ONE MAN’S BIG HEART

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 12 May 1928, Page 11

ONE MAN’S BIG HEART

A LONDON man behind a great adventure, who is brightening up the world about the docks, and thus making dreams conic tru,e is Mr KonnedyCox. He is known as the ’Warden of Dockland Settlement., Canning Town. About twenty years ago Mr Kennedy Gox made Canning Town his home. He left behind, in the place he had till then called his home, luxury and the friendship of pleasant, educated people. Dockland received this stranger into her midst and did not know for a long time, how great a force had come into her life. The force lay behind the brain, will, and heart of this one man. 'He looked out on the miles of unlovely streets where the girls and. boys, young men and women, sport their spare time knowing nothing better, and he determined that in this ’Sahara ail oasis should grow. He found a little mission that had been started five years before by Malvern College, land he took over the organisation of this, toiling himself and persuading others to toil.

The Dockyard Settlement, was the result. There can J>e found warm, cheery rooms, a place for games, a

BRIGHTENING OF SAHARA

place for anyone- who sighs: “Oh, for a book in a shady nook!’’ There are ’ arious clubs in the Settlement, where bov s can spend their spare energy at the carpenter’s o.- cobbler’s bench; the girls can play about in a real kitchen cooking, >ar in the sewing-room, or make as much noise as they like in the sing-ing-room. There are copies of Old Masters; there is a poet ’s corner. There is a little chapel too. The people -of Dockland are saving their pennies for something else —'for the last- of the Warden’s dreams’ to come true. This is the Dockland Theatre, one of the bravest enterprises ever come into being. For years and years the leaders of the ’Settlement aind the members themselvis have been toiling for a theatre of their own. There was noth, ing but cheap and vulgar music-halls or cinemas. They opened their little theatre, this brave company, one night last year, and the tiny place was packed. It is a long time since the world has heard such a splendid story, says a London writer. These people, spoken of as slum-dwellers, these thousands of inhabitants of a most dreary neighbour, hood where they might indeed be forgiven for saying that charity begins at home, have set all England an example in publie-spiritedness.