“Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”

The wish of the child for a picture of the story which has interested him, expresses a feeling that is found in those of maturer years. “Where did this happen?” is the question sure to follow a narrative that has awakened sympathy. We realise the truth of a description more forcibly when we have given to it “a local habitation and a name.” In the present instance there is more than the usual reason for detail. Characteristic peculiarities belong both to the place and the people whom I am about to describe. Origin, occupation, and habits will, to a great extent, account for much that would otherwise require explanation. Without a due regard to these particulars, much labour is lost in working among the poor. We know that the seed which flourishes in one soil, and brings forth fruit to perfection, will scarcely live in another; and as every successful gardener considers both ground and plant, so every labourer in the human soil is careful to adapt means to ends, or his toil is fruitless.

Inasmuch as there has always been a demand for pigs’ flesh, at least among Christians, it is impossible to determine for how long pig-feeding establishments have been thought necessary for the neighbourhood of London. In all probability they had their origin at a very early date, and can claim to be ranked among the “time-honoured institutions” of this great city.

But we are not able to go back much further than sixty years, when we find that this necessary evil had for some time been located near the ground now covered by the Marble Arch, Connaught and other Squares. Here the nuisance was supposed to be out of town, and the porcine tribe luxuriated in this dry and elevated region. If there had been found at that time a registrar-general to note down the deaths and diseases of pigs, the records would excite the envy of swine in the present generation, and induce the sad belief that the former times were better than these. But these respectable animals of the past century had apparently another cause for congratulation. Their society seemed eagerly sought by the great London world; and seeing how perseveringly they were followed, they could proudly boast that they were leading the metropolis “by the nose.” Such a soothing idea was, however, dispelled, when conviction was unwillingly forced upon them, that there was a general desire to get rid of them as near neighbours, and that their room was more highly esteemed than their company.

The ground which these pigs occupied had become too valuable for them to remain there in peace. I have not been able to discover whether they were expelled by purchase, ejectment, or annoyance; but it is certain that, about the period I have named, they were compelled to go in search of a new home.

About that time a man named Lake, a chimney-sweeper and scavenger, who lived in Tottenham Court Road, became, from the nature of his occupation, so obnoxious to his neighbours, that he, too, was compelled to take himself off to a fresh locality. My informant told me he was determined to go at once far enough out of London. He thought three miles in a westerly direction would make him safe, and finding a spot that suited him, he secured a lease of the land, and removed himself and his appendages to a place, now sometimes called Notting Dale, but more generally the “Potteries.” Here, for a short time, he enjoyed almost a solitary life. The population of the place, for the first year or two, consisted of only three persons. Whatever he may have suffered from loneliness, was, no doubt, abundantly made up to him by a sense of freedom, and an absence from all restraint, for his neighbours were distant and few. At length finding he could not use all the land he had leased, he naturally looked about for some one to share it with him. Alas! he was not company for every one. Eventually he heard of a man named Stephens, a bowstring maker, who, from the unsavoury nature of his trade, was enduring a similar persecution to that from which he himself had escaped. Lake invited this man to become his neighbour; and Stephens eventually purchased from him the lease of a plot of land for one hundred pounds, and removed his bowstring establishment to this new possession. Perhaps he did not find it answer to carry on his business so far from town: this does not appear in the narrative; but it is certain that, for some reason, he soon relinquished it, and commenced pig-keeping instead,—probably for the same reason as the bone-picker assigned for his attachment to his trade, that he shouldn’t think it all right, unless he could “feel a smell.”

In his inquiries after pigs, &c., he became acquainted with the distress of the “West-end establishment,” and offered its members a share of the refuge which he and his friend Lake had found. The offer was gladly accepted, and many of the masters either bought or rented small plots of land from the original proprietors, and removed their establishments of pigs and children to this favoured spot, where Lake assured them everybody should do as they liked, and “he’d see that nobody meddled with them.”

