“In the nineteenth century many people resented paying their poor rate, and statesmen debated how to get the large costs of welfare down.  Ring any bells today?… The population of London was uncontrollably shooting up partly stoked by immigration (in that day Germans, Jews, Italian, Irish escaping the potato famine)… ring any bells?… Returning soldiers from Napoleonic wars often hit hard times and became homeless swelling the workhouses.  Well, look at the recent Evening Standard campaign to help ex servicemen and women involved in Iraq and Afghanistan who have become homeless and hit hard times.  Come along on Wednesday at 6pm, Baker Street tube, Marylebone Road exit and hear the stories of some of the great reformers, with wonderful characterful sites, and ponder how all the issues are just the same, only quite different too!”