Bench

This bench comes from the casuals’ waiting room at Camberwell Reception Centre, known popularly as ‘The Spike’. Originally built as the Gordon Road Workhouse in 1878, it was a place of last refuge for over 100 years. The term 'casuals' referred to the homeless who sought shelter for a night at a time and was used from the Victorian period onwards.

The casuals’ waiting room was built in 1952 after local residents complained of the men ‘causing nuisances’ by using bombsites as toilets and delousing pits when they had to queue outside without access to any facilitiies. Following a campaign by local MP Freda Corbet, in 1952 the National Assistance Board who owned the site agreed to fund the £850 cost of creating ‘covered waiting accommodation’ with urinals.

Casuals were permitted to start congregating at the waiting room from 4pm each night, or 3.30pm in poor weather with admission starting from 5.30pm and running until 1am, or 3am on weekends. The waiting room had seating for around 50 people. At its post-war height, the centre was used by up to 1,100 men a night, depending on season, although 600 was more typical. To secure a bed, most men came early to get their name near the top of the running list. They stayed in the waiting room until they heard a bell, calling them in pairs to the admission window to start the process of admission.

It is likely the benches were installed after 1964 when a report noted that chairs were 'brandished as weapons in altercations between waiting applicants'. It also noted that benches 'by bringing the applicants into closer proximity - are likely to increase, rather than diminish, the risk of cross-infestation, however well they are cleaned after use.' The benches' aged appearance suggests that they may have been used elsewhere before.

'Upon arrival at Gordon Road, you had to wait with dozens of other dossers in a dingy, unheated outhouse containing nothing but a few benches. You might have to wait here for several hours, even all night.’ Victor Thomas Coughtrey.

The waiting room was a noisy, hectic, and, at times, hostile place to wait.

‘In times of pressure (e.g. at weekends), or when the admission process is interrupted (e.g. by failure of hot water supply to the baths), it becomes overcrowded, and (having regard to the habits and condition of the clientele) more than usually noisome'. (1964 report).

‘Enter the Spike and sit with the others, might be lucky tonight. Last night sat for three hours before the porters called us in. Quite a few drunks, same old faces, singing, swearing, bottles breaking, glass all over the place. One goes flying through the window and I duck as it flies over my head. Five or six porters come rushing in, they grab the drunk and push him out the gate. They are quiet now and we are called to the Reception office at last.’ Eddie Brindley, Spike resident.

The waiting room is also one of the places where violent incidents by staff against the homeless are alleged to have occurred. In the early 1980s, C.H.A.R., the campaign for the homeless and rootless, presented written affidavits to the DHSS accusing seven staff of assault. The court case collapsed and the findings of the DHSS investigation were kept secret.

Camberwell Resettlement Centre as it was then called closed permanently in September 1985.