A "Casual" Supper.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 7, Issue 376, 14 May 1866, Page 1

A "Casual" Supper.

(From the Pall Mall Gazette, 15th Pehruary.) In a large room at the back of a shop in Great Queen-street, Lincoln’s Inn, a curious company was last night gathered to supper. The’ room—spacious bare, and dingy, and with wheels and bands of machinery visible here and there —was furnished with benches and tables. Stout wooden pillars supported the roof and deepened the shadows in the dimly lighted chamber. This was the banqueting hall of the St. Giles’s Dormitory and liofuge. By eight o’clock some 200 and odd boys were packed together on the forms, and a substantial supper was being served. A visitor coming in when the feast was at its height, without being aware of the real character of the guests, would probably not at the first cursory glance, as they sat there all massed together, have discovered it. The lads were orderly and well-behaved enough, and, except for a prevailing grimy tint, showed nothing very remarkable in their appearance. There was none of that wildness of manners, that misery of sickness and emaciation, which one is accustomed to look for in. the outcasts of ths streets. Yet these were of the lowest and poorest of this class, who thought they were lucky when they got the shelter of a casual ward, and were content most nights to huddle in a doorway or a railway arch. The managers of the Dormitory, touched by the description they had read in our pages of the ordinary life of the hoy “ casuals ” resolved to collect as many of them as possible by the attraction of a supper, partly that they might for one night at least have the satisfaction of a full meal, and partly to see what sort of creatures they really were, and what chance they offered of beingreclaimed. Notice of the supper was sent to all the casual wards. The master of one workhouse —he almost deserves to be pilloried by name —refused to have anything to do with the project. The others, it is supposed, distributed the tickets as desired. How the notion got into their heads it is not easy to say, but there was a wide-spread idea among the boys that the supper was to be a very poor affair ■ —“ lots o’ jaw, you know,” as one of them described it, growing confidential over the beef and coffee, “ lots o’ jaw, and nothin’ to eat —only skilley “ ’sides,” he added, with a knowing wag of his shaggy head, “ some of our mates ain’t particular fond o’ bobbies asking questions, you know.” Some others owned that they had hesitated about attending. Others said there were many boys who ‘ knew of the supper, but stopped away “’cos they knew jolly well what a sell it would he.”

Notwithstanding, however, the discredit given to the benevolent intentions of the founders of the feast, a large crowd of boys waited patiently in the rain till the doors were opened, about half-past seven. About a hundred hoys are regularly boarded in this Refuge, where they are taught a trade and helped on in the world, and these, with their poor hut decent clothes and clean faces, were quite an aristocracy amid the general company of last night. There were in all somewhere about 120 casuals present. These, as they passed one by one, dripping from the rain, with the furtive, restless glance, the hanging head, and shuffling, shambling step, the nervous twitching of the hands at the tattered cap, with, here and there, in the hardened ones, a brazen indifference and levity —as these passed in there was no mistaking to what class they belonged. All degrees of destitution were represented. A few had homes, but “ father ” was blind or out of work, and they were left to pick up a living as best they could. But “ father and mother both dead” was the common story, with now and then a variation, “ Don’t know nothin’ on ’em ; haven’t seen ’em for ever so longor perhaps, “ Don’t never reck’lect seeing ’em.” One little fellow, when being asked how long he had been without a home, made answer simply, with evidently no suspicion of its pathos, “Always.” He had been born in a workhouse, and his mother (his father he had never known even by name) disappeared before he was well weaned. Many of the boys—almost all under sixteen years of age, the average being about twelve or thirteen —had slept the night before in one or other of the casual wards or in a cheap lodginghouse; but not a few had spent the night in the streets. Four came in together —a wretched, unkempt group —who had slept under the piazza at Covent Garden. Two had crouched together in a half finished sewer. The “ shutter bos” at Drury Lane Theatre had been the bed on which another slept. Of costume there was every variety. Some were in tatters from head to foot, so that it was a marvel how the “ looped and windowed raggedness ” was held together. Plainly there was a great effort made to keep up the appearance of a regular number of garments —at least to have some sort of coat, if only as much of one as collar, with a silk back and the part of a sleeve. One wore a robe of sacking like a poncho. But in one or two instances a poor child might be seen shivering in only a ragged shirt. Shoes, too, were quite da riyueur ; but such shoes ! the soles loose, the sides gaping—the whole ruin bound together with cord lest it should drop to pieces. We have said that, although they filed in singly, chilled and dripping from the rain, the boys seemed unmistakable members of the nomad races of the streets, yet as they sat massed together —whether because one kept the other in countenance, or because the food and warmth had improved their looks —they did not at first strike one who had not seen them before as particularly savage or destitute. Unclean enough they were, no doubt—black with the ingrained dirt, not of days, but of months and even years ; and the incessant scratching which disturbed even the play of knives and forks was dreadfully suggestive. But in health they did not look badly. Wan, sickly faces, pinched and worn, were to be seen, but these were quite the exception. Most of the boys had (as far as dirt would let it be seen) a fresh compexioned, robust appearance. But coughing was heard on all sides with distressing frequency. A doctor’s practised eye would probably have dectected latent’ consumption in a large proportion of the guests last night, and not always in the most sickly looking. One could not help wondering how many of these children would live to manhood ; and whether with such a prospect of manhood as lay before them, it were not to be regretted that they had ever lived at all. A more certain, rapid, and plainly marked out road to ruin there could not be than these hundred and twenty lads are now following. Questioned as to how they lived, their answers were vague and indefinite, “Do anything, sleep anywhere,” was the substance of their stories. After supper, when they had grown more confidential, , about a score owned to having been in prison,

most only once, but some twice and even three times. They insisted, however, that they had been sent there not for any grave oft’ence, but for tearing up workhouse clothes and similar misconduct. But of coarse their answers were not necessarily truthful. Of the supper itself much might be said. Half-a-pound of good cold roast beef, with a large piece of bread (about twice the size of the casual “ toke,”) washed down with a cup of coffee, was a meal so lavish and luxurious that at first it almost awed them by its magnificence. Indeed, for a while, except for the clatter of knives and forks and the conversation, of the visitors, there was comparative quiet. Even when the shyness had worn off, the business on hand was too solemn and important to admit of idle talk, which, besides, was.a waste of time. As the plates were cleared, tongues began to loosen, and when large dishes of smoking plum pudding (a pound to each allowance) appeared, there was a tremendous cheer. They had come for gruel and had got beef and pudding. It was a sad sign that many of these poor boys did not yield to their appetities, but saved the greater part of the pudding for another meal. Except a few of the regular tramp order, who had pouches knowingly contrived in their tattered raiment, most of the lads were puzzled to know how to carry away their surplus, and bits of newspaper were gratefully received. Nothing could be better than the behaviour of the company. There was no quarrelling among each other as to who should be helped first, no invasion of each other’s dishes, and they showed’considerable conscientiousness in passing up the shares first to' those who sat near the wall and distant from the waiters. They were quiet and attentive when addresse'd by Lord yhaftesburj- and other speakers, and joined in the singing of a hymn decorously and with evident enjoyment of the music. At the end, fourpence a piece was given to them to pay for lodgings. As they dispersed it was sad to think of the paths to which in all probability they were returning after this brief gleam of prosperity There are, it is calculated, 10,000 such boys in London, and as many pounds, we are assured, would rescue them from their evil haunts, and suffice for their education in a trade. Surely the matter will not he left to rest with the gratification of mere curiosity.