AHURIRI.

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 163, 13 May 1859, Page 4

AHURIRI.

OUR HOMELESS POOR.

(From the Hawke's Bay Herald Extra, April 25.) In our issue of Saturday (published by the way on Thursday evening) we mentioned that two gentlemen were virtually in the field for the office of Superintendent—the one representing the opinion that the chief executive officer should be out of the Council; the other that he be chosen from amongst the members of that body. For some days it had been known that the two parties which this division of opinion had originated were pretty equally balanced, but it was not till Friday that the fact transpired of both being exactly alike in the number of their supporters. Theiull effect of this position of affairs will at once appear when it is remembered that the Council numbers just ten members, —that it was split into parties of five, each presenting an unyielding front, and that, therefore, withput some compromise or concession, the Council could not proceed to action, the business of the Province would be brought to a dead lock, and the people, quite possibly, be denuded of their newly-found political privileges by the operation of clause 3 of the New.Provinces Act, under which the Order in Council must take effect within six months of its date. A nice state of things truly! A deadlock at the very outset of our career! Fortunately, however, the good sense of the council interposed. A preliminary meeting of the members took place, at which the knotty point was discussed in all its bearings. An arrangement was ultimately arrived at —not certainly without difficulty, for, long after the hour named for the council to meet the matter was still pending. Under this arrangement, Capt. Newman and Capt. Carter retired ; Mr. Ormond agreed to accept the Speakership, and Mr. FitzGerald the Superintendency. These gentlemen were accordingly elected without a dissentient voice—much, we may add, to the astonishment of the ' strangers/ few of whom had-the. slightest idea of what had arisen out of the previous proceedings. This result must he pleasing to the electors generally, for although many may, regret that one or other of the two gentlemen to whom we have so often referred, should not now be Superintendent of the province, they cannot be otherwise than gratifed at the good sense and sound judgment displayed by their members upon so startling an emergency. Melancholy Event. —On Friday last, some children belonging to the garrison, while out strolling in the neighbourhood of the barracks, partook of the poisonous berry knoaoi as tutu. To one of these children, we regret to say, the poison-proved fatal— vomiting having saved the others. The victim was.a boy named John Greenaway, aged.two years and nine months, the son of" a private. Dr. M'Shane attended at ! once, but his efforts proved unavailing. The child was seized with convulsive fits, which continued with little intermission till Saturday morning, between 3 and 4 o'clock, when death put a period to the child's suf-ferings.—-JSdwhes Bay Herald, April 23. •' An Incorrigible.-—The Chief Constable of Wagga, Wagga, New South Wales, recently apprehended a man named Ramsay, alias Mittes, against" whom there are a series of capital charges. The first was for being concerned in the famous and now somewhat ancient gold robbery from the ship Nelson, while lying in Hobson's Bay, Melbourne; the second charge is for stealing a bag of gold from Barrar's store, on M'lvor gold-field, in Victoria; and the third for escaping from Cockatoo Island in 1849, at which place he was undergoing a sentence of five years for forgery. John Lord, Esq., of Hobart Town, has determined to introduce the alpaca at his own cost into Tasmania. Many years ago, the same gentleman imported a number of German sheep into the colony. A man' named Thomas Ryan, lately convicted of a series of highway robberies in the Bathurst district, N.S.W., was sentenced to twenty-five years' hard labor on the roads.

