A PARISH IN BETHNAL GREEN.

(TO THE EDITOR OF THE EPICCTATOR.1 SIR,—You have recently pointed out that the condition of the Poor of London has two distinct features, both sad enough, though perhaps not alike so,—the intense suffering of the unemployed mechanics in the Isle of Dogs, and generally through the East End of London ; and the unchanging and at first sight one would say almost hopeless poverty and destitution of Bethnal Green. Last year the distress in the former was so acute as to altogether take precedence of the latter in public attention. Families that a year earlier had been in a position of independence were reduced to pauperism, and often to that which I venture to think worse than pauperism, the necessity of attending a place of worship to thereby earn a loaf. Poverty, the great humbler, humbled these men sadly through their families, and is doing so again this year. Yet, bitter as this is, it must have an end, either in the revival of trade or emigration on an extensive scale.

The other feature of the position of the London poor is sadder still ; but that it can be in some measure reached, I think the following little narrative will show. To give anything like a picture of Bethnal Green as a whole I felt to be out of the question, and I therefore took one parish with the full expectation of seeing much poverty and distress, with very little hope of finding much real work to alleviate the distress or lighten the load of the poverty, and with all a layman's belief that work done by the clergy or ministers of Dissenting congregations is in great danger of becoming merely sectarian work.

The parish I found myself in was "St. Simon Zelotes," which contains a population of 8,000; the incumbent is the Rev. C. M. Christie, who has been working here for eleven years, and living in the midst of his work, his house adjoining his church, and his church in the very midst of the poor people, whom a tradesman of any "means" whatever would move heaven and earth to get as far away from as possible. I learned afterwards that the parish contains only one place where a number of persons are employed (a soap manufactory, I think it is) ; so that employment has to be found by the residents elsewhere, and when anything that promises to be regular employment is found, the lucky finder, of course, removes to nearer his work, leaving his house to some less lucky person who has all possible claim to be a natural inhabitant of' Bethnal Green. The incumbent, however, who seemed remarkably sensitive about the character of his parish, said I was not to consider that because the people were poor they were therefore idle. They were in fact a remarkably industrious people,—weavers, dock labourers, barrow men,—and in nearly all cases doing their best in some way to earn a livelihood.

First of all, I took a Sunday afternoon, and visited the Sunday school. I found a dark room well filled with boys and girls. The incumbent and curate were both there at their work. The superintendent is a working weaver ; among the teachers were a son and daughter of the incumbent, and two, or more, I believe, of the children of the curate, working away quietly and intently in that gloomy room. "But for them," .I was told, "we should be badly enough off for teaching." Outside, there were the usual sights of London streets ; inside, there was surely something, however small, being done to train the spiritual nature to believe in higher and nobler objects.

I visited the church, a graceful little building, as plain, and neat, and clean (it was remarkably clean) as a Friends' meetinghouse ; and the simple earnest service accorded well with the character of the building. It was altogether "Protestant," nob "Catholic ;" but it lacked nothing of life and harmony, and it was full of devotion and solemnity. The sermons (I visited it on two consecutive Sunday evenings) were plain practical expositions of Christian truths and the duties of every-day life.

In the course of the week I visited the day schools. There are three schools ; the boys, attendance that day, 170; girls, 105; infants, 176. For the boys and infants the clergyman has Government help, for the girls none, not being able to reach the requirements of the Educational Board. All manner of contrivances are used for economy. The infants' schoolroom is an excellent one, formerly used as a Chartist lecture-hall. In the boys' school (ow the second floor) a class-room was required where it was exceedingly difficult to provide one. The difficulty was met by partitioning off a portion of the lower room (the girls' school) and. making a trap door with a ladder from the boys' school into it, a. plan that answers well. I asked for information as to the parenta. of the children, and the incumbent, who was present, called up a class. of boys one by one and put the question" What is your father ?" and after a time, on a second thought, "How many brothers and sisters have you ?" The first boy was an orphan. "Who pays for his schooling?" the clergyman asked. No one, Sir ; he does not pay," said the mistress, looking kindly at the little fellow. But he was the only one in the school who did not pay, and the clergyman was proud of the fact ; proud, he said, to be able to say that the parents really did and must deprive themselves ofsomething to educate their children. I took the following notes seriatim of the occupations of the children's fathers.

A cabman ; a fried-fish dealer ; a tinker ; two dock labourers ; a shoemaker ; a shipkeeper ; a hawker ; a fish drier ; a shoemaker (7 children) ; a mechanic (8 children) ; a matchbox maker (6' children, 3 at school) ; an orphan (one of 3) ; a bricklayer (5' children) ; an engine driver (4 children, one dead that day) ; a cork-cutter (11 children) ; a dock labourer (4). One child was: privately pointed out to me as the son of a ticket-of-leave man,, now a hardworking, industrious labourer ; another as the grandson of a man who had recently died in that district from " starvation."Each child pays 2d. a week for the schooling. I was pleased with the way in which the clergyman spoke of the convict father. The tone and words were both marked by a great humanity ; there was not a trace of cant or sentiment in either, but a real and' healthy kindness.

