"About My Father's Business": Work Amidst the Sick, the Sad, and the Sorrowing

by Thomas Archer

The obvious distress and suffering of those who are destitute, and whose claims are constantly before us, may lead us to forget the frequent needs of a large number of people who represent uncomplaining poverty. There is a tendency to identify general appeals to benevolence with efforts for the relief of that extreme necessity which demands immediate and almost undiscriminating aid, and requires the prompt distribution of alms or the provision of a meal, warmth, and shelter. Doubtless, the actually homeless and destitute claim our first attention—especially in the case of deserted and neglected children—and I have tried to show what is being done for those little ones, whose presence in the streets of this great wilderness of brick and stone should of itself be an appeal strong enough to move the heart of humanity in their behalf.

There is, however, another class of poverty, which makes no sign, and bears distress dumbly. There is a need, which, without being that of actual destitution, requires a constant struggle to prevent its representing the want of nearly all the luxuries, and some of those things which most of us regard as the necessaries of life.

We find this among that large section of the middle class represented by persons holding inferior clerkships, small official appointments, and situations where the salaries are only sufficient to yield a bare subsistence, and there is little or no probability of their improvement, because, among the number of candidates who are eager to fill such positions, there exists a degree of distress not easily estimated, even by the appearance of those who are the sufferers. Of course, relief cannot reach such people through the poor-law, or by any direct legislation. They are far above the reach of almsgiving, or even of societies for distributing bread and coals. They have a just pride in maintaining a position of independence; and though they may sometimes look with a feeling too near to envy at the more prosperous mechanic or the skilled artisan, who can earn "good wages," dress in fustian or corduroy, send his children to the Board School, and regulate working hours and weekly pay by the rules of a Trade Union, they mostly keep bravely on, hoping that as the children grow up, they may get the boys "into something," and find some friend to help them to place the girls in situations where they may partly earn their own living.

With rent and taxes often absorbing a fourth part of his entire income, with market cliques combining against him to keep up the prices of food, with dear bread, dear potatoes, boots and shoes always wearing out, and respectability demanding cloth clothes, even though they be made of "shoddy," how is the clerk, the employé, the small tradesman, the struggling professional man, to follow the prudent counsel which wealthier people are always ready to bestow upon him—and "lay by for a rainy day?" Rainy day! why his social climate may be said to represent a continual downpour, so far as the necessity for pecuniary provision. He lives (so to speak) with an umbrella always up, and it is only a poor shift of a gingham after all. The half-crown which is in his pocket to-night is already bespoken for to-morrow's dinner. As he listens to the account of the week's marketing, and knows that his wife and children have been living for three days out of seven upon little better than bread and dripping, he feels like an ogre as he thinks of the sevenpenny plate of meat that he consumed at one o'clock, because it was only "a makeshift" at home.

How is he to pay even the smallest premium to insure his life, when he is obliged to meet ordinary emergencies by a visit to the pawnbroker after dark?

Insure his life! Ah, the time may come when the hand of the bread-winner is still, when the little money left in the house is scarcely sufficient to pay for the "respectable funeral" which is the last effort of genteel poverty, when the red-eyed widow gathers her fatherless children about her, and wonders amidst her stupor of grief what is to become of the younger ones who yet so need her care that she will not be able to go forth to seek the means of living. To what evil influences may they be exposed while she is absent striving to earn their daily food?—the temptations of the streets for the boys: the certainty that the elder girls must either starve at home to mind the little ones, or must become drudges before they have learnt more than the mere rudiments of what they should be taught. It is then she feels that dread of degradation, which is amongst the sharpest pangs of the poverty which would fain hide itself from the world.

It may be that the children are left a parentless little flock, huddling together in the first dread and sorrow of the presence of death, and the sense of utter bereavement, and awaiting the intervention of those who are sent by the Father of the fatherless. Then, indeed, prompt and certain help is needed—help efficient and permanent—and such aid can seldom be secured except by organised institutions.

But let us see to what that Orphan Working School, established in 1758, has developed in 1874. We have but to take a short journey to the foot of Haverstock Hill, and there, in that pleasant locality named Maitland Park, part of which is the property of the Institution, we shall see the successor of the old house in Hogsden Fields, while its plain but large and lofty committee room is the modern representative of the parlour of the George Inn, Ironmonger Lane, where plans were first laid for the maintenance of forty orphan children.

This wide and lofty building, with its handsome front entrance and its less imposing side gate in the wing, is the home for nearly three hundred boys, and nearly two hundred girls, when its funds are sufficient to keep each of the long rows of neat beds in the great airy wards appropriated to a little sleeper.

I mention the dormitories first, because both on the girls' and on the boys' side of the building these are illustrative of the complete orderliness and excellent management of the Institution—illustrative of what should always be the first consideration, namely, to bring comfort to the child's nature, to join to necessary discipline a sense of real freedom and happy youthful confidence without dread of repression and the constant looking for of punishment.