From Workhouse to Westminster Part 13

The workmen had just cause to bless the Poplar County Councillor.

It was owing to Mr. Crooks's efforts that a revised schedule of wages was adopted. The result of this was that the contractors paid an additional 26,000 in wages. With all his zeal for the workmen, Mr. Crooks never once came in conflict with either the contractors or the engineers. Men and masters at Blackwall have all held the worthy Labour Councillor in the highest regard, and both are sorry that their long and cheerful connection must now be severed.

The same number of the _Munic.i.p.al Journal_ contained an article by Crooks himself, ent.i.tled, "A Labour View of the Blackwall Tunnel." The article displayed with what tact and modesty the Labour member had safeguarded the interests of his own cla.s.s without neglecting the interests of the people of London. It bore out the statement made in his first speech to the Council, that no contractor ever lost by paying the trade union rate of wages.

CHAPTER XIII

THE TASK OF HIS LIFE BEGINS

Elected to the Poplar Board of Guardians--b.u.mbledom in Power--Prison preferred to Workhouse--Poverty treated like Crime.

Six months after his return to the London County Council, Poplar elected Crooks to the Board of Guardians. When he took his seat as a member in the very Board-room where thirty years before he clung timorously to his mother's skirt he knew that the task of his life had begun.

He and his friend George Lansbury were elected together--the only Labour men on a Board of twenty-four. They were the firstfruits of the reduced qualification for Guardians introduced by Mr. (afterwards Lord) Ritchie, at that time President of the Local Government Board.

To Crooks belongs much of the credit for this welcome change. He felt keenly that working-men and women could never become Guardians of the Poor so long as the 40 property qualification remained. He persuaded the Poplar Trustees, of whom he was one, to ask the Local Government Board to make it possible for workpeople to become Guardians. Mr.

Ritchie, ever sympathetic towards the East-End, a division of which he was then representing in Parliament, met this request from Poplar by lowering the qualification to 10. His successor at the Local Government Board, Sir Henry Fowler, abolished the property qualification altogether.

At the time of Crooks's election the dissatisfaction felt by ratepayers with the old Guardians was deep and bitter. The Local Government Board has evidence in its possession that poor people of the district were saying at the time that if you wanted out-relief you must move into such and such a street, where rents were collected by someone who had influence with the Board.

Inside the workhouse Crooks found a state of things that seems incredible to-day. b.u.mbledom held sway over paupers and Guardians alike.

There were Guardians who had never been inside the workhouse once. When Crooks attempted to enter as a Guardian he found that the Master had power to shut the gate upon him. Without the Master's permission, except on the regular House Committee days, Guardians had no legal right inside the workhouse at all.

The two Labour men raised such a hubbub over this anomaly that Sir Henry Fowler issued an order giving a Guardian the right to enter the workhouse at any reasonable hour. As a result there began, not only in Poplar but all over the country, a marked improvement in the treatment of old people in workhouses.

Here was a distinct score at the first venture. With the right of admission established, Crooks made full use of it. He found most of the officers hostile. So much so, that during a fire that broke out in the workhouse bakery, bringing the brigade engines round, one of the officers exclaimed, in the presence of the others when the fire was at its height:--

"The only thing wanting now is that Crooks and Lansbury should be put on the top of it."

The cheers with which this remark was received were soon to give way to grave concern. It was clear the two Labour men meant to put an end to many things. Several of the officers were summarily suspended by Crooks one morning when he appeared on the scene unexpectedly.

A woman inmate had contrived to escape from the workhouse. She came round to his house and knocked him up. In consequence of an alarming story she told him respecting the conditions under which a fellow inmate had died in her arms that very night, Crooks hurried round to the inst.i.tution and suspended certain of the officers on the spot.

The officers whom Crooks had suspended were dismissed by the Board. Nor were they by any means the last to be dismissed or to take their departure, for other scandals were brought to light.

"We found the condition of things in the House almost revolting," Crooks stated in evidence before the Local Government Board Inquiry of 1906.

"The place was dirty. The stores were empty. The inmates had not sufficient clothes, and many were without boots to their feet. The food was so bad that the wash-tubs overflowed with what the poor people could not eat. It was almost heart-breaking to go round the place and hear the complaints and see the tears of the aged men and women.

"'Poverty's no crime, but here it's treated like crime,' they used to say.

"Many of them defied the regulations on purpose to be charged before a magistrate, declaring that prison was better than the workhouse.

