that in this way they see Nature as something poor and
ugly ; they cannot see it in any other aspect than as sub-
servient to human wants. There is no possibility of that
disinterested outlook upon the world which is the root of
all higher life. The country boy goes birds'-nesting, and
catches animals, and turns all things to his own profit and
amusement ; but not even his egotism can fail to see that
Nature has a meaning which is quite indifferent to his in-
terests, and so presently he develops into the artist or man
of science. If the town boy has any liking for live things



Ill THE CHILDREN OF WORKING LONDON 33

he haunts the bird-fanciers' shops, and all which that leads
to is pigeon-shooting and rat-catching.

Disinterested interest — that must be the keynote of all
healthy life, and it is so difficult to get for children in a town
life, where everything they see is framed and fashioned
unmistakably for man alone. In the country human
nature sinks to its proper insignificance, and preserves its
true proportions ; in the town its importance is exaggerated
out of all proportion, and it becomes the grotesque and
even hideous caricature which seems to develop inevitably
under the influences of town life, and which is rarely found
in the country.

This, then, should be one of the points to aim at in the
education of town children ; to get them back to a proper
reverence for Nature — reverence for the lower as well as for
the higher forms of life, for degradation of the former is always
followed by degradation of the latter. Much can be done
in this way by means of books, museums, and public gardens;
but all these are tainted by the same leaven of artificiality,
and subordination to the little uses of mankind. Perhaps
the biggest step in the right direction has been taken by
the Children's Country Holiday Fund, and if it would last
just long enough to establish a habit, and then die quietly
out before it has established a claim, it might figure in social
history as the initiator of a great social reformation.

Where there is a true home life this difficulty may be to
a large extent got over, and a good home influence may
partly compensate for the moral training which only country
life can fully give. How far the London school life works
in the right direction it is difficult to say; for the lowest
class of children its value is quite inestimable ; but this
value consists less in the actual information imparted than
in the discipline and order which is enforced. But when
the children are of a better class, getting their moral educa-
tion at home, and looking to school for their mental
development, the question takes a rather different shape.
If one could look upon the code as final, and upon education
as a given quantity accurately contained within its limits,
then our Board Schools would be almost perfect in this

D



34 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM iii

way. Even as it is, the results which they achieve are
really wonderful, and justify the expectation of great things
when the material upon which we have to work is better
understood. Take, for instance, the vexed question of
technical training. There is in our school -children an
immense amount of aptitude simply running to waste for
want of proper development. These are children of
generations of woodcarvers, weavers, flower-makers, and
engravers who have inherited a fineness of touch which
none of the present training given in a Board School can
improve. They are splendid material for real teaching,
and only need to have their eyes opened to true art to turn
out first-rate work ; but then we must have artists, or at
least some one who knows what art is, to teach them. It
is the same with musical talent ; here, again, the material is
excellent ; their voices are good, and they are far more apt
to understand and learn than children of the same age and
social rank in the country.

The point which I want to bring out about these better-
class children — the children of the artisan — is, that so far
as concerns them, we are reversing the process of using a
razor to chop wood with ; we are trying to fashion very
delicate and valuable material with very clumsy tools, and
there is a great future for the upper working classes when
they have learned how to develop properly the intellectual
capacities of their children.

How does it stand with these children as regards their
chances of health and physical development ? They have
many difficulties to contend with in a town. Much stress
is often laid upon the dangers they are exposed to in
coming into close contact with the lowest class of children
in the schools. So far as they do actually come into con-
tact with them, this is a serious matter, and makes one
feel inclined to wonder at the almost complete extinction
of private schools. But the explanation may be found in
the natural classification which goes on amongst the schools
of a neighbourhood, and which is perfectly well recognised
by both teachers and parents. Of the three schools which
I know best, and which lie almost within a stone's throw



Ill THE CHILDREN OF WORKING LONDON 35

of each other, the first contains hardly any but picked
children — the best of the artisan class ; the second has
children of a much rougher description, but still fairly
respectable; while the third is called by its teachers the
"sink of Hoxton." The neighbourhood is to all intents
and purposes the same, but the one which was built last,
and with all the newest improvements, has got a good
name. There are always far more applications than can
be entertained. The teachers are able to choose, and
they naturally select those who will keep up the good name
of the school. In this way the risks to the better children
are reduced to a minimum, and are perhaps hardly greater
than those incurred by West End children in passing
through the streets.

