isi
in a short time to restore his family to their proper station in society.
Take the following as a typical case. Marie Hilton, in the course of a round of visits, entered a room occupied by a man and his wife and several children. They were literally starving. The room was bare, every article having been sold or pawned for drink. The man was in such a condition that he could not face the visitor, but sat against the wall, with an old ragged dress of his wife's thrown over him. A wretched home had not driven this man to drink ; he had had a comfortable home, and had drunk it up. He was a fine, tall, soldierly-looking man, and had served right through the Indian Mutiny, and with distinction. Marie Hilton did not say to this man, " My friend, don't be a moral invalid. Drink is a thing put in your way by Providence for you to overcome. Keep on drinking ardent spirits, but do try and take less. Whatever you do, don't become such a poor, spiritless creature as a teetotaler. Teetotalism is illogical, absurd, immoral, unscriptural, and, what is more, it is ungenteel. Villadom would snigger at the bare idea of any one going without wine. Wine drinking is a fashion sanctioned by the aristocracy,
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so it must be right." No ; she said : " Become a teetotaler at once ; make no terms with the enemy ; tamper not with the evil thing." This man did become a teetotaler. In a short time he was able to take a house in a respectable neighbourhood, where he attended a place of worship, and gave his children a proper education. He had been a commercial traveller, and very soon obtained good work at his old calling. But for teetotalism this man would soon have filled a pauper's grave, and his wife and children would have come upon the parish. To talk of moderation to a man of this sort would be the Sze plus ultra of folly. He was not insane or semi-insane, unless the literary faculty be considered a sign of insanity, for he contributed to one of the monthly magazines, and was paid for his work. It is with the purpose of rescuing men of this sort from moral and physical ruin that temperance societies are formed. Teetotalers have been doing this work—saving the revenues of the country—for nearly fifty years, with the reward of unmeasured abuse. Even now, when the movement has attained colossal proportions, every shallow little trifler of the press, with just enough brains to string two sentences together, thinks himself
VISITING-THE DRINK CURSE	153
entitled to make his miserable jests at the expense of teetotalers, holding them up to public scorn as something mean, base and despicable.
Another case was that of a man with a wife and a large family. He was able to earn very good wages, but drank hard, and in that he was kept in countenance by his wife. They lived in one room in a state of misery and filth. Marie Hilton induced these people to become teetotalers. In a few weeks there was a wonderful change in their condition. They moved into better apartments, which they soon furnished comfortably. The children were well clad and sufficiently fed. They seemed to be in a fair way to become worthy and respectable citizens. Another child was born to them, and was treated with a care and tenderness none of its unfortunate brothers and sisters had known. One day Marie Hilton entered their abode, hoping to find things as usual. What a horrid change had been wrought in a few hours ! The man was seated before the empty grate in a state of beastly intoxication ; around him were the smashed fragments of the newly purchased furniture and crockery. The children were dirty, hungry and crying. The man was too drunk to give any explanation ; he sat there
154	MARIE HILTON
emitting incoherent noises and blasphemous ejaculations. The following day Marie Hilton found out the cause of the trouble. It appeared that the wife's mother had come to accompany her daughter when she took the baby out for the first time, and had persuaded her to enter a public-house and take some gin. The consequence was that the old appetite was roused, and she returned home drunk. The husband, seeing her condition, lost heart, and went and got drunk too.
The mother-in-law resided in a superior neighbourhood to that of Ratcliff; perhaps she had a genteel prejudice against teetotalism. Though unceasing efforts were made to win these people back, they were never reclaimed, but sank deeper and deeper into the slough of penury and shame. At another house Marie Hilton called at, she was in time to interrupt a scene of violence. The man and his wife were intoxicated. The woman had a deep cut on her face which was bleeding freely. Her husband, a ship's carpenter, had knocked her down, cutting her face on the fender. She talked seriously to the people, and pointed out to the man how narrowly he had escaped committing a murder. The following day they
VISITING-THE DRINK CURSE	155
both became teetotalers. The woman was Irish, and a rigid Catholic ; the man was English and a Protestant. They kept away from the drink, and the woman joined the sewing-class and the mothers' meeting. She regularly attended the Catholic Chapel, and joined in the rites of the Catholic Church, while her husband attended the meeting-house. On one occasion she saw Cardinal Manning, then Archbishop, and asked him why the Catholic ladies did not come down and help the people as the Quakers did. She said, " I am a better woman, a better Christian, and a better Catholic through knowing Mrs. Hilton." Instead of being a drunken, riotous, swearing woman, she was now a devout Catholic. The man, who could earn good wages, was well-behaved and respectable, and they had no need of charitable assistance. Drink was the sole cause of their poverty and violence. This woman, like so many of her class, held that every person should be true to the faith in which they had been brought up. She was a stickler for consistency. In her opinion a Roman Catholic should be a good Catholic, and a Protestant should be an earnest Protestant ; she therefore urged her husband to attend the Friends' Meeting regularly. One Monday morning she
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met my father and said : " Oh, Mr. Hilton, dear, I wish you could get my man to go to your meeting-house oftener."
" Well, he was there last night," he replied.
" Yes, he was, sure enough," she said, " but, God forgive me," she added, with a touch of the national humour, " I had to swear at him to make him go."
The path of those who would rise above their surroundings, above their own evil habits, is beset with difficulties and temptations ; at every street corner are the swing-doors, so hard to pass by, of beershop or gin-palace. These places are eating into the heart of industry, making poverty worse, and firing every criminal instinct. I have instanced but three cases out of the many I have heard my mother describe. Scores of families were rescued from the pit of shame into which they had fallen, and moved away to more reputable parts of the town where their history was unknown. It was Marie Hilton's belief, founded on an experience surpassed by few of her contemporaries for depth and width, that drink was the greatest obstacle in the way of both spiritual and material improvement ; indeed, she could have come to no other conclusion.
CHAPTER XI
THE DRINK CURSE—(continued)
IN his preface to Marie Hilton's brochure, " Woman's Responsibilities in Relation to Tem. perance," which she read at a drawing-room meeting held in the Egyptian Hall at the Mansion House on January 31, 1878, Canon Basil Wilberforce writes :
" It is but natural that one who has laboured so devotedly in the Christian work of sheltering the deserted lambs of the poorest quarter of the great metropolis in the fold of the Creche, her infant infirmary and her infant home, should turn her attention to the desolating vice which is eating into the nation's heart, demoralising the women, and by natural consequence causing the degradation and death of the children. The same spirit which constrained Mrs. Hilton to shelter and ,succour the helpless children of the very poor, whom she saw, to use her own words, fade and go out, like lamps untimely quenched,' has now
158	MARIE HILTON
animated her in her endeavour to kindle the enthusiasm of those who from want of thought are able to witness the misery, pauperism and death which accompany the use of intoxicating drink, without altering a single social habit of their lives.
" There is a pathos and a tone of reality pervading this narrative of personal experiences which cannot fail to arouse the interest of every reader, and must surely avail to stir up in the hearts of the wives and mothers and sisters of England a sense of their responsibility with regard to the master-sin which is sucking the life-blood from suffering multitudes."
" I particularly address myself to you who are mothers," Marie Hilton wrote, " and ask you to abstain for the sake of the precious children. I come from a house of cradles, where the children in their mute helplessness appeal to you for help and succour. Do you ask are they all the children of drunkards ? I answer no, but there is scarcely a little life that has not been shadowed by this cause.
" Have you ever noticed the appalling number of widows in the poverty-stricken districts of our great city ? Where are the bread-winners ? Oh, how many of them are cut off, directly or indirectly, by this cause ! Men working at machinery, in docks, &c., although not intoxicated, take suffi-
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cient to disturb the balance of the mind, and die from preventable causes. Others inherit that fearful curse, a drunkard's appetite, and fall an easy prey to habits of intemperance, re-echoing the sad wail of Jeremiah the prophet, Our fathers have sinned and are not, and we bear their iniquities.' But you may be ready to say, what has such an audience to do with this class of people ? I answer that every one who uses stimulants is in a measure responsible for this state of things. All know how powerful is the force of example, and how anxious all below us in the social scale are to imitate the manners and customs of those above them. Every fashion adopted by the ladies of the upper classes will at no distant day be copied by those farthest removed from them. Yes, my sisters, the garments now worn by you, giving grace and dignity to your appearance, will be repeated in some flimsy material, and trailed along Ratcliff Highway. All this is comparatively harmless, but does it not show your great responsibility in this matter ? Would any of you braid your hair in a fashion which, though it added grace to your appearance, making you more attractive in the eyes of those who love you, if you knew that when it was copied by your sisters it would bring
16o	MARIE HILTON
pain and anguish, nay, even madness and death ? Would you drape yourselves in a garment that, when its fashion reached down to them, would wrap them in leprosy and loathing, causing them to forsake every duty and rush into the presence of God impenitent ? No, you would exclaim,
Lord, save us from this sin ; ' and yet the people for whom I plead are largely influenced by every act of yours. They argue thus : if ladies, who do nothing (as they term it), require wine, how much more do I require beer to enable me to do my hard work ? If ladies, who have everything they require, cannot bring up their children without wine, porter, &c., how can I, who scarcely ever get any regular meals ?
" It is not my province, in this paper, to tell you how easy it would be for you to do without these drinks with benefit to yourselves ; but I ask you to think on this subject, and, with God's help, to resolve that you will no longer share this awful responsibility.
" I will now give you some account of my experience among the poor of East London. It is over thirteen years since I first went into the neighbourhood of Ratcliff, and from then till now I have spent the greater portion of my time in the
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midst of this densely populated district. During these years I have had a terrible experience of the effects of drink on the working classes. Oh, the grand and noble women, the brave boys and bright girls, that have been snatched away from us, some who were just beginning to appreciate God's love, others with closed eyes and deaf ears, whose souls had never been illumined by its divine radiance ! And as they passed from my sight I rejoiced that I had not made their path more slippery by my example. When I went among them, it was with the desire to benefit them morally and spiritually, and I record with deep thankfulness that I believe God has owned and blessed the effort ; but I have often sat at the feet of the sons and daughters of toil, and learned lessons of faith and patient endurance. In many cases the hand-to-hand battle with difficulties is as the cutting and polishing to the precious stone, or as the refiner's fire to gold. When will the nation awake to the fact that in all these neighbourhoods some of her costliest material is being wasted day by day ? Men and women with grand possibilities are being swept away because our laws do not protect the weak by lessening the temptation to do evil.
L
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" A great statesman has said that one of the chief functions of a Government should be to make it ' easy to do right, and difficult to do wrong.' Is not the glory of a nation the virtue and intelligence of its people ? May the day soon dawn when our revenue shall be derived from a purer source than the degradation of the people ! Do you deem this language strong ? Recollect that I come fresh from witnessing the anguish caused by this vice.
" It is very much the custom of the present day to say, ' Oh, don't tell us any more horrors ; we have had enough.' But is there not a danger of forgetting that while other scourges have their seasons, in this there is no pause ? The altars of this Moloch are never without sacrifices, and the cry of its victims ascends day and night.
" I shall now speak of the Creche which I had the honour of founding, and which was opened in February 1871 ; and of this I can say it has been an oasis in the desert. It has soothed the hearts of widows and brightened the lives of hundreds, nay, thousands of children ; but here again drink has shed its deadly influence. Doubtless the care and cleanliness, combined with good and proper food, have saved numerous lives, but there are many
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things with which we are powerless to grapple. Children of drunken and vicious parents usually fall victims to the first disease that attacks them, and many mothers live lives of fear, and are starved and ill-used by their husbands, which treatment, of course, falls with terrible effect upon the children.
" Before closing this paper I will give two cases as indications of what drink is doing. I select them as being 'among the least objectionable of the many I have met with. The first is that of a woman whom I had known for several years ; she worked for her family most industriously. Her husband was frequently either in prison or hospital. When in the former she used to say, My husband is in a little trouble ; he got mistook for somebody else.' She was always cheerful, never complaining of ill-usage, although frequently bearing the marks of her husband's brutality. On her return from the hop-fields last summer she was so ill that she had to be taken to a hospital. On the day she died her husband tried several times to strike her because she refused to give him the last of her earnings, amounting to 7s. 6d., which she had reserved to buy black for her little girls. An hour before she died she asked for me, and being told
164	MARIE HILTON
it was midnight, she said, Tell dear Mrs. Hilton I die a poor sinner, trusting in the Lord. I know she will take care of my little girls.' On one of the women speaking of her husband's brutality, she exclaimed, It was all the drink. Lord take me to rest.' And thus this bruised and stricken spirit went out into the great eternity.
" The second case is that of a youth whose grandmother was one of my sewing-class women. John or Johnnie, as his grandmother called him, was eighteen years of age, and the very brightness of her life. He was an orphan, and had lived with her from his earliest childhood. He was sober and industrious, and much valued by his employers. One Saturday evening he left home to pay his club money. Unfortunately he met an uncle who persuaded him to have something to drink. While in the public-house he was holding his purse in his hand, when a woman wrenched it from him. In a moment the youth had stabbed her, and she lay dead at his feet. It would be impossible to describe the anguish of that dear old woman. At first she refused to believe the dread-
ful tale.	Why,' she said, Johnnie has been so kind to dumb creatures all his life, he wouldn't hurt a hair of any one's head.' On account of his
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previous good character, and the circumstances surrounding the case, his sentence was only four years' penal servitude. He was filled with horror at the crime he had committed ; in three months death released him, the prison officials bearing evidence to his deep repentance and his trust in the merits of his Redeemer. No one who had seen that dear old grandmother, her face glowing with joy when recounting the care and thoughtfulness of Johnnie, would have recognised her in the poor trembling, stricken woman who crept about the streets. After several ineffectual attempts to maintain herself she went into the Union. A few days before her death she called upon me at the Creche. When she saw me she exclaimed : I'm very ill, my heart's broke ; I shall never see you again ; God is going to take me to Johnnie.' When I looked at her woe-stricken face, and thought of the brave bright boy who might have been her stay and support, I resolved afresh that I would entreat all to work mightily to remove this temptation to do evil.
" Some may say that this was an act of passion, and not the effect of drink, as he was not intoxicated, but he had taken sufficient to
	destroy the power of self-control.	Had he
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been an abstainer, three lives might have been saved.
" I have given you the barest facts of these cases : your own minds will suggest many sad details.
" And now, what is our hope for the future ? Is it not in the women, in the wives, the mothers and sisters of our great nation ? Let mothers teach their children that drink is dangerous to all, that it is especially a snare to the weak, and that it is the duty of every Christian, and of every philanthropist, to face the question whether it is not right for them to offer the strongest possible protest, viz., that of personal total abstinence. Who can realise the grandeur and glory that would circle this country were the drink curse removed ! I t would be even as the garden of the Lord. Life's roses, which now lie scorched and withered, would blossom afresh, shedding fragrance and beauty where desolation now reigns; and the cry from bruised and bleeding hearts would be changed into anthems of praise ; and the voices of the children, oh ! my sisters, would ring out in glad hosannahs, and the angels' song would re-echo, Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace and goodwill to men.' "
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The following passages are from another of Marie Hilton's pamphlets, " Our Homes in Danger," which she read at a conference, convened by the British Women's Temperance Association, in the Council Chamber at Oxford :
" God has entrusted to the hands of women the grandest work on earth, namely, the moulding of the world's future. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that, on a question involving the highest interests of our common humanity, they should think rightly ; and my confidence in the womanhood and motherhood of England is such, that when they feel that in their hands lies the redemption of this country from the drink curse, and that to them is committed the work of breaking the fetters and letting the oppressed go free, they will rise in all their dignity and purity, and cleanse their homes from this abomination.
" To every thoughtful person the danger must be apparent, for there is scarcely a house in which there is not one dead, and as they disappear into the darkness their ranks are filled up, and behind and yet behind a mighty host are coming on to their doom. Can nothing be done to stop the onward march of this terrible array ? for at every step recruits are joining them ; not only brave
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youths, but delicate and fair maidens ; young wives with the holy signet of motherhood on their brows, and grey-haired men and women, while helpless infants are crushed beneath its tread. Every one of the slain has brought desolation to some hearthstone. The land is filled with mothers weeping for their children, refusing to be comforted because they are not ; and of fathers, who are crying, ' My son, my son, would to God I had died for thee ! '
" This year is nearly at its close, and the roll of those who shall fall in the battle is almost complete ; but next year another army will be marching, and its recruits will be gathered from the homes of this country ; some will come from households of culture and refinement, others from haunts of vice. They come, indeed, from all classes of society ; and mothers, who would gladly give their lives to save their dear ones from suffering, are day by day preparing the sacrifice that will be offered on the altar of this mighty destroyer. Do you say that your sons are brave and noble, that your daughters are pure and fair ? The graves of thousands of such are about us. Is your home an earthly paradise ? The wrecks of many such are round us too. Do you plead :
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We are members of churches, preachers of the Gospel ! Yet from the pew and the pulpit hundreds are now filling dishonoured graves. If, in the face of so much danger, any woman can feel her home is secure, still, for the sake of those who stumble on life's pathway, make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way.
" Some will ask : Is the danger so near ; is it imminent ? Look around you. Are not the foundations of society being sapped by indulgence, and a vast proportion of our infant population, which should be the pride and glory of our country, swept away because they cannot survive the cruel conditions by which they are surrounded ? Are not wives widowed and children orphaned because of this foe in our midst ?
