It looked as though a recurrence of his old illness would prevent him from keeping an appointment to speak on his Poor Law policy at Bradford. Such was the strength of the appeal sent to him, however, that he determined to risk it. He had to be helped by his wife on the journey, and when at the meeting it was found he was unable to stand there was a unanimous call that he be allowed to keep his chair while speaking. Seated in the middle of the platform, he held an audience of two or three thousand people for upwards of an hour. The response he wrung from the crowded hall moved him deeply. Bumbledom never had a worse hour. Of course his first public meeting after the publication of the Local Government Board's report took place at the Dock Gates in Poplar. "We never had a better meeting," he wrote to me the next day. "The audience backed me to a man and woman--and, by the way, we never had so many women present before. It did me good." At some of his provincial meetings there were people who well-nigh worshipped him. Old men in particular who had known the Hungry 'Forties would come up to him after the meeting and say:-- "Let me shake you by the hand, Mr. Crooks. We read about it in the papers, but the papers don't understand. We've been through it, and know. Don't be down-hearted, Mr. Crooks. God bless you!" At a small country town a bed had been reserved for him at the little hotel outside the railway station. He arrived about midnight, and found the place in darkness. He knocked loudly for some time. At last a man's voice was heard from the railway line. "Is that Mr. Crooks? Lord love yer, we knew you'd be late, and gone again early in the morning, and so that I shouldn't miss seeing you I told the hotel-keeper to go to bed and let me have the keys, so that you couldn't get in without me shaking you by the hand." His first public meeting in Woolwich after the Local Government Board Inquiry drew an audience of over five thousand people to the Drill Hall. His colleague Lansbury shared in the inspiring reception and addressed the meeting. Crooks told the audience it was no wonder that Lansbury and he got angry at times over our iniquitous Poor Law system. Such was the injustice of the rating system in London that Poplar--which was spending out of the rates per head of population less than half what West-End districts like Kensington and Marylebone were spending--appeared to outsiders to be extravagant. If those West-End Boroughs had Poplar's poor to look after, their rates, instead of being about 7s., would be about 15s. in the pound. The poor of Poplar were London's poor; yet the cost of looking after them was borne mainly by the people of Poplar. London was the only city in the world where those who grew rich on the labour of the poor were able to segregate themselves in favoured quarters, and escape their obligation to help the aged poor unable to work longer.