Letters to Our Working Party by Evelyn Whitaker (1857-1903)

digitized by www.evelynwhitakerlibrary.org 

scanned and 1st edit by K Cummings Pipes 
August 2008

Brown cover, cloth with pictorial envelope in white, 
stamped in black  lettering cover and spine.  
Measures 4.75 x 6.75 inches.

This edition shows no copyright date.  
Internal evidence dates the text post 1887, prior to 1890.
This U.S. edition may be somewhat later.




LETTERS
TO OUR WORKING PARTY.



LETTERS TO OUR WORKING PARTY.


NEW YORK: 

E. & J. B. YOUNG & COMPANY, 
COOPER UNION. 


DEAR KATE,-I am so sorry to be away from home 
just when the working parties for Home Missions 
are beginning, and can so fancy on Wednesday afternoons 
how pleasant and snug the Vicarage drawing-room looks, 
with the blazing wood-fire and the round table in the 
corner covered with 
heaps of cut-out work, and the centre table 
adorned with that dear old work-box, overflowing 
with reels and tapes and buttons and needles. 
And then at half-past two, how one after another 
you come dropping in, and there is a little standing 
about by the fire, warming hanJs and talking over 
the work and the needles and any little bit of 
village news, till Mrs. Miller puts on her spectacles 
and looks round with her kind, little smile, and 
says, "Well, I suppose we may as well begin 
reading," and then you all settle down in your 
places, and nothing more is heard but the dear old 
lady's voice, rather sleepy now and then, and the 
click of the needles and an occasional whisper to 
pass the scissors, till half-past four, when the 

B 


2 Letters to Our Working Party. 

reviving sound of tea-cups is heard outside the 
room, and you all begin to fold up your work with 
a sigh, and to think how industrious you have 
been. 

You will smile, I daresay, when you read my 
regrets at being absent, and remember days when 
skating or a meet of the hounds was a sore temptation 
to pass the Vicarage gate; but I do not think in 
those days I gave a thought as to what we were 
really working for, and only thought of getting the 
nice little chair in the corner, with my left hand 
to the light, and showing how much better I could 
make button-holes than any of the rest of you. 
Oh! those button-holes! I do not think I can 
ever make another, after what I have seen lately 
down in Haggerston, of girls making them for five 
farthings a dozen, working night and day with 
poor, strained, faded eyes, and after all only 
earning enough to keep the barest life in the most worn 
and weary of bodies. Why do they submit to such 
slavery? you ask. Because it is worse to starve, 
and they know there are dozens willing to do the 
work even for less. 

But before I get hot and angry over these poor 
girls' wrongs, I want to know if, as I cannot join 
your working parties this year, I may be your 
special correspondent, and write to you an account 
of some of the interesting things I come across 
travelling about with Aunt Sophy, some of the 
great and beautiful work that is being done, where 
you can almost see the ladder set up on the earth 
and reaching to heaven, and the angels ascending 
and descending. I wonder sometimes if our little 
working parties may be allowed to help just one 


Letters to OUY Working Party. 3 

little bit to keep these ladders set for the angels to 
come down. I do not think they would ever seem 
dull, if we might think so. It is quite necessary 
to see some of the good that is being done, if it is 
only to get a little heart and hope and faith to look 
into the darkness and sin and ignorance that seems 
gathering so thickly all round. 

I think, if you will let me,that I will begin with 
the Mission of the Good Shepherd in Haggerston, 
for the mention of button-holes has brought that 
strongly into my mind, for the girls among whom 
the Mission is working are many of them buttonhole 
makers, while others work at some branch 
of boot-making, and are either "paste-fitters," 
"machinists," "vampers," or "flowerers." I 
never knew before how many hands it takes to 
make a pair of boots, for after the women and girls 
have done their share, the men take it up, and it 
passes all to the" rivetters" and" finishers." The 
machine rooms are, many of them, dreadful places, 
where the girls sit, closely packed, side by side, in 
front of their machines, often working under gas 
and in constant distracting noise, frequently till 
ten o'clock at night, when the poor young things 
are turned out, tired and cramped with work, to-
the streets. But besides the boot-makers, who 
mostly work at the factories, there are flower-
makers, gimp and trimming-makers, fancy box and 
match-box makers, collar and shirt-makers, all 
sorts of makers, till one's heart grows sick and 
angry to think of the pretty, gay shop windows, all 
set out with their 'cheap finery, making the passerby 
exclaim, "It's wonderful how cheaply they do 
things now-a-days." Wonderful ? We ought 


4 Letters to Our Working Party. 

rather to say dreadful and terrible, when we think 
of the price that is paid for these things. I do not 
mean the money given for the labour-collars 
stitched and finished at 2 1/2 d. the gross, match-boxes 
the same, out of which the Women have to find 
the paste, and all the rest at much the same rate but 
the heavy price of health and strength and life 
spent in providing us with our cheap finery; and 
then, too, to think of the cruel discouragement to 
honest work, and the temptation to take instead 
the wages of sin! 

You would like to know what these girls are like, 
and I cannot say they are very attractive. I could 
not help wondering what Mrs. Miller would say 
some Sunday afternoon if, instead of her neat, 
blushing, little Friendly Girls, a party of these 
sharp-faced, brazen-looking young women made 
their appearance at the Vicarage Bible Class, 
with their greasy hair in ponies' manes down 
their backs, and cut in straight fringes just above 
their bold eyes, with their big, holland aprons,and 
white silk neck handkerchiefs, which seem to be a 
sort of uniform of the class, and generally with a 
hat and long white feather perched on the top of 
their heads, making one wonder how many buttonholes 
or shirt collars and starvation must have gone 
to purchase that showy plume,and if the money had 
not better have been bestowed on boots and underclothing
which are usually of a most unsatisfactory 
description. But I am afraid if one could see 
below the surface, unattractive as it is, the 
prospect would be hardly more pleasing. Truth is a 
quality almost unknown among them; honesty, 
the same; purity? ah! one can hardly venture 


Letters to Our Working Party. 

to look for it in the foul atmosphere of Reform 
Place, Goldsmith's Row, Haggerston. They have 
no sense of honour, none of gratitude; they are 
greedy, cowardly, selfish; their language is often 
indescribably filthy; they are often the worse for 
drink; they think nothing of fighting with the 
men they call their "blokes," or among themselves, 

and oh! what can be more awful than two women 
fighting? They are altogether repulsive within 
and without, and it needs some of the faith that 
can remove mountains to dig down after the gold 
under all this refuse, and to patiently seek out the 
Image and Superscription on the defaced and disfigured coin. 

But think of their homes! In many cases 
slatternly, scolding mothers, drunken fathers, rude 
-often thieving brothers, and a host of little ones 
everywhere. A hard bed shared with two or three 
others, often even roused from that if the drunken 
father comes in late and quarrelsome, or the 
brother is hiding a "pal" from the police. Hard 
work and scanty food every day, and if she have a 
sweetheart (though it seems almost profane to use 
that dear old word for the brutal ruffian), ten to 
one he gives her a black eye or knocks her about. 
An utterly undisciplined, irregular life, going to 
bed when they feel sleepy or have a bed to sleep 
on, eating when they feel hungry, or have a halfpenny
 to buy strong smelling fried fish or potato 
chips. I wonder if you and I had such homes, if 
we should have been better than the worst of those 
drunken, abusive women with black eyes and hard 
drink-degraded faces? 

It was among these girls living in the neighbour


6 Letters to Our Working Party. 

hood of Goldsmith's Row, Haggerston, that the 
Mission of the Good Shepherd was begun now 
eight years ago, in a little room in Reform Place, 
by one of the Sisters of St. Saviour's Priory, whose 
heart had been greatly stirred by pity for these 
poor, black, wandering sheep. I think her heart 
must have failed her sometimes. I am sure 
mine would have done so very often, in the 
attempt to humanize these girls; and the discouragements, 
which she and the Sister who 
succeeded her in the work had to encounter, must 
have been well-nigh crushing; but patience has 
had her perfect work. The little light has been 
kept shining in that dark place, and by degrees 
small reflections have glimmered back from dark 
corners, little sparks of love have struck out of 
hearts that seemed like very flints, love for the 
Sister first of all and then to the Good Shepherd 
who sent her, little efforts of self-restraint, infinitely 
small in the sight of more disciplined natures, 
but not so in the sight of God who knows how 
difficult it is to them, a bad word checked, a blow 
not returned, an impure song hushed. Even in 
outward appearance there is some improvement: 
fringes curled instead of straight, (and, do you 
know? this is the first step in reformation) and 
greater cleanliness; there is a lavatory on the 
basement under the house in Goldsmith's Row, to 
which the Mission has now moyed, where they can, 
as the girls say, "have a good wash, where you 

can splash all round." 

Every evening the room is open and the girls 

flock into it, wild with the reaction from their hard 

day's work, making a noise that would frighten 


Letters to Our Working Party. 7 

the ears polite of Meadowland. The Sister makes 
no attempt to quiet the hubbub, it would be useless, 
and indeed it is the only safety -valve to give vent 
to superfluous spirits by loud, boisterous singing 
and romping about. By-and-bye they quiet down 
a bit, and on SOme evenings can settle to real work, 
when much-blotted copies are written in the very 
sweat of their brows, and sums worked out and 
primers studied with various degreos of proflciency. 
There are play nights when a good "step-jig" 
stretches restless young limbs tired and cramped 
from the machine, rings and various games are 
played at, and innocent street songs are sung in 
solo or chorus, always ending with Ken's dear old 
evening hymn, which they have learnt to sing 
reverently. There are Temperance nights, when 
songs and recitations are varied by speechifying; 
and Bible classes on Sunday evenings before church, 
to which the Sister takes her somewhat eccentric 
flock, who occasionally scandalize the more civilised 
part of the congregation by their unconventional 
behaviour. 

There is so much I should like to tell you of 
those strange, wild creatures, of their summer 
excursion, of their Christmas gatherings, of the 
work the Young Woman's Help Society is doing 
among them, but I should like you to have seen 
the group of ragged, little urchins and "flash 
fringed" girls, and rough, brutal-looking "blokes" 
standing reverently on Christmas Eve before the 
little creche or "manger" as the people call it, 
which the Sister had built in a dark corner of the 
room with evergreens and virgin cork and simple 
Christmas texts and hymns hanging about it. 


Letters to Our Working Party. 

There was a little red lamp above, throwing its 
warm light on the listening faces round, and the 
group of pure white figures below, Mary,Joseph, 
ox and ass, adoring the Holy Child, while the dear 
old Christmas story was simply told them.
"Well, I don't a bit know what it means, but it's 
very touching,"one poor woman said. And then all 
gathered round the old cracked harmonium and 
shouted out, "When Shepherds watched their 
flocks by night," and" Once in royal David's city," 
with a rough energy that did one's heart good to 
hear. 

Just then, perhaps, at Meadowland, the choirboys were 
singing their carols in the moonlight 
outside the Vicarage. I know how sweet their 
voices sound in the great silence of the night.
Here the voices,loud and rough as they were, were 
almost drowned by the roar of the streets outside, 
where Christmas marketing was going on, with all 
the shouting and swearing and quarrelling that 
seem a necessary part of it, while over the way, at 
the democratic club, some Atheist orator was 
holding forth noisily, amid bursts of loud applause; 
but through the din and wickedness of Haggerston 
as from the quiet moon-lit country, and from 
many and many a place besides, town and 
country, near and far, rose the same sweet song 
that the angels sang first at Bethlehem, " Glory to 
God in the Highest, and on earth peace, goodwill 
towards men." 

Now I must end my letter, and wishing you and 
all the working party a very happy New Year, 
remain, yours affectionately, E. W. 


DEAR KATE,-The text to my first letter to you 
and the dear home working party was a buttonhole, and 
I think the one to-day must be a plush 
tea-gown, such a pretty one too, of the most delicate 
pale blue and trimmed with soft cream-coloured 
lace, all so dainty that it seems as if you would 
soil it if you looked too hard at it. Does it make 
your mouth water? It did mine, I can tell you, 
when I saw it first in S. and D.'s show-room, and 
that dear, old Aunt Sophy saw my covetous glances 
and actually gave it to me there and then, as she 
said we were going soon to spend a few days at 
Merton Hall, where they dress a good deal, and 
my wardrobe is, as you know, of very modest 
dimensions. It is a great deal too pretty and 
elegant for me, and it will not be a bit of use when 
I come home, and Aunt Sophy gave a price for it 
that would have made my poor little purse more 
than empty, but she liked it so much herself and 
was so pleased to give it to me, that I should have 
been ingratitude itself if I had demurred, and, 
indeed; I was not the least inclined to do so, for I 
had never had anything half so pretty, and I went 
home in the greatest satisfaction, only longing that 


10 LetterS to 0ur Working Party. 

you and Alice and Bessie and a good many more 
of those who, that very afternoon, were gathered 
together at the Meadowland working party, could 
see my lovely blue tea-gown. That was on 
Wednesday and now it is only Saturday, and that 
very blue tea-gown is such a weight on my heart 
that I could not sleep last night for thinking of it, 
and I got up more than once and raised the silver 
paper that covers it in the box, with the feeling 
that, as Ruskin says, "blood must spot it," and 
I do not know how I shall ever make up my mind 
to wear it. 

Do not call me fanciful and capricious. Do you 
remember that story of David, when he was faint 
and weary in the heat of the batttle, how he

longed to drink of the water of the well at Bethlehem 
that is by the gate? What a real human 
sound there is in that story, even if it were not 
inspired one would know quite well that it was 
true, the longing for something from home; no 
water seemed so clear and bright and life-giving 
as the water from home, from Bethelehem by the 
well-known gate, and perhaps he felt the same 
sometimes even when he had come into his kingdom and 
could command the vineyards and brooks 
and water-courses of fair Canaan. And it was 
something of the same sort of feeling that made 
Naaman resent the order to wash in Jordan when 
his memory was full of the beautiful rivers of 
Damascus, Abana, and Pharpar. One knows the 
feeling so well oneself. Why those violets you 
put in your letter the other day, though they were 
flattened in the post, were twice as sweet to me 
as those we get in Covent Garden Market, just 


Letters to Our Working Party. 11 

because I know exactly where you picked them, 
under the hedge in the meadow behind the home 
farm, where we always find the first violets. 

But do you remember what David did with the 
water when those brave men brought it him? 
"He poured it out unto the Lord, and he said, 
Be i tfar from me,0 Lord,that I should do this: 
is not this the blood of the men that went in 
jeopardy of their lives? Therefore he would not 
drink it." Oh! Kate, that is just what I feel 
about that plush dress,and,if it only would not hurt 
and disappoint dear Aunt Sophy, I would never 
wear it. It seems to me like tricking myself out 
with the life-blood and the health and the youth 
and the happiness of the work-girl who made it; 
God grant it may not be also with her purity and 
her honour and her hope of eternal life. Of one 
thing I am quite resolved, that every time I wear 
that dress I will put aside something to help these 
poor young sisters of ours, even though it can only be
 a trifling sum,-I was going to say "a mite," 
only I have come to realize what amazing presumption
 it is for anyone of us to use that word 
for our pitiful little offerings. I do believe that some 
of us think that the dear Lord praised the smallness 
of the widow's gift, the two farthings, instead of 
the greatness of it, "all that she had, even all her 
living," and we forget that the millionaire's mite 
would be nothing less than a million, and that 
with less well-filled purses it would be all that 
those purses contain, instead of just the 3d. bit 
which I've fish out from among the larger coins 
when the offertory bag comes round, 

But about these girls,-they are a very different 


12 Letters to Our Working Party. 

class to those I told you of last month, much more 
refined, some of them well-educated, many of them 
have known better days or are descended from 
families who have done so; some have gentle 
manners, soft voices, good taste, appreciation (if 
they have the chance) of poetry, and art, and 
beauty, are in short, very near being the young ladies
 they call themselves, though, poor things, 
they had really far better be servant girls, with 
good food and a warm bed and a kind mistress 
and reasonable hours for work and rest. But they 
prefer to remain young ladies, and, indeed, some 
of them are as good ladies as you or me, only 
without the comfort and the leisure, and the music 
and the books, and the change and the family life, 
and the society and the love, and the means of 
grace. Oh! what a poor, dreary thing to be a 
young lady with all these adjuncts and circumstances 
stripped away, and nothing left but business 
and bed, business and bed, day after day; business 
taking up 12 to 14 hours of every week-day, so 
that they are too exhausted on Sunday to think 
of anything but rest. Sir John Lubbock says, "It 
is understating the case to call it slavery, for no 
slaves ever worked half so hard." 

My plush tea-gown comes back heavily on my 
heart as I think of one girl, for she works on such 
very things, may, perhaps, have had a hand in 
mine. She sits in the workroom from eight in 
the morning till eight at night-twelve hours often 
lengthening to fourteen under stress of work, 
and these short, foggy winter days the gas is often 
burning all day, and the air grows hotter, drier, 
fouler and more impure every minute. And for 


Letters to Our Working Party. 13 

this she receives ten shillings a week, and, every 
time she receives that weekly pay, her heart gives 
a wretched throb of fear and sickening anticipation 
as to how long she will be able to earn it, for she 
is losing her sight from the hard work; the sight 
of one eye is gone, and the other is weakening and 
needs rest; but it is only just barely possible 
to pay her way from week to week, and if she 
once gets behindhand, a month out of work or 
even a week makes it a desperate matter to ever 
catch up again: and so these girls would rather 
do anything than confess to being ill; will refuse 
to see a doctor, even if they get the chance, will 
smother the cough (and do you know how terribly 
common lung disease is among these girls?) say 
not a word of the sharp pain in their sides, of 
the splitting headache, of the legs swelled and 
aching with standing behind the counter. Do you 
remember, Kate, that time when we helped at the 
old English fancy fair at R--,how, in spite of 
all the fun, our feet ached, and how tired we 
were with standing just those four or five hours 
for three days? And think of a girl who has 
stood 12 or 14 hours a day for six years as a 
shop assistant, with twenty minutes allowed for 
dinner, and not always a seat then! Is life 
worth the living? They say this question is 
largely discussed in the London workrooms, and 
I greatly fear, if I were in their place, I should 
say it was not; and oh! how ashamed it makes 
one feel of one's own attacks of gloom and 
discontent and ill-temper, which one dignifies 
with the name of depression, and treats as if it 
were some affiiction imposed by Providence, to 


14 Letters to Our Working Party. 

be endured with a martyr-like feeling by ourselves 
and others, instead of realizing that it is just 
grown-up naughtiness, for which we ought mentally to
whip ourselves and put ourselves in the 
corner, and come out smiling in less than five 
minutes like little Tom Flowers, when he has 
been, as his mother says, "kinder disagreeable," 
and she has helped him out of it. 

