The Cheapest Hotel in London.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXX, Issue VII, 14 February 1903, Page 457

The Cheapest Hotel in London.

LONDON’S OaLY FREE SHELTER. Five hundred men, of many nationalities, of many occupations—but all of them homeless, penniless, in the world s richest city—may be seen any evening, however wet or cold it may be, forming a long, black line in one of the obscure streets of the backyard of London. Night after night this human driftwood floats down to the dock wall, weary and wretched from ceaseless, bitter lighting for a chance to live. What is the magnet that draws these outcasts out of the swirling currents and eddies of the throbbing sea of life of the great city? A hunk of bread and a box in which to rest the tired body. For this bit of comfort will men, halfclad, suffering from hunger and lack of sleep, shiver for hours in the eold rain. In all London there is no other haven where the homeless, penniless man may lind food and shelter. What one would pay for a dinner in a West End restaurant would carry these 500 despairing ones through another night, and strengthen them for their conflict with the world on the morrow. For few of these men are absolute derelicts, helpless wrecks, drifting on life's sea; rather are they like ships in distress, more or less storm-wrenched and waterlogged, to be sure, but only waiting for a tow to the repair dock. And sometimes the salvage is only three-halfpence! Many a human craft adrift has been towed into a calm harbour by the workers at Medland Hall, Ratcliff, London’s only free shelter. Clergymen, university men, doctors, lawyers, editors, publishers, journalists, schoolmasters —all have formed part of this daily line of distress. Scarcely a tiade or occupation is there that has not been represented. Shoemakers, driven out of employment by the invasion of foreign goods; sailors from foreign lands waiting for ships; aged enginedrivers physically unfit to be in charge