Mr. Crooks's knowledge, his experience, his courage, his readiness of humour, his good temper, and, above all, his devotion to the work he has undertaken have made him one of the most useful, as well as one of the most popular, members of the London County Council.
His devotion was shown by his attendance. For thirteen years in succession he never missed a single Council meeting. Until Parliament began to claim his time his record of attendance every year, both at Council and Committee meetings, stood among the half-dozen highest.
After such a long unbroken service, it was bitter to be kept at home by an illness one Tuesday, the day the L.C.C. meets. Only one other councillor—Sir William Collins—had kept pace with him during those thirteen years. Crooks wrote to his friendly rival from a sick bed:—
"To-day you go ahead in this long and pleasant competition between us. I cannot help thinking that after all it is a case of the survival of the fittest, for I cannot leave my room."
"I hate to win under such conditions," said Sir William in his cheering reply.
At one time the Progressive party proposed to nominate him as vice-chairman, a position entitling the holder to the L.C.C. chairmanship in the year following. The honour was declined. He believed he could be more useful as an independent member.
So the sequel proved. As a member of the Parks Committee he never wearied in working for more open spaces and children's play-places in the poorer parts of London. It had long been a grievance to the working classes of London that nearly all the parks lay in the West End and the suburbs. Since the poor districts were now too thickly covered with houses ever to permit of spacious parks being provided in their midst, Crooks was one of the most earnest in pleading that the Council should make amends by rescuing every vacant plot of land that remained and converting it into a recreation ground, no matter how small.
His strenuous plea secured for the East-End alone three splendid open spaces. These are the Bromley Recreation Ground, the Tunnel Gardens at Poplar, and the Island Gardens that take their name from the Isle of Dogs. To visit any one of these, and see therein children playing and tired people finding rest, is to feel deeply what a benign influence has fallen over these poor neighbourhoods.
Crooks obtained this recreation ground for Bromley at the cost of his overcoat. The open space was formed out of something like a morass by the banks of the Lea. It lay hidden away in that labyrinth of sterile streets stretching southwards from Bow Bridge to the spot where the lesser river loses itself in the Thames.