From Workhouse to Westminster Part 9

And perhaps the greatest occasion in the history of the College at the Dock Gates was that Sunday morning in June, 1906, that followed the opening of the Local Government Board Inquiry into the administration of the guardians. For the week previously the Press and the local Munic.i.p.al Alliance had done their best to poison the mind of Poplar against its long-trusted Labour man.

How would the College fare now? The attendance at the Dock Gates that morning was one of the largest on record. Thousands of ratepayers were there, and when Crooks walked through their ranks to the little portable rostrum he had one of the great receptions of his life. He urged them not to be discouraged because their cause seemed to be under a cloud, but to strengthen his hands in maintaining the integrity of public life and to possess themselves in quietness, confident that before long the accused would become the accusers.

CHAPTER IX

FROM THE CHEERING MULt.i.tUDE TO A SORROW-LADEN HOME

The Dock Strike of 1889--"Our Dock Strike Baby"--At the Point of Death--Discouraging a Missioner--Before a House of Lords Committee--Entrance upon Public Life--A Widower with Six Children--Second Marriage.

The great Dock Strike of 1889 nearly brought Crooks to his grave. Much of the brunt and burden of that famous struggle fell upon his shoulders.

Months before, he had prepared the way by his Dock Gate meetings. When at last the disorganised bands of dock and river-side labourers startled the industrial world by standing together as one man for better conditions of work and a minimum wage of sixpence an hour, Will Crooks was one of the half-dozen Labour Leaders who directed the campaign to its historic triumph.

Seldom, while the strike lasted, did he take his clothes off. He worked at his own trade during the day and gave nearly the whole of the night to the strikers. The outdoor meetings he addressed kept him going up to midnight. The early morning hours saw him lending a hand at the organising offices and relief stations until the dawn called him to his ordinary daily work again.

There were times when he gave both day and night to the dockers, preferring to lose time at his own work rather than miss an opportunity of lending a hand to his less fortunate fellows. Sometimes he would accompany the men in their demonstrations through the City and the West-End.

Those daily marches of the dock labourers opened London's eyes. The orderliness of the ragged battalions, headed by "the man in the straw hat," who was afterwards to take a seat in the Cabinet--John Burns--was as impressive as their numbers. They were forbidden to use bands of music in the City streets, so the men conceived the ingenious device of whistling. It had a curious effect, some fifty thousand men whistling the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" all the way from Aldgate to Temple Bar.

When Crooks did get home for an hour or two in the evening it was not to rest, but to sit by the bedside of his ailing wife and tend the youngest of his children. Ill though his wife was, little though she saw of him during the strike, she urged him from her sick bed to keep on helping the dockers.

"Don't mind me, Will," she told him, when he would peep in anxiously after many hours' absence. "I shall be all right if you can only pull those poor dockers through."

He came in one night after nearly two days' absence, having arranged to spend the whole of that evening by her bedside. She had just given birth to a son--"our Dock Strike baby," as he came to be called for long afterwards, now a promising apprentice in a Thames s.h.i.+pbuilding yard.

She was very happy at the good news he brought of the progress of the strike. She was happier still at the prospect of his being spared for his first evening at home. Presently the sound of hurrying footsteps was heard in the street. Something important had happened. The men wanted Will Crooks. Would he come again?

He looked at his wife. She must decide.

"Go, Will," she said. "Never let it be said your wife kept you from helping those in need."

The reaction came after the victory. When the dockers in their thousands were back at work rejoicing at having won their sixpence an hour, Crooks lay at the point of death in the London Hospital in Whitechapel Road. It was the first time he had been ill in his life. Friends feared this first illness was to be his last. Not until after a struggle of thirteen weeks could he be p.r.o.nounced out of danger.

He is fond of telling this incident that occurred in the hospital:--

"When I was approaching convalescence, and naturally fairly happy at the thought of soon being able to get out and return home, a missioner, as I think he was called, came to see me as I lay in bed in the hospital. He said to me quite bluntly, 'Are you not a miserable sinner?'

"I said: 'No; I may be a sinner, but I am not a miserable one just now.'

"The missioner left my side in disgust, and then returned and asked to be allowed to send me a Testament. I consented, and received in a day or two one marked in several places with red ink, apparently intended to impress upon me what a depraved and miserable creature I was.

"The missioner called again, and questioned me as to whether I had read the marked pa.s.sages and what I thought of them.

"I told him that, as applied to me, they were not true.

"I shall never forget the look I received, and I expect I was given up as a lost man.

"A few minutes after he had left my ward a patient from another ward came to see me, and said:--

"'I say, Twenty-five, that's the way to get rid of them.'

"I said, 'What have _you_ done to get rid of him?'

"'Oh,' he answered. 'The missioner said, "Are you not a miserable sinner?" and I said "Yes"; and then he said, "Thank G.o.d for that," and went away.'"

