Anonymous

“ It is the ignorance of the Irish, that is the nurse of their misery; lighten this darkness, and as the clouds of superstition and prejudice roll away, whatever germs of good, and they are many, now lie undeveloped in their hearts, will blossom beneath the genial rays of knowledge, and bring forth fruit in season. ”

“ They satisfy the head—they ought to influence the heart; for if it be a duty at once acknowledged and indisputable to exercise charity by clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, raising the fallen, helping the weak, educating the young, and visiting the sick, the widow, and the fatherless in affliction, there must abide an awful responsibility on those, who not only decline to do so personally, but refuse to strengthen the hands of others dedicating time and energy to these works of love. ”

“ Can it be right, or wise, or just, or patriotic, or Christian, to allow them, whatever be their earnestness, self-denial, or single-mindedness, to visit and relieve the Lazarus of your own door, uncheered by your sympathies, unaccompanied by your prayers, unprovided with your alms? Let each one answer for himself. ”

“ To rescue them from the evils of a careless tending; to preserve them from disease engendered by deleterious cordials, administered by ignorant and impatient guardians to hush their cries; to insure them the common blessings of light and air, of cleanliness and warmth, is essentially a mother’s charity. ”

“ But the most industrious persons cannot always obtain occupation. Breaks in employment perpetually occur, especially in the case of females. Servants out of place, laundresses and charwomen, milliners and sempstresses, alike dependent on families visiting London only for the season, all may be included in this list; simply to relieve them in distress would be to increase the evil; it is a different thing to find them work, hence the formation of the
WORK SOCIETY,
of which the intention is to purchase, by subscription, flannel, calico, &c. ”

“ No habitual receiver of the Blessed Sacrament can fail to have been struck with the gratifying sight afforded by the regular presence and devout behaviour of a class of young men, who commonly furnish a fifth of the Communicants at St. Mary Abbott’s, on the third Sunday in the month; a class which, however independent of the actual working of the Society, owes both its formation and guidance to the zeal and perseverance of not the least active or efficient Member of its Committee. ”

“ In passing from the juvenile to the adult members of the labouring classes, the Visitors are bound to keep the same principle in view of helping them to help themselves. Whilst either are capable of so doing, it is the truest charity to withhold all other aid. In children, this is effected by insisting on their receiving an Education adapted to their future prospects: in adults, by fostering providence and forethought. “Frugality,” said Goldsmith, writing to his brother, “in the lower orders of mankind, is true ambition; it affords the only ladder for the poor to rise to preferment. ”

“ All experience tends to prove a probable connection between dirt and vice. There is truth in the proverb, “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” We have the warrant of Holy Writ, for stating that men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. In every attempt to elevate the inhabitants of a neglected District, respect must be had to its sanitary arrangements. ”

“ Public Worship and the Sabbath rest, pressed home on the consciences of all, and the necessity of the Lord’s Supper inculcated on the serious but timid believer, in every case requiring further counsel and advice, he commends them to the ministration of the Clergy, who are thus enabled to exercise a supervision over the masses of their population that would be impossible without some such intermediate agency. ”

“ Must he, with a family heretofore respectably and honestly supported—after his tools, furniture, and clothes are pawned,—be at last consigned to what is, in fact, to him, the degradation of the workhouse, or so pledge his future labour, under an accumulation of debt incurred perforce, that all hope of future freedom from its load must, on reasonable calculation, be shut out? ”

“ The Provident Club, instituted for the reception of small sums, from one penny upwards, is also doing its best to strengthen the same practical thrift. Though open all the year, its chief receipts are taken, as might be rationally concluded, during those months when the other funds are not in operation. In one District, where the Visitor herself collects the weekly savings, the comparatively large sum of £8 has been set aside. As no interest is allowed in this Club, such p. 22a fact goes far to confirm the opinion that it is safe keeping, not usury, that the poor desire. ”

