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Four nights a week Mr. Philipps used to go from 8 to 11
to the Oxford House Working Men's Club, with which he was
closely associated for over a year. The club had over 300
members, and about 150 of them were up every evening to
indulge in billiards, chess, draughts, dominoes, bagatelle
and other recreations. In connection with the Club there
was also cricket, football, boxing, rowing, running, gymnastics,
rifle range, swimming, and numerous other activities.
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The
other two nights of the week Mr. Philipps spent in visiting at
their headquarters some of the 48 troops of boy scouts in the
East London District (i.e. Hackney, Stepney and Poplar) The work
in this connection consisted in inspecting the boys, giving them
instruction where necessary, advising the scoutmasters, and in
generally working to maintain a high standard of efficiency in
the first-aid, life-saving, fire-drill, cooking and other practised
by the boy scouts.
As Secretary for Wales of the Boys' Country Work Society, Mr.
Philipps had daily much writing work to do apart from his work
in the evenings in connection with the scouts or Workingmen's
Club. The object of the Boys' Country Work Society was to send
to well-recommended farms in England and in Wales, lads of good
character and decent physique, who wished either to train for
emigration or to stay on the land as farmlabourers. These were
already eighty of these boys in South Wales.
Mr.
Philipps was also associated with the "Waifs and Strays" and with
"Dr. Barnardo's Homes." On several Sunday evenings he addressed
over two hundred Barnardo boys at their big home in Stepney Causeway.
He also did work in connection with boy's clubs, and in his spare
time visited the London Hospital and the Bethnal Green and Hackney
infirmaries.
Every Sunday afternoon when in London he assisted at a big tea
given in Stepney by the widow of the late Dr. Barnardo for 1,400
of the poorest children in England. These children were between
the ages of twelve and two months, and were fed six or seven hundred
at a time. They were a pathetic sight as far the majority of them
were clad in rags.
Perhaps one of Mr. Philipps's greatest pleasures was the work
in connection with the Kent hop-picking season. Every summer during
the few weeks that the sunny country of Kent was over-run with
hundreds of poor Londoners imported with their families to pick
up the hops. A number of young university men went down to the
hop-fields to live under canvas with the pickers to help them
with their work, to cheer them by means of concerts and lantern
lectures in their leisure, and to doctor and help them in their
need. One year Mr. Philipps spent a week under canvas at Paddock
Wood, and in other year a fortnight in a tent at East Fawleigh.
As
can be imagined all this work not only had the effect of keeping
Mr. Philipps right away from the pleasures and luxuries of West
London, (he was in fact seldom seen there except that whenever
possible he paid a short daily visit to his parents, of whom he
was very fond,) but it also prevented his being able to take the
city's man's much looked-forward-to week-end holiday. However,
Mr. Philipps was always a singularly happy and contented person
and was devotedly attached to the East London life, which he rarely
leaved for a day except when he could be of some use amongst his
native hills of Cymru.
The
Boys
To be a boy in East London was to be at risk either from
the criminal element or from the dangers to health inherent
in the very nature of the surroundings. But there were many
mums and dads (particularly the mums) who had great ambitions
for their children and gave them an upbringing of which
they could be, and were, proud. But with the nearest piece
of greenery several miles away, the youngsters of the East
End seldom came into contact with anything other that dark
alleys and busy streets.
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The
universities, colleges and public schools had run missions in
the area (Clement Attlee, later Prime Minister, worked at the
Haileybury Mission which was a great formative influence on his
life). The churches and the Jewish organisations did heroic work.
Into
the maelstrom in the last years of this century's first decade
came the scouts. In 1912 there arrived on the scene as Assistant
Commissioner for East and North East London one of the most remarkable
men ever worn scout uniform, Roland Philipps.
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