rk went on, rendered possible, I ought to say, by the generous
assistance of friends unknown to me, who sent me, L150 a year during
the last year and a half. So also went on the vigorous Socialist work,
and the continual championship of struggling labour movements,
prominent here being the organisation of the South London fur-pullers
into a union, and the aiding of the movement for shortening the hours
of tram and 'bus men, the meetings for which had to be held after
midnight. The feeding and clothing of children also occupied much time
and attention, for the little ones in my district were, thousands of
them, desperately poor. My studies I pursued as best I could, reading
in railway carriages, tramcars, omnibuses, and stealing hours for
listening to H.P.B. by shortening the nights.

In October, Mr. Bradlaugh's shaken strength received its death-blow,
though he was to live yet another fifteen months. He collapsed
suddenly under a most severe attack of congestion and lay in imminent
peril, devotedly nursed by his only remaining child, Mrs. Bonner, his
elder daughter having died the preceding autumn. Slowly he struggled
back to life, after four weeks in bed, and, ordered by his physician
to take rest and if possible a sea voyage, he sailed for India on
November 28th, to attend the National Congress, where he was
enthusiastically acclaimed as "Member for India."

In November I argued a libel suit, brought by me against the Rev. Mr.
Hoskyns, vicar of Stepney, who had selected some vile passages from a
book which was not mine and had circulated them as representing my
views, during the School Board election of 1888. I had against me the
Solicitor-General, Sir Edward Clarke, at the bar, and Baron Huddleston
on the bench; both counsel and judge did their best to browbeat me and
to use the coarsest language, endeavouring to prove that by advocating
the limitation of the family I had condemned chastity as a crime. Five
hours of brutal cross-examination left my denial of such teachings
unshaken, and even the pleadings of the judge for the clergyman,
defending his parishioners against an unbeliever and his laying down
as law that the statement was privileged, did not avail to win a
verdict. The jury disagreed, not, as one of them told me afterwards,
on the question of the libel, but on some feeling that a clergyman
ought not to be mulcted in damages for his over-zeal in defence of his
faith against the ravening wolf of unbelief,