And yet these girls, thousands of them, keep on 
day after dreary day, serving in shops with 
smiles on their lips and civil words to tiresome 
customers; sitting in close workrooms, making 
pretty, elegant, tasteful things for other girls, 
no younger, no prettier, no more graceful than 
themselves; working machines, sorting boxes, 
folding books, in a dreary monotony of work and 
bed; "a life of drudgery leading to an early 
grave;" not a moment left for family and social 
intercourse, for relaxation, for fresh air and 
exercise, for reading, for amusement, or for self-
improvement. It is almost a relief to hear of 
one who stands sorting boxes all day, who has 
a mother to nurse when she gets home at night, 
though that mother is dying by inches of a terrible 
form of cancer. Yes, though it disturbs her too 
well-earned nights, and wears her out with anxiety 
and pity, still it keeps the human heart alive 
in her, and prevents her from becoming the mere 
machine into which she would otherwise grow. And 
so, indeed, it has proved to be the case, for this 
very girl, shut in among her walls of boxes, 
finds Spencer's "Faerie Qneen" an interest and 
delight. I think we will read it through, Kate, 
you and I, when I come home; but even on 


Letters to Our Working Party. 15 

its leaves we may find those spots of blood, the 
blood of those who went in jeopardy of their 
lives that we might haye those books so cheap. 
It used to be such a pleasure to me to go into 
the big booksellers and depots and turn over the 
sweet-smelling, uncut volumes; but, now that I 
know the payment for folding and stitching those 
pages, the voice of my brothers' and sisters' blood 
crieth unto me from the books. 

The more one knows of these girls, the more 
one wonders that so many stand firm, resisting 
the temptations that throng around them, keeping 
stedfastly to the path of virtue that is so dull, 
so tedious, so miserably unattractive. There are 
hundreds who day by day pass through temptations hotte
r than a fiery furnace, "and they 
have no hurt," for surely, if we could but see 
it, there is One walking with them in the midst 
of the fire, and His form is like the Son of God. 

You and I can have, thank God, no notion 
of what the temptation is as the girls leave the 
hot work-rooms or shops late at night, wearied 
and jaded, disheartened with the dreary past, 
sick of the monotonous present, shrinking from 
the gloomy future, as they hurry through the 
crowded streets, or by tram and Metropolitan 
train to the poor, lonely room they call home. 
They have but to hold out their hands, they are 
offered ease, comfort, refinement (the greatest 
temptation to many), sham love; and the poor 
dazzled young eyes, wearied with making my 
plush tea-gown, or folding that wonderfully cheap 
book, cannot always see through the golden dream 
to the black and bitter waking. They are lonely, 


16 Letters to Our Working Party. 

friendless, loveless; if they have ever been in 
better circumstances so much the worse, for their 
relations look down on them. Is it not wonderful 
that they stand? 

Oh ! Kate, what would you like to do for them? 
I know what you will say. Take them quite away, 
and let them rest, at any rate, for a few weeks; 
put them in a comfortable arm-chair, in a pretty 
room with pictures and tasteful things about, with 
a piano and flowers, and with windows looking on 
to a garden with soft grass and singing birds, and, 
perhaps, beyond that the sea, such a sea as one 
sees in Devonshire, deep, deep blue with great 
bars of purple cloud-shadows and reflections; and 
you would like to know there was a little bed, soft 
and white like yours and mine, ready for those 
weary, weary limbs and aching heads, in a dainty,
lady-like bedroom, where they can have their 
sleep out. And when they have slept a little of 
the weariness out of their eyes, and a little of the 
dull bitterness out of their hearts, you would like 
to show them all sorts of lovely countrified things, 
sweet banks, with primroses growing, and young ferns 
uncurling; thrushes' nests, with warm, blue-
speckled eggs; larks singing high in the sunshine; 
the sun setting in crimson glory over the sea; soft, 
little waves rippling upon a silver white beach; and 
the great calm moon drawing her silver pathway 
across the sea. Think what it would be to take 
such memories back into the hot work-rooms and 
close shops, among the walls of boxes and the 
miles of ribbons! I think it would make life worth 
living. 

And this is just what has been done, what we 


Letters to Our Working Party. 17 

can help to do. At Babbacombe, near Torquay, 
a holiday house was opened eight years ago for a 
house of rest for women in business. It will 
receive thirty visitors. They are not "patients" 
or "cases," but visitors, and Ferny Hollow is as 
nearly as possible a pleasant country house, with- 
out any vexatious rules or tiresome interference. 
It is all pretty and tasteful, such as we have been 
imagining just now. There is a large drawing 
room with sofas, arm-chairs, pictures, piano, books, 
and flowers, and upstairs the pretty bedrooms are 
not dormitories or wards, but each holds two or 
three little white beds, round which dainty 
curtains may be drawn when privacy is desired, 
and the rooms are called "the rose room," "the 
green room," "the peacock room," "the violet 
room," and the walls are tinted to suit their 
names. And I need not tell you what awaits 
the girls when, after a good rest, they venture out 
of Ferny Hollow. You know what South Devon 
is, and above all Babbacombe; you know the blue 
sea, and the ruddy cliffs, and the green meadows, 
and the white marble beach. You know the lovely 
Devonshire lanes and combes, and the flowers that 
spring everywhere, and the ferns and moss. How 
beautiful it is! But what must it be to these 
girls, many of whom have never had a holiday, 
never seen the sea, never picked a primrose? " It 
is like heaven," said one. "It must be easy to be 
good here," said another. I do not think they 
debate whether life is worth living at Babbacombe. 

I am afraid of making my letter too long, or 
else I should like to tell you how perfectly happy 

C 


18 Letters to Our Working Party. 

the girls are there; of the bathing and boating and 
excursions, of the picnics on the beach and in the 
woods, of the pleasant evenings of music and games, 
of the friendships made there, of the stores of health and life they carry away with them; 
and not only health and life, but hope and courage,
and faith in human kindness and in God's great goodness. 
But if (as I am sure you would) you 
would like to hear more, send a stamped envelope 
to Miss Skinner, Bayfield, Babbacombe, and she 
will tell you all about it much better than is in the 

power of your affectionate, E. W. 


DEARKATE,-In my first letter to you and the 
working party I tried to tell you something of the 
girls of Haggerston, among whom the Mission of 
the Good Shepherd is working. And now I should 
like to tell you about the men of the same class, 
"the blokes" in fact, of whom I made passing 
mention in my first letter, and I think that the best 
way of introducing them to you is by asking you 
to go back to the 6th of January, the Feast of the 
Epiphany, and meet 60 of them at supper. 

It seems a shame to ask you to step back from 
the lovely spring weather with the dear, pale 
primroses coming out in starry knots along the 
hedgerows, and the birds calling to one another in 
those long, sweet notes that tell of snug nests and 
warm eggs, and the young, thick-legged, awkward 
lambs jumping about in their own delightful objectless
 way, and to return to the bitter cold of the 
beginning ofJanuary, when the grimy frozen snow 
lay about the streets, and the silent, cold starvation 
on the faces of the women and children made one 
ashamed of one's sealskins, and sicken at one's 
good luncheon, and struck deeper into one's heart 
than the monotonous cry, "We've got no work to 
do; we're all froze out,poor,labouring men,we've 


20 Letters to Our Working Party. 

got no work to do," which sounded in one's ears 
from morning to night.

Some money had been sent at Christmas to the 
mother of St. Saviour's Priory, Haggerston, to be 
spent on the undeserving, and she and one of the 
sisters held solemn council one day as to how this 
money could best be applied. Not that it was 
so difficult to find undeserving, perhaps the difficulty
 would have been the other way,but it seemed 
quite a duty to find the most worthless and the 
least respectable of the Haggerston community, 
and among so many shades of grey to pick out the 
darkest instead of choosing such as by comparison 
look almost white. At first sight it seemed as if 
something was being done for everyone; there 
were presents, and parties, and teas, and suppers, 
and Christmas trees for guilds and school children, 
for men, and Mother Kate's lambs, for mothers 
and girls ranging in degrees of respectability from the
 highly superior fathers and mothers of 
"Nazareth" to the girls belonging to the Mission 
of the Good Shepherd, who had a cheerful party of much
 dancing and mincepies on Boxing Day.

But at last they remembered one class for which 

nothing was being done, and who certainly came 

very satisfactorily under the head of undeserving. 

The blokes had been left out in the cold, and it 

was cold just then, even if you keep close outside 

the swing doors of a flaring gin-shop and dig your 

hands as deep as possible into your pockets, and 

hop first on one foot and then on the other to keep

a little life in them, and shrug your thin shoulders 

up to your blue ears. You could see such by the 

dozen outside every public-house, and at every 


Letters to Our Working Party. 21 

street corner if you go down Goldsmith's Row any day. 
They are for the most part under-sized, 
small, poorly made, narrow-chested, knock-kneed, 
it is difficult to tell their ages, they are men at 
twelve, and enter on a dead level of degraded 
manhood till (if they live) they break up into old 
age and decrepitude at about thirty-five. They have 
hollow cheeks, large coarse mouths, narrow 
foreheads, small eyes that never look straight at 
you, close cropped heads, for their last hair-dressing 
may have been in prison. Some of them are professional 
thieves, there is a gang of such in Goldsmith's Row, hanging 
about a part they call 
"Piggie's Island," which sounds a remarkable 
name, but may be traced back to a French weaver, 
Pige,one of those who at one time made a f1ourishing colony
in Haggerston, where even now a few 
velvet and silk looms still linger, though they are 
fast dying out under the blighting influence of 
Free Trade. Some of these men are costermongers, 
others glass-blowers, in which employment they 
work alternate fortnights by day and by night. 
Some of them work in Lynes wood-yard, the place 
where there was the great fire in November, 1883, 

which burnt for a fortnight. Those who work 
there are called Lyneses dogs, and are reported to 
be a very low set, as also are the girls who tie up 
the wood in bundles. Some of them are cracker 
makers, and these mostly live in a place called the 
Rookery, where they ply their unhealthy and 
badly-paid trade in the midst of wretchedness and 
wickedness'unimaginable. 

You would get a good idea o fthis sort of man if 
you went to the Worship Street Police Court On 


22 Letten to Our Working Party. 

Monday morning, for numbers of them are brought 
up there every week on the charge of being drunk 
and disorderly on Saturday night, and attacking 
the police outside the musichalls,theatres orpublic 
houses. They largely frequent the music halls, 
of which the Belmont is one of the lowest. Have 
you ever heard of such a person as a chucker out? 
and do you know what a knuckleduster is? A 
chucker out is a regularly recognized functionary 
at music halls, his duties being to clear the place 
at the time for closing,and,I assure you, his duties 
are arduous enough. A man named "Basher," 
who is devoted to Mother Kate, and a constant 
visitor at the Priory, was for some time" chucker 
out" at the Belmont, and he found it necessary to 
make use of a knuckleduster to clear the hall, a 
thing like the fingers of a glove made of brass and 
fastened by a strap round the wrist, which, on 
occasion, gives such a blow as even the most 
obstreperous" bloke" fears to receive. 

Pigeon flying is one of the great-amusements, 
I was going to say, but I think I ought rather to 
call it one of the serious businesses of the men of 
these parts, as it is their method of gambling. 
Before I knew the reason, it seemed to me a touch 
of nature about the men that so many of them 
kept pigeons and apparently took great care of 
them and treated them well. It brought back to 
my mind the breakfast-room window at home, and 
the pigeons coming bridling, and strutting, and 
preening their pretty necks on the gravel-path 
outside, waiting to be fed, "with their quick, pink 
feet and their dainty airs and the bright iris on 
their burnished feathers. I know that it is un-


Letters to Our Working Party. 23 

reasonable, but I hardly think I shall care for 
them so much again now that I know that they 
are the innocent means of such miserable gambling.
Sunday is the usual day for this, and bOxes of 
pigeons are carried out to Walthamstow or Leighton 
and let fly there, and money is made or lost according
to the length of time the pigeon takes in 
flying home. Poor, faithful, little bird returning 
to some wretched, dirty, little room in Haggerston, 
instead of turning to the beautiful, clean, free 
country, coming back as truly and faithfully as 
if the flood still covered the earth and the dove 
found no rest for the sole of her foot and must 
needs return to the ark. 

It was on these men that Mother Kate resolved 
to expend the money given for the undeserving, 
and the Feast of the Ephiphany was fixed upon 
as the most appropriate day for the purpose, as, 
being the Manifestation to the Gentiles, it is 
without doubt the feast of the undeserving, and 
also a day when we should try to pass on a little 
of the undeserved light to others who sit in darkness
 and the shadow of death. Having fixed the 
day it was soon decided as to what form the 
entertainment should take, as Mother Kate in her 
long experience of work, principally among boys, had 
learnt the truth of the old saying about the nearest 
way to a boy's heart; and when you have to deal 
with very low natures, you must make use of the 
most elementary form of kindness, which is, undoubtedly,
 feeding, a feeder being the simplest idea 
of a friend. 

So a supper it was to be of the most plentiful 
description and of the sort most likely to please 


24 Letters to Our Working Party. 

the guests, and, I assure you, as much thought was 
expended on the choice as over the most elaborate 
menu to tickle the refined palates of a party of 
epicures, and you would have smiled to see the 
anxious discussions over the respective merits of 
beef and pork. "Don't you think roast pork with 
lots of onions?" 

Mother Kate has a theory, founded on experience, that
 a boy's appetite is almost unlimited, 
so provision was made on a liberal scale. 58 lbs. 
of beef and pork to be roasted, and to be accompanied
with large basins of stuffing and gravy, 
3 dozen savoy cabbages, 1 1/2 sacks of potatoes, 30 
lbs. of very substantial plum pudding. All down 
the table were arranged at near intervals, salt, 
mustard, pepper, and vinegar, the latter, let me 
tell you, being quite de rigueur with cabbage. 
One glass of beer round to each guest if they liked 
it, and unlimited lemonade for the others and to 
follow the beer. 

But first of al1 the invitations had to be delivered, 
and this was a work of some difficulty, as the first 
who were asked were shy and distrustful, suspecting some 
trick or dodge about it, and many of 
them having strong reasons for avoiding respectable 
society and the light of day. But Sister F. had a 
slight acquaintance with two or three of them 
through the girls of the Mission of the Good 
Shepherd, or had wrung a surly" Good evening" 
out of them as they loafed round the entrance to 
Reform Place; and, while I am in that neighbourhood, 
I should like to tell you a story of one of 

these girls, that you may see what manner of 
men these "blokes" may be, though the bloke 


Letters to Our W0rking Party. 25 

in question was not one of the sixty at the supper, 

and, indeed, was hardly to be reckoned a bloke at 

all, as he wore a collar, which constitutes him more 

a "toff" or a " masher." 

Mary Anne was one of the bettermost of the 
girls, nice-looking and quiet, a boot machinist, 
living at home with her family, fairly decent 
people. It came to the Sister's ears that she had 
taken up with a young man, and she asked the 
girl about it, and soon had the whole story. He 
was very respectable, and had walked home from 
work with her for some time, and had asked her 
in to supper with some friends once or twice, and 
he talked of marrying her and going to Australia. 
But her mother must know nothing of it, it was 
all to be a secret, and she was not to say anything 
at home. The Sister felt very uneasy, and still 
more so when Mary Anne said he wanted her to 
go with him to the Britannia Theatre, "the Brit," 
as they call it, on Saturday night. 

"Don't go," said the Sister. 
"I'm afraid," said the girl, "he says if I don't 
come he'll pay me out." 

"Don't go," urged the Sister, and at last MaryAnne promised
 she would not. She was evidently distrustful herself of the
 man, and yet she would 
rather like to go with him, and she was afraid 
what he would do if she refused. When Saturday 
came, the Sister watched anxiously for Mary Anne, 
and feared greatly when she did not come at the 
usual time. But at last she appeared, pale and 
scared-looking and silent, and when the other 
girls were gone, she told what had happened. She 
had been cleaning down the stairs when he came. 


"I'm not going," she said. "Yes, you are, or 
I'll pay you." They argued some time, and still 
she stuck to her refusal, and at last he said he 
would ask her three times and if she still refused 
she must take the consequences. She stood against 
the wall, and he asked her three times, "Will 
you go?" And when the third" No" came, he 
struck at her such a blow as might have killed her 
if she had not quickly dipped her head away, and 
such was the strength of the blow, that, coming 
against a loose brick in the wall, he cut his hand 
so badly that he had to go to the hospital to have 
it dressed. Such, dear Kate, are the lovers' quarrels 
in Haggerston! 

But when the first few invitations had been 
given, and the men asked if they had friends who 
would like to come, the numbers soon filled up. 
Men waited outside the Mission-house with filthily 
dirty lists of names in which Jack and Wally 
seemed the prevailing Christian name, and some of 
them bore curious nicknames "Donkey Bray" 
being one. Wally Samuel, the champion whistler, 
was not able to attend, such talents as his being doubtless
 much in request. 

They were all admitted by ticket and specially invited not
 to come "dressed." Now this will 
surprise you, I expect, as one does not generally 
associate dress clothes and white ties with East-
end costermongers; but what was meant was that 
they need not wear their Sunday clothes, which, if 
they have them, mostly spend the week at the pawnbrokers';
but to come in their working clothes, 
striped guernsies and " pearlies" (pearl buttons on 
coat), and spotted handkerchiefs round their necks. 


Letters to Our Working Party. 27 

Towards the end crowds had to be refused; but 

at eight o'clock on January 6th, sixty were 
admitted to the long low room at the Lodge, 
which is generally devoted to the boys called 
Mother Kate's lambs. There was no superfluous 
ornament except large vases of gorgeous paper 
flowers, pink and orange coloured, and plentiful 
crackers, which were pulled as the preliminary 
ceremony, and each cropped, ill-shaped head 
adorned with a cap, helmet, foolscap, crown, or 
granny's nightcap, which greatly enhanced the 
general effect. 

Then, grace having been said, silence and severe 
application to business ensued, and you can fancy 
that the carvers had a brisk time of it. One of the 
Sisters said she could see the men swell, as helping after
helping was passed down to them. I don't 
like the adjective generally, but I can only say 
that they were aufully hungry. One of them 
said that he thought he had had about enough 
after three helpings of beef and one of pork, and 
pudding still to come. 

Their manners were irreproachable; they could 
not help hooraying when the puddings came in, but 
otherwise they behaved with the greatest discretion, and 
they unanimously agreed at the end 
that they had never had such a "blowout" in 
their lives. 

After supper the tables were cleared, and if there 
had been any doubt on the part of their entertainers how 
to amuse their guests, such doubts 
were entirely set at rest by finding that the guests 
at once, without hesitation, took. the entertainment into 
their own hands. A chairman was 


28 Letters to Our Working Party. 

chosen from among them, who took his place at 
the end of the room with a hammer in his hand, a 
tap of which immediately stopped the least 
tendency to noise or disorder; a vice-chairman 
supported him on either side, and the rest of the 
company ranged themselves round the room, and 
when a plentiful supply of tobacco appeared on the 
scene; and pipes were produced from every pocket, 
the scene, as far as visible through the clouds of 
smoke, was orderly in the extreme, far more so 
than a corresponding party of girls would have 
been. 

I really think the poor fellows appreciated the 
tobacco as much as they did the supper, and I 
fancy the whole affair was managed very much as 
they do what are called" leads" at a public-house. 
Whenever there was any commotion the hammer 
descended with, "Order, gentlemen, order!" and 
the effect was instantaneous. 

Then the singing began, a man with a fiddle 
having been brought in to accompany the songs, 
most of which were of a very sentimental order, 
while all, both sentimental or comic, were of the 
most strict propriety. It seemed strange to hear 
"Mr. William Sale will oblige," and the gentleman in question 
sing with much pathos in a hoarse 
tenor, "Voylets plucked from my dear mother's 
grave," the said mother being still living and 
constantly tipsy and given to furious affrays with 
her son, the two being not unfrequently seen fighting like wild
 beasts up and down "the Row," to 
the entertainment of admiring crowds, There was 
also a verse in the song about the venerable father 
reading the Bible to his assembled family, Mr. 


