The Great Acceptance: The Life Story of F. N. Charrington

"The other witnesses, of whom Mr. Rainsford, who is a clergyman, I will select as an example, spoke also to the defendant's demeanour. His demeanour on these occasions is quiet and gentlemanly and courteous; and one of the plaintiff's witnesses, Mr. Dale, spoke of him, in cross-examination, in similar terms. Sometimes the person to whom he offers a tract responds with a sharp word, but on the evidence, as it stands, there is no ground for saying that the offering of the tract brings him into any angry or noisy altercation with any person to whom he is offering it, even those who have rejected it. He said, about one-third of the times that he has been there (he has been there on numerous occasions), he has been alone, and sometimes he goes with two or three friends, who are also engaged in missionary work, and occasionally, he said as many as from twelve to eighteen. Mr. Grenfell, whom I have already mentioned, spoke of him as having a remarkable ascendancy over the persons whom he met on this pathway; sometimes he also was accompanied by ladies.

"In my opinion, as the result of the evidence, all these persons conducted themselves in an orderly manner. They do not, as was alleged on the part of the plaintiffs, and particularly by the plaintiff Crowder, in his evidence, form a 'living barricade,' nor do they cause, in my opinion, any obstruction to the highway.

"Now, the defendant says that plaintiffs and their servants, and particularly their manager, have been the real cause of such disturbances as have arisen. The principal offender is Mr. Friend, the manager, whose testimony I cannot rely upon. Young stands on a level with him. Young was the doorkeeper, and was not called as a witness. Mr. Crowder and Mr. Payne have certainly, each of them, taken some part in creating the disturbances, though in a less degree than Friend and Young. Now, the witness Howes, who also gave his testimony, amongst other witnesses, described what was done by some of these persons whom I have named. They walk up and down with Mr. Charrington. I should say that his beat, or his patrol, if I may use such a term, appears to be a distance of about thirty yards each way from the music hall; and they not only walk up and down with him, but, according to Howes, they tread on his heels, and a mob accompanies them as they go.

"Mr. Mason, the shorthand writer, who also gave his evidence admirably, was a witness to the same effect. As Mr. Kerwin, another witness for the defendant, said (and I believe him rather than the plaintiffs' witnesses on this point), if Mr. Charrington had been left to himself, there would have been no crowd and no disturbance. What they said is this: I mean, what Friend particularly does, and Young also; they try to incite the passers-by, and those persons who are coming from the music hall are irritated. Well, it is said, it is natural they are irritated; I have no doubt, and it is a fair observation to make, that they are, to some extent, naturally incited against him. They look upon this as a crusade against the music hall; but they have gone far beyond, in my opinion, what they were justified in doing. They called on the mob to shout, and, on several occasions, certainly, Friend has tried to incite them, by saying, 'Halloa, boys, halloa!'

"They assail him with foul and filthy language and they have cursed him and they have sworn at him; they have assailed him with flour and with pease-pudding; they have knocked his hat off; they have kicked him, and the roughs from the hall have certainly made a dead set upon him. On one occasion he was assaulted, and the man was committed to prison for three months. They have actually, some of them, thrown human filth from the windows. On one occasion, particularly, there was a violent attack made upon him; that is, in October 1883, and I am satisfied that that was an organised attack. He was driven across the road, and had to seek refuge in a police section house on the opposite side. On one occasion they gave him in charge, and the magistrate dismissed the case, making, I am satisfied on the result of the evidence, observations which showed that the charge was wholly groundless. Mr. Piggott, who was a witness for the plaintiffs (and who denied what I am about to state, but I think he was in error; I think Mr. Piggott was an excitable man, and a strong partisan), threatened him with a stick. Besides this, the defendant has been kicked.

"On one occasion, Friend endeavoured to incite the mob in this way. The witness was delivering some tracts, when Friend called on the passers-by to assemble, and said, 'Come and see what this man is calling your wives – nothing but common whores.' The people followed him to a coffee house window, there were people in the street; he was then going to read a tract, and found it was not what he wanted. Friend, said the witness, and I am satisfied that he is right, caused the crowd. There is some truth indeed in that metaphorical description that Mr. Charrington in the witness box gave himself; he said he was no more responsible than a target that is shot at. They have maltreated his friends, or those who have assisted him. Alston, who looks a respectable witness, was hit in the face for calling attention to the man who had knocked in the hat of one of his friends, and the man Young, the doorkeeper, actually committed the indignity of spitting in his face. Kerwin, another respectable witness, was butted in the stomach. Mr. Rainsford, the clergyman, was threatened to have a knife put into him, and Mr. Grenfell himself was mobbed."

