It appears that all this district is a great centre of what is known as ‘sweating.’  Thus artificial flowers, of which I was shown a fine specimen, a marguerite, are made at a price of 1_s_. per gross, the workers supplying their own glue.  An expert hand, beginning at eight in the morning and continuing till ten at night, can produce a gross and a half of these flowers, and thus net 1_s_. 6_d_., minus the cost of the glue, scissors, and sundries.  The Officers of the Army find it extremely difficult to talk to these poor people, who are invariably too busy to listen.  Therefore, some of them have learnt how to make artificial flowers themselves, so that when they call they can join in the family manufacture, and, while doing so, carry on their conversation.

For the making of match-boxes and the sticking on of the labels the pay is 2-1/2_d_. per gross.  Few of us, I think, would care to manufacture 144 matchboxes for 2-1/2_d_.  I learned that it is not unusual to find little children of four years of age helping their mothers to make these boxes.

The Slum Sisters attached to the Settlement, who are distinct from the Maternity Nurses, visit the very poorest and worst neighbourhoods, for the purpose of helping the sick and afflicted, and incidentally of cleaning their homes.  Also, they find out persons who are about sixty-nine years of age, and contribute to their maintenance, so as to save them from being forced to receive poor-law relief, which would prevent them from obtaining their old-age pensions when they come to seventy.

Here is an illustration of the sort of case with which these Slum Sisters have to deal; perhaps, I should say, the easiest sort of case.  An old man and his wife whom they visited, lived in a clean room.  The old woman fell sick, and before she died the Slum Sisters gave her a bath, which, as these poor people much object to washing, caused all the neighbours to say that they had killed her.  After his wife’s death, the husband, who earned his living by selling laces on London Bridge, went down in the world, and his room became filthy.  The Slum Sisters told him that they would clean up the place, but he forbade them to touch the bed, which, he said, was full of mice and beetles.  As he knew that women dread mice and beetles, he thought that this statement would frighten them.  When he was out selling his laces, they descended upon his room, where the first thing that they did was to remove the said bed into the yard and burn it, replacing it with another.  On his return, the old man exclaimed:  ’Oh, my darlings, whatever have you been doing?’

They still clean this room once a week.

The general impression left upon my mind, after visiting this place at Hackney Road and conversing with its guardian angels, is, that in some of its aspects, if not in all, civilization is a failure.  Probably thoughtful people made the same remark in ancient Rome, and in every other city since cities were.  The truth is, that so soon as its children desert the land which bore them for the towns, these horrors follow as surely as the night follows the day.