XV
The Whole Conclusion of the Matter
There are two other shelters run on much the same lines as the Providence Night Refuge in Crispin Street, though their accommodation is much smaller.
I have already referred to the Refuge in Union Street, Southwark, which is run under the auspices of the Christian Herald, and supported by voluntary contributions. The shelter is an unpretentious-looking place at the corner of a street. It has some thirty-eight beds, for which those who have the money pay from ninepence to a shilling. Those who are destitute are admitted free of charge. This place, like others, is used for residential purposes by those who are able to make it a permanent home. Thus, we find some Old Age Pensioners living there; also a small number of girls engaged in factories in the neighbourhood. There are again a proportion of regular itinerants, if one may use the term, who come to Union Street every little while.
There remains the residuum of those waifs and strays of larger growth, who night and day cover the arid wastes of the London streets. These are admitted free of charge, and are given a meal of cocoa and bread. The refuge closes at ten o’clock, but applications at a later hour are answered by the matron, who, if there should be a bed available, lets the latecomer in. The women go straight into the kitchen in the basement, which, like other rooms of the lodging-house type, is set round with benches. A big coke fire is burning always, at which the women may cook such food as they have brought in. There is a little shop close at hand which does a considerable trade with the destitute, serving cold meats, pickle, vegetable salads and those other articles of diet which make a savoury repast.
After the women have had their evening meal they go to the lavatories and bath rooms. Plenty of wash basins are here, and a continuous supply of hot and cold water, foot-baths, and an inviting-looking bath, which one is entitled to use free of charge.
Ablutions over, they go upstairs to the sitting-room, provided with a harmonium and a piano. There is a more chastened atmosphere here than at Bishopsgate, but it is a very human place, and the restrictions are not oppressive. Drink is not allowed to be brought on the premises and any woman obviously intoxicated is not allowed to enter. The rooms are spacious and airy, and the beds beautifully clean. There are an average of eight beds in a room, with a different coloured counterpane matching the walls to each room. The mauve dormitory, I am told, is the favourite. And it is certainly attractive, with gentle-coloured bedspreads and softly-tinted walls.
If a woman has her baby with her, she brings it in, and there is a special basket cradle ready for the infant’s reception.
In the morning the destitute women are given a meal of coffee and bread and margarine. The residents, at a payment of twelve shillings a week, get board and lodging. There is no sectarian distinction, and, where possible, work is found for the destitute, either in factories or as domestic servants.
But here, as elsewhere, there remains that section which, for the time being, is unable to be employed. As I have said, only a gentle course of kindly treatment can restore their self-confidence, without which nothing in life can be attempted.
In Union Street the time allowed for the homeless to recover themselves is, of necessity, too short to accomplish any definite alteration in their status. They drift out as they drifted in, washed to and fro on the sea of destitution.
It will be seen that there are present two distinct problems, one of which is in a fair way of being solved—the problem of the woman whose income, earned, or received as a pension, is too small to allow her to start a home for herself. This type in the main is catered for, but for those others, my sisters of the bleeding feet and broken wills, but little has been done. An occasional free night’s lodging at one of these shelters, is the sum total of what they may expect in the present; and for the future, bounded by the terror of an institution, life holds no sort of hope.
There is this distinction between the Refuge in Union Street and the Salvation Army Shelter in Hackney. The last named receive and look after unmarried and expectant mothers. The activities of the first do not cover this particular problem. The funds at command are not sufficient. Moreover, it is felt that there are already organisations ready and willing to assist women in this pathetic predicament. And, in the main, I think this argument is true. There are homes for expectant mothers; homes for unmarried mothers; homes for old age pensioners; and those who can secure a weekly certainty, can always find a bed. The army of the night, however, still remains at the outposts of security; disinherited, unclassed, they stand, an eternal reproach to well-fed womanhood.