Soon after Crooks came out of the hospital he made his first appearance in a public capacity in Parliament. He was invited on July 11th, 1890, to give evidence before the Committee of the House of Lords on the Infant Life Insurance Bill. It was seriously argued at the time that working cla.s.s parents deliberately neglected their children for the sake of the insurance money. The Bill actually proposed that the insurance money be kept out of the hands of the parents altogether and paid to the undertaker. The offending clause disappeared after Crooks's evidence.

The _Evening News_, which headed its report of the day's proceedings "A Working Man shows the Weak Points in the New Bill," summarised what Crooks told the Committee thus:--

A journeyman cooper from Poplar, evidently a thoroughly straightforward and independent working-man of more than average intelligence and facility of expression, gave evidence yesterday before the Committee of the House of Lords, presided over by the Bishop of Peterborough.

He said he objected to the provision in the Bill for the payment of insurance money to the undertaker. It was not merely to cover the actual expenses of burial that the working man insured his child, but to provide "black" and to meet other unavoidable expenses. If insurance were abolished workmen would be obliged to fall back on the old practice of "Friendly Leads," which generally led to drinking at public-houses.

He knew thousands of families of working people, and was perfectly certain that there was not among them one mother lacking maternal affection. There was no sacrifice the poor would not make for their children, and it would be felt as a great reproach to say that a child had not been properly cared for. In other cases bad mothers would be bad mothers under any circ.u.mstances, and it was for the criminal law to find them out; but if there was one bad in a thousand he did not see why nine hundred and ninety-nine respectable persons should be punished.

To stop child insurance, witness said in reply to Lord Norton, would punish honest parents and do no good whatever.

It was about this time that the working people of Poplar began to urge him to go into public life. They elected him a member of the Poplar Board of Trustees, in regard to which he had recently unearthed a notorious scandal. Then he was made a Library Commissioner in recognition of the prominent part he had taken in persuading Poplar to adopt the Act. Soon afterwards he was returned as one of the two Poplar representatives to the London County Council.

The cloud that had hung over his home all through the Dock Strike was to grow yet darker. He had not been on the County Council many weeks when his wife died. She had barely recovered from the illness that kept her bedfast during the exciting days of the strike. Then there came the three anxious worrying months as her husband lay between life and death in the hospital. The worry wore her out, and a brave G.o.d-fearing woman of the people went down to her grave commanding her husband to work on.

Thus, at the commencement of his public career and while still in his thirties, Crooks found himself a widower with six children on his hands, the youngest a baby.

Among the many letters of sympathy that poured in upon him, that which got nearest to his heart came from one whose acquaintance he had but recently made, who described himself as "a fellow sufferer under a like bereavement." The writer was Lord Rosebery, then Chairman of the London County Council.

All that first year of Crooks's public life was gone through while he was bearing heavy burdens at home. His new duties as London County Councillor, the many urgent calls to help the Labour movement in other quarters, now that he was beginning to be known far beyond the bounds of Poplar, kept him away from home often until a late hour. All this added greatly to his domestic cares, since he had to be both mother and father to his children. The eldest daughter, fourteen years of age, managed bravely; but many a night he turned away from addressing the cheering mult.i.tude of a crowded, glittering hall and went to a cheerless home to find the youngest children crying. He would help to wash them, to mend their clothes, and to cook for them.

A year's experience convinced him that neither he nor the children could go on in that way. His aged mother rendered all the help her growing infirmities would allow. The old lady, with her married children's aid, now lived in modest comfort in a little house off the High Street. There lodged with her a young nurse engaged at a neighbouring inst.i.tution, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Lake, a native of Gloucesters.h.i.+re.

Crooks laid his case before her. She consented to become his wife and bring up his children. They were married in Poplar Parish Church in 1893.

The union has been a singularly happy one. Mrs. Crooks has done more than bring up the children. She has guided and inspired her husband in all his public life. So much so, that when some eight years later he laid down his robes of office after a successful year as Mayor of Poplar, he stated publicly in acknowledging a presentation to himself and the Mayoress:--

"Without my wife's aid I would have been of little use in my public work. Whenever I return home troubled or anxious, or defeated on some pet scheme, I never have from my wife anything but cheering and encouraging words. She it is who has made my public life possible. She it is who deserves your thanks far more than I."

CHAPTER X

A LABOUR MEMBER'S WAGES

The Will Crooks Wages Fund formed--The Poplar Labour League--Crooks's Election to the London County Council--Friends outside the Labour Movement--Money no Subst.i.tute for Personal Service--Refusing highly-paid Posts--Offer of a House rent-free for Life declined--Not Risen from the Ranks.

How came it that a working man like Crooks was able to give his whole time to public work?