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This has notably been the case with the marvellous impulse which has
been given in our age to the virtue of charity—charity, that is, in
the common acceptation of the word, as exercised towards the poor. How
far we have advanced in that more heavenly charity which is greater
than faith and hope, is not the question with which we have to do. Our
purpose at present is only to examine, so far as our space permits,
the practical results of that sudden turn in the wheel of public
opinion, which has rendered the care of the poor one of the most
approved pursuits of the day.
The movement on behalf of the lower classes has now lasted long
enough to have assumed the proportions of a national principle, which
no change in the caprice of fashion can henceforth destroy. The breach
thus made in the conventional barriers that shut out the poorer
classes from the sympathies of those in more favoured ranks, has
opened a way for nobler impulses and higher motives than any the world
could inspire; so that much solid good is to be found underlying the
inevitable humbug and unreality which accompanies all popular
movements, and claims a special right of possession in the charities
of the nineteenth century.
Human nature is essentially gregarious; and in examining the various
channels which modern charity has made for itself, we shall find that
the ideas first started by the originators of the various systems now
in force have been repeated again and again in endless development by
all who have followed their steps.
Whether the object of the charity be the shelter of the homeless,
the feeding of the hungry, the education of the ignorant, or the
checking of the social evil, we shall find that, generally speaking,
such institutions as do not bear an earlier date than the period
comprised in the last thirty years are founded each one on precisely
the same principles, and carried out with the very same class of
regulations.
In seeking, therefore, to test the values of the results that have
been attained, it is by no means difficult to recognise the mistakes,
everywhere the same, which have mainly hindered the furtherance of the
various objects in view. These mistakes, it seems to us, may be
classed under two general heads, and they both spring from the leading
ideas (erroneous in their very essence) which are to be found under
various aspects at the root of all causes of failure.
If, in place of the first of these errors, we had had from the
commencement the free action, the forbearance, the ready intuition of
a large-hearted love, seeking the good of individual souls alone, and
counting its own plans and theories as nothing in comparison, how
different a result we should have had to record! while, on the other
hand, if simplicity and self-denial had ruled all the outward
mechanism of the various charities, the numbers benefited might have
been counted by hundreds instead of tens.
We shall best prove both our positions, perhaps, by taking an
example from the various philanthropic schemes now at work, in which
the object of the charity has more than any other suffered by the
mistakes in question. One of the most important movements of modern
benevolence has been the attempt to grapple with that moral plague
which has been termed 'the social evil.' Nothing could be better than
the first principles which gave birth to the new penitentiary system.
Men and women alike had recognised the guilty, cowardly sham, by which
the world had sought to hide its blackest curse under a veil of mock
prudery, while it let thousands of wretched women drift year after
year into the abyss, without a hand stretched out to save them,
because their sin was unfit to be named in the polite society that
scrupled not to receive with open arms the very men for whom they
sinned.
It became the fashion not only to admit the existence of this deadly
sore, corroding the secret springs of life among us, but to consider
that there could be no nobler work for pure-minded women than the
effort to reclaim the most unhappy and degraded of their own sex. The
result of these very desirable conclusions was the establishment, in
England of several, in Scotland of one or two, Refuges for the
Fallen, conducted for the most part by ladies offering themselves
freely to the work. With such elements of success, what might not have
been accomplished! But they started from the very first on the
mistaken principles of which we have spoken, and following blindly in
one another's lead, the result has, in our estimation, been simply
disastrous.
In describing one of these 'Homes,' and the system pursued in it,
we shall describe all, for they scarcely differ in even insignificant
details.
To begin—How do they prepare the building, intended to receive as
many as can be accommodated of a class numbering, in England alone,
many thousands? One would think that the great effort would be to
provide the utmost space that could by any means be made available so
that the greatest possible number might find a shelter beneath its
roof.
Of course the dimensions of the building must be limited by the
amount of funds; and considering the end in view, one would certainly
expect that the simplest plans for housing large numbers, the plainest
materials, and the least costly arrangements, would be adopted in a
'Home' designed to be a refuge for the almost countless lost.
But what is the reality? A most elaborate ecclesiastical building is
erected, so arranged in an expensive, not to say luxurious manner,
that the principle object seems to be the gratification and
convenience of the ladies in charge, while the amount of space left to
the poor penitents is not much more than would be required for the
servants of a large establishment; a highly ornamented chapel, with
all the most costly appliances; a well-furnished sitting-room for the
head lady, another for her chief assistant, a third for the ladies in
general, a fourth for the visitors, a fifth for meals, a sixth for the
chaplain, a bedroom for each of the ladies, a room for any of them who
may be unwell, a room for the lady housekeeper, another for the lady
infirmarium, etc., and all these at the least must be supplied
before the true use of the building, the accommodation of the
penitents, is con- sidered at all. Even the small space left after all
for the poor outcasts is rendered far less available than it might be
by the over-legislation, of which, in its moral effects, we shall have
to speak at length; a work-room, a meal-room, a class-room, a
waiting-room, and, we grieve to have to write it, a punishment
-room are withdrawn from the space given to sleeping accommodation, on
which, of course, the number of inmates must depend. And what is the
result? In buildings which, from first to last, have cost as much as
the barracks of a regiment, and where one would wish to gather
hundreds of these unhappy women, we find that there is space for
eight, twelve, fifteen, twenty, or thirty penitents only!
We have given the actual numbers received in the principal 'Homes'
in England; only one or two have attained to twenty inmates, and in
one only has the highest figure, thirty, been exceeded. This is in the
largest church penitentiary in the kingdom, where a magnificent
building, fit, but for its monastic appearance, to be the palace of a
prince, has, by recent contributions of large sums from all parts of
the country, been made capable of containing fifty fallen women.
Of course, we need hardly say that all the supposed 'necessary'
appliances of these buildings are of the same expensive and cumbrous
nature.
Such, then, are the unwieldly preparations which cripple the funds
of the 'Home' at the very outset.
The next great obstacles which the founders rear against their own
intended charity are the 'rules of admission;' and here we may say
that the observance of rules seems to be a sort of
Fetish-worship for the benevolent good people, which they will not
abandon for the most urgent reasons that could possibly be brought
before them. The deepest interest of any individual penitent is never
allowed to move one iota the iron laws first formed for the regulation
of the whole community.
