His strenuous plea secured for the East-End alone three splendid open spaces. These are the Bromley Recreation Ground, the Tunnel Gardens at Poplar, and the Island Gardens that take their name from the Isle of Dogs. To visit any one of these, and see therein children playing and tired people finding rest, is to feel deeply what a benign influence has fallen over these poor neighbourhoods. Crooks obtained this recreation ground for Bromley at the cost of his overcoat. The open space was formed out of something like a morass by the banks of the Lea. It lay hidden away in that labyrinth of sterile streets stretching southwards from Bow Bridge to the spot where the lesser river loses itself in the Thames. He had persuaded a party of his County Council colleagues to go with him to the neighbourhood. They all left their overcoats in the private omnibus that took them down from the County Hall, while he showed them over the unwholesome little waste, as it then was, and pointed out its possibilities as a recreation ground. When they returned they learnt that one of the overcoats had been stolen. "I see it's not mine," said Lord Monkswell, pointing to his astrachan. "Nor mine," added the Hon. Lionel Holland, then M.P. for the division, as he picked up one lined with fur. "No," said Crooks; "people about here daren't wear overcoats like those. If there's one missing, it's bound to be mine worse luck." He laughed at the loss then and many times afterwards, though he had a private reason for lamenting it; it was a recent gift from half a dozen working-men admirers. He laughed because he found he was able to make use of the incident in his long agitation on the L.C.C. to get the waste reclaimed. Whenever his colleagues inquired where was this mysterious outlandish place he was so anxious to convert into a recreation ground, he would make reply:-- "It's the place where they preferred my coat to Lord Monkswell's." It came to be so well known on the County Council as the place where Crooks lost his overcoat, that when finally he got a definite proposal to buy the ground brought forward there was nothing but a good-natured acquiescence from every member. On the formation of the L.C.C. Technical Education Board, he pleaded the cause of good craftsmanship with some effect. He carried a resolution conferring special facilities for technical instruction upon working-class districts. Long after he retired from the Board he received from a working-man's son a little proof of the practical results of his efforts. It came in the following letter:-- You will probably remember how some years ago you pleaded my case on the L.C.C., and how, through your influence, I was enabled to complete my studies in naval architecture at Greenwich College.