In addition to the church proper there is the ‘Mission Chapel,’ where other services are held.  One day in the week there is a sale of clothes at very low prices.  They are sold rather than given, because if the women have paid a few pence for them they are less willing to pawn them than if they had received them for nothing.  In the Mission Chapel are held classes for young girls and services for children.

The churchyard, like so many of the London churchyards, has been converted into a recreation ground, where there are trees and flower-beds, and benches for old and young.

Outside the Church, but yet connected with it, there is, first, the Girls’ Club.  The girls of Ratcliff are all working-girls; as might be expected, a rough and wild company, as untrained as colts, yet open to kindly and considerate treatment.  Their first yearning is for finery; give them a high hat with a flaring ostrich feather, a plush jacket, and a ‘fringe,’ and they are happy.  There are seventy-five of these girls; they use their club every evening, and they have various classes, though it cannot be said that they are desirous of learning anything.  Needlework, especially, they dislike; they dance, sing, have musical drill, and read a little.  Five ladies who work for the church and for the club live in the club-house, and other ladies come to lend assistance.  When we consider what the homes and the companions of these girls are, what kind of men will be their husbands, and that they are to become mothers of the next generation, it seems as if one could not possibly attempt a more useful achievement than their civilization.  Above all, this club stands in the way of the greatest curse of East London—­the boy and girl marriage.  For the elder women there are Mothers’ Meetings, at which two hundred attend every week; and there are branches of the Societies for Nursing and Helping Married Women.  For general purposes there is a Parish Sick and Distress Fund; a fund for giving dinners to poor children; there is a frequent distribution of fruit, vegetables, and flowers, sent up by people from the country.  And for the children there is a large room which they can use as a play-room from four o’clock till half-past seven.  Here they are at least warm; were it not for this room they would have to run about the cold streets; here they have games and pictures and toys.  In connection with the work for the girls, help is given by the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants, which takes charge of a good many of the girls.

For the men there is one of the institutions called a Tee-To-Tum Club, which has a grand cafe open to everybody all day long; the members manage the club themselves; they have a concert once a week, a dramatic performance once a week, a gymnastic display once a week; on Sunday they have a lecture or an address, with a discussion after it; and they have smaller clubs attached for football, cricket, rowing, and swimming.