The story of the Mission is romantic. A lady, Mrs. Hun, was left a young widow. After less than two years of married life her husband died suddenly. She devoted herself to her only daughter, who grew up into a beautiful girl. The morning after her first ball the young lady was found dead in her bed. To assuage her grief and keep from breaking down utterly, the bereaved mother determined to devote herself to charity. The fearful condition of the young girls in this neighbourhood was brought to her attention, and with her fortune and that of her dead daughter she devoted herself to establishing a home for factory-girls.
Such is the short and simple story of how this excellent institution was founded. How it is carried out, how the girls cling to the Home, and how thoroughly they appreciate its comforts, any lady can see who cares to take a trip as far as Union Street, Borough, and ring the bell of the All Hallows' Mission-House.
The work which these girls have to do in return for a small wage is generally of a dangerous character. Many of them literally snatch their food from the jaws of death.
One girl in the Home was white and ill and weak, and her story may be taken as a sample. She worked at the 'bronzing,' that is, a branch of the chromo-lithography business, and it consists in applying a fluid, which gives off a poisonous exhalation, to certain work. Bronzing enters largely into the composition of those Christmas pictures which delight us so much at the festive season, and which adorn the nursery of many a happy, rosy-cheeked English child.
The law, recognising the dangerous nature of the work, says that the girls doing it shall be allowed a pint of milk per day, the milk in some way counteracting the effect of the poison the girls inhale. It will hardly be believed that some of the best firms refuse to comply with the regulation, and if the girls complain they are at once discharged.
Now, the wages paid are seven shillings per week. To keep at their employment it is necessary that the workers take castor-oil daily, and drink at least a pint of milk. They must either pay for these luxuries out of their scanty earnings or go without, and eventually find their way to the hospital.
Take another trade—the fur-pulling. The women and girls employed at this are in some shops locked in the room with their work, and have to eat their food there.
If you had ever seen a room crowded with girls pulling the fluff from cats, rabbits, rats, and goodness knows what other animals, you would appreciate the situation better. The fluff, the down, and the small hairs smother everything, and are necessarily swallowed by the occupants of the room, with pernicious effect. Yet it is the custom of some of the men in the trade to force their employés to eat under such circumstances—that is, to swallow their food thickly coated with the hairs from which nothing can preserve it.
Why do not the women refuse? Because they would be discharged. There are always hundreds ready and eager to take their places. The struggle for bread is too fierce for the fighters to shrink from any torture in its attainment.
With the dangers of the white-lead works, which employ a large number of these families, most people are now familiar; at least, those who read the inquests must be. In addition to the liability to lead-poisoning, in many of these works the machinery is highly dangerous. In spite of the Employers' Liability Act, the victims of machinery accidents—that is, when they are women or children—rarely get compensation.