Street Talkers

Two hundred Bowery bummers signed and sent a petition to Salvation Army authorities last week: "We, the undersigned, wish Isabella Austin to stay on the Bowery. She did a lot for us while she was here and we do not want to lose her." The girl, 19, blond, slim, small, cheery, had been giving street talks along the Bowery the past three months, had led many a corner prayer. But the strict Salvation Army rule, that workers must be frequently shifted to new localities, was behind her instructions to proceed to Morristown, N. J. Her orders not rescinded, she reported there last week.

One of the first street talkers of the1 Salvation Army type, was Robert Flockhart (1778-1857). For 43 years he was a strange figure in Edinburgh streets. A contemporary described him: an abnormally short man, with ponderous arms and legs, a shuffling gait, beaklike nose and chin, "curious cast of the eye," and a perpetual haranguer. He was wont to dress in pantaloons, long, colored coat; wore a stock, a top hat.

His method of evangelizing he described in his quaint autobiography: "Whenever I saw a man committing a sin, I reproved him, and then a multitude would gather around me. I would then begin to speak to them from a text of the Scripture, and would continue to speak as long as there was anyone to hear. Then the policeman would lay hold upon me, and drag me off to the police office, and my wife would get me out, and I would begin to preach again as if nothing had happened. Altogether I was nine or ten times in prison for preaching the gospel in Edinburgh."

Edinburgh policemen in turn had their grievances against Talker Flockhart. Frequently they had to carry him to the stationhouse. A diminutive man, he could not keep pace with them. In the station-house he would invariably transfix the officers with his strange eyes, and recite Scriptures to them. Often they threw him out of their presence; and that hurt those Scotsmen dreadfully. Manhandling the wight was like tearing a page from the Bible.

Edinburghers thought him insane; incarcerated him in Morningside Lunatic Asylum. There he refused to eat unless he could hold his Bible in his lap, and after some months of this officials discharged him, as a nuisance. His influence on the simpler folk of the city, however, was profound. Many a sinful soul became a convert; many an enterprising man an imitator of Street Talker Flockhart.