Letters to Our Working Party. 29 

Sale, senior, being a worthy spouse to such a 
mother. 

"And now, gentlemen," said the chairman, 
"Mr. Bill Hart will oblige with a horn-pipe, after 
which, if agreeable, some of the gentlemen will 
take a turn with the gloves." 

The horn-pipe should by rights have been 
danced in clogs, with half-pence in their heels to 
promote greater noise; but these were dispensed 
with on the present occasion, and really to an 
uncultivated ear the noise produced was quite 
sufficient. It was danced in perfect time and kept 
up fur a period that must have been very fatiguing 
to the performer as it certainly was to one of the 
spectators, though the rest seemed greatly to 
appreciate it. 

Then came the boxing. Do you recollect when 
Lance and Percy used to box how very dull we 
used to think it, when, at last we had been 
convinced that it was not very dangerous to knock 
one another about with those great gloves? I am 
afraid I am much of the same opinion still, but the 
company were of a very different mind, and sat 
watching with breathless interest and attention, 
appreciating the science of each blow, applauding their
favourites and wanting apparently no other 
amusement for any length of time. The combatants 
stripped off their coats, revealing striped guernsies, 
and bare, scraggy arms and necks of the most 
gaunt description, curiously devoid of muscle, but 
displayed with all the pride of a Hercules. 

It was all conducted with great solemnity and 
etiquette, shaking hands between each round, and 
stopping directly time was called, and walking 


30 Letters to Our Working Party. 

round, and when the combatants were out of 
breath the backers intervened, and the heroes were 
led off to rest and to have their faces wiped. 

There were some more songs afterwards, and 
then three cheers were given for their entertainers, 
and then someone in authority said, " Now, 
gentlemen, your hats," on which they all tore off 
without a moment's hesitation, being no doubt 
used to clearing time at the Belmont and the 
attentions of the chucker-out and his knuckle-
duster. Only a few stopped to say good-night and 
shake hands, recognizing, perhaps, that it was 
not the Belmont, nor Mother Kate the chuckerout. 

And there was an end of it ? Yes, I am afraid 
so. To be sure one lad appeared in church next 
Sunday with his sweetheart, probably for the first 
time in his life. The girls of the Mission of the 
Good Shepherd commenting on the fact, said, "It 
was that supper that did it." " No," said the 
Sister, anxious not to impute low motives, "for 
the supper was over." "Oh! but it was that 
beef that made him want to be good." But good 
as the beef was, one can hardly hope the effects 
will last very long, and there is nothing being done 
for these" blokes," and no one is working among 
them. 

To be sure, there is the Radical Olub, where, if 
they can afford 6d. a week, they can drink their 
full of poison. There is a large concert-room, 
library, billiards, lectures, any amount of drink, 
open nights when women are admitted, Sunday 
excursions in brakes, and now children's entertainment
s have been begun, as if the corruption did 


Letters to Our Working Party. 31 

not begin early enough already. The sowing of 
tares goes on bravely in Haggerston, you may be 
sure. 

And just opposite the Radical club there is a 
large rough room, empty now since some Russian 
Nihilists were turned out of it, which seems just 
meant for these men, a room where they could box, 
and sing, and smoke, and have a library and 
Mission Services on Sundays. There is a lady too 
who has offered £15 a year towards the rent, but 
"the labourers are few. Pray ye therefore the 
Lord of the Harvest." 

I cannot help hoping as I read ,that story of the 
star that shone in the East to bring kings to the 
brightness of His presence, that a star may shine 
in the darkness of Haggerston for these poor 
Gentiles too. Does it seem profane almost to 
compare these poor, low, ignorant" blokes" to the 
wise men who, even in a heathen land, knew the 
prophecy, and watched for His appearing? They 
were kings too, and brought rich presents of gold, 
and frankincense and myrrh. But, indeed, so are 
these children of the Great King, heirs of the kingdom
of heaven, and they can each of them bring to 
lay at His feet the most precious offering and the 
dearest in His sight, an immortal human soul, and 
the sweetest incense of their praise. 

Dear Kate, my letter this month ends a little 
sadly, but it is so much more cheerful to tell of 
good works being done or even begun, than of 
fields white 'already to harvest without labourers. 

Your affectionate 

E. W. 


Letters to Our Working Party. 32
 
DEAR KATE,-I hope all the coughs and colds 
at Meadowland are better; I mean the real bona-
fide grown up coughs, not the sudden attacks of 
scraping and hacking which come on among the 
school children when they see Mrs. Miller looming
in the distance, reckoning in their artful young hearts
 on the lozenge in the corner of her bag, or 
on the plentiful supply of honey and lemon or 
black currant jam that proceeds from the Vicarage 
store-room. I myself, as a child, always thought 
of that store-room when I heard of the land 
flowing with milk and honey. But I am afraid 
the bitter east winds in March must have been 
bad for a good many at Meadowland who cannot 
be so easily cured by Mrs. Miller's pleasant 
remedies, and that poor old Mrs. Blake will be 
having what she calls "brongtyphus," and Lizzie 
Martin "indigestion of the lungs," as they did 
last year in the cold spring weather. 

I thought of old Mrs. Blake's cough the other 
day as I was passing along a narrow street in 
Westminster. We had been at the stores, and 
you know what a lengthy matter that is, and it 
was nearly six by the time that Aunt Sophy had 
quite done, and when we came out into Victoria 


Letters to Our Working Party. 33 

Street it WaS nearly dark, and a nasty, raw cold 
evening, with an east wind penetrating  one's 
wraps, and a fog gathering. You know that Aunt 
Sophy thinks she possesses the bump of locality  
to a high degree, and can find her way about 
London blindfold, and she despises the assistance 
of policemen whom I regard as a superior substitute 
in London for signposts, and to whom I 
always fly if I have the slightest hesitation as to 
the way. She is not always to be relied on, however, 
as I have found to my cost on more than one 
occasion, when she has entrapped me into trams 
going in precisely the wrong direction, or hurried 
me into a train that my inner consciousness convinced 
me was not right. So this evening I was 
looking wildly round for a helmet, when she 
suddenly turned off down a little side street and 
declared in a decided tone that she would take me 
home by a short cut. I had serious misgivings,
but was afraid of losing her in the fog, so followed 
closely down one street and then another, till, as I 
said before, a cough just like old Mrs. Blake's 
carried my thoughts away from the foggy Westminster street
 to the Meadowland almhouses, and 
the dear, old woman, sitting up in her snug corner 
by the fire, with the patchwork curtain hanging from the 
shelf  to keep the smoke in, and the invariable little brown tea-pot
on the hob, and talking of her "brongtyphus." It was just such a 

hollow cough as hers, and came from one of a 
group of men waiting round a door, through which, 
just as we passed, one of them was called, and then 
the doo rclosed,leaving the others out in the east wind and the fog. 


34 Letters to Our Working Party. 

"What are they waiting there for?" I asked, 
and Aunt Sophy, after a quick glance up at the 
high building, answered, "Why this must be the 
Newport Market Refuge in its new quarters, and 
they are just letting the men in for the night. 
We will go in and see Sister Zillah." 

So in we went at another door and were soon 
ushered upstairs to a large warm room, where the 
women, who had just been admitted, were sitting gradually 
recovering from the nipping effects of 
the bitter east wind and sullen fog on weary bodies 
and wearier hearts. What was the history of 
some of those sitting there? It seemed almost 
impertinent to scan the dull, drooping faces to try 
and guess what brought them there, penniless, 
without means to get a night's lodging. No doubt 
there were romances there as thrilling and strange and sad 
as any of those we get from the library and cry over, only 
these are not bound in scarlet 
and gold with Mudie's label on their sides. Some 
of them may have seen better days, may even 
have been ladies, for, in the list of the occupations 
of those admitted to the Refuge last year, there 
are authors, artists, literary men, governesses, 
classical tutor, linguists, reporters, medical men. 
Many who come have known a life of comfort if 
not affluence, have been well educated, have started 
in life under favourable auspices, with hope and 
ambition and bright anticipations, and have sunk 
sometimes suddenly, sometimes gradually, till they 
are friendless, penniless, and hopeless. It is so 
difficult to realize how it is possible for people to 
sink away out of sight and get lost in London;
people,I mean,like you and me, Kate, with plenty 


Letters to Our Working Party. 35 

of friends and relations, and with strong hands and 
an average amount of brains-and yet they do. 
There was the case of Miss Baker. Has Aunt 
Sophy ever told you about her and her poor, old, 
blind sister? Their father was a graduate of 
Christ Church, Oxford, had been an author of 
some mark in his day, and he and his family had 
lived in considerable comfort in a village in 
Berkshire. The elder daughter had spent many 
years of her life with an uncle who, when he died, 
left her in possession of a comfortable fortune. 
She had travelled in Spain and Italy, and in later 
years lived with her sister in a pretty country-
house near Exeter. After their father's death, 
however, they fell victims to the dishonesty of an 
unprincipled lawyer and an uncle, till by a series 
of misfortunes, which it would take too long to 
detail, they sank lower and lower and dropped out 
of sight. When they were found, by chance as 
people say, by Providence as they mean, they were 
starving in a little back room in Haggerston. On 
a heap of filthy rags in a corner lay the elder one, 
70 and blind, wrapped in an old black shawl (her 
only covering) her bare feet and legs lying stretched 
out on the floor. The other sister, a few years 
younger, was dressed in a ragged petticoat and 
cloak and an old pair of goloshes, both dirty and 
emaciated beyond description, yet both, even in the 
midst of their misery and degradation, bearing 
unmistakable traces of better days. The shrunken, 
starved features were delicate and refined, and 
there was a pathetic mixture of the sublime and 
ridiculous in the old-fashioned courtesy with which 
they received their visitors. The help came just 


36 Letters to Our Working Party. 

in time for these poor creatures, but ah! how 
many there may be to whom it does not come. 

Well, to return to the Refuge. On either side 
of the room were the beds, sacking strained on 
frames, close side by side, with pillows and warm 
coloured blankets for all, and at the end of the 
room were five small cubicles for those of a better 
class. But we had not time to see them then, for 
the Sister (not Sister Zillah, who,I am sorry to 
say, was ill) asked us if we would like to see 
the men admitted, and took us down to a small 
room with a window opening into the passage 
just within the door, outside which we had seen 
the group of men waiting. 

Here the Superintendent was seated with a 
large book, and one or two gentlemen belonging to 
the Board which had just been sitting. The men 
were admitted one by one, those who looked 
superior to the mere casual or tramp being given 
the preference, for the Refuge is not meant for 
a casual ward, minus the stone-breaking and 
oakum-picking, but for those who have fallen from 
respectable antecedents, whose distress may be 
only temporary, and who may be helped to find 
work or to return to their friends before they 
sink deeper into the mire of poverty and crime. 
As each man comes up to the window with the 
light full on his face, he is closely scrutinized and 
questioned, but not bullied or browbeaten. The 
Superintendent has a wonderful faculty for recognizing 
faces that he has seen before, and though 
during the year more than five thousand nights' 
lodgings were given to men, and no man is 
allowed to come again after the seven nights 


Letters to Our Working Party. 37 

allowed him within a twelve month, he seemed 
able in a second to recognise any that had been 
there before and to remember facts about them 
even before, he had turned them up in the big 
ledger before him. There was no opportuity given for 
untruth, no reason for deceit; no object 
in cant. There was something very touching in 
the men's faces, a touch of defiance at first, 
disappearing as the kindly questioning went on, 
and in one case ending in such a quivering of 
the lip, that my eyes grew so dim I could hardly 
see the eager upturned face. A clerk, out of work, 
trying in vain to get employment, had answered 
advertisements for men to direct envelopes at 2s.6d. 
a thousand, but had no answer-had been a shoeblack for
 a time, slept in the streets the night 
before, no means of getting a night's lodging. 
There was no sharp cross-questioning as to how 
he had sunk so low or by whose fault. No doubt 
it was his own, and I daresay he felt it all the 
more acutely because he was not obliged to tell a 
lie about it or to make excuses, and, oh dear! 
how much worse it makes trouble when it is all 
one's own fault and serves one right, and how 
merciful it is that we do not all get our deserts. 
I think the Newport Market Refuge is one of 
God's answers to our prayer, "that it may please 
Thee to help and strengthen the weak-hearted 
and to raise up them that fall," for it is not 
merely the night's shelter and the wholesome 
food that is given, but practical, permanent help, 
either to find work or to emigrate or to return 
to their friends. I should have liked to have 
heard many more of those sad, little sketches of 


38 Letter'S to Our Working Party. 

human life, as, one by one, fresh faces appeared 
at the window, but the Sister came to call us 
away to see the women at supper, and we only 
took a glance in passing at the men's ward with 
the group round the stove, and saw that it was 
all warm, and clean, and quiet. 

Upstairs there was an appetizing smell of pea 
soup, and a large tin of this was being ladled 
out into basins with a great piece of bread for 
each. It smelt so nice and was so cleanly served 
that both Aunt Sophy and I accepted the offer 
to taste with alacrity, and it was really so good 
that I could have finished off the basin with the 
greatest satisfaction. 

But we had not seen half the institution yet,
for the night refuge is a very small part, though 
a very beautiful one, of the work done there. 
The Industrial School for boys is under the same 
roof and management, but otherwise is entirely 
separate. It was begun in 1866, in the early days of 
the Refuge, when it was still housed in 
the old slaughter-house in Newport Market. The 
pity of the committee was excited by the number 
of destitute lads who came to the Refuge, cast 
adrift on the ocean of London to go to wreck 
themselves and to help in the wrecking of others. 
Hard by the slaughter-house was an old granary, 
and this great empty shell was taken and four 
stories built in it, and this new sort of grain 
gathered into it, promising young rogues and 
vagabonds on the high road to become accomplished 
criminals, but capable, by having their 
talents turned to better account, of becoming 
useful, honest citizens. 


Letters to Our Working Party. 39 

Every year more boys were rescued, and the 
work of both Refuge and Industrial School went 
steadily on in the old cramped and inconvenient 
quarters in Newport Market, but at last a move 
was made necessary, not only from the ruinous 
and ramshackle condition of the buildings, but 
from a summons from the Metropolitan Board of 
Works, who wanted the place for working men's 
dwellings, and, after much uncertainty and 
difficulty in finding suitable premises, and, after 
a temporary sojourn in Long Acre, this new site 
was secured in Coburg Row, Westminster, close 
to the police-station in Rochester Row, and 
immediately behind the Grenadier Guards' 
Hospital. 

The School is large enough now for a hundred 
boys, but funds barely allow of seventy-five being
admitted, and there are spacious dormitories, 
school room, workshops, and a large covered 
playground. We were too late to see the work 
of the school going on, as nearly all the boys 
were out in the playground, and we only saw a 
few bright-faced, brisk lads sweeping out the 
schoolroom, and washing up in the large scullery and 
kitchens. Tailoring is taught in the School, 
and one of the leading tradesmen in Old Bond 
Street has for many years had all his errand boys 
from the School, many of whom have worked 
up into the higher branches of the profession, 
but do not forget their old friends, and come to 
-the annual supper for the old boys, where they 
meet school-fellows hailing from all parts of the 
world, and wearing all manner of British uniforms, 
for it is in her Majesty's service that the largest 


40 Letters to Our Working Party. 

part of the old boys of Newport Market is to be 
found. This is owing to the excellent band which 
is the mainstay of the School, and the musical 
teaching is so good that the demand for boys from 
the officers and bandmasters of various regiments 
is far greater than the School can supply, eighty two 
such applications having been received during the past 
year. Altogether there are two hundred and nineteen of 
these boys in forty-six regiments 
of her Majesty's service, including four in the 
Royal Artillery, ten drummers in the Grenadier 
Guards, twenty in the Scots Guards, and twelve 
in a crack kilted regiment, and these last, they 
say, have acquired the dialect of a Highland corps 
so glibly that you would think they had never 
seen a chimney pot or a cockney. 

So when we hear the roll of'the drum and the 
blare of the trumpets and a regiment marches past 
in all its pomp and panoply, we may look at the 
manly faces and military bearing of the bandsmen 
with interest, even beyond that which is supposed 
to be aroused in all feminine hearts by the mere 
sight of a red coat, and think that but for the 
strong hand and kind hand in God's providence 
held out, that gallant young trumpeter or sturdy drummer 
boy might now be one of the all too 
numerous criminal class, useless and mischievous, 
well-known to the police and prison chaplain-
that most hopeless of cases, a criminal from 
childhood. 

All honour to the Newport Market Industrial 
School and generous support from us all, and above 
all from any who have dear, manly English boys 
of their own, sons or brothers. And though like 


Letters to Our Working Party. 41 

Jacob of old our eyes are dim, not like his with 
age, but with the cares and riches and pleasures of 
this life, so that we cannot see these young kinsmen of 
ours, yet sometimes, when we are asking God's blessing 
on our own dear ones, we may 
stretch out our hands to these others,and ask,"The 
God which fed me all my life long unto this day, 
the angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless 
the lads," even these lads of the Newport Market 
Refuge. 
Your affectionate,

E. W. 



42
V
DEARKATE,-I hardly thought that I should 
have any letter to send you this month to read to 
the working party, as Aunt Sophy has been laid 
up with one of her bad attacks of bronchitis, and, 
as soon as she was a little better, the doctor sent 
us off to Torquay to try and escape the east wind. 
You know how good and patient Aunt Sophy 
always is when she is ill, and this time, when she 
was quite fighting for breath, she liked me to say_ 
the 150th Psalm, and especially the last verse: 
"Let everything that hath breath, praise the 
Lord." She says, whenever she is ill or in trouble 
she always gets to understand some verse in the 
Bible better or love it more, and that this is the 
"beauty from ashes" that is granted her. Well, 
I must not fill up my letter with Aunt Sophy,
though I could very well do so, but tell you how 
it was that I lighted upon some work going on in 
a little out-of-the-way corner, which I should like 
to tell you about. Do you remember that hymn 
the Temperance children used to sing?-"We 
must all shine: You in your little corner and I in 
mine," so I want you to come and see a light 
shining in a corner far away from Meadowland, 
and from the lights I have tried to describe to you 


Letters to Our W01!king Party. 43 

in my former letters as shining in the London 

darkness. 

How true it is that half the world does not know 

how the other half lives, and how good it is to 

think that there is hardly a spot in England where 

God is not putting into some heart to work for 

Him. "Thou, God, hast made me glad through 

Thy works." Now why this sermon to start with, 

you will say? Why, only because I have dipped 

down into a stupid, dull, old-fashioned, little 

country town with no interesting history, no 

beautiful church, not even a town-hall, which 

is, you know, a sine qua non to the importance of 

a country town, in fact nothing that to many would 

make life endurable, and there I find people with 

enough interesting work, and more than enough, 

to occupy busy brains and hands. Coming back 

from Torquay, through Somersetshire, I thought I 

would look up a remote cousin who lives perched 

on the top of Mendip, and offered myself for a 

visit of a day or two, being one of those gregarious 

animals that like to remember now and then in a 

life-time that they belong to a family. 

