October 19th, 1904.
To a Friend Offering Help.
Thank you for your able and most interesting letter re the scheme for the neighbourhood of the Wandle. It is the very thing one would desire to have done. The best advice I can give is that you should approach the able and helpful secretary of the Kent and Surrey Committee of the C.P.S. at 25, Victoria Street, Westminster, and see if they can in any way help. As a rule they work most in the country; but Mr. L. Chubb, their Sec., has more knowledge of how to work such a scheme as you sketch than anyone I know; and I hope he may at least see his way to seeing and advising. I am writing to him and forwarding your letter.
I fancy he will agree with me that your best course would be to form a strong local committee, to get some one or two people to select the exact area as silently as possible, to approach the owners and get an option of purchase, and then only to make the scheme public and approach the various bodies and individuals who should help.
I am a member of the Kent and Surrey Committee, and on that body might be able to help; and I should always hear from Mr. Chubb of the progress of the scheme, so as to help at any juncture if possible, tho’, individually, I fear at this moment I cannot undertake anything. I have, as you will see from the enclosed, in addition to my regular London work, a large country one on hand.
1904.
Letter to Fellow-Workers.
In one way, this Notting Hill area is the most satisfactory to me of any we have. It is so steadily improving, and the people with it. It is meeting so much the needs of those who find it hardest to get on. The group of ladies who manage it are eminently fitted to help on any who can be helped there, whether it be by introducing the young people to better work, by recommending widows for charing, by giving the labourer an odd job of rough work, by immediately calling attention to cases of illness or extreme want, by bringing a little healthy amusement into somewhat monotonous hard-working lives, and in many other ways. The work is much more like that which I was able to do in earlier years than any which is possible in most new buildings.
We have had a great alarm about the work in South London. When I wrote to you last it was still doubtful whether the Ecclesiastical Commissioners would decide to undertake the responsibility of rebuilding, and retaining in their own hands, the whole of the area which was to be devoted to dwellings for the working classes. It was still undecided whether they would not lease a part to builders or companies. They have resolved to retain the whole in their own hands, and to manage it by their own agents, of whom Miss Lumsden is the first. The advantages of this plan are obvious. The Commissioners will be directly responsible for good arrangements and government, instead of being powerless to interfere for eighty or ninety years; they will be freer than any lessees can be to modify, should change be needed, owing to development of science, or alteration of requirements as time goes on; they can determine conditions of life in a large area occupied by working people, which may have as deep an influence as the churches and schools, which, up to now, they have felt it their duty to supply. All this they have felt it possible to do, because they realise that there is growing up a certain number of ladies capable of representing them, and possessing special knowledge. So that in the years to come, as they will have lawyers to do legal business, surveyors and architects to see to the fabric of their houses, so they will have managers to supervise in detail the comfort and health of their tenants, so far as these depend on proper conditions in the houses in which they live; managers who will be interested in the people, and will have time to see thoroughly to the numerous details involved in management of such areas.
LADIES HELPING OFFICIALS