LIFE STORIES OF SUCCESSFUL MEN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2303, 21 April 1898, Page 46

LIFE STORIES OF SUCCESSFUL MEN.

MR QUINTIN HOGG, FOUNDER OF

THE POLYTECHNIC. In the years about 1860 there was a wonderful grup of boys at Eton who vied ■with each other on the playing fields oi that famous school and in admiration of the Queen, whom they so often saw. Among these boys were Lord Rosebery, the late Duke of Marlborough, Mr A. J. Balfour, Lord Kinnaird, Lord Randolph Churchill, the Earl of Morley, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, Lord Walsingham, and one in whom we are specially interested — Mr Quintin Hogg. It is said that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. If that was so, then the Polytechnic movement had its inception in the same place, for Mr Quintin Hogg is the founder of the pioneer Polytechnic, whose history is full of romance. To his devotion, skill, and generosity it owes its existence, and to his constant supervision it owes its continued success. Mr Quintin Hogg came AS A VALENTINE in 1845 to his mother and father. His father, Bir James Weir Hogg, was for several years chairman of the. old East India Company, and some time member _for Beverley and Honiton. The valentine arrived in Gros\enoT street, London, and has spent most of its life in the great city. Six years were passed at Eton, during which young Hogg distinguished himself in athletics arid sports He was captain of the football eleven, one of the shooting eleven, and keeper of the "fives." He was also captain of his House. When Mr Hogg left Eton he entered the old-established house of Bosanquet, Curtis, and Co., who were engaged in the East and West India trade. Of that firm he is now the head, and his own son is with him. London in the sixties was a very different place from the London of to-day Thirty years ago it was a common sight to see numbers of boys sleeping out at night ; but wliere you would have found 20 then you cannot find six: to-day. These homeless, hapeless,

DESTITUTE WAIFS found a soft place in the young Etonian's heart ; and a month or two after he left school, in 1863, he began to devote himself to them, and has never ceased. Indeed, he sums up his life's work as " business and boys " — especially boys. " I had never been brought into contact with real poverty and want before," says Mr Hogg, " and I felt as though I should go mad unless I did something to try and help some of the "ivretched little chaps I used to find running about the streets. My first effort was to get a couple of crossing sweepers, whom I picked up near Trafalgar Square, and offered to teach them to read. In those days the Thames Embankment did not exist, and the Adelphi arches were open both to the tide and the street. With an empty beer bottle for a candlestick and a tallow candle for illumination, two crossing sweepers as; pupils, your .humble servant as teacher, and a couple of Bibles as reading books, what grew into the Polytechnic was practically started. " We had not been engaged in our reading very long when at the far end of the arch I

noticed a twinkling light. ' Kool esclop ! ' shouted one of the boys, at the same time DOUSING THE GLIM and bolting with his companion, leaving me in the dark, with my upset beer bottle. After scrutinising me by the light of his bullseye, the policeman moved on, leaving me in a state of mental perturbation as to what the mystic words I had heard meant. Afterwards, when I became proficient in siang, I knew that ' Kool esclop ' was ' Look (out for the) police,' spelt backwards. The last word was evidently the origin of the contraction ' slop,' which is generally given to the police to-day." Although Mr Hogg did not regard this first attempt as a success, he determined to learn the language of these boys, to ascertain their real wants and their ways of life. This is how he describes his next effort : " I went to the New Cut, on the south side of the river, and bought a second-hand shoeblack's suit, also a box with a strap to go over the shoulder, brushes, and all necessary fittings. With this -I—used to go out two or three nights a week for about six months, blacking boots and sleeping out with the boys on barges, under tarpaulins, or in the so-called ' Punch's Hole ' on a ledge" in the Adelphi arches, or elsewhere. Of course my father knew nothing at all about it." Of one thing, however, Ms friends were

