From Workhouse to Westminster Part 15

When Crooks proposed the simple expedient of sending these children to the surrounding day-schools everybody seemed amazed.

The idea had never been heard of before. The London School Board of the day did not take kindly to it at all. It poured cold water on the project at first. The neighbouring schools were nearly all full, and the Board thought it would hear no more of the matter by suggesting that if the Guardians could find vacant places they were at liberty of course to send the children.

Crooks framed an answering letter that it was the School Board's duty to find the places, and that, come what would, the Guardians were determined to send the children to the day schools.

Soon places were found for all. The little people who, through neglect and idleness in the workhouse, had been getting steeped in pauperism, were now dressed in non-inst.i.tution clothes, and they went to and from the neighbouring schools, playing on the way like any other children.

That was the beginning of a system destined to have a far-reaching effect on Poor Law children all over the country. Other Unions, faced with the same problem, seeing how well it had been dealt with at Poplar, went and did likewise.

The Labour Guardian did not rest there. The children were a great deal better for coming in daily contact with the outside world, but much of the good work was undone by their having to spend every night in the workhouse. He wanted to keep them away altogether from its contaminating influence. He persuaded the Guardians to purchase a large dwelling house about a quarter of a mile away from the workhouse. This became a real home for the children. There they are brought up and regularly sent to the public day schools outside, entirely free from workhouse surroundings.

So long as the mark of the workhouse clings to children, so long, says Crooks, will children cling to the workhouse. That is what makes him so keen in getting rid of the inst.i.tution dress and of everything else likely to brand a child.

He helped to banish all that suggested pauperism from the Forest Gate School. The children were educated and grew up, not like workhouse children, as before, but like the children of working parents. With what result? Marked out in their childhood as being "from the workhouse,"

they often bore the stamp all their life and ended up as workhouse inmates in their manhood and womanhood. Under the new system, they were made to feel like ordinary working-cla.s.s children. They grew up like them, becoming ordinary working-men and working-women themselves; so that the Poor Law knew them no longer.

"If I can't appeal to your moral sense, let me appeal to your pocket,"

Crooks once remarked at a Guildhall Poor Law Conference. "Surely it is far cheaper to be generous in training Poor Law children to take their place in life as useful citizens than it is to give the children a n.i.g.g.ardly training and a branded career. This latter way soon lands them in the workhouse again, to be kept out of the rates for the rest of their lives."

How far the principle was carried out at Forest Gate may be judged from the report made by Mr. Dugard, H.M. Inspector of Schools, after one of his visits. Thus:--

There is very little (if any) of the inst.i.tution mark among the children.... Both boys' and girls' schools are in a highly satisfactory state, showing increased efficiency, with increased intelligence on the part of the children.... They compare very favourably with the best elementary schools.

In all that related to games and healthful recreation Crooks agreed in giving the scholars the fullest facilities. The lads were encouraged to send their football and cricket teams to play other schools. The girls developed under drill and gymnastic training, and became proficient swimmers.

In fact, the scholars at Forest Gate began to count for something. They learnt to trust each other and to rely upon themselves. They grew in hope and courage. They learnt to walk honourably before all men. In consequence, thousands of them have become merged in the great working world outside, self-respecting men and women.

I met Crooks looking elated one evening, and he told me he had just come from the Poor Law schools' swimming compet.i.tion at Westminster baths.

"There were three trophies," he said. "The first, the London Shield, was for boys. Poplar won that with 85 marks, five more than the next best.

The second, the Portsmouth Shield, was for girls, with a Portsmouth school competing. Our Poplar girls won that with 65 marks, the two next schools getting only 35 each. The third trophy, the Whitehall Shield, for the school as a whole with the highest number of marks, was also won by Poplar. I feel as pleased as though I'd done it myself."

The best administration in an out-of-date building is always hampered.

Forest Gate belonged to the old order of Poor Law schools known as barrack buildings. Although the Guardians made the very best of the school, there were structural defects that hindered the work seriously.

It was therefore decided to build cottage homes at Shenfield in Ess.e.x, where a special effort is being made to train the girls as well as the boys in rural pursuits in order to keep them out of the overcrowded cities.

The Parliamentary Committee on Poor Law Schools that sat in 1896 invited Crooks to give evidence. Many of the things he urged were included in the Committee's recommendations. Among them was the extension of the full benefit of the Education Act and the Technical Education Acts to all Poor Law children.

"The wine and spirit dues that provide the technical education grants,"

he told the committee, "might be said to belong to Poor Law children by right, because it is always being urged that it is owing to drunken parents that these children get into the workhouse. I don't believe it, but there is the claim."

At that time the Poor Law schools received no benefits in the way of scholarships or technical education grants. It was largely due to his advocacy that the scholars were at last given the same opportunities as other children. One of the great moments of his life was when he opened a letter from the headmaster at the Hunslet Poor Law school, telling him that "in consequence of what you have done, one of our boys has just taken a County Scholarship--the first Poor Law child to benefit under the Technical Education Acts."

Crooks would like to go much further. Until Poor Law children are taken entirely away from the control of Guardians he will never be satisfied.

