The women sleep very placidly and awake really refreshed. Breakfast is served in the dining-room, after which the inmates disperse for the day. The Sister in Charge of the refuge, like most other thoughtful and observant women who help the poor, is of the opinion that destitution has enormously increased since the war owing to the housing famine. It often happens that a woman will come to her in infinite distress, and explain that, like her husband, she is out at work, and that at the end of the day they have returned to find their bits of furniture put on to the landing and the door of their room locked. Another tenant has been found at a higher rent, and the landlord has simply and forcibly ejected them, flinging father, mother and children into the street.
It is very easy to point out that such cases can appeal to the law, but while the law is being put in motion, the furniture disintegrates or disappears, or, maybe, has to be sold to defray expenses, so that in the ultimate the law does not help at all. If it were possible to pass an act which should bring such a proceeding within the immediate jurisdiction of the police court, so that an officer could straightway go to the landlord and bring him up before the magistrate, something might be done; meanwhile rents go up and up, rooms are more difficult to get, and the landlord of the house seizes every opportunity of increasing his income. In Spitalfields a family thus dispossessed can go to the shelter, the husband is given house room in the men’s quarters, and the wife and children are looked after with the rest. Some few cases there are, the sister admitted, where destitution has been induced by drink. Such cases are always advanced in life; young and middle-aged women cannot and do not drink, as I have myself observed.
It will be seen that for the most part the hospitality of the Crispin Shelter is enjoyed by a selective group, and this, not through any exercise of favouritism, but because the old habitués line up early and get in first.
During the winter evenings, entertainments are organised at the shelter; professional singers, pianists and actors come down and give turns. Indeed, the whole atmosphere is stimulative, and the homeless look forward to the social, quite as much as to the material, benefits provided. On Sunday also, a dinner of hot soup is provided, to which all who so desire may come. They gather in from the street to enjoy the welcome fare. It is good soup, hot, strong, and clean, and it is prepared in large boilers, from which great ladles pour the liquid into huge tureens. No one is turned hungry away. There is a full attendance, but, like the kindly deeds for which this refuge is noted, the fame is not blazoned abroad. The destitute have their own secrets, and as I have said, they may quite possibly preserve a discreet silence, lest they should be crowded out. Refuges run on these lines near the centre of London, and in the outlying suburbs, would do very much to solve the problem of the destitute woman unable to pay for her bed. The working expenses of St. Crispin, as will be seen, are not excessive, and if a registry of employment were kept at each establishment, a certain proportion would emerge from the ranks of the outcast into self-support. Thousands of pounds every year are subscribed for the erection of hostels, where business women and girls engaged in offices may live in decent surroundings, at a figure considerably below the average rate demanded by a boarding house.
I am very glad to feel that business women and girls have these advantages, but it is not for them I am concerned. It is for those others, who, save for the helping hand extended by the Crispin Refuge and one or two similar places, have no hope of a bed unless they can collect the necessary pence.
I have mentioned that those women who wish to spend more than five days are asked to produce some kind of a recommendation. Many of these are very rudimentary. In one case a woman who had been turned out of her room, to make way for a more profitable tenant, asked to be allowed to stay for another week. She was in work and proudly produced a letter from her employer, which ran as follows: “Mary Brown has worked for us for a year, and we ain’t missed nothing yet.” The employee exhibited this testimonial with glowing rapture, for it would seem, in this quarter of London at any rate, dishonesty is the unforgivable crime. This particular inmate stayed on the whole of the season, for no objection is made to the inmates getting paid employment, and in no case is a charge made.
“It helps them to get boots and a few clothes,” said the sister; “if not for themselves for the children. And they want to collect all they can in the winter, or they may have nowhere to go when we close down.”
All sorts and conditions of women go to Crispin Street. I have already spoken of the “rover” type, but this does not exhaust the unexpected.
“We’ve had B.A.’s here,” said the Sister; “women who have taken the highest degrees in science. We’ve also had women doctors and a distinguished artist.”
There wasn’t anything specific to account for their declension in the social scale; none of them seemed to have been in prison, and there was no doubt as to their brains. Probably some shock, a big emotional strain, had broken them. They none of them attempted to get back to their professions, and when suggestions were made that they might be found
