Regeneration: Being an Account of the Social Work of The Salvation Army in Great BritainHaggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider)
Religion
Regeneration: Being an Account of the Social Work of The Salvation Army in Great Britain
Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider)
Great Britain -- Social conditions; Salvation Army
All the cases in this Home are those of girls who have fallen into
trouble for the first time. They belong to a better class than do
those who are received in many of the Army Homes. The charge for their
maintenance is supposed to be £1 a week, but some pay only 5s., and
some nothing at all. As a matter of fact, out of the twelve cases
which the Home will hold, at the time of my visit half were making no
payment. If the Army averages a contribution of 7s. a week from them,
it thinks itself fortunate.
I saw a number of the babies in cradles placed in an old greenhouse in
the garden to protect them from the rain that was falling at the time.
When it is at all fine they are kept as much as possible in the open
air, and the results seem to justify this treatment, for it would be
difficult to find healthier infants.
Five or six of the inmates sleep together in a room; for those with
children a cot is provided beside each bed. I saw several of these
young women, who all seemed to be as happy and contented as was
possible under their somewhat depressing circumstances.
THE MATERNITY RECEIVING HOME
BRENT HOUSE, HACKNEY
This Home serves a somewhat similar purpose as that at Lorne House,
but the young women taken in here while awaiting their confinement are
not, as a rule, of so high a class.
In the garden at the back of the house about forty girls were seated
in a kind of shelter which protected them from the rain, some of them
working and some talking together, while others remained apart
depressed and silent. Most of these young women were shortly expecting
to become mothers. Certain of them, however, already had their
infants, as there were seventeen babies in the Home who had been
crowded out of the Central Maternity Hospital. Among these were some
very sad cases, several of them being girls of gentle birth, taken in
here because they could pay nothing. One, I remember, was a foreign
young lady, whose sad history I will not relate. She was found running
about the streets of a seaport town in a half-crazed condition and
brought to this place by the Officers of the Salvation Army.
In this house there is a room where ex-patients who are in service can
bring their infants upon their holidays. Two or three of these women
were here upon the occasion of my visit, and it was a pathetic sight
to see them dandling the babies from whom they had been separated and
giving them their food.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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