e or two
residents wrote to the local papers complaining of the 'nuisance', and
pointing out that it was calculated to drive the 'better-class'
visitors out of the town. After this two or three extra policemen were
put on duty near the fountain with instructions to 'move on' any groups
of unemployed that formed. They could not stop them from coming there,
but they prevented them standing about.

The processions of unemployed continued every day, and the money they
begged from the public was divided equally amongst those who took part.
Sometimes it amounted to one and sixpence each, sometimes it was a
little more and sometimes a little less. These men presented a
terrible spectacle as they slunk through the dreary streets, through
the rain or the snow, with the slush soaking into their broken boots,
and, worse still, with the bitterly cold east wind penetrating their
rotten clothing and freezing their famished bodies.

The majority of the skilled workers still held aloof from these
processions, although their haggard faces bore involuntary testimony to
their sufferings. Although privation reigned supreme in their desolate
homes, where there was often neither food nor light nor fire, they were
too 'proud' to parade their misery before each other or the world.
They secretly sold or pawned their clothing and their furniture and
lived in semi-starvation on the proceeds, and on credit, but they would
not beg. Many of them even echoed the sentiments of those who had
written to the papers, and with a strange lack of class-sympathy blamed
those who took part in the processions. They said it was that sort of
thing that drove the 'better class' away, injured the town, and caused
all the poverty and unemployment. However, some of them accepted
charity in other ways; district visitors distributed tickets for coal
and groceries. Not that that sort of thing made much difference; there
was usually a great deal of fuss and advice, many quotations of
Scripture, and very little groceries. And even what there was
generally went to the least-deserving people, because the only way to
obtain any of this sort of 'charity' is by hypocritically pretending to
be religious: and the greater the hypocrite, the greater the quantity
of coal and groceries. These 'charitable' people went into the
wretched homes of the poor and--in effect--said: 'Abandon every
particle of self-respect: cringe and fawn: come to church: bow down and
grovel to us