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

I will also add that one of the most munificent of Mr. Charrington's millionaire supporters was the late Mr. John Cory. He gave Mr. Charrington two hundred a year as a regular thing. In addition to that, from time to time he bestowed large sums upon the Mission entirely independent of his yearly subscription. Shortly before his death he sent Mr. Charrington a cheque for a thousand pounds to cover the expense of the village hall on Osea Island, and, when recently staying with Sir Clifford Cory, Bart., Mr. Charrington ascertained from him the fact that his father gave away in charity nearly a thousand pounds each week!

Yet Mr. Charrington has found that the millionaires of to-day are not nearly so ready with their cheques as those of the past. The great growth of material comfort, the increasing love of magnificence and splendour, seems indeed to have deafened the ears of the very rich to the piteous cry of the starving poor in the East End. If only this book awakens some of those so abundantly blessed with riches to what has been done, and is being done, by Mr. Charrington, then its publication will indeed be blessed.

Did not the late Lord Shaftesbury say – and is it not true to-day? – "This is a great and mighty work. I can only say that I rejoice to think that such a work as this is to be extended, and well does our friend Charrington deserve it. No man living, in my estimation, is more worthy of success for the devotion of his heart, the perseverance of his character, the magnificence of his object, and the way in which he has laboured, by day and night, until he has completed this great issue."

I went, a few weeks ago, during the time of the great dock strike of this year – 1912 – to see the actual feeding of the hungry in Mr. Charrington's hall. I wish I could have taken with me a dozen of the richest men in England. I defy the most flinty-hearted Dives in existence to see what I saw, and remain untouched.

And, remember, that what I saw has gone on regularly for a long space of time.

I arrived at the Great Assembly Hall just after lunch upon a Sunday. Outside the hall a uniformed band was gathering, and by it stood a large, portable hoarding, mounted upon a handcart, bearing the words, "The Great Assembly Hall," and inviting all and sundry to visit the hall that evening and attend the service.

Even at that early hour – the "feeding" was not to take place till two hours later – along the railings which border the small ornamental garden which forms an oasis in the roaring Mile End Road, and are immediately in front of the hall, a crowd of patient, silent men had formed a queue, extending for many yards, and shepherded by a couple of watching policemen. There they stood in line, men of all ages, from the very old to the mere lad, the faces of each one of them pinched and gashed with hunger. The eyes had a dull, hopeless stare, the weary figures in their rags expressed the utmost dejection in every curve.

The band started a stirring march, Mr. Charrington and I at its head, together with various other workers of the Mission, who distributed handbills of the evening service as we went along.

We marched a little way down the Mile End Road, and then we turned into some of the narrowest and most dreadful slums of London. In some of these slums the policemen have to patrol in couples for fear of aggression. At every door, at every window of these rookeries, were dozens upon dozens of faces, with the marks of drink and deep poverty upon them. Children swarmed everywhere like bees in a hive. And yet, among all that misery and destitution, it was most pathetic to see how many of them – the little girls especially – were as neatly dressed as their parents could manage, and how their shining hair was brushed and tied up with odds and ends of ribbons.

We passed a large group of young men openly gambling upon the pavement. We passed a little house where, not so very long before, two young men had entered at seven o'clock in the morning, and murdered an old woman who lived there for the sake of a few shillings. We passed innumerable drunken men, some of them fighting and quarrelling among themselves, and more than one drunken woman leaned, leering and nodding, against the wall of her house.

And yet, not a word was said against us. In no single instance, during that two hours' progress, was even an insult hurled at Mr. Charrington or his friends. On the contrary, people waved cheerily to him from upper windows, and he brandished the inevitable umbrella, which he carries as a sort of baton upon these occasions, with a merry greeting. The little children ran to him and hung to the tails of his frock-coat, proud to hold his hand, and to march with him at the head of the music. In streets where at least half of the population were known to the police, and were of the definitely criminal classes, there was nothing but welcome for the evangelist and his music. There was no preaching whatever. Now and again, where two or three foul, dark streets converged, the band stopped and played, very touchingly and sweetly, for it is composed of first-class instrumentalists, that beautiful hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light." That was all, though on all hands the eager helpers were distributing handbills and inviting everyone to come to the Great Hall in the evening.