(From The Times, 24th December.) There are some among our many, readers whose professional duties demand that they should be out late at night, .and who will require no aid of ours to recall to mind the., crouching forms that sleep in doorways, under dry arches, or in niches on a bridge. At that hour of night the time is past for impostors or beggars, and the out-casts.-who. lie-about, gathering for warmth into groups of two or three as autumn wanes and the night winds grow chill, are a peculiar class, who seldom beg, and not more often steal. Many must have noticed how these people gradually vanish in winter, though not entirely so, for even on the rawest nights, small groups of two or three may still be met,—groups whose abject misery softens even the police, and they let them slumber on in doorways unmolested. These are members of, alas ! too large a class, known as the homeless poor, and let those who wish to see how they live and how they suffer, pass but one hour at the Refuge for the Destitute in Fieldlane. A very short visit will suffice even for those who most, uphold our union system, and deny that' very abject wretchedness can can exist which our workhouses are not adequate to relieve. The way to it lies through foul aud noisome streets, where small and crazy tenements are crowded with many families, and where amid even the scanty refuse which such a neighbourhood can afford to throw away, are groups of ragged infants, scarcely distinguishable, save by .their movements, from the heap in which they search either for food itself of such small rubbish as. ragdealers will give them bread for. In such a vicinity, and close to the spot where Jonathan Wild's house once stood, is a large and cleanly whitewashed building, with lights inside, which at once distinguish it from the surrounding houses, where only rarely and at intervals is the dim reflection of a candle to be seen through the cracked.and papered panes. You have no need to be told that this one clean building among many is the " Refuge," for long ere night has fallen the wretched claimants for its. shelter . have begun to assemble, and watch the door with that steady earnestness which only belongs to those who have no hope beyond its charity. As the dusk deepens they slink in from streets and byeways, old men of 60 and 70, young boys,—ay, and even .children, but. all alike in misery,—faint, wet, and weary. They sit upon the sloppy ground in silence more impressive than the loudest complaints; or, if they speak at all, it is in whispers, for want.and suffering have quailed their spirits, and they move with an abject deference gainful to' see from the paths of the very few who pass that way. Gradually more and more drop in until the group is increased to } 00 *pr thereabouts, and then the silence gets- broken at last with hacking coughs from tally meagre spectres apparently in the last-stage of decline, down to mere children hoarse with inflammation ofthe lungs, or paining the ear with their close suffocating whooping.-cqughs. Here are trampers, brick-makers and laborers who have had no work since summer ; some who have just come out of an hospital, and, are too feeble to . labor; old men and little boys, streetsweepers and orphans in every grade of misery . and loneliness. These are some, and only some, of London's homeless poor—the men and boys without a friend, or place to lay their heads in all this vast metropolis—the Bedouins of England who live no man cares how or where — who struggle through some years of bitter want, and may be crime, till they creep into a hole to die, and,.after lying in the.parish deadhouse a few days with a placard on their breasts marked with the touching word "Unknown." are given to the surgeons, and there's an end. But some of our readers may say— " Why do not these people go to the workhouse?" It is a fair question, but to meet it fully—to point out the insufficiency of accommodation for the casual poor in workhouses—the almost merciless rigour with which they are-treated there—would require a long explanation, and one foreign to-our present purpose. Perhaps, too, even in such a notice as this, enough may be found to account for the apparent phenomenon of the unions not giving relief. As soon as a moderate number have collected, the doors of the Refuge are opened to its wretched tenants, and so remain open until the littJe cribs are filled with their full number of 300 outcasts, when the place is closed on all too late. The wants of grown men, though they feel cold and hunger like the rest, are apparently less severe than those which fall on little children... * by whom, alas! nearly half the Refuge is occupied. Take the first who present themselves, and let them tell their own tale. Here comes , four meagre little forms; they are mere children, all under the age of fourteen; all orphans, destitute, and living upon the streets, without a home or a friend in the wide world. One has a pair of tattered canvas trousers and the remains of a grown man's fustian jacket hanging about his little limbs. Dirt and sores disfigure his . body, his eyes are swollen, his face is; puffed and fevered-looking^ for," though spokesman pf the party, he can scarcely draw his breath from inflammation ofthe lungs. They started two days since" to see if they could gather holly to sell at Christmas. They wandered f hrough Tottenham, and thence.on to, Hornsey and Eppin Forest, a lady giving them a penny by the way, with which they bought some bread and shared it equally.* They " couldn't git no holly," so they slept in a field, under a hedge, tramped back to London, and came to the Refuge, but it was full and closed, when one of the four went searching about the streets for food, while the three other children slept in a doorway on Saffron-hill.. Two of these four have

