East London

by Walter Besant

3. It continued to give the penny and the free meals and the lodging to the beggar because he was a beggar, but it ordered the beggar to go back to work.

4. It arrested, imprisoned, branded, and flogged the beggar because he was a beggar. It continued also to give him a penny for the same reason.

5. It founded almshouses for some of the aged poor; those who could not get in continued to receive their penny and their flogging because they were beggars.

6. It founded workhouses, Bridewell, and houses of correction for the beggar. And it continued to give that penny to the beggar because he was a beggar.

7. It built houses for the reception of the poor who could no longer work, infirmaries for the sick, orphanages and homes for poor children, casual wards for the homeless. It made begging an offense in the eyes of the law. Yet it continued to give the beggar a penny because he was a beggar.

8. It discovered that a multitude of rogues and people who will not work trade upon the charity and the pity of people, sending around letters asking for help. It therefore established an association, with branches everywhere, to expose the fraudulent. Yet it continued to give the beggar a penny because he was a beggar.

In other words, the Helping Hand has never been able to refrain from giving that penny which encourages the “masterless” man, and the man who will not work, and the fraudulent, and the writer of the begging letter. Could the Helping Hand be persuaded to refuse that penny for a single fortnight, to turn a deaf ear resolutely to the starving family on the road, to the starving children on the pavement, to the starving woman who stands silent, mournful, appealing with mute looks of misery, only for a single fortnight, the existence of the beggar would come to a sudden end. This the Helping Hand can never be persuaded to do. Therefore we have with us not only the real misery caused by fate, by fortune, by the natural consequences of folly and weakness and crime, but also the pretended misery of those who live upon the pity of the world and trade on that strange self-indulgence which gives the dole to remove an unpleasant object out of sight and to awaken the glow which follows with the sense of charity.

I leave aside in this place the casual dole—the penny to the beggar because he is a beggar; it is illustrated for all time by the partition of the cloak between St. Martin and the beggar. The saint, then a gallant cavalryman, did not stop—or stoop—to inquire into the merits of the case; here was a beggar. Was he really starving? could he work? were his sufferings pretended? was he really cold? did he deserve any help at all? Was he, on the contrary, well fed and nourished, money in purse, food in wallet, a sufficiency of clothes on his back, a fire and a pot over it at home, with a well-fed family and a wife on the same “lay” at the other gate of the city? Let us leave the Bishop of Ligugé as a type for all the centuries of the unthinking charity which gives the penny to the beggar because he is a beggar.

Let us turn to other and later developments. The Helping Hand has founded and endowed and now maintains by voluntary contributions hospitals of every kind for the sick; by rates and taxes, workhouses for the poor, schools for the children. Yet there has passed—there is now passing—over the work of charity a great and most remarkable revolution; it is a revolution characteristic of a time in which every theory of social life, social conditions, and social responsibilities has been completely changed. The old duties remain still; schools and hospitals have been multiplied; if almshouses have not increased, the workhouse system has become better organized. But we have become aware of other duties, of new responsibilities. It is now understood that it is not enough to put the children to school from one to fourteen; they must be looked after when they leave school; it is not enough to provide for the diseases of the body; we must make provision for the diseases, and the cause of the diseases, of the mind. The Helping Hand is at work in these days for the arrest of degeneracy; for the opening up of art, literature, music, science, culture of all kinds, to the better sort among the working-classes; for the wider extension of the area and the depth of culture; for the creation of that kind of public opinion which, more than anything else, makes for public order and the maintenance of law; for the care and safeguarding of young people at the perilous time of emancipation from school; for the rescue of those who can be rescued; for the cleansing of the slums; for the restoration to the world of those who, as we have seen, have dropped out; and for the prevention of pauperizing by ill-considered schemes of ill-informed benevolence.