The small shelter in King’s Road, Chelsea, is run upon lines of such kindliness and understanding that if it were possible to apply these on a larger scale very much would be accomplished. It was founded fourteen years ago, as a home for discharged prisoners, and for police court cases under remand. Some twenty-four women are accommodated, of which three are recruited from the destitute. Here, also, there are some semipermanent inmates, girls who have obtained daily work and have come to regard the hostel as their home. But so long as a bed is available, no one is turned away at any hour of the night, and very often the matron will make up a shakedown for those who otherwise would have to tramp until the morning.
I found no trace of officialdom in the refuge. The beds are clean and comfortable, while the washing accommodation is all that can be desired. The homeless are given a meal of cocoa and bread and margarine for supper, and tea and bread and margarine for breakfast, and a dinner on Sunday. The matron makes it her business to keep in touch with every kind of employer. Mistresses ring her up for domestic help daily, but if the homeless women cannot obtain work she arranges for their reception at various convents, where the unemployable are fed and tended until they become fitted, morally and physically, to enter the labour market once again. It will be seen that this particular home has gone a considerable distance towards the solution of the problem raised above, but of necessity it is circumscribed by the smallness of its establishment—three destitute women a night—supposing that one of the three is permanently put upon her feet, makes but little difference to the vast battalions of the forlorn. But, though it be small, the home is extraordinarily efficient; and I do not use the word merely in its mechanical significance. It is efficient in dealing with spiritual as well as material hurts, and it is good to know that those women and girls who have been placed out under the matron’s kindly help, keep in touch with the shelter, and make it their headquarters for their holidays and recreation hours.
There may be, as I have said, other places similar to this, but they have not come under my notice, nor have I heard of them in conversation with my fellow down and outs. The homeless woman gets a keen scent for places where she receives human treatment, and, save in instances where self-interest is involved in the keeping of the information private, a tramp can always tell a tramp where to get food and shelter.
It is my aim and hope to enlist sufficient support to start a number of these small homes, where the destitute can unite mind, body and estate, and, given time, to shed their sense of inferiority. My other ambition is to awaken public opinion to the shameful inadequacy of public lodging houses for women—inadequacy not only of numbers but of accommodation.
In regard to my first ambition, it is interesting to note that a shelter for the accommodation of say—twenty to twenty-five women, could be run for an astonishingly small amount. I have before me the report for 1924 of the hostel at 497, King’s Road, Chelsea. The upkeep of the hostel, including the discharged prisoners and the destitute women, for the year ending December 31st, amounts to £609 1s. 2d. This sum covers subscriptions, monies paid by women residing in the hostel, and gifts from those who have already stayed there. The total includes salaries and wages, which amount to the amazingly small sum of £125 9s. 4d. The whole work of the house is done by the two matrons, assisted by the inmates, who take their share in the domestic duties in return for the advantages of a home.
It is to me such an amazing result for so comparatively small a sum, that I herewith append an account of the expenditure as recorded in the balance sheet.
Expenditure.
£
s.
d.
By Rent, Rates, Taxes and Insurance
108
17
3
” Coal, Coke and Gas
32
2
9
” Food, Relief, Travelling, and Household Sundries
317
16
1
” Wages
125
9
4
” Printing and Postage
10
7
3
” Telephone
9
3
6
” Pew Rent
3
3
0
” Audit Fee
2
2
0
Balance Carried forward to 1925
207
3
2
£816
4
4
This feat of economy and generosity is, of course, only possible by the devotion of the matrons, one of whom has held her post since the inception of the hostel. It is, generally speaking, only in small establishments such as this, that you enlist the unbounded energy necessary to make this kind of thing a success. In larger and more imposing places human interest and enthusiasm deviates into so many channels that it is impossible to rely on that wellspring of living curiosity which vitalises all it touches.