We had started upon the last part of our march, after one of these halts, when a very drunken man came up to me, and thrust his arm through mine. He had not lost the power of his legs – at any rate with my assistance – and for half an hour or more he insisted on walking thus with me, by Mr. Charrington's side and at the head of the band, pouring out praises of the evangelist in a thick, but sufficiently intelligible voice! It was a curious experience – to me, at least – but it did not seem anything out of the way to my new friends. Suddenly the head of an old man protruded from an upper window, and a voice hailed Mr. Charrington in loud and friendly greeting.

"Who's your friend?" I asked, and when the answer came I looked with added interest, for every one who reads newspapers has heard of the old gentleman known as "Bill Onions," – that writer of curious doggerel verse, who has been imprisoned something like 480 times for drunkenness, and who, for many years now, has been a convinced teetotaler, and every year attends at the police court of his last conviction to receive the congratulations of the magistrate!

When we got back to the Great Assembly Hall the crowd of the hungry had enormously increased, as also had the attendant policemen. The gates leading into the smaller hall, where the feeding takes place, were opened, and the men filed in, shepherded by the policemen, and delivered their cards of admission.

I stood outside and watched, and it was explained to me that only a certain number of men – and women, in another hall which I did not see on this occasion – were able to feed each Sunday. I think the number is somewhat over seven hundred. But it always happens that a certain number of the tickets which have been distributed on the previous Sunday are not used. There are generally about twenty. The recipients may have got work, may have left London in search of it, or may, alas, have succumbed to their privations, and be where hunger can tear them no more, as was the case with one poor woman who came to the hall on a Sunday, and had her first meal for that day. On the following Monday and Tuesday it was afterwards ascertained that she had nothing whatever, and she died on the Wednesday.

This is known, and, in consequence, a large number of poor outcasts join the queue in the hope that there will be room for them.

When all the regular ticket-holders had been admitted, the tickets were counted, and, upon this occasion, it was found that some seventeen more invitations were available.

Seventeen men were counted off from the queue, their faces brightening with an inexpressible relief as they marched into the hall. But I never saw, in all my life, anything like the hopeless despair that came upon the faces of the large number of men who were left, who had waited for hours upon this single chance of a meal, and who must now disperse unsatisfied. It touched the very spring of tears, and stabbed the heart with a pain that cannot be forgotten. It was my first experience of anything of the sort, and it was at that moment that I began to realise – though only dimly, then – what Mr. Charrington was doing, and had been doing, for forty long years. The excellent lunch I had just had at my club in the West End seemed to turn to stone within me.

I have little space to devote to the actual meal. I shared it – it was good and sufficient. I sat upon the platform and saw the ravenous eagerness with which these poor men ate what they could. Many of them saved a crust or two and wrapped it in their handkerchiefs to make another meal later on. At the conclusion of the tea, a very short speech was made by a gentleman connected with the Mission, who had, in the past, nearly ruined himself with drink, but is now a happy and prosperous Christian, helping to uplift others. It was not a sensational speech, the emotions of the hungry were not worked up by rhetoric. It was a simple, heartfelt statement.

At the conclusion, more than twenty men of their own accord walked up to a little side table and signed the pledge. This goes on day by day in the Great Assembly Hall, and the percentage of those who keep their promise has been investigated! It is well over fifty per cent.!

Upon the evening of the next Sunday I attended the service in the great hall itself.

The enormous place was packed with people. The upper gallery of all was absolutely crowded by men, many of them in the last stages of destitution, all of them quiet, reverent, and attentive. I was told that a large number of them admitted, to use their own words, that they had "done time." Of the service itself I will say little. I have already quoted other opinions of such services. But, to me personally, who had never been present in my life at anything of the sort, the impression was wholly satisfying. The music was perfect. The singing was by a vast trained choir, the finest that can be heard in the East End of London. The enormous organ was assisted by a band as well as the singers. There was absolutely nothing sensational, nothing bizarre, nothing vulgar or in bad taste.

The gospel and the gospel only was preached. Any shibboleths would – personally – have repelled me. Nothing but the story of Jesus and His love for humanity was told. Mr. Charrington himself presided.

The preacher was my friend Mr. James B. Wookey, whose testimony to the work accomplished by the evangelist's powers is given in another part of this book.