" Many thoughtful persons assert that intemperance among women is on the increase, and I greatly fear this is the case, as during the past year I have had more applications for assistance from men with intemperate wives than at any other time—men living in the fear of God, who have wept and prayed and suffered, and from whose homes joy and hope had fled. It is hard to realise that women holding the tender relation-
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ships of wives and mothers can so desolate their homes, trampling life's fairest blooms in the dust ; but this terrible vice blots out all that is bright and beautiful. I will give two cases in point : the first the wife of a man employed in a City firm, who stated that when he married her she was a Sunday-school teacher and a member of a church, that for some years she lived the life of a consistent Christian, and they were happy and prosperous ; but during an illness she was recommended to take stimulants, and she went gradually down from bad to worse, till she became a confirmed drunkard, lost to home and friends, mingling with the vilest, frequently watching for her dear children and stripping them of their clothing to sell for drink. I asked him if he had tried abstinence, and whether he had been patient with her. He replied, ' God knows I have tried everything , ' but he added with a burst of anguish, ' she inherits the fearful curse. Her mother was a drunkard ; but she was so sweet and gentle, and appeared so unlikely to fall into the same vice, that, although an abstainer myself, I never dreamed of danger. But my great fear now is for the future of my dear children, and I want you to take them into your home, where
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they will be trained in the principles of total abstinence. I will pay more than the cost of their maintenance.' My home being full, I was not able to help in this case. The next is of a man in a different position, but most pathetic in its details. This case was of a poor man employed on the railway, who bore an excellent character. The company removed him from one part of London to another, hoping that a change of locality would give the poor woman another chance, but all was of no avail. When stating his case the man took about fifty pawn-tickets out of his pocket, and it was very sorrowful to hear him enumerate the various articles—the pictures that he had framed himself, and the clock he brought home to surprise ' the missus,' besides the children's clothing. He said, ' You are my last hope ; there is nothing left but to fling myself over the bridge.' After some serious conversation I agreed to take Matilda, aged three years, and Mattie, aged one year, the father paying two shillings per week till he had redeemed some of his goods. When the mother lost sight of her children, all her motherly and womanly feelings aroused themselves, and for the last two weeks she has been making superhuman efforts to build
172	MARIE HILTON
up and restore the home she has desolated ; and the long-suffering husband said, Well, I shall watch her carefully, and although she has sold me up seven times, if she means fair and square, I don't say as I won't forgive her, for there ain't one of us as haven't given the Lord a deal of trouble at times, and yet He never turns his back upon us.'
" I could not attempt to give all the terrible details of these wrecked homes, and it is not needed, for the evil is so widespread that they are but a type of others which can be found in all parts of this our Christian country. Let every woman arouse herself to face the threatened danger.
" There are bands of devoted women in almost every town in the kingdom who are labouring for this cause, but our work is scarcely yet commenced. We must be united in heart and purpose, and so harmoniously organised that we may be able to speak as with one voice when God or humanity calls for our utterance. Should a day of prayer be set apart and the women of every city, town and village unite in calling on our Lord to save and rescue those who are being destroyed by this deadly sin, who can doubt that He would
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send blessing and healing into the hearts of the stricken ones ? May we not hope that ere long our country will be circled by this army of the Lord ? Let us then consecrate ourselves afresh to this service, and appeal to all those who are not yet with us, to come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty,' for the great Master is at our side. He says, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.' Keep no longer to the shallows ; that is unbelieving work,
fearing to undertake great things.	Into the
deep,' He says. With the Master's blessing, success is ours, for it is promised, and the promise is wrapped in the command."
Many other passages from Marie Hilton's writings might be quoted ; but I have already dwelt too long upon the subject of drunkenness. The reader will have gathered from the foregoing chapters that Marie Hilton was an ardent advocate of total abstinence, and I am sure it will be admitted that her advocacy was justified. Teetotalers are still looked upon by many of the cultured classes as fanatical people, holding fantastically extreme views ; but few could have gone through Marie Hilton's experiences, and seen, as she did, the ravages caused by drink,
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without being forced to consider whether some measure of responsibility did not rest with every citizen who remained supine in the presence of such a gigantic evil.
Marie Hilton enjoyed the friendship of many leaders of the temperance movement on both sides of the Atlantic. She was closely associated with Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucas in the early days of the British Women's Temperance Association ; and with that distinguished and venerable lady known in the United States by the name of Mother Stewart a close and sympathetic intimacy existed. Mother Stewart was the leader of the Women's Whisky War in the State of Ohio in 1873, which achieved such momentous results. She came to this country in 1876, and founded the British Women's Temperance Association, and delivered addresses in many of our large towns. She paid us an extended visit in that year, and the friendship formed then remained unbroken to the end. In the year 1895, Mother Stewart, although her years numbered close upon fourscore, journeyed from her distant home in Springfield, Ohio, to attend the great convention of the World's Women's Christian Temperance Union, held at the Albert Hall.
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Fortunately she was able to spend some hours with us. The meeting between the two women was very cordial ; both had known much pain and sorrow since last their hands were clasped. After a few hours of loving converse they parted in silence on both sides. Each knew the cause of the other's tears—" they sorrowed most of all for this, that they should see each other's face no more.,, Mother Stewart was the elder by five years, but it was given to her to know the sorrow of hearing of her friend's death less than a year after she had returned to her Western home.
CHAPTER XII
FOUNDING THE CRÈCHE-THE INSTITUTION
DESCRIBED
ON February 22, 1871, the institution in Stepney Causeway, now so widely known as " Mrs. Hilton's Creche," was opened. The Creche system was entirely new to this country, and not unnaturally there was a little opposition at the outset. Some objected to the word Creche because it was not English. But the word was not so distinctively foreign as the critics supposed. In " Old Bibles," by J. R. Dore, the following particulars respecting the word are given :
" Whittingham's New Testament. In St. Luke, c. ii., v. 7, 12, and 16, both the 1557 and the 1560 have the word ' cretche ' , all other versions have ' manger.' This word ' cretche ' occurs in an old English poem on ' L'enfaunce ih'u crist.' (Bodleian MS. Laud, io8) :
FOUNDING THE CRECHE	177
" Zwane ih'u crist was i bore
To saue this worlde that was for lone,
In one Crachche he was leid,
Bi fore oxe and ass, soth it is said."
Others, speaking without knowledge of the necessities of the poor, urged that a mother should be the sole custodian of her own child, and never give it over to the care of strangers. They did not know that in starving East London the women had to work equally with the men to provide food for their children. But gradually the opposition declined ; the system grew in public favour until, after the lapse of a few years, Creches were established in most of our great towns, also in the cities of the United States and in the British colonies. There are at the present time many flourishing Creches existing in London founded on the model of the Stepney institution, whence every detail of management has been borrowed.
In Marie Hilton's direction of the Creche the idea of absolute religious equality was rigidly maintained ; no question was ever put to the mothers as to their religious beliefs. The good Samaritan did not ask the man who fell among thieves what sect he belonged to before staunching his wounds. So Marie Hilton insisted that
178	NIARIE HILTON
charity was for all suffering human creatures alike, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Upon this point she would suffer no discussion. Many people refused to subscribe to the institution unless baptism were made a condition of admission. Had this been done, many women who stood most in need of assistance would have been excluded from the benefits of the Creche. It was from the first conducted on the same principle as a hospital. Those well-meaning sectarians who proposed that no unbaptized child should be received, might have seen the impracticability and injustice of their suggestion after a moment's reflection. From an institution supported by people of all sects, the needy of all sects should be entitled to receive the benefit. Let the same restriction be applied to a hospital, and its absurdity becomes apparent at once. Imagine, for instance, a patient with a fractured limb being refused admittance because his religious views were held to be unsound by the management ! Many Jews generously contributed to the funds of the Creche, and the children of Hebrew parents were frequently received into the institution. True charity, like God's mercy, knows no sect.
FOUNDING THE CRÈCHE	179
It will not be necessary to defend Marie Hilton from the suspicion of want of religious enthusiasm. All the mothers were constantly visited, and many were induced to attend places of worship. Religious conviction was the essence of her mission to the poor. She was a consistent member of the Society of Friends and a regular attender at Ratcliff Meeting House, where many followed her from feelings of affection and respect ; but she looked upon all suffering humanity as her kinsfolk ; want and misery were the only claims upon her regard that she recognised.
Among the hundreds of visitors of all conditions who inspected the Creche soon after it was opened, were very few indeed who expressed anything but unqualified admiration at the arrangements. Some there were, however, who took exception to the graceful appearance of the cots. One lady, evidently a disciple of the Grad-grind school, after going through the rooms, said angrily to my mother : " In my opinion the cots are a great deal too pretty." My mother had, as far as was consistent with strict economy, exercised some taste in designing the cots, and was rather mortified at the remark. She rather
18o	MARIE HILTON
astonished the critic by assuring her politely that she could have procured ugly ones at the same cost.
The following account of how the Creche was founded, and of the difficulties encountered at the outset, is taken from a paper entitled " The Creche System,"which Marie Hilton wrote in 1893, when in failing health. It formed one of a series of Congress Papers on the Philanthropic Work of Women by Eminent Writers, edited and arranged by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, for the Royal British Commission, Chicago Exhibition :
" In the scenes of misery and want that I visited almost daily, the saddest feature of all was the neglected condition of the children. The mothers, though not deficient in maternal instinct, were yet lamentably ignorant of every detail appertaining to the proper care of infants. Cleanliness was unknown among them, and with regard to feeding, the children of the tenderest years generally shared the meal with their parents, even to the extent of beer and shell-fish. When, as often happened, the mother had an opportunity of obtaining work, she was unable to leave home, not having the means of providing for the safety of her children during her absence. But necessity often compelled
FOUNDING THE CRECHE	i81
her to go out to work ; it was the only alternative to starvation. Then in what jeopardy were the infants placed ! often left to the inefficient care of a child but a few years their senior, subject to every kind of accident, even to the hazard of the open street.
" I found widows, and women upon whom a greater trouble than widowhood had fallen—the curse of a drunken husband—utterly unable to earn a shilling for their families ; for how could they be nurse and bread-winner at the same time ? This question of the care of infants seemed to me the most important, and at the same time the most difficult problem which presented itself for solution at this time. I began to have some general ideas of a day nursery, where children could be cared for during their mothers' absence ; but it was only after much study and labour that I developed the Creche system as it is now seen in working order in Stepney Causeway.
" I turn to my first report (issued in 1872) for an account of how the first Creche in Britain was founded :
" ' In the summer of 187o I visited the Creche at Brussels, and until doing so I had not fully comprehended the scope of such an institution.
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I knew that infants were cared for in those Continental establishments, but here I found that there were from five hundred to six hundred children in the Creche, from one month to fourteen or fifteen years ; many having passed through from the cradle to the first class. Others, I found with satisfaction, had gone out into the world, and were filling honourable positions. I also understood the significance of the word Creche or manger, and that it was adopted by the originators in remembrance of the Babe of Bethlehem having lain in a manger ; and thus they were endeavouring by their loving care of the little ones to re-echo the blessed song of peace on earth and goodwill to men.
" 'Their charge for each child was seven centimes per diem, about two-thirds of a penny ; but their chief income was derived from subscriptions, balls, fetes, &c. These institutions are generally adopted by the cities or towns where they exist. In inspecting the infant department, I found that the cots were presented by individuals, as in children's hospitals, and on my return to England I sent out appeals for a Creche in Ratcliff, and speedily obtained promises of thirty cots. I then had to expend a considerable sum in fitting up and adapting premises. This part of my work had to be
FOUNDING THE CRECHE	183
done in faith, as I could not obtain funds for an idea. I was obliged to develop my plans, trusting that funds would come, and this to a large extent has been realised, and I feel certain that my balance-sheet would not show any deficiency, had not so many hearts and hands been engaged in aiding our suffering brethren and sisters on the Continent.* In some cases it might have been prudent to wait, but children were being sacrificed daily, and I had too much faith in the loving hearts of Christian mothers to doubt that ultimate success would crown this effort. I also hoped that others might be induced to give more attention to the awfully neglected state of the little ones in our great cities, and this hope has also been abundantly fulfilled. It was not till February 8, 1871, that the building was ready for inspection, for which purpose it was kept open for a week, and during that time we examined cases for the selection of children. This was, in many cases, a painful task, as it was thought best to take only the children of married women, and I am pleased to be able to record that we found no mother of a family who could not produce her marriage certificate. In some cases under very exceptional circumstances
* The victims of the Franco-Prussian War.
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we have, however, found it a Christian duty to depart from this rule ; in one instance at the earnest request of a clergyman in the locality. The applications which have reached us through the post to take charge of children of unmarried women have been very numerous. The Creche was opened on Monday, February 22, and it would be impossible to convey to any one the experience of the first week. We did not admit more than ten infants and fifteen young children ; but the state in which some of the children were brought was indescribable. Their condition, morally also, was indeed deplorable. One lovely little child of four years old tore his hair and flesh, bit and kicked every one who approached him, and finished by pouring forth such fearful oaths that we were obliged to send for his mother to remove him. Several dear friends came to assist in reducing our little ones to order, my dear daughter and I spending the whole of our time there. By the second week we had peace and bright joyous faces. The mothers seemed to realise that our thoughts towards them were thoughts of love, and although .he washing question was a difficulty, it was soon overcome, and they were quite proud of telling us how good the dear
FOUNDING THE CRECHE	185
children were at home. In one case, the mother told us that her fellow-lodgers, who were going to leave the house if the landlord retained her, thought that she must have changed her child, he went to bed without any trouble. This child was but two years old. To most of the children the Creche is the happiest place on earth. We often hear of the dear babies pointing to their clothes and holding out their hands for the money.
" We found in translating the report of the Brussels Creche that the same fears and objections to such an institution had been advanced as those we have occasionally met with : such as—the mother ought to take care of her own child ; and that the love that rightly belonged to the mother would be diverted. To the first objection we answer, that we never take a child whose mother is capable of taking care of it herself ; and to the second—as I found they did at Brussels—that the loving arms of the mother fully compensated for the change of circumstances. It must also be remembered that great care is taken to ascertain that on the mother devolves the chief task of providing for the family, and that she has no one to leave the children with during her absence. We have liberated many children to attend school
186	MARIE HILTON
who have been kept at home to nurse babies. I have recently received a visit from a vice-chairman of a School Board, who said that they found the nursing of the babies by the children one of their greatest difficulties, and that he had come over one hundred miles to London on purpose to inspect the Creche with a view to establishing one, under a committee, to assist the working of the School Board.
" The number of children on our books is one hundred, forty of whom are children of widows. The average attendance is sixty-five, except on Saturday, when the number is always considerably less.
" We commenced with a charge of one penny per day, but some friends have thought that this is not sufficient, while others are surprised that the mothers pay so much, and hope they may not be pressed for more. We have asked all fresh applicants for twopence, which many cheerfully pay ; but circumstances are continually arising, making the payment of even this small sum very difficult —such as illness or time lost in seeking for work —so that we can lay down no rule that can be strictly adhered to.
" Some have suggested that we should take
FOUNDING THE CRECHE	187
children at a higher rate—eightpence or one shilling per day ; but we have felt that this would be taking charge of children whose mothers ought to attend to their own, and we have in one or two instances refused applications. One hope I had in opening the Creche was, that by giving the children good nourishing food they would be saved from sickness and premature death ; but I had no idea of the extraordinary diet that these children are reared on. One woman, whose child was six months old, said, " If I don't come, you can feed her ; she can eat potatoes, meat and greens." Another, with a child of nine months, said, " My child was hungry, and he ate a fried mackerel." One fragile, delicate child of six months was said to be able to eat a quarter of a pound of fat bacon !
" ' Our task is often difficult, and our battle with ignorance and prejudice at times discouraging. Before opening, we heard of ladies who had established small nurseries, and women would not bring their children, and those who did would not allow their children to be washed. Had we commenced with a higher rate of payment we should not have succeeded. We had to gain the confidence of the women, and induce them to bring
188	MARIE HILTON
their children that we might benefit them. Many mothers, whose infants stood most in need of care, were quite indifferent whether they were dragged about the street or were placed in the Creche, and we were gratified that they could be induced to pay even one penny. Any one acquainted with these districts, and the low scale of wages paid to women, will better understand the difficulty, especially when more than one in a family are in the institution. One widow has three with us, and finds one shilling and sixpence as much as she can pay. Did we refuse such cases, the children would sometimes be locked in a room without food or fire till the mother came home. We had one dear child whose father and mother were intemperate, yet they said they could not pay one penny per day. We declined to take the child without payment, and felt, when delivering it to the tender mercies of its parents, as though we were offering it up for sacrifice. In a few weeks I visited a wretched court, and seeing the shutters closed at the miserable dwelling it called home, I entered, and saw baby in his coffin. I inquired the cause of its death, and this was the mother's account : " That boy," pointing to a child of seven, " let it fall down five stone steps, and then it crawled into
FOUNDING THE CRÈCHE	189
the gutter and ate some pea-shucks. I carried it to Ratcliff Cross Hospital, but they couldn't take it in. They sent two ladies, though, and they sat here nearly all day, and when they went they told me to go on doing as they had done : but Mrs. B. comes in, and she says, that child is bound to die, so don't you go on a-torturing of it no more, and so I didn't, and the pore child died."
" ' I again looked on baby, then at its father, who was not sober, and its mother, who, in her selfishness and ignorance, had cast away one of God's best gifts, and I could only feel that it was well with the child.' "
A case like the above places the philanthropist in a great difficulty. The father of a family may spend half, or two-thirds, sometimes all, his wages in drink, leaving his wife and children to shift for themselves. Marie Hilton found many cases where the man never gave his wife a penny , she had to work to keep herself and her children from starvation. A rigid political economist would doubtless say it is a crime to do anything to relieve such a man of his responsibilities. Charity bestowed here only means so much more in the
190	MARIE HILTON
publican's till. But there is the other side to be considered ; the man will continue to drink whether his family be in want or not. In our highly civilised Christian country there is no law against a man's spending all his earnings at the public-house. The right to do so is the palladium of our liberties ; it is a privilege which no statesman dare touch. So long as a man does not bring his wife and family upon the parish, whereby John Bull's pocket or conscience is affected, no law can compel him to work or contribute to their maintenance. And while the law remains as it is, Christian philanthropy cannot disregard the claims of the drunkard's family.
" One of the most pleasing results of our work for the dear children has been the improvement in the mothers. I had known many of them intimately in the mothers' meetings, sewing-classes, &c., but the mutual interest in the children brought us nearer than anything else could have done. There are some mothers in Ratcliff who have very little motherly or womanly feeling, and whose children we long to shelter, but they do not care sufficiently for their children to bring them. We can say of our mothers generally that
FOUNDING THE CRECHE	191
they do not lack love, but many are untrained and ignorant, though willing to take advice, and attempting to do their best for their darlings. I can say truly that the institution has developed a loving interest in each other's welfare. In cases of trial I have known many of the women show much love, devotedness and self-sacrifice. One case of great interest might be named. A poor mother was consumptive. The doctor had ordered her to wean her babe of two months. She was sitting in the room appropriated to nursing mothers, weeping over her infant, when a fine young German woman offered to nurse it when she came to nurse her own. For two months she performed this loving service in the most unobtrusive manner, and only discontinued it when ordered to do so, for it was feared that her own babe might suffer.