The 'rules of admission' are generally most ingeniously contrived
to frustrate the object of the Refuge, by excluding all but an
infinitesimal number out of the great aggregate:—'No penitent is to
be received who cannot bring a medical certificate of perfect
health.'—By that rule ninety-nine out of a hundred are struck from
the list of possible recipients of the charity. 'None are to be
received who will not promise to stay two years.'—Ninety-nine in two
hundred may very well be set down as sacrificed to that rule. 'None
are to be received unless the chaplain and lady superintendent are
both satisfied of their eligibility;' and too often because the
chaplain is satisfied the superintendent is not. 'None to be received
a second time who have once left,' and so on ad infinitum.
In some Homes they have a rule which, if rigidly carried out, would
simply quash the whole concern. They propose to receive none who do
not give unmistakable signs of penitence. Now, that they should come
to those refuges as penitents, in the true sense of the word, is as
nearly as can be an impossibility, and, as a matter of fact, it is a
phenomenon which scarcely ever occurs; to expect it, is just one of
the saddest mistakes made by those who would befriend these fallen
women, because it lies at the root all that is wrong in their
subsequent management. The object of these refuges really ought to be,
by God's help, to make penitents of them. Where, in the name of common
sense, are they to learn penitence, or catch so much as a glimmer of
God's grace, in the horrible lives out of which they come? We cannot
touch on the sickening details of their previous condition, or on the
immediate effects on the soul of a degradation which trades in sin;
but it is certain that it is more entirely deadening, not only to the
conscience, but to the better instincts of our nature, than any other
species of evil-doing; and the unhappy women who enter these refuges
under the mocking name of 'penitents,' have in reality lost all
perception of the distinction between right and wrong, and all belief
in a heaven or a hell.
There are many motives which induce them to seek a shelter without
a shadow of repentance for their evil lives. Generally speaking, it is
a sudden impulse following some act of cruelty from the wretches among
whom they live, or it is the sight of some worn-out companion dying in
a workhouse, or some other phase of the temporal penalties of their
career. Sometimes it is want succeeding lavish excess, or pain,
disease, disappointment, disgust at the miseries which go side by side
with their so-called pleasures; these, and a hundred other motives,
drive those wayward, impulsive beings to any refuge which may seem to
present itself, and the true wisdom, the true charity, would be to take
advantage of the motive, be it even evil, which prompts them to
escape, and after offering them every facility to come, and every
inducement to remain, to take them just as they are, and strive by the
gentlest means, and with due regard to individual temperament, to
awaken them to a sense of their unspeakable misery, and to a knowledge
of hope yet existent for them in the future.
But far other is indeed the treatment they receive. And here we
reach that one fatal error which has marred to an inconceivable extent
this and most other charities of our age, viz., over-legislation,
developing itself in a narrow minded discipline, administered without
either love or humility—the two absolutely essential qualities in
those who govern.
It is a grave question, and one to which we fear the true answer
would be most unsatisfactory, whether those penitentiaries,
established from the best motives, and conducted with the utmost
self-denial, have not been productive of far more evil than good, by
the unfortunate system of management, which has driven out those they
should have saved to rush into deeper guilt, and to warn others to
avoid, as they would a pest-house, the 'Homes,' which they have found,
to use the actual words of many of them, 'worse than the jail.' Let us
look at the facts. The persons whom this system is intended to reform
are, as we have said, totally dead to all sense of right. For the most
part, they enter on their dreadful career at so early an age, that
they are entirely ignorant of religious truth, and their only
impression of the Christian faith is some vague recollection of
unintelligible words learnt at the Sunday-school, or heard in drowsy
weariness from Sunday sermons. Almost the only chance of rousing good
feeling within them is by an appeal to the memory of some dead mother,
who would, they feel, have wished better things for them; but in many
cases they have been trained by their very parents in vice, and even
this faint gleam of light is lost.
Accustomed only to lives of the wildest indulgence, the grossest
excess, the most lawless freedom,—governed solely by passion and
impulse, without hope in the future, or memory in the past, to inspire
them with a wish beyond the gratification of the present moment,—they
come, in the fiery excitement of some passing fancy, to the Refuge,
and are straightway subjected to a system of conventual rule and
severe religious observance, which the best-disposed novice that ever
sought to be trained as a nun would find hard to bear! It seems to us
as if nothing short of insanity could propose such a system to those
poor reckless girls, dead to moral sense, and unconscious of their own
degradation, when probably not one in a hundred of the most refined
religious minds could long endure the strain, the weariness and
depression it inevitably causes.
It is not possible in our limited space to give a detail of all the
wretched little stringent rules, which through the four-and-twenty
hours are arranged to goad and torment the unreasoning victims into
utter disgust with the very idea of repentance or reform; but the
general outline of the system consists in a multitude of religious
services, of which the penitents understand little or nothing; hard
labour, presided over by a severe elderly female, who checks wellnigh
every word or look; classes for instruction, made awful by their
length, and the rigid solemnity with which they are conducted; meals
eaten without the utterance of a word; and above all, a species of
moral torture (for it is nothing else to such beings), entitled
'silence times,' when they are seated all together at needlework, or
some other sedentary employment, and the most absolute silence is
enforced for two or three hours at a stretch, for no other purpose but
'to discipline the penitents.'
The smallest infraction of any rule is followed by punishment, for
which purpose the 'punishment-room' is provided, where the poor
creatures are locked up in solitary confinement, and generally on
bread and water, for periods varying from one day to a fortnight.
One of the cruellest parts of the system is their rigorous
confinement to the house, and total want of exercise in the open air.
Setting aside the consideration that the enjoyment of the natural
beauty with which God has filled the heavens and the earth is an
innocent and legitimate pleasure, which might surely be allowed to
those who have voluntarily abandoned all that seemed pleasure to them
before, one would think that common sense alone would teach their
managers that out-door employment and exercise is absolutely essential
to their health, both of mind and body. Nevertheless, it is a fact
that not one breath of fresh air is allowed to these poor prisoners
through the day; not one half hour is granted them in which to look on
the blue sky and the sunshine, and to meet the cool breeze with its
invigorating power.
The same dreary round of entirely irksome duties and needless
restraints drives them through day and night, to begin again, with
lessened powers of endurance, or, if these fail, to descend to a lower
depth of misery in the solitude, so awful to these ill-balanced minds,
of the 'punishment-room.'
