On Monday 9th March a keen group of Glovers and their guests completed the Breakfast and Clothing Challenges at the Whitechapel Mission. The Glovers have supported the Mission for many years with an annual gift of gloves, and when the Mission’s manager, Tony Miller, invited us for a more hands-on experience, we leapt at the offer.
The Whitechapel Mission provides a freshly cooked breakfast, clean clothes and toiletries for up to 300 homeless people every day of the year. Our tasks were to prepare, cook, serve and clean up breakfast, and to sort, size and hang enough clothes for a week.
The Breakfast crew arrived before dawn, ready for a non-stop morning of work, occasional mayhem and much laughter. Supervised by the efficient Michelle and the other Mission staff, they performed brilliantly. Liveryman Dick Morgan and Peter Cave could rival any baristas in London, making individual teas, coffees and even mochas at lightning speed, while Liveryman Sonja Garsvo fried up a mountain of sausages, bacon and hash browns, aided by Dick’s very welcome guest Tomasz, a professional chef. While Immediate Past Master Rodney Jagelman charged dozens of phones, and even got them back to the correct owners, Past Mistress Susan Jagelman buttered endless loaves of bread. Sonja’s guest Helen manned the till (payment is not compulsory, but many of the clients prefer to make a contribution), First Under Warden Daphne Cave made an excellent silver service waitress, and all were rewarded by having Renter Warden Richard Morris drench their feet with an over enthusiastic bucket of soapy water at clean up time.
The Clothing crew had a later start, but were speedily presented with an entire hall filled with what seemed like hundreds of tables of clothes, sleeping bags piled up to the ceiling, and box upon box of woolly hats, socks, underwear and of course gloves. Ray, the Clothing Supervisor, was a fund of useful advice and interesting stories, and soon had his volunteers measuring, labelling and hanging clothes in teams of three, capably overseen by The Master Roger de Courcey. The three teams, consisting of CPC Chair Maggie Manwaring, Vanessa Morris, Liverymen Mark Lamport, Lindy Estlin, Felicity Chadwick-Histed, Virginia Hopson, Sonja Jenkins, Christine Heald and Minnie Harris, were so efficient that they finished earlier than expected and were rewarded with a tour of the hidden depths of the Mission. The tour included the vast underground storage facilities and the room in which, when it was part of the Whitechapel Hospital, autopsies were performed on the first two victims of Jack the Ripper: a fascinating snippet of local history.
Fortunately, there were no autopsies required for any of the Glovers, and the morning ended with two tired but satisfied teams dispersing in the welcome spring sunshine, most of them swearing off cooked breakfasts and clothes shopping for quite some time.
After this successful and enjoyable first visit, it is hoped that a Glovers team will take the Challenge on an annual basis.
Liveryman Minnie Harris
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