The Birth of YMCA -Anniversary Review Part 1
The world-wide YMCA movement began in a small bare room above a shop in St Paul’s Churchyard, in the heart of present day London. London at that time was a dirty, chaotic city. Mingled among its population were about 150,000 young, male shop workers. They were supporting more “respectable” than the manual workers of the metropolis, but they worked very long hours- from 7am to 8 or 9pm, six days a week. With such little time for themselves, and usually living cramped in their employers’ homes, usually living cramped in their spare time to blot out their boredom at a local tavern or gambling house. According to a shop assistant at the time, who went on to become a clergyman: “No class was more degraded and dissolute, none were sunk deeper in ungodliness and dissipation, than the shop-men of London.” One of these 150,000 was Georges Williams, a farmer’s son from Somerset. George had taken up a post at Hitchcock and Rogers, a draper’s shop with 14...