I helped organise the OPEN CHRISTMAS, a three-day fest of soup, mince pies, sausage rolls and blankets circa late 60’s early 70’s. Today, it is a very efficiently run ten-day seasonal event which highlights and responds to relieving the lonely Christmas conditions of homeless people; not only in London but in nationwide venues also. What was once a London ad hoc effort to provide basic food, clothing and warmth as a brief respite for people who slept rough is now a highly organised Charity – CRISIS – providing high standard food, baths, medical care, housing help and advice.

The originators of this basic help initiative were formed of a small group of mainly key church movers and shakers in the London homelessness field who would meet in late September to plan what was then known as Crisis at Christmas. So it was that I was invited to join Rev. David Moore – Director Bow Methodist Mission & founder of CHAR (Campaign for Homeleess & Rootless); Richard Smith, Director No Fixed Abode – an umbrella group of homelessness agencies; Rev. Eugene Morse – East End Methodist Mission; Rev. Malcolm Johnson, Vicar of St Botolph’s Church, Aldgate, and Church Army Captain Terry Drummond. A fellow layman, Pat Logan founder of UNLEASH * participated as consultant adviser. I qualified to be in this company being welfare Administrator of Providence (Row) Night Refuge & Home, 50 Crispin Street, Spitalfields.

Quaker Action supporters and members of the Salvation Army and volunteer nurses from the main London Hospital Nursing Schools and the Metropolitan Police cadets were drafted in. Caspar Werley, a monk, was seconded from his monastery to command a team of lay volunteers and direct the whole operation.

Caspar delegated various fund raising aspects to me and I was rostered for work on Christmas Eve in 1977. Miracles were performed over a number of months and Crisis at Christmas was ready to open in St. Mary’s Church – now The Tradescant Centre – next to Lambeth Palace. Long before the church doors opened, I passed a half-mile queue forming alongside the Palace and stretching down as far as St. Thomas’s Hospital and County Hall where Capital Radio had set up a temporary studio.

I had been assigned to contribute to a broadcast about Crisis at Christmas with Jim Horne – charismatic founder of St. Mungos, Organiser of nightly Soup Runs and master of empty buildings acquisition as shelters for homeless people. The Director of CHAR – Campaign for Homeless and Rootless People – and tireless campaigner – Nicholas Beacock spoke also. The tailpiece of the discussion was the opportunity given to contributors to make a direct appeal specific to each represented charity. I appealed for footwear and clothing for Providence Row Night Refuge. Next day, tons of both requirements were delivered: a particularly unusual gift was hundreds of unused blue Metropolitan Police issue shirts – without collars.

When I got to St. Mary’s later that night the pews were stacked ceiling high against the walls and the floor space packed with sheltering “dossers” – a politically incorrect word now – but that was what they called themselves then. Indeed, Ted Eagle founder of PROD – Protection of the Rights of Dossers – was a helper along with other co-workers, I attended Midnight Service celebrated at the raised holy end by Malcolm Johnson assisted by Caspar. Down in the darkened well of the church hundreds of homeless people sprawled on mattresses watched over by mainly women workers. The glow from the fags being surreptitiously smoked winked back up at us as the service progressed. Just before the Collect, a man rose from his mattress: mounting the steps he then sat himself down on what would have been the Archbishop’s Chair and intoned the most perfect and appropriate latin. He remained there throughout and responded in latin as and when. Communion was taken in both kinds under the Anglican Rite.

Later, about one thirty in the morning, as we crept past the sleeping “Congregation” to head home I heard a whispered: “Tony! Tony! Give us a fag!” In the gloom I recognised Laura a woman I, along with many others, had often helped out in the past. I bent down and gave her the remainder of a packet of Guards I had on me while extracting a promise that she would not smoke them until the morning. A dwarf, Laura stood on a sleeping figure cheek by jowl on the floor and, all stale drink fumes, hung suspended from my neck long enough to kiss me. Happy Christmas!