A far more serious matter is the overcrowding which
seems to be almost inevitable in a town life. In the day-
time this is of comparatively small importance, though
even then the effect on character of never being alone is
very bad ; but the miserably inadequate sleeping accom-
modation, which is quite invariable amongst working people
in London, must be highly injurious to children. Four or
five in a bed is a common distribution, and I have known
them overflow into the box -mangle, which was considered
by the mother to be quite sufficient for two. When we
add to this that the same room is used by night and day
without a thought of ventilation, we cannot doubt that the
seeds of much and serious illness are to be found in this
overcrowding of growing children. Nor is the question of
ventilation quite such a simple one as it appears to the
educationally inclined visitor who demonstrates to the
mother the ease of opening a window. Very often the
houses are so constructed that what comes in at the window
is worse than what goes out. Moreover, those who have
lived in the poorer districts have learned that if they
are going to keep their windows opened at night, they
must be prepared for very unpleasant interruptions to
their rest.

Another way in which this overcrowding acts is in the
late hours which it encourages, if it does not actually cause



36 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM in

them. Half, at least, of the children cannot go to bed
until the sitting-room is done with ; they must keep their
parents' hours, and few of them finish their day before ten
or even eleven o'clock.

Then, again, the excitement of a town life tells very
greatly upon children ; if you look closely you will see that
London children are always tired ; the dark rings under
their eyes tell of the nervous strain which is breaking down
their health, and their very restlessness is the restlessness
of fatigue and nervous exhaustion. They begin to share
the life of their parents so early that they often seem to
have no real childhood. This is especially the case with
the first children of a family. The working people of
London are a pleasure-loving race, and in their youth, at
any rate, their evening engagements are hardly fewer than
those of the West End ; the young men and women meet
at the theatre, the music hall, often at private parties ;
they become acquainted in the course of social life, and
when they marry they keep up the same constant round
of evening recreations. Then comes the time when the
young wife has to choose between child and husband ; it
is a moral dilemma which hardly occurs in higher ranks.
To stay at home with the child is to lose one of her strongest
holds upon her husband — is to cease to share his leisure
with him ; to leave the child alone seems impossible.
And yet it would probably be safer than the course almost
invariably pursued — that of taking the child and exposing
it to all the risks of sudden changes of temperature, of
crowded rooms, and of the cold night air. " Why do so
many Shoreditch babies die of bronchitis?" I asked a shrewd
woman. "It's going out at night in all weathers," she
said promptly ; " then, when the parents get home, they
are not going to take the trouble to light a fire at that
time of night, and the baby is undressed in the cold and put
into cold night-clothes and a cold bed; of course they die."
Not long ago I counted between thirty and forty infants-
in-arms at the Britannia Theatre, and there cannot have
been fewer than a hundred present. The later ones fare
better ; not only is it easier to leave two or three at home



Ill THE CHILDREN OF WORKING LONDON 37

together, but with increasing years and responsibilities the
appetite for pleasure-going diminishes ; the father's habits
are settled for good or for bad, and the mother is more
content to bide at home. On the other hand, with the
increase of the family, there creeps in the system of sub-
contracting, which is as liable to abuse in family life as in
industry. The mother hands over the baby to the
elder children, the elder children to the younger, until
three-year-old is left tumbling about the streets in charge
of one-year-old, and no one ever knows the narrow escapes
and actual mishaps which they undergo.

Another great difficulty against which these children
have to contend is their unsuitable diet. Here, again,
their needs have to conform to the taste of the parents,
and often with disastrous results. In a town, the whole-
some, if monotonous, diet of the country is replaced by an
immense variety of cheap and " tasty " food, and even the
baby has a morsel of everything which is going. " It can
eat anything," said a proud woman to me, exhibiting a
flabby infant, and the " anything " probably included an
assortment upon which most of us would hesitate to venture.
The " drink question " also assumes, perhaps, its chief
importance with reference to children who drink tea almost
as soon as milk, and acquire a taste for alcoholic liquors
before they can speak plainly.

It is worth noticing that in poorer districts the damp-
ness of dwelling-houses is emphasised by medical ofificers
as a fertile cause of illness amongst children. Indeed,
all the causes which tend to raise the death-rate in poorer
London are far more fatal to children than to their elders.
Taking the percentage of deaths under five years of age
to total deaths in the same district, I find that in five of
the worst districts it varies from 44 to 49 per cent, while
over all London it is only 36. Camberwell is most
instructive in showing how terribly child -life is a prey to
circumstance. Taken as a whole district, the rate of
deaths under five years is 44 per cent of the whole number;
but it is divided into four subdistricts. In Dulwich the
proportion is only ig per cent, in Camberwell proper it is



38 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM iii

36 per cent, in Peckham 40 per cent, and in St. George's
49 per cent.

Perhaps it is not too much to say that the number of those
who succumb to these evils is of less importance than the
condition of those who survive. All are subject to the
same mischievous influences, and those who struggle through
bear the marks for life, if not in actual disease, at any rate
in impaired vitality. And yet the remedies are so simple ;
more stringent enforcement of existing sanitary regulations,
stricter supervision against overcrowding, and, most import-
ant of all, better training of boys and girls for the responsibili-
ties awaiting them : little more than this is needed to make
a healthy life for children as possible in poor London as
in rich.