These are hard and definite records.

But you must picture to yourselves Frederick Charrington and Ion Keith-Falconer accompanied by their friends, night after night – in all weathers – conducting their campaign amid the jeers and obloquy of the mob.

Often, from the upper windows of the music hall they were drenched with flour, red ochre, and even more horrible things than these.

But Frederick Charrington stood there undaunted. His physical courage was supreme. His moral courage was even greater than that. He was determined upon the work which God had set him – he did not flinch nor falter.

What he must have endured I only faintly hint at. It is not my design to draw a lurid picture of that ascetic abnegation, that utter throwing away of all that makes life sweet, which was his cheerful, daily portion.

But I remember an old Cornish woman, whom I met on a wild, heath-covered moor upon a windy Sunday afternoon, when we were both leaving a little granite meeting-house, where a rugged, moorland farmer had spoken of his spiritual experience, and his fresh-cheeked daughters and their friends had sung hymns to the accompaniment of an harmonium, hymns which were drowned by the rushing mighty winds.

The old lady, whom I helped over the rough tussocks of grass – she is dead now, and, I am sure, in Heaven – turned to me, coughing and spluttering, when we had for a moment some shelter from the wind.

"Ah!" she said, referring to the words of the preacher, "Jesus belonged to have a brave, bad time! 'Twas a bitter nailing, sir, 'twas a bitter nailing!"

That is the note – that is the right note in which, I think, we ought to revere in memory those strenuous days when Frederick Charrington dared everything for the Lord.

CHAPTER VI

THE FIGHT ON THE LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL

The personal campaign against Lusby's Music Hall, the astounding details of which are found in the preceding chapter to this, was complemented by Mr. Charrington's work upon the London County Council, to which we find him elected as member for Mile End.

Some one has told me that after Mr. Charrington was returned to London's local Parliament, one of his congregation at the Great Assembly Hall remarked that he ought to be known from henceforth as "the member for Religion." Certainly, Mr. Charrington immediately recommenced his efforts to purify London, and these attempts – upon such a public stage – made his name known to almost every one in England in a very short space of time.

It was during the London Licensing Sessions that the world at large first heard of him. It was his efforts to make the Empire, the Aquarium, and other places of amusement, fit for the patronage of the ordinary man or woman, that called down upon his head a tempest of scorn, a tornado of obloquy, and induced the congratulation, the prayers, of thousands of Christian men and women who thought with him.

We have seen him endure personal violence of the most vindictive kind, as he stood fighting for his convictions, outside the music halls of the East End. We are to see him now, no less calm and dignified, enduring the insults of the press, and the angry opposition of his colleagues upon the Council.

Here is a little study in contrasts!

Upon one occasion, during the battle in the East End, Mr. Charrington was arrested as causing an obstruction, and taken to the local police court, where he was confined all night in a cell. He had his Bible with him, and during the hours of his incarceration, he solaced himself with the word of God. In the morning, he was accosted by a fellow prisoner – as all the offenders of the night before were marshalled in the passage outside the cells.

"What are you in for?" said his new friend.

"Oh, I am in for a little affair in connection with Lusby's Music Hall," said Mr. Charrington with a smile.

The other chuckled. "Well, I never!" he said, "so am I! I sneaked a 'am from the bar of the same 'all."

There were others in that dismal company who recognised the young evangelist who had worked so earnestly among them for so long. He seized the opportunity. He prayed with these derelicts of the night, and ere they were ushered into the court to stand their hurried trials, they had all sung a hymn together, the police standing reverently by in complete sympathy with what Mr. Charrington did. The evangelist was liberated at once, the magistrate remarking that the charge was perfectly unfounded, and that, if he wished. Mr. Charrington would have his legal remedy for false imprisonment. It is hardly necessary to say that the evangelist brought no action against the police or their instigators. Of all the men I have ever met, he has realised and applied the words of the Gospel to practical life. He has always turned the other cheek.

Here is one picture. Come with me now into the debating-room of the London County Council and see Frederick Charrington, well-dressed, well-groomed, strikingly handsome, and with the manner of the polished man of the world, quietly, but forcibly, combating the emissaries and paid supporters of vice.

I believe that this, his first prominent appearance in the London County Council, was the occasion of much surprise.

Although he had never advertised himself at all, his name was, of course, familiar to his colleagues. Buried in the East End as he was – and has always been – he was, nevertheless, not unknown by rumour. The assembled members of London's parliament expected to see an elderly, bearded man – the typical missionary among the poor. They saw, instead, a slim and debonair gentleman, aristocratic in appearance, and self-possessed in manner. Such shocks to preconceived notions are not nearly so rare as people suppose. A type – of this or that vocation – gets fixed in the public mind in some odd way. The reality is often startlingly opposed to the expected.

