The Mysteries of Modern LondonSims, George R. (George Robert)
History
The Mysteries of Modern London
Sims, George R. (George Robert)
Criminals -- England -- London; London (England) -- History
There are men in the city of London engaged in large businesses, and
employing hundreds of Christian hands in manufactures not previously
carried on in England, and these men came from Russia and Poland poor
persecuted Jews, with but a few shillings in the world to call their
own. If I were to make a list of the big Jewish manufacturers and
tradesmen, and Jewish men of learning and of science, who came to this
country poor alien immigrants, the revelation would be an astounding
one.
But we must not stay now to look back or to look forward. The people to
whose stories we are listening to-day have left the past behind them,
and their future is an unknown quantity. The present is to them a
problem which shuts out all other considerations.
Here is a refugee who fled from a city of massacre. He had been wounded
in a riot at Ekaterinoslav. During the riot his brother disappeared,
and it was supposed that he had been killed and quietly buried by the
authorities.
When this man gives his name it is a peculiar one. A member of the
committee remembers that some time previously a man with a similar name
had come to the Shelter from Russia, and had been sent to America. The
books are referred to, and a full description of the man is found.
It is the brother who was supposed to be dead. The poor applicant is
overjoyed. He receives his ticket for America, and goes from the room
almost hysterical with joy. He is going across the seas to find in the
new land the brother whom he had mourned as dead.
A young woman comes before the committee with tears in her eyes. She has
her ticket for the Argentine. What does she want?
She tells a pathetic little story. Five years ago her only sister left
Russia and came to London. She sent her address to her relatives. The
girl who is now before the committee has accompanied her husband, a
reservist. When she left home she took her sister's last letter with
the address on it and put it with her few belongings. She has lost the
letter. She has been all day tramping about trying to find anyone who
can tell her where her sister is living. To-morrow she will have to
leave London for the Argentine. She may be quite close to her sister at
this very moment--the sister she loves--but she must go away to-morrow,
and in all human probability they will never meet again.
What can be done? Nothing. To find a certain woman in London, who left
Russia five years ago, is beyond the power of the committee. They can
only offer the weeping girl their sympathy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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