The New Model Dwellings.
After the parish work and the work of education I had placed that of housing, but this has already been sufficiently considered.
The care of the sick comes next upon my list. There is a continual cry ascending to the regions of the rich concerning the insufficiency of hospital endowments. There is certainly no city better provided with hospitals than London, nor any city where more money is annually subscribed for their maintenance, nor any where the medical staff are paid so little and do so much. In East London there is the magnificent foundation of the London Hospital, which receives 11,500 in-patients every year, has an endowment of £20,000 a year, and an additional income, from voluntary subscriptions, of £40,000 a year. The story of the Children’s Hospital and its beginnings in the hamlet of Ratcliffe has been already told. And there are, in addition, “homes” of all kinds, crêches for infants, nursing societies, and dispensaries. One mentions these in passing, but a catalogue of endowments is not necessary.
Among the organizations for help must not be forgotten the fraternities for mutual assistance, such as the Odd Fellows, the Foresters, and the Hearts of Oak. These associations do not belong exclusively to East London, but they have extensive branches here, and are, I believe, well managed and on sound principles. They offer assistance in times of misfortune, medical aid in sickness, and care of the widows and fatherless. In this place they can only be mentioned.
For the women, a very large society is that called the M.A.B.Y.S.—i.e., the “Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants.” It began by befriending young servants from the workhouse—girls generally friendless and very forlorn—and has now extended its work to include all young servants. Every lady in the society undertakes the care of one or more servants, whom she visits or invites to her own house on the Sunday “out.” These friendships are often lifelong, and produce the best possible results.
The position of the workhouse girl is sometimes very pitiful. One such girl recently came to my knowledge. In this case the girl had been picked up as a baby in the streets; she had no family, no name, no friends, no birthday even. When she found a friend in the M.A.B.Y.S. she asked permission to take her friend’s birthday for her own, and to call her friend’s cook her aunt, so that she might feel that she too could enjoy, if only in imagination, what all the rest of the world possesses—a birthday and a family.
There are six or seven free libraries in East London. Who was the benefactor to humanity who first invented or discovered the free library? Who was the philanthropist who first advocated the free library? I do not know. But when one realizes what the free library means one is carried away by admiration and gratitude. By means of the free library we actually give to every person, however poor,—we give him, as a free gift,—the whole of the literature of the world. If he were a millionaire he could not acquire a greater gift that the poorest lad enjoys who lives near a good free library. He can take books home with him; he can study any subject he likes, if he is a student; or he may read for his own pleasure only, and for amusement. More than this, since none but good and worthy literature should be admitted to the free library the readers cannot use its treasures without forming, purifying, and elevating their taste. Now, taste in literature leads naturally, it is believed by some, to corresponding preferences as regards the major and the minor virtues and their opposites. For my own part, I regard the librarian of a free library as a guardian of morals, a censor, a teacher; those who receive books of him receive the continual admonitions of the wisest and the best of men. A course of Shakspere is in itself an education; a course of Scott may be said to teach history; and a course of the best fiction in our language teaches what is meant by the grand old name of gentleman. I look for the time when the demand for books by the mass of the public will be in itself a selection of the best and finest; when it will be impossible to reproach the people, as is done to-day, with buying the ephemeral trash that is offered at a penny, and neglecting the scholars and the poets and the wise ones of ancient days. The free library is doing for the working-people what the circulating library cannot do for its readers who go in broadcloth and in silk. In the time to come, in the immediate future, it will perhaps be the latter who read the rubbish and the former who will create the demand for the nobler and the higher work.
Mention has already been made of the Sunday afternoon lecture. Other attempts have been made to brighten the Sunday afternoon, always in winter a difficult time to get through. There are organ recitals at the People’s Palace, social meetings, with talk and sometimes lantern views, and short addresses.
Perhaps the work that is done in East London for the waifs and strays is the most remarkable, as it is certainly the most interesting.