Lest we should be thought to be making an exaggerated statement, we
subjoin the actual time-table of one of these modern penitentiaries,
managed by ladies, who give their assistance gratis. We must beg our
readers not to suspect us of sarcasm when we assure them that this
Refuge is considered one of the most lax in the treatment of
penitents.
5 A.M. | Rise. |
5.30, | Private Prayer. |
5.45, | Industrial Work. |
6.45, | Prayers in Chapel. |
7, | Breakfast. |
7.30, | Industrial Work. |
12, | Dinner. |
12.30, | Mid-day Prayers and Recreation. |
1, | Industrial Work. |
4, | Tea. |
4.30, | Work. |
7, | Bible-Class and Reading. |
8, | Service in Chapel. |
8.15, | Private Prayers. |
The half hour between 12.30 and 1, which is to be divided between
'Mid-day Prayers and Recreation,' would be a positive burlesque on
the idea of 'recreation,' if it were not so really cruel, considering
that this is all the time allowed for relaxation of any kind to
those who, before they entered the Home, had never known either work
or restraint.
We have spoken hitherto only of the daily systematic regulation of
these Refuges, but it will readily be understood that the moral
government of the penitents is in all its variations conducted on the
same principles. The ladies in charge, whose self-denial and devotion,
generally speaking, it is impossible to praise too highly, have
adopted the unfortunate theory, that it is necessary to keep these
unhappy women at a distance, in order to teach them the heinousness of
their sin and the vast difference between the pure and the fallen. Now
as, in the first instance at all events, it is by working on their
affections alone that there is the least chance of winning them, the
result of this system is absolutely fatal to their own well-meant
intentions.
The punishment-room, with its solitude and its bread and water, is
in constant requisition for offences which are the inevitable result of
this treatment on minds and bodies disorganized by excess and subject
to every form of hysteria. We shall best show the nature of this
ill-judged system by an illustration from real life, which the poor
girl in question related herself, when urged afterwards to make one
more effort at reform.
She had entered a penitentiary to please her mother—the one being
whom she really loved in the world; and moved by this powerful
affection she did honestly try to enter thoroughly into the plans of
reform urged upon her at the Home. She remained there longer than most
of her companions, struggling against the overwhelming depression of a
life which was one intolerable bondage and weariness to her. At last,
the total confinement to the house and the continual strain, became
more than she could bear. One morning she made her escape, and flew
like a bird let loose into the free air of the first fields she could
reach outside the town. After walking about for an hour or two, she
began to reflect on the grief it would cause her mother if she went
back to her evil life. Thoughts of God, whose anger she had been of
late taught to dread, regret at losing all she had gained by her late
endurance, a conviction she could not repress that anything was better
than going back to her 'old ways,' all combined to decide her to
return to her prison before she had spoken to a single person outside
the walls. She never doubted that her fault in leaving it would be
forgiven in consideration of the great effort she made in returning;
and surely if ever there was a case where the teaching of the parable
of the Prodigal Son should have been carried out, this was one. She
arrived at the door of the Home, told where she had been, and expected
praise for her conduct in coming back; instead of that, she was met by
angry reproof, and sentenced forthwith to a week of the
punishment-room, on bread and water; 'And then,' she said, 'after I
had been locked up a while, Miss — came up and scolded and rated at
me, and she hardened me,—she did for ever. I left as soon as I could,
and I would rather die than go to one of those places again.'
That girl has done more to hinder her companions from entering
penitentiaries than the worst keepers of bad-houses have ever
accomplished, and some such injudicious treatment has sent hundreds
like her from these 'Homes,' to plunge into deepened guilt and
misery. Will it be believed that in some penitentiaries, in addition
to the burden and thraldom of the daily rules, they have established,
at certain periods of the year, a religious observance called a
'retreat for the penitents,' held on one, two, or more days, during
which the penitents are required to keep a total silence from morning
till night, and, with scarce any interruption except for meals, to
spend the entire day in the chapel, where religious services of
different kinds are carried on the whole time?
The judgment displayed in this proceeding need not be characterized
by us, but it was forcibly illustrated on a recent occasion, when one
of these 'retreats' was being held in a penitentiary. One of the poor
penitents, a specially well disposed girl, suddenly burst from the
chapel, where she was kneeling with her companions, and rushed into
the courtyard, where she began shouting a ribald song at the top of
her voice, and then laughed and screamed alternately, till she fell
into hysterics. She had no malicious intent in doing so, and was
really sorry afterwards to have disturbed the ladies, but it was the
simple reaction from a degree of mental strain, for which she, as well
as the others, were totally unfit.
'I am now going to speak from the bottom of my heart,' said a poor
diseased outcast, shivering in the tramp ward of a workhouse, when
urged to return to a penitentiary. 'I would rather go to jail for two
months as to the "Home" for one day. Liberty's sweet, and it's a
black look-out to see a prison door shut upon you; but oh, it's better
than the rules, and the 'silence times,' and the curtsies to the
ladies every time you move, and being punished if you forget.'
It were easy to describe the large, simple, airy building, with
enclosed fields and gardens surrounding it, which we should like to
see prepared for these poor outcasts, and the homely, cheerful life to
which they should be invited within it, where kindness adapting itself
to their varying needs from day to day should alone rule them, and
such restraints only be imposed as would be needful to shelter them
from evil. But our purpose at present is to point out mistakes in
existing charities, and not to suggest new schemes.
We have described the system of our modern penitentiaries, because
it could best illustrate the position we laid down in the first
instance, that over-legislation and cumbrous machinery are the two
great evils which tend to render the charities of this age abortive,
and these errors will be found marring the greater part of them, be
they what they may.
Orphanages; refuges for the destitute; homes for the aged, for
incurables, for convalescents, for training servants; schools of every
description,—all these institutions are alike crippled and perverted
by the stern policy which has discipline, and not love for its
watchword. Of course, in the case of the children, this principle has
an especially free scope; laws are solemnly enacted for them, and
chaplains gravely consulted on their peccadilloes; and it is really
sad to see the little premature old men and women, with all natural
vivacity and joyousness crushed out of them, who are the result of the
system.
In the management of Reformatories, indeed, the peculiar attributes
of nineteenth century charity manifest themselves to the full as
conspicuously as in that of penitentiaries. The reformation of the
young is one of the special hobbies, and many institutions, both
public and private, have sprung up of late years for that purpose. But
in the whole of them, from the vast Government Refuge for convicted
boys or girls, down to the private Home for eight or ten female
orphans, where elderly ladies ruling them grow in that narrow sphere
ever narrower in their ideas, till trifles are magnified to a crushing
importance, and butterflies are broken on the wheel after the most
approved fashion—in all these the same principle of stern government
is found to reign supreme, the moral machinery employed in all its
unbending rigour.