Under this magnificent charter and spirited government the little colony progressed rapidly, and numbers of houses, or rather huts, sprang up on all sides. Such things as drainage and fresh water were considered superfluous; and the accumulation of the filth of years rendered it certain, by the simple law of self-preservation, that nothing would be meddled with.

In addition to the above-mentioned trades, about thirty years ago a considerable plot of land was bought for brick-making, the soil being almost entirely composed of stiff clay, peculiarly adapted for that purpose. This introduced another fresh element into the newly formed colony. The labourers employed at this work are not usually of a very high class, and the oldest inhabitants of the Potteries speak of their introduction as an evil. An old woman, who has lived forty years in the place, and her husband’s parents were amongst the first inhabitants, remarked, “Now pig-keepers is respectable; but them brick people, they bean’t, some of them, no wiser than the clay they works on.” I asked this old woman what kind of life they had lived there by themselves so many years. She said, “Oh, ma’am, you’d think ’twas an awful life! The only difference in Sundays and work-days was, that on Sundays we had cock-fighting and bull-baiting, and lots of dogs were kept on purpose to amuse the people by fighting and rat-killing. People all round were afraid of these dogs, and nobody ever cared to come nigh the place. We didn’t ourselves venture out after it was dark; if we hadn’t got in all we wanted before night, why we jist went without it: for besides the dogs, d’ye see, ma’am, there was the roads; leastwise, we called ’em roads, but they wornt for all that,—it was jist a lot of ups and downs, and when you had put one foot down, you didn’t know how to pull the other one up. Once, I mind, I happened to be out late in the evening, and had to go through Cut-throat Lane jist as it was gitting dark, (they calls that Pottery Lane now, you know, ma’am); I heard some people coming along, fighting and swearing, and I was so frightened I got down into the bottom of one of the ruts, and there I stopped till they had gone; so I got a service out of them that time, d’ye see, ma’am.

“We had no near neighbours for a long time; there was a farm-house where the Mitre Tavern now stands, and I can mind, when I have been passing by, seeing the men stacking the hay and the corn, and hearing them singing over their work. Then there was another farm-house, down where the Royal Crescent is now; and sometimes I have been there for a drop of milk, for we hadn’t no shops for a long time.”

I knew that my communicative old woman had been a good Christian character for many years; so I asked her how she, as an individual, had managed to pass her Sundays in this dark place, before there were either schools or places of worship of any kind there.

“Why, ma’am,” she replied, “I never would work of a Sunday—nobody couldn’t make me. I used to tidy up my house after breakfast, and put the saucepan by the fire, and then I went over to the old church at Kensington. The people now and then threw stones at me, and used to threaten to set the dogs at me; but they never did,—the Lord didn’t let ’em; and they knew me, too, that I’d be torn in pieces before I’d give up what I knew to be right.”

I was astonished at the immense numbers of pigs which these people seemed to keep, and I asked the old woman how they managed to find food for them all; she said—

“We most of us keep a horse, or a donkey and cart, and we go round early in the morning to the gentlefolk’s houses, and collect the refuges from the kitchens. When we comes home, we sorts it out; the best of it we eats ourselves or sells it to a neighbour, the fat is all boiled down, and the rest we gives to the pigs.”

“Do you go to the same houses every day?” I asked.

“Why, you see, ma’am, that depends upon how much refuge they have. When they have lots of company, then they gets a deal of refuge. I have been to the Duke of —, whenever he has been in town, for the last thirty years. Last week one of his daughters was married, and the house was full all the week; then there was plenty for me. But, do you know, ma’am, for all I’ve been in the habit of going backwards and forwards to that house so many years, them servants, that they have now, never had the manners to give me a bit of bridecake. I couldn’t help speaking about it. I says to them, ‘Well, this is something to think! I have been in attendance on the Duke this thirty years, and can’t get a bit of bridecake when his daughter is married.’ Of course that wasn’t the Duke’s fault, you see, ma’am; it was all a-hoeing to them servants. When the families goes out of town, the servants is put upon board wages, and they skrimps and saves everything; we aint wanted to call then, ’cause there’s not a scrap left for us. Oh no, it aint no use then.”

