ON THE ROAD IN ENGLAND

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19682, 27 December 1933, Page 14

ON THE ROAD IN ENGLAND

LIVING WITH THE UNEMPLOYED The following are extracts from a description at first hand of Ufe among the English unemployed. The author Mr. William Teeling, journeyed through the United States as a “hobo” last year and gained similar experience in migrant labour and its relief in that country, Mr. Teeling writes: “I left a settlement in Whitechapel one evening early in December, dressed in an old American shirt—relic of my hobo days in the Middle West—a pair of shabby blue trousers well rubbed in the mud, a torn pullover, a topcoat that could be disreputable or almost respectable—it depended on how it was buttoned up—and a dilapidated soft hat. On my back I carried a sack containing a change of underwear, a towel, soap, shaving material a washing love, grey flannel trousers, a cap that was a little more respectable, and £3 to carry me through the first part of my six weeks' tramp through England.

As I walked out through West Ham and East Ham I passed districts where three years ago I stood for Parliament, but I passed unrecognised and so felt reassured to face the rest of England, and first of all East Anglia. Through Essex. Suffolk, and Norfolk I collected a fair number of Mts, and the car owners told me what they knew of the district.

I was struck at once by one great difference between England and America. In England you have not far to travel from one town to another in which you can either get a bed cheaply in a doss-house or sleep in a casual ward. In America, once yeu left a reasonably-sized town you had often to be prepared to walk anything up to 200 miles before coming to another town where anv form of lodging was provided for the down-and-out other than the prison floor and two blankets. In such towns you might find a cheap hotel—lt must, however, cost you nearly 5/-. In England, a day's walk was the most you had to face between towns that often had clean hostels at 1/- a night or at least a doss-house—officially called a common lodging-house—with a bed for 8d or up to lOd.

My first night was at Chelmsford, my second at Ipswich in the Sailors' Rest. Here, as in other Sailors' Rests I visited. I found the pleasantest atmosphere of all. For 1/- I had a clean bed in a dormitory with the local paper boy—he rose at 4.30 to sell papers; a young docker in casual work; a sailor off a freight boat tramping home from London after eighteen months abroad: an old tar 6ft tall and sixty years old; and four AB.'s on leave from the Navy for Christmas. The naval people who ran it—thinking I had seen better days—offered me a bed in a room where I would be alone, which I refused, and next day the docker suggested I stop on another day and so rest my feet—already sore —while he went out to his lorrv driver friends to get me a lift towards Lincoln. Everybody was kind, everybody friendly and willing to tell me anything I wanted to hear, since I told them I was just back from Canada and America and wanted to know the ropes. Here was a type of hostel, mainly for men of one profession, that might be more useful to many cities than corporation or even church hostels. The men had something in common—they exchanged sea experiences in a language they all understood, and it cheered them up, and they played chess or draughts and forgot their depression a bit. At Spennymoor, a small mining town in County Durham, I helped the warden of the New Settlement one evening to give out books in the library, and was struck by the number of young men asking for works on electricity and mechanics. After supper we motored over to Ferry Hill to discuss the drama with the local workers. It was Interesting to hear middle-aged farmers and young miners discussing with real knowledge of the subject the comparative advantages to a district like their own of Gilbert and Sullivan, the classics or mid-Victorian melodrama. The women openly pleaded for some form of play. They wanted to get away from the drabness of their homes and to find some active expressions of their feelings. Vendor of Mice. In Newcastle I stopped at Simpson's Hotel, at Wallsend, where several hundred men are housed for I'6 in small cubicles, and a canteen provides cheap food. Here I sat and talked to many about their plans for work. I did not find them just content to exist on a dole. One told me how he kept mice in a friend's backyard. They breed quickly, and their antics amused him while he had nothing else to do. On market day he would sell from sixty to 100 mice at 3d to 6d each for hospitals and to mothers as pets for their children. And in many mining districts I talked to men who breed all kinds of animals from monkeys to chickens, from mice to rabbits and canaries. In Liverpool the Exchange runs an excellent physical training class. Applicants give such various reasons for their desire to enrol as “I'm a little too narrow-chested yet to join the Army"; “I want to keep my deportment as I'm by trade a shopwalker"; or “I know 111 never get my old Job back—l want to be stronger for manual labour." Unhappily, when it rains or is cold, there is a falling-off in attendance for lack of boots or overcoats. The saddest cases are those of the proudest. Some do not like to undress in a changing room and show torn underclothing or Just tops of socks that leave bare feet In the shoes, and so forgo the drill and games. For Liverpool has suffered more than most cities and over a longer period.