Nineteen hundred? A forecast and a story

by Marianne Farningham

Arthur Knight had a shock as, sitting in his office one day with the windows open, he overheard some of the girls in his employ talking together, and he lost no time in providing a place where Miss Wentworth and her helpers might begin a beneficial work among these young people, many of whom, though at present between fourteen and sixteen, would soon be the mothers of children, and who for that, if no other reason, needed greatly the womanly ministrations of Christian love.

But it happened that at the first of the girls’ meetings in the temporary evening homes prepared for their reception Miss Wentworth could not be present, and, indeed, for several weeks the young ladies who were to help her had about fifty factory girls to themselves. Neither of them would ever forget their experience. Provision had been made for the girls to wash at the rooms, and take tea there, so that they might be as long as possible under the influence of their friends, who earnestly desired to render them real service, but who were at their wit’s end to know how to accomplish it. The girls brought curling-tongs, and spent most of their time in “frizzing” their “fringes.” They were urged to join a savings’ club, but said they were already in a “feather club,” to which they paid, out of their earnings of seven or eight shillings, a shilling a week for “fashion and finery,” and they could not afford to save anything else. For some time it seemed impossible to reduce them to any sort of order. They at once gave nicknames to the ladies; and began by mimicking their manner of speaking. One of the girls went to a timid, nervous young lady, and, looking her full in the face, said, “Blush! blush!” an order which was, of course, instantly obeyed, to the great glee of those who stood around, and who laughed uproariously. One impudent-looking girl had a dreadful black eye, and in reply to a lady who kindly inquired if she had met with an accident, said, “Mother did that. She throwed a tater at me, and it hit my eye. My mother can’t do nothing with me, and it makes her mad.” The words were immediately sung in a sort of chorus: “My mother can’t do nothing with me, and it makes her mad.” A lady offered to give a little talk on the body, having made physiology her favourite study; the girls sat and giggled the whole time, at the end of which they dubbed their teacher, “Bones.” The young ladies were very much troubled by the boys outside, who waited about for the girls, and amused themselves by knocking at the doors and climbing up to the windows, and who became at last so troublesome that a policeman was asked to take up his station near and keep order. The next day many of the girls brought the policeman offerings of flowers, and nearly all surrounded him, and began talking and joking with him.

“It is of no use to try. We shall never do them any good. We must give it up and leave them to their fate.” But this was not what those educated, Christ-obeying girls said. Some whom they knew had gone away to work among the dwarfs of the Congo, the fever-stricken men and women of the jungle, and the lepers of Siberia; should these be less heroic than they? They kept steadily on, and, after a time, a few of the girls for whose salvation they agonised grew more quiet than the rest, and these would distribute themselves among the others and try to keep order during the prayer-time; and, at last, now and then the young hearts of these home missionaries were thrilled with such whispers as this: “I do want to be better, please tell me how?” So they worked faithfully.

But many signs of the times were less hopeful than this. It was known in England, and especially in London, that few financial ventures were so absolutely safe as those connected with journalism, provided the popular taste was met. Those who won the greatest popularity were those who wrote down to the masses, and went even a little lower than they. The sale of such journals was largely helped by religious people, not that they approved the morality of the journals, but because they were amusing, the gossip being of a spicy nature, and the tales sensational and enthralling. For several years almost all papers had become increasingly personal in their character, and editors were willing to pay large sums for little bits of news touching persons who were in the least distinguished for position, possession, or power. The society journals had always a large sale, especially those that were the most unscrupulous in hunting for skeletons in cupboards, and exhibiting them to the public at the rate of a penny a week.

But lately there had been commenced a new journal, which was giving intense pain, and covering with shame a large section of the British people. Its registered title was Saints’ Society, and the motto under the title, chosen in confessed irony, was, “See how these Christians love one another.” It existed for the express purpose of blackening the character and showing up the weaknesses of all sections of the Church, and was full of personalities of the vilest kinds. It would have done less harm if it had been boycotted by respectable or even Christian people, but too many women and some men bought the paper, and gloated over it in semi-secret circles, because of what it told of individuals whom they knew. The adults who did this could not perhaps be greatly harmed by it, since, already, the process of deterioration must have gone so far with their own characters that a little more made almost no perceptible difference; but it was the young people in their families who suffered most, and who, by hundreds throughout the land, were declaring gleefully or angrily, according to their temperament, that religion was a sham and a fraud, which they declined altogether to uphold by any adhesion of theirs.