This brings me naturally to my third class of children
— the invalids. These children, as I have said, are
generally in the third generation of London life. But to
say this alone is at once too much and too little ; it implies
a cumulative and inevitable evil in which I do not 'beheve,
and the fatalism of the observation seems to yield a little
before analysis. Take the child I have already mentioned
as No. 3 ; she is suffering from hip-disease, and will probably
never get rid of the complaint in one form or another.
A superficial inquiry seems to strengthen the theory of
heredity; her father died of consumption, a large family on
the mother's side have died of consumption, and the
mother herself is delicate. But let us go a little deeper
into the family history. On the father's side the grand-
father is a native of Islington, a bootmaker by trade, a
clever workman, kind-hearted, easy-going, and thriftless,
with a wife of distinctly commoner nature. They have a
large family of wild, reckless young people, all of them
steady so far that, though extravagant, they do not run into
excess, but spoiled on the one hand by the mother's
quarrelsome temper, on the other by the father's careless-
ness. Their home is a scene of constant irritation and
excitement ; they most of them work at their father's trade,
and arrange their life so as to work night and day for half
the week and play the other half. One of the sisters died



Ill THE CHILDREN OF WORKING LONDON 39

in a lunatic asylum, literally driven mad by the home
quarrellings. The others are all living and in good health
except the father of No. 3, whose illness was caused by work-
ing in poisoned air, and was probably in no way inherited.
On the mother's side both grandparents were country
people. The grandfather was hopelessly invalided while
comparatively young, and the whole burden of a large little
family fell upon his wife. She went out to work, leaving a
tribe of babies in charge of the eldest boy, and the mother
of No. 3 went to work at the age of twelve, and never
ceased until she met her future husband at an evening
party. Three years afterwards he broke down, and with
two babies the wife had to turn to work again, taking the
smallest one with her, to lie about on stone floors and be
almost utterly neglected, because she feared to lose the
work that was bread to all of them. The other child was
adopted by the father's family, and is now as healthy as
late hours and unwholesome diet will permit; but the other
was tossed from pillar to post while the mother alternately
worked and nursed her dying husband. It is, of course,
perfectly natural that she should now be suffering from
early neglect, but there is nothing in all this which is the
inevitable result of town life. If the father's early life had
been in better hands, if the sanitary inspector had done
his duty by the shop in which he worked, if friends had
come to the rescue of No. 3 as they did for her sister
— so many " ifs " might have saved this child that it is
impossible to regard its fate as inevitable.

I believe the same to be true of thousands of the little
invalids who are now looked upon as the necessary victims
of town life. They owe their lot to nothing so impressive
as an inherited doom, but to a very commonplace careless-
ness and stupid selfishness on the part of the family and
community into which they are born.

One most difficult part of the problem remains. What
is to become of the lowest class of children — the children
who come of degraded homes and degraded parents — the
children who herd together in schools of the worst fame,
and streets of the worst reputation ? The class is too



40 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM in

large a one to be ignored, though it may easily be over-
looked if you keep to the highways. Like rats and mice
and blackbeetles these little outcasts shun the open ways,
and have their own haunts where they are seldom trespassed
upon by the outside world. The responsible members of
the family, the fathers and grown-up sons, are generally on
guard at the public-house at the corner, waiting patiently
for an acquaintance to turn up and stand them a glass, or
beguiling the hours with a stray number of Tit-Bits. Down
a side street and into a little court off it you will find the
wives and families at home. It is a peculiarity of these places
that the house doors always stand hospitably open, inviting
attention to a confusion of chaotic dirt within, and letting
out into the street an indescribable odour which at once
betrays the class of inhabitant. Every doorway is occupied
by a more or less sturdy woman who, with her sleeves rolled
up ready for the work which she never does, is comfortably
nursing her red elbows until the costermonger, who is
yelling at the top of the street, shall make his way down to
her. Then she will buy from him some half-rotten fish
or decayed fruit and vegetables at the price charged for
wholesome food in the open road. Swarming up and
down the doorsteps, or camping out in the roadway, are
countless numbers of puny, dirty children — a striking con-
trast to the stout, red- faced women who look on. They live
in the roadway; it is quite safe from accidents, for there is no
traffic; nobody thinks of passing through, and few people
beside the rent-collector have any business in the place
itself; and wet or dry, hot or cold, the children swarm up
and down, eat and drink, play and even sleep, from each
morning to late at night. They can hardly be said to be
clothed; they are tied up in old rags, and garments of the
most incongruous description are hung on to them with the
utmost disregard of the age or shape of the wearer. These
are the children who are found in the lowest class school,
and there they get the only training or education of any kind
which they will ever have. They are always unwashed, —
at home because washing does not come within the scope
of family life ; at school because the risk is too great until



