Social Transformations of the Victorian Age: A Survey of Court and CountryEscott, T. H. S. (Thomas Hay Sweet)
History
Social Transformations of the Victorian Age: A Survey of Court and Country
Escott, T. H. S. (Thomas Hay Sweet)
Great Britain -- Civilization -- 19th century; Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
Exterior of a University settlement in the East End. The scene in the
street. Various functions of the University settlers within. General
supervision of health arrangements; putting the law in motion to that
end. Conciliation between masters and men. The higher culture for East
End pupils. Coaching a Bethnal Green four. Earlier efforts in this
direction. S.W. slum boys in Belgravian drawing rooms. The young lady
and the ubiquitous jockey. The settlements and clubs of to-day at the
East End of London foreshadowed by earlier organizations in the
provinces by the agencies of the Christian socialists; the working
man's colleges, etc. The inside life of settlements and clubs to-day.
Schools of character to all concerned. General analogy between West
End and East End clubs. Some details of the good work done for, and
by, both sexes, young and old. A City missioner's testimony. Then and
now in the East End. A. Toynbee; T. H. Green and this movement. Rules
suggested by personal experience for the conduct of this intercourse
between different classes.
In a street broad and clean, as many of those at the extreme East End of
London are, but still in the heart of an unmistakably poor, often a
squalid quarter, is a house which, resembling its fellows in architecture,
presents even as to its exterior the appearance of being inhabited by
persons of a better sort. On the pavement outside groups of men, women and
boys are waiting for admission. The door is opened presently, not by a
servant of either sex, but by a person, evidently a gentleman, in the
prime of early and athletic manhood. The men and women are introduced into
a room on the ground floor. Their host hears perhaps of a fever having
broken out not a hundred yards off; of a home distrained upon for unpaid
rent by an impatient landlord, or gutted of its furniture by the broker's
man, of a local inspector's failure to order the demolition of dwellings
unfit for human habitation, of a strike imminent near the Docks, and
likely in its results to leave tens of households without clothing or
food. If this be the tale poured into the ears of the young Oxford or
Cambridge graduate, he at once hurries off to see whether his personal
influence, strengthened as it is by some years of varied local experience,
cannot move the landlord to give his tenants one more chance; or whether
the tact, that is not likely to grow rusty from lack of practice, cannot
promote a compromise between masters and men; or whether the knowledge of
municipal law, acquired by many months of careful reading, with the help
of local illustrations, cannot be so brought to bear upon the parochial
officer as to induce him duly to execute the letter of the Sanitary
Statute.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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