Why should the authority that looks after workhouses for the old and infirm be entrusted with the task of training the young? The two duties lie as far apart as East from West. He would place these children wholly under the education authority.

No matter where, he is always ready to put in a word for Poor Law children on the least opportunity. It was news to his colleagues on the London County Council when, in the course of a debate in the summer of 1894, he told of his own experience in a Poor Law school. He seems to have made a deep impression by his speech on that occasion, judging by the following comment made shortly afterwards by the _Munic.i.p.al Journal_;--

Those who heard Mr. Crooks's speech in the Council Chamber, when the subject of the training of Poor Law children came up on a side issue, will not readily forget it. One of the daily papers, in its admiration the next day, declared it to be the best speech heard at the Council. Be that as it may, the speech, coming spontaneously with the pent-up indignation of a soul that had suffered sorely from a pernicious system, was a marvellous one, producing a marvellous effect. Councillors in the front benches turned round and visitors in the gallery stretched forward to catch a glimpse of the short dark figure on the Labour bench pleading so powerfully for the children of the poor.

Nor had he been in the House of Commons long before his voice was heard there on behalf of workhouse children. Speaking in a debate in 1903 on the various methods of dealing with these children, he said:--

At one time there was no stronger advocate of boarding-out than myself. It is an ideal system in theory, but its success by practical application has yet to be proved. Many requests are made by country people to be allowed to adopt children on charitable grounds, but when inquiries come to be made into the incomes of these people the Guardians generally find it is hoped to make a profit out of the children. I have visited a village where a widow boarded four children--two more than the law allows. For these children she was paid sixteen shillings a week. She lived in a district where the labourer's wages were only eleven shillings.

In regard to another case I personally investigated, I asked how the boy was getting on.

"Oh, all right; but he is growing so big and eats such a lot that I wish you would take him away and send me a smaller boy."

The boarded-out children, so far from losing the pauper taint, are more frequently known by the name of the Union from which they come than by their own names. In fact, in some villages, I found "boarding-out" a staple industry. Boarding-out is all right in good homes; the difficulty is to find good homes.

Not long after he made this speech, there was an outcry in a section of the Press over "an amazing example of extravagance" at Poplar. It appeared in the form of a letter from a correspondent. The correspondent--who turned out to be a member of a firm of contractors--waxed virtuously indignant over the Guardians' tenders because they included, he alleged, supplies of luxuries for paupers. The so-called luxuries for the most part proved to be medical comforts ordered by the doctor for the ailing. Among the other items was 1 cwt.

of pat-a-cake biscuits, and these were singled out specially as a specimen of how the workhouse inmates were pampered.

I met Crooks in the Lobby of the House of Commons at the time of the outcry, and asked what he thought of it all.

"Perfectly true," he said. "We in Poplar are guilty of the great crime of inviting tenders for the supply of a few pat-a-cakes; but our horrified critics are in error in a.s.suming that the pat-a-cakes are for the workhouse inmates. They are for the children. We order 1 cwt. for the half-year, which I believe works out at the rate of a cake for each child about once a week. There's extravagance for you! Isn't it scandalous? Just imagine our kiddies in the workhouse school getting a whole pat-a-cake to eat!

"That's not the worst of it. Those youngsters of ours, not content with getting an occasional pat-a-cake, have actually been overheard to sing the nursery rhyme on the subject. We shall be having a Local Government Board inspector sent down to stop it if it leaks out. You should hear the little ones holding forth!

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man, Bake me a cake as fast as you can!

p.r.i.c.k it, and pat it, and mark it with T, And put it in the oven for Tommy and me.

"The youngsters lie awake at nights, wondering when their turn will come again to have a farthing pat-a-cake. One of the little girls came running up to me in the playground the other day, exclaiming: 'Oh, Mr.

Crooks, what do you think? I had a pat-a-cake for tea last Sunday. They promised it to us the day before, and I was so pleased when I went to bed that night that I nearly forgot to go to sleep.'"

CHAPTER XVI

ON THE METROPOLITAN ASYLUMS BOARD

Mr. Chaplin's Humane Circular to Poor Law Guardians--Crooks Appointed a Member of the Metropolitan Asylums Board--Chairman of the Children's Committee--His Knack of Getting His Own Way--Reorganising the Labour Conditions of the Board's Workmen.

We have seen that the policy of Poor Law reform which Crooks was carrying out at Poplar won the good-will of the Local Government Board.

Soon after Mr. Henry Chaplin took his seat in Lord Salisbury's Cabinet of 1895 he sent for Crooks, and the two spent a whole morning discussing the weak points in our Poor Law system. Mr. Chaplin made many notes during the conversation, and at parting good-naturedly remarked that Crooks had given him enough work to occupy the next two or three years.

Shortly afterwards, the Minister and the Labour man made a personal investigation of Poplar and other East-End workhouses and infirmaries.

The visit to each inst.i.tution was a surprise one. When the two men entered the children's ward of the Mile End workhouse, they found the nurses absent and the children screaming. In about half a minute Crooks had all the children laughing.