Page:Distinguished Churchmen.djvu/361

 THE REV. HARRY WILSON, M.A. 313

I took three rooms in Settles Street and fur nished them. They consisted of parlour and bedroom, and underground kitchen and a back yard. I moved after a bit, as the rooms had too many surroundings. On one side was a Board School with 1,200 children; at the back a rag-picking yard, where large quantities of rags imported fresh from Egypt were sorted, and over head resided three families, not always sober, consequently I was glad to get the chance of moving to a little house of three rooms behind the Mission House. There some of my staff lived for five years, when we shifted into the Clergy House which had been built at a cost of ^4,000. We had previously built the Mission House for the lady workers, costing .3,000. The next thing we did was to build a Club House at a cost of ^&quot;3,000 ; then to improve the appear ance of the church, then the large hall under the church ; to erect a mortuary ; and, lastly, the Red House, which cost ^&quot;10,000.&quot;

&quot;And how did you find East London was the population greater or less than it is to day?&quot;

&quot; East London then, as it is now, was as crowded as ever it could be. There were 7,500 people or more in the parish, and that is the case to-day. The Jewish immigration has, of course, been a great nuisance. And then there has always been difficulty with regard to housing.

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