THE BITTER CRY
OF
OUTCAST LONDON.
AN INQUIRY INTO
THE CONDITION OF
THE ABJECT POOR.
LONDON:
JAMES CLARKE & CO.,
13, Fleet Street, E.C.
*** We desire thankfully to acknowledge the assistance kindlyafforded us in the pursuit of our investigations by the Secretary andAgents of the London City Mission, and also by the Rev. A. G. BROWN ofthe East London Tabernacle, and his Missionaries.
All communications should be addressed to Rev. ANDREW MEARNS, LondonCongregational Union, Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, E.C.
THE BITTER CRY
OF
OUTCAST LONDON.
There is no more hopeful sign in the Christian Church of to-day than theincreased attention which is being given by it to the poor and outcastclasses of society. Of these it has never been wholly neglectful; if ithad it would have ceased to be Christian. But it has, as yet, onlyimperfectly realised and fulfilled its mission to the poor. Untilrecently it has contented itself with sustaining some outsideorganizations, which have charged themselves with this special function,or what is worse, has left the matter to individuals or to little bandsof Christians having no organization. For the rest it has been satisfiedwith a superficial and inadequate district visitation, with the more orless indiscriminate distribution of material charities, and with openinga few rooms here and there into which the poorer people have beengathered, and by which a few have been rescued. All this is good in itsway and has done good; but by all only the merest edge of the great dark[Pg 4]region of poverty, misery, squalor and immorality has been touched. Weare not losing sight of the London City Mission, whose agents areeverywhere, and whose noble work our investigations have led us to valuemore than ever, but after all has been done the churches are making thediscovery that seething in the very centre of our great cities,concealed by the thinnest crust of civilization and decency, is a vastmass of moral corruption, of heart-breaking misery and absolutegodlessness, and that scarcely anything has been done to take into thisawful slough the only influences that can purify or remove it.
Whilst we have been building our churches and solacing ourselves withour religion and dreaming that the millennium was coming, the poor havebeen growing poorer, the wretched more miserable, and the immoral morecorrupt; the gulf has been daily widening which separates the lowestclasses of the community from our churches and chapels, and from alldecency and civilization. It is easy to bring an array of facts whichseem to point to the opposite conclusion—to speak of the noble army ofmen and women who penetrate the vilest haunts, carrying with them theblessings of the gospel; of the encouraging reports published byMissions, Reformatories, Refuges, Temperance Societies; of TheatreServices, Midnight Meetings and Special Missions. But what does it allamount to? We are simply living in a fool's paradise if we suppose thatall th