THE BATTERSEA BILLIARD-TABLES.
LT. ras EDITOR OF TER "BrierATOR."] SIB,—May I, as briefly as possible, place the real facts of the Battersea municipal billiards before you (see Spectator. March 2nd) ? There is a district in the parish, extending Lenin Falcon Road on the east to John Street on the west, known as the Plough Road district. It contains about twenty-five thousand inhabitants, and is purely a working man's neigh- bourhood, with a large amount of casual labour ; most of the houses, which are of an old and insanitary type, contain two families, some of them three. Plough Road bisects it, and, taking the point of its entrance to York Road as a centre, there are, within a radius of half-a-mile, ninety-one public houses. beer-houses, and off-license houses. It has the largest birth and death rates in Battersea.,—in fact, in the summer the babies die like flies. There is a good deal of minor • crime due to drink, and I think I am justified in saying that lunatic asylums, fever hospitals, workhouse schools, infirmaries, and gaols get more than their fair proportion from this neighbourhood. The Battersea Borough Council, knowing the amount it had to pay to all these in- etitutions, decided to try and help the people by another method, and a disused site was purchased in Plough Road, on which was built the present institution. It was never made a party matter, and was supported by the Moderates. In fact, the scheme was introduced by a
Moderate. The building contains twenty-four slipper-baths —hot and cold—of which 7,290 people, all working-class, have taken advantage, and they themselves paid the sum of 273 19s. id. towards the expenses during the five months ending March 2nd. There is a museum and a recreation- room for children upstairs, where the average attendance of children is three hundred a day, and many more have to be turned away, as there is not room enough. When I think of these swarms of children in the adjacent streets, who have no place to go to on winter evenings, who just stand against the glass doors of the public-houses for the warmth of the fetid air from inside, and listen to the undiluted language from within, I can but hope that the children's room will soon be enlarged. Then there is the gymnasium, where 989 men and 2,678 boys have attended classes, with immense benefit, both physically and morally, and then the recreation-room, where working men can meet, read a paper, smoke, and play a game, without any temptation as to drink, bad language, or gambling. The recreation- room has been used by 6,703 men during the five months, and their payments, with the gymnasium receipts, amount to 268 16s. 7d.
Now with regard to the billiard-table. The Council allocated to the Library Committee 2250 to equip the gymnasium and furnish the recreation-room. Some club at St. Albans having broken up, the Committee made them an offer of 285 for their gymnasium apparatus. They wanted 2110, and after some haggling it was decided to give them this sum, on the condition that they threw in the billiard-table and a bagatelle-table which they possessed. This was done, and this is the famous "Socialist table" under the weight of which the Battersea ratepayer is staggering. But mark this the rate for playing on the table is 6d. per hour, and it has, in the five months ending March 2nd, taken 220 Os. 5d., which I have no hesitation in saying is more than its value. How any one with any sense of fairness can say this is a "Socialist plot" puzzles me. I have worked among the poor as a medical man in this district for over twenty years, and I thank God that the Battersea Borough Council—for once—did its duty to the poor, irrespective of party. The whole scheme is worked at less than one-third of a penny in the pound, and we feel sure that by its moral and physical teaching we will reduce the rate for criminals, lunatics, inebriates, Sm. As to the Latch- mere billiard-tables, they have paid for themselves twice over, and we expect the new one at Plough Road to do the same.— I am, Sir, dec., LEONLED STRONG MCMANUS, M.D. Mayo House, Spencer Park, Wandsworth Common, S. W.
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