But the paper was chiefly supported by those who openly hated anything bearing the Christian name. Certain individuals in some sections of the Church had roused considerable antagonism by harassing, with piecemeal legislation, the supporters of existing evils. They had not the energy and perseverance, perhaps they had not the power, to destroy the wrongs of which they complained—that would require a revolution—but they had made it disagreeable for a good many people who coined money by, and were otherwise interested in, the perpetuation of these wrongs, and this had created a great amount of angry feeling. The Saints’ Society Journal was the outcome of revenge.

But in one respect the journal was serviceable. It threw a vivid light upon the standard of excellence which the world expects in Christian people, and many readers turned away from its columns with uneasy consciences. Even The Saints’ Society had a generous word for real goodness, but for those who professed to be religious and yet were not good it had no mercy. It devoted a whole page to paragraphs referring to incidents in which professors fell below their ideal. The following are illustrations from a single number of the paper:—

“Art and Artful.—One day last week a young lady brought a painting to a fine art depository in the West-end, and asked the proprietor to buy it for two pounds. He looked at it, and declared the price ridiculously high, inquiring, with a sneer, where she got such a lofty estimate of her own talents. She replied that she was in most urgent need of two pounds, and felt sure that the picture was worth the money. He told her to take her picture and clear out if she had no more sense than that. Then she asked him what he would give her for it; and he replied that he would pay her eighteen shillings. With trembling lips she said eighteen shillings would not be enough, she must have more; would he not make it twenty-five? No, he replied, not a penny more than eighteen shillings. Eventually, she left it on sale or return, and was to call again in two or three days. It was an exquisite little gem, and before the day was ended it was sold. A gentleman bought it for ten guineas. Two days later, the artist called again and saw the proprietor. Was her picture sold? Oh yes, it was sold, and there was the money for it—eighteen shillings. The poor girl began hysterically to beg for more, and to ask in agony, what should she do? The dealer in art ordered her to leave his premises, and not make a scene, or it would become unpleasant for her; and after vainly trying to melt the heart of stone of the art man, she went away cursing him. But he is a much respected churchwarden of St. Ronald’s. Could a wronged girl’s curse touch him?”

“Going Shares.—A gentleman had in his employment a skilled workman to whom he paid thirty-five shillings a week, which is about the usual wages for the sort of work he did. Ten years ago the workman saw how, by a slight alteration in a machine, the work might be done much more advantageously, and he told his master. ‘A very good idea, Smith,’ he said; ‘can you manage to set it down in writing and make a drawing of it?’ Smith did so, and the master had it patented. He has just died, leaving a fortune of sixty thousand pounds, made chiefly, as all the world knows, by that improved machine. Did he go shares with Smith? Oh, yes! This is how he went shares: he gave him a pound for his idea; and before he died Mr. Jones made things still more right by leaving two hundred pounds to the hospital in which Smith is ending his days!”

“A Case of Starvation has just been brought to light in King Court. A screaming child attracted the notice of the police, who broke into the room from which the sounds issued. A dead woman lay on the bare floor, and by her side a naked female child was endeavouring to awaken the mother. There was not a scrap of food in the place, and the only furniture was a wooden stool, a table, a ginger-beer bottle, and an old blanket, which partly covered the body of the corpse. The room was a very small one; the floor was broken in several places; there were three broken panes of glass in the window; the walls were damp and dirty, and the ceiling far from waterproof. An inquest will be held to-morrow. It has been ascertained by our detective that the woman paid four shillings a week for this room. We had some difficulty in finding the real owner of the house; but we have discovered him to be Mr. John Smith, of Albert Buildings. Mr. Smith is a deacon of the Duke Street Church. The woman made sacks. By working thirteen hours a day she could earn tenpence. She was employed by Mr. Samuel Sneed, of Thames Place. Mr. Sneed attends the church of Mole Street. He is the respected leader of the Band of Hope.”