newly been left orphans and destitute, but two have been upon the streets -some time, the little spokesman having shifted for himself four years, carrying parcels, holding horses, minding vegetables in Coventgarden, or watching butcher's meat when left out in the summer's night to cool, but never stealing. While this child tells his piteous tale, another comes and begs ad- , mission to the Refuge. He is only thirteen —a dull stupid lad, in whom want and misery seem to have blighted the growth pf mind and body. His motherdied when he was a very little .child, his father (who was a respectable tradesman) when he was only ten years old, ■ and he, with another brother, who went to sea and was drowned, were turned out to live in the 1 streets of London. He could hardly say howhe had existed three years. Sometimes he carried parcels or swept crossings, and got a hw half-pence, when he bought bread, and paid Id. for his lodgings,, for the night. Sometimes he got nothing, when he walked about the streets and slept in doorways-— a poor man or woman, little better off than himself, occasionally having pity on his forlorn lot, and giving him a bed for a night or two with themselves,; and a; share of their wretched meal inthe morning. 'S° he lived on, if living it maybe called, getting 2d. a day for work in the fields in summer, going hopping with the trampers, who gave him his keep for minding their little children while they themselves were hop-picking. Latterly, however, his earnings had fallen off to almost nothing, and his food to about the same. His favorite resting place had been an archway at the back of the Surrey , ! Theatre, till detected and driven from there by the police, always so vigilant in discovering such offenders, when he took to Covent-garden, living on what he could pickup, and sleeping in carts and baskets. For two days before he came to the Refuge he had only a basin of coffee, which a poor woman' had given him, and a turnip which he " found" in the market. Wearied at last with famine and disease, with a pain in his chest that he could hardly, as he said, " draw'd his breath," he comes to the shelter of Field-lane; for to him it had the comforts of a home, the only one which he has known for three long years. Bye-and-by, some little crossing sweepers come in, eight in all—-all children, all orphans—all destitute for years. One has earned 2-|d., which he has spent in a pennyworth of bread and a basin of coffee, keeping a halfpenny for some bread next day. Another; a singularly nandsome boy, also a crossing-sweeper, has lately walked up from Bristol, living on blackberries and" swedes" by the way, and getting a little work now and then at carrot-pulling. His mother, the only relative he ever knew, died four years since of cancer in the foot, and he himself has „ similar disease forming, and now walks lame. He has been to an hospital about his foot, which pains him much, where they told him to rest it, keep it warm, and. poultice it every night. Good advice this to a destitute child, sweeping crossings, and without food enough *to! live on! Another squalid, miserable child comes in, and his tale is so peculiar that we cannot refrain from giving it. His father and mother are alive, and he his one of a family of twelve children. His two eldest brothers are nearly always in Prison, "for they does handkerchers"— i.e., steal them —getting 2|-d. each for them, or 3d. for very good ones. His eldest sister, now only fifteen, a thief in her infancy, a prostitute at eleven years old, has been much iri prison, and is now in a reformatory. The father and mother and the rest of the children live in this peculiar way:—The whole family rise at two in the morning, and, quitting the cellar in which they dwell, issue forth about the thoroughfares to tear down the posters and bills from palings and dead walls. Thus employed until daylight- the united exertions of the whole family in winter can collect a half-a-hundredweight of paper, for the sale of which they get 7fd. But it is only during the long winter nights that even this pittance can be earned—-in summer, the father gets a little work, and the family scatter and shift in the fields, each for themselves. It is useless, however, multiplying those painful instances—each one has, of course, some heartrending tale to tell, else they would not be there. Let us pass to the female refuge. It is part of the same charitable institution, though, for obvious reasons, not near where the outcast males are harbored for the night. It is in another part of Field-lane, about half-a-mile distant, towards Saffron-hill, where ; all the Italian! organ grinders receive a wretched shelter from their masters, and where want and loathsome misery, of*course,, abound. ; The refuge here is in a little,yard off a narrow street, where a door iiCar a coach-: house admits the visitor up a narrow flight of wooden steps to a very cleanly whitewashed and well lighted room or loft, some forty feet long by twenty feet wide and ■ high, alongside of which are five and-twenty little cots ranged on the floor. A difference is very properly made between the treatment of the men and that ofthe women—-the latter, .instead of lying on the boards, have each a straw stuffed mattress and extra rug, while through the benevolent ministry of some kind ladies, a large cup of hot coffee is given to them with the eight-ounce loaf provided by the refuge at night and morning. For obvious reasons, too, it opens to receive its hapless victims as soon as darkness falls,' for the kind managers ofthe refuge know, what the law appears to be ignorant of, that it is dangerous to allow these famine-clung and friendless girls upon the streets at night. At 7, therefore, (except those that work'for the Jew slop houses-in Houndsditch), they are mostly all assembled and sit, women and children, in two long rows drying their wretched garments near the stove; so worn and famished-looking that it wrings* the .heart to see them crouching moodily to-