Although, as years rolled on, London continued to come further out of town, till those pig-feeders found themselves again surrounded by streets, squares, and terraces, inhabited by the “quality,” little attention was directed to the place, till the visitation of cholera in 1849. Then the eyes of the newly arrived were opened, and many were horrified at discerning what a plague-spot they had in their midst.

In one of the first numbers of Dickens’s “Household Words” the following passages appeared, which at once brought the place into notice; and, both in and out of Parliament, plans for its improvement were discussed:—

“In a neighbourhood studded thickly with elegant villas and mansions, viz., Bayswater and Notting Hill, in the parish of Kensington, is a plague-spot, scarcely equalled for its insalubrity by any other in London; it is called the Potteries. It comprises some seven or eight acres, with about two hundred and sixty houses (if the term can be applied to such hovels), and a population of nine hundred or one thousand. The occupation of the inhabitants is principally pig-fattening. Many hundreds of pigs, ducks, and fowls, are kept in an incredible state of filth. Dogs abound, for the purpose of guarding the swine. The atmosphere is still further polluted by the process of fat-boiling. In these hovels, discontent, dirt, filth, and misery are unsurpassed by anything known even in Ireland. Water is supplied to only a small number of the houses. There are foul ditches, open sewers, and defective drains, smelling most offensively, and generating large quantities of poisonous gases; stagnant water is found at every turn; not a drop of clean water can be obtained; all is charged to saturation with putrescent matter. Wells have been sunk on some of the premises, but they have become in many instances useless, from organic matter soaking into them. In some of the wells the water is perfectly black and fetid. The paint on the window-frames has become black from the action of sulphuretted hydrogen gas. Nearly all the inhabitants look unhealthy; the women especially complain of sickness and want of appetite, their eyes are sunken, and their skin shrivelled.

“The poisonous influence of this pestilential locality extends far and wide. Some twelve or thirteen hundred feet off, there is a row of clean houses called Crafton Terrace: the situation, though rather low, is open and airy. On Saturday and Sunday, the 8th and 9th September 1849, the inhabitants complained of an intolerable stench, the wind then blowing directly upon the terrace from the Potteries. Up to this time, there had been no case of cholera among the inhabitants; but the next day the disease broke out virulently; and, on the following day, the 11th September, a child died of cholera at No. 1. By the 22d of the same month, no less than seven persons in the terrace lost their lives by this fatal malady.”

It will be supposed that, after this, the law of self-preservation induced the surrounding inhabitants to be very urgent with parochial and all other officials who had any authority in the place. In a short time a good road was made, and supplies of fresh water were introduced. The drainage was found very difficult, from the low level of the ground; and it certainly could not have been thoroughly completed; for in the Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Parish of Kensington, for the year 1856, by Francis Goderich, M.R.C.S., L.A.C., Medical Officer of Health, the following passages appear:—

“One of the most deplorable spots, not only in Kensington, but in the whole metropolis, is the Potteries at Notting Dale,—a locality which is from its position difficult to drain. It occupies eight or nine acres of ground, and contains about 1000 inhabitants, the majority of whom obtain a living by rearing and fattening pigs upon the house-refuse obtained from club-houses and hotels, and upon offal, entrails, liver, and blood from slaughter-houses. This offensive food, often in a high state of decomposition when brought to the place, is boiled down in coppers and the fat separated for sale.

