In Darkest England and the Way Out Part 9

Since the commencement in 1888, we have supplied over three and a half million meals. Some idea can be formed of the extent to which these Food and Shelter Depots have already struck their roots into the strata of Society which it is proposed to benefit, by the following figures, which give the quant.i.ties of food sold during the year at our Food Depots.

FOOD SOLD IN DEPOTS AND SHELTERS DURING 1889.

Article Weight Measure Remarks Soup ......... 116,400 gallons Bread 192.5 tons 106,964 4-lb loaves Tea 2.5 tons 46,980 gallons Coffee 15 cwt. 13,949 gallons Cocoa 6 tons 29,229 gallons Sugar 25 tons ..................... 300 bags Potatoes 140 tons ..................... 2,800 bags Flour 18 tons ..................... 180 sacks Peaflour 28.5 tons ..................... 288 sacks Oatmeal 3.5 tons ..................... 36 sacks Rice 12 tons ..................... 120 sacks Beans 12 tons ..................... 240 sacks Onions and parsnips 12 tons ..................... 240 sacks Jam 9 tons ..................... 2,880 jars Marmalade 6 tons ..................... 1,920 jars Meat 15 tons .....................

Milk .......... 14,300 quarts

This includes returns from three Food Depots and five Shelters.

I propose to multiply their number, to develop their usefulness, and to make them the threshold of the whole Scheme. Those who have already visited our Depots will understand exactly what th is means.

The majority, however, of the readers of these pages have not done so, and for them it is necessary to explain what they are.

At each of our Depots, which can be seen by anybody that cares to take the trouble to visit them, there are two departments, one dealing with food, the other with shelter. Of these both are worked together and minister to the same individuals. Many come for food who do not come for shelter, although most of those who come for shelter also come for food, which is sold on terms to cover, as nearly as possible, the cost price and working expenses of the establishment. In this our Food Depots differ from the ordinary soup kitchens.

There is no gratuitous distribution of victuals. The following is our Price List: --

WHAT IS SOLD AT THE FOOD DEPOTS.

For a child

Soup Per Basin 1/4d Soup With Bread 1/2d Coffee or Cocoa per cup 1/4d Coffee or Cocoa With Bread and Jam 1/2d

For adults

Soup .. .. .. Per Basin 1/2d Soup .. .. .. With Bread 1d Potatoes .. .. .. .. .. 1/2d Cabbage .. .. .. .. .. 1/2d Haricot Beans .. .. .. .. 1/2d Boiled Jam Pudding .. .. .. 1/2d Boiled Plum Pudding .. .. Each 1d Rice .. .. .. .. .. .. 1/2d Baked Plum .. .. .. .. 1/2d Baked Jam Roll .. .. .. .. 1/2d Meat Pudding and Potatoes .. .. 3d Corned Beef .. .. .. .. 2d Corned Mutton .. .. .. .. 2d Coffee per cup 1/2d; per mug 1d Cocoa per cup 1/2d; per mug 1d Tea per cup 1/2d; per mug 1d Bread & b.u.t.ter, Jam or Marmalade per slice 1/2d

Soup in own Jugs, 1d per Quart. Ready at 10 a.m.

A certain discretionary power is vested in the Officers in charge of the Depot, and they can in very urgent cases give relief, but the rule is for the food to be paid for, and the financial results show that working expenses are just about covered.

These Cheap Food Depots I have no doubt have been and are or great service to numbers of hungry starving men, women, and children, at the prices just named, which must be within the reach of all, except the absolutely penniless; but it is the Shelter that I regard as the most useful feature in this part of our undertaking, for if anything is to be done to get hold of those who use the Depot, some more favourable opportunity must be afforded than is offered by the mere coming into the food store to get, perhaps, only a basin of soup. This part of the Scheme I propose to extend very considerably.

Suppose that you are a casual in the streets of London, homeless, friendless, weary with looking for work all day and finding none.