I was sitting just behind him upon the high platform, surrounded by the Deacons and Choir. I could not see the preacher's face, but his voice, which went pealing out into the great Hall before me, reached my mind as well as my ears with every inflection and change of note. It was an occasion which I shall not easily forget. Here was a man preaching to an enormous number of people in the first place. No ordinary church would hold such a concourse. In the second place the congregation was unique. There were well-dressed and prosperous people not only upon the platform, but in the body of the Hall and first gallery, and stretching right away to the roof were hundreds upon hundreds of outcasts, the men and women for whom Society has no place – the down-trodden and despised.

To these Mr. Wookey addressed an appeal, couched in very simple language, yet it was his use of English which drove home in an extraordinary way.

If we think of it, the greatest effect in all appeals to the heart have been got by the use and arrangement of simple words. If one takes that triumph of the English language, Milton's Lycidas, it is extraordinary to notice how in the most tender and most beautiful lines the monosyllable predominates.

It was just that fact which the preacher of this night thoroughly understood. It was strong nervous English, capable of being comprehended by the meanest individual in the Hall, and yet it was tensely living English also. I confess to extreme surprise. In a minute or two, however, my point of view was changed. I was touched, and deeply touched by the intense pathos of an appeal such as I have seldom heard. I was caught up, as many other members of the congregation were also, by the almost painful driving force, the tremendous earnestness behind the words. I watched the faces in the gallery, row after row; I saw the tense and almost breathless interest upon every one of them. Nobody moved or stirred. The congregation was frozen into attention.

The subject of the sermon was simple enough. We were asked to give up our sins, we were entreated almost with tears to give up strong drink, and come to Jesus. Not simply in the hope of personal happiness and future salvation – though this was, of course, implied – but because every evil act we commit gives personal pain to the Saviour who died for us. It was an intensely moving sermon, and it must have knocked at the hearts of very many of us. There was a dead silence, and in tones faltering with emotion, the preacher concluded by quoting the well-known couplets —

"He died that we might be forgiven,
He died to make us good,
That we might go at last to Heaven,
Saved by His Precious Blood."

Afterwards, in a large room under the hall, I saw many fallen men and women kneeling quietly with one or other of the helpers and confessing all their sin and troubles to Him who alone can heal and pardon.

Strange experiences have been the lot of Mr. Charrington during this part of the work. On one occasion a young man was about to commit suicide, and had a bottle of poison in his pocket. Mr. Charrington wrestled with him upon the floor of the room and took the bottle from him by force, thus saving his life.

So much for my own experiences. Let me conclude this necessarily circumscribed account of the living, burning activities of the Great Assembly Hall at this day, by telling my readers that upon Lord Mayor's Day, when the Chief Magistrate of London holds his Civic State in the grand old hall in the city, two or three thousand of the very poorest are also entertained at the Great Assembly Hall by Mr. Charrington and his co-workers, on behalf of the Lord Mayor, the Sheriffs, and the City Companies.

The poor have enjoyed this banquet for twenty-six years in succession, and I take a typical account of one of these feasts from the columns of a daily paper published in 1902.

"There was a pleasing though pathetic scene witnessed last night in the Great Assembly Hall, Mile End Road, when a large number of London's destitute poor were entertained to supper. As the people of all ages trooped in to take their seats at the long benches laden with good things, many a wan face brightened, as it had probably never brightened before, at the prospect of a good and nourishing meal. For the most part the people came with freshly washed faces, and nicely combed hair, and to one who did not know the vast metropolis and its slums, it would be impossible to believe that these were the people – or at least, many of them – who practically lived in the streets, and helped to augment their own and their parents' incomes by selling matches, flowers, and other articles along the kerbside. There were about two thousand guests, and when they once 'fell to' there was almost a silence. This gradually increased into a murmur, then into a general clatter of tongues as the good fare began to warm them. Then, here and there, came a merry peal of laughter. By the time the meal was finished, every one was gay and happy; each was in a veritable fairyland, and quite oblivious of the life of the morrow. But even such a momentary ray of sunshine into the lives of toil and trouble may help to fashion a character and teach not a few of them what can be done by kindness and well-dispensed generosity, while those who were responsible for the feast were amply recompensed.