“The number of pigs varies from 1000 to 2000 (as many as 3000 have been kept), in filthy and badly-paved styes close to the houses. The drainage, in nearly all cases very defective, permits the liquid manure to run over the yards, saturating the ground to a great depth, contaminating all the wells with putrid matter, and polluting the atmosphere for a considerable distance around. There were, till lately, several immense accumulations of stagnant water, into which this pig matter found its way. One immense piece, called the ‘Ocean,’ formerly occupied nearly an acre of ground; it was covered with filthy slime, and bubbling with poisonous gases, caused by the drainage of pigstyes, &c., flowing into it. Till lately, the want of water was most severely felt by the inhabitants, and even now many of the yards in which the pigs are kept are entirely destitute of it. Many of the houses are in a most dilapidated state. Old railway-carriages and worn-out travelling-vans may be seen taken off their wheels and converted into dwellings.

“The people in general look sallow and aged; the children pale and flabby, their eyes glistening as if stimulated by ammonia. Small-pox is ten times more fatal than in any of the surrounding districts.

“The general death-rate varies from forty to sixty per 1000 per annum; of these deaths the very large proportion of 87.5 per cent. are under five years of age; and nearly all the deaths, I again observe, occur from zymotic diseases. The most appalling fact, however, connected with this subject, and one most likely to make a deep sensation in the public mind, is, that for a period of three years the average age at death is under twelve years.”

After this, great efforts were made to get rid of “the swinish multitude” altogether; but the shrewd chimney-sweep, Lake, seems to have foreseen this evil day, and “for the purpose of pig-keeping” had been inserted in the very leases which the people were able to produce; so that nothing but a special Act of Parliament could remedy the existing evil. The number of animals was, however, somewhat reduced; and, by additional drainage and further supplies of fresh water, a decided improvement has been effected. The inhabitants have become much healthier, and for the last year or two the number of deaths has scarcely exceeded the common average.

So much for the physical aspect of the district. But another question arises, fraught with still greater interest. What has been done for the people themselves? Surely the moral as well as the physical drainer had work to do here. However scanty may have been the supply of fresh water, the “water of life” was still more scarce. The road to heaven, though it had not to be made for them, had to be pointed out. In the almost entire absence of the observance of the Sabbath and of the means of grace, it is not surprising that a generation should have grown up without God in the world, and to all outward appearance as “far off by wicked works” as any of the heathen nations.

When, however, the place began to be frequented by the district visitor, it was found that a few, even there, had from the first feared and honoured God, had kept His Sabbaths in spite of all opposition; and though their cry had been, “Woe is me that I dwell in Meshec,” yet they had held fast their integrity, and, in a few cases, had managed even to establish in their families the daily reading of the Bible and united prayer. I have had the pleasure of conversing with some of these good people; and it might as truly be said of their moral standing, as it was of Saul’s natural height, that “from their shoulders and upwards” they were higher than any of the people.

The first girls’ school in the Potteries was established through the benevolent exertions of Lady Mary Fox. Some time after its foundation, a gentleman, who took a deep interest in the improvement of the district, presented a plot of ground on which a spacious national school-room was soon erected. It was, and is still (1859), surrounded by pigstyes. St James’s Church was built in 1845, within a few minutes’ walk of these school-rooms.

The first curate who was appointed entered at once upon his work in this deplorably destitute district, and in spite of great difficulties, and frequent failures of health, from exposure to damp and the horrible pollutions and stench of the highways and byways, he has steadily worked on for twelve years. He has happily lived to see a great improvement since he commenced his labours, and he has won the respect and affection of the whole community. The old woman, from whose conversation I have before quoted, said, in speaking of him, “’Twas the best day that ever rose in the Potteries, when he came amongst us; and, let who will come after him, he’ll never be forgotten.”

Another happy event was the appointment of a City Missionary, in the year 1850. It was pre-eminently the missionary that those people required. Their early habits, and also a spirit of lawlessness which seems one of their natural characteristics, made it difficult to persuade them to attend any place of worship. They had, indeed, to be “sought out.”