When it pleased God of all compassion to seek the reformation of a
whole world lying in wickedness, there was but one agency employed,
one only motive power set in action by Him to accomplish the mighty
end. That agency was love—love so deep, so broad, so high, that there
were none too wicked or too weak to find a shelter for their
wretchedness in its infinite tenderness and pity. The worst of sinners
ministered to that Love manifest in the flesh, and feared not to kiss
His feet; the outcast children of the streets hung round Him
unreproved; the sick and sorrowful never sought from Him in vain the
healing virtue that brought relief and comfort, though well He knew
their gratitude would be as fleeting as the morning dew; the woman
that was a sinner, and the friend that denied Him, were the first to
whom He gave token of His return from the grave to which their own
sins and those of others had consigned Him. 'I have given you an
example,' He said, when in all loving humility He had performed His
last act of touching kindness to those who were about to forsake Him;
and He had indeed given them an example all His life long of unwearied
efforts to save the lost, to reform the erring, to raise the fallen by
means of love alone, in all gentleness, meekness, and tenderest
compassion. The servant is not greater than his master. How comes it
then, that those who in all sincerity are His servants, never fail,
when they attempt the task of reform, to proceed on a principle
diametrically opposed to that which governed all His dealings with the
guilty? Surely one would have expected that they would have followed
inch by inch the footsteps of perfect wisdom, when they engaged in the
very work for which He left His Father's glory, and endured the cross?
Yet how is it in reality? What concord has that Divine Reformer and
His one principle of action—the charity that never faileth, with the
cold, austere authority, the haughty arrogance, the severe, even
merciless discipline, practised by those who govern our so-called
'reformatories?' We will give the testimony on this point of one who
was an entirely impartial observer, a man singularly devoid of
prejudice, who set himself to examine into the charities of London,
with the honest desire to appreciate what was good, and only to regret
what might be mistaken. He is speaking of the Feltham Reformatory for
boys; and although this is a Government institution, it is not
practically under a severer system than the private reformatories
which have followed in its wake, even those established for girls and
governed by women. The details, of course, may vary, but the principle
that rules them and, the moral effects are precisely the same. At
Feltham 'there were no luxuries,' Mr. Jerrold says, 'save that of
cleanliness. The work was hard; the hours were long—from six in the
morning in summer: and the punishments were not of the mildest. Boys
were reduced to No. 10 or No. 16, letter A or B. They had neither
affection nor even regard about them. A line of conduct was traced out
for them, and they must keep to it, or suffer the penalties prescribed
for the government of the school. They could see their parents, or
receive letters from them, once in three months only. The chaplain
would speak some comforting words to them; they might get a pat on the
head from the superintendent; but they must remain apart, wrapped up
in their own thoughts, cut off from the world, and without the gentle
tones of one womanly voice to expand and soften their nature. It is
said to be the best that can be done for them, their natural parents
having failed them; but it is a cold, and harsh, and desolate place to
abide in for the young who should still be under the maternal wing. I
watch the little fellows marching in columns from the fields to the
hoarse word of command, and see how completely the will is curbed and
the heart is disregarded, in order that these large numbers may be
dealt with ...
'I doubt whether this constant strain on the spirits, and
this incessant wheeling to the right and left are good. The boys are
apt to become dogged. A very wise head has told us that "the bow
should be sometimes loose." I was struck with a remark from one of the
authorities, that the boys would not play. When they had a half
holiday lately, and foot-balls were given them, one school was incited
to challenge another, but no match could be got up. The boys held
sullenly back, and broke into groups and chattered. I saw them at
play; one or two appeared endeavouring to be cheerful, and the rest
were leaning so silently in line against the schoolroom wall that I
thought they were under punishment. A tame, meek boy who was idly
kicking a stone about seemed utterly unable to rouse himself....
'A long row of neat pig-styes built by the boys, inhabited
by prime Berkshire porkers, and mounds of potatoes laid up for the
winter, were evidences that the farming of this great Middlesex
industrial experiment had been begun in earnest;' but 'the pigs are
consumed by the officers of the school, the boys not being allowed to
taste pork. The consequence is, as the superintendent's
punishment-book shows, they frequently steal it. In this book I found
this entry, "Stealing piece of pork, six strokes on each hand with
cane."...
'The tailors' room was a lofty, well-ventilated apartment,
where some five-and-twenty boys were sitting cross-legged, busily
plying the needle, under the vigilant eye of a master. By the fire
stood a most miserable-looking lad, whose hair had been cut close to
his head, so that it looked like the back of a mouse. I inquired what
his offence was. The superintendent ordered him to stand forward. He
was asked why his hair had been cropped. He answered, "For taking
money from my friends." The answer was given in a meek, subdued voice.
The boy was dispirited and thoroughly ashamed—a picture of dejection.
He had not, it should be understood, stolen one farthing, but he had
accepted money from one of his comrades, and the school rules forbade
this. While the master tailor showed us the stout pilot suits making
for the boys going into the navy, this cropped boy stood at hand, and
I could not help thinking the punishment he was suffering
disproportioned to his offence. I marked a second cropped boy among
the budding tailors, and was told he had been cropped by mistake! We
returned to the endless corridor, passing doors on each side, until we
halted by a narrow transverse passage. This led us to the bath. Some
five-and-twenty boys, under the superintendence of a master, were
bathing, or drying, or dressing themselves. They looked blue with
cold; their teeth were chattering. Over the bath were the solitary
confinement cells. They were dark and bare enough—four walls, and a
rug to be folded in, at night. The superintendent opened one of the
doors with a loud noise, but the prisoner was fast asleep, and had not
been disturbed. He woke as by instinct at the superintendent's
summons. He was a runaway, who had been brought back that morning. He
looked dejected and wobegone while the superintendent described his
case and fate. "He will remain here," said the superintendent, "till
the magistrates meet eight days hence. They will deal with him. He
will be flogged." The next cell contained a second runaway. I remarked
that the boy had neither socks nor braces. "We remove them always," he
said; "it's military rule. They are wonderfully cunning. There is one
here (in another cell) who was found altering his blouse, to make it
like a coat. This was his preparation for absconding. He will be
flogged tonight by the drill-master." As we descended to the corridor,
the boys were issuing from the bath-room in double file, and to
military word of command. Along the corridors we constantly caught the
master's sharp words—"Right wheel; halt; left wheel." Along the
central line of the corridor lay bundles of the boys' clothes, and
they marched until they faced those bundles, when they were halted,
and they clothed themselves with military precision.' ... 'The master
always speaks to them with the voice of a drill-sergeant. The seventy
or eighty tailors and the fifty or sixty shoemakers fall in, and wheel
and face about. I saw them sit to their supper. They were marshalled
by word of command, and marched to their bread and cocoa with the
precision of Guards. They even raised their hands, and clasped them,
and sang grace to the sharp orders of the master.' ... 'There is an
elaborate detective machinery kept up, by which officers of the
school, some of whom are sworn in as constables, can swoop upon
runaways, and carry them back to their section and the birch. The
birch, the cane, bread and water, solitary confinement, and incessant
drill—these are the terrors ever present to the Feltham boy's mind.