Night comes on. Where are you to go? You have perhaps only a few coppers, or it may be, a few shillings, left of the rapidly dwindling store of your little capital. You shrink from sleeping in the open air; you equally shrink from going to the fourpenny Dosshouse where, in the midst of strange and ribald company, you may be robbed of the remnant of the money still in your possession. While at a loss as to what to do, someone who sees you suggests that you should go to our Shelter. You cannot, of course, go to the Casual Ward of the Workhouse as long as you have any money in your possession. You come along to one of our Shelters. On entering you pay fourpence, and are free of the establishment for the night. You can come in early or late.

The company begins to a.s.semble about five o'clock in the afternoon.

In the women's Shelter you find that many come much earlier and sit sewing, reading or chatting in the sparely furnished but well warmed room from the early hours of the afternoon until bedtime.

You come in, and you get a large pot of coffee, tea, or cocoa, and a hunk of bread. You can go into the wash-house, where you can have a wash with plenty of warm water, and soap and towels free.

Then after having washed and eaten you can make yourself comfortable.

You can write letters to your friends, if you have any friends to write to, or you can read, or you can sit quietly and do nothing.

At eight o'clock the Shelter is tolerably full, and then begins what we consider to be the indispensable feature of the whole concern.

Two or three hundred men in the men's Shelter, or as many women in the women's Shelter, are collected together, most of them strange to each other, in a large room. They are all wretchedly poor--what are you to do with them? This is what we do with them.

We hold a rousing Salvation meeting. The Officer in charge of the Depot, a.s.sisted by detachments from the Training Homes, conducts a jovial free-and-easy social evening. The girls have their banjos and their tambourines, and for a couple of hours you have as lively a meeting as you will find in London. There is prayer, short and to the point; there are addresses, some delivered by the leaders of the meeting, but the most of them the testimonies of those who have been saved at previous meetings, and who, rising in their seats, tell their companions their experiences. Strange experiences they often are of those who have been down in the very bottomless depths of sin and vice and misery, but who have found at last firm footing on which to stand, and who are, as they say in all sincerity, "as happy as the day is long." There is a joviality and a genuine good feeling at some of these meetings which is refreshing to the soul. There are all sorts and conditions of men; casuals, gaol birds, Out-of-Works, who have come there for the first time, and who find men who last week or last month were even as they themselves are now--still poor but rejoicing in a sense of brotherhood and a consciousness of their being no longer outcasts and forlorn in this wide world. There are men who have at last seen revive before them a hope of escaping from that dreadful vortex, into which their sins and misfortunes had drawn them, and being restored to those comforts that they had feared so long were gone for ever; nay, of rising to live a true and G.o.dly life. These tell their mates how this has come about, and urge all who hear them to try for themselves and see whether it is not a good and happy thing to be soundly saved. In the intervals of testimony--and these testimonies, as every one will bear me witness who has ever attended any of our meetings, are not long, sanctimonious lackadaisical speeches, but simple confessions of individual experience--there are bursts of hearty melody. The conductor of the meeting will start up a verse or two of a hymn ill.u.s.trative of the experiences mentioned by the last speaker, or one of the girls from the Training Home will sing a solo, accompanying herself on her instrument, while all join in a rattling and rollicking chorus.

There is no compulsion upon anyone of our dossers to take part in this meeting; they do not need to come in until it is over; but as a simple matter of fact they do come in. Any night between eight and ten o'clock you will find these people sitting there, listening to the exhortations and taking part in the singing, many of them, no doubt, unsympathetic enough, but nevertheless preferring to be present with the music and the warmth, mildly stirred, if only by curiosity, as the various testimonies are delivered.

Sometimes these testimonies are enough to rouse the most cynical of observers. We had at one of our shelters the captain of an ocean steamer, who had sunk to the depths of dest.i.tution through strong drink. He came in there one night utterly desperate and was taken in hand by our people--and with us taking in hand is no mere phrase, for at the close of our meetings our officers go from seat to seat, and if they see anyone who shows signs of being affected by the speeches or the singing, at once sit down beside him and begin to labour with him for the salvation of his soul. By this means they are able to get hold of the men and to know exactly where the difficulty lies, what the trouble is, and if they do nothing else, at least succeed in convincing them that there is someone who cares for their soul and would do what he could to lend them a helping hand.

