The Difficulty in handling it—The Question of its Recognition—The Argyll Rooms—Mr. Acton’s visit there—The Women and their Patrons—The Floating Population of Windmill-street—Cremorne Gardens in the Season.

The only explanation that can be offered to the supersensitive reader, who will doubtless experience a shock of alarm at discovering this page’s heading, is, that it would be simply impossible to treat with any pretension to completeness of the curses of London without including it.

Doubtless it is a curse, the mere mention of which, let alone its investigation, the delicate-minded naturally shrinks from. But it is a matter for congratulation, perhaps, that we are not all so delicate-minded. Cowardice is not unfrequently mistaken for daintiness of nature. It is so with the subject in question. It is not a pleasant subject—very far from it; but that is not a sufficient excuse for letting it alone. We should never forget that it is our distaste for meddling with unsavoury business that does not immediately and personally concern us, that is the evil-doers’ armour of impunity. The monstrous evil in question has grown to its present dimensions chiefly because we have silently borne with it and let it grow up in all its lusty rankness under our noses; and rather than pluck it up by the roots, rather than acknowledge its existence even, have turned away our heads and inclined our eyes skyward, and thanked God for the many mercies conferred on us.

And here the writer hastens to confess, not without a tingling sense of cowardice too, perhaps, that it is not his intention to expose this terrible canker that preys on the heart and vitals of society in all its plain and bare repulsiveness. Undoubtedly it is better at all times to conceal from the public gaze as much as may be safely hid of the blotches and plague-spots that afflict the social body; but if to hide them, and cast white cloths over them, and sprinkle them with rose-water answers no other purpose (beyond conciliating the squeamish) than to encourage festering and decay, why then it becomes a pity that the whole foul matter may not be brought fairly to board, to be dealt with according to the best of our sanitary knowledge.

The saving, as well as the chastening, hand of the law should be held out to the countless host that constitute what is acknowledged as emphatically the social evil. It has been urged, that “to take this species of vice under legal regulation is to give it, in the public eye, a species of legal sanction.” Ministers from the pulpit have preached that “it can never be right to regulate what it is wrong to do and wrong to tolerate. To license immorality is to protect and encourage it. Individuals and houses which have a place on the public registers naturally regard themselves, and are regarded by others, as being under the law’s guardianship and authority,—not, as they ought to be, under its ban and repression.”

Against this grim and essentially unchristian doctrine, let us set the argument of a learned and brilliant writer, who some years since was courageous enough to shed a little wholesome light on this ugly subject, from the pages of a popular magazine.

“It is urged that the ‘tacit sanction’ given to vice, by such a recognition of prostitution as would be involved in a system of supervision, registration, or license, would be a greater evil than all the maladies (moral and physical) which now flow from its unchecked prevalence. But let it be considered that by ignoring we do not abolish it, we do not even conceal it; it speaks aloud; it walks abroad; it is a vice as patent and as well-known as drunkenness; it is already ‘tacitly sanctioned’ by the mere fact of its permitted, or connived-at, existence; by the very circumstance which stares us in the face, that the legislative and executive authorities, seeing it, deploring it, yet confess by their inaction their inability to check it, and their unwillingness to prohibit it, and virtually say to the unfortunate prostitutes and their frequenters, ‘As long as you create no public scandal, but throw a decent veil over your proceedings, we shall not interfere with you, but shall regard you as an inevitable evil.’ By an attempt to regulate and control them, the authorities would confess nothing more than they already in act acknowledge, viz. their desire to mitigate an evil which they have discovered their incompetency to suppress. By prohibiting the practice of prostitution under certain conditions, they do not legalise or authorise it under all other conditions; they simply announce that, under these certain conditions, they feel called upon promptly to interfere. The legislature does not forbid drunkenness, knowing that it would be futile to do so: but if a man, when drunk, is disorderly, pugnacious, or indecent, or in other mode compromises public comfort or public morals, it steps forward to arrest and punish him; yet surely by no fair use of words can it be represented as thereby sanctioning drunkenness when unaccompanied by indecorous or riotous behaviour, for it merely declares that in the one case interference falls within its functions, and that in the other case it does not.”

No living writer, however, dare bring the subject before the public as it should be brought. A penman bolder than his brethren has but to raise the curtain that conceals the thousand-and-one abominations that find growth in this magnificent city of ours, but an inch higher than “decorum” permits, than the eyes of outraged modesty immediately take refuge behind her pocket-handkerchief, and society at large is aghast at the man’s audacity, not to say “indecency.” Warned by the fate of such daring ones, therefore, it shall be the writer’s care to avoid all startling revelations, and the painting of pictures in their real colours, and to confine himself to plain black-and-white inoffensive enumerations and descriptions, placing the plain facts and figures before the reader, that he may deal with them according to his conscience.

It should incline us to a merciful consideration of the fallen-woman when we reflect on the monotony of misery her existence is. She is to herself vile, and she has no other resource but to flee to the gin-measure, and therein hide herself from herself. She has no pleasure even. Never was there made a grimmer joke than that which designates her life a short and merry one. True, she is found at places where amusement and wild reckless gaiety is sought; but does she ever appear amused, or, while she remains sober, recklessly gay? I am not now alluding to the low prostitute, the conscienceless wretch who wallows in vice and mire and strong liquor in a back street of Shadwell, but to the woman of some breeding and delicacy, the “well-dressed” creature, in fact, who does not habitually “walk the streets,” but betakes herself to places of popular resort for persons of a “fast” turn, and who have money, and are desirous of expending some of it in “seeing life.” Such a woman would be a frequent visitant at the Argyll Rooms, for instance; let us turn to Mr. Acton, and see how vastly she enjoys herself there.