It was painful to see them march from the school to the supper
form—1, 2, 3 lift their hands in prayer; again 1, 2, 3 lower their
hands, and take their seats before their iron mugs of cocoa, and set
to in solemn silence. Not a word must be spoken during meal time. And
why? The day has been spent in the workshop, in the fields, and in
school. It is dark. The boys are weary. Why should they be doomed to
sit elbow to elbow munching their dry bread? It is enough to freeze
the heart out of them, and it is through the heart they must be
reformed.' ... 'I have now a few words to say on the instrument of
terror that overshadows the school, and may well make the stoutest boy
tremble. The corporal punishments are administered by a tall, muscular
drill-master, who has, I believe, been in the army. The
punishment-book shows that his muscle is not seldom brought into
requisition. Strokes on the hand, and a dozen with the birch, meet
many offences, as "very gross insubordination," and altering blouses
with a view to absconding. I witnessed three canings and two floggings
with the birch. I may be chicken-hearted, but I confess that when I
saw a boy stretched upon a table—when I saw him stripped and held by
two or three stout men, while a fourth, a stalwart disciplinarian,
with a long birch, struck the naked flesh with his full might, pausing
between each blow, while the urchin shrieked with agony and implored
forgiveness, I confess I thought it was a brutal sight for any eyes to
look upon, and I pitied the forty-nine boys who were bound to witness
it. Again, when this same stalwart drill-master took a heavy cane and
struck a boy's hand with such force that the cane whistled through the
air, and the boy in his agony writhed like a cut worm, I looked on
with a strong feeling that this was bad and brutal. I am told that it
is necessary, but I should like all who advocate the birch to see it
in operation. It is said it flogs the vice out of a boy, but I am
inclined to think it is apt to flog the heart out of him.'
We have given the account of this Reformatory at some length,
because, as we have said above, it is simply a specimen on a large
scale of the system which prevails in all the so-called 'Homes' for
the erring or destitute. It matters very little whether 'reformation'
as regards a guilty past, or 'training' with a view to a doubtful
future, be the object of the institution; the ruling principle is
still the same. Even in Orphanages, where surely the charity that
comes to bereaved children in name of the Father of the fatherless,
should wear as nearly as may be the likeness of a mother's love,—even
there the harshness and moral cruelty exercised by devoted and
well-meaning managers is almost incredible. Could anything at Feltham
be worse in its measure than the proceeding, in a certain Home for
little orphans, where a mite of a child was condemned to two or three
days' solitary imprisonment for coming down stairs with her cap awry,
or some similar want of precision in her toilette; where the children
having been allowed on one occasion, by a too soft-hearted younger
teacher, to talk for a few minutes after going to their rooms, were
discovered in the commission of this frightful offence by the head
lady, and were forthwith taken out their beds and severely beaten,
because they knew the RULE of the Home, and should not have
supposed any under-teacher could abrogate it? In this 'Home,' where in
winter they were physically made to endure bitter cold, and all the
year round suffered in the yet more freezing atmosphere of a total
lovelessness, the poor little wretches were so unhappy that they were
for ever plotting how to make their escape. Two of them did manage to
run off one day: one, in some unaccountable manner, succeeded in
reaching the house of a relation thirty miles distant; the other was
found late at night in the midst of a drenching rain, crouching in the
shrubbery not far from the gate, and was straightway conveyed back to
the 'Home' to be punished! Nor are those who through toil and poverty
have reached the close of life allowed to pass to another world
without the previous 'discipline' of this iron-handed charity. We can
vouch for the fact, that in a certain 'Home for aged female paupers,'
the poor old women were sentenced to their rooms as a punishment when
they coughed more than the superintending lady thought necessary.
Doubtless there are exceptions, but they are generally charities which
have been established by individuals wealthy enough to undertake them
alone, and wise enough to follow no rule but the simple one of seeking
to make their protégées good by first making them happy. Once let a
society or a committee sit down to draw up 'rules,' and the result is
inevitable. We must confess, however, that apart altogether from the
system of management pursued in those institutions, we greatly doubt
whether they are wise charities for the managers any more than for the
inmates, when we consider the matter with regard to the great mass of
human misery and guilt that overspreads this world.
In the midst of that vast heart-sickening chaos of all evil, moral
and physical, we must do the most, as well as the best we can;
and it is a serious question whether the self-devoted persons who shut
themselves up with half-a-dozen old men, or old women, or children, as
the case may be, would not be of incalculably more use in their
generation if, in lowly imitation of the Divine example, they simply
went out into this suffering world and strove to do good, and to help
their sorrowful fellow-creatures wherever and however the occasion
presented itself. Were it even certain that their work in the narrow
spheres they make for themselves were entirely successful, instead of
their protégées being, as we believe, over-trained, over-disciplined,
and too often over-refined, it still seems to us that the zeal,
energy, and self-denial expended in nurturing, as it were, a few
exotics in a hot-house, might be multiplied a hundredfold in its
results if it were turned into the vast wilderness of teeming
wretchedness that lies unknown and unvisited all around them.
