Morning journal and courier., 1884-12-03

and other cities lead Tn this respect now.
 Even the guttural croak of the itinerant mer-
 chant who buys up old clothes, and which sounds more like "Ork" than "ole clo'es, D is
 not such familiar feature of street life as it once was. The vendors of cats meat (de- rived from the carcasses of the three thou sand horses that die here every week. and the milk-sellers as a rule seem to prefer pecu. liar call of one or two syllables to the bell or | horn which prevail mostly with us.
 Another important industry is the snaring l of the common birds upon the fields which lie between the various suburban villages. Last Sunday I took long walk and was | amazed at the dimensions of this business. 1 Most of the fields through which l passed wore signs which threatened trespassers with 8 heavy fine, but not the slightest heed was paid to these placards. Some were engaged | in shooting the larger birds as they passed by on the wing; but the majority were working 1 traps in which to capture the unwary denl- | zens of the air alive. Two long nets would be so set that by the pulling of 6 cord Q few l hundred feet away they would fly over and | imprison the birds in their relentless meshes. As temptation to induce birds to alight, other birds, which had previously been cap- | tured in the same way, would be tied to stakes or enclosed in light cages in the victn- ity of the nets, where their efforts to fly high CT than the string allowed or escape from the l cage would attract attention. Sparrows, larks, hnnets, swallows and kindred birds o time, and put in coops set apart for their kind. Many of the birds were exceedingly beautiful, and the prices ranged from one penny to three pence, according to the varle- ty selected A crowd of idlers surrounded each party of snarers and made occasional purchases. These same birds, when put in the public market, bring from four to eight pence apiece. Any quantity are on sale at the Seven Dials markets, where you may ire quently secure good singers for such paltry sums. The so-called English sparrows,
 which completely girdle the globe now, are
 principally sold for shooting practice, and
 earn their freedom again providing they can evade the shot of the amateur after they are released.
 The education act of 1870 which created the Board school system in England has bear ings upon the 'Epoor problem" here which people might not at first suspect. Of course the task of enforcing compulsory education in so vast city London is no light one. These Board schools are calculated to impose the slightest possible burden upon the poor. The fees which are charged by the Board range from one penny to sixpence per week. These charges are apportioned according to what is believed to be the ability of the pa- rents to pay; and in order to avoid class dis tir rctions @ the charges at each school are uniform The general effect of the Board system has been most salutary. Whereas about 320, ,000 children were enrolled for at tendance at the time when it was introduced, there is now an enrolment of about 540, GOO children. Nearly 5000 children have also
 been sent to Industrial schools at the instance of the board while 1000 other cases have
 been inquired into by the Industrial schools
 committed and referred to the various vol
 untary agencies to be dealt with. This eff
 cient system is really copy of our public
 school system (though in some respects
 step in advance of ours), for believe it was
 . h1eonT that RIpht
 Hon. William Edward Forster picked up the
 idea out of which grew the Education act.
 The Board system seems destined, moreover,
 to absorb the National and other systems. Except in special cases children which have
 arrived at the age for attending school must
 be in attendance until they have passed the
 sixth standard or if they haven't the capacl- ty to ever pass, they must attend up to cer- tain age It may seem that penny or two pence week is Q small expense; but when there are half dozen children in the family l the coppers represent almost so many meals. Moreover, it is a characteristic of slum life that when child is of school age it is also of wage-earning age; and the sacrifice of time l thus involved-the people call it enforced idleness'-is very serious sacrifice indeed. Thus all sorts of excuses are coined to evade the requirements of the Education act, and only the closest surveillance and the most rigid enforcement of the law keep it from be- coming a failure. Parents whose children | have failed to put in an appearance are promptly summoned before the Board to show cause why they should not be sum moned before a magistrate and fined. These ''B" meetings, as they called, are great source of dread to the poor people. Fees are | now remitted by the Board in eases of abso- 1 lute inability to pay, and the diTest domestic emergency is accepted as excuse for non attendance upon school; but the officers are \ wont to probe things to the bottom, hning l of fto lou e. | able, and imprisoning those who are unable l or unwilling to poy the fine.
 l As already intimated, both church and 1 State have engaged in the work of regenera- l ting outcast London. 1 have not the space 1 to speak at length of the various missions, 1 hospitals, night refugees and other worthy in 1 stitutions located in the heart of the worst districts, or to detail the life work of Edward I Denison and other philanthropists who have I gone to live right in the midst of the vilest l and most squalid surroundings imaginable. l Perhaps the foremost of these retaining 1 agencies is the Tower Hamlets mission, loca- I ted on the Mile End road, in that famous l quarter from which it takes it's name, and 1 which teens with population of over mil l lion souls. A large, plain structure called
 the "Great Assembly Hall' contains @ hall l which seats 2,000 people, smaller auditori- l um, a ''coffee palace" ''book saloon, " and 1 various offices and miscellaneous apartments. This establishment has been in daily use
 since it was built for the purposes of gospel
 preaching, temperance meetings, &c. On Sundays the place has been found inadequate
 to accommodate the throngs which resort
 to it, and now the management is erecting
 another hall about the size of Spurgeon's
 Tabernacle
 | A branch of this mission is known as
 the Boys Home, and provides shelter for the
 bootblacks and street urchins who gai1
 their livelihood by selling matches, holding 1 horses and in other similar ways, but who 1 would otherwise have to sleep in stairways
 dry goods boxes or under shrubs in private
 gardens. The Home is located in an olc
 eer-bottling establishment The same in 1 stitution seeks also to "feed the multitude.
 At one free supper ,450 people were seated 1 together in the Great Assembly Hall. One
 man ate loaf and half of bread. An
 other dropped in dead faint on the thresh
 l old A third, who actually starving
 1 ate with indiscretion and was carried away
 to the London hospital insensible. This
 work was suggested by seeing men pick III l orange-pee1s on the streets and greedily de
 vour them.
 TatterIv. in conjunction with the loca l clergy, an effort has been made to transfer
 the excess of population to Australia, Can l ada and the other colonies which are opeI
 to receive immigrants
 l At the head of the Tower Hamlets mission is MT. Frederick N. Charrington, who him
 self resides in the midst ot the people thai he seeks to bless, and regards it as holi day when he gets off to breathe the rela l lively less tainted air of Regent or Oxford streets. He is the eldest son of the late chief partner in the well-known brewing
 firm of Charrington, Head 6c Co. He for sock brewery fife without a halfpenny to l devote himself to philanthropic effort. At his fathers death he inherited small for | tune. which he is now spending, far as l it exceeds his own support, in the amelio- l ration of the masses. The new building
 cost $100, ,000.
 The Roman Catholic church has planted | some benevolent institutions in the slum quarters One of the most notable of these l is the Home for Factory Girls, managed by l the Sisters of St. John the Baptist, Clever, | situated in Southwark. Here the hundreds
 of factory girls may find a real home for a
 small weekly payment, and escape, the moi sy. wretched and too often vicious sur | roundings of their nominal homes. This 1 'sHome'5 is crowded with girls from base ment to roof; girls who work hard all day | at dangerous trades, and belong to families that have sounded the deepest depths o1 sin. The girls are taught cleanliness, DO l 1iteness and the practices in general of de