" Another incident was most touching. A precious babe died, and the mother, too poor to bury it at her own charges, sent for a parish coffin. The child was very dear to us, and we had named it Queenie. It was a sore trial to us to see the golden curls mingled with sawdust, which was all that was placed in the coffin ; and yet we could not spend public funds on the
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funeral. In a few hours a mother came to the Creche and said : ' Come and look at your Queenie now.' We went, and saw that loving hands had softened all the harsh outlines. A little bed and pillow had been provided, a frill placed round the edge, and some children had placed a few flowers on the darling's breast. The cost had been .9d., paid for by three mothers, and although so freely and lovingly given it was the price of more than a meal each. These things show us that the mothers of Ratcliff are worth cultivating ; that poverty, sorrow, crime, and all the terrible evils of such a locality have not had power to blot out God's image from the mothers' hearts. It is in these things that we gather hope and courage to persevere. in the terrible battle with vice, ignorance and crime. We have also found that our care and tenderness to the children have produced an increase of care and attention in the mothers. It has often been amusing to see the start of surprise when baby has been brought to them washed and dressed in the clothing provided. In one or two instances they were not recognised for the moment.
" The tender ages of our children preclude us from offering to our subscribers the same points
FOUNDING THE CRECHE	193
of interest that children of a more advanced age would present, although to ourselves they have
brought much heart-sunshine. Amid toil, disappointment and discouragement our nurseries have been to us oases in the desert. We started with the idea of making the Creche a happy home, where harsh words were never heard, and where the eyes of the children should rest on bright and beautiful things. It has been said that blessed is he that prepareth a pleasure for a child ; if so, then shall those who have given of their abundance to prepare and sustain this home be richly blessed. For more than three hundred days have sixty baby hearts been made glad. Visitors have frequently been surprised, when going through the institution, to find sixty or seventy children under five years, and to hear no sounds but joyous ones.
" Thus briefly, and, I fear, very imperfectly told, is the account of my first year's experience in managing the Ratcliff Creche. At first a good deal of prejudice had to be overcome. Some persons, with true insular narrowness, objected to the foreign-sounding name ; while others maintained that the system tended to weaken the maternal feeling, and viewed it with suspicion as
N
194	MARIE HILTON
a means by which poor mothers of the Continent got rid of their responsibilities, a means which British mothers would scorn to adopt. But we have had to learn in this, as in many other instances, that all wisdom does not dwell with us, and that in establishing Creches our Continental sisters had caught the inspiration of the divine words which fell from the lips of our Redeemer, so infinitely tender, when speaking of the little ones. And so they gathered the babes, and tended them with loving care for the sake of Him whose loving arms encircled the babes that were brought to Him by the Jewish mothers ; and they chose the name Creche, or manger, that they might be kept in continual remembrance of the Babe of Bethlehem."
The late Blanchard Jerrold visited the Creche in the first year of its existence, and wrote an account of his visit, which appeared in the School Board Chronicle. In that article he attacked the Rt. Hon. W. E. Forster with some warmth for not including a scheme of day-nurseries in his Education Bill.
" This woful condition of things " (wrote Mr. Jerrold)—" this utter neglect of the cradle, which
FOUNDING THE CRECHE	195
punishes us in the shape of a forced duty of providing for the youth and manhood of the poor—is, it seems, to be the rule still. Comic men dismiss the matter with the observation that the Government are not prepared to become baby-farmers on a great scale. And even serious writers and speakers applaud Mr. Forster's determination to have nothing whatever to do with
the earliest education of the human creature.	It
is satisfactory,' says a writer in the Examiner, that Mr. Forster has not consented to turn State-aided schools into baby-farms. No child is to be admitted under three years of age, and no grant is to be made on account of children under four.' Why is it satisfactory to think that no help will be given to such cradle-schools as.that which Mrs. Hilton is conducting in the midst of the squalor and vice of Ratcliff ?—to this priceless education which she is imparting by the help of Kindergarten toys, and pictures, and little games and songs, to the little imps who, but for her, would be swearing in the gutter and taking in loathsome thoughts and speech while they learned to walk ? What will Mr. Forster do with that fiend in the bud, whom the superintendent was compelled to turn out of her establishment because it lisped such awful words,' and, albeit, just short-coated, was so fearful an example to the rest ? He will give it eight square feet of school area when it is five years old ; and these will be lighted, drained
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and ventilated ; but what power will the schoolmaster have over its fallen nature ? The golden opportunity will have been lost. There will be seeds of evil rooted deep in the baby's soft heart, and these he will never reach.
" . . . That with the vast majority of us this valuable fundamental educational faculty of the human being should have been, not lost, but perverted to help the degradation of the man for so many years, while we have been writing and speaking about education, and philosophising over brandy-balls, and sustaining controversies about the proper thickness of the birch, is melancholy to think upon. Shall we do our utmost, now, to repair the errors of the past ? I have come, by a circuitous —necessarily circuitous—route, to this question, and to the entrance to the new Creche in Stepney Causeway. I want to let the reader know what is within, and how this new beginning of education for the poor at the cradle may blossom into far-spreading flowers, clear the Great Wild Streets of our towns, and so, in time to come, make the keys of the gaoler rust at his waist and the doors of the publican creak on their hinges.
" Among the Aphorisms and Opinions of Dr. George Horne, late Lord Bishop of Norwich,' is this : Cheerfulness is the daughter of employment, and I have known a man come home in high spirits from a funeral, merely because he had
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had the management of it.' I am in London's lowest centre. I have remarked often, how, in the saddest of places, and under the heaviest load of labour that, to the passing observer, looks dull and repugnant, the earnest heart remains unconquerably cheerful. To be charitable by fits and starts, and to give, through the pocket, to the applause of the world, are acts of self-gratification rather than of self-sacrifice. But mark the simple, painstaking, unregarded woman, who conducts the daily concerns of a refuge, a home, a sick-ward, or a nursery. She sets no high price on her daily round of duties among the poor, performed at the sacrifice of nearly every worldly pleasure. She is filled with the true Samaritan spirit, asks for no reward, shuns applause, and is for ever regretting how little the sum of good is which she is able to accomplish. I have seen such love of the poor in many places ; and where it exists I have always found a disposition to be tolerant of their lesser vices and foibles, and the strongest desire to get at the good in the man and woman who, to the outer thoughtless world, are a mass of evil passions and proclivities.
" The Silver Trumpet forms the right-hand corner, and the Royal Duke the left, of the Commercial Road end of Stepney Causeway. They are the grim sentinels upon whose tawdry paint and gilding the earnest folk, on their way to the
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plain, clean house with the nursery bell, look with dismay. These are the evil genii of the place, who suck the marrow from the bones of Labour, make she-devils of mothers and criminals of fathers. Glancing to the right and left, I see their handiwork. The slatternly women and unkempt children are in all directions. Lines stretch across the lane to the left, from house to house, propped from the gutter by a pole ; and upon the lines scraps of clothes are drying in the murky air. The whole neighbourhood is covered with the well-known indications of London poverty, and the most prominent of these are the many public-houses. Dirt is upon all, and laziness, begotten of drunkenness, is upon most. It is Wild Street over again, but on a large scale. Stretching along the banks of the river is one unbroken line of shiftless poverty and almost unchecked vice. The men skulk along the riverside for a precarious living, and the women work—chiefly that they may drink—for the bottle-makers and other local manufacturers. Coming to Stepney Causeway by the railroad from Fenchurch Street, the eye wanders over broad acres of tiles and forests of tall chimneys, all in a sooty haze, but picked out by church spires and the flaunting colours that hang out over the scores of public-houses. The glimpses of the teeming life in alleys, back gardens and rubbish-corners show the misery of the pale hosts who assemble under
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those flags—doomed battalions, who drag the children after them to destruction.
" There can be no mistake as to No. 16 being the Creche. The hubbub of the children is audible from the street. It is, for the neighbourhood, a light and roomy house, and is exquisitely clean. Formerly Stepney Causeway was as eminently genteel as it is now eminently noisy and the resort of the pauper, the rascal and the tatterdemalion. This Creche, in which some solid mahogany doors remain in testimony of its ancient splendour, was rented at a trifle under Z. 1 oo a year. On the ground-floor is a trim workroom, where Mrs. Eilton, the lady superintendent, and other helpful hands are preparing little flannel garments. The shouts of laughter and the romping feet overhead tell how the cradle is flourishing already , albeit, the difficulties have been many in a neighbourhood like Ratcliff. There is a cheerful atmosphere over the whole scene, from the babies' room, where the snowy, nautilus cots are ranged along the walls, to the soup-kitchen in the basement of the building. The humble Christian duties in progress of performance give this cheerfulness to the doers. They want stout hearts to beat their way through the terrors of the immense field of vice and suffering in which they have pitched their tent, in order to rescue at any rate a few of the babes and sucklings.
" The lower day nursery, in which the elder
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children—Tomkins, major, aged three or four years—are assembled, is a well-ventilated, spacious, and cheery room ; that is a reading- or temperance lecture-room in the evening, when the poor children have been carried home from the comfort, cleanliness and kindness of the day to the dirt and ill-treatment of the night. Against the walls, by an admirable mechanical contrivance, are benches, which are lifted throughout the day, discovering rows of tiny armchairs for the children ; and these chairs are so arranged as to meet all the requirements of children and to keep the atmosphere of the apartment entirely free from effluvium. Then there are swings ; the toys of the Kindergarten ; pictures to attract the wonder-seeking infant mind upon the walls; and, when we entered, a patient, hearty woman was the centre of a ring of happy children, to whom she was teaching some game which included a chorus.
" While I stood in the crowd of Liliputians in brown holland pinafores, and they came turning up their inquiring faces to me, now and then getting courage enough to clasp a finger or touch my coat, Mrs. Hilton directed my attention, with a true motherly joy, to different interesting members of her family of waifs. The condition in which these infants, now clean as the gentlest nurtured, first make their appearance is indescribable in all its details. Here were two charming girls, daughters of a poor woman ; there were the
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children of a most distressed mother who hawks plants through the streets and who used to drag them at her apron-strings. A little girl was playing apart, modestly and quietly. I am told : That is the child who said, when she first came and we gave her a doll, " I'll shake the very life out of you," in imitation of her own experiences.'
" Many were the offspring of drunken parents, and would return from this happy and wholesome scene to filthy dens, in the keeping of those mothers who were to be seen greasing the doorways of the Silver Trumpet or the Royal Duke. This, the lady superintendent sadly confessed, was the reflection that made her faint-hearted very often. But how could it be helped ? A little time since, two dear children in whom she had taken a special interest absented themselves for a couple of days. She was perplexed and alarmed. One of the visitors undertook to seek out their home and solve the mystery. He went into a frightfully neglected room, in the corner of which the two little things were crouched, with their arms round each other's necks. They hushed the visitor as he approached, and one of them whispered, 'Father's gunk ! '
"They were starving and in fear of violence, and the brute whom the law still allowed to have power over them was dead drunk. They were only trembling to think what their fate might be when he should wake out of his gin fumes.
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" More affecting even than the fate of these little ones, who had managed to entwine themselves so closely about their foster-mother's heart, was that of an infant who was carried to the Creche recently by its mother. This imp was wild as a lynx, and as savage. It mastered all the endeavours of the nurses to subdue it. It was barely four years of age, and yet its oaths and language were so foul that Mrs. Hilton was compelled to part it at once from the bulk of her infant community and lock it up alone in a room until its mother could be fetched to remove it. That wild animal of Rat-cliff will grow into—what ? But the sins of the fathers speak even upon the suckling lips of the babes. While we were reviewing the tiny occupants of the cots, the nurse hushed us at once, saying, Pray, don't let us wake him.' He was the terrible infant of the nursery, whose passion was unappeasable. Another who could just toddle had thoroughly exhausted itself in wild storms of passion, and had only yielded to the kind treatment after many days. The little fellow was lying in peace upon the mattress in the pound,' a square railed-off space in the centre of the play nursery for the sleepy. The pound would make a delightful picture, with the little children lying in confused groups upon it, asleep, in a perfect heaven of toys.
" They have had Irish stew to-day for dinner,' I was told, and you should have heard the cheers and laughter when they heard of the treat that
FOUNDING THE CRECHE	203
was in store for them. The other day, when we told two poor little, half-starved waifs that they would have rice pudding for their dinner, their joy was uncontrollable for hours.'
" On the staircase, in a strong current of air, the home-clothes of the children were hanging, to be resumed on their departure, the clean holland pinafores being left in the nursery. The children are thoroughly washed and are wholesomely fed. They have bread and milk for breakfast, puddings or stews for dinner, and their bread and milk tea. The mothers who are suckling their babes are permitted to come to them as often as they please in the course of the day. There is medical attendance constantly at hand. And for all this the charge is one penny a day !
" There are restrictions, of course. The first comer cannot ring at the nursery-bell and deposit her infant. Inquiries are made as to the whereabouts and means of the parents, and they are visited ; but the regulations are wisely framed in the main.
" The mother of this dear child,' the lady superintendent said -to me, touching a modest little girl, is an incorrigible drunkard, and so is the father. We have children of a family, the mother and eldest daughter of whom frequent together the most infamous night-den of Rat-cliff.'
" If the rules excluded the infants of such
204	MARIE HILTON
debased creatures as these, the holiest purpose of the true Creche would be obliterated from it."
" Let me note," writes Mr. Jerrold in the department of his paper in which he deals with Ratcliff Parents and Children, " the predicaments of a few of the children I found in the Ratcliff Creche or cradle-school, upon which Mr. Forster turns his back :
Margaret Neal, aged two years. The mother works in a bottle factory. The father deserted his wife three years ago, and it is believed that he has fled to the United States.
Hannah Lake, three years ; Isabella, her sister, four years. The mother of these children is a widow, a needlewoman. Her late husband was an engineer's labourer, and died of consumption, aged thirty-seven.
G. Gerdon, four years ; Matilda Gerdon, six weeks. The mother is a widow. Her husband was a gilder ; he died from sunstroke. The baby was born seven months after the father's death. The children live with their grandmother, who is now enabled to go out to work, but previous to the opening of the cradle-school was compelled to remain at home to take care of the infants.
Matilda Truman, four years ; William Truman, one year and nine months. The mother is a widow, a charwoman. The father was a
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dock labourer, and died suddenly, three months before the birth of little William.
Grace Alice Goodwin, and George Thomas Goodwin, twins, one year and six months. The mother works at a bottle warehouse. The husband is supposed to be lost at sea ; nothing has been heard of him for nine months.
Thomas Curley, eight months. The mother is the widow of a dock labourer. He died of fever. Mrs. Curley works at the bottle factory.
Ellen Bryant, five months. The mother is a rag-sorter, and the father a labourer in the docks.
Charles Emery, three years. The mother is a coat-maker, and the father a labourer.
Susannah and Ellen Brown, four and two years. The father is a hawker, and the mother is a street dealer in plants. These children are described as being filthy in body and most miserable, through the forlorn condition of their parents. Mrs. Hilton says, The only happy hours in their lives have probably been spent in the Creche.'
" m. Mary York, ten months. The mother is a maker of feather dusting-brushes, and the father is a labourer.
" The foregoing are favourable instances, in which the mothers are reported to be affectionate to their children, but have not the means of giving them proper attention. They are very thankful
206	MARIE HILTON
for the cradle-school, which enables them to do their hard day's work in peace of mind. But there
is a class before whom the friends who are watching over these Ratcliff cradles are powerless. This consists of ' drinking mothers.' The children of these are left to their fate. ' They cannot,' Mrs. Hilton tells us, ' be reached by any existing means , and yet their children ' ought to be removed from them entirely, or they will inevitably be found in our gaols in a few years.'
" It will be seen from the foregoing statements that the children whom Mrs. Hilton has under her care would, in all probability, find their way to the house (en route, in many instances, for the house of correction) if she were to abandon them. The Ratcliff parents are in this dilemma : they must stay at home and starve with their children, or go out to work, leaving them in the gutter for the day, and to the mercy of drunken neighbours and vicious associates.
" In Case No. 4, the mother, a charwoman, must starve her family, or leave them alone all day, or go with them to the workhouse. This cradle-school enables her to work for them, and for a penny each a day to give them health and strength, and the softening influences of kindness. They will never get—let who may teach them—more valuable lessons than they have now, as they lie rolling in the pound, crowing in the cradle, or rocking in the swing, with gentle voices about
FOUNDING THE CRÈCHE	207
them to encourage them to goodness. The fathers round about this first school are coalheavers, coal-backers, lightermen, dock labourers, rope-makers, bottle-washers, &c. The mothers are shirtmakers, postbag-makers, bottle-washers, soldiers' knapsack makers, charwomen, &c. The underworkers, i.e., women who work for contractors or sweaters, make shirts at is. 4d. per dozen, finding their own thread. The postbags are a yard and three inches square, sewn with string, and the women are paid one shilling for sewing fifty. The knapsacks are made with strap and buckle, and the makers are paid 234.d. each. So you see the Post Office and the War Office do their share in depressing the parents to the level of the pauper. Mr. Monsell and Mr. Cardwell give work to Gwydyr House, and help to provide Mr. Forster with incorrigibly bad pupils. Every postbag represents so much starvation payment for labour ; that reacts upon the poor-rates of the locality in which it is performed. Every knapsack which the soldier carries signifies a sweater's profit and a workwoman's distress. This is no exaggeration, nor is it a sentimental view of the question. . . .
" In her preliminary address, by which the cradle-school was got together, Mrs. Hilton says : ' During the time I have occupied myself in mission work at Ratcliff, I have witnessed painful scenes amongst the infants of the poor. Numbers of poor women (many of them widows)
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go out to work, leaving their infants in charge of very young and incapable boys and girls, who
ought to be at school. Accidents are continually occurring ; many of the children die young or
grow up as cripples. Other women idle about and gossip at the corners of the streets, Ike baby in arms being the excuse, while their earnings would greatly help the family.'
" To meet this, the most obvious evil of a terrible neighbourhood, in a direct way, the Friends' Crèche was opened. To be able to work at such work as the docks, the bottle factories, the sweaters, and the open streets provide is fate hard enough to bear, but to be kept lolling in the streets, and so tempted to the Silver Trumpet or the Royal Duke by the baby in arms, or the infants rolling about the alley, is, to the mother who has a tender place left in her heart, agonising. It is not possible to convey to the reader, within the limits of this paper, an adequate idea of the extent of the pauperism which is engendered by the simple impossibility of doing work in which young mothers are placed.
