Here and There—A Contrast.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 791, 29 April 1887, Page 9

Here and There —A Contrast.

HEARTBREAKING INDEED. The British Weekly, a new periodical published in London, gives a few startling and shocking facts regarding the condition of the London poor. In its issue of February 4th it says : Some startling facts have been revealed by a special commissioner of the Globe as to the condition of school children in London. Thirty-four schools were visited, nearly all Board Schools, and it is heartbreaking to learn that out of thirty thousand children, about one-fourth came to school without a breakfast. The report of the Board School Free Dinner Fund puts the proportion still higher, at one-third; and states that a fourth of the children come to school again dinnerless. In many of the poorer districts penny dinners have been provided, but the promoters have been baffled by the inability of the children to provide the necessary penny. The deplorable poverty of the parents has been recently shown by the number ot remissions of fees which had to be granted by the London School Board, amounting to no less than four thousand in one division. The Fund above mentioned has provided seventy thousand dinners at a cost of lfd. per head. The South London Schools Dinner Fund is providing dinners at a cost of 1£ per head. The effect of these meals upon the children is said to have been marvellous and instantaneous, and the teachers report an immediate lightening of their labours through the increased brain power of the children. At a single school in Peckham twelve boys, nine girls, and nine infants are sent to school with bare feet. Many of such details might be given, which prove that free education must come before long, and if it is to be of any value must be accompanied, in a large proportion of cases, by bodily nourishment. It is here that Christ’s disciples may well step In, and by feeding these hungry rhultitudes, fulfil that word of the Master, ‘Greater works than these shall ye do, because I go unto my Father.'