“ Influence follows, as a matter of course, and is used, in most instances, under a solemn sense of responsibility for the temporal and eternal welfare of those submitting to its sway. House by house, and room by room, the inmates of the cellar and the garret, are brought into contact, and joined in bands of unity with their fellow-Christians. None but the vicious are held as outcasts, and for the worst of these the means and place of repentance are religiously kept open. ”

“ Nor will the lady, surveying with a grateful heart, the commodious arrangement of the apartments of her little ones, have her sense of gratification, in bending over the cradle of her son and heir, diminished by the recollection that she has been instrumental in procuring for the offspring of others, some amongst those comforts so abundantly bestowed upon her own. ”

“ And if, as is presumed, our boys and girls are taught, in advancing youth, to set apart, on principle, a certain percentage of their allowances for purposes of Christian love, where will they find an object for their sympathies more in unison with their age and feelings than one devoted to the reception of children far younger and more feeble than themselves?
At the age of two years, the infants are transferred to one of the three Schools of the District. ”

“ A wife, therefore, who makes her husband’s shirts, may obtain it for little more than her own labour. That this Society supplies a gap in the District Organization is not more plain from the consideration that out of the 144 workers, whom it has employed, 118 have been recommended by the Visitors, than from the position which it has assumed, as a valuable coadjutor in the industrial training of young females. ”

“ In conclusion, the Committee would humbly commend the future proceedings of the Society to the compassionate care of that Lord, who being rich unto all, has blessed its operations to the present date, beseeching Him to overrule its plans and works to His own everlasting glory and the final salvation of those who now and hereafter shall regulate, subserve or benefit by, the ministrations of that abounding charity, which it is its especial object to stimulate, develope, and control. ”

“ Nowhere are the evils of overcrowded chambers more apparent. Single rooms frequently shelter two, and even three families. Its choicest district exhibits a return of forty families to eighteen houses; of one hundred and sixty persons, exclusive of lodgers, sleeping in thirty nine rooms. The entire population, inclusive of Palace Place, must exceed one thousand five hundred souls. Prior to the erection of the present School, it was impossible for ladies to penetrate its recesses. ”

“ This remark applies with peculiar force to suburban districts such as Kensington, where a large proportion of the heads of families proceed early in the morning to transact their daily business in London, and do not return until the evening. The fault of their ignorance is not however to be charged to the Committee of the Society, who do all in their power to make known its title to assistance, both by the publication of Reports, and the appointment of a collector, whose business it is not merely to gather old, but also to solicit new subscriptions. ”

“ With some of the smaller tradespeople, who formerly were accustomed to keep open their shops, and drive their usual trade on Sunday, the persuasions of the Visitors have been effectual in procuring an entire cessation of business; and others, who have not strength of principle wholly to forego their profits, trusting to the blessing of the Lord, have yet been influenced, by the prevailing sense of decorum, to intermit their sale during the hours of Divine Service. ”

“ Charitable persons using its agency to furnish clothes for the Jennings’ Buildings and Gore Lane Schools, or, indeed, for the poor at all, have the double satisfaction of knowing that they are doing good, not merely by their gift, but by its preparation also; while to the ladies superintending the cutting out and execution of the work, and conducting its weekly sale, special thanks are tendered by the Committee, who are not unaware of the time and regularity that so intricate a duty must demand. ”

“ Already thirty children have gone from this school to earn their own living in the states of life to which it has pleased God to call them; and if in their different situations they are practising, as the reports of their employers testify, the virtues of honesty, sobriety, and industry, of gentleness and modesty, there can be no undue assumption in attributing this happy issue far more to discipline and precept, than to nature or example. ”

“ For if by a judicious advance of money, it be possible to procure that attendance, medicine, nourishment, and change of air, required for the restoration of the sinking patient to his normal health, it is clear that the productive energy, which is the immediate source of national wealth, must be increased, by the same means that carry into effect a paramount part of Christian obligation. ”

“ The expenditure for rent, books, master, &c., is £114, of which only £61 is obtained by regular subscriptions. But it most assuredly becomes all who have at heart the interests of Scriptural religion, who desiderate the spread of Gospel Light, and love the truth as it is in Jesus, to combine in strengthening by both personal and pecuniary aid, an Educational Institution, abundantly blessed in the rescue of many children from heathenism, vice, and crime. ”