The captain of whom I was speaking was got hold of in this way.

He was deeply impressed, and was induced to abandon once and for all his habits of intemperance. From that meeting he went an altered man.

He regained his position in the merchant service, and twelve months afterwards astonished us all by appearing in the uniform of a captain of a large ocean steamer, to testify to those who were there how low he had been, how utterly he had lost all hold on Society and all hope of the future, when, fortunately led to the Shelter, he found friends, counsel, and salvation, and from that time had never rested until he had regained the position which he had forfeited by his intemperance.

The meeting over, the singing girls go back to the Training Home, and the men prepare for bed. Our sleeping arrangements are somewhat primitive; we do not provide feather beds, and when you go into our dormitories, you will be surprised to find the floor covered by what look like an endless array of packing cases. These are our beds, and each of them forms a cubicle. There is a mattress laid on the floor, and over the mattress a leather ap.r.o.n, which is all the bedclothes that we find it possible to provide. The men undress, each by the side of his packing box, and go to sleep under their leather covering. The dormitory is warmed with hot water pipes to a temperature of 60 degrees, and there has never been any complaint of lack of warmth on the part of those who use the Shelter. The leather can be kept perfectly clean, and the mattresses, covered with American cloth, are carefully inspected every day, so that no stray specimen of vermin may be left in the place. The men turn in about ten o'clock and sleep until six. We have never any disturbances of any kind in the Shelters. We have provided accommodation now for several thousand of the most helplessly broken-down men in London, criminals many of them, mendicants, tramps, those who are among the filth and offscouring of all things; but such is the influence that is established by the meeting and the moral ascendancy of our officers themselves, that we have never had a fight on the premises, and very seldom do we ever hear an oath or an obscene word. Sometimes there has been trouble outside the Shelter, when men insisted upon coming in drunk or were otherwise violent; but once let them come to the Shelter, and get into the swing of the concern, and we have no trouble with them. In the morning they get up and have their breakfast and, after a short service, go off their various ways. We find that we can do this, that is to say, we can provide coffee and bread for breakfast and for supper, and a shake-down on the floor in the packing-boxes I have described in a warm dormitory for fourpence a head.

I propose to develop these Shelters, so as to afford every man a locker, in which he could store any little valuables that he may possess. I would also allow him the use of a boiler in the washhouse with a hot drying oven, so that he could wash his shirt over night and have it returned to him dry in the morning. Only those who have had practical experience of the difficulty of seeking for work in London can appreciate the advantages of the opportunity to get your shirt washed in this way--if you have one. In Trafalgar Square, in 1887, there were few things that scandalised the public more than the spectacle of the poor people camped in the Square, washing their shirts in the early morning at the fountains. If you talk to any men who have been on the road for a lengthened period they will tell you that nothing hurts their self-respect more or stands more fatally in the way of their getting a job than the impossibility of getting their little things done up and clean.

In our poor man's "Home" everyone could at least keep himself clean and have a clean shirt to his back, in a plain way, no doubt; but still not less effective than if he were to be put up at one of the West End hotels, and would be able to secure anyway the necessaries of life while being pa.s.sed on to something far better. This is the first step.

SOME SHELTER TROPHIES.

Of the practical results which have followed our methods of dealing with the outcasts who take shelter with us we have many striking examples. Here are a few, each of them a transcript of a life experience relating to men who are now active, industrious members of the community upon which but for the agency of these Depots they would have been preying to this day.

A.S.--Born in Glasgow, 1825. Saved at Clerkenwell, May 19, 1889.

Poor parents raised in a Glasgow Slum. Was thrown on the streets at seven years of age, became the companion and a.s.sociate of thieves, and drifted into crime. The following are his terms of imprisonment: -- 14 days, 30 days, 30 days. 60 days, 60 days (three times in succession), 4 months, 6 months (twice), 9 months, 18 months, 2 years, 6 years, 7 years (twice), 14 years; 40 years 3 months and 6 days in the aggregate. Was flogged for violent conduct in gaol 8 times.

