"THE SHADOWS OF LONDON."

Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 4520, 24 November 1884, Page 2

"THE SHADOWS OF LONDON."

The first of a aeries of four lectures snder this title was delivered last night in the Opera House by Mr Fred Crook, before a moderate audience. It was of a descriptive character, interspersed with sound reflections, and it proved very interesting indeed. Starting with a graphic sketch of St. Paul's Cathedral, the lecturer went on to trace the course of a wintry day in London from its foggy and shivering opening till its bleak and dreary close. Then winging his flight to the East End, he took certain types oi character and held them as illustrative of the millions of poor in the vast metropolis, who, as they eat one meal, have no knowledge whore the other is to come from. He showed, too, that hopeless poverty and wretchedness were rather the predisposing causes of drinking habits than their effects. Chained like galley-slaves to the oar of labour, thousands toiled amid cheerless, unwholesome surroundings from week's end to week's end with a pipe, of tobacco or a pint of beer as their only possible enjoyments in life. He then went on to show that the well-meant efforts of rich philanthropists for the amelioration of the poor had been frustrated either through ignorance of how to set properly to work, or elso through the intervention of a class, of middlemen, who battened upon misdirected beneficence. Peabody'a hoart, he said, was broken by the paltry results of his expenditure of half-u-rnillion sterling to improve the homes of the p6or. The barrack discipline which was established drove away the the very class #hich it was sought to reach. In fact, the Committee of nobodies who managed the trust sifted as it were the great man's money through a ladder, the poor getting what fell upon the rungs. Lord Shaftesbury was also a kind and benevolent man, but for similar reasons his charity failed tp 'produce the benefit which, wa,s designed. As. foj; the Charity Organisation. Socipty' or i\len#city Society, its "failure was ebovvfl t>e fact that while one year,. M^Jy. $a income amounted to Mjgft, ifts solp esgaenditure tor relief' purposes was LS2Q, L 127 more distributed in the way- of loans, L 424 paid for postage | stamps and cab hire, while salaries'and office expenses swallowed up the remainder, In the lecturer's opinion, George R. Sims, writing as a journalist under the norn t{spluwe.<B 'Tagonet,' had done WQr« fay the poor of London than any other man living. After reciting an affecting poem by this writer, Mr Crook went on to describe a thieves' kitchen and the schoolroom attached to it, wherein by means of a coat suspended from a rope stretched between two bells the yountj $ea was taught to shoot in the lq\o, of professional thievery. When. tStf contents of the coat pocket could be abstracted without ringing the boll the young pick-pocket was qualified to take to the street. Having next dessribed Dodlan's Soup Kitchen, and portrayed the character of that clasa of avaricious property - owners in poor quarters of whom <(Th.ePatriarch "in "Little Don-it,," ig a Mr typo, Mr Crook wont on to yvo several heartrending cases 9s-lftHUlord cruelty, and of that pathetic sympathy which only the poor have for the poor. In his closing remarks, he said that if the £32,000,000 spent a.nnw»y upon religion were devoted/V the relief of distress and. the mitigation of a grinding poverty, the wld would be the better, and religion aould take care of itself. The (second leoture of the series, " Money and Misery " will be delivered on Sunday evening next