[‘The Vagrant, Criminal, and Inebriate Classes’: Wilson Carlile (‘The Chief’), Prebendary of St Paul’s Cathedral and Founder of the Church Army.] Autograph Letter Signed, asking W. S. De Winton for assistance in helping persons to a ‘fresh start’.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. The Church Army, still active today, was founded in 1882 as a Church of England equivalent to the Methodists’ Salvation Army. From the papers of the recipient Wilfred Seymour De Winton of Haverfordwest. 3pp, 12mo. On a bifolium of grey paper. In good condition, lightly aged. Signed ‘W Carlile / Hon. Chief Sec.’ To the left of the signature, in the bottom-left of the recto of the second leaf, is a purple ink stamp of the following: ‘WRITTEN BY ONE OF OUR POOR STRUGGLING LABOUR HOME BROTHERS’. He begins what is undoubtedly one of many such letters he had to write: ‘Dear Mr De Winton / The Vagrant, Criminal, and Inebriate Classes, a seething mass of our fellow men, look to us as the hand of the Church held out to give them a last chance.’ While many could ‘get a fresh start in life after 2 or 3 months staying in one of our Labour Homes the lack of funds compels us day by day to refuse numbers of genuine helpable persons’. He stresses that the homes ‘are not Shelters and are limited to 25 Inmates, men women and youths all received irrespective of creed’. He states that 51 1/2 per cent of those who passed through the institutions in the year 1895 ‘obtained a fresh start’, and that the organisation requires ‘£100,000 annually’. ‘The financial burdens come heavily on us who nearly all work without any pay.’ He asks if De Winton can help them ‘regain by labour & religion many rapidly sinking into the vortex of crime and misery.’