Agricultural colonies; Poor -- Great Britain; Salvation Army; Unemployed -- Great Britain
The meeting over, the singing girls go back to the Training Home,
and the men prepare for bed. Our sleeping arrangements are somewhat
primitive; we do not provide feather beds, and when you go into our
dormitories, you will be surprised to find the floor covered by what
look like an endless array of packing cases. These are our beds,
and each of them forms a cubicle. There is a mattress laid on the
floor, and over the mattress a leather apron, which is all the
bedclothes that we find it possible to provide. The men undress,
each by the side of his packing box, and go to sleep under their
leather covering. The dormitory is warmed with hot water pipes to a
temperature of 60 degrees, and there has never been any complaint of
lack of warmth on the part of those who use the Shelter. The leather
can be kept perfectly clean, and the mattresses, covered with American
cloth, are carefully inspected every day, so that no stray specimen of
vermin may be left in the place. The men turn in about ten o'clock and
sleep until six. We have never any disturbances of any kind in the
Shelters. We have provided accommodation now for several thousand of
the most helplessly broken-down men in London, criminals many of them,
mendicants, tramps, those who are among the filth and offscouring of
all things; but such is the influence that is established by the
meeting and the moral ascendancy of our officers themselves, that we
have never had a fight on the premises, and very seldom do we ever hear
an oath or an obscene word. Sometimes there has been trouble outside
the Shelter, when men insisted upon coming in drunk or were otherwise
violent; but once let them come to the Shelter, and get into the swing
of the concern, and we have no trouble with them. In the morning they
get up and have their breakfast and, after a short service, go off
their various ways. We find that we can do this, that is to say, we
can provide coffee and bread for breakfast and for supper, and a
shake-down on the floor in the packing-boxes I have described in a warm
dormitory for fourpence a head.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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