Every one who looks at the photograph of Mr. Charrington in evening clothes, which I made him have specially taken for this book, will agree with what I say. Indeed, during his whole life in the East End, people who have never met him before, have called upon him for spiritual or material assistance, and have not left him without expressing their surprise and wonder at his personal appearance. A man once came to him who would hardly believe that he was "the" Mr. Charrington.

"I thought I was going to see an old bloke," he mumbled in clumsy apology, "you know, one of them old blokes with a white beard, seeing as I'd 'eard of you for so many years."

So, when Frederick Charrington stood up to oppose the licenses of certain notorious music halls in the West End in the London County Council, his personal appearance and manner created a vast amount of surprise, and, if what I have heard is true – and I have no reason to doubt it – something of consternation also.

The Licensing Committee of the London County Council met in the Clerkenwell Sessions House, to consider applications for music, dancing, and theatre licenses. Mr. T. G. Fardell, Chairman of the Committee, presided, and there was a very full attendance of members.

The Sessions House had just been under the hands of painters and decorators. It looked quite bright and cheerful, but it proved quite inadequate for the accommodation of those people directly interested, and others who had gathered to hear Mr. Charrington give his evidence and endeavour to purge London of so much that he felt inimical to Christianity.

I have before me all the verbatim reports of that historic meeting. The fairest and most unbiased seems to me that of the Daily Telegraph, and it is from those columns that I reprint an epitome of what occurred. I see no better way of presenting the scene as vividly as possible than by doing this, but my readers must understand that I have only made extracts, as the whole proceedings are far too long to be incorporated in a book of this size.

And, moreover, I shall only print the record of Mr. Charrington's opposition to the licenses of music halls known by name, then and now, to the great mass of the public.

For months he had been obtaining evidence as to the character of these places, and also of similar and less famous ones. In a general picture, such as I wish to present, the cases of the less important halls must be eliminated. It is sufficient to say that the opposition to these minor licenses was as carefully considered, and as earnestly presented, as the objection to the others.

I will deal at once with the objection which Mr. Charrington made to the renewal of the licenses to the Empire Theatre of Varieties in Leicester Square. In order to make certain references in the report intelligible to the reader, I must say that one of Mr. Charrington's inspectors – a Mr. Frye – was a grocer by trade. Half the ribald press of London, for many days, constantly referred to this fact. "Mr. Charrington and his Grocer" became a byword in the columns of purely worldly newspapers. It was a cheap enough joke, and I entirely fail to see why a grocer should not be as efficient a critic of morals as any one else. But if Mr. Frye had been a solicitor, a banker, or a vendor of smoked spectacles, through which to look at an eclipse, the comments would have been just the same.

Mr. George Edwardes applied for the renewal of the music and dancing license held by the Empire Theatre, Leicester Square.

Mr. Charrington: I oppose this license.

Mr. Forest Fulton, M.P., who appeared for the applicant, said no notice of opposition had been received.

The Chairman asked whether Mr. Edwardes would prefer to have the case adjourned.

Major Probyn: I think it exceedingly unfair to applicants not to have had notice of opposition. It is not at all in conformity with English ideas of fair play.

Mr. Beachcroft thought that as the option of having the case adjourned was given, there was no case of complaint.

The Chairman: The Theatres Committees were not aware of any opposition until this moment.

Mr. Forest Fulton said the difficulty of course was that they had no knowledge whatever of the nature of the complaint which was made, whether it was that they were harbouring prostitutes, or allowing indecent songs.

The Chairman observed that it was quite as inconvenient to the Committee as it was to the applicant.

Mr. Charrington said that the reason of his opposition was that the Empire was not only the resort of prostitutes, but that the prostitution was of a most dangerous character to those who went to the house. The license he had opposed previously affected the poor of the East End of London, whereas in this case the license was particularly dangerous to young men of the better class. He was told on good authority that there might be seen in the hall young fellows from Oxford and Cambridge, who there saw vice and prostitution in its most attractive form. The prostitutes, who were often in evening dress, were to be found in the best parts of the house, and not, as in other music halls, in the cheaper seats. If the committee did not see their way to withdraw the license, he trusted that they might draw attention to the state of matters and so deter many from being inveigled into this place. It was also a frightful source of temptation to young women of the poorer classes. The evidence of his informant would show that the dresses of the performers were very indecent, especially in the ballet called "A Dream of Wealth." He opposed the licenses so that he might not again be accused of partiality in attacking poor places of entertainment only.

The Inspector Bartlett was then called.