The foreman had several blacksmiths and wheelwrights working under
him. He showed me two carts they had built and some trucks for the
Salvage Brigade, with an excellent arrangement for carrying
bottles. In the same Elevator they make the mattresses for all
their establishments and in another department men were at work
picking rags. One department was devoted to the care of the engines
in all the stations. At the Elevator where the bunks are made they
also make good simple furniture, all the benches used at the halls
and other plain things. I saw here some fine chairs carved by hand,
the work of an ivory carver. They could not furnish the man with
ivory, so they gave him oak. The difficulty of selling his work has
not yet been met. The manufacturers are jealous and will not allow
such high-class goods to be put on the market.
Woman’s Shelter, Hanbury Street, Whitechapel. Here women may sleep
and have tea and breakfast. For meals twopence each, for a night’s
lodging the same. No questions asked. They must be indoors before
eleven o’clock. The women are very reserved and reticent. They are
from the lowest part of the community. Many old women in pitiful
rags and tatters. Some have to be called at one o’clock in the
morning to go to the markets, where they earn a few pence by
picking over fruit. The shelters are kept 60 to 65 degrees
Fahrenheit. The mere warmth is often enough to keep life in bodies
weakened by hunger and cold. The long room is filled with bunks, or
rather boxes. At one of the shelters men were at work making these
sleeping boxes, carefully painted and enameled, the superintendent
told me, as a protection against vermin. Inside each bunk are a
leather-covered mattress and pillow, but no bedding.
A smaller room leading from the large one is reserved for women
with children. I visited the _crêche_ where, by paying a small fee,
mothers can leave their children for the day. I saw one of the Slum
Posts. The two Lassies in charge were gentlewomen, the daughters of
a well-known Church of England clergyman. Their post is in the
worst quarter of London.
“No one ever annoys us; we go in parts of the town where no one
else could go safely. No one would hurt a Salvation Army Lassie,”
they said.
At one of the shelters the women may wash their clothes Tuesday and
Friday evenings. Tubs and hot water are provided gratis; the women
must bring their own soap.
My interest in the Salvation Army began one hot Sunday afternoon some
time in the eighties, at the home of my sister, Laura Richards, in
Gardiner, Maine. Looking out in the street, I saw a man beating a drum
and a girl with a blue bonnet shaking a tamborine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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