Ill THE CHILDREN OF WORKING LONDON 41

it is possible to have a separate apparatus for each child.
They are generally sucking sweets of some description, and
they are nearly always one behind with their meals. It is
quite true that many of them come to school without
having breakfasted, and this is because their parents in-
terpret too literally the maxim of "sufficient unto the day."
They empty their cupboard each day, and have to earn a
breakfast before they can eat it ; and though the children
are always late for school, the household is seldom suffi-
ciently advanced in its operations to feed the children
before turning them out. Moreover, experience has taught
them that the child who goes fasting to school generally
brings home at night a little ticket which enables his
father to postpone the problem of next day a little longer.
I must repeat here that the actual instruction which it
is possible to drill into these children is absolutely unim-
portant in comparison with the habits of order and obedi-
ence which they are learning. It is their one chance of
civilisation. From the age of three to twelve or thirteen
they are in good hands, and it is before and after this
period that they stand most in need of help. The critical
moment of their lives is when they leave school, and in
saying this I refer especially to boys. They are then
bright, quick, and fond of making themselves useful; if
they could be got straight to work we should find ourselves
in twenty years' time almost without a residuum. But their
mothers like them at home to help with the children ; their
fathers to have them at their heels ready to run errands.
If they are put to work at once it is only to a little errand-
boy's place, which they lose as soon as they begin to grow
lanky. This is true, I am sorry to say, of even the better-
class parents, and many a lad is spoiled for life in the
interval between school and work. Six months of the idle,
undisciplined street life is more than enough to undo all
previous training, and it is extraordinary how a course of
lounging outside public - houses will change these lads.
When they leave school they are bright and responsive ; as
cheeky as you like, but quite frankly so, and without any
malice about them. They are ready to do anything, and



42 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM iii

full of pluck and vitality. But after a year's idleness you
can do nothing with them; they will be sulkily stupid when
you talk to them, and are as likely as not to throw stones
as soon as your back is turned. Any excuse is good
enough for refusing work, and the chances are all in favour
of confirmed loafing. There is a grand opening for the
enterprising school manager who will take one of these
schools in hand, catch the boys as they leave, and use all his
influence to persuade the parents to put them in a good
way of work. It would not be a very difficult task, and
the effects would be quite incalculable.

Are London children happy ? I think there can be
little doubt in answering in the affirmative. Some very
fruitful sources of childish misery there are. Illness, of
course, is one, and perhaps not less potent the chronic
sickliness due to the continual consumption of bad sweets.
Drunkenness is another, though this is by no means
invariably combined with cruelty, or even unkindness, to
children. Even when it is, the genuine slum child has
many means of withdrawing himself from notice until the
danger is over. On the other hand, the delights of the
street are many and great ; the daily path to school yields
a succession of stolen joys which make it compare very
favourably in point of true pleasure with the formal pro-
menade of the little West-ender in fashionable clothes and
clean hands. The interests of a wet day are even greater
than when it is fine, and the stock plea that the children
have got no boots seems to diminish in importance as one
sees the deliberate way in which they wade up the gutter,
and seek out every puddle to paddle in, utterly regardless
of good boots, or bad boots, or no boots at all.

To children of fourteen and fifteen the streets have a
perilous fascination in the evening. The glare of the gas-
lamps, the busy thronging to and fro, the wild, free inter-
course among acquaintances and strangers alike, are irre-
sistible attractions to these excitable young creatures after
the monotony of the day. I have seen a letter from a
girl of this age describing the delights of the street dance
and the meeting of friends, which, though perfectly simple



Ill THE CHILDREN OF WORKING LONDON 43

in expression, was almost passionate in its intensity of feel-
ing, and made me realise more than many failures the
impossibility of getting these young girls out of London or
into a quiet domestic life. If they are plain or awkward
or low-spirited, or in any way'unable to hold their own in
the boisterous merrymaking, you may succeed ; or if you
can get hold of them before they have fairly broken away
from the restraints of school. But not unless. There is
a passion for excitement in all of us which must be satis-
fied when once it has got the upper hand, and what do we
offer these children for the pleasures which we ask them to
relinquish ? Safety and restraint ; and for the one they
cannot realise the need, while the other they have learned
to hate. We shall never succe-^"^ '^ntil we can provide
some safety-valve through wb' â–  can expend the

emotional energy whicl' poss ^, I suppose many

of us find this safe^ - cerature, and it is

astonishing tha<- .jen done to place good

literature with' of the poorest classes. Many of

them read it r or every one that reads now there

should be a doztxi. Moreover, the stuff they generally
read is as injurious as the sweets they are always sucking.
In one sense it is harmless enough ; there is nothing in it
which could be objected to by the most rigid censor of the
press ; but the sickly sentimentality, the false ideals, the
untrue pictures of life which are provided for the poor are