WORK FOR EX-CONVICTS

Grey River Argus, 19 June 1933, Page 8

WORK FOR EX-CONVICTS

LONDON’S GOOD SAMARITAN. The story of the remarkable activities cj.‘ a wealthy Londoner, Air. Arnold Hamer Hall, who is spending his days and fortune providing a fresh start in life for ex-convicts, was told in the Sunday Chronicle recently. Air. Hall reclaims men from crime and brings them byck into society by running a. business staffed by the men themselves. His theory is; Give a man a job and a chance to make good, and he will become a good citizen again, and help to reduce the 12,000 j population of Britain’s prisons. So successful are Air. Hall’s plans that he is opening larger promises. Once those men were criminals, men for whom society had no further use To-day they arc fighting their way back to self-respect again. it was a visit to a. prison about ton years ago which made Atr. Hall their friend. He was a man of independent means, with a, country house, an estate, a yacht, and the mastership of a pack of foxhounds. He says the stories he heard convinced him that something must bo done about discharged prisoners, so he decided to devote his life to their welfare. .Eight years ago Air. Hall opened a sma.ll basement. business in Earl’s Court, London, and employed one man. Then he took a shop in Kensington where, altogether, he has employed about 50 ex-convicts who have worked I for him for a while ami then gone on I to other jobs. “Nowadays I get anything up to five men to see me every day,” Air. ‘ llr.U said, “The man who has been in prison is not some kind of animal different from the rest of mankind. He is a man like you or I. Give him j the chance of getting a foothold in | life again and he will go straight. “It is terribly difficult to keep straight. Yet here is an extraordina.ry thing. I find the Gild lags’ arc the best material.’’ One of the men Air. Hall helped at the beginning fell out of work six months ago. lie had 27/- a week to keep a wife and four children, but he is not going back to crime.