The reverend gentleman was afterwards good enough to show me through some streets of the district. I said, "Can you introduce me to the house of a weaver?"—" Yes," he said, "takethis one," and we turned at once into a passage and up a flight of stairs. I say this to show that the house was taken at random,. not by design. It was composed of one large room, on each sideof which, near the door, was a loom, one for the man and theother for his wife—wife, however, just then making dinner. Nearer the fire was a " four-post " bed, with a little consumptive,. dying child in it. There were decent cottage chairs, table, clock, "dresser," a fold-up bed, as well as the four-post one, and thewindow plants which always seem to thrive so well amongst the of the poor. Perhaps, however, the reader thinks thesewere not of the poorest of the poor. The reader shall judge. After a few kind, neighbourly words (the woman grumbling something about her regret at being "caught in the rough," and the

clergyman assuring her that she was caught in no "rough," nor ever had been so caught by him, and that he could take his dinner as sweetly from her table as his own), we asked the man what his and his wife's average wages amounted to. He said nine shillings a week for himself and four for his wife, and that they had always to wait for payment till the piece of work was done. The man was weaving neckerchief silk ; the woman glace silk. They have five children, but two, the mother said, are "out at service," a phrase that only poor people rightly know the meaning of. It is a very little thing to engage a new servant ; it is often a dreadful thought to enter on a new "place." I have seen bitter tears wept when the little household was about to be broken up by that one apparently unimportant thing "going out to place." Father and mother know not what devilry there is waiting for their child, but they know that there is an awful amount of such devilry abroad, and it is a solemn day when the moorings are cut, and a poor man's daughter sent out "to service ;" as black an unknown as ever poet or philosopher dreamt about or talked about in connection with the other side of those romantic, great hills, leading to no one can say whither or what. I am sorry to digress, but I think rich people know so little of poor ones, as to imagine that her going out to service would be simply a relief to such a mother as this poor weaver, and nothing more. It is a great deal more, but it is a relief too.

The clergyman said, "Why don't you apply to the parish for help for the little boy ?"—the boy in consumption. "Can't do it nohow," said the woman, "can't go and be questioned in that way ;" the clergyman shook his head, and said no more, evidently knowing much that did not appear on the surface. The feeling of this poor woman was the same that I had found everywhere among the shipwrights in the Isle of Dogs—an intense and rooted dislike to making application to the parish, not so much because of the humiliation of receiving parochial relief,—for the people were humbled enough, and knew it,—but because of those terrible questions, asked in the terrible parochial way. No, the poor woman knew poverty and privation ; they came to her and staid with her, but the worst had not come so long as they did not carry her before a Board and question her in "that way." I did not see that the clergyman's way of dealing with such a case (and I have seen much of it that cannot be stated here) was not, at all events, as effective as the overseer's, and there would be a world of kindness in the former (supposing that he had the necessary means placed in his hands as there is without them) which the latter is proud as a rule to know nothing of. Such means in the hands of such a man would be like life to at least one parish of Bethnal Green.

This is what might be ; what really is I wish to now state, premising that my information in what will follow here is chiefly taken from printed reports placed in my hands by Mrs Christie, with the single remark, "These are my own publicly-made statement of facts, and I only wish to say that my parish is a fair representation of others in Bethnal Green. Don't think it better, and don't make it worse. I am much obliged for the interest you have taken ;" and that was all.

In a report published in 1860 we come to the following passage, a very melancholy passage, the exact point of which, however, one requires some knowledge of the district to see. The Incumbent says :—

" The churchwardens have their own bread to earn—they are, moreover, a actually in advance after doing all they can. To slacken in my efforts is at once to put all the leverage out of gear—to see the day schools closed (a not unprecedented case in such poor neighbourhoods) —to see the house of God again shut up, as it was before for six months,

for want of less than thrice as many pounds to keep it open And then if one but stops one little wheel of the machinery, the large ones cease to go—all comes to a stand—and the parish relapses into heathenism. I may state here that the whole gross income of the benefice is .£200 endowment and .£5 fees, of which VO goes towards the stipend of a curate, and the accounts annexed show that I am responsible for a deficiency of .£60, besides my need of funds for future operations. A newspaper advertisement might indeed remove or mitigate the want, but the public mind is more than satiated with such records of the wants and woes of Bethnal Green, and the inhabitants complain that these have given to the place a mach worse name than it deserves. For, perhaps, in no part of the metropolis is there so much industrious, decent, uncomplaining poverty, combined with so little open vice or immorality."

