He knew thousands of families of working people, and was perfectly certain that there was not among them one mother lacking maternal affection. There was no sacrifice the poor would not make for their children, and it would be felt as a great reproach to say that a child had not been properly cared for. In other cases bad mothers would be bad mothers under any circumstances, and it was for the criminal law to find them out; but if there was one bad in a thousand he did not see why nine hundred and ninety-nine respectable persons should be punished. To stop child insurance, witness said in reply to Lord Norton, would punish honest parents and do no good whatever. It was about this time that the working people of Poplar began to urge him to go into public life. They elected him a member of the Poplar Board of Trustees, in regard to which he had recently unearthed a notorious scandal. Then he was made a Library Commissioner in recognition of the prominent part he had taken in persuading Poplar to adopt the Act. Soon afterwards he was returned as one of the two Poplar representatives to the London County Council. The cloud that had hung over his home all through the Dock Strike was to grow yet darker. He had not been on the County Council many weeks when his wife died. She had barely recovered from the illness that kept her bedfast during the exciting days of the strike. Then there came the three anxious worrying months as her husband lay between life and death in the hospital. The worry wore her out, and a brave God-fearing woman of the people went down to her grave commanding her husband to work on. Thus, at the commencement of his public career and while still in his thirties, Crooks found himself a widower with six children on his hands, the youngest a baby. Among the many letters of sympathy that poured in upon him, that which got nearest to his heart came from one whose acquaintance he had but recently made, who described himself as "a fellow sufferer under a like bereavement." The writer was Lord Rosebery, then Chairman of the London County Council. All that first year of Crooks's public life was gone through while he was bearing heavy burdens at home. His new duties as London County Councillor, the many urgent calls to help the Labour movement in other quarters, now that he was beginning to be known far beyond the bounds of Poplar, kept him away from home often until a late hour. All this added greatly to his domestic cares, since he had to be both mother and father to his children. The eldest daughter, fourteen years of age, managed bravely; but many a night he turned away from addressing the cheering multitude of a crowded, glittering hall and went to a cheerless home to find the youngest children crying. He would help to wash them, to mend their clothes, and to cook for them.