From Workhouse to Westminster by George Haw

Author:George Haw [Haw, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Classics
ISBN: 9781507557051
Google: QLn4rQEACAAJ
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
Published: 2015-03-03T16:04:33+00:00

"What d'yer think?" he overheard a tradesman's wife ask another in disgust. "They've made that common fellow Crooks Mayor! And he no better than a working-man."

"Quite right, madam," he interposed, raising his hat as she turned round, crimson, and recognised him. "No better than a working-man!"

It was evident, too, that at first certain of the other metropolitan mayors thought him a common fellow, far beneath their notice. The first occasion that saw him in their midst was a conference of mayors at the Mansion House. It was convened by the Lord Mayor to consider arrangements for the Coronation Dinner to the Poor. Crooks listened for an hour to all kinds of suggestions put forward by men who knew little about the poor before rising at last to make a proposal of his own.

The instant he rose there was a howl of disapproval.

"Sit down—sit down!" "Who are you?" "We want none of your opinions." "Sit down—sit down!"

The wrath of some of these funny little functionaries at the idea of a Labour man daring to address them was something he laughed at for a long time after. Several of them had lost their heads entirely at being invited to discuss a matter which so closely concerned the King and Queen. The very presence of a Labour man at such an august gathering was felt to be an insult.

They drowned his voice each time he attempted to speak, until it began to dawn upon them that instead of gaining favour with the Lord Mayor, who was in the chair, they were incurring his displeasure.

"Gentlemen," he cried, "I protest against this conduct. I call upon my friend, Mr. Crooks, to speak."

You should have seen their faces then! They had forgotten that the Lord Mayor (Sir Joseph Dimsdale) and Crooks had been colleagues together for years on the County Council.

Having got a hearing, the Labour man spoke evidently very much to the point. Sir Thomas Lipton, who represented the King at that and the subsequent conferences, declared afterwards that the one mayor in London who seemed to know what was wanted was the working-man Mayor of Poplar. At any rate, the final arrangements for the King's Dinner were left to a small sub-committee, of which Crooks was unanimously elected one by the body that first tried to howl him down.

The illusion that working-men cannot make mayors died hard. It lingered last in the columns of the Times. Crooks had been in office several months when that journal called public attention to the fact that the Mayor of Poplar lived in a house "only rated at £11 a year." From this circumstance the Times drew the rash conclusion that a man so poor could not necessarily fill the office of mayor properly.

After this, nobody could be surprised at the wild mis-statements that followed. The Times went on to say that before Crooks's election the Labour Party of Poplar seemed to think his income of £3 10s. a week insufficient for the mayoralty, and that they started

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