My offer of a visit was accepted, but, on my 
arrival at the snug vicarage, I was greeted with, 
"Now, I don't know, dear, what you will say, but 
I am engaged to a working party at Martel this 
afternoon, but nurse will take care of you and 
bring you some tea, and there are three new 
magazines come in, so you must make yourself 
happy and comfortable till I come back at 6."  

But the contrariness of my disposition, which 
you know of old, Kate, led me to decline the 
peaceful prospect presented to me of the comfortable 


44 Letters to Our Working Party. 

arm-chair in the sunny window, with the uncut 
magazines on the table, close at hand, and the 
pleasant garden gay with spring flowers and clothed 
with living green, inviting closer inspection, and 
little Pat, the youngest of the vicarage children, 
peeping in with round, shy eyes, to see if this 
strange cousin was a likely person to come and 
assist in the wonderful messing he calls gardening, 
and I said, "Oh, do take me with you, I should so 
like to see Martel." 

This produced rather a worried expression, as if 
I were too great a weight for the poor pony, but 
still, "Very well, dear, if you like, but it's very 
stupid, and you know what sort of a place it is as 
to church matters." 

So I went, and from two to four sat in an old- 
fashioned,country town drawing-room, with country 
town young ladies sitting round, with smiling faces 
and busy fingers, making little frocks and pinafores, 
and listening to "Lowder's Life" and short 
accounts of East London work read aloud, very 
much the same as the Meadowland working parties, 
and, I suppose, as working parties anywhere else. 
At four came tea, and then the whole party went 
to church, after which my cousin proposed returning home. 
"Oh, won't you stop and come to the 
factory tea?" asked Mrs. M. 

I am afraid I am a very troublesome visitor, for 
in spite of the very decided disinclination in my 
cousin's eyes, and the refusal that was already on 
her lips, I ventured to say, "I should like that 
above all things," and I had again to be given way to. 
I suppose if you have a troublesome visitor for a 
day or two, you must make the best of it, and 


Letters to Our Working Party. 45 

not increase the trouble by putting her out of 
temper. 

So after a short rest we turned out into the queer 
old town, which is built on the steep side of a 
hill, so that the chimneys of some of the houses 
are on a level with the doors of others. We passed 
through the lower part of the town, which reminded 
me of Old London in the "Colonies," where the 
picturesque life was wanting that it had in the 
"Inventories;" and then out between high stone 
walls into a meadow-path, from which the hill-sides 
sloped up on either side and met an apricot sky in 
that bright spring evening. Then in the growing 
twilight we reached the scene of action, a suburb of 
Martel which has grown up round the large velvet, 
satin and crape factories which established themselves 
along the course of the dirty, little stream, 
which seems too insignificant to turn the great 
wheels, and too grimy and full of cabbage-stalks 
and refuse to have any hand in the creation of the 
bright, glossy, delicately-tinted velvets and satins 
which are produced by its agency. 

Two of the factories that we passed were still at 
work, brightly lighted with gas, and with the buzz 
and rattle of the looms filling the air; but some of 
the factories must have finished work, for when we 
reached the long, low schoolroom, tea was already 
going on busily, and the room was full of girls. 
Three or four long tables were spread with tablecloths 
and neatly set out with cups of hot tea 
poured from cans, but sweetened by the girls themselves 
to suit their own taste, from large bowls of 
lump sugar which seemed constantly being passed 
up and down till the supply was gone, and one 


46 Letters to Our Working Party. 

felt that it was a good thing that sugar is so cheap. 
The girls have as much hot, sweet tea as they like, 
a long roll and portion of butter (half a pound cut' 
into twelve) and for this they pay a penny, which 
does not, of, course, cover quite the cost of all. 
They seem to like having their own plates and 
knives, splitting their rolls and thickly buttering 
them, and also stirring up the abundant sugar in 
their cups, although the tea-spoons have occasi.onally 
to be handed from one cup to another, but 
they prefer this to ready-sweetened tea and ready-

cut bread and butter. 

Mrs. M.

was warmly welcomed by the girls, and 
by Mrs. Black, the wife of the foreman of the 
factory, a bustling, stout, good-tempered person, 
who undertakes the arrangement of these teas. 
Mrs. Black is very musical, which is half or more 
than half the battle with these factory girls, and is 
organist at a village church in the neighbourhood. 
She has a sharp, off-hand way with the girls, which 
seems to suit them. "Now, chatterbox!" "Make 
yourselves comfortable, girls." "Now girls, either 
you must talk or I must; we can't all be heard," 
and such like, half banter, half command, which 
makes the girls laugh while they follow her 
orders. 

After tea and the clearing away of cups, etc., 
Mrs. Black said a short prayer. "Eyes closed, 
girls;" and then they were exhorted to make 
themselves comfortable, which seemed to people 
demoralized by arm-chairs and sofas, more easily 
said than done under the circumstances, but which 
the girls carried out by leaning back with their 
heads in some cases turned against the wall, or 


Letters to Our Working Party. 47 

their arms thrown across the narrow tables; and I 
noticed that the hands were most of them smooth 
and soft, and bore no traces of hard, rough work; 
and I was told that smooth hands were essential in 
many parts of the work, and that doing any household 
work unfits them for the factory, and that 
this is why factory girls make such bad wives, 
dirty and untidy, because they are quite ignorant 
of ordinary cleaning and household work. Many 
were doing nothing but listen, and now and then 
joining in the singing, while some had crochet or 
knitting, and a very few needlework. I think 
there may have been between thirty and forty girls the 
evening I was there, and that number 
varies'upto seventy or eighty. Butit is difficult 
for all to come even if they wished, as part of the 
silk work has to be prepared in the evening for the 
following day, and many of the girls who are 
friends will do each other's work and come by 
turns. They were in their factory dresses, with 
the large, coarse holland aprons and bibs,and every 
variety of fringe, curly and straight, and, for the 

most part, healthy country faces, though looking tired and worn. 

I was sitting watching the faces, the rosy, the 
pale, the merry and the sad, and thinking of all 
their lives, and wondering whether as in our old 

favourite, "The cry of the children," the girls were 
glad that the wheels were silent "Ay, be silent, let them
 hear each other breathing 
For a moment, mouth to mouth,  
Let them touch each other's hands in a fresh wreathing 
Of their tender, human youth! 
Let them feel that this cold metallic motion 
Is not all the life God fashions or reveals. 


48 Letters to Our Working Party

"Let them prove their inward souls against the notion 
That they live in you or under you, oh wheels! 
Still all day the iron wheels go onward, 
As if Fate in each were stark, 
And the children's souls which God is calling sunward 
Spin on blindly ill the dark." 
And now I saw their faces for the most part look 
interested. Mrs. Black had moved her position 
from the harmonium which faced down the room, 
and perched herself on one of the tables facing Mrs. 
M. with the other auditors to hear the Bible class 
which Mrs. M. had been asked to give the girls, 
but which turned more into a talk than a regular 
class, telling them how they should make the best 
of their lives. I cannot remember the words she 
said, but I can the drift, for it has haunted me 
since, and I have mixed it up with my own 
thoughts till it is difficult to distinguish hers and 
mine. She reminded them of thelovely silkworm's 
silk in its raw state, golden yellow or creamy, 
perfect as made by God, but of little use, if put 
away only as a treasure to be looked at and 
admired. No, it must be worked by clever hands 
and clever machinery, passed from one to another, 
in the process often losing all its beauty, becoming brittle, 
lustreless and yet not discarded as spoilt or 
worthless, but still passed on until at last, as they knew, 
came the lovely satin to be placed proudly in the master's 
hand and laid away in quiet 
warehouses, away from the noise and rattle of 
the looms until it was wanted, perhaps for a royal 
palace. And so, she told them, it was with their 
lives. How perfect the little life was, fresh from 
God's hand, the lips that had never lied, the eyes 
and ears that had never drawn in what could 


Letters to Our Working Party. 49 

stain the soul. And ye tthis too was of little use, 
it must be passed through all the troublesome 
machinery of this world, it must get worn and dim, 
and sometimes only God and the holy angels, who 
can see how the work is being perfected, can see 
any beauty in it. Then at last when all the 
perfecting is done, the poor worn out body is laid 
away in the grave and the soul in God's quiet 
warehouse, beside the still waters which turn no 
noisy wheels or mills of weary work, where neither 
the rattle of the loom nor "the strife of tongues" 
approach "its sweet peace to molest," uutil the 
happy day comes when the soul is once more 
clothed with the body, now glorified, bright and 
gleaming like the lovely satin to be worn in the 
Palace of the King.

After this the girls sang a great many Moody and Sankey 
hymns, sometimes together, 
sometimes one standing up and singing a 
solo verse followed by a chorus. Then one 
very melancholy girl proposed to recite, which 
she did, and a most gloomy recital it was, as 
far as I could gather from the strong Somersetshire 
twang. Then more singing, SOme of it 
secular and on the tonic-sol-fa system. Then 
Mrs. M. read a short sensational account of achild 
being saved from a fire, which was pronounced 
"beautiful," and then more singing and a little 
talk about the G.F.S. and a summer excursion; 
and at last half-past eight came, and MrS.Black 
broke up the assemblage, reading two or three 
collects and wishing them good-night, and they all 
trooped out rather noisily, but not doing 
anything worse than pulling the school bell" by 

E 


50 Letters to Our Working Party. 

accident." My much enduring cousin was awaiting me, 
and we set off on our return journey up 
the steep hills and along the lonely lanes, with 
overhead the silence of the stars. 

I learnt one or two things more about these 
girls. They pay in a penny a week to get themselves 
ulsters, and by-and-bye, when the work 
is a little more developed, they will be encouraged 

to pay in for underclothing, and be taught how 
to make it. Mrs. M.says that it does not do to 
make it too much of a sewing class, as the girls 
come out of the factories tired and like to rest, 
and make themselves comfortable while they sing 
or hear reading, better than setting at once to 
needlework. As a rule, Mrs. M. says, few factory 
women are also good needlewomen. She finds 
this at her mothers' meeting; they hardly know 
how to cut the simplest garment, and when cut 
out have to be shown how to put it together. 
Then how do they and their families get clothed? 
Why, principally from ready-made shops. Very 
extravagant, of course, and if they are given old 
clothes they have no idea of altering them to fit, 
but they must be passed on to other hands, and 
a few pence spent, at least, before they can be 
worn. This causes a demand fur dressmakers of 
a very humble description; and tribes of young 
girls, too carefully brought up by their mothers 
to enter the factories, are taught a smattering 
of dressmaking when they leave school, and live 
at home earning 5s. or 68. a week with these 
odd jobs from the factory hands, and at Whitsuntide, 
reaping a short harvest from the stylish 

holiday dresses that these same factory girls have 


Letters to Our Working-Party. 51

screwed and starved to get. You would be 
amused to see how they turn out then. Mrs. M. 
says she has seen a little, slatternly, half-starved 
looking factory girl living near her gate, attired 
in an elegantly fitting crimson velvet costume, 
trimmed richly with coffee lace and a hat to 
match, and this is by no means an unsteady girl 
in any way, but a poor little toiler for 5s. a week, 
who, not long ago, came, broken-hearted, to Mrs. 

M. to tell her that she had been dismissed for 
being "flagrantly insolent" to the foreman, and 
had to have a letter of entreaty written to beg for her 
pardon, as her mother, who was partly dependent on her 
wages, was thought to be dying. 
It is not easy to guage the morality of these 
factory girls, you have to allow a large latitude 
for" factory manners," for coarseness of language and 
habits of thought; but Mrs. M. says there 
are very few really unsteady, that there is a 
rough and ready code of honour and honesty 
among them; that they are affectionate and 
impressionable; and these are very hopeful foundations 
to build on; and I hope that the work, 
which is only in the beginning, may grow and 
prosper, and that in the great loom of God's 
Providence these poor threads that look to our 
ignorant eyes dull and dim, and soiled and 
tangled, may be woven into that fine linen clean 
and white in which, when the marriage of the 
Lamb is come, His wife shall make herself ready.
No more now, but good-bye, from 
Your affectionate,

E.W. 

52
VI
DEAR KATE,-I was so sorry to hear of old 

Martin being laid up, and a substitute having to 
be found to deliver the Meadowland letters. I 
never direct a letter home without just half a 
thought to the dear old man, with the leather 
bag skapped over his shoulders, and with his 
wonderful, wrinkled, old gaiters, and his face as 
wonderful and more wrinkled and old, with its 
frosty blue eyes, and the bit of straw between his 
lips. And don't you know, if one is particularly 
anxious to get a letter, how he fumbles and potters 
about, and gets out his silver-rimmed spectacles, 
and holds the letter a long way off',and his head 
on one side, when one knows almost before it is 
out of the bag to whom it is directed. He is so 
curious, too, and lingers about pretending to buckle 
his straps, in the hope of gleaning a word or two 
of its contents to carry on to the next house. 
"There's somat wrong up to the Parsons," or 
"There's ter'ble bad news of young Mister 
Gurge." " We'll be having a wedding, I'm 
thinking, up to Croft Farm," and so on. As 
for post-cards, I think he cOnsiders that they 
are intended for his special edification, and 
that he would be quite missing an opportunity 


Letters to Our Working Party. 53 

of self-improvement if he delivered any un-

read. 

What a very different thing it is in London. 

Rat·tat!--a letter drops into the box, which may break 
your heart or make you the happiest 
creature in existence, and you see the blue uniform 
and red facings of the postman pass the window, 
and hear another rat-tat, and another and another, 
growing fainter in the distance, before you even 
have your letter in your hand. He neither knows 
nor cares what it contains, nor how it affects you, 
nor what becomes of it after it is once through the 
slit in the door; he is just part of a machine. 
But what awonderful machine the Post-office is, 
and how marvellous the exactitude with which it 
works, and the few mistakes that are ever made, 
almost unworthy of mention, when one takes into 
account the stupidity and perversity of many of 
the people who make use of it, and who cry out 
directly an illegibly written envelope miscarries, 
or a carelessly done up parcel is damaged, or a 
misdirected letter is delayed. The wheels of the 
great machine run so smoothlythat very few of us 
realize all its size and beauty, and we accept all 
its elaborate arrangements for our comfort and 
convenience (and,oh! how muchof the happiness 
and peace of our lives is concerned in the working 

of the post and telegraph), without a thought of 

the huge organization, and of the instruments by

which it is carried out. 

One gets to regard the arrival of the morning 

post, as one does the rising of the sun, and to have 

as little gratitude for the artificial, as one has for 

the naural blessings in life. I sometimes think 


54 Letters to OUY Working Party. 

if He Who gives more than either we desire or 
deserve, only gave us just what we ask for, or took 
away all for which we are not grateful, how 
terrible it would be. 

My mind has been full lately of the Post-office 
and its elaborate machinery, and I made up my 
mind that my next letter to our working party 
should be about this, and whenever I begin to be 
interested in something else, I am always brought 
back to the point by the sharp rat-tat from the 
hand of one of the army of postmen, who at all 
hours of the day and a good way into the night 
are working for our convenience. It is no 
exaggeration to use the word army, for in the 
Postmaster-General's Annual Report, he says, 
"The permanent staff of the department numbers 
upwards of 48,000 officers of various grades, and 

"as many more are employed for several hours 
daily," and all these are engaged in the almost 
superhuman work of transmitting the millions of 
missives which are daily placed in the letter-box. 
I read a most interesting article the other day, 
describing the General Post-office and all its 
departments, and I have been promised a visit 
there myself some day, of which you shall have a 
full description. But it is less the beautiful 
organization that has been in my mind lately, 
than the human instruments that it makes use 
of, this host of young fellows, men and boys, who 
are not just a set of wheels revolving or machines 
working, but living, thinking, suffering, tempted 
human beings. They are all of them men of a 
certain amount of education and intelligence, that 
is necessary in all the departments, and in some of 


Letters to Our Working Party. 55 

them, a high standard is required; they must bear 
a character of perfect honesty, anY shortcomings 
in this respect being punished with a severity that 
would seem disproportionate to the crime, if it 
were not plainly to the interest of the public. 

Oh! that public! that great, selfish, indolent, 
greedy public! I may safely call names, for I 
am including myself in the accusation; how easily it takes 
all that is done for it! how violently it 
grumbles if the machinery is in the smallest 
particular out of gear! how hard it is on the poor 
letter-carrier who is tempted by the stamps he 
feels enclosed in the envelope in his hand! how 
calmly it shirks the responsibility of doing anything for 
the public servant who does so much 
for it! 

The early and late hours, often beginning at 

3 o'clock in the morning, the long weary walks in 

all weathers, the short period of rest, often tell 

severely on the health of the men, especially on 

the younger lads of 16 and 17, with whom con

sumption is frequently the result. Numbers of 
them live at a distance from their sphere of work, 
so that although they are not on duty during the 
whole of their time, they may be said, to use their 
own phrase, to be "on the job" from the very 
 earliest hours of the morning until the latest at 
night, and the distanoe from home does not allow 
of their return, after the early sorting or delivery is over, 
for the rest which is sometimes sorely 
needed, or for the ablutions that are often omitted, 
owing to their early start. And besides the 
outward discomforts and trials to health and 
strength, there are the inward temptations, the 


56 Letters to Our Working Party. 

vices and evils that closely beset all young men in 
London; the public-house with its attendant evils, 
and allurements of a like nature which await the 
letter-carrier during the hours when he is not 
actually engaged in the delivery of letters. There 
are low pleasures to entice him, there are 
Socialistic clubs to beguile him, there is the great 
enemy, Atheism, who is making such terrible 
progress in our midst, to waylay him and enslave 
him. The Post-office army have much to contend 
with, even though they are an army of peace, 
and it seems to me that if in any way we can 
strengthen them in the conflict, we are bound to 
do so to the utmost, lest that bitter curse pronounced by 
the Angel of the Lord should fall on 
Us, as well as on "Meroz and the inhabitants 
thereof, because they came not to the help of the 
Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty." 
And mighty indeed, is the strong man armed in 
his palace in London, so strong that our hearts 
would fail us if we did not fight under the banner 
of the Stronger than he. 

Ten years ago, St. Martin's League was started 
with three members, and the Rev. A. H. Stanton, 
Curate of St. Alban's, as president, and in a few 
years the numbers rose to a thousand, and now 
stand at between seven and eight hundred. It 
was not an easy work to undertake, and the secret 
of its success (though it seems like presumption to 
talk of the secret of success when we know Whose 
Hand gives the increase) was the entire absence of 
patronage, which is always a hindrance in any 
work, but especially so in the case of dealing with 
young working fellows. They are peculiarly sen-


Letters to Our Working Party. 57 

sitive to anything like being taken in hand and 
treated as inferior beings, a practice which is very 
questionable in all cases, as it at once raises a 
barrier between those who exercise it, and those 
towards whom it is exercised. So the main 
promoters of the League are not patrons, but 
friends, with whom the young men may feel that 
they stand on an equal footing in the social scale, 
and enjoy easy and unrestrained intercourse, and 
may give and receive sympathy and help, face to 
face, and heart to heart, and not merely signal 
their goodwill to one another across the great 
gulfs that yawn between class and class. At any 
rate, in St. Martin's League "brother clasps the hand 
of brother, stepping fearless through the night." 

