HUNGRY CHILDREN IN LONDON

Colonist, Volume L, Issue 12165, 13 February 1908, Page 4

HUNGRY CHILDREN IN LONDON

There are'said to be six thousand nve hundred needy children in London who are receiving no meals at all at school. '• Not only is the number of children" fed insufficient, but even the children who are being fed are receiving an insufficient number of meals. The distress at the schools has been underestimated considerably. At the Chaucer Schools, Bermondsey, 419 children were reported upon as needing food, but only 148 were being fed. Even these children were reeiving only two meals a week. In another group of sohools in Bermonds9y the number of children needing food were 10S, 278, and 245. Not one of these children was being fed. Mr Will Crooks moved several of the members of the London County Council to tears by his description of the miseries endured by "some of London's starving children. Speaking amid the dead silence of the whole Council, he made a powerful plea for the children in a speech which members described afterwards as being the most eloquent ever j} heard in the Council Chamber. He reminded the Council that they had adjourned that very evening for an hour for dinner. The same night ho knew that hundreds of little children were going to bed with a cup of cold water. They would get up and have nothing but a cup of cold water foi

breakfast, in one school he knew'of tho teacher had received a note.to this effect from one of the parents: —Dear teacher.— Will you allow my little girl to come home at half- past three. Uer father has earned Gd, and she will be able J^to get something warm to oat, as they havo had nothing to eat all day. "l appeal to you," concluded Mr Crooks, "to , rise to a sense of your responsibiliy, and see these hungry children. If JLt meanc that 1 should be driven out of public life by putting these meals on the rates. 1 would not hesitate a moment in feeding these children out of the rates. At any rate, 1 should have done my duty." After a long discussion an amendment by Mr Allen M.P., tn provido meals for hungry children out of tDe rates was defeated by 64 votes to 40, only one of the moderates voting for with the minority. On the result being announced Mr Will Crook 3 cried "Scadalousl Disgraceful!,*' and Mr Frank Smith said that that decision would haunt at- their Christmas dinners those who voted against the amendment.