He says further (1860) :— "I have to acknowledge the excellent organization of the parochial machinery which I found in operation, and upon which my predecessor had spent so much of his time and strength. Owing, however, to the failure of his health, which compelled him to resign his charge at the close of 1857, I found things at almost a complete standstill. The church was closed for want of money to effect repairs required even for the safety of those entering it. 'the day schools had left a large

deficiency on the expenses of the year, and there was but the remnant of a Sunday school. My congregation was composed of 23 adults, and twice as many children assembled in a room, the impure atmosphere of which had driven away almost all who were not under a moral obligation to be present."

In 1867 he says :— " In the present month, the day scholars reached 460 weekly, besides 30 or 40 in the evening school. The teaching power is kept up to the standard required by the Government, and the coat per child has not exceeded 20s., which is considerably under the school average of England and Wales. But owing to the poverty of tho neighbourhood, which drives the children from all schools, and makes their attendance irregular when they do come, the school pence do not produce a third of the amount required to cover the expenses of management ; and even when the Government grant and the small endowment of .£5 from Betton's Charity are added to them, the amount cast upon me personally to collect, mainly by sheer bogging, has boon, since March 1, 1865, at the rato of £168 a year ; and out of this I cannot raise £10 in my own parish, or in all Bethnal Green, while other parts of the parochial machinery call no loss loudly upon me for funds, and lay on me a

further burden of responsibility In spite, however, of every effort made (with what success the accounts will show), I am left at the close of the last school year £83 13s. 3d. in actual advance, and without any improved prospect of the schools being self-supporting, although the teachers are doing their work well."

In the report for 1868, we have the following :

"By much exertion the deficiency on the year's account has been reduced from £83 13s. 3d. to E57 15s. 6d., and the numbers and efficiency of the schools have been maint Lined. To effect this, however, it has been requisite to raise .£81 19s. 6d., and I have had to pay besides nearly a quarter of the income of my livinty, to keep the school-4 on foot ; which require, moreover, an outlay of .£150 to put them into good repair."

Since 1860 the value of the benefice has been increased ; it is £300 per annum, but out of this there is a sum of £40 to pay to a second curate, provided by the Bishop of London's Fund, and £10 a year and 2s. 6d. per week to a deaconess (parish nurse). I find also the incumbent's name foremost on all the subscription lists for amounts such as £3 10s. for an organ (in his report he apologizes for the organ as a luxury) ; £2 for schools ; £2 for church expenses, &c.—serious drawbacks to the money-value of such a "living." I dare say this remark will be unpleasant to the reverend gentleman, but he has nothing to do with it, and I cannot omit it. I notice, too, that the other names on the subscription lists appear again and again, showing how small a circle there is to appeal to. The balance sheets are as clear and methodical as a merchant's, and if, instead of being the minister of a missionary church (it is as truly so as if it were in Africa), the clergyman had opened a shop, he could have had a better balance sheet—better on the side of "profit "—than he has any chance of making in Bethnal Green.

The machinery now at work in this poor parish will be partly seen from a dry summary. There are the incumbent, and two curates, with two distinct religious services (that in the church and one in a schoolroom); a Scripture reader ; the nurse; four good day schools ; an evening school (paid for) ; a free evening school (lately discontinued) ; Sunday schools; district visiting society; maternity society; penny bank ; missionary society ; mothers' meetings ; and coal club. I should say there is the minimum of proselytism with the maximum of truly practical Christian kindness. Not one rich person lives in the parish. I believe, indeed, not one person in what would be called comfortable circumstances. The parish is abandoned to the poor, as most poor districts now are, and if it were not for men like these standing to their posts and work, there would be no lot on earth so wretched as that of the poor people. It is a grand thing in human life for men to wear themselves out in such a work ; proper, too, that they should do so, I dare say, but it ought not to be for want of money to keep up schools, or afford reasonable help to the poor. It is strange and mournful to hear a clergyman of the wealthy Church of England stating that out of this poor living he has to pay a quarter of his income to

keep up his schools. An ordinary man would let them go,—why not, if "it will be all one fifty years hence ?" But it will not be so. The welfare of England is bound up with that of Bethnal Green. Souls as well as bodies, and bodies as well as souls, depend on these agencies, which deserve and will in the end obtain legislative work of some kind, and which, till they obtain that, appeal very powerfully to private help and support, which may do a vast amount of good among these poor and deserving people.

I entered the parish as a critic ; !left it, I confess,. with the feeling of an advocate, and an earnest hope that the facts now before the public, from no partizan or sectarian point of view, might tend to show one way in which those who have money, and would do good with it, could send real and effectual help to the poor of Bethnal Green.