Social work in London, 1869 to 1912 : a history of the Charity Organisation Society / by Helen Bosanquet.
- Helen Bosanquet
- Date:
- 1914
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Social work in London, 1869 to 1912 : a history of the Charity Organisation Society / by Helen Bosanquet. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.
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![I.] DEGRADATION OF LABOUR The Paddington Charity Organisation Committee, shortly after starting work, asked for five plain clothes detectives to be placed on duty in their district, with the result that 36 mendicants were arrested in one week. After the second week the nuisance was so much diminished that the ordinary police were able to cope with it. It cannot be doubted that behind this mass of chronic pauperism, beggary and crime, there was an appalling amount of genuine misfortune and suffering. Not only the widows and orphans needed help, but men and women broken down by sickness or unemployment found their real needs overlooked in the clamour of mendicancy. Distressful Poplar, e.g., then as in later days, was suffering from the effects of an ill-conceived strike which had driven away employment and left thousands of workers stranded. The very existence of the degraded class was a standing insult and injury to ,the genuine worker, who shared its reputation for idleness and in- efficiency, and was deprived by it of the succour which should have come to him in times of misfortune. There was at the time a large demand for labour in the North of England, but in 1870 we find the secretary* to the Newcastle Charity Organisation Society writing: — I regret exceedingly to inform you that, while I find that there are nearly 3,000 men required in the next six months, nearly every employer refuses to receive London men. Messrs. Straker and Love say they have had men from London—32 of them—of whom only 3 or 4 were worth anything. Mr. Langdale, who will require about 300 men at the end of the year writes :—* It will be no use sendmg men from the Thames or similar places, where constitutions are broken, and the men enfeebled bv dissipations and excesses of all kinds.' I have reason to know that even London employers do not like or use London men. A large brewer told me some time ago a fact which struck me very much. He said, 'we never take a London man. If a man in our employ is ill and * This was probably Mr. W. T. Stead. B](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21359362_0025.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
