The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-06-08

district were never reached by the rays of the sun during any part of the day He told of families of seven and eight, many of them soldiers families, who were forced to live in two rooms. He instanced rentals for mere novels which ate deep into tiny incomes and generally drew picture of living conditions almost unbe lievable as existing only few miles from the royal palace itself, and the pri- vate palaces of neighboring Belgravia and Mayfair
 At the end of Colonel Lewis talk the Queen made a significant observation which is widely quoted. Ut is pretty clear to me-" she said that when I have
 visited the poorer districts, I have been
 taken mainly to the highways and not to l the byways.
 Convinced that much had previously
 been withheld from her, the Queen, with
 characteristic promptitude, determined to examine some of the "byways" forthwith | There and then she decided to visit Beth
 mai Green and see it's very worst side for herself and that Colonel Lewis should be l her guide on this "slumming party. few days later she was as good as her word
 No one in Bethnal Green except the mayor, the town clerk and the sanitary il spector of the district, John Foot, the latter interesting a character as the mayor himself, who accompanied the Queen on her tour of inspection, knew that she was coming. Attended only by
 one of her ladieS-in waiting, Lady Ampt- hill, and by her private secretary, Harry Lloyd Verney, the Queen drove to Beth
 nal Green in a closed car which stopped
 near Brady street, one of the poorest in
 the district. There the Queen, who was lveiled and dressed in black with small
 black toque, got out. For the next hour and a half, guided by the mayor and the | c4ho off ni0lC ho
 through the district, insisting on seeing
 the worst that it had to show. One of ose worst things is Pereira street.
 desolate, rejected, pitiful alley which looks
 as if it suffered from all the ills that
 bricks and mortar are heir to. One of
 the most amazing things about Pereira street, which is hidden away as 1t de- serves to be- is that the London County Council cut it out of the scheme for re
 building the area the scheme that never materialized, considering, in it's strange humor, that it ought to be left to private ! CT terprises.'
 LONDON'S. WORST STREET The queen walked along Pereira street studying the miserable line of two story houses on either side. The queen was much struck--probably it is not too much to say that she was much shocked, with Pereira street. She had never seen any | thing like Pereira street before, and Pe- | reira street is enough to shock any one | let alone a queen.
 III From Pereira street the queen turned into Meath place, which might much more | fittingly be called Meath alley so mar | row is it. The houses in Meath place ars | little brick houses, with rooms that cer' tainly were never designed by their ar | chitect for the traditional cat-sW1nglng Then the party walked along Dixie street
 none of whose humble residents coule ever be imagined as singing, II Want TS Be Back Home in Dixie,' along BradN street and Scott street, two of the wors in the neighborhood, and thence to DIED, walk, where are the famous "back-to back houses By the end of her walk the royal visitor had trudged over mil
 through byways teeming with young lire and her identity quickly leaking out, wa followed by ever increasing crowd o
 admiring men, women and children, wh we'll knew that they could not fall to D the gathers through her visit.
 Ii After thus examining the outside Q Bethnal Greens slums, the queen wen into house after house and talked wit the needy folk who inhabit them. Sh
 encouraged them to talk frankly to ne and to reveal to her the truth about tn M conditions under which they live Sn | even stopped and talked with some of tn | people she met in the streets and aske II | incomes, their families, about all, in fac
 that concerned them. She went into sex | eral of the back backs Gin one | which she found a soldier with "A year | service to his credit eating his one cours
 lunch) and agreed that the so-called sar | itary arrangements of these novels wei | so inadequate as to be practically none. | istent.
 I In one two room house which the quee | entered live soldier and his wife name 4 Noon and their seven children. Whi
 she talked with Mrs. Noon, Queen Maj
 sat on the edge of table, and, upon ei quiring how many rooms she had for h. big family learned in her hostess's s word
 that they had "one up and one down Queen Mary could scarcely believe th' there were only two rooms in the hou ! and that the stairs which curled out the little sitting room-10 feet by 7-ls merely to another little chamber abov \ Accordingly she made a personal invest gation and discovered for herIelf. on g