Dinner-time at the Clare-Market Ragged School. Click on image to enlarge it.
We desire earnestly to invite the Christmas bounty of some of our readers to aid the charitable institutions in the squalid and crowded neighbourhood of Clare Market, which forms part of our owm parish, St. Clement Danes. The maze of narrow streets between the Strand and the south-west corner of Lincoln’s-inn-fields contains as needy a population as can be found anywhere west of Temple Bar; and the efforts both of the clergy, under the Rev. Mr. Simpson, the parish rector, and of the benevolent ladies and gentlemen who are associated together in support of the local Mission, deserve a liberal share of public assistance. The house at No. 6, Denzell-street, which is occupied by the day-schools and is used in the evenings for the “Penny Readings,” the “Mothers' Meetings,” the “Sick and Relief Society,” and other institutions of social beneficence, presents a very interesting scene between one and two o’clock on those days of the week when the poor children attending the day-schools are treated with a wholesome dinner of pease-porridge.
There are two rooms, one of which is tolerably large, being the whole of the ground floor, pretty well lighted and ventilated; but the lower room, or rather front cellar, which is used for the infant school, is confined and dismal. It is the one sho*n in our Illustration. When 130 children are thero assembled, the boys on one side and the girls on the other, every one holding his or her basin, cup, jug, mug, or gallipot, fetched in haste from their wretched homes to receive the warm mess of nourishing food, it is a lively place enough. The whole number of children who are daily taught and weekly fed at these schools is between two and three hundred; but they are divided into two companies, to whom-a meal is given on separate days—we believe, on the Tuesday and Thursday of each week. The schoolmistress is Miss Taylor, and Mr. John Palmer is manager of the whole. Yesterday, being Christmas Eve, thero was a special treat, instead of the ordinary pease-porridge dinner; and there will be a good supper of meat and pudding on Monday evening next; for which cause, and for many other reasons, needing few additional words of persuasion, we commend the Clare Market works of beneficence to those who have a little money to spare for deeds of human kindness at this appropriate season.
Bibliography
“The Clare Market Charities.” The Illustrated London News 55 (25 December 1869): 655, 657. Hathi Trust online version of a copy in the Princeton University Library. Web. 31 May 2021.
Last modified 31 May 2021