SLUM FLOK AND THEIR LIVES

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 88, 13 April 1935, Page 29

SLUM FLOK AND THEIR LIVES

Mr. Horace Thorogood, a well-known journalist, recently lived . for a few weeks in the East End of London, and in "East of Aldgate" he relates his experiences. He takes a room at the house of Mrs. Hobson:—

\ "I suppqse,'M said, touching the bed, "I can*'rely on this being clean?"

1 Whenever I think of it I redden with shame,'recalling the way Mrs. Hobson stiffened at the affront. She # was a short, sturdy, black-browed* woman, two years a widow. Her husband's framed certificate as a member of a Lancashire branch of the United Society of Boilermakers and Iron Shipbuilders, dated 1880, had the place of honour in the front parlouiyand his" pipes remained piously in the piperack in the kitchen, just as'1 he left them. If I had known what a perfect engine of house-pride she was, what a scrubber and shiner, what a zealot with the blacklead and the brass polish, I would have bitten off my tongue rather, than have asked the question.

But she controlled her indignation. "Well, sir," she said, "anyone can see for hisself the bed's clean. I've had gentlemen sleeping here for two years, and none of them never made no complaint." * ■ ' . ;

■My immediate sensations when I shut the gate of my Poplar lodging for the last time were of satisfaction, says Mr. Horace Thorogood, when he leaves the lodgings of Mrs. Hobson. It was good to be going back to St. John's Wood, its pleasant houses and pretty gardens, where acacia trees gnarl their upper branches into fantastic shapes above the latticed gates, and spring arrives in state .with almond blossom

and lilac and laburnum .loading the evening air' with-perfume, ;:'';.;. y.f\

But although I had had enough of it, .1 had enjoyed my stay in~ Poplar, and when the effect of its depressing external features had worn off, the memory of it began to take on a mild beauty, derived—or so 1 see it—from the new knowledge it had given me of how courageously the essential gbodness of men ..and women .preserves itself in the'midst of adverse circumstances. ■;• •'■ ■ ' : ■-•■.■ '■ :i ■:;■■. -

How stupid it is of us whose luck is so much better than Poplar's to plume ourselves on being honest, or kind, or industrious when those qualities are common form among the great majority of these people to whom they bring so little advantage which we should consider material!

Why do they "stand for" it, I often wondered. I think it is because the life has compensations of- Which we are unaware. It is, 'for ■instance, absorbingly interesting, living in a crowded community in which nearly everyone is engaged in an adventure that begins afresh daily... Everybody's life is an excitingserial"; stbry in which one is always reading new episodes; or a play in which: one is constantly called upon to improvise a part. It is impossible for them to be bored. They are very iwise about' human nature, very good judgesjpf character, and since they keep.,. Mostly ."-on the "enough" side of poverty, they are not unhappy, even in the slums. It is frail, brave Humanity in the slumsv native there or sojourning there to help those who live in them, which shows to me, as I look back on Poplar, the only admirable thing I could find in them.