THE EAST ENDER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 223, 19 September 1940, Page 9

THE EAST ENDER.

DOWN RIVER LONDON.

NOWHERE SUCH DIVERSITY. The Rev. D. Gardner Miller, Superintendent of the Christchurch Central Mission, spent five years In mission work in the East End of London, and writes with a personal knowledge of its people. (By GARDNER MILLER.) East London is a worjd of ite own. From Shoreditch to Silvertown, from Wapping to Whitechapel, you will find more radical differences and queer cus- ' tome than you will find in any similar area anywhere else on earth. Jfo one who has ever lived in East London can ever get away from it. Its smells and sights and sounde follow you and nag at you to return, though your present domicile be next'door to Arcadia. Two years ago this month I wae back in London, and was an interested spectator of Chamberlain's dramatic return from Germany waving Hitler's scrap of paper announcing that all was well between him and Britain. How posterity will laugh as the historian tells the taTe of these scraps of paper and our childish belief in them. Widow's Courage. I stayed for a time in Bethnal Green, in a house with a basement, from the window of which you caught a glimpse of the feet of the paseers-by. My hostess was a widow of 80 who had faced adversity with great courage. The Government had issued instructions how to seal windows and doors in ease of air raid with incendiary bombs. It was pathetic to see her industriously go about with a roll of gummed paper covering cracks in the walla. I met her one day in the street going for her gas mask, and I shall never forget her thin voice as she told me that she knew ehe would die as eoon as she put it on. Poor old eoul, -wonder if her house is still standing, and where she is.

For diversity of character and for many and queer ways of makjng a living,* commend me to Dockland. Sit in a dockside coffee house and you will hear half a dozen languages. Better still, stroll into one of the several magnificent sailors' homes and have a chat with the "super." The Swede, the Chinaman, the Lascar, and the negro ri*b shoulders with the Scot, the Irish, and the cocky little Cockney. The "super," if f he ieri't too busy trying to get a burly sailor a job whose ticket isn*t very satisfactory, will make your flesh tingle and your heart skip a beat with true yarns of fights and crime. He will also tell you of men, coloured as well ae white, who have, with a smile, gone out into the Great Beyond for the eake of a pal. Life in tbe Raw. Life is raw in Dockland, especially when work ie scarce. You don't feel like eating when you have seen a couple of hundred men watch the dock gates shut in their faces, and know there is nothing else for it but to tighten their belts and go home later to the missus and youngsters who have been hoping against hope that something might turn In the squalid homes of Dockland there is sacrifice and grit, as well as wretchedness. To walk the docke from the Tower Bridge to Woolwich is to experience one of the greatest sights of the world. Here the ends of the earth meet and old Father Thames is the rendezvous. But what opposition among the East Enders when the docks were 'being conetructed! In those days river robbery was a thriving trade, and if legend does not lie, many a fortune was made by systematic plunder. Lightermen, porters, carmen, watersiders, raised loud protests that their living was toeing endangered, and the whole river populace was up in arme against the coming of the docks. It was estimated, so a London chronicler says,, that eleven thousand riverside robbers were thieving* as much as half a million pounds a year. In a Class by Himself. 'Speaking of robbers remind* me of the many that inhabit the East End. I remember one Sunday evening making my way to a historic church. It was dark end I was not very sure of my direction. Finally, I knew I was lost. I 'began asking my way from the folks I met. Most of them kept near area railings of houses and seemed to| slink along instead of walk. I asked" , about a dozen people and not one of them could epeak English. Of course, I came across the usual policeman and he put "me on the right road.

Later on , I was to know that unsavoury district rather well, but somehow I never forget the eerie feeling I had that dark Sunday night when my questions met with strange tonguee and shaking of heads.

For kindness to one another in illness, the East Ender is in a class by himself. To sit in a grimy 'back shop and talk politics with a greasy individual when you have good reason for believing that he is a fence is quite entertaining. I tame across more. than one instance of 'the kindness of that prince of crooks, the late Horatio Bottomley, M.P.

But you can't destroy London, for London lives in the hearts of all those who call themselves British. They are a tough lot who live in that sprawling city, especially those between Wapping and Westminster.