“I am, Sir, yours most respectfully,
“A. SOYER.
“Reform Club, Sept. 23.”
Under the Patronage of the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of London.
SOYER’S PAROCHIAL MODEL KITCHEN,
FOR THE
POOR WEAVERS OF SPITALFIELDS.
From the Times of February 21.
“Sir—Having lately been introduced by several gentlemen of distinction to the Reverend Joseph Brown, the benevolent pastor of Saint Matthias, Spitalfields, with the view of relieving, if possible, at a trifling expense, the sufferings of that industrious but distressed class of society, the Weavers of Spitalfields; and having, with that gentleman, visited several of their abodes, we found, in many of the houses, five or six in a small room, entirely deprived of the common necessaries of life—no food, no fire, and hardly any garment to cover their persons, and that during the late severe frost. In one of the attics we visited we inquired of a woman how they subsisted. Her husband, she said, had no employment during the last four months, and that they merely lived on what he could get by begging in the streets; she added, that she and her children had not tasted a bit of food for twenty-four hours, the last of which consisted of apples partly decayed, and bits of bread given to her husband, which food we may consider, if even plentiful, to be pernicious to health. The only piece of furniture in that gloomy abode of misery was the weaving machine, now at rest, and which, in time of prosperity, was used to provide food, and made, if not a wealthy, at least a happy home for those now wretched and destitute families, and the scientific production of which has often, and even now, adorns the persons of thousands of the aristocracy and gentry of the country.