The first house taken was in Greville Street, 
Halborn, and here are provided a kitchen in 
which members can have their meals, a dressing 
and bath-room, two sleeping-rooms, where, during 
the intervals between the hours of delivery, the 
men can take much-needed repose, a large sitting

room and conservatory, where books and newspapers and 
comfortable chairs and sofas provide 
rest and recreation for mind and body. Three 
other houses of a similar character have now been 
opened in the East, South-east, and South-west 
districts, besides the central house in Greville 
Street, and a sea-side bouse at St. Leonards, where 
the men can go for their holidays on payment of 
14s. a week; 375 members having availed themselves of 
it last year.  

St. Martin's League aim at being as comprehensive not 
as exclusive as possible, and though, at 
first, membership was restricted to those belonging 


58 Letters to Our Working Party. 

to the Church of England, it was resolved two 
years ago to remove even this restriction, and now it 
is open to all who are employed in the General Post-
office. But do not think from this that it is a 
purely secular society, and that religion is discarded 
as a thing of no account. To be sure an ordinary 
visitor at one of the League houses could discover 
nothing" churchy " about it; there are no Bible 
readings or prayer-meetings, religion is rarely the 
topic of conversation, and as Mr. Stanton says in 
his last annual address, "as for the evidence of 
good we have done, we cannot exhibit any spiritual 

samples for the inspection of devout, or even any 
physical achievements for the admiration of muscular 
Christians, but I believe in the preventive 
work not only intimated but assured, the results of 
which are hidden away secretly in His Tabernacle 
Who judges not as man." 

The indirect influence reaches far; sick members are 
cared for, dying comforted, tempted 
strengthened, fallen and in prison visited and 
helped to start afresh, sympathy and advice are 
ready for all in perplexities or distress, in many 
cases, doubtless, reaching souls that would have 
shrunk away from a society more professedly 
religious. It is a great work and one that seems 
to me should stand in no want of support when 
one hears in all directions of the difficulties of 
getting hold of young men and of the great spread 
of infidelity. Here is a great means ready to 
hand, here is a great army ready to be set in array 
against the enemy. But will you believe it? 
This Jubilee year of the Queen will most likely be 
the last of St. Martin's League! 


Letters to Our Working Party. 59 

The four London houses will have to be given up 
when the leases fall in next year. They cannot 
be self-supporting, as the members' subscription of 
4s. a year is not sufficient for the purpose, and if 
that is doubled, half the members would be lost, 
and more than half the usefulness of the League 
lost with them, as it would then become merely a 
club for the superior Post-office employes, and all 
the poor young fellows who need it most would be 
shut out. But it is not merely the want of money 
to support it (£500 a year would suffice), but the 
want of men. A warden is needed at each house 
as a resident head, to control the difficulties that 
continually arise. Mr. Dolling and Mr. 
Wainwright, who were wardens of the east and 
south-east houses, are engrossed with other duties, 
and the whole weight of the four houses has now 
fallen on Mr. Stanton, and it is too much for one 
man to undertake. The house at St. Leonards 
will still be kept on, but the London houses must 
go, the quiet sleeping-rooms, where the men lie 

curled up in blankets like rows of cocoons, after 
the morning delivery; the kitchen, where so many 
hot meals have been cooked, and taken away the 
chill of foggy mornings, and tramps through snow 
and driving rain; the pleasant sitting-room, where 
an arm-chair and a pipe, and a newspaper by the 
fire is so much pleasanter than the public-house, 
and where on Tuesdays, those enjoyable musical 
evenings take place, when ladies come and sing 
and play, not to them, but with them, and get 
quite as much pleasure as they bestow by an 
evening spent in " the pure, fresh mountain air of 
equality," though the outer air is crowded with 


60 Letters to Our Working Party. 

tobacco smoke; the little chapel (ah! I did not 
tell you of that; it is not made conspicuous, but it 
is there) for shame-faced young fellows to slip in, 
as many do unnoticed, to say a prayer, without 
feeling that they are hypocrites and making a 
profession of being better than they are. 

I cannot believe that this gallant ship, with St. 
Martin's pennon flying from its mast, which has 
weathered the storm of ten years so bravely, should 
be suffered now to go down, least of all, as we 
believe that One is with them Who was with the 
apostles on the stormy lake, and who perhaps is 
even now looking on our fears, and saying, "Why 
are ye so fearful? How is it 'that ye have no 
faith? " 

Your affectionate, 

E.W. 

61
VII

DEAR KATE,-Do you remember that part in 

the garden where the ground slopes down towards 
the fernery, and how, sometimes, on Autumn 
mornings a sudden crop of fungus has sprung up during 
the night, enough to provide stools for all 
the toads in the neighbourhood, if such sensible 
and substantial creatures should think of availing 
themselves of such unattractive and ricketty furniture? 
I was forcibly reminded of that sudden 
uncanny growth during a day I spent at Plaistow 
the beginning of June, though there was nothing in the 
surroundings to suggest, except by utter 
contrast, the dear old garden, where the laburnums 
were in full blaze of golden sunshine, and the 
ferns on the rockery were unfolding their dainty 
croziers, and the thrushes singing as only the 

Meadowland thrushes can. 

I dare say you do not know where Plaistow is! 

Nor did I till the other day, and after all there 

was something in Mr. Squeers' practical way of 

teaching his pupils "c-l-e-a-n, clean, verb active, 

to make bright, to scour; w-i-n, win, d-e-r, der', 

winder, a casement. When the boy knows this 

out of book, he goes and does it." And the best 

way of learning geography is to put on your 


bonnet and go to the place in question. But 
beware! there are two Plaistows, and it is no use 
saying it is near Bromley, for they are both near 
Bromleys, only such very different Bromleys, and 
such very different Plaistows. My Bromley is 
Bromley-by-Bow, my Plaistow is Plaistow-on-the-
Marsh, in Essex, over the River Lea, over the 
border, far away east, to be reached by the Tilburyand 
Southend Railway from Fenchurch Street 
Station. 

My ideas had never travelled, nor my body 
either, further eastward than Bethnal Green or 
Whitechapel, and there are hundreds of civilized 
creatures who have liyed all their lives in London 
and never got so far east even as that; but this 
great Babylon of ours stretches miles farther, and, 
year after, reaches out farther and farther, like a 
hungry monster, eating up green fields and sweet 
hedgerows and shady trees. 

Fifty years ago, Plaistow marshes must have 
presented a pleasant sight to eyes weary with a 
long sea voyage, and gazing from a homeward 
bound vessel towing up the Thames, on the shores 
of Old England. Broad reaches of green meadow 
land, intersected with ditches, stretched away for 
miles, dotted with grazing cattle, and diversified 
here and there with handsome old houses, standingin 
well-timbered grounds, and beyond, the shady lanes of 
West Ham and the remains of the grand 
old forest of Hainault, with its stately trees. Even 
then the dwellers in these fine old family mansions, 
many of them rich Quakers, must have found the 
neighbourhood rather damp and aguish, with the 
marshy land and attendant fogs, and occasional 


floods. But folks thought less of soil and climate, 
pure water and good drainage, in those days. This 
is a more enlightened age, you will say, in such 
matters, and yet you would hardly think so if you 
went to Plaistow, for where one man lived in 
unwholesome surroundings fifty years ago, a 
thousand live now amidst surroundings a hundred 
times more unwholesome. Our civilization is, 
after all, so much of it selfishness: we take infinite 
pains over our own health and comfort, but we are 
not so keen about others. Where are the broad, 
green meadows? Where are the shady lanes and 
hedgerows? Where are the substantial family 
mansions? Going! going! gone! And in their 
place is the mushroom growth that made me think 
of the old home garden. Rows of poor, little 
houses, run up with marvellous speed, with a 
wretched monotony of meanness, a dead level of 
squalor, that is most depressing. In some of the 
latest productions of speculative builders, to be 
sure, ghastly little attempts at ornamentation are 
introduced, pitiful efforts of quaintness and Queen 

Anne, which have filtered down from the fashionable vagaries 
of the upper surface of society till 
they have reached even the Plaistow marshes, 
and would be almost funny if they were not 
irritating. 

In every direction you turn, you see rows of 
half-finished houses, scaffolding, heaps of bricks, 
building plots, half-made streets, littered with all 
the debris of building, almost impassable in winter 
with mud, and nearly as bad with the thick and 
all-pervading dust in the summer. This is the 
land of liberty for builders, for it is outside the 


jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Board, so that 
tiresome interference in such matters as drains, 
roads, gas and pavement is not to be feared. 
Perhaps in some ways things are not so bad at 
Plaistow as they were in 1857, when Dickens 
wrote his article in Household Words, called 
"Londoners over the Border," in which a ghastly 
picture is given of the dirt and wretchedness of 
the place; of the houses built, or rather laid like 
bandboxes upon the soil, close on the stagnant 
ditches and draining into them right under the 
very windows, these ditches being choked with 
filth and having no outlet, till the floods came in 
the winter, lifting all the accumulated filth and 
spreading it over the land; spreading also disease, 
which coming upon bodies saturated with the 
influences of such air as this, breathed night and 
day, fell as a spark upon touch wood, and ague, 

fever and small-pox brooded over the place almost 
without intermission. But if things are not as 
bad as this in some ways, in others they are worse, 
for in the thirty years that have elapsed since that 
paper was written, the population has been increasing at 
the rate of something like a thousand 
a year, the building going on with amazing 
rapidity, till Dickens himself would hardly recognize the 
place; row upon row, terrace upon terrace, filling up the 
open spaces, and stretching 
across the marshy grouIld, till the great" Dismal 
Swamp" is rapidly being converted into a huge 
compact city of one-storied houses, which are filled 
as soon as finished by the great tide of human life 
pouring eastward out of London. 

Why do they come to Plaistow? you ask, and 


Letters to Our Working Party. 65 

you might well wonder what can be the attraction, 
if you saw the heavy fogs that lurk there all the 
winter, and the hazy thickness that hides the sun 
in summer, and gets into your throat and seems to 
choke the life and energy out of you, or if you 
could smell some of the odours of the place. You 
had better put your nme in your pocket before you 
go to Plaistow. The main sewer from L0ndon 
runs through it, and is quite a striking feature in 
the place, and there is, I believe, a talk of making 
a boulevard of it; the noxious, ill-smelling trades, 
which London would no longer tolerate in its midst, 
have found a happy home across the Lea, and 
manure works, bone works, tar distilleries and 
chemical works of various kinds, pour their filth 
into the river Lea and pollute the atmosphere for 
miles round. The small-pox hospital is erected 
there too, and though at first it was isolated, now 
those enterprising builders are running up houses 
close to its very walls, with a brave disregard of 
infection (for other people). 

Why do they come? you ask again. The great 
Victoria and Albert Docks bring a great many, 
hundreds more than can possibly make a living 
out of them; numbers who get a day's work now 
and then, numbers who just loaf about the dock 
gates and live as they can and let their wives and 
children live or die as they can. These make up a 
large proportion of the people of Plaistow, with 
unskilled artizans chronically out of work, and a 
large floating population of people who have seen 
better days, and a good sprinkling of the criminal 
class. 

The old parish of Plaistow extended down to the 

F 
66 Letters to Our Working Party

Thames, including all that part now covered by 
the Victoria Docks, and the densely populated 
town that has grown up round them; and though 
this has now been cut off and forms the separate 
and huge parish of St. Luke's, and three other 
parishes have also been carved out of the unwieldy 
mass, the old mother church of St. Mary's is left 
still with the charge of 15,000 souls, increasing, 
as I said, at the appalling rate of a 1000 a year, a 
rate which does not seem likely to diminish till 
every square inch of soil is covered, and the mean 
little houses packed together too closely to allow 
room for more. 

Don't you think that the present vicar's heart 
must have failed him when he came into the parish 
three years ago, and found a church capable of 
holding 400 people, but never called upon to do so; 
with broken windows and dirty, slovenly arrangements; 
day-schools in a sort of dilapidated rabbit hutch, 
Sunday-schools hardly worth mentioning, 
no parish organization of any kind, no Scripture 
reader nor Bible-woman, no mothers' meeting, nor 
Bible classes, nor mission services, and all around 
a great population entirely alienated from the 
Church, some of them given over to dissent, but 
more sunk into actual heathenism, among whom 
the Atheists were making triumphant progress, 
hundreds crowding to the notorious Cromwell 
Club to hear Bradlaugh, Mrs. Besant, and such 
like, whose object seemed to be to rob the 
poor creatures, who listened open-mouthed, of the 
only thing that could make their sad, suffering, 
diseased existences endurable: the hope of immortality, 
the faith in a merciful and loving Father 


Letters to Our Working Party 67

and in a Saviour who was afflicted in all their 
affiictions; while the dirty little church, with the 
wind whistling through the broken windows,was 
left empty?

It must have been more than discouraging, 
simply overwhelming, and I think, I am afraid 
that had I been in the Vicar's place, I should have 
given it up as an impossibility and gone to some 
pretty, healthy, country vicarage, with a nicely 
restored church and a simple, docile, little flock of 
a few hundreds, and a Squire ready to put his 
hand in his pocket whenever means were wanted. 
There are no Squires in Plaistow, no one who can 
help in the smallest degree-all the 15,000 are on a 
dead level of poverty, as dead and as level as the 
marshes themselves. 

It must have required wonderful faith to believe 
that "they that be with us are more than they 
that be against us," and to see through the thick, 
murky air of Plaistow, and through all the sin 
and ignorance and infidelity, as plainly as the 
Prophet of old saw in Dothan, that it was "full 
of horses and chariots of fire round about," for 
"the chariots of God are twenty thousand even 
thousands of angels, and the Lord is among them 
as in the holy place of Sinai." 

But much has been done already, even in the 
short space of three years; it is not often that 
one can point to such triumphant progress in so 
short a time, and it is only in comparison with 
what remains to be done that the results seem 
small and insignificant. First and foremost the 
flag of St. Mary's, Plaistow, waves proudly over 
the Cromwell Club, the Atheists and scoffers have 


68 Letters to Our Working Party 

been routed out of their very stronghold, not without 
a struggle, you may be sure; every Sunday 
morning lecture's of the most blasphemous and 
violent description against the doctrines of Christianity 
were delivered in the large hall behind the 
club, and these were answered and refuted every 
Sunday evening on the green, outside the club, by 
lecturers sent by the Christian Evidence Society, 
meeting the Atheists on what they consider their 
own special ground of reason and science, and 
conquering them as thoroughly on this as on the 
higher standpoint of faith. 

I must not stop to tell you how by degrees the 
arguments of the secularists turned to mere abuse 
and insollence, and how gradually the influence on 
the other side extended, by patient house to house 
visiting and open air lecturing, but I think it is 
pretty plain which side got the best of it, for the 
Cromwell Club, or as one called it, "the Sunday 
morning drinking saloon," and others "the hell of 
Plaistow," is now a coffee tavern and reading-
room, where the working men of Plaistow may 
find rest, recreation, instruction and refreshment, 
and in the great hall behind, where these infidel 
lectures used to be given, and where in the evenings, 
including Sunday, variety entertainments were 
given, consisting of low comic songs and recitations 
and acting and dancing of the lowest and vilest 
description, is now a Mission Hall for the preaching 
of the Gospel. This transformation was not done 
with a wave of the fairy's wand and a "Hey, 
presto !"-transformations of this sort in real life 

cost a great deal of money, and you will bear in 
mind that there is no Squire in Plaistow, not even 


Letters to Our Working Party 69

rich manufacturers, no large landed proprietors, 
not many even who can afford to keep a servant. 

There is, connected with the coffee tavern, a 
soup kitchen, which makes sixty gallons of soup 
daily through the winter, and supplies thousands 
of penny dinners, or dinners minus the penny to 
the starving children and others who are destitute, 
and it is not easy at Plaistow to say who is above a 
penny dinner. 

The windows of the church have been mended, 
and it is clean and weather-tight if it cannot be 
beautiful, and there is a talk of enlarging it. 
There are two Mission churches, one of them in a 
part called "No man's land," rather over a mile 
from the parish church, one of those sudden 
growths of little houses, where in an incredibly 
short time 5,000 people were settled, with not a 
single place of worship in their midst. Ah, Kate, 
I wonder what the dear old vicar would say if a 
sudden irruption of wretched little cottages sprang 
up in some of the fields of Meadowland, and 5,000 
or more of poor were added to his parishioners in 
a few months! The rabbit-hutch schools in which 
the mistress, tradition says, kept school of old 
under an umbrella in wet weather, have been 
improved, and the standard of education so greatly 
raised that now 97 instead of 66 per cent of the 
children pass, and the" Excellent" grant has been 
obtained; and the Sunday-schools have multiplied, 
and continue to multiply, in a way most satisfactory from 
our point of view, but overwhelming 
when teachers are almost an impossible attainment. 
Don't you know how eyen in Meadowland it is 
not easy to get teachers for all the classes of sun


70 Letters to Our Working Party 

burnt, stupid, little lads, and blushing, blue-eyed 
maidens; and think of the difficulty at Plaistow, 
where all the people are poor and hard-worked 
and ignorant. 

Mrs.Given-Wilson has a large and very successful mothers' 
meeting, numbering over a hundred, 
which has outgrown its two first habitations, and 
now has taken up its abode at the old Cromwell 
Club, and is stretching out its influence far and 
wide through many a poor, hard-worked, broken-
down mother, and helping them with blanket, coal, 
clothing and provident clubs, but still more by 
human sympathy and heart to heart kindness and 
gentleness. 

My letter is getting too long, and there are yet 
many things to tell of what has been done, and if 
I once begin on what remains to be done I shall 
never get to the end. It is impossible, and it 
would be criminal not to look forward and see 
what Plaistow will be in a few years time. It is 
not merely the present, overwhelming as that is 
alone, but the future, the dense population settling 
down like a swarm of locusts on the Plaistow 
marshes, on whom the Lord will, nay does,look 
with compassion and says to us, "Give ye them 
to eat." 

Mr.Given-Wilson has secured two sites in dif- 
ferent parts of the parish (and remember always, 
if you please, the absence of that money-giving Squire 
in Plaistow), so that the Church may find a 
corner among the crowded habitations in days to 
come, where the Cross of Christ may be raised for 
the healing of the nations. It was" without the 
gate" that the dear Lord suffered, and shall we let 


Letters to Our Working Party 71


it be? "Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass 
by?" that He is being crucified afresh, " without 
the gate" in this London over the Border, and 
that none of us go forth to Him, without the camp, 
bearing His reproach. 

Your affectionate,

E. W. 

72
VIII

DEAR KATE,-The last letter I wrote to the 
working party was heavy, it seemed to me, with 
the air of Plaistow, and dull with the gathering 
clouds hanging over its future prospects, and 
depressed with the dead monotony of meanness, 
and with the white faces of the little children 
playing-no, it was too listless to be called play-
loitering round the foul, stagnant ditches. Aunt 
Sophy got it into her head that I was out of sorts, 
and even threatened to send for the doctor or to 
give me a course of tonics; but one morning at the 
beginning of July she looked up from her letters 
with a very smiling face and said,"Well, child, here's 
a tonic for us both. There is a vacancy at The 
Buttercups, and we will take that poor little baby from 
Haggerston down ourselves." 

