THE PAUPERS' DORMITORY IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXI, Issue 311, 21 October 1887, Page 4

THE PAUPERS' DORMITORY IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE.

Rumor has been rife of late in regard to the congregation in Trafalgar Square during the night of all the itinerant beggars in London. To satisfy themselves on this fcorp, the proprietors of the Daily News give a commission to one of their staff to investigate and report, and here is what he says : —

The midnight hour had chimed and the streets were beginning to look very deserted tbis morning, when, for tbe purposes of this article, I concluded a hurried inspection of the paupers' dormitory in Trafalgar Square. Here, according to public rumor, were gathered nightly a most; extraordinary assembly of the outcast poor, tbe vagabond, and the thief. " You should really see the Square ht midnight," said my latest informant, and I went and saw ir. It was indeed the spacious open air dormitory of a woDdrous crew — an aggregation of those miserable units and small groups that are seen in tbe summer nights on the embankments and the bridges, and that are tbe wonder, the compassion, and the despair of those who witness them, and know not what to do to mend a state of affairs that seems so terrible and so unnatural. In the black shadows of the square they lie, homeless in the heart of a great city, without a refuge in tbe neighbourhood of palaces, without a bearing for their tales of distress or redress for their grievances, within sight of the towers of St. Stephen's. There is some reason for their being so un-obse-fred. All the thousands of paesersby are not priests and Levites ; but tbe good Samaritans do not see the misery so near them. On three sides the obscurity of the square conceals it, on the fourth it is effec-tually.-screeaed by the parapet, at the foot of which, on the other side, it is wrapped up in its wretchedness and rags. Put your foot between columns of the parapet, raise yourself np and look over, and there you can dimly see the sleepere, Bitting, lying, sprawling, and crouching along the whole length of the wall foot. Witbin the railed-off corners they are lying — a grimy bad looking lot. There are benches two or three yards in front. These offer accommodation for a second line of the loaf ers. Many women in tbo tawdry bonnets and long black shawls common to the begging tribe are settled there for the night, whilo men who havo como (too late for the Beats, or may have been chivalrous enough to abandon them to the other sex, are coiled up on the ground behind. ,' On the steps leading up towards the National Gallery are some late comers, and all along the two Bides of the enclosure as you walk down towards Parliament street, human beings are lying well in the deep shadow of the wall. The numbers are, however, by no means bo large this morning as the laso report th»t reached me had led me to anticipate. Some two or three hundred may be easily counted, but rumor had doubled, perhaps multiplied, that some. Bumor, one of the people told me, had not gone far wrong ; for a multitude who had found a habitation in the square on the previous night had gone into Kent for the hopping, and, moreover, I was told that if I waited till two o'clook I should see there were more to come.

In the centre of the tramp-like figures who were taking refuge under the wall was a brightly-dressed girl of about nineteen — a curious contrast to the wretched looking mon and women on each side. She had a baby iv her arms, and young fellows protecting her on either, side. "Who is sho?" I enquired. "They oall her the Queen of the square," said a policeman laughing. " She is always here. She prefers being among these people to being anywhere else. The baby is not hor own. She is minding it for another woman, who herself has ten shillings a week for the maintenance of it, and yet iB content to live in the square." " The Queen," herself, when spoken to giggled a good deal, but was not readily drawn out. Her companions were eloquent denunciators of the workhouse, wbioh they said a man would be crazy to go into while there was a Trafalgar Square, the prison, or the Thames in whioh to seek passing

or everlasting refuge. Prolonged conversation was rendered impossible by the dosing ia around the visitor of a dirty crowd, from whioh escape was in every respect desirable. There was also in the square, I was told, a woman recognised by the name of "the Duchess of Devonshire." She for the moment was missing.