150 homeward passages had been paid, and in the two years from 1871 to 1873 the number of persons who received relief was 21,333, who with their wives and families represented a considerable community of poverty. During the year 1,983 grants were made of sums varying from less than 10s. to 1,324 persons, 10s. to 431, 15s. to 47, £1 to 135, and so on to £5, which was allowed in a few instances, while sick allowances were granted in 292 cases. One important and suggestive feature of this excellent Society is that it numbers among its members not only subscribers to other charitable institutions, but members of the medical and legal professions, who frequently render their aid to applicants free of expense, in order either to relieve them from suffering, or to protect them from the errors or impositions to which their ignorance and helplessness might expose them.
There is no restriction either as regards creed or nationality, and though each case is matter for inquiry, the only persons disqualified for receiving relief are those who are detected as impostors – persons who are deemed to have sufficient support from any other source, those who cannot give a good reason for having come to this country, and proof of their having striven to obtain work and to labour for a maintenance, those who are proved to have been guilty of fraud or immoral practices, and beggars, or drunken, dissolute persons.
As regards the numbers of persons who have received relief since the institution was founded, there is the tremendous total of 21,645 applicants on behalf of 129,299 individuals. What an army it represents! Of these Germany (which till recently included Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia) represents 71,913; Sweden and Norway, 9,422; Holland, 8,878; France, 7,339; Russia, 7,006; Italy, 5,415; Belgium, 4,578; Denmark, 4,215; the West Indies, 1,716; Switzerland, 1,685; and so on in a diminishing proportion till we come to "Central Africa!" – a very recent case, no doubt.
Can any one question the good that has been effected by an institution so careful not only to relieve with rigid economy, but also to do its work on so truly voluntary a principle? If the temporary and comparatively casual aid afforded to poor and destitute strangers works so beneficially, however, the pensions, to which only very extreme cases are elected, are even still more in the nature of help given to those who are ready to perish, Here are some specimen cases:
A watchmaker of Frankfort, seventy-four years old, and nearly seventy years in this country, disabled by paralysis, with a wife, who is a waistcoat maker, unable to compete with the sewing-machine; one son, twenty years old, who, having some small situation, lives with them, pays the rent, and "does what he can;" a boy of fourteen who works as an errand boy.
An Italian looking-glass maker, seventy-three years old, and fifty-three years in this country. Has lately lived by making light frames, but health and strength fail, and he is suffering from asthma. His wife, an Englishwoman, and aged sixty-six, works as a charwoman. He has two sons, each married and with large families, so that they can do nothing for him.
A French widow, sixty-seven years old, and thirty-two years in this country, and paralysed for the last thirteen years. Her only daughter who is in delicate health, earns her "living" by needlework, but can only gain enough for her own maintenance.
These are only three of the first cases in the official report of pensioners, and they are not selected because of their peculiarly distressing character. When it is remembered that this society has not, in a general way, sufficient means to grant more than two shillings a week in the way of relief, and when we take the trouble to observe that in the majority of cases where a pension is granted the recipients have been so long resident here that they may be said to have lost their nationality in ours, will it be too much to ask of England – alike the asylum for the persecuted and the teacher of liberty and of charity – that the "Friends of Foreigners in Distress" shall be regarded as the friends of all of us alike in the name of Him of whom it was said, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?"
But I have not quite done with the pensioners. I must ask the reader to go with me to Lower Norwood, where amidst a strange solitude, that is almost desolation, we will visit three ladies of the ancien régime, one of whom, at least, began life nearly ninety years ago as a fitting playmate for the daughter of a king.
WITH THOSE WHO ARE LEFT DESOLATE
There is something about the aspect of Nature as seen from the railway station at Lower Norwood on a damp and misty day which, if not depressing, can scarcely be regarded as conducive to unusual hilarity. I speak guardedly because of my respect for the district, and lest I should in any way be suspected of depreciating any particular locality as an eligible place of residence. In the latter regard I may mention that the immediate neighbourhood of Lower Norwood Station is not at present converted into a small township by the erection of long rows of tenements on freehold or long leasehold plots. My remarks apply only to the general outlook from the road, amidst an atmosphere threatening drizzle, and beneath a sky betokening rain. As far as houses are concerned, there seemed to me, on the occasion of my last visit, far more probability of pulling down than of building. In fact, I went for the purpose of inspecting a whole series of very remarkable tenements which I had heard were soon either to disappear from the oozy-looking green quadrangle of which they formed three sides, or were to be converted to another purpose than that of the dwelling-places of a few elderly ladies who occupied one dreary side, whence they could look at the desolation of the closed houses on the other.[1]
It will not be without regret that I shall hear of this intention being carried out, for the houses are devoted to the sheltering of alms-folk; and the alms-folk are the elder pensioners of that admirable association, the Society of the Friends of Foreigners in Distress, which, for above ninety years, has been doing its useful work among those who, but for its prompt and judicious aid, would feel that they were "alone in a strange land."
As a part of its original provision for the relief of some of the applicants who, after long residence in this country, had fallen into a distressed condition at an age when they were unable any longer to maintain themselves by their own exertions, the society instituted the almshouses at Lower Norwood. There is now an impression among the directors of the charity that their intentions may be carried out in future by some better method than placing a number of aged and frequently infirm persons in a comparatively remote group of dwellings, where they are peculiarly lonely, and lack frequent personal attention and general sympathy. There can be no doubt that almshouses have frequently been associated a little too closely with that monastic or conventual practice with which they mostly originated, and that the retirement, almost amounting to seclusion, into which the inmates of such places are removed, may be very far from affording to the aged the kind of asylum which they most desire. Alas, in many instances, to be placed in an almshouse is to be put out of the way, – to be conveniently disposed of; with the inference that every possible provision has been made for comfortable maintenance. Thus, susceptibilities are quieted. The aged pensioners are supposed to be periodically visited; their wants attended to by somebody or other who "sees that they are all right," and the whole matter is conveniently forgotten, except when a casual traveller passes a quaint, ancient, mouldy-looking, but still picturesque block of buildings, and inquires to what charity they belong; not without a kind of uneasy fancy that there is a custom in this country of burying certain old people before their time – shutting them out of the light and warmth of every-day companionship; or, to change the metaphor, making organised charity a kind of Hooghly, on the tide of which the aged, who are supposed to be nearing the end of their mortal life, are floated into oblivion until the memory of them is revived by death.
It is no part of my intention to represent that the almshouses at Lower Norwood bore such a significance, but the conditions to which I have referred appear to be so inevitable where places like these are concerned, that I cannot question the good sense of the directors of the Charity in determining to supersede them, and to carry on the work by annual or monthly pensions only. On behalf of the few remaining inmates of these queer, half-deserted, and failing tenements, it was desirable that the proposition should be acted on at once, and a more comfortable provision be made, at least, for those who wait on, with constantly
Since this was written the Almshouses have been closed, and their two or three remaining inmates "lodged out."