I must say that the prospect at first sight was 
not so pleasing as Aunt Sophy's smiling facewould 
have led me to suppose. I am very fond of babies, 
as you know, but experience has taught me that it 
is as well to keep within hail of mother or nurse, 
as, the moment you get out of earshot, some 
contingency occurs, to which the capacity of an 
ordinary woman-body is unequal, and which leads 
to tribulation of some sort or other, sacrifice of 


Letters to Our Working Party 73

clean pinafores and sashes, destruction of valuable 
drawing-room ornaments, or, worst of all, loud 
squalls and consequent indignation from mother 
and nurse. But this, at any rate, was not a case 
of clean pinafores and sashes. I had seen a sort 
of sick white monkey, quite devoid of clothing, 
sitting up in the middle of a large bed filling up 
most of a back room in Haggerston, while his 
mother was washing one or two minute rags which 
represented Johnnie's wardrobe, and my heart 
failed me at the idea of an hour with a child 
screaming for his mother, for The Buttercups is 
near Twyford, on the Great Western Railway, and 
the journey takes about an hour from Paddington. 
And then to my dismay Aunt Sophy added, " And 
I see they want us to bring down a child from Westminster 
Hospital with us, so we shall each have a 
baby to see' after." And then perhaps she noticed 
that I was looking rather aghast, and she laughed. 
"Ah! perhaps you don't know how good London 
children are, poor little souls; it would be quite a 
different matter to take two Meadowland babies 

from their mothers." . 

I never can quite make up my mind if it is most 

a compliment to human nature generally, or a 

reproach to the mother in particular, when the 

baby stretches out its poor little arms to anyone

who likes to take it, and falls asleep quite happily

in a stranger's arms, or on the clean, cool pillow 

of a little blue cot, as unlike as possible to the 

frowsy tumbled bed at home, shared by, I should 

be sorry to say how many. 

But in spite of Aunt Sophy's assurances it was 

with some trepidation, and a large bag of sponge 


74 Letters to Our Working Party 

cakes, that I took Johnnie in my arms at Paddington that 
July afternoon, and saw Aunt Sophy furnished with another 
specimen-smaller, whiter, 
and with a sharper and more wizen old face even 
than my Johnnie, and rejoicing in the name of 
Bob. There was something so pathetic in Johnnie's 
patient, little face, his resignation to whatever 
might be coming next, that, in theory, I should 
have been almost glad if he would have howled. 
There must surely have been something a little 
happy in his short past that he was sorry to lose, 
something just possible to conceive in the future 
that might be worse than what he had hitherto 
experienced. But in practice, of course, I was 
infinitely relieved when Johnnie went to sleep 
almost before we were out of the station, and I 
was rather inclined to crow over Aunt Sophy,
whose charge, though perfectly good and composed, 
continued wide awake, watching first one and then 
the other of us with those odd old eyes of his, that 
had a strange look of contempt in them as if he 
had seen through the world and was not to be 
taken in again. 

"They have a great deal to learn at The Buttercups," Aunt 
Sophy said. "They have to be 
taught to play and to laugh, and, I was going to say, 
to be naughty-I mean bona fide baby naughtiness, little 
tempers, you know, what they call 
'tantrums' in the nursery, that can be cured by 
a few minutes in the corner and sobbed away with 
a face hidden in a friendly apron. They arewicked 
enough, poor mites; young lips can lisp out oaths 
and tell lies, and some of them at five years of age 
have seen and understand more wickedness than 


Letters to Our Working Party 75

you and I have any notion of. One baby of nine 
months old had been used to her half-pint of beer 
regularly for supper, and liked a drop of brandy 
when she got the chance. One little black-eyed 
imp was so wicked, inarticulate, happily, but spiteful 
and sly, and evilly disposed to such an extent, that 
the matron could only account for it by supposing 
that he could not have been baptized, which idea 
was favoured by the fact that only his surname 
was given on his medical certificate, and that a 
curiously appropriate one, "Savage," but on 
enquiry it was found that his baptism had not been 
neglected, and a few more weeks at The Buttercups worked 
such outward and inward improvement in Jimmy, that he 
really became almost fair 
both in complexion and conduct before he left. 

Aunt Sophy told me a good deal about The 
Buttercups as we travelled down, while Johnnie 
lay peacefully sucking a small and dirty thumb, 
and oblivious of time and space, and Bob traced 
out the pattern on Aunt Sophy's mantle with a 
long pointed finger. ' 

It had its beginning a good many years ago, 
before the summer holiday and fresh air mission 
became so popular, by some ladies having a few 
London children down in the summer and boarding 
them out in respectable cottages. It is so very 
generally done now that you can hardly go to a 
railway station in London during the summer 
months without seeing parties of children with 
tickets and directions tied round their necks, being 
seen off by anxious and bustling mothers or friends, 
or tho same parties returning sun-burnt and some· 
what the worse in the matter of clothes, but with 


76 Letters to Our Working Party 

big bunches of flowers and such brightness in their 
eyes and on their cheeks as London can never give. 
Then one summer an old servant of these ladies, 
who was a widow, was somewhat unwillingly persuaded to 
take care of a certain little ricketty Emmie, and, I 
think when the little thing clung 
round Mrs. Green's neck with her poor, crooked, 
young arms, and cried at parting from her, she 
laid the foundation of The Buttercups, and opened 
its pleasant door to all the many sickly, sad, miserable 
little ones who have found their way in since 
that, and gone back, for the most part, rosy and 
bright, and fat and happy. 

The Buttercups (is not it a nice name, Kate? so 
young and childish and countrified), is about a mile 
from the Twyford station, and is a long white 
cottage, with black beams and a red brick gable 
end, in which is a large bow-window with tinted 
glass in the upper panes, and generally a row of 
young faces in the lower. There is a little grass 
plot in front where the babies bask in hot weather, 
and a good-sized cottage garden round the house, 
full of potatoes and cabbages, apple-trees, roses and 
pinks; and behind there is a barn, a great resource 
in wet weather, where there is a swing and a 
rocking horse; and beyond the barn a meadow, 
where, the day we arrived, haymaking was going 
on. Fancy carrying little Haggerston Johnnie, 
still sleeping, right into a hayfield, and laying him 
down on a haycock and letting him 'wake and look 
up into the cool shade of an elm, with the July blue sky 
beyond, when he had fallen asleep in the 
dust and bustle of Paddington, with engines 
whistling and bells ringing, when he was used to 


Letters to Our Working Party 77

dragging about the hot pavements of Haggerston 
in the arms of a girl not many sizes bigger than 
himself, crawling from one sultry doorstep to 
another, with occasional excursions into the gutter! 
I do not think you can imagine it even as nearly as 
I can, for you do not know what a London baby's 
life is like even as much as I do, and I know little 
enough, but I think that the change must be some 
slight approach to what we shall feel one day when 
we shall awake and be satisfied. 

"You must excuse the children being so untidy," 
said Mrs. Green, "they do get such grubs in the 
meadow." And sbe picked up a kicking sunburnt 
person of three, and pulled a tumbled frock and 
pinafore down over a pair of sturdy legs. 

"But," I said, doubtfully, glancing round at the 
haymaking party, numbering about twelve altogether, 
'"I thought The Buttercups was meant for 
delicate children." " So it is," said Aunt Sophy, 
"but it does not undertake to keep them delicate, 
neither does it turn them out at the end of a rigid 
three weeks as is done and must be done in m0st 
convalescent homes. It takes time to make such a 
change as this," she said, comparing the stout 
members in Mrs. Green's arms to Bob's spidery 
limbs, which looked like empty stockings with 
boots dangling at the end. 

And then Mrs. Green told us how Walter had 

come down two years ago, eighteen months old and 
weighing thirteen pounds and a half. He had been 
born with bronchitis, and was too weak to sit up, 
and constantly sick, not being able to keep anything 
down. Why Bob and Johnnie were grand com-

pared to what Walter was when he first arrived. 


78 Letters to Our Working Party 

Polly, a rosy, curly-headed little girl of four, 
who was making her way so rapidly along by the 
palings towards some gooseberry bushes, that I did 
not notice she was lame, came down from Westminster 
Hospital with incipient disease in both 
hips, brought on by sitting out in the streets in an 
weathers with her father, a shoe-black, in Westminster. 
The Charity Organization Society pay for her now, and 
all fear of hip disease has gone, 
but one leg is shorter than the other, and she is to 
have a high shoe to help her get into all the 
mischief that curly little head imagines so readily.

Winnie is five, and looks up at us with great 
expressive eyes that make up fo rherlack of speech, 
for she has a hollow roof and is sadly disfigured 
by a scar on her lip. A sad little story was 
Winnie's-a mother dying of consumption, with a 
baby pining away by her side, and WvVinnie not 
two years old, and no bigger than many babies at 
six months, lying in a cradle near her, utterly 
neglected, too weak to turn her head or hold anything 
in her hand. The father was out at work 
all day, there was no one to attend to the dying 
woman and the two babies. She took the baby 
with her when she went, and Winnie seemed 
unlikely to be far behind them, for when she came 
to The Buttercups in her sad, little, black frock she 
brought bronchitis with her, and for six weeks was 
so near death that it seemed almost cruel to try 
and keep back the poor, little, struggling soul that 
had got so far through the dark valley towards the 
light beyond. 

But she lived, and I do not know how Mrs. 
Green could ever part with her now, for that six 


Letters to Our Working Party 79

weeks day and night nursing have tied her so 
closely to her heart. 

There were so many little stories to hear of 
children past and present: of Jessie, whose father 
was in prison for ill-treating his wife and children, 
and who had expressed his willingness to swing 
for the baby. Poor little soul! you might almost 
have thought that she knew of the threat, for she 
shrank if anyone spoke to her, as if a blow usually 
followed a word, and she had to be coaxed and 
surprised into a little wintry smile in spite of herself; 
and would hasten to retrieve such a rash step 
by relapsing into a heavier scowl. 

There was Willie, whose deserted, desperate 
mother brought him to be baptized at a church in 
Haggerston, and went straight on to drown herself 
in the canal, being happily rescued and helped to 
start afresh. 

There was a fair, little Lily, rescued by the 
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children 
from a den of infamv. 

There was a little Mabel, so rickctty that' the 
hospital doctors thought her arms must have been 
broken, they were so crooked and twisted. She 
came down in splints, which she used to put together 
in the funniest way to say grace. 

There were victims of Board School education, 
over-worked brains and St. Vitus's dance. 

There were so many that it would make my letter 
too long to tell a quarter, and moreover it was tea 
time, and the little maid at The Buttercups came 
out to bring the children in to their tea in their 
nice, cool, bow-windowed room, with the long table 
spread with an array of mugs, and such huge plates 


80 Letters to Our Working Party 

of bread and butter that I could hardly believe it 
could ever be demolished, but was assured by Mrs. 
Green that more and yet more would certainly be 
required. There was tea for us in the matron's 
own pretty room at the other end of the cottage, 
and after partaking of it, we went up to see the 
children's bedrooms; pleasant, airy, cottage rooms, 
with rows of small beds and cots, each with a little 
red flannel sleeping-jacket, worked with a buttercup, 
as were also the curtains in the sitting-room 
below. 

There was nothing fine, and nothing of an institution 
about it. It was just a cottage and a 
home, with only such simple rules as any orderly 
family might have; no laws of the Medes and 
Persians as to hours and diet, and coming and 
going. The children do not become cases, they are 
all individuals with likes and dislikes, recognized, 
and as far as possible complied with; and I think 
the most satisfactory proof of the success of this 
easy system is the love that springs up almost 
invariably between Mrs. Green and each of the 
children, the tears that are shed at parting (it is 
by no means so pleasant, Aunt Sophy says, to 
escort a child back to London), and the improvement 
that is seen when they get home, not only 
in rosy, sunburnt faces, and bright eyes, and renewed 
health and strength, but in manners and 
morals too, for minds, as well as bodies, benefit 
from the pure air and healthy surroundings of The 
Buttercups. 

The fly was waiting to take us to the station, 
and we went to say good-bye to the children, and 
I cherished a secret hope that after my successful 


Letters to Our Working Party 81

journey down with Johnnie, he would express some 
sorrow or regret at parting with me; but would 
you believe it, such is the ingratitude of human 
nature, he was too much absorbed in a mighty piece of 
bread and butter to take the slightest 
notice of me, and he sat up in his high chair among 
the others as if he had been born and brought upin 
The Buttercups. 

"Well," Aunt Sophy asked, as we went to the 
station, between the hedges covered with wild roses 
and honeysuckle, and the sweet-smelling hayfields, 
"do you feel the better for a visit to the Buttercups? " 

And I answered, "Ever so much, but I should 
like to take hundreds of little London babies out 
of the gutter straight down to The Buttercups' 
hayfield." 

In the matron's bedroom there was an illuminated text, 
""Who so shall receive one such little 
child in My name, receiveth Me." 

Don't you think, dear Kate, we might manage 
a Buttercups at Meadowland? 
Your very affectionate, 

E.W. 


82
IX

DEAR KATE,-I wonder if you remember as 
vividly as I do a day in January, some years ago 
now, at Torquay, when the flags on the vessels in 
the bay were hoisted half-mast high, and nearly all 
the houses and shops showed some signs of mourning, 
and St.John's was thronged with sad-faced, tearful 
crowds, bearing wreaths to lay on a coffin that stood 
in the chancel, almost hidden with white flowers. 
And do you remember how among them camesome 
fishermen from Brixham with a wreath of seaweed, 
and how it was given the place of honour on the 
coffin,very near the noble dead heart that in life 
had loved the St. Andrew's Waterside Mission, 
and the sailors and fishermen so dearly? I am sure 
that anything to do with the work of which Canon 
Robinson was the founder, and in which he took so 
deep and tender an interest, cannot fail to interest 
any who, like you and I, remember the sad leave-
taking when the sorrowful procession passed down 
the church, bearing the flower-covered coffin, while, 
with broken voices, choir and mourning people 
sang

"Jesu, give Thy servants 
ConsolatiOn sure, 
Haste Thee to us bringing 
Blessings that endure." 


Letters to Our Working Party 83

How empty the church looked when the choir came 
slowly back without their burden, and there was 
only the white wreath in the empty stall, and the 
stole laid across the desk. 

WeIl, Kate, that is my excuse, if any excuse is 
needed, for asking you and the working party at 
home to take an interest in the St. Andrew's 
Waterside Mission at Great Grimsby. 

Thirty years ago Grimsby was only a little fishing 
village of no particular importance on the Lincolnshire 
coast. About that time four smacks from 
Barking began to land their fish here, and forward 
it by train to Billingsgate, and this system developed 
so rapidly that last year 80,000 tons of fish were 
sent from Grimsby to London alone, and the little 
fishing village has become the first fishing port in 
the world, owning more than 1100 smacks, and 
giving employment to more than 6000 men afloat, 
and providing occupation for almost as many ashore. 
Only a few of these are the old Grimsby fishermen 
or their sons, and a few more are hereditary fishermen 
from other places, but the great demand for 
apprentices draw boys and young men from all 
parts of England, and applications are even made to 
workhouses and reformatories to supply the demand. 
Some are incorrigible lads, to whom magistrates 
give lighter sentences on condition that they are 
sent to sea when discharged. There is one such I 
heard of, a lad of sixteen, who had been given three 
months' hard labour for threatening to murder his 
employer and blow up his house, and who would 
have had a heavier sentence but for the understanding 
that he should go to sea. Some are runaway!'!, 
either to avoid punishment or escape all control. 


84Letters to Our Working Party 

Don't you remember, Kate, how Joe Dance ran 
away to sea after a long course of hen-roost robbing 
and pilfering, and how broken-hearted his mother 
was? But Meadowland is too far from the coast 
for the craze for going to sea to be very common 
among our lads, who are more often enticed away 
from the plough by the recruiting sergeant and 
the bunch of fluttering ribbons. 

Some of these Grimsby lads are ne'er-do-weels 
of private homes, for whom it is hoped that the 
utter absence of control and the freedom of sea 
life, with its positive discomforts, will do what 
kindness and unbounded affection has failed to 
accomplish. Some have received good educations, 
some cannot read, some have been well brought 
up, and some have had no bringing up, some are 
brave, honest, manly fellows, while some are quite 
the reverse, without honour or truth, graduates in 
every form of vice. It is easy to imagine the 
difficulty of working among this assemblage of 
incongruous elements, it is impossible to treat 
them as a class, the work must to a great extent 
be individual. There is no public opinion for good 
to begin with, "Which is so powerful a help in 
country parishes. It is not acting from a high 
motive, to be sure, to go to church because the 
folks would notice if one were not there, and not 
to get drunk because one could not look the 
neighbours in the face afterwards, and to put on 
a clean shirt and be tidy on Sunday because people 
talk so if one does not, but these small motives are 

very helpful sometimes, they are like the low 
box-edging round the flower borders, quite inadequate, 
of course, to keep people off them, but very 


Letters to Our Working Party 85

effectual all the same in preventing us from 
wandering off the gravel path. Say what you 
like about Mrs. Grundy, she is not a bad friend 
after all, if she is not too much of a tyrant. Anyhow, 
at Great Grimsby there are no box-edgings, 
nor Mrs.Grundy, and their absence is by no means 
an advantage. For half the year, usually from 
March to December, during what is called the 
"fleeting" Season, the boats are away in the North 
Sea, only returning for one week during the time. 
They go to the fleeting in companies of from 40 
to 100 smacks, under the direction of an 
"Admiral," who signals when fishing shall go 
on. These smacks keep together for the whole 
season, and build small towns on the water, a 
steam cutter leaving them every day with the fish 
they have caught packed in boxes, either for 
Grimsby or London. The rest of the year is 
devoted to what is called single boating, when the 
trips are only from ten to fourteen days, and the 
boats then return to port with the fish they have 
taken carefully preserved in ice. There are two 
sorts of smacks used in the fishing, known as 
"codmen" and"trawlers,"the former usually carrying ten 
hands, and the latter five, and these boats 
vary in size, the largest being about 90 tons. The 
smacks used in the single boating are arranged 
entirely with a view to the storage of the fish, and 
with verv small consideration for the comfort of 
the men: In the fore part of the boat, the sails 
and ship stores, nets, cordage, etc., are placed; 
then comes an ice-room, holding about 14 tons,and 
all the centre of the vessel is filled up with what 
looks like the stalls of a stable, called at sea 


86 Letters to Our Working Party 

"pounds" or "pars." Into these is put the fish 
as it is caught and covered with ice, till a stall is 
filled, and then boards are put up to keep it firm 
and steady, and then more fish and more ice are 
added till the stalls are closely packed and the 
whole centre of the boat is practically a huge mass 
of fish and ice, when the men set sail for home. 
As for the accommodation provided for the men, 
that is a very secondary consideration, or rather of 
no consideration at all; quite in the after-part of 
the boat there is a little hole of a cabin, dark and 
close, provided with "bunks," where the men 
sleep. Oh! don't imagine for a moment they are 
like the berths we had on the Southampton and 
Havre boat,with nice white pillows and sheetsand 
silk curtains and gilding, and a hovering and 
encouraging stewardess, though we were both far 
too miserable to appreciate the comfort and even 
elegance that surrounded us that night; these 
bunks are more like small cupboards, or like the 
drawers of a bedroom chest of drawers with half 
the front cut out. 

