I think I have now given an account of all the institutions of the place,
with one exception—that of the Methodists, who meet in a temporary little
hall, originally a photographic establishment. They are an infant cause
as yet, but Mr. Richardson has recently granted a site for a place of
worship for their accommodation. Such, then, are the institutions of
Bessbrook. Let me repeat what they are—the school, the church, the
dispensary, the shop, the reading-room, the mill. Let me add what they
are not—the pawnbroker’s, the leaving-shop, the ragged-school, the petty
lodging-house to which tramps resort in all our large towns, the
public-house, and consequent police-station. Does it now dawn on you,
intelligent reader, why, in the opinion of many, Bessbrook is deemed
worthy to be called a model town?
Let me now speak of its origin. The concern has been in active operation
about a quarter of a century. An estate of six thousand acres belonging
to an Irish nobleman was in the market, and it was purchased by Mr. John
G. Richardson, a wealthy, intelligent, and public-spirited member of the
Society of Friends, partly with a view, of course, to the productive use
of his capital, and partly to give the operative class a chance of living
and working under conditions favourable, and not, as is too generally the
case, opposed, to their physical and moral welfare. On the estate, on a
site admirably adapted for the purpose, Bessbrook is situated. There is
a beautiful blue granite found in one part of the estate, equal if not
superior to that of Aberdeen as regards appearance and quality, which is
gradually being introduced into England, where it needs but to be seen to
be appreciated. It is now being used in the Manchester new Town Hall,
and as it is better known we may expect to find it more largely in demand
there. As at the mill, the same law holds good, that no public-house is
to be tolerated. As a natural consequence, as I have already intimated,
the police are unknown. All over the rest of Ireland you see
them—wonderfully fine fellows, equal to any Prussians—the flower of the
country—fully armed and ever active, as they may well be, for in Ireland
there is little sympathy between the rulers and the ruled; even on the
hills around Bessbrook the peasants illuminated when they heard of French
successes, as if France was to come and fight on their behalf. There are
public-houses around, and they bring with them the usual curses incident
to such institutions among a people so excitable and passionate as the
Irish. In Bessbrook, and in one or two other districts, the public-house
is forbidden, and consequently the step of the policeman is never there
heard. In its peaceful streets his martial figure is unknown. The
operative has no fines to pay for being drunk and disorderly, and has no
occasion to pawn his Sunday clothes to procure a meal for his starving
family. Teetotallers flourish. There is a Band of Hope with nearly nine
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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