Part 12

Two solutions of the problem are offered us—the Reformatory School and the Refuges for Homeless and Destitute Children. According to our statisticians, in the former seventy per cent. are reclaimed and reformed. According to the latter, eighty per cent. are similarly improved. Mr. Williams, of Great Queen Street, claims for his institutions that they have an advantage over the reformatories, inasmuch as the taint of a prison attaches to the former; and that the fact of a boy having been an inmate of one of them exerts very often a most unfavourable influence over his prospects in life, however desirous he may be of acting honestly and industriously. For years and years he becomes marked, and is treated with more or less suspicion; and, when this is the case, it is not to be wondered at if he returns to a life in which the standard of action is very different to that of good society, and in which the most successful criminals are the most highly envied and applauded. The returns of the Great Queen Street Refuge show, however, much may be done to cure the evils arising from suffering the street boys of our day to ripen under the devil’s guidance into depravity and crime. Last year, there were admitted there 445 boys, as follows: From various casual wards and other night-shelters, 63; on the application of parties interested in their welfare, 95; on their own application, 98; sent in by the secretary and subscribers from the street, 76; brought in by the boys’ beadle (that is, a person employed to hunt up needy cases), 17; sent by magistrates and policemen, as being utterly destitute, 17; sent by London City missionaries, ragged-school teachers, and others, 44; readmitted from the ship, 60; sent from Newsboys’ Home, 29. The benefit of such an agency is still more apparent when we remember that it is not much more than five years since the _Chichester_ training-ship has been established, and that during that time, upwards of one thousand boys have been placed on board, and in little more than four years and a half the committee have trained and placed out in the Mercantile Marine and Royal Navy as many as seven hundred boys, all of whom, it is to be remembered, were bound to be, from necessity, as it were, the criminal classes of society. But, after all, this is but a drop in the bucket. It is something to do; it is a great deal to do. England requires good sailor lads; and these lads generally, according to the testimony of their masters, turn out such. At Farningham, the secretary, Mr. A. O. Charles, will show you any day three hundred street arabs all growing respectable. England is already overstocked with incapables and scoundrels; and these boys would have been such had not kindly hearts and friendly hands come to the rescue. That they can be trained and made useful we see in the number of well-conducted blacking boys, of whom, I believe, the number is three hundred and sixty-two, and in the little scavengers who pursue their calling almost at the very peril of their life. In 1851 the first Shoe-black Society was formed. There are now eight, and last year the earnings of the boys amounted to upwards of £11,000. Only think of all this money made by London mud!

Clearly the street boy can be elevated in the scale of being. The vices of his early life may be eradicated. The better part of him may be strengthened and called into existence. He is not all bad, nor altogether incurable. He is what you and I might have been, good or bad, had we been left to ourselves. It is hard work winning him over. It requires a patience and a wisdom such as only a few possess, but it can be done, and it must be done, if the future of our country is to be brighter and better than its past. Ah, he is very human, that little unwashed, uncombed, unfed, untended nobody’s child. Leave him alone, and he will be cunning as a serpent, cruel as a wolf, like a roaring lion, ever hungering for its prey. Grown up to a man, and not hung, he will cost the State a great deal of money, for no man wastes property like the thief, and to try him and shut him in prison is very costly work. It is infinitely cheaper to make an honest man of him. For ten pounds you may plant him with a Canadian settler, who will make a man of him, in a very few years. At any rate it is unwise to treat him unkindly, to keep him moving on, to chivy him for ever along the streets, much to the disgust of old ladies, who are always “dratting” those horrid boys. It is to be feared their number is on the increase, and this, I regret to write, is the testimony of one who ought to know. What is the reason? My informant tells me it is diminished parental authority. Every day, mothers and fathers come to him with boys of tender years, whom they declare to be utterly unmanageable. Another cause undoubtedly is our cheap and trashy literature. Recently, a great newsvendor stated before a committee of the House of Commons, that he sold weekly one hundred of “The Black Monk,” one hundred of “Blighted Heart,” five hundred and fifty of “Claude Duval,” fifty of “The Hangman’s Daughter,” and three hundred and fifty of “Paul Clifford.” If you want to see what these boys read, visit Kent Street or the New Cut. Look at the sensational pictures of the cheap illustrated journals, in which murder, suicide, and crime are the staple commodities treated of. Read some of the journals professedly written for boys, and which you will see the boys read if you happen to pass any large establishment at the dinner hour, and it will not be difficult to understand what street boys, if left to themselves, are sure to become.

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THE END.

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CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.