03/14/2021
Harold Stevens posing and living as a homeless man under Cleopatra’s Needle on the Embankment, 1926. (Read below for the story)
Stevens was a Weymouth Magistrate who, for two weeks in 1926, decided to live as a homeless person, in an effort to ‘study the vagrancy problem’ of the time.
This is an extract from an article on Stevens on the Dorset Life website: “...Stevens wrote a series of articles for the Westminster Gazette that were published nationally in more than forty newspapers, recounting a wealth of experiences from meeting a man who made a century for the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club?) and a former society lady selling matches...
In the crypt of St Martin-In-The-Fields he saw a man of over eighty, his hair unkempt and in rags, start up in his sleep and murmur: ‘My times are in thy hands, whatever they may be, pleasing or painful, dark or bright, as best may seem to thee.’
These beautiful lines, coming from such an unexpected source, and uttered in a room crowded with the dregs of humanity, were startling in the extreme. “Could these poor creatures ever again be contemptuously dismissed as mere loafers?” asked Stevens......”The average man on the embankment, in the crypt of St Martin’s church and in Trafalgar Square is a decent fellow who wants work. Hosts of them are ex-soldiers to whom a land for heroes was promised. I have learned to love them, and intend to pay them a return visit.’”
Stevens maintained his compassion for the homeless community, and is reported to have often paid their fines when they appeared in his court.