CLOGS FUND FOR HALIFAX TO RELIEVE SERIOUS SITUATION
Education Department To Administer
You would shudder if you knew how many children in Halifax possess neither boots, nor clogs worthy the name of protection. The brightness of school is something that counts in many of these lives, but, however eager they are to go, their footwear is in too sorry a state to permit it. The children cannot even come out to breathe pure air. Too much thought, thank God, has been bestowed on the juvenile poorer life of our town to allow many tiny feet to go about naked in years past, and nobody wants to see it now.
Only yesterday most sinister news grated on our ears, to the effect that the authorities could not see their way to provide clogs for those directly needing them, this side of Christmas. If you only think what this will mean to such little tots, will it not brace you to instant action? We should dearly love to place the first pairs of clogs on those feet at the latest next week. If they wore them out before the Christmas period is over, going round flattening their noses at the shop windows, our faith in the Halifax public is big enough to feel later pairs – not one, but several – will if necessary be provided.
In that brief preamble, good-hearted readers, you get an inkling of a task we are setting ourselves: you will have perceived already how frightfully urgent the business is. Set about it, and be so good as to pass us your aid by return post. If you can influence sympathy in any wise, do so please, only don’t go about street-collecting, because that method is barred without the consent of the Watch Committee, – and we are hopeful than an appeal of this kind—so tragic and heartsearching will so arouse the spirit of charity that recourse to extraneous aids will not be needed.
WHAT HAS BEEN DONE, THE PRESENT DIFFICULTY
Hitherto clogs have been provided, in proved necessitous cases, by the Education authority out of money which has found its way to them from the Town Hall. It represented the interest from a fund provided by Good Samaritans some 64 years ago. Out of this year’s grant 307 pairs had been given away, the wherewithal is gone, and yet the needs of many children, in homes that are poorer than ever, are far from being satisfied. The authorities know the critical situation only too well, and they, like us, pray that it may be met. Will you not help please!
ln our issues of to-morrow, the Mayor will himself address the public in support of this appeal. Anything at all we will welcome. Please address “Fund Manager, Courier, Halifax,” and cheque may be made payable that way.
We take pleasure in opening this Fund ourselves with ten pounds, and especially in putting before the public the first substantial support already presented by friends who knew what we were about.
The Halifax Daily Courier And Guardian : 30 November 1921
This Newspaper appeal for clogs for impoverished Halifax children was published 100 years ago. In some ways that is ancient history, but it was just a couple of decades before I was born. Sadly, child poverty is not a thing of the past – clogs may be long gone but deprivation remains.
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