gether, with the silence of exhaustion and despair upon them all. •At the first glance they seem' to be all women of a middle age, but this is only the effect of care and . hardship on their young frames, for a majority of them are under twent}*-, while but too many are mere children. Others come in by twos and -threes, walking heavily and slowly, with their dresses —too light and cool for sjummer wear—barely covering their poor thin forms. The last comers have been worked at the slop houses, where by incessant labor from eight in the morning till eight at night they can earn 4£d. per day finding their own cotton, needles, and tapes, and paying each Id. a week fpr the use of the room they work in. Why don't these people go to the workhonse indeed? Would they not if they could ? ■ • Let us take the case of the girl that last came in. She is 16, though she looks 30 ; she has been a servant in two places, and had a good character from both, when she left the last to go into the hospital for a l6ng illness* When she came out, she could get no place ;, she pawned her clothes,* endured starvation more or less severe for many weeks—-she had to apply* for "relief and went the round of the casual ward's of the unions. She applied, she says, for admittance in White-chapel Union, and was taken before the Board of Guardians, who told her the house was full, and they could " do nothing for her, " so she went away and wandered in the streets another day and night, and next morning went to a magistrate, who told her her case was a hard one but he could 'do nothing for her.' If she had but given one pert answer to any of those functionaries miscalled relieving officers, the magistrate, whoever he was, would at once " have done something for her," and the girl Would have gained a shelter, even though in a prison. This poor creature then got some slop work at the remunerative rate we have already mentioned, but her thin hands so perspired from weakness, that she dirtied the shirts, and was dismissed, and after a few more days and nights of hungry wandering was directed to the refuge, where she is now nearly deaf from a cold which she caught while sleeping in a doorway. Another , girl is there, not yet 13, without friends or parents, and who, like all the rest, has gone through the usual routine of famine and exposure till a nightly shelter was given her here. Another girl of .15 used to work at doll-making with her sister, and the two could earn ss. or 6s. per week. . But the work fell off, her sister had gone she knows not where, and she now depends upon the refuge, leaving it in the morning to wander out upon the streets till dusk shall open her home to her again. One person is there, a lady in manners and education, the daughter of an officer in the navy—who speaks French, understands German, and can teach music, and in whose face, worn and meagre as it is, can be discerned the traces of what once was beauty. ": Very little is known, of her, for she is reserved about her past life and present relatives; but from the little that has been ascertained it would seem, that some nobleman has been instrumental in bringing her to her present outcast lot. She and her little son both find a refuge here at night, a shelter all the more gratefully received, as this poor lady—-if we may so term her—has experienced the miseries of half the casual poor wards in London, from the wretched pen in which women are herded at Islington to the sheds where they aie thrust away at Lambeth. But it is needless to recapitulate such sad tales, from hearing the accumulated miseries of which our readers would shrink with heartfelt pain. Let us return once more to the men's refuge. It is past nine now, and all the rows of cribs are filled with occupants, and those who come too late—and there are always some forty or fifty sueh —must sleep in the streets, as those within the refuge now have done many hundred times before. Among the 300 occupants not a word is heard—each has washed and sat down in his crib, and each receives with grateful thanks an Boz. loaf, which is eaten almost before the man has done his work of distribution. Prayers are read, in which all join. Then each takes off his tattered clothes, though how they get them off, or still more how they are to get them on again, is almost a mystery—and spreading them, beneath them on the boards cower under their rugs and go quietly to sleep. A watcher always remains up, though there is no need of him,—there is seldom a movement among the poor thin*'• forms around; worn out with hunger and fatigue they sleep on as if the world had no cares for them, or the next day did not dawn on the same life of loneliness and misery as. that which has just gone by. . • ; Such is a plain and in trutlv a brie^ac--count of our homeless poor, and such.is a refuge for the destitute. Nobler .or more beneficent charities than those re-fuo-es do not exist on earth. No hon. or rev. gentleman enlists himself in their cause, or speaks in their behalf, for a tale of abject misery in London is dull to fashionable ears, and the only heathens whom the refuges claim are white ones and our own. They have no annual meetings at which they can exhibit sentimental blacks, and prove how their souls were saved at a cost of something like £1000 apiece; nor have they even that claim on the ostentatious charity of May meeting folk which forming one refuge for the destitute on the coast of Africa at once would give them. The misery which they relieve and the vice * which they check is both unpicturesqueand real; so therefug;es can only claim assistance on the ground of their necessity, as the sufferings of the destitute,plead in turn to them. Christmas is here, with all its happy gatherings and kind associations, and at this time, above all'others, the heart should be open-and the hand free to those who have no honies^ and vvhom * Providence has visited with such keen adversity-as that