" The moral value of a cradle-school apart, it is a most praiseworthy institution. It is a baby's refuge from the street ; a boy's salvation from bad companions in his most impressionable days ; a man's strength and health, by which he may be able to live in independence. If so many cubic
FOUNDING THE CRECHE	209
feet of pure air are necessary to the poor boy during school hours, aft-A- he has completed his fourth year, are they not, in the interest of the society of which he is a member, necessary to the infant of a few months ? Refuse them, and the child becomes a weak man, perhaps an immediate pauper, not improbably a criminal. If cradle-schools were established in every poor crowded centre there would be fewer pauper children in district schools, costing ratepayers more to keep and educate than their own children. It is bad economy when the statesman turns his back upon work like that which Mrs. Hilton is quietly and devotedly performing among the Ratcliff fathers and mothers ; for while it makes drunken idlers of the parents, it leaves the children to grow
up at best sickly and unskilful workers—at worst, paupers, tramps and thieves. Let the man who
doubts the far-reaching good of a protected cradle for the children of the poor pay a visit to Stepney Causeway."
CHAPTER XIII
OTHER DESCRIPTIONS OF THE CRECHE
MR. WILLIAM GILBERT, the author of " Contrasts," was one of the early visitors to the Creche. The following passages descriptive of the founding and working of the institution are taken from his work,
" Facta non Verba," published in 1874 :
" I will not go at any length into the different labours of Mrs. Hilton in mission work and general exertions on behalf of the poor in the neighbourhood of Ratcliff and Stepney. Admirable as they were, and beneficial to those on whose behalf she exerted herself, they would hardly point the moral of my tale—that a good Protestant woman, taking up a difficult cause, may, by the co-operation of her friends, carry it out to maturity ; and this has certainly been done by Mrs. Hilton in the establishment of the Creche at Ratcliff. Nor was there a locality in London that offered greater necessity for the adoption of an institution of the kind. The whole neighbour-
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hood abounded with dirty, ragged, under-fed children of most dilapidated constitutions, partly arising from want, partly neglect, and partly from congenital weakness, in too many cases brought on by the intemperate habits of their parents. Possibly this description may appear somewhat exaggerated in the eyes of those who have merely passed the broader thoroughfares of Ratcliff, Stepney and Limehouse ; but it was 'not in the broad thoroughfares and the glare of day that these poor neglected little ones were to be found. In the lanes and alleys, where resided the worst paid or the most demoralised of the population, they were to be looked for. During Mrs. Hilton's visits to these squalid homes, the poor children appeared to be mutely, but emphatically, appealing to her for relief. Amidst her many avocations, it seemed almost wrong to apply herself specially to one, and she continued on her general labours. The spirit of motherhood, however, was strong within her, and by degrees the wish to aid all these poor little ones became so earnest, that it resulted in being the dominant feature in her philanthropic labours. . . . Having now enlisted in her cause many energetic and useful co-operators, Mrs. Hilton selected a building for the purpose and commenced its furnishing. Among other powerful agencies in her hands was a large portion of the public press. Thanks to its notices, the establishment, while in course of preparation, was visited by more than
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five hundred persons, including many eminent philanthropists, as well as friends of education, and twenty deputations from different parts of England, to obtain information as to its intended working ; and the result of their reports has been the establishment of many similar institutions on the same plan.
" I t was from reading Mrs. Hilton's report of the first year's proceedings of the Creche that I was induced to visit it, and well did it repay the time I spent in doing so. I t is situated in Stepney Causeway, some twenty doors from the high Blackwall road. The building is certainly not well adapted for the purpose, still it was the best that could be obtained in the neighbourhood, and has been made as convenient as the circumstances of the case would allow. I was first shown the baby department, in which, I suppose, there must have been about fifty inmates. Some were seated in little chairs in such a manner that, while their limbs were at liberty, they could not fall, and amusing themselves with toys upon a slab running before the whole. Others were on the floor, or seated in different parts of the room, all appearing happy and contented, and not a cry was heard among them. In another room were placed iron cots, and really handsome ones too, all of the same pattern, and in which some of the babies were sleeping. The arrangement of these cots also deserves notice, as possessing a peculiarity which
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might be adopted with admirable effect in some of our large metropolitan schools. A small piece of iron projected from the top, on which was placed the baby's towel. Simple as it may appear, the idea of each infant having a towel for its own use, as a sanitary precaution, and as preventing the spread of ophthalmia, is an admirable one. In the Foundling Hospital at Moscow, as soon as a child is attacked by ophthalmia it is immediately separated from the others, and there no two children are washed with the same towel ; the moment the operation is over for one, the towel is thrown into a basket by the side of the nurse, and the next child has a clean one for its own use. All the towels are washed within two hours afterwards and brought back clean for the next day's use. Noticing from the complexion of the children that they were of the delicate constitution class in which ophthalmia is most to be dreaded, I inquired whether there were any cases of the kind in the Creche, and was told that, with the exception of two the first year the establishment was open, there had been none whatever.
" The ground-floor of the house seemed to be specially appropriated to the senior children. Here I found some thirty or forty, averaging from two to five years of age. They were amusing themselves with different toys, or playing together, and a happier community than they presented it would be impossible to imagine. Still, their happiness
214	MARIE HILTON
was not yet at its height. Mrs. Hilton and her daughter, who had accompanied me on my rounds, each carried in her hand a paper bag full of small cakes, which a benevolent lady in the neighbourhood had placed at their disposal for the children. No sooner was the happy fact made known to them than those at play immediately left their games, and with the rest congregated round Mrs. Hilton in anticipation of the delicacies they were about to receive. And here another element struck me as tending to prove the habitual kindness the children received in the Creche. Instead of regarding Mrs. Hilton with the respectful alarm frequently visible among young children when in the presence of the senior authority of their school, they rushed round her, and clung to her skirts and those of her daughter in a manner that showed that the discipline they were under was certainly not caused by terror.
" Mrs. Hilton now advanced, with the cakes in her hand, into a room used as a schoolroom, where the children were to have their tea, and a proportion of the cakes was appropriated to each. When seated at the table, and before the meal began, they sang a short childish hymn of extreme simplicity. If occasionally the fastidious ear of the listener might have discovered a want of tune, the most severe critic would not have discovered any absence of energy. They evidently seemed to consider, after the fashion of the musical
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celebrities in Ratcliff Highway and Stepney, that strength of voice and melody were synonymous terms. One musical attribute they certainly possessed, and showed it emphatically—the knowledge of time, as was proved by their accompanying themselves by clapping their hands in measure during their singing.
" We now left the children to visit other portions of the establishment. One feature particularly struck me—the extraordinary and perfect cleanliness existing throughout the whole. There was not a child present whose features were not in a sufficient state of cleanliness to be brought for inspection into any drawing-room. Their clothes, also, though certainly of a somewhat coarse description, were as spotless as if they had just come from the wash. When remarking on this to Mrs. Hilton, and complimenting the children's mothers on the cleanly condition of their offspring, she said to me : You have not had much experience with the working-classes in the lower and poorer districts of Ratcliff and its neighbourhood. So far from keeping their children in a cleanly condition,
their carelessness on that point reaches to a degree almost incredible. At the same time, it is only
justice to state that a considerable reformation is
taking place among them in that respect. Some of the children arrive here in the morning in such
a dirty condition it would be impossible to allow them to mix with those of the cleaner class ; so
216	MARIE HILTON
when they first come they are all stripped of their clothes and washed, and then dressed in clothing we have here in the house. You see those bags,' she continued, pointing to possibly one hundred small ones hanging up on the walls of the room in which we then were ; all those contain the clothes of the children at present in the house. They were taken off this morning, and when the mothers come for them in the evening the children will be again dressed in their own clothes, and the same course adopted to-morrow.'
" So admirable was the nursing I noticed in the Creche, that I was almost tempted to believe the accusation I have so frequently heard in private families concerning the natural fractiousness of babies is little less than a slander, for during the whole two hours I spent there, out of the hundred babies it contained I did not hear one cry.
" To combat all the ignorance and prejudice Mrs. Hilton must have had opposed to her in those districts would have damped the courage of any one less determined to carry out a good cause than herself. In some cases she met with women who were perfectly willing to send their children to the Creche, but under the stipulated condition that they should not be washed. This, however, as may easily be supposed, was not acceded to by Mrs. Hilton, and the mothers, in some cases, refused to allow their children to attend. Others unwillingly left them, and yet afterwards these
OTHER DESCRIPTIONS OF THE CRECHE 217
very women were most grateful that their objection had not been attended to. Again, many strongly demurred to the penny a day for their child, not calculating that the bare expense of feeding one at home in the humblest manner would far exceed that sum. Again, so badly is female labour paid in the eastern districts, that even a penny a day was often found more than a poor woman with a family could well afford. One widow sent three children to the Creche, while she worked in some factory near, and she proved that 1 s. 6d. a week was fully as much as she could afford to pay out of her limited earnings.
Speaking of the kindness of the poor to one another, and the affectionate attention habitually given by these poor mothers to their offspring, Mrs. Hilton said : ' I have also found, when visiting, how utterly the people around the sufferer lose all self-reliance, and are ready to adopt the most absurd suggestions of their neighbours. In visiting the children of the Creche in times of sickness, I have been much pleased with the love and devotion of the mothers to their suffering little ones, and to see how cheered they have been by our visits. One dear child who had been with us four months previous to her last illness, and had suffered from measles, followed by whooping-cough and bronchitis, was in convulsions four days previous to her death. The poor mother was worn
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out with watching. She described how she passed the night previous to my calling : " Do you know, ma'am, I tried so to recollect the prayer my mother taught me, but I could not, so you see I got the Prayer-book and I stood by her bed and read every prayer I could find, hoping that God would hear me. By three o'clock I was that tired that I could read no more. I then woke Bella (a girl of eight), and said, ' Get up, my dear, and read these prayers over your poor sister.' " Still the dear child writhed and quivered in convulsions. So the poor mother concluded that her prayers were not heard."
Another graphic description of the Creche appeared in the Sanitary Register, under the title of " Gutter Brats versus Bonnie Bairns." The writer, like so many other visitors, was struck with the good appearance of the children.
" Not a few," he wrote, " are as remarkable for personal beauty as any specimen in a West-end nursery. Talk of the pictures in the Academy, or the beauties in Hyde Park ! There is not a beauty in the one, nor a picture in the other, can compare for a moment in deep interest, in touching pathos with the scene on the nursery floor of the Creche. Here you have little atoms of humanity in every conceivable attitude, but every one graceful and perfectly true to nature. There sits the nurse,
OTHER DESCRIPTIONS OF THE CRECHE 219
clean as a new pin, rocking a baby	not her own
—on each knee ; and there a little maid as bright as a day in any ordinary April stoops to soothe some crying little one—extraordinary duty—' to wipe the tears from all faces' ! In the centre is a softly cushioned square, enclosed by a low rail for the very small ones, and all around are innumerable dainty cots for infants, who, we presume, can do nothing but sleep. And where do they all come from ; and where would they be if they were not here ? That's what concerns the community. But how on earth is it managed day after day ? That's what completely puzzles us men. Fancy receiving all these children every morning from their mothers, many of them, no doubt, most disagreeable people. Fancy taking off these children's dirty clothes to be put into bags and disinfected, washing the bairns themselves, and putting them in the Creche clothing ! Fancy feeding all these fingerless little ones two or three times a day, to say nothing of constantly looking after them all day long, and then putting them, cross and sleepy, into their own clothes at night ' to be called for' ! Fancy doing this through the cold dreary days of November, and stopping there to do it in the bright glorious days of June ! Ah well, it is wonderful, but it's nothing ; for are there not a hundred thousand women in London who do the same every day, in one form or another ? But none the less honour to them. And never, never
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will the wonder of it decrease in the eyes of men who see it. The misfortune is that so many of them don't see it at all, and if they do, don't see it to be most mysterious.
"Mrs. Hilton's Creche is not a show place. I t means business, and does it. The Creche is in a narrow, poky, very uninviting little street in the extreme East (Stepney Causeway). The sole advantage of the position is that it is surrounded by mothers and what were meant to be children, but are generally left to be savages or little corpses ! After passing through a narrow, dingy passage, we find that they somehow manage to get on without a fine secretary's desk, or cushioned chairs and sofas in the visitors' room. The only specially attractive things in the room are the photographs of some of the children, which, by the way, might surely be made more of. It was no particular concern of ours to know how the place was maintained or who might be its patrons or patronesses, if it has any. Our only concern was, is the plan conducted on sanitary principles, both in management and working ? As far as we could judge, it could be scarcely surpassed in these respects.
"It is perhaps unnecessary to say that the working of the place showed the perfection of cleanliness, although it was distinctly accompanied in every department by the marks of poverty and extreme economy ; and on the day we visited it we
OTHER DESCRIPTIONS OF THE CRÈCHE 221
noticed that every window was wide open, so that the balmy breeze of May, or at least the best breezes of Stepney, blew free and fresh through every room. But that's nothing ; that's easily done, and might have been ' got up' for visitors' notice. There is, however, one check which is quite infallible where children are concerned. There is—we know it by constant experience—there is only one portion of the community which can not be induced to tell fibs, which cannot be trained to act —that is, the little children. We have long ago laid it down, as a perfectly infallible axiom, ' Where children are found crying there is mismanagement.' It matters not under what circumstances or for what reasons, if any considerable proportion of children, where a number are collected, are found weeping or easily made to weep, there is to a certainty something wrong in their treatment or management. Now here we saw probably a hundred little ones, from little, little babies eighteen inches long, to little boys and girls three feet high ; we personally spoke to a considerable number of them, and only one out of all that number was reduced to tears when we did so—a clear case of excessive timidity in a little novice. In our opinion that one fact is worth far more than the most searching sanitary inspection that could have been devised.
" Let it not be imagined that all these children were robust, rosy, healthy specimens ; such indi-
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viduals were quite the exception. That which is so well known to any one with the sanitary eye, that paleness, the pinched look, the large wistful eye—those invariable accompaniments of poverty, squalor and bad air—were sadly, painfully visible on many of the little faces.
"There was, too, a marked absence of that energy and perpetual restlessness, those indices of perfect health in old and young alike. Moreover, there were three or four—how could it be otherwise in such a district ?—three or four of these poor little things that should never have been born ; little everlasting sufferers, whose tiny, misshapen limbs tightly bandaged to the cruel splints proclaimed the rickety babes, whose very existence is a social crime, but even these lay smiling and happy on the floor of Mrs. Hilton's Creche. Could more be said in praise of the establishment ?
" One word in conclusion. There are, we know, many thousands of women, from seventeen to seventy, women—ladies—carefully trained to be constantly ' on guard,' who are not suspected of having hearts, but who would simply revel in the little beauties and the little uglies of the Creche, most of whose life-stories are short, brilliant romances —women who, if they went, could scarcely be induced by the attending matron to ' move on '—women who, under some pretence, would get the babies into their arms and keep them there ; women who would be in a paradise while their
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visit lasted, and would dream and redream that paradise over and over again for months afterwards. To such we say, ' Why not go and enjoy it ? ' Try this one, which holds out so good a promise. If you do, an odd sixpence, or half-crown, or golden sovereign will not go to the gin-palace if given to these children. But that is of little importance. What we should like you ladies to say to yourselves is : ' If Mrs. Hilton and the women who help her can get so much happiness out of a wretched little house in Stepney, why should we not also do something of the same sort for ourselves ? ' You coulcl not possibly find a more womanly, ' ladylike,' and delightful occupation than looking after babies who would otherwise be inconceivably miserable. Think of it, helpless innocents, ' dear little mites,' in constant pain, misery and dirt ! Therefore, will you do it ? "
As soon as the Creche was open to public inspection, it received very wide and cordial recognition from the press generally. Descriptive articles appeared in nearly all the great dailies. The illustrated papers, the journals devoted to religious and philanthropic objects, and the local East-end papers all kindly helped to give the new Creche system publicity. The institution is now so well known that any further description of its internal economy would be superfluous.
CHAPTER XIV
WHY THE CRECHE SUCCEEDED-THE PRINCESS CHRISTIAN-CRECHES AT HOME AND ABROAD-THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY
IN concluding her essay upon " The Creche System " for the Chicago Exhibition, Marie Hilton said :
" In conclusion, I would say that in this age, when our sex is constantly being accused of invading the domains hitherto reserved exclusively for the male portion of the community, and thereof sacrificing some measure of womanliness, it is satisfactory to be able to point to this work in which there can be no thought of rivalry between the sexes. In this noble labour of watching over and training the infants of the poor we can occupy an unassailable position. The entry of woman into political life, and into the professions, has been sharply criticised ; but here, who can charge us with resigning any of the attributes of our sex ?
WHY THE CRÈCHE SUCCEEDED 225
In exercising the high privilege of first access to the men and women of the future we are all-powerful and supreme. To this work, then, I would commend all my sisters of every creed and nation, in the hope that their labours may be blessed alike to them and the objects of their love. The world moves slowly forward ; vice, cruelty and poverty seem to be ever with us ; but in the darkest times in all ages woman's love for the helpless and the suffering has shone out grandly as an alleviation ; and to that love, on behalf of the myriads of neglected infants, I would appeal."
The success of the institution may be said to have been owing in a great measure to the universality of the appeal, to which every woman could respond, irrespective of sect or creed. As Hesba Stretton said :
" The absolute helplessness of a baby makes, perhaps, the most touching appeal that reaches a woman's heart. We look at an infant, with no language but a cry,' so utterly cast upon a mother's care ; and a tenderness, with thoughts too deep for tears,' springs up in the innermost recesses of the spirit."
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In the care of what Mrs. Norton aptly described as " these fragile beginnings of a mighty end," Marie Hilton found her especial work ; it was one for which she was peculiarly fitted, both by character and experience. In reviewing her life one could almost believe that every incident, and indeed every trouble, had been sent purposely to shape her destiny, and to lead her up to the accomplishment of the great work with which her name is connected. What it cost her in health and strength, the nervous tension at which it kept her day by day, was known only to those of her own household. When there was sickness at the Creche, or when, the limits of accommodation at the institution being reached, she had to refuse aid to some especially distressing case, she suffered intensely.
