3-028-302 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Strangers' Home, West India Dock-Road, Limehouse, 1870. 'The Strangers' Home for Asiatics, Africans, and South Sea Islanders...a handsome and commodious building...has accommodation for 230 inmates...with hospital and bathrooms...It offers, not gratis, but for ten or fourteen shillings a week, the comforts of a well-managed lodging and boarding house to sailors, servants, and others from the Eastern world, with perfect safety against the fraud, robbery, and ill-treatment to which they would otherwise be exposed in London. More than 5000 persons, from India, China, East and West Africa, the Malayan peninsula and islands, and those of the South Pacific, have been sheltered in this institution. Of these 1124 were casuals, and 1149 were destitute creatures, taken off the streets, or from hospitals, gaols, and work-houses. This institution, under the active superintendence of Lieutenant-Colonel R. Marsh Hughes, the honorary secretary, exerts its influence to put down mendicancy, while inquiring into cases of destitution and procuring relief. A religious missionary visitation, in connection with the Strangers' Home, has been set on foot among the Lascars, the Kroomen, and other non-European seamen, at the chief maritime ports of this kingdom'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.