It has been remarked of the people in the United States of America, that they are all, to some extent, tinctured with the spirit of their early founders. The indomitable spirit, the resolution to conquer difficulties at any cost, is traced back by some to “the Pilgrim Fathers.” Those who reason thus would perhaps think they could account in the same way for that extraordinary spirit of independence which is so manifest in the dispositions of the people of whom we are now writing. The descendants of Lake and Stephens would, if placed in the same difficulties, undoubtedly exhibit the same ingenuity and resolution to extricate themselves. Another cause of this independence may be, that they have remained very much their own masters. Each man and woman seems to have had so many pigs and children to rule over, and no one dared to interfere. This absence of service, each one having to think for himself, and not to conform to the dictates of another, would also cause unusual self-reliance.

Fortunately for this people, the missionary soon made himself thoroughly acquainted with the soil he had come to cultivate, and was enabled so to accommodate and adapt himself to its requirements, that very little time was lost in getting to work. Had the case been otherwise, years might have passed in fruitless labour; but God gave to His servant a wise and understanding heart, and by appearing to yield everything, he gained everything. Among the many triumphs of missionary work, the Potteries must rank almost the highest. A contrast more striking could scarcely be imagined than that between the indifference, rudeness, and sometimes even execration, with which his first visits were received, and the spontaneous respect which is now paid to him by every man, woman, and child.

But other agencies for good have also been at work. The church and congregation assembling at Horbury Chapel directed their kind sympathies, and stretched out helping hands to cleanse this “Slough of Despond.” A room was first hired, in which to conduct a Sunday school; but this was soon overfilled, and it was proposed to build a chapel and school-rooms. By the exertion of kind and influential friends, the proposal was carried out, and the building was opened in 1852. An excellent master and mistress for the schools were secured: it is not too much to say that their influence for good is felt through the length and breadth of the district.

I was present at a meeting held at Kensington Chapel some time since, when a report of these schools was read. In describing the first gathering of the children, it was remarked that the scholars who regularly attended soon became orderly and attentive; the annoyance which was at first experienced arose not from them, but from the ragged, neglected children without, who for a long time persisted in throwing stones, breaking windows, persecuting the scholars as they came and returned, and in other varieties of characteristic mischief. From these facts it was evident that while the “aristocracy” of the Potteries had education provided for their children, there still existed an outlying juvenile population of young Ishmaelites, to reach whom some other means must be devised. After a short time, a room was hired, and a Ragged Evening School for girls was established; a Mothers’ Class soon followed, then a Sunday Evening Ragged School for boys, a Working Men’s Association, and other like institutions. All these, from want of a suitable place for assembling, were maintained with considerable difficulty, and also with great expense. This want continued to be so increasingly felt, that in June 1855, a lady in the neighbourhood kindly convened a meeting of influential ladies and gentlemen at her house, to consider the possibility of erecting such a building. At this meeting, the following resolutions were unanimously carried:—

“1st, That should such school-rooms be raised, they should be placed in trust of a committee of evangelical Christians, to consist of members of the Church of England and Dissenters in equal numbers.

“2d, That they should be for the benefit of four chief objects:—the Boys’ Ragged School, the Girls’ Ragged School, the Infant School, and the Mothers’ Meetings.

“3d, It is also considered important that the use of the building should be granted for lectures and for general educational purposes. The means of carrying out these resolutions are left for decision till a future meeting.”

Upwards of one hundred pounds were subscribed on this occasion; but, though great exertions were made to obtain the requisite funds, it was not until March 1858, that the committee considered they had a sufficient amount in hand to warrant the prosecution of their design. In the list of contributors to the Building Fund will be found names of members of the Established Church, the Society of Friends, Independents, Wesleyans, and Baptists. It is the determination of the committee to carry out the first resolution in its strictest integrity, trusting that all the members will be enabled to act in harmonious concert in the one grand object of promoting the moral and religious training of the poor people of the Potteries. The Infant and Ragged School-rooms, erected under the able direction of Mr Sim, the Honorary Architect, are remarkable alike for simplicity of design, excellence of ventilation, and space. They were opened by Lord Shaftesbury in June.