In the record time of six weeks the law was altered. It sounds miraculous to those who know the ways of Whitehall. Crooks's resource proved more than equal to red-tapeism.
First the Asylums Board wrote to the Home Office. Then the Home Office sent the usual evasive reply. The correspondence would have gone on indefinitely had not Crooks waited on the Home Secretary in person.
As the Labour man expected, Mr. Ritchie knew nothing about the matter, the Home Office officials having settled it without consulting the Secretary of State. Always willing to co-operate in anything that promised to keep children away from the workhouse, Mr. Ritchie asked Crooks what he had to suggest. The visitor pointed out that the Juvenile Offenders' Bill was at that very moment before Parliament, and that the insertion in that measure of an additional clause of half a dozen lines only would keep remand children away from the workhouse for all time. The Home Secretary seized the idea at once, and Crooks's suggestion became law the following month.
The first of the Remand Homes was opened at Pentonville Road for the convenience of children charged at the police courts of North London and the East-End. Sometimes as many as fifty young offenders, boys and girls, can be seen there at the same time.
Instead of loafing about the workhouse, as before, and becoming inured to pauper surroundings, they are now taught as in a day school. They have play in the open air and recreation indoors in the way of games and books. Moreover, the girls are taught to sew and knit, the boys instructed in manual work. Though seldom there more than a fortnight before being taken back to the police court, they go away cleaner, better informed, not without hope. And the magistrates now feel justified in sending about 80 per cent. of them back to their parents.
A visit to this Remand Home at Pentonville will teach you disquieting truths about the vagrant child-life of London. These wayward youngsters tell their tales with startling frankness.
That bright-faced lad of twelve—why is he here?
"Stealing," he answers us.
"What did you steal?"
"Some stockings outside a shop."