W. M. ("Buff").--Born in Deptford, 1864, saved at Clerkenwell, March 31st, 1889. His father was an old Navy man, and earned a decent living as manager. Was sober, respectable, and trustworthy. Mother was a disreputable drunken slattern: a curse and disgrace to husband and family. The home was broken up, and little Buff was given over to the evil influences of his depraved mother. His 7th birthday present from his admiring parent was a "quarten o'gin." He got some education at the One Tun Alley Ragged School, but when nine years old was caught apple stealing, and sent to the industrial School at Ilford for 7 years. Discharged at the end of his term, he drifted to the streets, the casual wards, and Metropolitan gaols, every one of whose interiors he is familiar with. He became a ringleader of a gang that infested London; a thorough mendicant and ne'er-do-well; a pest to society.

Naturally he is a born leader, and one of those spirits that command a following; consequently, when he got Salvation, the major part of his following came after him to the Shelter, and eventually to G.o.d.

His character since conversion has been altogether satisfactory, and he is now an Orderly at Whitechapel, and to all appearances a "true lad."

C. W. ("Frisco").--Born in San Francisco, 1862. Saved April 24th, 1889. Taken away from home at the age of eight years, and made his way to Texas. Here he took up life amongst the Ranches as a Cowboy, and varied it with occasional trips to sea, developing into a typical bra.s.s and rowdy. He had 2 years for mutiny at sea, 4 years for mule stealing, 5 years for cattle stealing and has altogether been in gaol for thirteen years and eleven months. He came over to England, got mixed up with thieves and casuals here, and did several short terms of imprisonment. He was met on his release at Millbank by an old chum (Buff) and the Shelter Captain; came to Shelter, got saved, and has stood firm.

H. A.--Born at Deptford, 1850. Saved at Clerkenwell, January 12th, 1889. Lost mother in early life, step-mother difficulty supervening, and a propensity to misappropriation of small things developed into thieving. He followed the sea, became a hard drinker, a foul-mouthed blasphemer, and a blatant spouter of infidelity. He drifted about for years, ash.o.r.e and afloat, and eventually reached the Shelter stranded.

Here he sought G.o.d, and has done well. This summer he had charge of a gang of haymakers sent into the country, and stood the ordeal satisfactorily. He seems honest in his profession, and strives patiently to follow after G.o.d. He is at the workshops.

H. S.--Born at A---, in Scotland. Like most Scotch lads although parents were in poor circ.u.mstances he managed to get a good education.

Early in life he took to newspaper work, and picked up the details of the journalistic profession in several prominent papers in N.B.

Eventually he got a position on a provincial newspaper, and having put in a course at Glasgow University, graduated B.A. there. After this he was on the staff of a Welsh paper. He married a decent girl, and had several little ones, but giving way to drink, lost position, wife, family, and friends. At times he would struggle up and recover himself, and appears generally to have been able to secure a position, but again and again his besetment overcame him, and each time he would drift lower and lower. For a time he was engaged in secretarial work on a prominent London Charity, but fell repeatedly, and at length was dismissed. He came to us an utter outcast, was sent to Shelter and Workshop got saved, and is now in a good situation. He gives every promise, and those best able to judge seem very sanguine that at last a real good work has been accomplished in him.

F. D.--Was born in London, and brought up to the iron trade.

Held several good situations, losing one after another, from drink and irregularity. On one occasion, with #20 in his pocket, he started for Manchester, got drunk there, was locked up and fined five shillings, and fifteen shillings costs; this he paid, and as he was leaving the Court, a gentleman stopped him, saying that he knew his father, and inviting him to his house; however, with #10 in his pocket, he was too independent, and he declined; but the gentleman gave him his address, and left him. A few days squandered his cash, and clothes soon followed, all disappearing for drink, and then without a coin he presented himself at the address given to him, at ten o'clock at night.

It turned out to be his uncle, who gave him #2 to go back to London, but this too disappeared for liquor. He tramped back to London utterly dest.i.tute. Several nights were pa.s.sed on the Embankment, and on one occasion a gentleman gave him a ticket for the Shelter; this, however, he sold for 2d. and had a pint of beer, and stopped out all night.