conscious, and that was his habit of coming down early to breakfast and filling his pockets with food from the table, which 'Avas distributed to his less fortunate friends as the J3OY MERCHANT went to the city. This was when he lived at Carlton Gardens, in a house which his old schoolfellow Arthur Balfour afterwards occupied. " I was not boot-blacking all the time," Mr Hogg tells you. " I would go out about Covent Garden Market, or hold horses, or do any odd jobs which I saw boys doing." One day he was out with his box when his own father. Sir James Weir Hogg, came along and wanted his boots cleaned. But Sir James did not know that his son cleaned them. In the same way Mr Hogg has cleaned the boots of many of his friends — all without being recognised In those days he was a veritable Hyde and Jekyll In a few months he had started a ragged school for his boy friends One night it looked as though it would utterly fail. Mr Hogg was at home with a heavy cold, when one of the elder boys rushed up to his house and begged him to go down to the school. [ The bo.ys, he said, were fighting the police, ! and using the slates as ammunition. Three minutes later Mr Hogg was dressed and on his way to the school. Arriving, he found the place in an uproar. Not content with the slates, the boys were using the GAS-FITTINGS AS BATON' 3. But when Mr Hogg's voice was heard the riot ceased, and then it was thifc he felt for th? first time that he had some kind of instinct for the management of boys. He vva<» tliCtt as* qLUite 20. %

During the next four years he was scarcely absent a night from the school, and so great was its success that the boys had to come in two sections of 60 each — one from 7 to 8.30 and the other from 8.30 to 10.

" I used to sit between the classes," says Mr Hogg, " perched on the back of a form, dining on my 'pint of thick and two doorsteps ' — as the boys used to call coffee and bread-and-treacle — teaching reading to one class and writing to another."

When the school was first opened five boys came to it absolutely naked, except for their mothers' shawls which were pinned round them. One named Flannigan would come in no other dress. Five separate gangs of thieves attended the ragged school, all of whom within six months were earning their livelihood respectably. In 1871 the idea of an institute for young men came to Mr Hogg. He felt that the ideal institute was one which would minister to all sides of a young man's nature — the religious, the educational, the athletic, and the social — and this is the ideal of the Regent street Polytechnic. The first institute was in Hanover street. • Larger premises succeeded in Long Acre. In 1881 the Polytechnic in Regent street, the old home of the Diving Bell and Pepper's Ghost, came into tho market, and Mr Hogg bought it for £50,000 — his own money. Since then he has spent £100,000 on additions and alterations, and he alone knows how much else. This pioneer Polytechnic now has a membership of 1600 young men. One hundred classes in various subjects are held each night. If you happen to pass down Regent street about 9.15 in tho morning you see a

STBEA3I OF BOYS passing into the Polytechnic Day School. If you follow thorn you see them pass at the top of a small flight of stairs a handsome man with well-knit frame. He has a firm mouth, kindly, piercing eyes, hah- getting grey — altogether an attractive man, and as fine a specimen of muscular Christianity as Tom Hughes or Charles Kingsley could wish to see. This is Mr Hogg.

All the boys pass him as they go into the school. He knows something of each boy, and has something for each. Perhaps it is only a word or a pull of the ear or hair ; for each there is some little playful act, which is taken by the boys as a most kindly greeting. That is why the Polytechnic succeeds. The personality of its founder pervades it. It is more than an institution.

After school has begun Mr Hogg goes to the city. When he left Eton he did not leave his love of athletics behind him. Perhaps he would not have succeeded in his work if he had. He captained the first seven

SCOTCH INTERNATIONAL

teams in the years 1864-70. In the same years he captained the Old Etonians ; and while he was captain they never . lost a match. His favourite games are cricket, football, and fives. There is only one game he hates — croquet. - Like all really busy men, Mr Hogg has found time to do many things. He has paid 14 visits to his plantations in the West Indies ; has crossed the Atlantic 34 times ; has journeyed in the East "again and again, and was in the Khyber Pass with the Khyber levies during the war of 1880, when the English army was shut up in Cabul.

There are few parts of the world where he has not travelled, and wherever he goes he does not fail to find old " Poly " boys. He has shot big game in South America, as some splendid horns in his hall testify. A fine tiger skin in his library recalls a shooting expedition in India. He has travelled with the Red Indians for six weeks together, and shared their wigwams. He has been on the Missouri, where his vessel was stopped by a gieat herd of buffalo, hundreds of thousands of them crossing 'the river. To-day there is scarcely a buffalo to be seen.

Mr Hogg's devotion to his work is typified by the fact that his house in Cavendish Square backs on to the Polytechnic in Regent street, and a private door leads from one to the other. — Answers.