which we have endeavoured to ppurtray. At such a,season let us remember. others as well as ourselves —let us remember those poor little orphan children who went forth to gather holly for festive Christmasses which brought no cheer to them,- and spare r a mite out of our great abundance to charities like these, which with reduced funds and fast increasing applicants still do their duty—which keep the wretched _ destitute from starving and'give a shelter to our homeless poor. The Late Regatta. —We have been re- ' quested to draw, attention to the fact that many subscriptions to the fund for the late I regatta have not yet been paid. . It cer- • tainly is unpleasant having to pay for ' amusements after they have come and been enjoyed, and have been forgotten;-, but the duty is no less obligatory, and we would impress upon those who put down t their names to the subscription list^ the necessity of paying the amounts opposite to , the same, unless they'-wish the members of the Committee, who have- already given a great deal of time, and jgone '' through a great deal of anxiety, in order . to originate and carry out a popular dajr's sport,^be held responsible for the sum still wanting to make up the sum1 total of expenses (including prizes) of the Regatta. We understand that, but for this, delay, the balance sheet of expenditure and receipts would have been long since published by" the Committee, and that the amount of the former would have been found to be - in excess of the latter, leaving something to be carried to the credit of next year's regatta. — Southern Cross, April 5. Attempted Arson and Suicide. —A man of • the name of Odlam, a pensioner, residing . in a street near the bottom of Cook-street, appears, from the evidence given at an inquest held'on the 11th April atthe Wheat Sheaf Inn, to have attempted on Sunday morning, about half-past eleven, to set, his house on fire, and then to cut his own throat. An alarm of fire was given at. the time mentioned, and the fire which had been lighted under the house, was speedily extinguished. The man was then found near the house with his throat slightly cut, and he was taken into custody. The jury : on the inquest returned a verdict pf' arson* against the prisoner, and on the following day he was committed from the Resident Magistrate's Court to take his trial at the next, Criminal Sessions.— lbid, April 15. Compasses in Iron Ships. —lt is remarkable how much,apprehension on the nature •of magnetic action exists even among- men ' of high intelligence. A competent witness, -_ in a recent law trial, in a case of wreck, arising chiefly from a want of knowledge of the^ laws of magnetism in the navigation of the ship, stated that seamen in general believed that, if a cargo of iron was covered over, its effects were cut off from the compass. A leading counsel in the case sympathized ,with the general ignorance, because he confessed that he had shared it. The adjustment of compasses by magnets is a most delicate operation, and has received much attention from some of our leading men in science. An able committee, under the auspices of the Board of Trade, are now engaged in the midst of an iron navy in the port of Liverpool in elucidating the whole of the subject. We feel bound, however, to record our opinion against the indiscriminate employment of all the nostrums prescribed by the compass doctors. • or quacks at many of our seaports. Let the shipowner consult such reports ofthe Liver------j pool Committee already published,, or or follow the Admiralty plan of having at least one good compass in a position .free from all magnetic influences. In some of the large ocean steamers a standard compass is fitted high up in the mizenmast, and .we hear that it is proposed to build a special stage on board the ' Leviathan,' in order to keep the compass from being affected by the immense body of iron in her fabric. — The Quarterly. '.Otago Shingles.—-We have recently been shown some shingles taken from a roof covered in 1848, partly with red pine and partly with Hobart Town shingles. The whole having now been removed, the former appear to be in as sound condition as when first put on, while the latter are completely weather-split and worn out. A similar difference, though not to so marked an extent, has been observed, with respect to white pine and Hobart . Town shingles, which have been taken from another roof, and have been rather longer in use. It is well that the public should be made aware of the greater durability of our native timber, as it is surely unnecessary that we should import that for which we have an unlimited supply of superior material at our own . doors. Mr. Thompson, timber merchant, on the beach, has in hia' possession the specimens referred to, and the matter is worthy;of attention.— Otago Colonist. " ■ -XX'-a k. : X A Numerical Johe.—Kn Irish counsellor having lost his cause, which had been tried before three judges, one of whom was esteemed a very able lawyer, and the other two but very indifferent, some of his brother barristers were very merry on the occasion. "Well, now," says he, "who could help it, when there were a hundred : judges on the bench•?■" " A hundred judges? There were but three." y"By; 'St. Patrick!" replied he,' * • there were one a,nd two ciphers*." ' -.;