“ Mary Abbott’s, the Ninth Annual Report of the Kensington Church of England District Visiting Society, the Committee feel constrained to call the serious attention of all residents blessed with the will and power of exercising a discriminating charity to the several subscription lists annually put forth from the date of its foundation. ”

“ A large stock of blankets is annually distributed on loan to deserving persons, who are considered by the Visitors in want of such a boon, and not likely to abuse it. For several years, and with an experience of many hundred blankets, but few cases have occurred in which their judgment has been deceived. Some half dozen blankets may have been pawned, and as many lost; more are fairly worn out. ”

“ Large areas of formerly vacant ground, both in the New Town and on Campden Hill, are now covered with houses, in the occupation of tenants who must possess competent, if not abundant, means. In Palace Gardens, mansions have sprung up, which, in all the appliances of a luxurious and tasteful civilization, throw into the shade the neighbouring Royal residence. ”

“ No exertion ought to be spared to procure for it water, light, and systematic cleansing; against the demoralizing overcrowding of single rooms the most stringent clauses of the Lodging House Act should be rigidly enforced. ”

“ Being a cul de sac, unlighted, irregularly paved, and indifferently supplied with water, its best disposed inhabitants find it difficult to cultivate the habits of civilized life. The majority give the matter up, and seek in alcoholic and other stimulants, an antidote against wretchedness, malaria, and disease. ”

“ Insurances on life and against accidents are its forms amongst people enjoying wealth and competence. With others, possessed of smaller, but permanent incomes, the savings’ banks develope its latent energies. ”

“ I feel the uselessness, of impressing upon the people the advantages of cleanliness, when such drawbacks as I have mentioned come to the assistance of their naturally dirty habits.”
“In this eight-roomed house forty people, men, women and children, live. ”

“ Mary Abbott’s Church.
8. The Visitors shall all be members of the Established Church; their business shall be, to keep a List of all the families in their several Districts, according to a prescribed form; to inquire into all cases recommended; to administer relief; and to circulate Books and Tracts upon the List of this Society.
9. Relief shall not be given in any case by the Visitor to a larger amount than 2s. a week for adults, and 1s. for each child, nor continue for a longer period than four weeks, without the sanction of the Board, at its monthly meeting. ”

“ Under the pressure of circumstances thus doubly adverse, with a sphere of usefulness steadily increasing, yet decreasing supplies wherewith to occupy it profitably, it may be a matter of surprise to some, that the operations of the Society have been so efficiently and perseveringly maintained. ”

“ These constitute a reserve fund p. 11always available to its members, in seasons of unlooked for privation. Ordinarily, the man who has money in each of these Clubs requires no extraneous assistance; he is sufficient for himself. His three grand winter wants, fuel, raiment, and rent, are all provided for. This independence enables him to understand the pleasures of an honest industry; raises him above the influence of any trifling fluctuation in his trade, and educes at once and fosters the invaluable characteristic of consistent self-respect. ”

“ This establishment consists of two good sized airy rooms, in a quiet part of the town, fitted up with cradles, mattresses, and other articles of infantile furniture, for the reception of babies, whose mothers are engaged in daily employment. A small yard or playground is attached, where the children old enough to run alone may take their exercise without any fear of the dangers incidental to the streets. ”

“ I had learnt from books to be disinterested and generous, before I was taught from experience the necessity of being prudent.” This homely but difficult truth is becoming year by year more generally acted upon. It influences the whole social body. ”

“ In one street alone a considerable number of small dwellings, containing from six to eight rooms, have recently been built, by which comfortable lodgings are secured to upwards of five hundred new inhabitants, of whom a large majority, on any failure of health or employment, would become eligible candidates for temporary relief. ”

“ The poor mother cannot afford to remain at home all day to tend her child. What then becomes of her babe? Shall it be consigned to the care of some aged neighbour, at a cost of a third part of her daily earnings ”