Is it well, while thousands upon thousands of wretched and guilty
human beings are swarming round us day by day—is it well, we say,
that those who are willing to give themselves to the poor for Christ's
sake should restrict their life's work to a doubtful experiment on
some half dozen souls, with whom they isolate themselves altogether
from the great family of God's creatures? The more, as it has always
seemed to us, that those good works which must be conducted in
institutions, such as the reclaiming of the fallen or the care of the
insane, might so easily be rendered a twofold charity by placing them
under the charge of persons themselves in straitened circumstances,
such as the widows of poor clergymen, governesses out of employment,
or professional men incapacitated from pursuing their calling,—all of
whom, obliged to spend their lives in struggling for a scanty
subsistence, would be thankful to find a home where they had it in
their power also to do a little good. But even amongst those who do,
like their Lord, go about doing good, it is painful to think how
sorely their best efforts are frustrated by the prevalence amongst
them of the very same spirit which is the bane of the establishments
we have been describing—a spirit of harshness and intolerance towards
human error and weakness, and a love of rule and authority, which
leads them to assert a right to legislate for the souls and bodies of
all who are the recipients of their gifts, and to demand, as it were,
a return for every penny bestowed in so much moral improvement.
Doubtless, no one would own it to themselves, but we believe that
there is an idea latent in the minds of most good people who patronize
the poor, that they ought only to bestow their alms on immaculate
virtue, and that the blackguard, or the depraved woman whom want
overtakes, whenever the trade in sin grows 'slack,' should be left
alone to grapple with their fate, on the ground that it serves them
right. Of course, we do not mean to say that the principle which would
choose 'the deserving poor' for relief in preference to others is not
a right one, provided the individual who relieves can flatter himself
that he possesses such nice discrimination as to be able to balance
justly the deserts of those whose opportunities for good or
temptations to evil have been so bewilderingly varied. Persons are apt
to forget that those (and how many such there are in this 'enlightened
country!') who never, from the cradle to the grave, hear the name of
God but in blasphemy, are far less guilty in the indulgence of the
grossest vices than even their patronizers themselves, when they give
way to the polite sins of society.
We shall be met on this ground, doubtless, with the vexed question
of imposture in all its phases, and the risk that all undiscriminating
charity would but tend to encourage the cunning beggars who limp about
one-legged on crutches in the day-time, and dance in patent boots at
their 'swarrys' in the evening; and no doubt this is the one great
difficulty which will always stand in the way of the best and most
judicious efforts for the welfare of the poor. But it is not
insurmountable; no one who actually visits among them can fail to
detect much real misery; though allied to guilt, no less real; and
there is another side of the question which is almost wholly
overlooked in this legislative age, and that is the probability, we
believe we might safely say certainty, that with those whose moral
perception is absolutely dead, whose conscience has never been
aroused, whose ignorance is invincible, it is by active compassion for
their bodily suffering, by ministering to their bodily wants alone,
that we can ever hope to touch the poor lost soul within; the law of
kindness, of love—the law that stirs the deepest springs of all God's
dealings with ourselves—alone can cope with the evil which we shall
ever seek in vain to remedy by severity and discipline. He sends His
rain on the just and on the unjust: why should His sinful creatures be
so merciless to the sins they do not chance to share?
There comes a day to the drunkard and the profligate and the
street-walker, when their lawless revelry is stopped, when want
stares them in the face, and disease grasps their misused bodies, and
racks them as they lie cursing and moaning in their despair; if in
that hour one comes to them whom they know to be good and pure, one
whom they would expect to shun all contact with them, and speaks to
their heart by deeds, not words, as though ever saying, 'Poor
creature, you have been very sinful, but so have I; and the good
Saviour who died to save us both has sent me to help and comfort you,
that you may know He loves you,' the tender mercy of that look and
touch will draw out in their perishing souls, as nothing else in this
world could, the still lingering traces of the Image in which they
were first created, and bring, it may be, many a reckless wanderer to
the feet of the universal Father, never known till then.
It may be thought that we are simply descanting on impossible
theories, very fair-seeming on paper, but quite unmanageable in
practice. It is not so. Those theories have been put to the test of
positive facts; so also has the opposite system, with what results the
daily history of the elaborate and costly London City Mission could
perhaps best tell us. Mr. Jerrold gives us some insight into its mode
of working; and as his impartiality cannot be doubted, we will give
some of his remarks on the subject. He begins by complaining, as we
have done, of the burdens grievous to be borne, which modern charity
lays upon the recipients of her bounty:—
'The recent discussion at a meeting of the Society of Arts on model
cottages for the working classes, was an excellent illustration of the
manner in which men totally ignorant of the wants and feelings of the
poor will dogmatize on their improvement, lay down plans for their
dwellings, reform their tailors' bills, change their food, and
prescribe their reading.' ... 'The Rev. M.A., who designed the rules
of a model lodging-house, was astonished when it was made known to him
that the single young men to whom he addressed himself would not be
drilled in their own rooms for which they paid rent, and that they
declined to pay for ventilation with slavery. Half the charities of
London are encumbered with absurd restrictions and conditions. A man
must attend a certain class in order to obtain a crust of bread and a
refuge pallet at night, or the dole belongs only to the hypocrite.
Hence the spread of a pauperized class. Poor people learn to conform
to the rules of sectarian charities; they whine and mum, and teach
their children to whine and mum after the approved fashion.' ... 'All
charity should be help; ... it should comfort the man who is out of
work in a way that will stimulate him to seek work.... It should leave
him free, and never debase him by extorting conditions that he must
fain pay with hypocrisy. The London City Museum has four hundred
missionaries doing a work of charity. Here is a little army that might
do incalculable good if it would approach the slums of London—the
fences and padding-kens—the sloppy alleys and the fever-gardens—in
a thoroughly sensible spirit. It is the subscribers of the income of
#37,000, which this mission enjoys, who are in the wrong. I have
reason to know that the missionaries are zealous, and in a great
degree useful men; but they would be more useful, there would be fewer
of those barefooted wild children in the streets, if the public who
subscribe would be at the pains of learning how they may best help the
poor out of the slough of despond, out of the inhuman squalor in which
they now lie huddled behind the great and busy arteries of the wealthy
metropolis. The city missionary is a good and a brave man as a rule,
but his sphere of activity is foolishly circumscribed. He has only
words for the ragged, and tracts for the famished.' ... 'The city
missionary has awkward work to perform. He is the bearer of religious
consolation; but the field is not ready for him. All this dirt must be
cleared away first. These begrimed patterers and pickpockets cannot
jump from this degradation into a state of piety. The missionary is
not very hopeful. He says, "Nearly twenty cases of death have occurred
during the last twelve months. I cannot refer to any of them as
sleeping in Jesus, all have left, to me at least, unsatisfactory
evidence of their ultimate happiness." This missionary also complains
that his prayer-meetings are not so well attended as those where
temporal relief is given with the teaching, and where people listen
with solid reward before them to tempt them. But I protest at once
against the style in which the missionaries make reports on their
labours. They provoke hostility, and suggest to the mind of the most
amiable reader a certain falsity in the writer. In a word, their tone
is canting. I am quite certain that if many of the forlorn creatures
scoff at the city missionary, it is because he will persist in talking
a religious or missionary jargon that is wholly unintelligible to the
mass of men and women. The report of an individual case sent in by the
Drury Lane missionary is not calculated to impress, but rather to
puzzle, and it may be to disgust the reader; it is choked with
hackneyed verbosities. It jars upon the ear, and makes the listener
look doubtingly towards the speaker. Is he in earnest, and the right
man in the right place, who walks amid ragged savages, uninformed and
cold as the ground they tread, and talks of them in this wise? "Mr.