"One day I went into the dining-room and found women sitting on the long forms, some sullen, some crying. In front of each was a basin of what was alleged to be broth. They called it greasy water, and that was exactly what it looked and tasted like. They said they had to go out and wash blankets on that. I appealed to the master to give them something to eat, as they said they would sooner go to prison than commence work on that. Those women, like the men, were continually contriving to get sent to prison in order to escape the workhouse. After a few heated words between the master and me he gave them some food, and none of them went to prison that day.

"A few weeks later I was in the workhouse when these same women were creating a fearful uproar.

"'Ah, there you are,' said the master, meeting me. 'Go and look at your angels now! A nice lot they are to stick up for!'

"I went to the dining-room. There was a dead silence the moment I entered.

"'I am right down ashamed of you,' I said. 'When you were treated like animals, no wonder you behaved like animals. Now that Mr. Lansbury and I have got you treated like human beings, we expect you to behave like human beings.'

"They said not a word, and later in the day the ringleaders, without any prompting, came to me and expressed their regret. From that day to this no such scene among the workhouse women has ever been repeated.

"The staple diet when I joined the Board was skilly. I have seen the old people, when this stuff was put before them, picking out black specks from the oatmeal. These were caused by rats, which had the undisturbed run of the oatmeal bin. No attempt was made to cleanse the oatmeal before it was prepared for the old people.

"Whenever one went into the men's dining-room there were quarrels about the food. I have had to protect old and weak men against stronger men, who would steal what was eatable of their dinners. There was no discipline. The able-bodied men's dining-room on Sundays gave one as near an approach to h.e.l.l as anything on this earth. It was everybody for himself and the devil take the hindmost. If a fellow could fight he got as much as he wanted. If he could not, he got nothing. Fights, followed by prosecutions at the police courts, were common. The men boasted that prison had no worse terrors than that place. They were absolutely beyond control. They wandered about all over the place, creating all kinds of discord, and even threatening to murder the officers. Two labour masters nearly lost their lives in trying to control them.

"The inmates were badly clothed as well as badly fed. Not one of them had a change of clothing. Their under-clothes were worn to rags. If they washed them they had to borrow from each other in the interval.

"The inmates' clothes were not only scanty, they were filthy. On one occasion the whole of the workhouse linen was returned by the laundry people because it was so over-run with vermin that they would not wash it.

"One of the inmates--a woman--who was doing hard work at scrubbing every day, asked me whether she couldn't have a pair of boots.

"'Surely,' I said, putting her off for the time, 'n.o.body here goes without boots?'

"A second and a third time when I came across her scrubbing the floors she pleaded for boots. She raised her skirt from the wet stone floor, and showed two sloppy pieces of canvas on her feet, and that was all she had in the way of boots."

Crooks went on to relate that he walked along the corridor and saw a female officer. "There's a woman over there who has asked me three times to get her a pair of boots," he said.

She drew her skirt round her and said, "Oh, why do you worry about these people; they are not our cla.s.s."

"Worry about them!" Crooks rejoined. "What do you mean by our cla.s.s? We are here to see these people properly clothed. I do not want to quarrel, but that woman must have a pair of boots to-day."

CHAPTER XIV

THE MAN WHO FED THE POOR

Chairman of the Poplar Board of Guardians--b.u.mbledom Dethroned--Paupers' Garb Abolished--Two Presidents of the Local Government Board Approve Crooks's Policy.

This, then, was the state of the workhouse when Crooks went on the Board. It was soon evident that a strong man had arrived. He whom some of the Guardians at first described as "a ranter from the Labour mob"

soon proved himself the best administrator among them.

Within five years of his election he was made Chairman. The Board insisted on his retaining the chair for ten consecutive years. During that time he wrought out of the shame and degradation he found in the workhouse a system of order and decency and humane administration that for a long time made the Poplar Union a model among Poor Law authorities, and one frequently recommended by the Local Government Board.

Of course he made enemies. Some of the old Guardians whom he had turned out of public life nursed their resentment in secret. Others joined them, including contractors who had fared lavishly under the old _regime_. Presently a Munic.i.p.al Alliance was formed, and though it could do nothing against Crooks at the poll, since the ratepayers would persist in placing him at the top, it found other methods of attacking him, of which more hereafter.

One of the first things he aimed at was a change in the character both of officers and of Guardians. He saw no hope for the poor under the old rulers. At each succeeding election his opposition brought about the defeat of the worst of them.

The officers could not be dealt with so publicly. Some of the officers in the infirmary, addicted to drunkenness, were able to defy the Guardians for an obvious reason. It was one of their duties to take whisky and champagne into the infirmary for the delectation of some of the Guardians, whom a billiard table often detained into the early hours. Crooks and Lansbury raised such indignation in the district as to make it impossible for this state of things to continue.