The Thrawl Street Mission House

"The courts leading out of Bishopsgate are occupied by the same kind of immoral resorts that King's Cross boasts of, while lower down towards Spitalflelds they are still worse, culminating in the most horrible and deadly arena of London crime of which Thrawl Street is the apex.
    [-50-] It is here that the mission house of the long established and highly reputed "Christian Community" stands, and it is in this low spot where all the scum and filth of the most degenerate humanity can be found. To go there on the Saturday evening and stay till Sunday morning, or until the bells of the surrounding churches ring out their Sabbath peals, and to watch the despairing horde congregate in the courts and alleys, is the scene for a lifetime. Right in the midst of almost the worst vice and crime that London contains, a band of men and women deny themselves their rest for the purpose of providing a meal for those who are starving and helplessly lying round their mission door. Every spark of manhood extinguished, every hope scalded out, every atom of virtue annihilated, these poor wretches lie in one mass positively worse than the beasts of the field. It is like heaven bursting upon their view when the assist- ant secretary or one of his co-workers opens the door of the mission room to let in the dark troop, and immediately they are seated their weary eyes are closed, and in the land of dreams they are for a few hours taken out of the sufferings of their horrible existence. They are hungry, and must be fed, and while their temporary slumber lasts honorary workers are in a little side apartment preparing their breakfast of bread and meat, and hot coffee. Like the Master with His five loaves and two fishes, they preach the most stirring sermon by their practical bread and meat treatment. Like the Master they descend to [-51-] the very corrupt of their fellow men, in order to reform their lives. In some instances there is something good found beneath the crime which has been accumulating for years, and in two notable cases the reformation of nature has been most perceptible. Inside the walls of this mission two workers are labouring assiduously who were found amid the tribe of homeless wanderers, and who now are assisting to rid the broad road that leads to destruction of a. few of its doleful travellers."

From a link provided to me by Mr. Hyde. 

http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications4/londonatmidnight.htm