An excerpt from The Classic Slum by Robert Roberts

I recently re-read Robert Roberts' classic, The Classic Slum.

There's a passage in the text that I've included below that I think stands as one of the most quietly devastating pieces of moral realism in twentieth-century British writing – an example of working-class self-critique that reveals how deprivation, fear and ignorance can deform empathy, yet also how individual acts of kindness can quietly resist that deformation.

It’s a passage that feels absolutely vital today, reminding us that decency depends not on comfort or circumstance, but on the courage to see others as human.

The Jews, twenty thousand strong, dwelt in an area adjacent to ours on the north side, some in a poverty so appalling that it shocked even us. Our own poor grew hostile. They sensed the menace of a horde of hungry foreigners seeking to share in charities which, they felt, as true-born Britons belonged to them alone. Odd Jews who strayed into the village were driven out at once. Very early in the century one did venture to set up a small second-hand clothing store. Ignored by the police, thugs arrived, carried his stock into the road and set fire to it. From then on we were saved from further contamination. In 1905 a new 'Aliens Immigration Act' barred the entry of the destitute altogether. No more 'Sheenies' came our way save one. Our elders tolerated a tall, bearded glazier who padded along the pavements clutching glass in a wooden frame and called diffidently, 'Vinders!' The young trailed behind, jeering, and mocking him with that same awful question howled down the centuries by anti-semites. Once, when he carried it on his back, the boys threw stones and broke his glass. Grown-ups lolled, amused, in doorways. (At police courts and elsewhere 'Sheenies' were always 'comic'.)

'You don't shout after the glazier, do you?' my mother asked us sternly.

'Never!' we lied.

Once a winter, on sight of him, she would break a small scullery window with the end of a scrubbing brush (it cost ninepence to repair) because she hated to 'offer charity'. 'Go and tell the gentleman,' she should say, 'there's a job for him'.

'Gentleman?' - the word seemed ill-chosen. He came to the back kitchen one afternoon out of a wind full of frozen sleet, wearing broken shoes and a frock-coat past his knees. He stood, big-eyed, beard frozen, and looked embarrassed. I watched too curiously till a nod from my mother sent me from the room. But going no further than the small ventilator outside, I climbed a box to peep in on what was now an odd sight. The Jew still stood gripping glass and wooden frame to his side, and my mother, close to him, was trying to remove that which, somehow, he seemed unwilling to give up. At last I understood: after hours of his wandering in the cold, cramp had locked one arm rigid to the body. She loosened his frock-coat. It swung open. The man was naked from the waist up. Then my mother did a shocking thing - she placed a hand in the folds of the garment and, standing very close now, began to rub life into his body and arm. Soon he relaxed and gently they removed the frame and the coat. I gazed, then stepped down - frightened at his emaciation. The tap ran. She was drawing hot water - bringing heat to his rod-like arm. Later when I looked again the window had been mended. They were standing drinking tea from cups without savers. The Jew offered her food from a newspaper. And she took and ate it! They talked smiling together like friends. I turned away disgusted. She seemed sullied.

In the evening my mother looked up at me, cool and unrepentant from the sewing machine. 'The gentleman left a ball of putty,' she said. 'He thought you might like to do some modelling.'

'Don't want it,' I grunted.

'You take it,' she told me a little grimly, 'and let me have no nonsense!' But in the way of mothers, then to eight-year-old sons, she didn't deign to make any explanation. From that time on whenever the glazier was in the district he called upon her and they chatted over the shop counter, but with the war he came no more.

Roberts, R. (1971). The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century. Manchester: University of Manchester Press. pp. 171-173.

It shouldn't be necessary to stress that the author's mother is the most sympathetic figure in the book, functioning as its moral and emotional centre, but there's no harm in emphasising the point.

This is a beautifully written work, benefiting from syntax that's economical but nonetheless rhythmically deliberate, achieving a perfect balance between austerity and lyricism. Especially effective is the understated way in which Roberts allows moral revelation to arise indirectly, rather than through overt commentary. And it's very funny, the most I've laughed reading a book in a while.