Little thought seems to be given to the comfort 
and welfare of the bodies of the" hands" employed 
on these smacks, and still less has been bestowed 
on their souls, those souls that in the course of 
their perilous calling may at any time be called 
to their account without a moment's preparation. 
During the time of single boating the men seem 
more within reach, but our seaports are such dens 
of vice, of which it is  impossible to describe or even 
imagine the dangers, that one might almost be 
glad to see the smacks sail away out of reach of 
them, for if afloat they are without God, on shore 


Letters to Our Working Party 87

their life is often one continuous debauch. And 
of all men in the world one would have thought that these 
men who go down to the sea in ships 
and occupy their business in great waters should 
be God-fearing, God-knowing, that in all the 
perils of their dangerous life they should be able 
to cry unto the Lord in their trouble. Death is 
so near them, the lad that is the noisiest and 
wildest and most full of fun and mischief, may in 
a few minutes be a poor lifeless body tossing about 
at the sport of the waves, to be cast up among the 
drift and weed on the shore, or to be seen no more 
till the sea gives up her dead, and it may be that 
he goes with an oath on his lips or half stupified with 
the drunken bout of the night before. If you 
glance over the Parish Magazine for Grimsby your 
eye is constantly caught by such headings as 
"Fisherman drowned," "Two lives lost at sea," 

"Burnt at sea," "Collision and loss of life," 
"Dock accident," etc., and here and there the sad 
record of a storm with its attendant casualties. 

About eleven years ago a Mission was begun 
among the seamen at Great Grimsby, and the St. 
Andrew's 'Waterside Mission gave a grant of £60 
a year towards it. Mr. Harte, the first Mission 
chaplain, found it certainly very uphill work; I 
suppose good work always is, since the cross was 
carried up the Hill of Calvary. Little seemed 
possible, the lads would sometimes attend the 
Mission-room, then held in a private house, to 
"have a game with Daddy Harte," or to blowout 
the tongues from the notes of the harmonium, 
which a friend had provided for the Mission, or 
any other piece of mischief which might occur to 


88 Letters to Our Working Party 

them, with any amount of noise and rough horseplay. 
Mr. Harte's kindness and imperturbable 
good nature were proof against irritation, and his 
real interest in his somewhat erratic flock began 
at last to produce some effect. He begged many books 
and funds for the supply of new ones, and 
almost every smack sailing from the port carried 
off some reading material from the Mission, and 

he did much for the spread of temperance, drink 
being apparently a seaman's special temptation, 
and in many other ways laid good foundations for 
future work. 

Soon after this a Fisher Lad's Institute was 
projected on a large scale with swimming-bath, 
reading-room, navigation-room, etc., but it eventually 
became a "non-sectarian" institution, in 
which the Mission chaplain to these fisher lads 
had no place. When in 1884 Mr. Harte left 
Great Grimsby, funds were insufficient for the 
appointment of another chaplain to succeed him, 
and a layman, Mr. H. D. Lee, undertook the 
work, a large Mission-hall was secured, and 
through much difficulty and penury the Mission 
has struggled on, increasing and extending, however, 
till last year the number of visits of the lads 
to the Mission-room were 9,581. Here they have 
draughts, dominoes, etc., illustrated papers and 
books, and at times addresses and readings. The 
clergy frequently drop in, and Mr. Lee is present 
every night from 6 to 10, gaining their confidence 
and gradually acquiring a wide-spread influence 
among them. As a rule these lads are communicative, and 
their emotions are readily stirred, and 
into the ear of this ready and sympathetic listener, 


Letters to Our Working Party. 89 

many stories are poured of far away homes and 
kind and much enduring friends, whose patience 
the runaway has tried to the uttermost. They 
tell, too, of the scrapes that are of almost daily 
occurrence, and which very frequently end in 
longer or shorter residence in what they call 
"Webster's hotel," "Webster" being the governor 
of the gaol, and they frankly describe the stages of 
the temptation which leads to the often repeated 
fall. One of these lads seems almost to get into 
that ancient hostelry on purpose, and spends most 
of the winter there, as he does not like work and 
bad weather; and another says, "I can't help 
getting into trouble. It's just this way, when I 
come in from sea, I meet an old shipmate; he 
shouts 'What cheer?' (the regular fisherman's 
greeting) I answer, 'What cheer?' and the next 
thing is,'Come and have a drain?' I say, No,'but 
I go. He stands glasses, and then I stand glasses, 
and before we've done, another chap turns up and 
has a drain, and then I'm ready for any number of 
glasses, and I'm very noisy when I'm drunk; the 
police lookafter me, and nobody knows how mad I am 
with myself the next day, and still I do it again." 

There are half-a-dozen badly-written, ill-spelt 
letters lying before me now that I should like to 
send you tosee, or copy for you,if my letter were 
not already too long. They come from the North 
Sea, from lads out fleeting, to Mr. Lee. You 
could almost fancy there was a smell of the salt 
spray about them, though, more likely, it would 
be the smell of the close little cabin, of the fish 
and the tar, and the oil of the dim, little swinging lamp, 
and the coarse tobacco that the foreign 


90 Letters to Our Working Party. 

"copers" bring to the men when they get the 
chance, along with the wretched spirits, to muddle 
the foolish, young heads, weary of the monotony 
of the rough, hard work, without change or variety, 
for four months at a stretch. 

I began by asking you to be interested in this 
work for the sake of Canon Robinson, but I had 
better have asked it for the sake of his Master, 
who drew four at least of His little band of 
Apostles from among these fisher-folk, and among 
them the three who were nearest to Him, who 
were with Him at the Transfiguration, by the bed 
of Jairus's daughter, in the Agony of Gethsemane; 
and the disciple whom Jesus loved, who leaned on 
the Lord's breast at the last supper, was but a 
fisher lad. The Lord was with them, teaching 
them in dock, when the "ships were standing by 
the lake; but the fishermen had gone out of them, 
and were washing their nets." He was with them 
too when they were at their fishing near land, at 
the single boating, as it were, when He bid them 
"Launch out into the deep, and let down your 
nets for a draught;" and again when they were 
far out away from land, like the smacks in 
the wild North Sea, "in the midst of the sea, 
tossed with waves, for the wind was contrary, in 
the fourth watch of the night, JeSus went unto them 
walking on the sea." An effort is being made to 
follow in the footprints of our Lord, whose way is 
in the sea, and His path in the great waters, by 
providing a Mission ship which shall go with the 
men fleeting in the summer, and be a dock church 
in the winter, when the men go single boating, 
and for this £2,500 is required. 


Letters to Our Working Party. 91 

Those fishermen were very near the Master's 
heart then, these fishermen are just as near it now; 
and as from the Cross His dying eyes looked down 
on the fisher lad, the great Apostle and Evangelist, 
St. John, so now He is looking from His throne 
on God's right hand on these rough, wild fishermen of Great 
Grimsby; and He says to our 
Mother Church, as He said to His own dear 
Mother then, "Behold thy son." 

With my love to the working party, I remain, 
your very affectionate, 
E.W.




92
X

DEAR KATE,-A verse in the Psalms has been 
in my mind since we left Ventnor. " 0, spare me 
a little that I may recover my strength before I go 
hence and be no more seen," and with it a recollection 
of the guest chamber in the House Beautiful; 
you remember it, I am sure. "The pilgrim they 
laid in a large upper chamber, whose windowopened 
towards the sun-rising; the name of the chamber 
was Peace." 

This quiet resting place where toilers up the steephill 
of consumption can rest before they go hence 
and are no more seen; this large upper chamber 
called Peace from whence weary pilgrims can see 
the sun-rising of a fairer day, is St. Catharine's 
Home for patients in advanced consumption at 
Ventnor. The view from the windows of the little 
home is fair enough, framed by the roses and 
passion flower that cover the verandah, into which 
the windows of the men's wards open; the town 
lies below sheltered by the steep hills and cliffs, 
with little St. Catharine's Church, half hidden 
by trees, and beyond is a sunny stretch of blue, 
blue sea with such lights, such colours, such 
variety of beauty; with seagulls catching the 
light on their white wings, and little brown sailed 


Letters to Our Working Party. 93 

fishing boats or dainty yachts scudding past, 
and further off the puff of smoke of a passing 
steamer on its way to India, China, or America, 
or the Channel fleet itself on its stately way. You 
need not be afraid to withdraw your eyes from the 
smiling scene outside, expecting to find nothingbut 
what is sad and melancholy within. It is nothing 
of the kind; the rooms are bright and cheerful, so 
are the faces of the inmates, so above all are the 
sisters. The sunshine comes pleasantly in at the 
large windows on the pale blue walls with their 
bright pictures and the dark stained floors with 
warm coloured rugs; there are plenty of flowers 
and books and ornaments about on the tables, there 
are comfortable cushioned arm-chairs, and the 
little beds with their blue quilts and snowy sheets 
look very tempting.

I had always had a fear of that little uninteresting 
grey house, which in spite of its pretty situation 
and the fair sunny scene all round it, seemed to 
my fancy always to have a shadow resting over it, 
a shadow from the valley of shadows; it seemed as 
if the grim motto over the entrance to Dante's" Inferno" 
might be read over that unpretending little door: "Who 
enters here leaves hope behind." 
I could look with pleasure at the great hospital for 
consumption with its handsome blocks of building 
and its bright rows of windows; that is a convalescent 
hospital, and the very name has something cheerful in the 
sound; but when Aunt Sophy proposed a visit to St. Catharine's 
Home for patients 
in advanced consumption, I remembered that I 
very much wanted to finish that sketch at Bonchurch 
in time for your birthday, and had half-a-dozen 


94 Letters to Our Working Party.  


other very important things to do, and I actually

let poor,dear,little Aunt Sophy set off by herself, 

toiling up the glaring white chalk road, and she 

was almost out of sight at the turn of the road 

before I came to a better mind and went after her, 

getting, very hot and out of breath as a punishment 

for my selfishness. 

And I am so glad I went. First of all it is 
not at all a gloomy place; the sun was pouring in to one 
of the men's wards that looks over 
the sea, and the men were clustered round 
the window with a large telescope, deeply 
interested in the passing of some yachts, and from 
above, where the two wards for women are, sounded 
merry voices and laughter. It is not necessary, 
even as regards this life, for those who enter to 
leave hope behind; they do not all come there to 
die-the tender care and nursing, the nourishing food, the 
mild air, the comfort and rest will sometimes stop the 
progress of the disease, even when 
it is very far advanced, and the patients leave the 
home benefitted, and, in some cases, so far restored 
to health as to be able to resume their work and 
return to their occupations. And as to that other 
hope, the hope of the life to come, many of them 
find it for the first time shining for them in the 
very darkness of the valley. 

I think everyone who has had anyone very dear 
to them who has entered into rest by that long, steephill 
of consumption cannot fail to be interested in 
St. Catharine's Home, and in this climate of ours 
there can be very few who have not followed some 
dear friend along the toilsome way, weary and sad 
enough with all the alleviations that money and 


Letters to Our Working Party. 95

tender care and nursing can procure, and how 
infinitely worse in loneliness and poverty.

Consumption is so dreadfully common, and many 
of the occupations of the young men and girls are 
of such a sort, and in such circumstances that they fall 
a ready prey to this sickness that destroyeth in 
the noonday-the noonday of youth, and life, and 
activity. It is not only the trades that are known 
to be injurious to health, the steel-grinders, stone 
masons, glass cutters, millers, etc., but the longhours in 
hot work-rooms, and bad air make lung disease very common 
among dressmakers and work-
girls, clerks, and shopmen, and the exposure to 
weather in other occupations, such as the young 
postmen, about whom I told you in one of my 
letters, adds to the long list of victims who fall 
yearly before this fatal disease. 

Think what it must be to those who are working for their 
daily bread, whose only chance of keeping their heads above 
water is to struggle on with all 
their strength, never abating their exertions for 
amoment; who,in the rush and hurry, and hideous 
competition must jostle and elbow and push, just 
to keep the pitiful foothold that a dozen others are 
ready to seize if they give way an inch. Without 
time to spare a thought for the future, for old age, 
or for a rainy day, and with, perhaps, others 
dependent on the poor little earnings, think what 
it must be to such an one when the first symptoms 
of the disease show themselves-the hollow cough, 
the wearing pain in the side, the short breath, the 
heavy perspirations at night, the hectic fever. He 
fights against it at first, he will not allow it even 
to himself, he will not be ill, he cannot, be will 


96 Letters to Our Working Party. 

shake it off, it is nothing but a cold. But by-and bye 
there is no mistake about it,no self-deception 
or deception of others is possible; the work which 
has been done every day with increasing difficultyand 
pain has to be given up, and the week's wages 
taken for the last time-and then? VVell,if he is 
not too far gone, he may get admitted to one of the 
consumptive hospitals, and remember these will 
not (and rightly, too) take incurable cases, or those 
that are not likely to derive benefit. Perhaps he 
is fortunate enough to get admitted to the Ventnor 
Hospital, and there the mild climate, and care, and 
good food, really seem to be doing him good, and 
he hopes that he is going to get well again-these 
cases are nearly always hopeful, sometimes to the 
very last. But the two months come to an end all 
too soon, and it is the middle of winter, and he 
shrinks from returning to the snowy, bleak country, 
or the frosty fogs of London, and some friends send 
him a little help, and he takes a small lodging at 
Ventnor and struggles on as well as he can. It 
can only, of necessity, be a humble, little lodging, 
not always clean, with bad cooking, and no means 
of supplementing it with the little delicacies that 
tempt the appetites of richer invalids, and with a 
pitiful desire to economize in fires and nourishing food, 
which are by no means luxuries, but 
mere necessities in his condition. He is not 
very likely to get better in these circumstances, 
so he gets worse, or the remittances from friends 
who can ill afford to help, get uncertain and 
fail altogether, and then? There is the workhouse 
Infirmary.

It was to keep some of these from this bitter 


Letters to Our TVorking Party. 97 

alternative, more bitter to many of them than 
death itself, that St. Catharine's Home was opened 
eight years ago to receive twelve patients, six men 
in the wards on the ground floor, and six women 
in the wards above. The payment for each case at 
the home is 1Os. 6d. a week. It is open to patients 
of all religious denominations, neither Roman 
Catholics nor Dissenters being expected to join 
the services in the pretty little chapel which has 
been fitted up in a room next to the women's wards. 
It is nursed by Sisters from St. Margaret's, East 
Grinstead, hospital-trained and very experienced, 
as to whose kindness and sympathy in soothing 
the weary hours of pain and weakness, there is no 
need to speak, for their testimony is written plainly 
enough in those "pathetic haunting" eyes that 
brighten and follow them as they pass, and plainer 
still on grateful hearts, read there by the Eye unto 
whom all hearts are open, read in those long nights 
of fever and exhaustion, when as has been so beautifully said, 
"He gives His angels charge of those 
who sleep: but He Himself watches with those 
who wake." 
The Sisters' work must be sometimes very 
depressing; the patients are many of them so young, 
so bright, so promising, it seems to our dim eyes 
such a pity, as if there might be so much good 
work done in the world by such brave young hearts 
and bright young intellects, if only they could be 
spared to do it; it seems sometimes so mysterious 
that the rusty, old tools should be made use of year 
after year, and the bright, keen ones laid aside 
almost unused, that the active stirring life has to 
be exchanged. 


98 Letters to Our Working Party.  

For such long weaknmess. and such wearing pain 

As has no end in view, that makes of life 

One bitter avenue of darkened days-

The bitter darkness growing darker still, 

which none can share or soothe, which sunders us 

From all desire, or hope, or stir of change,

Or service of our Master in the world, 

Or fellowship with all the faces round, 

Of passing pains and pleasures, while our pain

Passeth not, nor will pass;-and only this 

Remains for us to look for,-more of pain, 

And doubt if we can bear it to the end." 

There are so many sad stories of loneliness and 
poverty attached to the young lives that end here 
so peacefully, of friendlessness and destitution and 
mental anxiety, and of the weary search for escape 
from "the hand that holds and pierces us,and will 
not let us go, however much we strive from under 
it." In St. Catharine's Home they find friends 
and tender care, and nursing and gentle teaching, 
and if indeed there is no escape from that hand of 
sickness that is laid so heavily on them, they learn 
to know and love it as a Hand that was pierced 
for them, and to hold it fast "though the nails 
pierce thine too." 

There was one young French girl who was there 
for four months. She was a French governess in 
a large scbool, and when she was taken ill had 
nowhere to go to, and no money or friends in 
England. Her mother came from Paris to see her 
before she died, not able to speak a word of English, 
but with a card round her neck with the address 
at Ventnor on it. 

Another girl spent ten months at St. Catharine's, 
and left benefitted, but after being three months 
at St. Leonards came back to die. Sbe had such 


Letters to 0ur Working, Party. 99 

a great longing to get back in time, that, when she 
was brought in, she said, "Now I can die happy, 
and I do not mind if it is to-night. I have had 
my wish." She lived two months and suffered 
much, but she was very patient to the end. 

There was a man who had been in South America, 
and had had sunstroke. He had a wife and dear 
little baby not two years old, in London. He 
was very fond of the little thing, and grieved 

-much at the idea of leaving it. He was 
prepared for Confirmation while he was in the 
Home, and taken when very ill over to Bonchurch, 
where the Bisbop confirmed him in the vestry, as 
the risk of the excitement of a crowded church was 
too great for him. He did not live long after 
that-a very peaceful end which need not even 
have been saddened by the thought of leaving his 
baby, for the little thing went first, only twenty-
four hours before his father, who did not know of 
it here, but only when they met there. 
There are many other cases I should like to tell 
you of, but those last days seem too sacred to 
intrude upon, too holy to be described by me, 
who

"Am not so much as worthy to stoop down 
And kiss the sacred foot-prints of my Lord, 
Upon the feet of any such an one 
As lieth patient here beneath His hand; 
'Whom Christ has bound on His own cross, to lie 
Beside Him, till Himself shall give release; 
And that shall not be. many an one knows well, 
Until this place knows him no more on earth." 

They want to enlarge the Home, so as to receive 
twenty instead of twelve patients, and to have a 


100 Letters to 0ur Working, Party.  

ward for children; they also want more single 
rooms for exceptional cases-they have but two 
such now-also rooms where the patients could 
have their meals, so that they need not have them 
in thew ards. Better accommodation for the sisters 
is needed, and a garden for the patients, and I do 
not think that we, who in almost every family have 
a sweet and tender memory of one who left us 

going Zionwards up the long, steep, stony hill of 
consumption, will let them want the means to carry 
out these improvements. 

Your very affectionate, 

E.W. 

101
XI

DEAR KATE,-I had almost begun this letter to 
you with "my pretty lady," and asked you to 
cross the poor gipsy's hand with a piece of silver, 
and told you that you had a lucky face, and that 
good fortune was coming to you from over the 
sea, only that you must beware of a dark woman 
who means you no good; and from this beginning 
you will guess what has been filling my thoughts 
lately, and what I want also to fill yours. 

Aunt Sophy and I went down in September to 
stay with the Martins in Oxfordshire, and a very 
pleasant time we had there. The house was full 
of people we liked, the old manor house is so pretty 
and so are the gardens and park and the rich, 
undulating country round; the weather too was 
beautiful, and every day there was something going 
on-a picnic, or a water party, or tennis, and when 
the men were out shooting, we had some delightfulsketching 
excursions, the results of which you shall 
see when I come home; and Edith Martin took 
me to see her poor people in the pretty, thatched, 
black-timbered cottages, and to the little model 
village school, which is quite a picture, and even 
surpasses Meadowland school, if dear Mrs. Miller 
will forgive my saying so. 


