HAMILTON ROTARY CLUB

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17223, 5 October 1927, Page 8

HAMILTON ROTARY CLUB

LADIES' DAY. REV. F. HARTY ON EAST END LIFE. Rotarians of Hamilton and their wives lunched together at the Y.M.C.A. rooms to-day. Mr J. F. Montague, the Auckland elocutionist, entertained and amused the audience with stories, a passage from Shakespeare and a Norse legend. Rev. Prank Harty spoke of his work in Clerkenwcll, on the edge of the East End of London. Huge tenements were being built to take the place of the old buildings, hut he doubted whether these were any gTeat improvement. One of the buildings housed 300 families. A soul-destroy-ing arrangement it appeared to one reared in the colonies. Some of the lower flats had no daylight at all. Some of the older buildings, though, were positively leprous; but it was surprising to sec the neat children that came from these homes. His church in that district—the Church of the Holy Redeemer —was one of the, most remarkable in London, by virtue, of its spaciousness, loftiness, bright illumination from clear windows and while walls.

The boys of the district would come to film in all states of undress to be entertained till 10 at night. The boys were. extraordinarily quickwitted. They considered him (Mr Harty) rather severe, but some of them had come to give him presents before he left. One of the boys had revealed the fact that another bad done without his dinner for two days in order to save the, cost of his gift. Mr ITarty said he found no revolutionaries or even radical Labourites among the people bring in that district. They were all staunch lories. The trouble, came from lhe bettereducated among the working class rather than from the uneducaled. inarticulate masses. A clergyman of the district with radical views was called a "Bed." and his ideas were very unpopular. The. speaker considered a revolution could not be biought about in Britain.