Now let us examine the accounts of the shelter in Union Street, known, to give it its official title, as “The Incorporated Willow Street Philanthropic Mission.” In this home, as I have said, some beds are occupied by paying inmates; others give a nightly fee of ninepence to a shilling, others again are admitted free of charge. The costs of rent, rates, food, new bedding, kitchen utensils, etc., etc., including wages, amount to £799 8s. 7d. for the year. Here again, we must take into account personal devotion, though there is a larger permanent staff here than in King’s Road. The personnel consists of the matron, her assistant, and two women servants. The washing in both establishments is put out and is a very heavy item.
It will be seen, therefore, that no very large demand need be made on public generosity to found a number of these places. It is but a small social service if a millionaire builds a library, or presents a park to the people, and such a gift generally runs into as many thousands as there are hundreds shown in the balance sheets of these two shelters. But it needs only a couple of thousand to start a shelter, and once it is going an annual income of a thousand would be sufficient to carry on the work. I am an extraordinarily bad arithmetician, but considerable mental wrestling has assured me that there being two hundred and forty pence in a pound, twenty-four thousand pennies would ensure a hundred pounds, and if twenty-four thousand women would give a penny twelve times a year, we should have quite enough to be going on with.
In considering the expenditure at the refuge in Crispin’s Street, it is necessary to remember that the cost of the men’s shelter, which accommodates a hundred and forty per night, is included with that of the women’s. Since the foundation of the refuge in 1860, just on two million three hundred thousand free night’s lodgings, and four million six hundred thousand free meals have been provided. Figures such as these connote but little to one in the abstract, but when you have seen the long line of tables set out with food and drink, when you have touched the beds in which the women sleep, and gone into the bathrooms where they wash their aching feet, figures acquire a new significance, and you are conscious of a great throng; each one of these has been ministered to and comforted.
The cost of the refuge is included with the cost of Gilbert House Hostel, Home of Rest, Servants’ Training Home, and other activities. So many are these activities and so far-reaching, that we arrive at a total of nine thousand pounds odd. This refuge, however, as I have said, is practically unique, and it would be almost impossible to construct another on similar lines. Still, remembering the vast area of its activities, and the never-ending stream of demands on its resources, the amount seems to me but small.
The refuge does its work quietly and has but little recognition in the Press; indeed, until I visited Crispin’s Street, like the majority of my fellow journalists, I was unaware of its existence, and for this reason I should like to make it known that for over sixty years the homeless, the hungry and the forlorn have been taken in and quietly and unostentatiously looked after.
You have only to talk to the Sisters in Charge to understand how blessed a thing is this home of healing, where none are turned away and—miraculous significance—no questions are asked.
A little sister told me that she had read my articles in a Sunday newspaper, dealing with the life of the destitute woman, and she had wondered day after day if I had come to St. Crispin’s, and always she looked at each new face with interest and lively curiosity. Had she met me among the homeless I should, I know, have found in her that solace for human suffering which can be given only by the simple people.
I went back to my own home raw with fatigue and with an added perception of sorrow; but a wider and deeper comprehension of the infinite loving kindness of the human heart. The outcasts never failed me. When I was spiritually hungry, my hands were filled to overflowing with those small deeds of kindness which flower to perfection in the darkest and bleakest soil. I had passed through a door little, if ever, used by the well-fed. I had experienced actual physical privations which women of the middle class may weep over, but cannot comprehend. I had touched the bottom of destitution; I had had no place wherein to lay my head. Never again can I look out on life with the same eyes; never again can I forget that all night long women are wandering to and fro upon the pavement, or trying to sleep in an alien bed.
And yet what I have seen has not made me hopeless, rather do I glory in the knowledge that starvation of body, or starvation of mind, cannot, and does not, sear the soul of the outcast. And for this reason, and because I have had shown to me the beauty of giving, I cannot rest until I awaken the same desire to give among those women who, like myself, have always known the security, the peace, the contentment of a home.
And it will take much to convince me that among the twenty million women in this country, there cannot be found enough to join with me in easing the burden of our sisters, and removing the stigma that, in this city of almost countless dwellings, there remains a sorrowful multitude who, neither in home nor in bed, have permanent lodging.