In 1841 a tract distributor, Miss Macarthy, began an organised endeavour to teach the depraved inhabitants of Chequer Alley. In 1869, a sanitary surveyor, reporting on one of the courts of this foul district, recommended that the premises there should be demolished under the "Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Act," because the floors and ceilings were considerably out of level, some of the walls saturated with filth and water, the others broken and falling down, doors, window-sashes and frames rotten, stairs dilapidated and dangerous, roof leaky and admitting the rain, no provisions for decency, and a foul and failing water supply.
The "pulling-down" remedy, without any simultaneous building up, has been extended since then in a locality where a model lodging-house, which has been erected, has stood for years almost unoccupied, because like all model lodging-houses in such neighbourhoods, neither the provisions nor the rentals are adapted to meet the wants and the means of the poorest, of whom, as I have already said, a whole family cannot afford to pay more than the rental for a single room, or two rooms at the utmost.
But we are wandering away from the work that we came to see. Look at that wistful young native, standing there quite close to the mouth of Chequer Alley. Ask him what is that sound of children's voices from a casually-opened doorway, and he will tell you "It's our school; yer kin go in, sir, if yer like—anybody kin." As the name of the institution is "Hope Schools for All," his invitation is doubtless authorised, and we may well feel that we have made a mistake in thinking of the Italian poet's hopeless line, for out of the doorway there comes a sound of singing, and inside the doorway is a room containing fifty or sixty "infants," seated on low forms, and many of them such bright, rosy—yes, rosy—clean—yes, comparatively, if not superlatively clean—little creatures, that hope itself springs to fresh life in their presence. It is thirty-four years since Miss Macarthy, with an earnest desire to initiate some work of charity and mercy, resolved to become a distributor of tracts, and the district she chose was this same foul tangle to which I have asked you to accompany me. Bad as the whole neighbourhood is now, it was worse then. It was never what is called a thief-quarter, but many juvenile thieves haunted it; and the men were as ruffianly and abusive, the women as violent and evil-tongued as any who could be found in all London. Instead of being paved, and partially and insufficiently drained, it was a fœtid swamp, with here and there a pool where ducks swam, while the foul odours of the place were suffocating. No constable dare enter far into the maze without a companion. But the tract distributor ventured. In the midst of an epidemic of typhus, or what is known as "poverty" fever, she went about among the people, and strove to fix their attention on the message that she carried. The religious services commenced in a rat-catcher's "front parlour," and at first the congregation broke into the hymns with scraps and choruses of songs. The crowd which collected outside not only interrupted the proceedings, but threatened those who conducted them with personal violence, and even assaulted them, and heaped insult upon them; but the lady who had put her hand to the plough would not turn back. In the midst of her patient and difficult work she herself was stricken down with fever. She had visited and tended those who were suffering. When the question was asked what had become of her, the barbarous people learnt that she was like to die. Perhaps this touched the hearts of some of them, for she had begun to live down the brutal opposition of those who could not believe in unselfish endeavours to benefit them. She recovered, however; and supported by others, who gave both money and personal effort, the beneficent work went on.
In this large room where the children are singing we have an example of what has been effected. Some of the little creatures are pale, and have that wistful look that goes to the heart; but there are few of them that have not clean faces, and who do not show in the scanty little dresses some attempt at decent preparation for meeting "the guv'ness."
There is a school for elder children also; and in the ramshackle old house where the classes are held there are appliances which mark the wide application of the beneficent effort that has grown slowly but surely, not only in scope, but in its quiet influence upon the people amidst whom it was inaugurated. Yonder, in a kind of covered yard, is a huge copper, the honoured source of those "penny dinners," and those quarts and gallons of soup which have been such a boon to the neighbourhood, where food is scarce, and dear. Then there was the Christmas dinner, at which some hundreds of little guests were supplied with roast meat and pudding, evidences of how much may be effected within a very small space. Indeed, this Hope School, with its two or three rooms, is at work day and night; for not only are the children taught—children not eligible for those Board schools which, unless the board itself mitigates its technical demands, will shut up this and similar institutions before any provision is made for transferring the children to the care of a Government department—but there are "mothers' meetings," sewing classes, where poor women can obtain materials at cost price, and be taught to make them into articles of clothing. There are also adult classes, and Sunday evening services for those who would never appear at church or chapel but for such an easy transition from their poor homes to the plain neighbourly congregation assembled there. There are evenings, too, when lectures, dissolving views, social teas, and pleasant friendly meetings bring the people together with humanising influences. It becomes a very serious question for the London School Board to consider whether, by demanding that ragged schools such as this shall be closed if they do not show a certain technical standard of teaching, the means of partially feeding and clothing, which are in such cases inseparable from instructing, shall be destroyed.