— (a cardboard modeller), aged fifty, of the Model House, Charles
Street—the only instance of real apparent good I have seen
there—first came under my notice while visiting there, as I have done
from time to time. About January 1860, he came to have a more open
liking for my visits. Being a man of some education, having been
educated in Christ's Hospital, Newgate Street, he was able to express
his ignorance of God's plan of salvation, and his own felt need of
God's pardoning love, in a straightforward, intelligent manner. For a
very long time he wandered in darkness, seeing men as trees walking. I
felt great pleasure in often visiting him. He began to attend Trinity
Church, as also a church in the city, and was also an attendant at my
Thursday evening meeting. He evidently was seeking salvation.
Eventually, the Lord led him by a path he knew not. One day in June
1860, he told me of new light that had broken in upon him, which led
to further conversation, during which time I gathered he had received
great good from one of the Dublin Society's tracts, Good News;
and a passage he read there, under God's blessing, was the means of
bringing to his soul a sweet assurance of God's pardoning love." ...
'I am glad that the cardboard modeller has listened to the pious
exhortations of the missionary, but, at the same time, I am surprised;
for I cannot understand how the pious zealot made himself intelligible
to him. I should be sorry wilfully to disparage the doings of the
London missionary body; but their knowledge has not been turned to the
fullest possible account. Such knowledge, the result of experience,
might have been turned to most profitable account many years ago, had
the missionaries of our London alleys shown a sense of the importance
of temporal as well as spiritual matters, and had understood the
temporal good as a basis for the spiritual.'
In fact, it is as we have said, in this age even the charity that
seeks out the poor in their own dens and hovels is but too much
pervaded with the harsh, cold, domineering spirit which makes
prison-houses of our so-called 'Homes.' Although, in the freedom of
the streets, they cannot, as in the Refuges, be coerced into an
outward conformity with the severe rules of their benefactors, it is
very easy to put on the screw in another shape, which only so far
varies in its results that it makes them hypocrites, instead of making
them simply hate religion and goodness and propriety as the source of
their unhappiness in these institutions of benevolence.
The effect of a simple change of system was remarkably illustrated
in the case of a night-school for boys, which was started in the
lowest quarter of a large town.
It was a charity greatly needed in the locality where it was
founded. Scores of boys, not a few of them rogues and vagabonds,
prowled about the streets in the evening, and got into every
conceivable mischief and wickedness. They were of the lowest class,
had never been sent to school as children, and were for the most part
as entirely ignorant of religion or morality as if they lived in a
heathen land. Nevertheless, for lads of that description, the idea of
learning, if they have not to pay for it, and if it is a matter of
voluntary choice and not compulsion, has often great attractions; and
even where there is not this inducement, the prospect of a room with
lights and a fire, and plenty of companionship, is quite sufficient to
bring them in shoals to the school in the first instance. Their
continuing to come depends on the treatment they meet with.
In the town of which we speak, the night-school was established by
some clergymen, who enlisted various young men in the service, and a
good staff of teachers was soon secured. Rules were drawn up and
punishments decided upon, and the school commenced.
A very short period of practised enforcement of the rules and the
punishments was sufficient to bring the school into such a state of
wild rebellion that the police had to be called in on more than one
occasion. The boys continued to attend, but it was with the view of
manifesting their opinion of the school and its masters, by furtively
putting out the gas, and then proceeding to break windows, throw
stones, and otherwise convince their teachers that their 'discipline'
had certainly not been successful. Of course no good end could be
gained by a continuance of such a state of things, and it was decided
to give up the school. There was however a lady, who, when the school
first commenced, had taken a little class in a corner of the room, and
who had always found the boys so manageable, that she felt convinced
the cause of the failure lay with the managers and not with the
scholars. She asked leave, before the school was finally given up, to
be allowed to try if she could carry it on alone; the gentlemen
thought it about the rashest venture a deluded female could make, but
knowing that she would have help within reach if the boys became
dangerous, they let her have her way.
The next evening when the boys assembled, the gentlemen informed
them that the school would be given up to Miss —, and took their
departure. Enter Miss — upon the scene. Some thirty or forty boys
were raging round the room, shouting, swearing, quarrelling,
overturning the desks, shouldering the forms, and attacking one
another; the whole party, without exception, having in the space of
two minutes adorned themselves with moustaches, an impromptu
decoration derived from the ink-bottles. The noise was so tremendous
that she could not attempt to make herself heard, but seizing hold of
the first boy she could catch, she hurriedly exclaimed, 'Ask them if
they would like to hear the wonderful story of Jack Smith?' The boy
soon compelled them to hear his message, and there was a universal
shout of acquiescence; in another moment their missiles were flung
aside, and they were all crowding round her with eager calls for Jack
Smith, mingled with hopes that he was a robber. She told them she
would not utter a word until they were perfectly quiet, and instantly
they all squatted down on the ground at her feet, and she took her
place in the midst of them.
Now the proposal to tell them about Jack Smith had been a sudden
idea, uttered on the spur of the moment, and she knew no such story,
but she saw that delay would be fatal; if she did not win their
attention in the next five seconds the uproar would be worse than
ever. She therefore plunged headlong into a history, invented as she
spoke, and which she soon found must be of the most sensational
description; but as her object was to accustom them to obey her, she
noted every word spoken, or sly blow dealt to a comrade, and at once
refused to proceed till they were perfectly orderly. The result was,
that by the time she had hung, drawn, and quartered Jack Smith, she
had so completely gained their attention, that they listened
attentively to the few words in which she told them that she would
keep a school open for them alone, if they liked to come where there
would be no punishments and no rules, save the one inviolate law, that
anybody behaving ill should be dismissed at once. They all assured
her they would come, and that they would behave well; and they did.
