Charity organization; Housing -- England -- London; Poor -- England -- London; Working class -- Dwellings
Others apply to whom the committee recommend a course which seems hard.
A little sick child must be sent away into the country. The father of
a family must go to a Convalescent Hospital. The large and expensive
room must be given up by the old couple whose wages are falling lower
and lower. The kitchen, the dampness of which is sapping the children's
strength, must be left; the idle son must be made to work. The advice
of the committee is generally refused, but they need not despair.
They know that in a day or two the visitor will call--she will tell
the mother how kind are those who care for sick children, and will
gradually persuade her to send her little one out of the hot, close air
which is killing it. She will tell the man how much better it would
be to get thoroughly strong than to work on in his weak state; she
will stir him up by thoughts of the bright grounds which surround the
Convalescent Hospital: and soon she will come to the committee for the
offered letter. Going day by day she will break down the apathy and
carelessness which has allowed a high rent or an unhealthy situation
so long to cripple the strength of the family. She will tell of better
and cheaper rooms, she will appeal to both love and prudence, and by
kind words to-day and by stern refusals to-morrow give help till they
so far help themselves as to move. She will go to visit those who are
bitterly resenting the decision of the committee not to help so long
as the strong son remains idle or children are kept away from school.
She will speak gently and simply of the blessedness of duties; she will
tell of the kindness which has seen so far that it would make the idle
industrious, the careless careful, the ignorant wise. Perhaps she will
find and talk to the idler or the truants, and them she will induce
to go with some of their playmates to school, him she will stir up to
apply for the work of which the committee told him. Thus the visitor in
her visits will persuade and rouse the people to the action that the
committee saw to be good, but were powerless to enforce.
Then there are those who suffer poverty quietly and shrink from making
any appeal. These the visitor finds out and sends to the committee for
their advice and help. Spirited and hard-working women, high-class
working men whose illness has been so long that the club money has
ceased, will thus be brought to the notice of the committee, who will
go patiently into each case. The woman will probably be offered some
work; and though she has a hard life at home, children to care for, and
occasional mangling to do, she will make an effort to accept the offer;
some means of cure or some quiet work will be proposed to the sick man,
or it may be thought well to grant him a regular sum weekly for a time.
In all the cases the knowledge of the committee will be brought to bear
on the poverty of the striving family that the visitor has discovered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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