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197
classes. Beer was cheap at l½d. to 3d. a pint, gin 8d. a pint or
4d. for a "double" and this prevalent taste for liquor was amply
met by the more than numerous public houses in areas close
to the river. Tea had not yet become a serious competitor to
alcoholic beverages and nearly 6 out of every 1,000 persons
were charged with being drunk and disorderly. In the streets,
shoeless children were a common sight and elderly women were
sometimes to be seen standing on doorsteps in "coarse aprons"
occasionally smoking clay pipes.
Compulsory education, which was then under the jurisdiction
of the School Board for London, had not long been removed
from the voluntary "2d. per week for infants and 4d. for others"
kind of tuition and was not to become a County Council
responsibility for a couple more years yet. Children were still
leaving school at 12 years of age in order to work and add a
little to the family's income.
By modern standards the Board of Guardians seemed
harsh, requiring disposal of many family and personal effects
before relief, mainly "in kind" was given. A curious corollary
to this was that acceptance of official assistance resulted in a
loss of franchise.
Many people, jealous of their independence, preferred to
starve rather than have recourse to that odious but well-meant
effort, the workhouse, where refusal to carry out the workhouse
master's orders rendered an inmate liable to prosecution on the
charge of "refusing to carry out his allotted task". A most
distressing sign of the times was the early Monday morning
queue of penurious women at the pawnshop ready to pledge
the family's possessions for food and the next week's rent.
Nevertheless, much good work and assistance were offered and
accepted from the various church organisations which, supported
by many well-to-do and influential people, appeared to be much
more numerous then than now. Toye's orphanage, a barracklike
establishment in Lewisham Road, typified the unobtrusive
one-man charity so common in those days. It brought into
many young lives the love and care so often sadly lacking and,
although pathetic by modern standards, the bodily needs of
many a deserted and lonely child were met by this dominating,
bearded and patriarchal figure from his own resources and with
the aid of gifts from a small band of sympathisers. Some twenty
or so elderly ladies were similarly catered for by a Miss Distant
at three or four houses in Evelyn Street.