But it set him thinking, and he determined next day to raise 4d. and see what a Shelter was like. He came to Whitechapel, became a regular customer, eight months ago got saved, and is now doing well.

F. H.--Was born at Birmingham, 1858. Saved at Whitechapel, March 26th, 1890. Father died in his infancy, mother marrying again.

The stepfather was a drunken navvy, and used to knock the mother about, and the lad was left to the streets. At 12 years of age he left home, and tramped to Liverpool, begging his way, and sleeping on the roadsides. In Liverpool he lived about the Docks for some days, sleeping where he could. Police found him and returned him to Birmingham; his reception being an unmerciful thrashing from the drunken stepfather. He got several jobs as errand-boy, remarkable for his secret pilferings, and two years later left with fifty shillings stolen money, and reached Middlesbrough by road. Got work in a nail factory stayed nine months, then stole nine shillings from fellow-lodger, and again took the road. He reached Birmingham, and finding a warrant out for him, joined the Navy. He was in the Impregnable training-ship three years behaved himself, only getting "one dozen," and was transferred with character marked "good" to the Iron Duke in the China seas; soon got drinking, and was locked up and imprisoned for riotous conduct in almost every port in the stations.

He broke ship, and deserted several times, and was a thorough specimen of a bad British tar. He saw gaol in Signapore, Hong Kong, Yokohama, Shanghai, Canton, and other places. In five years returned home, and, after furlough, joined the Belle Isle in the Irish station. Whisky here again got hold of him, and excess ruined his const.i.tution.

On his leave he had married, and on his discharge joined his wife in Birmingham. For some time he worked as sweeper in the market, but two years ago deserted his wife and family, and came to London, settled down to a loafer's life, lived on the streets with Casual Wards for his home. Eventually came to Whitechapel Shelter, and got saved.

He is now a trustworthy, reliable lad; has become reconciled to wife, who came to London to see him, and he bids fair to be a useful man.

J. W. S.--Born in Plymouth. His parents are respectable people.

He is clever at his business, and has held good situations. Two years ago he came to London, fell into evil courses, and took to drink.

Lost situation after situation, and kept on drinking; lost everything, and came to the streets. He found out Westminster Shelter, and eventually got saved; his parents were communicated with, and help and clothes forthcoming; with Salvation came hope and energy; he got a situation at Lewisham (7d. per hour) at his trade. Four months standing, and is a promising Soldier as well as a respectable mechanic.

J. T.--Born in Ireland; well educated (commercially); clerk and accountant. Early in life joined the Queen's Army, and by good conduct worked his way up. Was orderly-room clerk and paymaster's a.s.sistant in his regiment. He led a steady life whilst in the service, and at the expiration of his term pa.s.sed into the Reserve with a "very good"

character. He was a long time unemployed, and this appears to have reduced him to despair, and so to drink. He sank to the lowest ebb, and came to Westminster in a deplorable condition; coatless, hatless, shirtless, dirty altogether, a fearful specimen of what a man of good parentage can be brought to. After being at Shelter some time, he got saved, was pa.s.sed to Workshops, and gave great satisfaction.

At present he is doing clerical work and gives satisfaction as a workman: a good influence in the place.

J. S.--Born in London, of decent parentage. From a child he exhibited thieving propensities; soon got into the hands of the police, and was in and out of gaol continually. He led the life of a confirmed tramp, and roved all over the United Kingdom. He has been in penal servitude three times, and his last term was for seven years, with police supervision. After his release he married a respectable girl, and tried to reform, but circ.u.mstances were against him; character he had none, a gaol career only to recommend him, and so he and his wife eventually drifted to dest.i.tution. They came to the Shelter, and asked advice; they were received, and he made application to the sitting Magistrate at Clerkenwell as to a situation, and what he ought to do.

The Magistrate helped him, and thanked the Salvation Army for its efforts in behalf of him and such as he, and asked us to look after the applicant. A little work was given him, and after a time a good situation procured. To-day they have a good time; he is steadily employed, and both are serving G.o.d, holding the respect and confidence of neighbours, etc.