"When I was approaching convalescence, and naturally fairly happy at the thought of soon being able to get out and return home, a missioner, as I think he was called, came to see me as I lay in bed in the hospital. He said to me quite bluntly, 'Are you not a miserable sinner?' "I said: 'No; I may be a sinner, but I am not a miserable one just now.' "The missioner left my side in disgust, and then returned and asked to be allowed to send me a Testament. I consented, and received in a day or two one marked in several places with red ink, apparently intended to impress upon me what a depraved and miserable creature I was. "The missioner called again, and questioned me as to whether I had read the marked passages and what I thought of them. "I told him that, as applied to me, they were not true. "I shall never forget the look I received, and I expect I was given up as a lost man. "A few minutes after he had left my ward a patient from another ward came to see me, and said:-- "'I say, Twenty-five, that's the way to get rid of them.' "I said, 'What have _you_ done to get rid of him?' "'Oh,' he answered. 'The missioner said, "Are you not a miserable sinner?" and I said "Yes"; and then he said, "Thank God for that," and went away.'" Soon after Crooks came out of the hospital he made his first appearance in a public capacity in Parliament. He was invited on July 11th, 1890, to give evidence before the Committee of the House of Lords on the Infant Life Insurance Bill. It was seriously argued at the time that working class parents deliberately neglected their children for the sake of the insurance money. The Bill actually proposed that the insurance money be kept out of the hands of the parents altogether and paid to the undertaker. The offending clause disappeared after Crooks's evidence. The _Evening News_, which headed its report of the day's proceedings "A Working Man shows the Weak Points in the New Bill," summarised what Crooks told the Committee thus:-- A journeyman cooper from Poplar, evidently a thoroughly straightforward and independent working-man of more than average intelligence and facility of expression, gave evidence yesterday before the Committee of the House of Lords, presided over by the Bishop of Peterborough. He said he objected to the provision in the Bill for the payment of insurance money to the undertaker. It was not merely to cover the actual expenses of burial that the working man insured his child, but to provide "black" and to meet other unavoidable expenses. If insurance were abolished workmen would be obliged to fall back on the old practice of "Friendly Leads," which generally led to drinking at public-houses.