I02 Letters to Our Working Party. 

The children's faces seem all cut from one pattern, 
just as their pinafores are, and the little girls curtsey 
and the boys pull at their forelocks as if it was all 
regulated by machinery. There is no public-house 
in the village, and all the old women wear white 
caps and scarlet cloaks, and use the same expressions and 
quote the same texts. I do not 
mean that they are hypocrites, but they have got 
on to a certain line and their little pious ejaculations 
mean no more than the bad words that interlard the 
conversation of the East-end costermongers 
or the Grimsby fisher lads. 

It made me a little irritable when I remembered 
Plaistow and its neighbours, and all the mass of 
poverty and suffering to be found there with so few 
to help, when I saw all the sympathy and half-
crowns and jelly and broth and new flannel that 
the least trouble or illness calls forth at Nestley, 
and how the sufferer's cottage is beset with kind 
enquirers laden with little covered baskets and 
overflowing with offers of help and good advice. 
One could not help feeling wickedly that a little 
misfortune at one of the cottages was almost a 
Godsend to the ladies at the Vicarage and the 
Grange and the Manor, giving them a little variety from 
tennis and dancing and picnicing, and an 
opportunity for the luxury of showing kindness, 
just as, after the ambulance classes at Meadowland, 
though we did not actually wish accidents to occur, 
we were not altogether sorry when Joe Cape cut 
his arm or Mrs.Benson's baby scalded its foot, as 
affording us an opportunity of displaying our skill 
and prowess. 

Well, you will say, what has all this to do with 


Letters to Our Working Party. 103 

the gipsies? but I am coming to them now. 
For several days in the beginning of September 
we could not drive in any direction from Nestley 
without meeting processions of vans of all sorts and 
descriptions passing on their way to St. Giles' Fair 
at Oxford, which is a great annual meeting-place 
of gipsies from all parts of the country. There 
were vans and shows and roundabouts, and covered 
carts and waggons, most of them very heavily-
laden, and followed by a picturesque tribe of 
handsome, dark-eyed women, with gay-coloured 
handkerchiefs tied over their heads, and funny, 
little, half-clothed children with eyes as bright and 
quick as monkeys, and big, hulking, loose-limbed 
men, nearly everyone of whom had a lurcher dog 
at his heels with the same stealthy movements as 
his master. 

It certainly gave a great picturesqueness to the 
neighbourhood, and Edith made a lovely little 
sketch of an encampment on a bit of waste ground 
near the gravel pit, with a fire lighted and a 
regular gipsy kettle boiling over it, and the van 
behind with its gaily-painted red wheels, and 
smart little green door and brass knocker and 
white curtains to the trim, little windows. We 
suspected that this outward appearance of cleanness and 
tidiness was delusive, and that the interior 
was not so presentable, but we did not realize the 
least in the world what gipsy interiors are as a 
rule, nor trouble ourselves to think how that 
picturesque-looking group round the fire, and the 
children who were ranging about and kept turning 
up in all sorts of unexpected quarters, and the 
couple of men asleep under the great golden gorse 


104 Letters to Our Working Party. 

bush on the grass where the raw-boned, grey horse 
was grazing, could all pack into such an extremely 
small space at night. They stopped for three or 
four days at Nestley as the horse was lame, and 
Edith and I were quite sorry when they moved 
away, as we had made friends with one of the 
queer, little, brown boys, and he had taught us 
to "roker" one or two words of gipsy language, 
and to call rabbits "shoshi," and hares "kanegros," 
and hedgehogs "hotchi-witchi," and in return for 
this instruction had accepted as much cake and 
pudding and fruit as we liked to give him. The gentlemen, 
however, were much relieved at their departure, 
as gipsies are not pleasant neighbours to well-
preserved coverts, and they and their dogs are 
such adepts at poaching that they have been 
known to clear a field of hares and rabbits, and 
bag their game while the keepers have been lying 
in wait for them over the fence. The hen-roosts 
too are not sacred to them, and pigs and cows 
have been known to sicken in a mysterious manner 
and die after the visit of gipsies to the neighbourhood, 
and the farmers have been glad to sell the 
body for a trifle to part of the same gang, who 
according to a pre-arranged plan, call on him a 
day or two afterwards. Mrs. Martin, too, was glad 
of their departure, as the queer old hag with the 
scarlet handkerchief over her head, who reminded 
us of the witch in the story of the tinderbox, was 
constantly lurking about the kitchen door beguiling 
the maids with her rubbish, and, though I was 
inclined at first to treat it as harmless nonsense, 
she convinced me that the silliness of girls is such 
that it often leads them on into mischief, deceit, 


Letters to Our Working Party. 10S 

and dishonesty, as the cases in the police court 
testify; and she told me of one case in Dorsetshire where 
two gipsy women induced a dairyman's wife to part with her 
sovereigns for, a 
sheep's heart studded with pins in mystic patterns' 
outside, and crammed inside with bright farthings. 
The heart was to be hung in the chimney till 
Easter, when it was to be taken out and all the 
farthings would be found turned to gold. 

When the gentlemen found how interested 
Edith and I were in the gipsies, they proposed 
that we should go and have a look at the fair on 
Monday, and though Mrs. Martin did not quite 
like our going, and Aunt Sophy was rather dubious 
about it, Allen and Walter offered to take care of us, 
and we started off,in spite of a little rain, on the 
six miles drive to Oxford to the field outside the 
tOwn, near Somers Town, where the annual fair 
of St. Giles is held. 

As we drew near our destination, the road began 
to be thronged with vehicles of all descriptions, 
from the trim, tidy-looking van drawn by substantial horses 
to the tumble-down cart covered 
over with sticks and old sheeting, drawn by a 
donkey in harness not worth sixpence, tied together with 
string and pieces of rope, and these 
last always most heavily loaded-one that we passed 
having a woman and six poor, dirty, little children 
peering through an opening in the rotten canvas, 
reminding one of a nest of young rabbits. 

I do not know how these tardy arrivals got 
accommodated, for the road for more than a mile-
and-a-half from the meadow was bordered with 
vans, carts, and tents along the side of the road 


106 Letters to Our Working Party. 

in the ditch, and the square seemed packed as 
tightly as possible, and the toll-clerk told us that 
there were 220 vans and shows there, and that it 
required endless patience and ingenuity to arrange 
them, and, as it was, we heard more than one 
quarrel going on between envious or discontented 
neighbours. 
The noise and hubbub all around was quite 
confusing at first; there were crowds of people, 
and a brisk trade seemed to be going on at 
the gingerbread and toy stalls, and at the shows 
and wheels-of-fortune and cocoanut shies, while 
fortunes were being told in all directions, and, 
I believe, horse dealing was also in progress in 
another part of the field, though we did not see 
anything of it. 

lt was altogether a very lively scene, and Edith 
and I, having come intent on the picturesque, shut 
our eyes as much as we could to the dirt and 
squalor and wretchedness that peeped out from 
behind the fun and the freedom and the romance of 
gipsy life. We counted over fifteen wheels-of fortune, 
everyone of which was surrounded by a 
crowd and kept spinning without cessation. These 
consist of a large wheel, something like a clock 
face or compass, with a swinging finger or hand. 
Round the outer edge of the wheel stand a lot 
of prizes, chiefly children's toys, fancy boxes and 
ornaments. Those who want to try their luck put 
down a penny opposite the thing they fancy. 
When several have done this, and the pennies are 
studded about the wheel, the finger is set swinging, 
and wherever it stops, the fortunate owner of the 
penny claims the prize, but it was most remarkable 


Letters to Our Working-Party. 107 

how seldom the finger stopped at any of the places 
where the pennies were laid-it always seemed 
rather to go just past the mark or stop short of it. 
However, this circumstance did not seem to prevent 
the crowd of boys and young women and girls 
trying their luck again and again, and I was told 
by those who knew, that the wheels-of-fortune and 
shows make more money than all the other things 
in the fair put together. It was very eyident to a 
looker-on that the luck was regulated by the stall 
keeper pressing a stud that operates underneath the 
top of the table against the swivel upon which the 
finger or hand is placed, and he can stop it 
wherever he likes. 

We went on from there to the cocoanut shies, 
where Allen and Walter accepted the invitation of 
one of the men. "Now, gents, try your luck! try 
your luck! all good uns and no bad uns, bad uns 
returned!" But they were too good cricketers to 
be very acceptable to the owner, cocoanut after 
cocoanut fell before their aim, and the proprietor 
at last suggested that they should patronize another 
of the twenty or more establishments, and I  was glad 
to move away as I was so afraid lest some of the 
little brown children who were scrambling after the 
balls should get a knock on the head, and both 
Edith and I wanted to find out our small friend 
Zack, whose acquaintance we had made at Nestley. 

There were shows of all sorts, wax-works, acrobats, 
dog-monkeys, tight rope dancers, white bears, fat 
women, Indian conjurors, female blondins, but the 
only one we saw was "Boscoe, the fire king," who 
was dressed and painted like a red Indian, and who 
wen tthrough a horrifying performance of eating fire, 


108 Letters to Our Working Party. 

making leaden bullets, putting a red hot poker down 
his throat and drawing it across his tongue, and 
bending red hot iron bars with his feet. This was 
followed by an acrobatic performance by a poor 
little boy with a thin anxious looking face, and then 
an equally pathetic, nervous, little pony told fortunes; 
but we did not stop to the end, as the tent was hot 
and close,and we had had enough of it and wanted 
to be getting home, and the fair was becoming 
more crowded and noisy every minute, and there 

were a great many tipsy men about-yes, and women 
too, and even little children, and among them our 
little friend Zack, who staggered across our path as 
we left the fair too stupified even to recognize us. 

We were all very silent as we drove horne, and 
even the stately beauty of Oxford with its grand old 
colleges and churches drew no expression of admiration from 
any of us, though it seems the very 
embodiment of learning and science; perhaps our 
eyes were still dazzled by the dirty finery and 
tawdry spangles of the gipsy shows, and with the 
orange and scarlet handkerchiefs and flashing dark 
eyes of the women, even the grand roll of the 
Magdalen organ as we passed seemed somehow out 
of tune, while the "roker" of the gipsies and the 
shrill cries of the children were echoing in our ears. 

"Well," Aunt Sophy said, "have you enjoyed 
yourself? " 
And I said, "I don't know, I want to think 
about it." 

And, of course, when I want to think of anything 

myself, I want you and the working party at home to 

think of it too, and the more I think of it, the more 

terrible it seems, this horde of gipsies spread about 


Letters to Our Working Party. 109

over this beautiful Christian land of ours, living in 
utter ignorance, in indescribable dirt and wretchedness, sin and 
misery, beyond the reach of religion or 
of sanitary or educational inspection, with no power 
but the policeman exerting any influence over them. 
It seems almost unbelievable that in a civilized 
country 30,000 children should be growing 
up in ignorance and heathenism, growing up 
naturally to fill the ranks of our criminal classes 
and people our prisons, for it is well-known that 
ignorance and crime go hand in hand, and of 
the persons who were committed to prison last 
year 60,840 could neither read nor write. 

One who has the cause of the gipsies very near 
his heart, and who has already done noble service 
for the children in the brick fields and on the canals, 
Mr. George Smith of Coalville, says that gipsy 
morality, cleanliness, faithfulness, honesty and 
industry exist, with some noble exceptions, only in 
imagination. The pure bred gipsies are very few 
now, and their ranks have been filled up by all 
sorts of rogues and vagabonds who, for one reason or 
another, were anxious to cast off the constraints of 
decent life and live a roving existence, for the most 
part wandering about the country during the 
summer, and settling down on the outskirts of 
London or some other big town during the winter. 
Upon Wanstead flats, Cherry Island, Barking 
Road, Canning Town, Hackney Flats, Battersea, 
Wandsworth, Chelsea and many other places, they 
gather together for the winter living in tents, which, 
at first hearing, sounds better than some of the overcrowded 
kitchens and garrets of the London courts and 
alleys, but when we see what these tents are like we 


110 Letten to Our Working Party. 

may change our opinion. I will describe one. It 
is about 7 feet wide, 16 feet long and where the 
round top is highest about 4 1/2 feet in height. It 
is covered with old pieces of sacking or canvas to 
keep out the cold and rain, and the entrance is 
closed with a kind of curtain; the fire by which 
they cook their meals is placed in a tin bucket 
pierced with holes, and some of the smoke from the 
burning sticks goes out of an opening in the top of 
the tent that serves for a chimney, while the rest 
of it fills the place and helps to keep the inmates' faces 
and hands a proper gipsy colour. The bed is a 
little straw laid on the damp ground, covered with 
a sack or a sheet as the case may be; an old soapbox or tea 
chest serves both as cupboard and table. 
Creeping into one of these tents almost on all fours 
you will find half-naked gipsy children squatting 
upon the ground, busy at skewer or washing-peg 
making, and, at night, father and mother, brothers 
and sisters huddle together, lying down where they

have worked and sleep as they are, with but a rag between 
them and the bleak night of pitiless snow 
and rain. The over crowding of these tents and 
vans is something terrible. The following will give 
you some idea of the average numbers and chances 
of decency and morality in such circumstances. 
"Phillips, a gipsy from Maidstone,had in his van 
one woman and eleven children; Green, from 
Bristol, had two men, two women and eleven 
children; Brinklow had in his van two women 
and seven children; Lee, a gipsy from London, 
had in his tent two young men, one woman and 
seven children; making a total of 47 men, women 
and children of all ages and sizes huddling together 


Letters to Our Working Party. 111

in these fou rtents and vans, and not two of these 
could read or write a sentence. 

There is so much I should like to tell you about 
the gipsies and the hardships and miseries of the 
life that looks so free and merry and picturesque, 
of the horse-dealing gipsies and their arts in 
doctoring-up broken-winded and roaring horses 
to look quite serviceable, and buying them back 
from the deluded purchaser for a trifle to be 
doctored again and again. A fine-looking, broken-
winded horse "roarer" or "cribber" is almost a 
fortune to a gipsy. During two or three years 
while he can go, the screw is sold and bought in 
again scores of times. I could tell you too of their 
poaching and thieving, and of the way in which 
infection and disease is carried from one place to 
another by their means, and the worse infection 
and disease of sin and impurity. 

It iscertainly a very difficult matter to deal with, 
but the difficulty of a thing does not take away 
our responsibility with regard to it. Through the 
instrumentality of Mr. Smith, a bill is now before 
Parliament to provide for the registration of all 
gipsy vans and temporary dwellings with a view to 
their inspection by the sanitary authorities to 
prevent overcrowding and insanitary conditions, 
and also to enable the School Board officers to get 
hold of thec hildren who will have a pass book to 
enable them to obtain admittance at any school for 
as long a time as they happen to be in the neighbourhood, 
and to allow of their presenting themselves for examination 
at the usual time, provided 
they have made 200 attendances during the year, 
and that such attendances have been duly entered 


112 Letters to Our Working Party. 

by the various schoolmasters at whose schools the 
children have attended. 

There are many difficulties in the working of the 
scheme, but I do not think they are insuperable 
ones. Do you remember how the Israelites, 
wanderers and dwellers in tents like these poor 
gipsies, asked leave of the Amorities to pass 
through their land to Canaan? "Let me pass 
through thy land, we will not turn into the fields 
or into the vineyards, we will not drink of the 
waters of the well: but we will go along by the 
king's highway until we be past thy borders." 

I think the little, bare-footed, ignorant, heathen 
gipsy children are asking us, and all the more 
eloquently, that they are too ignorant even to 
know what they want, to let them pass through 
our borders by the king's highway of education 
and civilization to the promised land, and that if, 
as the Amorites, we will not let them pass, we shall 
be ranking ourselves with the enemies of the Lord, 
and His punishment will not fail to fall on us aR 
upon Sihon and his people. 

The Lord, who in His righteous anger with 
Israel, thought with mercy of the "little ones 
which ye said should be a prey, and your children 
which in that day had no knowledge between good 
and evil," and promised that they should go in to 
that good land and "unto them will I glve it, and 
they shall possess it," and who spared sinful 
Nineveh for the sake of the "more than six score 
thousand persons that cannot discern between their 
right hand and their left hand," and He who 
"was moved with compassion on the multitude 
because they were as sheep not having a shepherd," 


Letters to Our Working Party. 113 

will look with pity on the 30,000 ignorant gipsy 
children in the very midst of rich, highly-educated, 
Christian England. 

Your very affectionate, 

E. W.

 

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H. J. A. MIles . Square 16mo. cloth, bevelled boards, 
gilt edges, Is. 6d. 
THE CLOUD AND THE STAR. By the Hon. Mrs. C.HOBART, 
nee N. P. W. 2nd Edition. With Outline Illustrations 
by H. J. A. MILES. Square 16mo. cloth, bevelled boards, 
gilt edges, Is. 6d. 


WAS LOST, AND IS FOUND.' A Tale of the London 
Mission. By the Rigbt Rev. W. WALSHAM How, D.D. 
With Outline Illnstrations by H. J. A. MILES. Square 
16mo. clotb, bevelled boards, gilt edges, Is. 6d. 

'A really spirited religious ballad, artistically, yet 
gracefully iIlustrated.'-The Times. 

DEARE CHILDE. A Village Idyl. By the Rev. S. J. 
STONE, M.A., Vicar of St. Paul's, Haggerstone. 3rd Edi. 
tion. With Outline Illustrations by H. J. A. MILES. 
Square 16mo. cloth, bevelled boards, gilt edges, Is. 6d. 

Popularly known as Jerusalem the Golden. 

THE LAND OF LIGHT: A Transcript from the Rhythm 
of Bernard de Morlaix. With Outline Illustrations by 

H. J. A. MILES. Square 16mo. cloth, bevelled boards, 
gilt edges, Is. 6d. 
'We have seldom seen a more beautiful little booklet. 

-Church Times. 

OUR FRIENDS IN PARADISE; OR, SANCTORUM DULCIS MEMORIA. 
With Introduction by the Right Rev. 

W. D. MACLAGAN,D.D., Bishop of Lichfield. Small 4to. 
fancy cloth boards, 3s. 6d. 
'Constructed after the model of a birthday text-book, 
and designed to recall the memory of those who have 
entered into their rest, and thus assist in realising more 
fully the doctrine of the Communion of Saints.' -The 
Year-Book of the Church. 

'A very elegant volume externally and internally. To 
every page three days are allotted, those on the left 
bearing dates, texts, and choice quotations, the opposite 
pages being spaced for records and remarks.'-The Queen. 

WORTHIES OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. By W. 
DAVENPORT ADAMS. Crown 8vo. extra, cloth boards, 3s. 6d. 

MEMOIR OF THE LIFE AND EPISCOPATE OF EDWARD 
FEILD, D.D., Bishop of Newfoundland, 1844-1876. By 
the Rev. H. W. TUCKER,M.A. With Prefatory Note to 
the Autbor by the Right Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE,

M.P. 
With :Map of Newfoundland. 3rd Edition. Crown 8vo. 
cloth boards, 5s. 
'A record of a devoted life.'-Pall Mall Gazette. 


digitized by EvelynWhitakerLibrary.org 

scanned and edited by K Cummings Pipes 
August 2008 

• www.evelynwhitakerlibary.org 
, the online catalog & notes on books by the 
anonymous author of Miss Toosey's Mission, Laddie, Tip-Cat, 
Gay,Faithful etc.