Laura was a chronic alcoholic: when no palatable alcohol was available she drank the “Jake” methylated spirit cut with lemonade. A way of getting money was to allow herself to be thrown about – the ancient pastime of dwarf-tossing practised at one time in certain East End Pubs. Four years later, a policeman, an acquaintance, the Limehouse Coroner’s Officer in fact, told me that she had been murdered in a Wapping “derry” a derelict house. Her special friend was eventually successfully resettled. See “Helen Goes Home”.

For many years I was very close to the street homeless of London’s East End. Indeed, I was so familiar with their ways and knew their real names: “Scouser” Bob, “Brummie” Dave, “Galway” Mick, “Scrumpy” Jock etc., usually sufficed among themselves. Others, murder squad detectives, used to visit me at Providence Row Night Refuge and ask me to help identify dead people. I would be driven to locations where the bodies would still be lying where they were found: in underground garages, tower block stairwells, chaotic squats, derelict houses, “skippers” i.e. any kind of makeshift shelter. Frozen, burned, battered, often choked when being sick in sleep, sometimes gnawed by rodents. More often or not, I would look down into their dead faces as they were slid out on metal trays from the refrigerator at Limehouse Mortuary and put a name to them.

Few people knew that at Bethnal Green Police Station there was a unique photographic “Dossers Gallery”. This consisted of a series of regularly updated photographs of homeless men and women sleeping rough in the neighbourhood: Aldgate, Spitalfields, Whitechapel, Shadwell & Wapping mainly. They were photographed in situ undisturbed as they slept. It saved a lot of precious police time.

One of the few comforts gained from working with homeless people was their sense of humour; often ironic, some of the best jokes were those they told about themselves. This anecdote about Crisis at Christmas was told me by a homeless man. I had asked him what he would have liked for Christmas and he replied: “A school tie – Eton colours – Dear Boy! With two crossed cider bottles and the motto “Bibo ergo sum”.

My narrator set the scene of his anecdote thus: Crisis at Christmas three-day Shelter is ending. Hundreds of homeless people stream out to re-occupy the streets and whatever shelter is available: the worst off to avail of whatever minimal shelter they can find: Cardboard City:– packing cases at nearby Waterloo Station; Charing Station and under the bushes on nearby London Embankment or the DHSS controlled Camberwell Spike. The ‘better off’ will move back into in the numerous doss-houses of up to a thousand beds that warehoused the homeless in those days. The ‘best off’ having spent a few days with old associates living “on the ramp” (No Fixed Abode) will return to bed-sitters where life, for many, is an often lonely resettled existence.

Duffle-coated media commentator pokes microphone into face of our departing “dosser”. “Here we have a typical homeless person who has spent three days with crisis at Christmas – How was it for you?” “Most agreeable” is the reply which continues “except that the champagne was flat, the caviar ‘orf, the dancing girls never arrived and the mattresses had fleas.”
“So there you have it Ladies and Gentlemen as I hand you back to the studio – there’s always room for improvement. A Happy New Year to you All!”

* United London Ecumenical Action For Single Homeless

“A BODY HAS BEEN FOUND…”

“It’s someone You might know!”
Said the voice on the phone,
“Can you come round?
Ring back when convenient,
On this number – usual hours”.

At the mortuary a long metal tray
is slid out from the fridge:
The Attendant says “Another NFA!
The Winter’s a killer!
Though no worse than usual!”

The face is revealed;
the eyelids are stitched.
“Nothing to go on –
Can you say who it is?
The rats got the eyes!”

“Can I look at the clothes?
They might give a lead.”
“None found.” is the reply.
“In the muddy conditions
they had all rotted away.”

A last long look…
Then I turn aside;
the Attendant slides
the remains from sight.
In cold silence we look at
each other, our eyes say:
“It could be anybody.”

Tony Brady. Extract out of – Nothing Matches but it Home!- the quartet of books: Scenes from an Examined Life. published by tradition.com