She was often urged by friends to seek the assistance of a committee of management, and so relieve herself of some part of the responsibility. But she had perfect confidence in her own ability to get through any amount of work ; she was inspired with the courage born of great physical powers and an unimpaired constitution. And it must be remembered that she was an innovator. She had to introduce a system, to bring the institution
WHY THE CRÈCHE SUCCEEDED 227
up to her own ideal ; and she was not at all sure that a committee of ladies, though they might be never so earnest and capable, would see with her eyes and agree to her methods. Nevertheless, it would have been much to her advantage if a financial committee had assisted her in raising the yearly income. But to this subject I will allude a little later.
The success of the Creche was immediate and unqualified ; for although the money subscribed was barely sufficient to cover the expenses of the institution, the Creche system was introduced to the British people and received their approval, and that was Marie Hilton's great object. Descriptions, adequate in every way, of the institution are given in the preceding chapters ; nothing
further need be added ; but no conception of the enormous labour involved in starting the Creche, and getting it into working order, has yet been
given. The whole plan of the institution, down
to the minutest details, was matured by Marie Hilton herself ; designs of cots and other appliances were sent to manufacturers, and estimates
were received and approved ; the furniture of the place and the great stock] of necessary clothing had to be designed and made according to sub-
228	MARIE HILTON
mitted patterns ; and lastly, hundreds of letters were written to philanthropic people to engage their interest and support. All this was done by Marie Hilton herself, aided only by her eldest daughter, while directing at the same time various branches of the Mission and regulating the affairs of her own house. The force of character and ability required to carry this great enterprise to a successful issue may be imagined. But this was not all. The institution could not afford highly qualified officials. A matron and a staff of nurses had to be obtained and instructed in the new system. The materials at hand were most unpromising : a number of girls were selected from the neighbourhood, and day after day, with wonderful patience and skill, Marie Hilton drilled and trained them till they became trustworthy nurses. The work was very difficult ; it was almost impossible to make them understand the importance of certain rules. They would wash several children with the same sponge instead of keeping a separate sponge for each child as the rules provided, until, like old soldiers, obedience to orders through constant iteration grew into an instinct. After much searching and several disappointments a competent matron was found ; but
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in the early days of the institution scarcely a day passed that Marie Hilton and her daughter did not visit the place and personally inspect every detail of the work. The experiences of the first day or two after the opening were not easily forgotten. The state in which some of the infants were brought was horrible and disgusting ; from one baby no less than one hundred and twenty vermin of four different varieties were gathered ! It was necessary to undress some of the children upon newspapers spread on the floor, so that the parasites could be easily seen and destroyed ! It might be said that the Creche introduced washing into the district. In a few years a marked improvement in the condition of the children was visible ; year by year habits of cleanliness became more common, and the armies of parasites sensibly diminished in numbers. The Creche was beneficial in several ways. The girls taken from the neighbourhood to act as nurses developed in the course of time into valuable servants. In the first year they slept in their own homes, but in the second year sleeping accommodation was provided for them, and a training home for servants soon became combined with the Creche.
The following incident bears eloquent testimony
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to the courage and devotion with which my mother carried on her work. It was never her custom to order an inferior to perform any duty she was unwilling to do herself ; honest work of every description was sacred in her eyes. One of the recently engaged nursemaids, a native of the district, had allowed her head to get into a horrible condition—sores swarming with parasites. So bad was it indeed, that her fellow-servants, one and all, flatly refused to assist her in the work of purification. My mother arrived at the Cr&he, and finding that no words of hers could induce them to perform the office, she did it with her own hands. This was a characteristic action of hers, but one of a sort that she never spoke of. We never honoured our mother so much as when we heard what she had done, for we alone knew what the task had cost her. We alone knew with what intense loathing she shrank from any disgusting sight. It was deeds of self-sacrifice such as this which placed her among the noblest women of our time, and endeared her to the people among whom she laboured.
In her second year's Report Marie Hilton gives the following particulars respecting the class of women whose children were received :
WHY THE CRECHE SUCCEEDED 231
" We have many children of street-hawkers, some selling dried fish, plants, old keys, dusting-brushes, crockery; and some work in bottle warehouses, rope-works, and packing-houses; others are match-box makers, snuff-box makers, umbrella stitchers, and followers of many similar occupations. Of needlewomen we have a large proportion ; the chief work of the district is shirt-making and trouser-finishing. We have six needlewomen whose husbands have deserted them, and four whose husbands are invalids. Many others are the children of dock labourers, who earn a very precarious living, the mothers working at various warehouses and factories. We have three whose mothers and four whose fathers are in consumption, and two cases of fathers in prison for offences committed while in a state of intoxication. The widows are a large class. We have the children of fifty-six, twenty of whom have had posthumous children ; several of the husbands died of consumption, some lying many months ill ; others were killed by accident ; and one suicide. In several cases the husbands had died in foreign countries, some having deserted their families. The anguish some of these poor women suffer from suspense, as months have passed without
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news of their husbands, has been sad to witness, and I have often felt that the struggle for the
daily bread has saved their reason.	It is a
matter for wonder how they exist from day to day, and I am often filled with astonishment at the accounts they give of the Johnnies and Tommies and Pollies who help to keep the homes together. Truly, our God is the husband of the widow, who circles these bereaved ones with His love. Many of the occupations mentioned are very precarious, and have their seasons, and frequently a freak of fashion will throw numbers out of employment ; added to these is the tendency in all thickly populated districts to the love of drink, which does so much to impoverish and degrade the people."
I will add one or two more brief extracts from the first Report :
" We have also found that our love and tenderness to the children have produced greater care in the mothers. It has often been amusing to see the start of surprise when baby has been brought to them washed and dressed in the clothing provided. In one or two instances they were not
WHY THE CRÈCHE SUCCEEDED 233
recognised for the moment. One poor woman, a seller of watercress, was moved to tears, and said, How I wish its father and its big brother could see it ! '
" I will give another incident to show that even these untrained children can be self-sacrificing. It was in one of the two cases in which we admitted the child of an unmarried woman. The case in question was one in which the grandmother was burdened with the care of the child. Her account of the case was most touching. She was very anxious to place the child in the nursery, so that she might be able to go out to work, all her dependence being four shillings per week, earned by a boy of thirteen. She said, I am in such trouble about little Tommy, ma'am. I cannot bear to put him in the house [workhouse], and I could never work if he was shut up by himself. The other day I was crying over Tommy, and my Tom [the boy of thirteen] came in. He said, " Mother, what are you crying for ? " I said, " Oh, I shall have to put little Tommy in the house." He replied, " Never do that, mother ; he must not go there. Put two slices less in my parcel when I go to work ; this is how we will manage." ' It will be readily imagined that the rules were relaxed in
234	MARIE HILTON
this instance, and that I felt anxious to see the little hero who had thus early and unconsciously obeyed one of the first conditions of discipleship by denying himself and taking up a cross."
" The dread of the union seems universal, and we have often been astonished at the privations cheerfully endured rather than break up the
home,' as they term it, although to outward eyes it is desolate enough. Who shall say, though, that there is not a band of home angels who give to these dreary homes touches of brightness unseen by other eyes ?
" Ah ! if we knew it all, we should surely understand
That the balance of sorrow and joy is held with an even hand ;
That the scale of success or loss shall never overflow,
And that compensation is twined with the lot of high and low."
" One woman who had spent many years of her life in prison and the union alternately, rather startled us one day by saying, Well, of the two, give me prison.' She had just been brought to us, bruised and bleeding from a fight in a public-6' house, and we had been talking to her and saying we were sure she would be sent to prison if she continued in this terrible course, when she made the foregoing remark. She then went on to explain, Well, you see, Mrs. Hilton, they are an
WHY THE CRECHE SUCCEEDED 235
awful set in the workhouse, but in prison they are not allowed to carry on in that style ; and then, best of all, you have your cell to yourself ' We could but feel a sense of wonder, such as we have often felt during our many years of work, at the different views of life taken from different standpoints."
" The careful and loving tending of even the young ones has not been without its fruit. Mothers have told us that the little ones are distressed if the elder children quarrel. In one case a child of a year and eleven months drew two elder children together and offered his lips to be kissed, the father exclaiming, ' Why, that's what the little chap learns in that there crouch,' for the name is still a wonder and a mystery in the neighbourhood. This is, of course, a common occurrence in households ruled by love, but not in houses such as our babies call ' home.' Would it shock you, dear friends, to hear that we have sometimes bruised babies brought to us, and not from falls, but by blows ?
" Mothers say the children are as if changed ; they go to bed quietly, mind when they are spoken to, seldom fight, and never say the bad words they used to hear in the street."
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Marie Hilton always gratefully acknowledged her indebtedness to the press. The immediate success of the Ratcliff Creche, and the adoption of the Creche system in other parts of the country, were mainly owing to the kindly and appreciative notices that were written by all the journalists who visited the institution. This help was given by journals representing every shade of opinion. Very valuable notices appeared in the Times, the Daily News, the Graphic, the Standard, Evening Standard, Globe, Echo, Christian, Christian World, the Quiver, the Queen, and special papers, such as the Milk Journal and the Sanitary Register. Cordial notices also appeared in many of the provincial journals. The gentlemen of the press grasped the possibilities of the system at once, and saw that it would inevitably come to be adopted as soon as its advantages were proved by experiment. The articles in the School Board Chronicle by Blanchard Jerrold had great influence in directing public attention to the subject of Creches.
Soon after the first Report was issued, her Royal Highness Princess Christian gave the
institution prestige by kindly consenting to become patroness. By request of H.R.H., Lady Susan
WHY THE CRÈCHE SUCCEEDED 237
Melville wrote to Marie Hilton stating that " H.R.H. would have much pleasure in becoming the patroness of the institution, hoping by so doing to promote its welfare, which she feels sure will prove a great blessing to both children and mothers."
The Princess has ever since shown the most kindly interest in the work of the institution. In her eighth Report Marie Hilton wrote :
" Before closing this part of the subject I will mention two offerings : the first was from H.R.H. Princess Christian and her two daughters, their Royal Highnesses Victoria and Louise of Schleswig-Holstein, aged respectively eight and a half and six and a half years, who kindly sent us articles for the bazaar made by their own hands these articles must have taken many months of patient labour. This is a beautiful instance of that wide sympathy that binds all hearts in one common bond of brotherhood. The second offering I would mention came from a workhouse ward. It was a small needle-book, on which the last pence of a poor woman had been expended for the sake of Him who had said, Suffer the little ones to come unto me.' "
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In the year 1881 her Royal Highness opened a bazaar held in aid of the Creche funds at the City Terminus Hotel. The Princess Christian was attended by the Hon. Mrs. Liddell and Colonel Sir John McNeill. There were present also the Lord Mayor and the Lady Mayoress ; Mr. Sheriff Waterlow ; the Bishop of Bedford and Mrs. Walsham Howe ; Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Gurney Barclay ; the Rev. A. J. Ross, D.D., Vicar of St. Philip's, Stepney ; Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Bart., M.P. ; Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Gurney ; the Rev. J. F. Kitto, Rector and Rural Dean of Stepney ; the Rev. R. Arbuthnot, Vicar of St. James's, Ratcliff ; Mr. Arthur Pease, M.P. and Mrs. Pease ; Mr. Passmore Edwards, M.P. and Mrs. Edwards ; Mr. W. Fowler, M.P. and Mrs. Fowler; Mrs. Henry Ford Barclay ; Lady Clavering ; Mrs. Dunbar-Dunbar ; and Lady Selwyn Ibbetson.
The interest in the Creche spread rapidly among people of all conditions, and to every quarter of the world. Cardinal Manning, who had at all times a warm admiration for Marie Hilton's work, sent a contribution ; but, knowing how bitterly he was regarded by a section of his Protestant fellow-Christians, he asked that his donation should be placed among the anonymous gifts
WHY THE CRECHE SUCCEEDED 239
in the Annual Report ; " for," said he, " my name might do the institution more harm than good." The ex-Empress of the French, having read the Report, sent a message expressing sympathy with the object of the institution. Subscriptions were received from Australia, Egypt, India, Germany and New Zealand. In her fourth Report Marie Hilton wrote :
" A little Jewess sent the following letter : DEAR MRS. HILTON,—This money is from my sister and me, for the babies' Christmas-tree.—
Yours truly,	NELLIE.'
"The clothing that we have received comes from all parts of the kingdom, representing much labour and self-sacrifice. I n many places young ladies meet once a week to make garments for the children. Mothers' meetings and ladies' working-parties have also sent contributions. The young ladies of the East London Collegiate School sent over forty garments. Nor has the interest awakened on the subject of caring for the babies of the poor decreased ; we are constantly hearing of the establishment of similar institutions in various parts of the United Kingdom and abroad. A
240	MARIE HILTON
gentleman, a native of Poland, has lately visited the Creche to obtain particulars of management, as some ladies of rank in Warsaw were desirous of starting a similar institution on a large scale. Mr. Shipman, of Chicago, has also written for all information, as he is about to open a Creche in that city in connection with the home for Foundlings. Last year we sent a copy of our Report to the American poet Whittier, at the same time apologising for quoting so largely from his poems. My husband received the following reply :
" AMESBURY.
" MY DEAR FRIEND,-I have been very much interested in thy wife's beautiful mission, and if any word of mine has cheered her in her labour of love I am very thankful. The Lord bless and help her in caring for those little ones. Wilt thou receive for thyself and thy dear wife and daughter the assurance of my entire and hearty sympathy with your benevolent exertions to render less the sum of human suffering.—Thy friend,
" JOHN G. WHITTIER."
Another letter from the venerable Quaker poet was received a year or two later :
WHY THE CRECHE SUCCEEDED 241
" OAK KNOLL, DANVERS,
" December 28, 1877.
" MY DEAR FRIEND MARIE HILTON,—I ought long ago to have told thee how much pleasurable interest I have felt in thy benevolent work of Christian charity. Thy letter gives thee and thy husband a new claim on my sympathy and regard, as it discloses the fact that you have faith like myself in the Eternal Goodness. As Canon Kingsley once said to me, ' I have ventured to believe that God is as good as an average member of the Church.'
" I have read Canon Farrar's statement ; but I fear the Bible revisers will be afraid that not the Book will suffer but the Creed, if they adopt his view.
" I have read three of thy Reports with great interest. It is a unique and much-needed charity, and I am glad to see that it is sustained by some of the wealthy and noble of your land.
" With hearty sympathy, I am very much thy friend,
" JOHN G. WHITTIER."
Marie Hilton was often cheered by hearing how her work was appreciated and imitated in America. A few years after the Creche was started, the ladies of Hartford, Connecticut, opened a day nursery on the principle of the Stepney Creche,
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where the children of working people, from three months to eight years, were received at a charge of five cents a day.
In her third Report Marie Hilton says :
" A poor woman had one of our leaflets given to her, entitled ' What shall I do with a Baby ? ' She was a charwoman, and feeling the need of such an institution, she sent her little girl with the leaflet to some ladies who she knew were interested in poor women. The ladies at once commenced collecting money, and succeeded in establishing a small Creche, which is a blessing to the poor mothers in the district.
" A German physician visited us a few months since. He informed us that his mother had three nurseries in Munich. On leaving the Creche he said that he had learned several things which he felt sure his mother would adopt."
As the years passed the correspondence in connection with Creche affairs increased enormously. Among Marie Hilton's multifarious labours the most exacting task was writing elaborate instructions respecting the founding and working of Creches, even to the minutest details, for the
WHY THE CRÈCHE SUCCEEDED 243
guidance of persons who proposed starting similar institutions. Ladies would write asking for particulars of the size of saucepans and the number of articles of clothing of this and that description for a Creche to accommodate so many children. " How many pounds of soap ought we to use in a year ?" "How many small toothcombs are necessary ? " and questions of that sort were constantly being asked, the answers to be sent by return of post. With these earnest inquirers she was wonderfully patient, but to some she could only say, " Come and see for yourselves." These applications for advice and instruction often came from very unlikely places, such as Moscow and British Guiana.
In her thirteenth Report Marie Hilton speaks of much larger correspondence than usual. Reports of Creches founded were received by her from Belgium, Germany, Toronto and Vienna, and from many towns in England. A very interesting account was also received from the wife of a major residing in India. This lady had seen that the children of the regiment required care during the day, so she called the officers' wives together, and they at once opened a Creche, which proved a great success.
In her eighteenth Report she speaks of wider
244	MARIE HILTON
interest being taken in the Creche system. During the year interviews were held with ladies starting Creches at West Kensington, Homerton, Plaistow and Bow, and with the ladies of the West London Wesleyan Mission, to whom very ample information was given. Advice was also furnished by correspondence to ladies at Macclesfield, Margate, Kingstown, Leicester, Mitcham, Walsall, Glasgow, Worcester and Sydney, Australia.
In her twenty-first Report Marie Hilton speaks of having received many letters asking for information as to the formation of Creches from various parts of England, also from Rome, Australia, Canada and the United States of America. A little later full particulars respecting Creche management were furnished to applicants at Moscow. And a few months after my mother's death the secretary received a letter from a lady in Athens who proposed starting a Creche in that city, and to whom all information was sent.
It will thus be seen how rapidly the system which Marie Hilton had introduced into this country grew in popularity, and how widely the working details of the Ratcliff Creche were copied and adopted in various parts of the world.
WHY THE CRECHE SUCCEEDED 245
During the twenty-five years that the Creche has been open it has been visited by upwards of thirteen thousand persons.
The Earl of Shaftesbury took a warm interest in the institution from the first, and it was at his suggestion that the name " Mrs. Hilton's Creche " was adopted. In the year 1878, though in failing health, he opened a bazaar held in aid of the funds at the City Terminus Hotel. On that occasion Marie Hilton presented an address to him, in which she expressed her appreciation of the noble services he had rendered throughout a long life of Christian philanthropy, and prayed that the blessing of " those who were ready to perish " might be his everlasting portion and reward. Mrs. Hilton added that she had first been prompted to work among the poor by reading and hearing of similar efforts by his lordship, when Lord Ashley, many years ago.
