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

by Thomas Archer

Happily, the numbers of those who seek what is called casual relief have diminished in proportion to the general abatement of pauperism; and it is perhaps encouraging to know that the applicants for nightly shelter at Refuges for the homeless and destitute are fewer than they were three or four years ago. This is a fact which should be made public, because some of these Refuges have been accused of offering inducements to casual paupers to seek food and shelter provided by charitable subscriptions, instead of betaking themselves to the night-wards provided for them at metropolitan workhouses. The complaint was made on altogether insufficient grounds, at a time when, during a hard winter, and with a fearful amount of distress among the poorest class of the community, the workhouse night-wards themselves were frequently inadequate to the demands made upon them; while, apart from the persons who were known as casual paupers, there were hundreds of unfortunates suffering from temporary starvation and the want of a place in which to find a night's lodging, who yet were altogether removed from what is known as pauperism, and dreaded the abject hopelessness which they associated with "the Union."

It should not be forgotten, either, that the task which is, and was then, imposed upon the pauper on the morning following his night's lodging and its previous dole of gruel and bread, renders it almost impossible for the recipient to obtain work. Before his job of stone-breaking or oakum-picking is accomplished, the hour for commencing ordinary labour outside the workhouse walls has passed, and his hope of resuming independent employment, and the wages that will provide food and lodging for the next four-and-twenty hours, has passed also. This alone is always sufficient to make a very marked distinction between the regular casual pauper and the temporarily unfortunate man or woman who, having failed to get work, and seeking only the aid that may give rest and strength for a renewed effort, might look in vain for succour but for the existence of places like that admirable Institution to which I wish to take you to-night.

The shameful spectacle of groups, and, in many instances, of crowds, of houseless, starving, and half-naked creatures huddled about the doors of casual wards, to which they had been refused admission in direct defiance of legislation, led to the establishment of Night Refuges. There was then no time to dispute. While boards and committees were squabbling and vilifying each other, the poor were perishing. But even now that a better system prevails, and pauperism has so considerably diminished, there is much necessity for the continuance of these institutions and their adaptation to the relief of that kind of distress which is all the more poignant because it is at present only temporary, but would receive the brand and stamp of permanence if it could find no other mitigation than that secured by an appeal to workhouse officials, the shelter of the casual shed, the union dole, and the daily task required in return.

At the time that Night Refuges were first founded, in consequence of the failure of the Houseless Poor Act, there were one or two institutions which went on the plan of offering no inducement whatever to those who sought shelter within their walls. The provisions were barer, the beds harder, the reception little less cold and unsympathetic than they would receive at any metropolitan union.

Those of my readers who remember the Refuge for the Houseless Poor which once stood in Playhouse Yard, close to that foul tangle of courts that still exists between Barbican and St. Luke's, and is known as "The Chequers," will understand me when I say that there were no alluring inducements for the houseless and the destitute to seek its aid.

I have seldom seen a more painfully suggestive crowd than that which waited outside the blank door of that hideous building on a cold drizzly evening when I paid the place a visit, only a short time before it was finally closed. I cannot deny, however, that the applicants for admission consisted of those persons for whom the institution seemed to be especially designed. The very lowest class of poverty, the representatives of sheer destitution, made up the 350 men and the 150 women who were to occupy the bare wooden bunks in the two departments of the building that night, and to accept, as a stay against starvation, the half-pound of dry bread and the drink of water. What I would call emphatic attention to, is the fact that this place was filled nightly at that time, because the inmates could leave early in the morning to seek a day's work, and so rise out of that depth of destitution which was represented by the nightly return to the casual ward. But let us remember that, though this Institution could scarcely be characterised by the warm name of "charity," it received all applicants who were not suffering from infectious diseases, and therefore its policy was deterrent. In order to separate itself from the idle casual, it made its provisions little short of penal, and, indeed, very far short of those common comforts that are to be found in prison.

But the Refuge in Newport Market was one of those which had been founded on a different principle. It was never intended as a supplement to the casual ward, or as having any relation to poor-law relief; though, during the terrible distress that overtook the houseless in that severe winter when our poor-law arrangements broke down utterly, it was impossible for any place founded in the name of Christian love and charity to be very particular in excluding famishing and frozen men and women on the suspicion that they had already somehow obtained parochial relief the night before.

This "Refuge" was originally established by the influence and the personal exertions of Mrs. Gladstone, and a few ladies and gentlemen who, knowing of the extreme distress that prevailed in all that poverty-stricken neighbourhood about Seven Dials, around the alien-haunted district of Soho, and in the purlieux of Drury Lane, and the courts of Long Acre, set about providing some remedy for the misery that homeless, destitute men, women, and children had to suffer during the bitter nights of winter. First, a regular mission was established in an ordinary room, and, after a time, space was secured to make a Refuge—first for six, then for ten, and afterwards for twenty of the most destitute cases which came under the notice of the mission-woman. This went on till the funds were sufficient to warrant a very earnest desire to obtain larger premises, and at last to make a bid for that queer ramshackle old slaughter-house, which was the rather too indicative feature of the locality. The landlords of this place were fully alive to the value of any property rising in proportion to the anxiety of somebody to become its tenant, and they demanded a high rent accordingly. Still, the work had to be done, and the slaughter-house—cleansed, repaired, whitewashed, and divided into several queer, irregular-shaped wards and rooms, which were reached by strange flights of steps and zig-zag entries—was opened with cheerful confidence and hope, under the earnest superintendence of the Rev. J. Williams, who was at that time incumbent of the parish of St. Mary, Soho. It was at that period that I first made acquaintance with the Institution, and with the quiet, undemonstrative work of charity which was carried on there, and is continued to this day, though it is less arduous now that the neighbourhood itself has felt the influence of such an organization—not so much in the diminution of actual poverty, as in the humanising and constantly suggestive presence of men and women who have brought a gospel to those who were hopeless, and seemed to have none to care for them.

The need to receive numbers every night to the utmost limits of the Institution has passed now, except occasionally during very severe weather; and though the cases admitted are still those where deep, and sometimes apparently almost fatal, misfortune is the claim, there is no longer the urgency which forbade a too discriminating selection, and the regular casual stands no chance under the quick and experienced eye of the superintendent, Mr. Ramsden, whose military tone and manner are, by the way, modulated so as to carry the sense of detection to the pretender, and to support and give courage to the weak and faint-hearted.

The same complete, quiet method of receiving applicants who await admission enables me to repeat the impression which I received during the time that the demands upon the night Refuge were more urgent. The experienced visitor who stands at the gate of this rehabilitated building that was once the old slaughter-house, and who watches the people go in one by one, and listens to their low-voiced pleas for food and shelter, cannot mistake them for casual ward cases. Just as, in some other Institutions, the pain of the spectacle is the degraded poverty of those who seek aid, the most affecting element here is utter destitution, without that accustomed debasement which would find a fitting resource at the workhouse door, leading to the night shed.