Of his children he would often remark, during the controversy over religious education in schools, that they seemed to disprove the theories of both contending parties. One of his daughters and a son, who were educated in Board Schools, became communicating members of the Church of England, while two daughters educated in Church of England schools afterwards became Nonconformists.
A glimpse of his home life was given in the "Celebrities at Home" series, published in the World. The writer described Gough Street as a row of tiny houses so much alike that the only difference between one and another was the number on the door.
But if you did not know Mr. Crooks's number, you could guess his house by waiting at the corner of the street. Because, between half-past nine and half-past ten, the door-knocker of No. 81 will beat a tattoo twelve or twenty times to the hour, when all the other knockers are silent. For this is the hour when Mr. Crooks is at home and receives his visitors, while he takes his breakfast in a spasmodic and interrupted manner—bad, one feels sure, for his digestion. They are not social callers. They come because they want something—an order for free medicine or for an artificial limb, for advice as to a likely quarter to get work, for a hundred and one needs of poor people who have no resources of their own.
They are pleasant rooms in which the Labour member finds the best happiness of his life. They are not large. They are not handsomely furnished, for a Labour member has no need of luxury; but to Mr. Crooks every little adornment in them has its own story to tell and its own pleasant memory. On one of the walls are two oil paintings of ships in distress—"good or bad," says Mr. Crooks, "I'm no judge," But they are valuable to him, because they were painted by a man down on his luck, as a thanksgiving for a good turn done to him by the only friend he had.
"Bless you," says Mr. Crooks, "they all bring me little things, and I can't refuse them. See that champagne glass on the piano? That was given me by a poor old lady I used to look after a bit. That wine glass on the other side came from another old friend. Someone will bring me a China shepherd, another a vase or candlestick, or a comic pig. It's pleasant, you know!"...
Mr. Crooks is one of the pleasantest and most interesting men to visit. If you take him at the right time—half-past nine o'clock—it means an early journey from the West!—he will sit you down to a plate of porridge and give you more information about the life of the working-classes in the course of an hour than the most laborious reading of Blue-books will do in a lifetime.
The visitor must be prepared for interruptions. In a corner of the breakfast-room is a member of the family who likes to have his say. It is a poll-parrot—"as cunning as a barge-load of monkeys," says his owner affectionately. He has a peculiar habit of cracking invisible filbert-nuts at the back of his throat, rather disconcerting to a stranger; and although he dotes on Mr. Crooks, it is a little game of his to snub the Labour member by depreciatory remarks and scornful whistles of derision. But he always has an affectionate "Goo'-bye, Will!" for his master when he puts on his hat in the morning. To Mrs. Crooks he is always courteous. "Goo'-morning, mother!" he says, when the lady comes down to breakfast, and thrusts his beak out for a kiss. Then he calls "Tilly! Tilly!" in a shrill voice, like an elderly landlady, and is not satisfied till Mrs. Crooks's pretty, black-eyed daughter has given him his morning greeting.
"He has his little prejudices, like the rest of us," says Mr. Crooks. "He can't abide babies, and squawks at them fearfully."
Mr. George R. Sims gave a sketch of "A Morning with Will Crooks" in the Daily Chronicle of May 2nd, 1906. He suggested that if 81, Gough Street—Crooks's Castle, as he called it—had a brass plate on the door, the most appropriate device to be inscribed upon it would be, "Inquire within upon everything."
It was twenty minutes past ten when I arrived. At half-past ten we were due at the relieving office. But before we started, some three or four pathetic narratives had found their way into the little hall for Mr. Crooks to mark, learn, and inwardly digest.
I appreciated the situation, and expressed sympathy.
"It is depressing," said the people's M.P., "but, after all, somebody's got to listen and somebody's got to help."
We went out into the street. In the hundred yards that we walked to our destination six sad riddles of life were submitted to Mr. Crooks for solution.
The broad-shouldered, black-bearded, smiling politician of the people had a cheery word of advice for all applicants, and scarcely had these pavement consultations ended before we were seated in the relieving office listening to tales of woe told by a procession of poor petitioners with whom the world had gone woefully wrong.
The committee of relief were generous and sympathetic. Poplar has a reputation for generosity in this matter. It struck me that at times the committee might have impressed a little more earnestly upon the recipients of out-relief the other side of the situation; but I am bound to admit that undeserving cases—cases which had a history of drink and thriftlessness—were dismissed with no illusions....
We went to the workhouse at the dinner hour. A comfortable place certainly, and the dinner probably better than a good many of the inmates had been accustomed to when they were earning their own living....
A pleasant hour with Mr. and Mrs. Crooks and their daughters at the castle, a stroll in the little garden which is Mrs. Crooks's delight, a short interview with Tommy the Tortoise, and it is time for the Member for Woolwich to start for Westminster and take his place in the National Assembly.
He takes up a leather case containing some sixty or seventy letters to be answered, and we go out into the street, which is happily bathed in sunshine. We get on the top of an omnibus, and I listen to the merry stories merrily told until we arrive at Aldgate Station and bid each other good-bye.
I have spent a most interesting and instructive morning with a typical Englishman, a man who has laboured with skill and used his brains as well as his hands to good purpose—a man who has fought his way up from boyhood, a man whose heart is as big as his shoulders are broad.
Beyond his sterling common sense and his sympathy with suffering, Will Crooks has one golden quality in a tribune of the people. He has a sense of humour. It does your eyes good to see him smile. And he has a laugh that makes you feel the sunshine even when the north wind blows.
Sometimes the Labour man has nearly a hundred letters a day to deal with. First attention is always given to those from people seeking counsel or help in Poplar and Woolwich.
An old man of ninety-four asks him to visit him for old times' sake. A widow has lost her property—will Mr. Crooks see her righted? A sick woman wants to know how she can get into a convalescent home. An anxious father asks him to speak to a wayward son, because "the lad sets such store by what you say, Mr. Crooks." Again, it is a distracted mother who writes, maybe about a son or a daughter who has run away or fallen into trouble.
Amusing letters come sometimes, varying the note of sorrow sounded in so many of the others. This, for instance, from a sympathetic Frenchman, who evidently imagines that a place called Poplar must be studded with trees of that name and surrounded by open fields. "I see," wrote this sympathiser from across the Channel, "that you are doing much for the unemployed, and I have pleasure in sending you enclosed cheque for them. I would suggest, in view of the importance of the poor children having pure milk, that the money be spent in putting unemployed men to work in cleaning out the ponds in the fields and lanes of Poplar where the cattle drink."
While Crooks is essentially a home-loving man, counting it one of his chief joys to have an evening free or a week-end to call his own, he regards it as a duty to speak at religious and temperance meetings, and on behalf of other movements not necessarily allied with the Labour Party.