As We Are and As We May Be

by Walter Besant

'St. Katherine's Hospital is an Ecclesiastical Corporation, returned as a "Promotion Spiritual" in the reign of Henry VIII., and so acknowledged by law in the reign of Charles I. It takes its place as a Collegiate Church with Westminster and Windsor. The Clerical Head of its Chapter, the Master of the Hospital, will be entitled, unless Her Majesty shall see fit otherwise to direct, to the style of Very Reverend and the rank of Dean. The Brothers have the status and dignity of Canons Residentiary, and through the Sisters of the Chapter the parallel dignity of Canonesses is preserved, under another style, to the English Church of our day. The Collegiate Chapter holds its entire revenues subject to certain eleemosynary trusts embodied in its original constitution, the ecclesiastical and the charitable charges belonging alike to all the estates instead of being assigned separately to different portions of them…. All these principles of the constitution of St. Katherine's must be kept in view in any scheme which it may be proposed to submit, or in any suggestions which may be offered through the press, for the consideration of the Lord Chancellor in reference to the advice which he may submit to the Queen…. St. Katherine's Hospital is no more a "Charity" than Westminster Abbey is a Charity, and to describe it as such, after the true facts of the case are known, will leave any writer or speaker open to the charge of discourtesy, directly offered to a capitular body whose personal constitution is worthy of its high and ancient corporate ecclesiastical dignity, and indirectly through the members of the Chapter, to the Queen.'

It will thus be seen that those of us who think that the place is a Charity, and therefore call it one—including Lord Eldon and Lord Lyndhurst, the Report of the Charity Commissioners in 1866, and Lord Hatherley in 1871—are open to the charge of discourtesy. Well, let us remain open to that charge; it does not kill. If it is not a Charity, what is it? A place for getting the souls of rich men out of purgatory? But the souls of rich men no longer in this country have the privilege of being bought out of purgatory. Then what is it? A place where seven well-born ladies and gentlemen are provided with excellent houses and comfortable incomes—for doing what? Nothing.

Let us, if we must, offer a compromise. Let the Master, Brothers, and Sisters, now forming the Society of New St. Katherine's, remain in Regent's Park. We will not disturb them. Let them enjoy their salaries so long as they live. At their deaths let those who love shams and pretences appoint other Brothers and Sisters who will have all the dignity of the position without the houses or the salaries. We may even go so far as to provide a chaplain for the service of the chapel, if the good people of the Terraces would like those services to continue. But as for the rest of the income one cannot choose but ask—and, if the request be not granted, ask again, and again—that it be restored to that part of London to which it belongs. One would not, with the person who communicated with the Commissioners, insult East London by founding a 'Missionary' College in its midst unless it be allowed to have branches in Belgravia, Lincoln's Inn, the Temple, St. John's Wood, South Kensington, and other parts of West London; we will certainly not ask permission to turn St. George's-in-the-East into a Collegiate Church with a Dean and Canons, 'and a sisterhood.' But one must ask that the pretence and show of keeping up this ugly and useless modern place as the ancient and venerable Hospital be abandoned as soon as possible. That old Hospital is dead and destroyed; its ecclesiastical existence had been dead long before, its lands and houses and funds remain to be used for the benefit of the living.

Ten thousand pounds a year! This is a goodly estate. Think what ten thousand pounds a year might do, well administered! Think of the terrible and criminal waste in suffering all that money, which belongs to East London, to be given away—year after year—in profitless alms to ladies and gentlemen in return for no services rendered or even pretended. Ten thousand pounds a year would run a magnificent school of industrial education; it would teach thousands of lads and girls how to use their heads and hands; it would be a perennial living stream, changing the thirsty desert into flowery meads and fruitful vineyards; it would save thousands of boys from the dreadful doom—a thing of these latter days—of being able to learn no trade; it would dignify thousands, and tens of thousands, of lives with the knowledge and mastery of a craft; it would save from degradation and from slavery thousands of women; it would restrain thousands of men from the beery slums of drink and crime. Above all—perhaps this is the main consideration—the judicious employment of ten thousand pounds a year would be presently worth many millions a year to London from the skilled labour it would cultivate and the many arts it would develop and foster.

It is a cruel thing—a most cruel thing—to destroy wantonly anything that is venerable with age and associated with the memories of the past. It was a horrible thing to destroy that old Hospital. But it is gone. The house of Shams and Shadows in Regent's Park has got nothing whatever to do with it. Its revenues did not make the old Hospital; that was made up by its ancient church; by the old buildings clustered round the church; by the old customs of the Precinct, with its Courts, temporal and spiritual, its offices and its prison; by its burial-grounds, with its Bedesmen and Bedeswomen, and by the rough sailor population which dwelt in its narrow lanes and courts. How could that place be allowed to suffer destruction? But when the old thing is gone we must cast about for the best uses of anything which once belonged to it. And of all the uses to which the revenues of the old Hospital might be put, the present seems the most unfit and the least worthy.

Again, if Queen Matilda in these days wished to do a good work, what would she found? There are many purposes for which benevolent persons bequeath and grant money. They are not the old purposes. They all mean, nowadays, the advancement and bettering of the people. A great lady spends thousands in founding a market; a man with much money presents a free library to his native town; collections are made for hospitals; everything is for the bettering of the people. We have not yet advanced to the stage of bettering he rich people; but that will come very shortly. In fact, the condition of the rich is already exciting the gravest apprehensions among their poorer brethren. We can trace, easily enough, the progress and growth of charity. It begins at home, with anxiety for one's own soul first, and the souls of one's children next. Charities give way to doles; doles are succeeded by almshouses; these again by charity schools. The present generation has begun to understand that the truest charity consists in throwing open the doors to honest effort, and in helping those who help themselves. Else what is the meaning of technical schools? What else mean the classes at the People's Palace, the Polytechnic, the Evening Recreation Schools, and the City of London Guilds Institute?

I believe that a conviction of the new truer charity, and of the futility of the old modes, is destined to sink deeper and deeper into men's hearts, until our working classes will perhaps fall into the extreme in unforgiving hardness towards those whom unthrift, profligacy, idleness, have brought to want. But with this conviction is growing up the absolute necessity of more technical schools and better industrial training. We want to make our handicraftsmen better than any foreigners. More than that, there are some who say that the very existence of the United Kingdom as a Power depends upon our doing this. Can we afford any longer to keep up, at a yearly loss of all the power represented by ten thousand pounds a year, that house of Shams and Shadows which we call by the name of the ancient and venerable Hospital of St. Katherine's by the Tower?

THE UPWARD PRESSURE:

A PROPHETIC CHAPTER FROM THE 'HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY'

The most striking part of the great Social Revolution which was witnessed by the earlier years of the twentieth century was the event which preceded that Revolution, made it possible, and moulded it; namely, the Conquest of the Professions by the people. Happily it was a Conquest achieved without exciting any active opposition; it advanced unnoticed, step by step, and it was unsuspected, as regards its real significance, until the end was inevitable and visible to all. It is my purpose in this Chapter, first to show what was the position of the mass of the nation before this event, as regards the Professions; and next to relate briefly the successive events which led to the Conquest, and so prepared the way for the abolition of all that was then left of the old aristocratic régime.