But here is a youthful guide—a shambling, shock-headed lad, with only three-quarters of a pair of shoes, and without a cap, who is to be our guide to another great work, on the Golden Lane side of this great zigzag, to the "Costermongers' Mission," in fact. You may follow him with confidence, for he is a Hope School-boy—and that means something, even in Chequer Alley.
Still threading our way through those dim alleys, where each one looks like a cul-de-sac, but yet may be the devious entrance to another more foul and forbidding, we leave the "Hope-for-All" Mission Room resounding with infant voices, all murmuring the simple lessons of the day. That room is seldom empty, because of the evening school where a large class of older pupils are taught, reading, writing, and arithmetic; the adult class, and the "mothers' meeting," to which poor women are invited that they may be assisted to make garments for themselves and their children from materials furnished for them at a cheap rate in such quantities as their poor savings can purchase. The visiting "Bible woman" is the chief agent in these works of mercy, since she brings parents and children to the school, and reports cases of severe distress to be relieved when there are funds for the purpose. Not only by teaching and sewing, however, are the hopeful influences of the place supported, for, as I have said already, in this big room the people of the district are invited to assemble to listen to lectures, readings, and music, to see dissolving views; and in the summer, when fields are in their beauty and the hedge-rows are full of glory, there is an excursion into the country for the poor, little, pallid children, while, strangest sight of all, a real "flower show" is, or was, held in Chequer Alley. One could almost pity the flowers, if we had any pity to spare from the stunted buds and blossoms of humanity who grow pale and sicken and so often die in this foul neighbourhood.
But we have strange sights yet to see, so let us continue our excursion in and out, and round and round, not without some feeling of giddiness and sickness of heart, through the "Pigeons"—a tavern, the passage of which is itself a connecting link between two suspicious-looking courts—round by beershops all blank and beetling, and silent; past low-browed doorways and dim-curtained windows of tramps' kitchens, and the abodes of more poverty, misery, and it may be crime, than you will find within a similar space in any neighbourhood in London, or out of it, except perhaps in about five streets "down East," or in certain dens of Liverpool and Manchester.
One moment. You see where a great sudden gap appears to have been made on one side of Golden Lane. That gap represents houses pulled down to erect great blocks of building for warehouses or factories, and it also represents the space in which above 4,000 people lived when the population of this square quarter of mile of poverty and dirt was 22,000 souls. This will give you some idea of the consequences of making what are called "clean sweeps," by demolishing whole neighbourhoods before other dwellings are provided for the evicted tenants. One result of this method of improving the dwellings of the poor is that the people crowd closer, either in their own or in some adjacent neighbourhood, where rents are low and landlords are not particular how many inmates lodge in a single room. Remember that whole families can only earn just enough to keep them from starving, and cannot afford to pay more than half-a-crown or three-and-sixpence a week for rent. They must live near their work, or they lose time, and time means pence, and pence represent the difference between eating and fasting.
"The model lodging-house!" See, there is one, and it is nearly empty. How should it be otherwise? The proprietors of such places, whether they be philanthropists or speculators—and they are not likely to be the latter—can never see a return of any profitable percentage on their outlay while they enforce necessary sanitary laws. The top-rooms are half-a-crown a week each, and the lower "sets" range from about six shillings for two to eight-and-sixpence for three rooms. The consequence is that the few tenants in this particular building are frequently changing their quarters. Some of them try it, and fall into arrear, and are ejected, or want to introduce whole families into a single room, as they do in these surrounding courts and alleys, and this, of course, is not permitted. Imagine one vast building crowded at the same rate as some of these two-storeyed houses are! Ask the missionary, whose duty takes her up scores of creaking staircases, to places where eight or ten human beings eat, drink, sleep, and even work, in one small room—where father, mother, children, and sometimes also a brother or sister-in-law, herd together, that they may live on the common earnings; places where children are born, and men, women, and children die; and the new-born babe must be clothed by the aid of the "maternity box," and the dead must be buried by the help of money advanced to pay for the plainest decent funeral.