She carried on a most successful school for two or three winters,
although it was one which would no doubt have horrified a rigid
disciplinarian. Her chief object was to give these poor heathen boys
true religious and moral teaching, and this she did almost entirely by
conversations. Gathering them all round a bright fire, which, poor
fellows, they seldom saw elsewhere, she encouraged them to talk to her
freely, and to tell her all their own ideas and opinions, and then, in
the simplest language, often interrupted by their eager questions, she
told them the great truths of God they would never hear elsewhere. So
completely did she win their confidence, that they did not hesitate to
tell her of their past misdeeds, and even of their intention to do the
same again; and yet so anxious were they not to offend her, that she
never once heard an oath from any one of them.
The great secret of her influence was the entire sympathy she gave
them in all their pursuits and pleasures; and so implicitly did they
learn to believe that she felt with them in all things, that they
would often identify her with their own habits and occupations in a
most amusing manner.
'Next time you wants to tame a bull, miss,' said a boy to her once,
'I'll teach you the smartest dodge as ever was; you gets a long whip,
and you puts a ring through his nose,' etc.; and he went off into an
elaborate detail of the process.
'Well but, Bill,' she said, when he had done, 'do you think I am
ever likely to want to tame a bull?'
'Well, you might, on occasions,' he answered; 'but, now I thinks on
it, I believe you had best not try, for I am a'most sure as the bull
would get the better on you.'
The very frankness with which they spoke out their own crude ideas,
showed her how little they would have gained from a school conducted
with the ordinary strictness and formality. A small boy, to whom some
one had tried to teach the Catechism, obstinately refused to believe
in anything but the 'Articles of the Christmas Feast;' and
being asked for further explanation, said 'A jolly plum-pudding was
the best on 'em.' Another, who professed to be strong in theology, was
found to possess, as his sole religious creed, the theory that any one
who had riches, 'five or ten pound like,' he explained must
infallibly go to hell. As a practical refutation of this dogma, Miss
— told them the history of Miss Burdett Coutts' great wealth, and of
the many good deeds and kind actions she had performed with it. 'Now
you don't suppose,' she added, 'that a lady who made such a good use
of her riches would go to hell simply because she had them?' 'Well,
no,' was the reluctant answer; 'not if she warn't given to swearing.'
Then there was the 'travelling chap,' as the other boys called him,
who intimated that he had received quite a polite education, and whose
confidence had to be summarily check, beginning, as they generally
did, 'I know'd a parson as swore,' or 'I've known ladies afore you,
miss; they was all play-actresses.'
Then there was the boy who invariably interrupted all histories of
heroes and saints recorded in Scripture by disparaging comparisons
with Tom Sayers. 'Moses and Joshua was all very well,' he would say,
'but what was they to that little chap, a-standing up, as game as a
bantam-cock, before that great thundering Yankee, and a-knocking of
him down like a nine-pin? Bless you, Noah and Abraham and all that lot
were not fit to hold a candle to him. He war a hero, he war!'
Occasionally the high spirits of the boys would get the better of
them, and they would become noisy or riotous, but their teacher had
only to say that she must dismiss them for the night if they continued
unruly, and they were quiet at once. On one occasion, when they had
been very boisterous, one or two of the boys gravely suggested her
proceeding to extreme measures. 'Don't you think, miss, you had
better get a long cane, and give it us well all round?' 'The day that
I find I must get a long cane,' was her answer, 'I shall break up the
school, and have nothing more to do with you. I don't undertake to
teach any but quiet, well-behaved boys.' This was such an awful threat
to them that she had never occasion to renew it. Had not her own
judgment been already strong against such measures as they proposed,
their own confidences to her would have sufficed to convince her that
the employment of brute force on such subjects is not the way to quell
evil within them, or make religion and virtue lovely in their eyes.
Often had they described to her the terrible rage, the fierce,
revengeful anger, which had been excited within them when they were
beaten, the oaths they swore to leave no stone unturned in the effort
to get a hold of a knife, that they might then and there kill their
master if they could; and when such feelings were roused towards
clergymen at the night-school, it served no other purpose but to fill
them with hatred for evermore towards those who would have been their
best friends.
A tangible proof of the success of this 'undisciplined' school was
given in the fact that twenty or thirty of these street Arabs
presented themselves for confirmation on the next occasion which
offered.
We have shown pretty clearly, as it seems to us, in our first
example, 'how not to do it,' and this last may give some idea
of the manner in which the poor must really be met, if we would
benefit them; for the needful principle is the same whatever be the
special object of the charity.
What we want is to get rid of the moral red-tapeism which shackles
and paralyses our modern benevolence, and to adopt in its place an
untrammelled simplicity and a flexible adaptation of all resources to
the exigencies of the moment. In place of 'discipline' let us have
love, and for unbending rule a ready sympathy.
Although our illustrations have been taken from those charities
which have to do with the souls rather than with the bodies of the
poor, yet the evil effects of the system at present in vogue does also
impair those which are appointed for the bestowal of material comforts
far more than could be imagined. A gift hedged round with all manner
of humiliating restrictions, and which the worn-out, sad-hearted
pauper can only obtain by compliance with half-a-dozen rigid rules,
may indeed nourish or clothe the body, but it does so stript of the
blessing both to giver and receiver which was designed for us in the
promise that the poor should never cease out of the land.
Let those who help the poor, whether morally or physically, abandon
their self-formed theories, their pre-arranged codes of iron laws, to
which, like the Procrustean bed, the wants and necessities of their
protégés must be moulded, and let them start with no other guide than
the one rule which the Divine Governor has given for our own lives—to
love God, and our neighbour as ourselves; and they will find that this
broad and comprehensive principle will never fail to meet the varying
requirements of every case that may present itself.
Loving God with heart and soul and strength, they will combat
successfully the evil which He hates, and, loving their neighbours as
themselves, they will ever, in imagination, place themselves in their
stead, and thus, feeling for and with them, will find that tender
compassion and loving humility will work miracles of healing both on
body and soul, which discipline and the arrogant exercise of authority
could never accomplish.