The Earl of Shaftesbury, in replying, said he was there contrary to the express injunctions of the doctor, but, having pledged himself to come, and the object being such a praiseworthy one, he would incur any hazard rather than break his engagement. He was much gratified by the address presented to him, and was more than
246	MARIE HILTON
rewarded by knowing that anything he had been able to accomplish in his early career had proved a stimulus to others. There were few institutions more valuable to people at large, and especially to the rising generation, than those like the Creche. He was old enough to remember the time when they did not exist, even on the Continent. When he first became interested in the question of factory legislation the state of things was not only deplorable, it was horrible and wicked, mothers leaving their young children very nearly, and in some cases entirely, without attendance. A bottle of " Godfrey's Cordial," or some other nostrum—sometimes a piece of flannel soaked in laudanum put into the child's mouth—was resorted to as a soporific during the mother's absence. As a consequence of this neglect the children grew up ragged, miserable, diseased and forlorn. Many died young, and those who survived were wretched objects of humanity. This state of things was now, he said, greatly remedied, but many mothers were still compelled to leave their children during the day to earn a maintenance for them. This admirably devised Creche system afforded a relief to those poor mothers, whilst it did not free them
WHY THE CRECHE SUCCEEDED 247
from responsibilities devolving upon them as parents, because they must contribute to the care of the children so far as they were able, and must also take them away every evening after the toil of the day was over. Not only were the mothers thus relieved, but the children were kept in health and received such instruction as their tender minds could imbibe. It was to the rising generation that we must look for the social, political, moral and religious welfare of this great empire in time to come, and therefore such a movement as this was productive of incalculable good to the community at large.
CHAPTER XV
ADDITIONS TO THE CRECHE-THE INFIRMARY-THE COUNTRY HOME-THE TEMPORARY ORPHAN HOME
TEIE infant mortality in the neighbourhood of Ratcliff was fearfully high, and appalled at the number of lives that were being sacrificed through unskilful or careless nursing, Marie Hilton resolved to add an Infirmary, or Children's Hospital, to the Creche. In her second Report she said :
One of my great anxieties of last year has been set at rest ; I refer to the sick children. A room is being prepared at the top of the building, where they may be cared for. We meet with many cases in which mothers hopelessly injure their children by improper treatment. I will only mention one such case : A child of ten months old was dying of diseased bowels ; its mother came to
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the Creche weeping. ' Well,' she said, ' I have done all I can for my poor baby. Only yesterday I gave it four pennyworth of eels, two eggs, and two glasses of port-wine ! ' The child died the following day. The adaptation of the room for the receiving of sick children will be chiefly paid for by one generous donor."
In the following year's Report she was able to announce the completion of the work :
" Our Infirmary was finished in the autumn. More than forty children have been benefited, and it has given us much pleasure to attend to these little ones in sickness, thereby preventing many poor women from losing the work on which the whole family was depending. The Infirmary is the most costly part of our work, as we have to provide night attendance. Several women kindly volunteered for this service, but we have only been able to avail ourselves of it in a small degree, because women who work hard in the day are not fitted for the care of invalids by night."
No infectious cases were received into this little hospital. A nurse who had been trained in
250	MARIE HILTON
a hospital was placed in charge, and the room being spacious and well ventilated, the little patients had a far better chance of recovery than they would have had in their own homes. Through the operation of this branch of the institution many suffering children, who would inevitably have died if left amid unhealthy surroundings, have, by skilled medical attendance and careful nursing, been restored to health and vigour.
In the year 1882 a Country Home at Feltham, Middlesex, was opened. In her eleventh Report Marie Hilton said :
" I must now proceed to give an account of our Country Home and how it came into our possession. For the last two years we have felt that, if we could not obtain this desired boon, we must part with our girls, and yet we feared that the parents of some would object to emigration. Just as we had almost given up hope, a Christian lady (Mrs. Groom) wrote, saying that she knew of a house that might be used for that purpose at Feltham, and that I should have it at a nominal rent for three years. At first I feared greatly to take upon myself this added responsibility, but after due consideration I gratefully accepted the
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offer, and the house passed into our hands at midsummer. The house is called ' The Limes: and is situated in a beautiful part of the country between Twickenham and Hounslow. It was estimated that about £300 would be required for altering, furnishing and adapting the house, so special appeals were sent out, and although only £175 has been received up to the present time, still we pray that the deficiency may be met shortly. I have been careful in furnishing the house to do away with all idea of an institution, it being quite impossible to train girls for domestic service unless they are acquainted with the use of everything required in an ordinary household.
" I cannot express here my feelings of thankfulness to the dear friend who has given us this beautiful house, relieving us of a load of care by placing our girls in safety and enabling our little ones to breathe the sweet air of the country. We have just had a batch of letters expressing in very quaint language their ideas about the country. We have arranged the household duties so as to enable them to attend the Board School, which is near the house. Most of our young children will go to the Home for change of air during the autumn, after which only delicate little ones will be sent down."
252	MARIE HILTON
This Country Home proved a really valuable addition to the work. In speaking of it many years after, Marie Hilton said :
" Here, those children too weak constitutionally to thrive in the vitiated atmosphere of Stepney, have grown up strong and healthy, and gone out into the world as domestic servants, or filled other positions of usefulness."
The last addition to the Creche was a Temporary Home, which met a very pressing need. Its object and scope had better be given in my mother's own words :
" I have opened a Temporary Home in Stepney Causeway for the accommodation of children whose mothers are temporarily incapable of directing their household affairs. The great usefulness of such a place will be at once recognised, and I would strongly impress upon those who purpose starting a Creche the advisability of accompanying it with a home of this description. We have found it of inestimable benefit in those cases where a poor mother has been taken to a hospital to undergo an operation. How much greater has been her
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chance of recovery when comforted by the reflection that her children were safe from all danger, and lovingly treated by her friends at the Home ! Here, as at the Creche, we always make a point of inducing the mothers to contribute as much as their means allow towards the maintenance of their children."
The following cases, which I take from the twelfth Report, will show the nature of the work the Home accomplished in the district :
" One child was brought to us while his father was dying. The poor man had fallen down the hold of a ship, and had been in the London Hospital for seven months he could not endure the sound of the little feet that used to be as music to him, so we took the child. Charlie only stayed with us three weeks, when the poor young widow came for him. She was most grateful for the help afforded.
" One day a man came, well recommended by his employers, asking me to take Lizzie, a little girl three and a half years old. His wife had deserted him, but he said he was able and willing to pay for the child. I saw that he was far
254	MARIE HILTON
advanced in consumption, but, seeing the urgency of the case, I took the dear child. The poor father brought two half-crowns, but he was unable to pay many visits, as he got rapidly worse. We sent him blankets and every comfort, as he was living in a small room, with no one to attend to him. He was so highly valued by his employer and the men that they allowed him to believe he earned the few shillings they kindly gave him. He still hoped and believed that he would get well, and be able to take little Lizzie to live in the country. He was most tenderly attached to her, and one day, when speaking of her as a dear loving child, he said, Oh yes, ma'am, she is the angel of my life.' In speaking of his wife, who was living a sinful life, he said, She left us on a Sunday night, and was calling out a vile song, when little Lizzie's voice rose sweet and clear, " Oh, think of the Home over there;" her mother ran back to kiss her before she left, and since then I have heard nothing of her.' We received Lizzie in July, and she appeared thoroughly healthy until the beginning of October, when she complained of earache ; this proved to be inflammation of the inner ear, and for ten days her sufferings were intense. I sent a cab for her father, and it was
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most pathetic to see him sit beside Lizzie's bed, trying vainly to soothe the poor child, and talking to her still of the house in the country and the pretty things he would buy her when she got well. I said, ' Yes, the dear Lord is about to take little Lizzie into the beautiful Home that she used to sing about.' The poor man was much distressed, but he said, ' The Lord knows best.' The dear child lived a few days, but in such agony that we were all thankful when the end came. Our medical officer reported that an abscess had formed in the centre of the brain. In a few days the father also died, and I trust that he has realised the joy that is unspeakable and the peace that passeth knowledge, and that he is now in the presence of the Lord ' to go no more out for ever.'
" Yes I though the land be very far away,
A step, a moment, ends the toil for thee ;
Then changing grief for gladness, night for day, Thine eyes shall see."
" One little boy named Willie has been with us nine months ; he is three and a half years old. He lost one of his legs when only eighteen months old through an accident on a tramway car. He was brought to us from a hospital, where he had been nursed for a wound in the head, inflicted by
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his father, who threw a knife across the room at his wife and it struck the child instead. Some
ladies pay for him, as they are anxious to keep him from his parents, who exhibit him in public-houses. Willie is very happy with us, and can now walk famously with his crutches.
" We have lately received two little children from a woman whose husband deserted her, leaving her with eight children ; also twin girls of a mother who had attempted suicide because she despaired of being able to provide food for her six little ones. The latter case was recommended by a Bible-woman. Another new inmate is a little boy named Harry, whose mother had deserted her home, leaving her husband with eight children, of whom Harry is the youngest ; his father most earnestly pleaded for his admission, saying he could take care of all the rest, but the baby he could not manage ; for, although nearly two years of age, he was unable to stand or walk, having been much neglected. Our medical officer pronounced him to be very delicate, and we feared to receive him into the London home ; but I was so struck by the look of suffering on the little face that I resolved to send him to Feltham, where he is thriving beautifully, and, although he has only
ADDITIONS TO THE CRÈCHE	257
been there a few weeks, the good food and much-needed care have so improved him that he can walk quite nicely."
The little boy, Willie, mentioned above, did not remain for long an inmate of the Home. His parents, who had found that he was a profitable investment, demanded that he should be delivered up to them. It had been their practice to take the child from one public-house to another, exhibiting his injuries, and receiving marks of sympathy, which usually took the form of liquid refreshment, from the crowd. With such a case as this, Marie Hilton found herself in a great difficulty. Her impulse was of course to keep the child in defiance of the parents. But the law is distinct and explicit upon the question of the inalienability of parental rights ; besides, neither the house in Stepney Causeway nor her own residence was in a condition to withstand a siege. The father, a brutal, degraded animal, insisted that the child should be given up to him ; this meant taking him from a home where he was being carefully trained and educated, to drag him through the low beer-houses and public-houses of Ratcliff and Stepney, where his life would be in
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constant peril from exposure and violence, and where the only language spoken was an obscene patois. One night the worthy couple appeared at the Creche when the child was in bed, and insisted on having him. The man was intoxicated, and was, moreover, " full of strange oaths." He and his wife entrenched themselves in the Matron's room, and refused to leave without the child. The Matron endeavoured to make them listen to reason, but the man was so horribly abusive and violent that she became terrified and sent for the police. In course of time a couple of stalwart constables arrived upon the scene , but the blue uniform had no terrors for this man—he had doubtless fought and conquered on many pavements. He came to close quarters at once, and in a few seconds the policemen were tripped up and brought to the ground. After a prolonged struggle, in which the furniture of the room suffered considerably, both the man and his wife were mastered and ejected. But the constables advised the Matron to let them have the child. It was too late to send over to consult Marie Hilton, and the Matron, attaching perhaps undue weight to the advice of the policemen, handed the child over to the tender mercies of the ruffian. The
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child, it seems, was not unwilling to go, as the excitement of life in the public-houses had charm s
for him.	The only hope," Marie Hilton wrote,
" is that God will in some way deliver the poor child from the terrible life that lies before him."
Had the parents come for the child while Marie Hilton was at the Creche, their errand, on that occasion at least, would have been fruitless. She would at any cost have refused to surrender him, for it was not possible to terrorise her.
In a previous chapter mention has been made of children being left in the entry of the home. Upon the subject of child-abandonment Marie Hilton wrote : " During the past twenty-four years only three children have been left with us. My experience is that cases of child-abandonment are very rare, even among the poorest mothers."
The discovery of the first little derelict is thus described (it was in the year 1881): " One dark night, when a servant went—to light the gas over the street-door, she saw a bundle in the passage which seemed to move, and, on opening it, one of the sweetest little babies was found, dressed in very coarse clothes. It appeared to be a month old. The policeman who was called in said, ' Sena
260	MARIE HILTON
it to the station in the morning.' I went over the next day at ten o'clock and found the policeman ready to conduct the mite to the station ; but when I looked at the baby I found it impossible to give it up to such stern keeping. The policeman was all on the side of prudence, remarking that lots might be left in that way,' but in the face of even such considerations I decided to keep the little waif. The household had taken the little one to their hearts, and the schoolroom children had formed plans to maintain her. We named her Dorothy Ratcliff, and she is at once the glory of the home and the admiration of visitors. Every effort was made to trace her parents, but without success, and we have often wondered what were the circumstances which induced the mother to abandon her child ; but doubtless she was, as a young mother remarked when looking at Dolly,
hard pressed.' "
The little one proved, however, but a temporary visitor. In the next year's Report Marie Hilton wrote : " How we all loved the little waif, and rejoiced in thinking that she was ' our very own,' as the children expressed it. They used to argue thus : God sent Dolly here ; He didn't give her to any mother.' She was the first to be thought
ADDITIONS TO THE CRÈCHE	261
of ; the sweetest flowers, the prettiest toys were awarded to her by common consent, and had not nurse been wise as well as kind Dolly might have been spoiled. Dolly was small for her age, but was growing nicely, and was just beginning to walk and talk, when she was taken from us. One clay in winter nurse asked that the doctor might be sent for, as Dolly was poorly. In a few hours she became very ill, and almost before we realised clanger she was past hope. The household pet was sadly missed by every one ; nurse did her best to make the children understand where Dolly had gone, and if asked, Where is Dolly ? ' they would at once answer, In heaven.' `Why did she go ? " Because,' they would say, Jesus wanted her.' "
" Only one week of weary pains,
With sufferings oppressed ;
And now—the Sabbath that remains,
God's everlasting rest.
" Only one dark and wintry time,
With chill and gloomy hours;
And now—the everlasting spring,
The never withering flowers.' "
No other child was left at the door of the institution till the year 1893. In giving an account of the cases of the year, Marie Hilton said :
262	MARIE HILTON
" The last case in this list is the saddest of all. It was that of a babe of some three days old, who was placed in the outer passage of the Creche one cold winter night. There is something very sad in the circumstance of so young a babe being so utterly outcast and alone. Our Infirmary nurse gladly took charge of it, and tended it with loving care for six weeks, when the frail little life ended."
The following year another child was found in the same place ; this makes the third and last case. In the last Report Marie Hilton was ever to write she said :
" This case was the saddest we have known. Dr. Debenham, the medical officer of the Home, said it was the smallest living child he had ever seen. It was in a terrible condition, and so weak that it never ceased screaming night or day. It was afflicted with blindness in addition to its other frailties. The very greatest care was lavished upon it, the Infirmary nurse devoting herself to it constantly; but, in spite of our utmost efforts, its little life closed in three months. All felt relieved when the end came, for nothing
ADDITIONS TO THE CRECHE	263
seemed to allay its sufferings. We had given it the name of Marie Ratcliff. The nurse who had charge of the little foundling of last year felt convinced from the appearance of the babies that they belonged to the same people ; but, of course, this may have been only conjecture. We have never been able to discover the least trace of their parentage. The two little victims of cruelty and wrong came mysteriously, and as mysteriously passed away into the great eternity."
The Home remained a most valuable adjunct to the Creche. Many of the girls trained in it became in due course nurses in the Creche, some obtained situations as servants, or filled other positions. Correspondence was kept up with them, and all seemed to have none but the happiest recollections of their life in Stepney Causeway and at Feltham.
CHAPTER XVI
FINANCIAL TROUBLES-THE BURDEN OF SYM-
PATHY - LOSSES AND CHANGES - ILLNESS
MARIE HILTON had now the responsibility of four houses upon her hands—three in Stepney Causeway and "The Limes" at Feltham. The staff of helpers had to be greatly increased, and a much larger revenue was now required to maintain all the branches in a state of efficiency. The labour of raising subscriptions, always an onerous and exacting task, became more difficult every year. This was owing in no small measure to the success of the system Marie Hilton had introduced. Many persons who had been in the habit of subscribing liberally, when applied to again, said they were now supporting a Creche in their own locality. This, although very satisfactory in one sense, was hard upon the parent institution, for there were no wealthy residents in
FINANCIAL TROUBLES	265
Ratcliff and Stepney who could be relied on for support. Interest had to be awakened in new directions, and it became necessary to expend large sums in advertisements and in appeals by circular. To quote once more from " The Creche System," Marie Hilton said :
" Yes, the State should do something. In the past one-and-twenty years I have, by my own unaided efforts, been enabled to collect funds for the maintenance of a large Creche and several collateral branches ; but the constant struggle to keep clear of debt, and to sustain the interest of subscribers, has proved a terribly exacting task, and one which I dread to see others take upon themselves. The ever-present necessity of obtaining money has been a far heavier burden than the labour of management and supervision. The income derived from sales and bazaars, though generally sufficient to meet current expenses, is still liable to be suddenly decreased in times of commercial depression."
The sense of responsibility weighed very heavily upon her. The balance at the bank was often down almost to vanishing-point, and demands
266	MARIE HILTON
from landlords, from gas and water companies, and from tradesmen, became peremptory. At these times of pressure, when it seemed that the work must perforce stop, she was often prostrated with anxiety. But she never quite lost courage ; somehow the money came in, and in twenty-five years the Creche was never once closed for lack of funds, although the time came when the Feltham Home had to be shut up. She had a kind of instinct that led her to address the right people when financial troubles were crowding thickly around her. She would muster her resolution, and sit down and write thirty or forty letters in a day to benevolent persons, although her hands were often nearly crippled with gout ; and these letters never failed to bring a response sufficient to meet the difficulty. Respecting these money troubles, my sister, Mrs. H. J. Gill, writes :
" She used to say, sometimes, ' I have to keep asking for small mercies, and they come. I suppose it is to keep me dependent.' She used to be much worried about money for current expenses, and often put the tradesmen's books by her bedside and prayed that the money owing to them might be sent. One morning she was in pressing need of £22. There was only one letter by the
FINANCIAL TROUBLES	267
first post, and that contained £2 only. But an hour or two later the Creche visitor came over, bringing one letter more. ' I'm afraid there's nothing good in it, ma'am,' she said. The letter contained a cheque for £20 ; so the exact sum needed was made up. This is but one of the many instances of answer to definite prayer that I remember."
