Though no lover of Jews, _Punch_ in 1869 contrasts Jewish guardians favourably with their so-called Christian brother officials. Dickens's picture of old Betty in _Our Mutual Friend_ is hardly overdrawn, and a year after Dickens's death _Punch_ was still contrasting the comforts of prison life with the usual conditions of life amongst the submerged poor. The State had not yet awakened to a sense of its responsibilities to the "legal poor." Much was being done by practical philanthropy, and it may be fairly said that no appeal to _Punch_ for assistance or encouragement was left unanswered. Wholehearted in his support of Ragged Schools, he comes forward in 1858 to plead the cause of their logical corollary--Ragged Playgrounds:-- Deprive a boy of healthy, fair and open games, and you drive him to resort to unwholesome, foul and sneaking ones. Deny him any playground but a hole-and-corner court, and you'll find that he'll betake himself to hole-and-corner games in it. In default of wholesome cricket, he'll become a dab at chuck-farthing; and will get from pitch and toss to still worse kinds of time-slaughter. * * * * * If we mean then to teach the ragged young idea, we must give heed somewhat to the ragged body likewise. And the first thing to be done is to provide it with proper play space. _Punch_, therefore, may be regarded as one of the pioneers of the admirable "Play Centres" movement. In the same year we find him applauding the conversion of an old thieves' public house in Westminster into the headquarters of the Ragged Schools, and appealing for funds to maintain it. Drinking fountains had been established in Manchester and Liverpool, and Punch expresses a desire to see them introduced into London. Here, at any rate, he was prepared to welcome the saying that what Lancashire thinks to-day, England will think to-morrow. In the domain of social reform _Punch's_ great bugbears were patronage, condescension and misplaced missionary efforts. Towards Exeter Hall philanthropy the old and rooted hostility remains throughout this period, and in 1865 we find _Punch_ pleading vigorously for a greater interest in social reform at home to supplement the fashionable enthusiasm for foreign missions. For missionaries of the type of Livingstone he had nothing but praise, but that "perfect Christian gentleman," as Sir Bartle Frere described him, had severed his connexion with the London Missionary Society in 1857, and thenceforth had been subjected to "much hostile criticism from narrow-minded people." [Illustration: TELESCOPIC PHILANTHROPY LITTLE LONDON ARAB: "Please 'm, ain't we black enough to be cared for?" (With _Mr. Punch's_ compliments to Lord Stanley.)]