"This annual gathering was begun in the year 1887, when three to four hundred people were fed, and from that time onward, owing to the flow of contributions, for which the Lord Mayors of London and their Sheriffs have been in a large degree responsible, the number of people provided for at this annual gathering has reached upwards of two thousand. The task of finding out the most deserving has been left to the clergymen, ministers, mission workers, city missionaries and others. No distinction of sect is made. Each recipient received a meat pie, a cake, two apples, and a loaf, while tea was plentifully supplied. At the conclusion of the meal, a very amusing entertainment was provided. The following telegram was sent to the Lord Mayor: 'Two thousand guests send greetings and thanks to Lord Mayor, Lady Mayoress, and Sheriffs.'"

The reply came speedily, and was as follows —

"Lord Mayor, Lady Mayoress, Sheriffs, and Ladies, greet the guests at Assembly Hall, and thank them for telegram which will be read by Lord Mayor to company at Guildhall. Lord Mayor hopes guests are spending pleasant evening, and regrets he cannot personally greet them.

    "Lord Mayor."

"Shortly after nine o'clock these happy people for a while went out into the Mile End Road and sought their squalid homes, after threading their way through London's murky streets on a typical November night. Who is responsible? What is responsible? How shall the sufferings of the poor of the East End of London be alleviated?"

The following appeared in the Daily Graphic, November 11, 1902 —

The Other Banquet

"In the East End, when people speak of the Lord Mayor's Banquet, they do not refer to the affair at the Guildhall, but to the meal which has now been provided at the Assembly Hall, Mile End Road, on sixteen consecutive Lord Mayor's Days. Mr. Charrington is responsible for the organisation of this treat to the East End poor – a treat which is doled out to any who are deserving of it and need it, irrespective of their nationality or religious belief. Two thousand invitations were issued for the banquet held last night. The tickets were given for distribution to any responsible men and women who applied for them. All the two thousand invitations were accepted, but, in addition to these, a very few guests were invited at very short notice; in fact, they came to the doors – hundreds of them – and clamoured for admission. They had but one excuse to offer for their behaviour – they were hungry. Some of them were brought inside the gates and as many as could be fed, were fed, but there were hundreds who had to be persuaded by the police to go away. They came back to the doors again – and again – and again. For what? A cup or two of hot tea, and a paper bag containing a pork pie, a pound cake, a roll, and two apples. After the meal there was some music by the students' orchestral band, a few speeches, and a display of animated photographs given by Mr. Luscombe Toms. The guests were welcomed by Mr. Charrington, in the name of the Lord Mayor, and a telegram of thanks and congratulation was sent to the Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs. The Lord Mayor had contributed twenty guineas towards the expenses, the Sheriffs ten guineas each, Sir Horace Marshall twenty guineas, and donations had also been received from several City Companies, and members of the Common Council. When the banquet and entertainment were over, all the paper bags had gone, and the urns, which had contained three hundred and fifty gallons of tea, were empty. Outside there was a hungry, envious crowd."

There has always been a great Banquet at Christmas also, in addition to that provided by the Lord Mayor upon his day.

It is interesting to remember that last year before King George left these shores to proceed to the Great Durbar, he not only took thought for the high business of State, but also for the needs of his poorer subjects. He sent a cheque for ten pounds from Buckingham Palace to aid the Tower Hamlets Mission in its work of feeding the East End poor at Christmas. Mr. Charrington announced the fact to the guests and intimated that the present was the third occasion on which King George had sent a cheque for the purpose.

An enormous work has been done among the children of the East End in connection with the Great Assembly Hall. There is the largest Sunday school in London, there are many agencies for giving the little ones holidays away from their sordid surroundings.

Quite adjacent to the Great Assembly Hall is another Hall capable of seating 1000, known as the Children's Hall. It is used exclusively for Christian and Temperance work amongst the children of the neighbourhood, and is under the control of Mr. Edward H. Mason, who is also Superintendent of the Sunday School, which is probably one of the largest in the Metropolis.

Much attention is devoted to music. Complete Oratorios, and also Gems from the Oratorios are frequently given, the large Choir and Orchestra being composed entirely of the working people of the neighbourhood, and have been brought to a high state of perfection by the Musical Director of the Mission, Mr. G. Day Winter.

The Temperance work – Mr. Charrington's life-work – is unceasing. I have thought it just to sum up all that the evangelist has done for the cause of Temperance in another chapter, so I need not refer to it further in this.