Her chief support came from the Society of Friends ; the most munificent subscribers being members of that body. The Corporation of the City of London, and most of the City Companies also, frequently gave of their great wealth; and steady support was received from the readers of the Christian. But from the general public, as time went by, it became very difficult indeed to obtain help. While the need of the poor people in Ratcliff was almost as sore as ever, the novelty of the Creche had worn off, and the stream of charity was directed into newer and more fashionable channels. As the old subscribers died, it became harder and harder to fill their places. That Marie Hilton should have been able, for a quarter of a century, without extraneous aid, to keep the Creche and branches in working order, is an evidence of ability and courage such as few
268	MARIE HILTON
women have possessed. Only those who have experienced financial troubles know how wearing they are, how destructive of rest and enjoyment ; but I believe the greatest trial of Marie Hilton's life was the burden of sympathy. Day by day she was hearing of the terrible sorrows of the people, not only at the Creche but at her own house, where many of the poor women came to plead for help. These troubles of others she was not able to forget ; they haunted her by day and by night. In looking back one remembers some things with great vividness : how often I have seen her weeping for the sorrow she had no power to alleviate. Her memory was wonderfully retentive, and when she described some of her experiences among the poor mothers, and told how they had come and unburdened themselves to her, few could listen unmoved. Her command of language was great, and, quite unconsciously, she told these anecdotes with an eloquence and dramatic effect of which, unfortunately, I can give the reader no conception. In the Report which my father had to write when the hand that had penned the record of work for twenty-four years lay stilled for ever, he thus describes a day at the Creche :
FINANCIAL TROUBLES	269
" If I could give a faithful description of her work at the Creche for almost any day taken at random, I am sure it would be deeply interesting to subscribers. It was not often that I had the privilege of being with her at the Creche, but at times I have spent a Saturday afternoon there. When I have thus listened to the sorrowful details told by applicants for the admission of children, for advice or for help, I have been completely overcome, and have wondered how my wife could live through such experiences day after day. After hearing the particulars of a distressing case, she had to consider the capabilities of the institution and the state of the funds at her disposal, and in multitudes of cases she was obliged, with almost a broken heart, to refuse admission or help. Many cases were of course unsuitable, and I have heard her tenderly and lovingly reason with and advise the poor people, fathers as well as mothers, and exert the wonderful faculty she possessed for comforting them. I have seen them come helpless and bowed down with sorrow, and go away hopeful and consoled. I have heard her give advice to a man which has changed the whole course of his life."
Those whose lives are passed amid pleasant and happy surroundings will scarcely be able to realise what suffering a person of quick sensibilities has
27o	MARIE HILTON
to undergo who lives among the poor. Perhaps, after reading the few cases which I shall now give—taken at random from Marie Hilton's writings—the true force of the words " the burden of sympathy " will be better understood :
" A poor old woman came in with a very delicate baby in her arms. She shall state her own case. She said : This is my daughter's baby ; she was one of the best girls that ever lived. I have had a large family of boys, three of them were lost at sea. I have had a good deal of trouble, and my daughter would not get married till she was thirty, because she would take care of me. She died fifteen months after she was married. Her husband was a good man, and would have taken care of me and the baby, but the first voyage he went after his wife died the ship went down and all hands perished.' The poor old creature was so overwhelmed by the recital of her sorrows that it was difficult to comfort her."
" A young widow comes in with a beautiful baby in her arms ; her husband was lost at sea. Her face bears the grieved and bewildered look of one stricken by a mighty sorrow. We take
FINANCIAL TROUBLES	271
baby in, and she is thus enabled to go to work. Then comes an old woman who seems very poor, leading a little girl of between three and four years of age, named Lucy. She wears a little black hat trimmed with crape, and her face is very wistful. The old woman tells us that Lucy's mother died of consumption and her father died quite recently, after three days' illness, and since that the aunt who was going to take care of her died also. The old woman said : I am a sort of aunt of her mother's, and I would not put little Lucy in the workhouse, but if I can leave her here I can do my work happier, and will take her home on my return from my day's work.' The poor old creature is not less than sixty-five or seventy years of age."
" Just before the opening of the Home we received little Willie, aged eighteen months he was to remain with us until he was old enough to go to school. His father was a clerk, who died suddenly, leaving a wife and four children un-provided for. The poor widow thought to get her living by needlework, but her health failed, and she was quite unable to pay for her little boy. I told her not to distress herself, as we would get some one to pay for him, and if not he could be
272	MARIE HILTON
one of the ' Providence children.' I did not hear of her for some weeks. When she called one evening she was looking very ill, her complaint being heart-disease. After she had rested, she said, ' I have so longed to come to see you, and bring something for my dear child's keep.' She took half-a-sovereign from her purse and gave it to me, saying : ' It is a very small sum, but I have had so much trouble to save it, and to keep from changing it when saved ; ' and fearing I was about to refuse it, she said, ' Do take it, dear Mrs. Hilton ; God only knows what it has cost me, but I shall feel happier now I have paid something.' She is still unable to work much, but is going to the land where they shall hunger no more ; where the cross so meekly borne shall be exchanged for the crown, and all pain and weariness be as though they had not been.
" God's ways seem dark, but soon or late
They touch the shining hills of day."
" The following case was recommended to us by the missionary to the French : Leon was the child of a poor French artist , his age was three years and a half , his face was most lovely. His father always fetched him on Saturdays, and brought
FINANCIAL TROUBLES	273
him back on Sunday evenings. He spoke only a mixture of French and Spanish. It was most
interesting to notice how our children welcomed and tried to understand him, Pet acting the part of a perfect ' Mrs. Plornish,' interpreting the strange sounds into quaint sayings for the benefit of the nurses and children. His father was always delighted to tell how happy his little son was with us, and he once brought a little bouquet of rosebuds for ' chere mademoiselle' (Miss A. Hilton). One morning, on visiting the Creche, we found Leon very ill. The attack proved to be bronchitis. It was soon seen that the precious child would not recover, and it was one of the saddest sights we ever witnessed to see the poor father rejoicing over what he thought to be improvement when we could see that the child was fading slowly, though surely. A lady who visited the Creche had lost an only child. She entered into his sorrow and sent him a letter in his own language, pointing him to the source of all consolation ; but when my daughter read it to him he said, ' I need it not ; my child, my little one, is better.' He sat up four nights with the nurses. One night, after we had returned home, a messenger came to ask some one to come and speak
s
274	MARIE HILTON
to Leon's father. When my daughter saw him, he said, I have brought the soup' (which Leon had asked for), but Leon he cares not for it.' He was then told that the dear Lord was about to take his precious child to His heavenly kingdom. Oh,' he exclaimed, he cannot die ; I have no one in the whole world. Feel his pulse : it is good. Say he will live ! ' A nurse placed his hands on the child's feet, which were icy cold. He then leaned over the bed, saying, My little Leon will not leave papa,' but while he spoke the child was with the angels. His grief was very terrible. He asked for the letter, which he took away with him. About three weeks after he visited the home and said, Madam, my heart is very desolate ; have you a little one you could give me who has no one to take care of it ? ' I went through the institution with him, but no face was like that of his lost child's. He went away very sorrowful, but most grateful for all the care bestowed on his little Leon.
"The next case is very different in character, and yet it has touches of the pathetic. One day, in the winter, just as we were leaving for home, a man stood in the entrance-hall asking for the lady.' He appeared to have been drinking, but still it
FINANCIAL TROUBLES	275
could be seen that he was in great trouble. He presented a note which he said was from his
governor.' It stated that the man's name was Hill, and that he was a road-scraper employed by the Limehouse Board of Works. His wife having died, his two children were in the direst need, as the poor fellow was so bewildered by his grief as to be quite helpless. I think it was the most extraordinary interview I ever had. I could only imagine that he had been told not to swear, so he gave utterance to expressions (I could not even guess the meaning of some of them) to give force to his appeal ; his grief was really very great. He began his recital as follows : My poor gal's dead, and what be I to do with the little 'uns ? Who'd a thought as she'd a died ? She says to me, " Mate, I'm a-goin'." I says, " Where ? " She says, " Jim, I'm a-goin' to leave you and the little 'uns. And," she says, " give my shawl to mother and my best gown to Sally. And," she says, "Jim," she says, "be good to the children."' Here the poor fellow's grief became uncontrollable. When he recovered, he said, But she know'd what she was a-talkin' about, my poor gal did. I've been, this yere very day, and planted a rose-bush at one end of her grave, and a what you call a lauratiner at t'other ;
276	MARIE HILTON
what could a pore feller do more ? The Lord Mayor don't love his children no better nor I do, and if you takes 'em they're reg'lar wax-works for beauty.'
He arranged to pay two shillings per week each, and we received them the next day into the home. They certainly were beautiful children. Dorcas, aged six years, and Bessie, a fair-haired little one of only two summers. Their father paid regularly for some time, then ceased to come. Before we saw him again we received the following testimonial to his honesty, written on a scrap of dirty paper : Lady ilton ill is a man as will pay up Board o Works.'
" Late one Saturday evening a poor man came to my house, bringing a letter of recommendation from the Relieving Officer of Mile End, saying that he had lately lost his wife, was in consumption, and wished me to take charge of his little boy seventeen months old while he went into the country, adding that the case was one deserving sympathy. Our home was quite full, but I thought it best to see the poor man. The night was bitterly cold. His breathing was so laboured that it was some minutes before he could speak. His little boy was standing by his knee. He
FINANCIAL TROUBLES	277
said, pointing to him, I buried his mother this afternoon ; and what I want to ask you is, can I leave the little chap while I go to my sister's in the country ? I feel sure that would do me good ; and then I will come back and work for him.' The housekeeper was so grieved to see the dreadful state of the poor man that she offered to take the child into her room. I saw that for the poor fellow there was no earthly hope ; that the longing for familiar scenes and the face of his sister was one of those delusive hopes common to the disease from which he was suffering. The dear child, too, I saw would soon be gathered into the Saviour's fold. The poor man's face beamed with joy when I said we would manage to take his little one. He then said, I am but thirty-two. I have been a coke-burner, which has injured my lungs ; but my sister is a good nurse, and she will soon get me round.'
" I could not let him leave without asking what were his prospects for the journey that I knew he was so soon to take, and his answer was, You see, I haven't had my chance, I have worked seven days and seven nights on and off.'He seemed struck by my earnestness, and said, Well, perhaps, I never shall come back ; but my sister she
278	MARIE HILTON
knows all about what you're talking about. I'll leave you the little chap ; and if I never come back, God, they say, will pay the likes of you ! ' He went out into the bitter night, and in a day or two reached his sister in the country. Little Alfy began to fade directly, and for five weeks his sufferings were great, when the dear Lord took him to rest in the home above. Subsequently we heard that his father had died four days previously, and we trust that he found rest and peace.
" Oh, the crowds that are passing to the great Eternity, who, amid the clamour of life and the grasp of poverty, seem as if they re-echo the sad wail, You see, I haven't had my chance.' What can we do better than trust these in the hand of our loving Father, hoping that, beyond and above the grasp of our comprehension, infinite pity has folded away to meet this need some special mercy, some grand scheme of love, that will encompass these souls who were groping amid the shadows, longing for divine love and light, but failing to realise their blessedness.
" One day an old woman came in with a little blue-eyed girl in her arms, aged eighteen months. I thought it looked strange, and asked the reason.
FINANCIAL TROUBLES	279
The woman replied, The father and mother drink. I am its grandmother, but I cannot take care of it. Last night its mother threw it at her husband, and that frightened the baby.' We sent our visitor to make inquiries ; she found the statements correct, so left a card of admission. The child came for two days, and on the fourth died at home in convulsions. The poor distracted mother mourns bitterly for her little Queenie, as she called her baby, saying, If I had only worked like a good woman, and brought Queenie here, she would have been alive.' She has several tines come into the passage to bless the house and all in it for Oueenie's sake.
Another woman, who was generally well-conducted, took a spell of drinking, and for a month was almost in a state of madness. We kept the children in the Creche. One day, as she was hurrying past, she saw my Bible-woman, and exclaimed, I am going to drown myself.' She was induced to come in to see me, but it was a long time before we could soothe her ; her agony of mind was terrible to witness. She said, I have sinned against light and knowledge. My dear mother was a Christian ; and what sort of a mother am I ? ' At last she was persuaded to return
280	MARIE HILTON
home ; but in the night she became violent, and our Bible-woman was aroused, and going to the door, found a little child, not five years old, who had come alone through the streets to ask her :o go to mother.' The woman said afterwards s'ie remembered the child saying, Don't be frightened, mother ; I'll go and fetch the lady who never drinks the nasty beer.'
" Another of our babies had a most industrious mother, but a drunken father. One night there
was a fight in the room.	Little Willie vcas
scarcely two years old, and very delicate. His little voice pleaded, Don't hurt baby ; baby's good ! ' Still the fight went on ; but the cry of the helpless child reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, and in the night an angel came aid wrapped the frightened little one in a loving embrace, and carried him to the land of rest, to the loving care of the Good Shepherd.
" Paul is a child of eighteen months. His mother is a coloured woman. She had been living in Russia, but her husband deserted her, and she came to London hoping to be able to support her child and herself. She found it very difficult to obtain a situation, as she pathetically described to us, saying, You see, Mrs. Hilton,
FINANCIAL TROUBLES	28!
it's my colour ; some people tell me I should frighten the children, and if another servant is kept she would threaten to leave if I came.' At last she had to be content with a place in a large family with very small wages. She gave all her money to have her child looked after, and he, poor little thing, was dragged about the streets half naked. It was some time before we had a vacancy, but when at last we were able to admit little Paul his mother was full of joy, and all her other troubles seemed light in comparison with the anxiety she had suffered on account of her child.
" Ellen, three years old. Her mother, a widow, twenty-seven years old, was dying of cancer in the throat, but could not be persuaded to go into a hospital until a home was found for
her only child.	So little Ellen came to us,
bringing with her her mother's bible, a few trifles in a small parcel, and a message from the dying woman, saying that she prayed God to bless abundantly the home that sheltered her darling. She lingered several weeks in intense agony. A few days before her death she asked to have a last look at Ellen, so one of our nurses took her to St. George's Hospital. The poor mother
282	MARIE HILTON
was much comforted by the bright face of her child, who chatted merrily to her, unconscious that it was for the last time on earth.
" Beatrice, three and a half years old. Her father had deserted his family, and her mother had sunk to a shocking state of degradation. She took her poor little girl about from one public-house to another until closing time, when they were thrust out, sometimes falling on the wet pavements. At last she deserted the child altogether, and we took her in. I t is seldom that so young a child realised the misery of its surroundings sufficiently to put its feelings into words, but this little one told us most pathetically that she had no bread and butter, no frocks, and no nuffin at all.'
" Louisa, eleven years of age. Her mother has been dead some years ; her father is in a consumption. The child was sent to us by a lady to whom her mother had been a faithful servant for some years previous to her marriage. Louisa's father had married again, and his second wife neglected her and treated her with cruelty ; indeed, when the poor child first came to us she was in such a state of fear that at any sudden noise she would put up her hands as if to avoid a
FINANCIAL TROUBLES	283
blow. We have found her most affectionate and docile, and very helpful with the little ones.
" The next case I shall mention is the saddest of all. We received the three children of a man who was sentenced to death. His wife had wrecked his home, pawning all the household goods, and spending all his earnings in drink, and in a fit of frenzy he took her life. His sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life, and his earnest wish was that his children should be trained to a life of usefulness, and where they should never touch the article that had destroyed their home. A few weeks since his mother came to see the children, and seeing her unusually distressed, I inquired the cause. Amid her tears and sobs she said, `It's my poor Harry's birthday ; he is thirty to-day.' Poor mother ! who could comfort her, and who could wonder at the bitter grief for the sin and sorrow of a son who, as she said, had always been ' such a good boy' to her ? We could only commend her to the tender pity of the Father whose love is stronger and deeper than any earthly love can be.
" A mother came to ask admission for her two little girls, Mabel and Dorothy, aged five and six
284	MARIE HILTON
years. Her husband had been in prison eight months, and would be released in another month. The poor woman had suffered terribly in her endeavour to keep the home together, but she said, It would indeed be dreadful if he had no home to come to when he came out.' It was pathetic to witness her anxiety to give hope to the poor father, and, as it were, concealing the rents in the household by various loving devices. In asking me to take the little girls, she said, You see, if he was to see so many of us at once, he would lose heart.' She had a baby four months old in her arms. Seeing me look at the child, she said, I hope you do not think he is not a good father and fond of his children.' I did not question this, though I was deeply grieved at the case of the poor woman and the little girls. They were in a terrible state of distress, but thoroughly respectable. I consented to take Dorothy and Mabel, trusting that there might still be some brightness in the days to come. The case was strongly recommended by the local Committee of the Charity Organisation Society, who knew all the details.
" Another case was that of a mother who had been ordered to hospital to undergo a serious
FINANCIAL TROUBLES	285
operation, but at first she could not be persuaded to leave her little boys, Willie and Herbert, who had never been away from her a day in their lives. At last she consented to leave them with us ; our nurse kindly attending to all her directions about them, which soothed her very much. They were with us four months, by which time the mother was able to take charge of them."
These are types of the cases which came under my mother's notice day by day. In this atmosphere of suffering, among the people of saddened lives, giving her love and pity to all, she passed thirty years of her life.
In the year 1882 Marie Hilton sustained a severe loss. Her eldest daughter, Alice, who had been associated with her in the work of the Creche from the first, and who had done much of the secretarial work, married Mr. Henry J. Gill, of Guildford, and went to reside in that town. She was greatly missed by all the inmates of the Creche and Home, among whom she was very popular. She had visited the institutions with her mother almost daily, and was endeared to children and nurses alike by a hundred acts of kindness and
286	MARIE HILTON
sympathy. My younger sisters then gave all the help in their power in the work of correspondence, book-keeping and general management ; but in 1886, Eva, the youngest, married Mr. S. T. Dadd, the well-known artist, and went to live in Kent. After this second marriage a heavy share of the secretarial duties fell upon Marie Elmore, my second sister, who was an art student and Academy exhibitor ; but art had to give place to philanthropy, and for some years she devoted the major part of her time to helping her mother in the supervision of the institutions and in doing most of the clerical work. Her marriage with Dr. Thomas Cromwell Winn took place in 189o, but this did not sever her connection with the Creche ; she continued for a long time to render material assistance in the work of management.
Marie Hilton's daughters had left her, and age was creeping on, yet with undiminished courage, and enthusiasm still unquenched, she remained at the head of the institutions she had founded. The gout, which had now become chronic, made it impossible for her to walk many steps, but she generally drove over to the Creche twice a week. She received great assistance, and at a time, too, when help was sorely needed, from my brother's
FINANCIAL TROUBLES	287
wife, Mrs. J. A. Hilton (nee Winn), who devoted herself to the arduous task of conducting the correspondence of the institutions, and assisting in the management with much earnestness and ability. She was with my mother till the end, her help and sympathy being lovingly appreciated. In the year 1888, while residing in the Bow Road, Marie Hilton suffered a long and painful illness. She had been on a visit to her daughter at Guildford in the spring, and on her return the gout assumed an acute form. She remained bedridden for many months, undergoing all the terrible tortures the malady can inflict. It was feared by all her friends that she would never be able to walk again ; she was practically crippled for months ; but the end of the year found her partially restored and able to drive over to the Creche as usual. During her illness she was enabled by her wonderful power of will to keep control of her affairs. She dictated letters from her bed and directed the arrangements of the institutions ; a daily report from the responsible matron keeping her informed of every incident that took place, my sister Marie Elmore and Mrs. J. A. Hilton visiting the institutions frequently, and attending to the correspondence.
CHAPTER XVII
THE LAST DAYS
IN the autumn of the year 1892 Marie Hilton removed to Shore House, South Hackney, which, though only a short distance further from the Creche, was in a much more salubrious neighbourhood than Bow. In this old house, in a quiet street, just away from the busy hum of Mare Street, she spent the last four years of her life. This period was not to be one of rest and peace ; there was no rest for her on this side. The last years were darkened by almost constant bodily suffering ; by financial troubles, for as her health failed she lost much of her old power of keeping up the revenue of the institutions, and the thing she dreaded most, an accumulating debt, loomed near and terrible ; and worst of all, domestic afflictions came with awful suddenness. In this house of sorrow, she, who stood on the brink of the river herself, saw three of her beloved grand.
THE LAST DAYS	21,:k)
children depart before her. The shock of these deaths had a most depressing effect upon her health and spirits. She had limitless love and pity for all children, but this width of sympathy lessened in no degree her capacity for attaching herself passionately to individuals. Her love for her own children and her grandchildren was so deep and strong that those who did not know her would never have supposed that her affections could be so catholic and far-reaching. She never quite recovered the loss of these little ones she had loved, and who loved her so fondly. In the long illness that followed the first death she often uttered the name of her little grandson, and in the strange twilight land where she wandered for so many days she seemed to be seeking him, trying to clasp his baby hands, and listening for the voice that would never wake echo more. When the shadows fell away, and she came back to us for a time, she told of a wonderful vision she had had, which had satisfied her longing. She had been told that the loved one was at peace, and in safer keeping even than hers.
Her severe illness in i 893 began with a bronchial affection, which rapidly developed into double
290	MARIE HILTON
pneumonia. For many days she lay hovering between life and death. It seemed indeed that she could never recover. Her children were summoned, and though she was able at intervals to recognise them, she was never at any time conscious of her own danger. None of us had any hope. In that terrible time we tasted the bitterness of parting, and when, three years later, the end came, the stroke was softened to us. We had no hope, but who could gauge the strength of my mother's wonderful constitution ? Very slowly, and by almost imperceptible degrees, she came back to life. Her recovery was aided to a great extent by the genial spring of that year, which deepened into the most glorious summer and autumn the present century has seen. She was mercifully restored to our care and affection, with faculties unimpaired, and with but a faint recollection of her journey to the borders of the
Silent Land," for her illness had been almost painless.
In the month of June she was still very weak, and could only move about with great pain and difficulty, but a bazaar in aid of the Creche funds had been announced to take place at the Morley Hall, South Hackney, and against the advice and
THE LAST DAYS	291
persuasions of her doctor, Marie Hilton was there the day before the opening, directing with some-filing of her old energy the arrangements for the decoration of the stalls. It had been her practice to hold bazaars at intervals of two years ever since the foundation of the Creche. They were always occasions of great enjoyment. Her many friends gathered round her, glad of the opportunity of helping in the work. This one was no exception, for although it did not prove a great financial success, she was able to meet the old friends and workers, many of whom had given their services at similar functions for many years. On the first day the bazaar was opened by Lady Howard de Walden, who was accompanied by Lady Ottoline Cavendish Bentinck. Lady de Walden kindly came at the request of the Countess Aldenburg Bentinck, who was unavoidably prevented from coming. The next day the Right Hon. Lord Russell of Killowen, now the Lord Chief Justice of England, and Lady Russell performed the opening ceremony. Lord Russell said :
" He was still the member for South Hackney when he consented to take part in the proceedings
292	MARIE HILTON
of the bazaar. Although no longer their member, he yet took the warmest interest in the welfare of the constituency. Comparing the charitable insti- tutions of England with those of Continental countries, he remarked that, while the latter were for the most part State-aided, those of this country were almost entirely supported by voluntary efforts. Among the many institutions demanding support, he could not conceive of any charity which more earnestly pleaded for support than a Creche, which aimed at helping the poor and the children of the poor, and he recognised the fact that charity, rightly conceived and rightly viewed, regarded no religious distinction. Mrs. Hilton had cause for congratulation in the fact that her admirable and benevolent action in founding the Creche in England had been so widely copied."
Lady Russell then declared the bazaar open.
A sale of surplus stock followed at the old meeting-house, Ratcliff, at which Marie Hilton was able to be present. In the brief season that
remained to her she was able to accomplish much. Aided by her daughter, Mrs. Winn, and her daughter-in-law, Mrs. J. A. Hilton, she still carried on the Creche work, but alas ! with great anxiety and suffering. The attacks of gout became more
THE LAST DAYS	293
persistent and prolonged, and it was only occasionally, when the weather was fair, that she could drive over to the Creche.
In the year 1895 she was much cheered by a street collection that was made by some working people of the East End. It was an evidence of the estimation in which the Creche was held by the class for whose benefit it was established. A temperance association—the Sons of the Phoenix —whose members are found exclusively amongst the working-men of London, organised the collection, and paraded the streets of Stepney and the adjacent districts with bands and banners. This collection, so generously undertaken, resulted in a
sum of	being added to the Creche funds.
Among the great mass of bronze coin paid in was an immense number of farthings, showing that hundreds of little children had dropped their mites into the boxes. My mother was inexpressibly touched and gratified with this voluntary testimony to the value of her work.
The sands were running out fast. The opening months of the following year (1896) found her growing steadily weaker. But at Easter she was able to leave her room and spend Good Friday and Easter Monday with her family, although
294	MARIE HILTON
there was a tired spiritless look on her face which showed that life was becoming a weariness to her. The keen air of the season must have struck a chill to her, for she returned to her bed, from which she was never more to rise. For a few days we were not without hope ; she was still able to sign cheques and send messages to the Creche. But on April 9 the symptoms of bronchial trouble became acute, and, though on the evening of that day she roused occasionally and was able to converse, it was evident that her vast reserve of vitality had been drawn upon too heavily, and life was slowly ebbing. On the morning of the loth she was still alive, but a deathlike coma numbed her senses, and she saw not the light of the bright April day. A little before noon the golden gates swung open and God's peace fell on her, and, without a struggle or a cry, she passed out of our knowledge. Death was very merciful. So softly and gently the change came, her passing was like a little child falling asleep, and we hardly knew the exact moment when she entered into rest.
" Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord. They do rest from their labours, and their works follow them."
THE LAST DAYS	295
Marie Hilton was in her seventy-fifth year when she died. She was buried on Tuesday, April 14, 1896, at the Friends' Burial Ground, Wanstead, Essex, according to the usages of the Society.
In the foregoing pages I have dealt with my mother's public work more fully than with her life. The true record of her life, as showing her love, her tenderness, her quick forgiveness, her long-suffering, can never be fully told ; it belongs to the secret history of English womanhood. Our land is richly endowed with women whose lives are beautiful. Every day English mothers die, perfect in love and fulfilled duty, ennobled by long self-sacrifice, whose only memoir is written in the hearts of their children. The recollection of our mother's noble life is our most sacred possession, a legacy more precious than gold. In the beautiful words of Robertson of Brighton : " If there is anything in this life sacred, any remembrance filled with sanctifying power, any voice which symbolises to us the voice of God, it is the recollection of the pure and holy ones that have been taken from us, and of their examples and sacred words."
296	MARIE HILTON
In every relation of life, as wife, as mother, and as friend, the beauty of Marie Hilton's character shone out brightly, as its stronger side manifested itself in the great schemes of charity she directed so successfully. And—I mention it as but one testimony to her great love and true womanly discretion—when the mourners stood round her grave, her daughters' husbands were stricken with a grief, and sense of irreparable loss, scarcely less keen than that of her own sons.
Her work was done, her hours were full of pain, and she was very weary when she passed to the rest her stormy, hurried life had never known ; yet did we " grudge her sair to the Land o' the Leal."
Those who knew her not may perhaps wonder at the bitterness of our regrets when her life, so full of years and honour, came to a close ; but to us she was never old. She watched the march of events in the world's history with the bright intelligence of her earlier years ; and her interest in all that concerned the welfare of her children and those of her house was as kindly and thoughtful as ever. We lost our mother ; we lost, too, the friend and dear companion of our lives. Time may speak to our hearts, and teach us patience
THE LAST DAYS	297
and resignation ; but the great loss and void can never be filled until our own journey is ended, and—for Death cannot prove more cruel than Life —we see her and know her again.
Blessed, indeed, are they who, when the grave has closed over a beloved parent, are able to say without reservation : I have nothing to regret, no duties left undone, no obedience withheld, no love and tenderness held back, no bitter memories of pain and sorrow inflicted. And blessed is he who is spared the knowledge of the greatest love, because unto him most was forgiven.
INDEX
ABANDONMENT of children, 259-263
American visitors at Brighton, 34
Assault at Ratcliff, 113, 114
BAZAAR at City Terminus Hotel, 245 Hackney, 290, 291
Bethnal Green, the poor at, 66 Bricklayer, heroism of a, 38, 39 Bromley, Middlesex, life at, 45, 46, 47 Brussels Crèche, 18r, 182
Brutality of London roughs, 79-87
Burglars in hiding, 140
CHILDREN, abandonment of, 259-263
birth of, 26
profanity of, 184-202
unsuitable diet, 187
Christmas guests, 37
Correspondence upon the Creche, 242, 243
Country home, the, 25o, 251, 252
Crèche,
Brussels at, 181, 182
cases at the, specified, 204, 205
Chicago, at, 240
children left at the, 259-263
correspondence regarding, 242, 243
criticisms on, 177, 179, 193, 194
description of a day at, by John Hilton, 269
first days at, 184-189
300	INDEX
Creche,
furnishing of the, 227, 22S
Gilbert's, Mr. W., description of, 210-218
Hartford, Connecticut, at, 241
in India, 243
infirmary at the, 248, 249, 250
influence on the children, 235
on the mothers, 190, 232
Jerrold's, Blanchard, article on, 194-209
Manning, Cardinal, and the, 238, 239
need of, at Ratcliff, 180, 181
press, the, and the, 223, 236
Princess Christian as patroness, 236
Sanitary Register, article on, 218-223
Shaftesbury, Earl of, and the, 245
State aid for, 265
street collection in aid of, 293
unsectarian character of, 177, 178
visitors to, 245
word used in old Bibles, 176
DEPUTATION, a strange, 113
Dialect, London, 69-77
Dickens, Charles, and the poor, 93, 94, 96
and temperance, 147
Donkey, a, as bedfellow, 6z
Drink curse, the, 142-174, 181, 188-190
instances of people rescued from drunkenness, 151-156
and teetotalers, 152, 153
EAST END, Sir Walter Besant on the, 53
brutality in the, 79-87
described, 52-68
dwellings, 6o, 61
poverty, causes of, 57
trades in the, 54
wit and humour in the, 77-79
FIGHTING women, 8o-84, 132, 133
Forbes, Mr. Archibald, at Ratcliff, 139, 140
INDEX	301
Foundlings at the Creche, 259-263
Friends' Meeting House at Ratcliff, history and description,
117-120
Funds, lack of, 136, 265, 266
GILBERT'S, Mr. W., description of Creche, 210-218 Gill's, Mrs. H. J., recollections of her mother, 41-44
HACKNEY, residence at, 288
Harrow man, death of an old, in Ratcliff, 66, 67
Hartford, Connecticut, Creche at, 241
Hero, a little, 233, 234
Heroine in humble life, a, ion-106
Hilton, John,
description of a day at the Crèche, by, 269
letter to the Morning Star, 102-1o6
mission work at Ratcliff, and, 126
Society of Friends, and, 23, 24
Temperance movement, and, 27-30
Hilton, Marie,
agnostic, letter to an, 48, 5o
animals, love of, 40
birth, Do
childhood, 12
Christianity, belief in, 14
Church of England, severance from, 19
Congregationalism, adhesion to, 20
courage, 7, 8, 28, 131-133
" Creche system " paper written for the Philanthropic
Section, Chicago Exhibition, 180-189, 190-194
devotion to duty, 230
Dickens, Charles, appreciation of, 39, 4o
domestic management, 25
dreams, prophetic, 15-19
fallen women, tenderness to, 41, 44
generosity, 6, 33, 34
Hackney, residence at, 288
humour, sense of, 4
illness at Bow, 287
at 13romley, 47
302	INDEX
Hilton, Marie
illness at Hackney, 289, 29o, 293, 294
injustice of life, thoughts on, 15
last days, 293, 294
marriage, 24
marriages of daughters, 285, 286
Mother Stewart, friendship with, 174, 175
" Our Homes in Danger," paper read at Oxford, 167-173
personal appearance, 32, 33
prayer answered, 266, 267
Quakers' meeting, first attendance at, 23
recollections, early, II
Scriptural knowledge, 13
Sunday School work at Westminster, 21
at Brighton, 22
Temperance question, and the, 142, 147, 157-166, 173
unsectarianism, 7
woman's mission, words on, 224, 225
"Woman's Responsibilities in relation to Temperance,"
paper read at the Mansion House, 157-166
youthfulness of spirit, 5
IMPOSTORS, 138, 139
India, Creche in, 243
Infant mortality, 248
Infirmary at Creche, 248-25o
JERROLD'S, MR. BLANCHARD, visit to the Creche, 194-209 KIPLING, MR. RUDYARD, and the East End, 95
LAST days, 293, 294
Lewes, riotous meeting at, 29, 3o
Limehouse, life in, io8-112
Lucas, Mrs. Margaret Bright, 142, 174
MANNING, Cardinal, and the London poor, 65 message and subscription, 238, 239
in Ratcliff, 113
Mission work commenced at Ratcliff, 126-128
INDEX	303
Morrison, Mr. Arthur, and the East End, 95, g6 Mother Stewart, 174, 175
NOBLE deeds of the poor, 88-107, 191
Novelists and the poor, 93-96
OVERCROWDING, 139, 140
" Our Homes in Danger," paper by Marie Hilton at Oxford, 167-173
PARENTAL rights, a hard case, 257-259
Poker fight, a, 132
Prayer answered, 266, 267
Princess Christian as patroness of the Creche, 236
gifts from, 237
Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, gifts from, 237
Louise of Schleswig-Holstein, gifts from, 237
Prison and workhouse compared, 234, 235
Pugilist, a, as lecturer, 127, 128
QUAKERS' Meeting House at Ratcliff, history and description,
117-120
conservatism of, 120, 121
Quakerism, revival of, 121
RATCLIFF streets, first impressions of, 115-117
first experiences of, 112
Realf, Colonel Richard, 34-37
Relief tickets, abuse of, 141
Russell of Killowen, Lord, at Creche bazaar, 291, 292
" SANITARY REGISTER," article in, 218-223
Self-sacrifice among the poor, instances of, 83-1o7, 191
Sewing classes, 129, 130
a rough intruder at the, 131
Shaftesbury, the Earl of, and the London poor, 65
and the Crèche, 245
speech at Crèche bazaar, 245-247
Soup-kitchen, 134
Sorrowful cases, 27o-285
304	INDEX
Stewart, Mother, 174, 175
Stepney Causeway described, x14, 115, 197-199
Street collection, 293
fight, a, two views of, 81-84
Sympathy of the poor with the poor, 192
TEETOTALERS and the drink curse, 152, 153
Temperance meetings upset on the North Level, 28
at Lewes, riotous, 29, 30
movement, advance of the, 27
question considered, 142-174
" Woman's Responsibilities," paper read by Marie
Hilton, 157-166
work at Brighton, 28
Temporary Home, particulars of cases at, 253-263
Training Creche servants, 228
VERMIN, 62, 229, 230
WHITTIER, J. G., letters from, 240, 241
Widows, large number of in Ratcliff, 231
Wilberforce, Canon Basil, his preface to Marie Hilton's
Temperance paper, 157, 158
Workhouse and prison compared, 234, 235
the people's dread of, 234
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English Cathedrals.
1. Westmintier Abbey.
By the Very REV. F. W. FARRAR, D.D., Dean of Canterbury. Illustrated by HERBERT RAILTON.
2. York Minster.
By the Very REV. A. P. PUREY-CUST, D.D., Dean of
York. Illustrated by ALEXANDER ANSTED.
Winchester Cathedral.
By the REV. WILLIAM BENHAM, B.D., Canon of Canterbury. Illustrated by HERBERT RAILTON.
4. St. Alban's Abbey.
By the REV. EDWARD LIDDELL, M.A., Canon of Durham. Illustrated by F. G. KITTON.
5. Canterbury Cathedral.
By the Hon. and Very REV. W. H. FREMANTLE, D.D., Dean of Ripon. Illustrated by W. LAPWORTH.
6. Norwich Cathedral.
By the Very REV. W. LEFROY, D.D., Dean of Norwich. Illustrated by ALEXANDER ANSTED.
Gloucester Cathedral.
By the Very Rev. H. D. M. SPENCE, D.D., Dean of Gloucester. Illustrated by HERBERT RAILTON.
8. Salisbury Cathedral.
By the Very REV. G. D. BOYLE, M.A., Dean of Salisbury, Illustrated by ALEXANDER ANSTED.
St. Paul's Cathedral.
By the REV. W. C. E. NEWBOLT, M.A., Canon of St. Paul's. Illustrated by HERBERT RAILTON.
io. Ely Cathedral.
By the REV. W. E. DICKSON, Canon of Ely. Illustrated
by ALEXANDER ANSTED.
To be followed by many others.
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