“The most striking thing to me about the place was an upper gallery fringed with this sort of company. A sprinkling of each class seemed to be there by assignation, and with no idea of seeking acquaintances. A number of both sexes, again, were evidently visitors for distraction’s sake alone; the rest were to all intents and purposes in quest of intrigues.

“The utter indifference of the stylish loungers in these shambles contrasted painfully with the anxious countenances of the many unnoticed women whom the improved manners of the time by no means permit to make advances. I noticed some very sad eyes, that gave the lie to laughing lips, as they wandered round in search of some familiar face in hope of friendly greeting. There was the sly triumph of here and there a vixenish hoyden with her leash of patrons about her, and the same envy, hatred, and malice of the neglected ‘has-been’ that some have thought they saw in everyday society. The glory of the ascendant harlot was no plainer than the discomfiture of her sister out of luck, whom want of elbow-room and excitement threw back upon her vacant self. The affectation of reserve and gentility that pervaded the pens of that upper region seemed to me but to lay more bare the skeleton; and I thought, as I circulated among the promiscuous herd to groundlings, that the sixpenny balcony would better serve to point a moral than the somewhat more natural, and at all events far more hilarious, throng about me. As far as regarded public order, it seemed an admirable arrangement; to the proprietor of the rooms, profitable; of most of its cribbed and cabined occupants, a voluntary martyrdom; in all of them, in making more plain their folly and misfortunes, a mistake.

“The great mass of the general company were on that occasion males—young, middle-aged, and old, married and single, of every shade of rank and respectability; and of these again the majority seemed to have no other aim than to kill an hour or two in philosophising, staring at one another and the women about them, and listening to good music, without a thought of dancing or intention of ultimate dissipation. A few had come with companions of our sex to dance, and many had paid their shillings on speculation only. Some pretty grisettes had been brought by their lovers to be seen and to see; and once or twice I thought I saw ‘a sunbeam that had lost its way,’ where a modest young girl was being paraded by a foolish swain, or indoctrinated into the charms of town by a designing scamp. There were plenty of dancers, and the casual polka was often enough, by mutual consent, the beginning and end of the acquaintance. There was little appearance of refreshment or solicitation, and none whatever of ill-behaviour or drunkenness. It was clear that two rills of population had met in Windmill-street—one idle and vicious by profession or inclination, the other idle for a few hours on compulsion. Between them there was little amalgamation. A few dozen couples of the former, had there been no casino, would have concocted their amours in the thoroughfares; the crowd who formed the other seemed to seek the place with no definite views beyond light music and shelter. Many, whose thorough British gravity was proof against more than all the meretriciousness of the assembly, would, I fancy, have been there had it been confined to males only. I am convinced they were open to neither flirtation nor temptation, and I know enough of my countryman’s general taste to affirm that they ran little hazard of the latter.”

Again, Cremorne Gardens “in the season” would seem a likely place to seek the siren devoted to a life mirthful though brief. Let us again accompany Mr. Acton.

“As calico and merry respectability tailed off eastward by penny steamers, the setting sun brought westward hansoms freighted with demure immorality in silk and fine linen. By about ten o’clock age and innocence—of whom there had been much in the place that day—had retired, weary of amusement, leaving the massive elms, the grass-plots, and the geranium-beds, the kiosks, temples, ‘monster platforms,’ and ‘crystal circle’ of Cremorne to flicker in the thousand gaslights there for the gratification of the dancing public only. On and around that platform waltzed, strolled, and fed some thousand souls, perhaps seven hundred of them men of the upper and middle class, the remainder prostitutes more or less prononcÉes. I suppose that a hundred couples—partly old acquaintances, part improvised—were engaged in dancing and other amusements, and the rest of the society, myself included, circulated listlessly about the garden, and enjoyed in a grim kind of way the ‘selection’ from some favourite opera and the cool night breeze from the river.“The extent of disillusion he has purchased in this world comes forcibly home to the middle-aged man who in such a scene attempts to fathom former faith and ancient joys, and perhaps even vainly to fancy he might by some possibility begin again. I saw scores, nay hundreds, about me in the same position as myself. We were there, and some of us, I feel sure, hardly knew why; but being there, and it being obviously impossible to enjoy the place after the manner of youth, it was necessary, I suppose, to chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancies; and then so little pleasure came, that the Britannic solidity waxed solider than ever even in a garden full of music and dancing, and so an almost mute procession, not of joyous revellers, but thoughtful careworn men and women, paced round and round the platform as on a horizontal treadmill. There was now and then a bare recognition between passers-by: they seemed to touch and go like ants in the hurry of business. I do not imagine for a moment they could have been aware that a self-appointed inspector was among them; but, had they known it never so well, the intercourse of the sexes could hardly have been more reserved—as a general rule, be it always understood. For my part I was occupied, when the first chill of change was shaken off, in quest of noise, disorder, debauchery, and bad manners. Hopeless task! The picnic at Burnham Beeches, that showed no more life and merriment than Cremorne on the night and time above mentioned, would be a failure indeed, unless the company were antiquarians or undertakers. A jolly burst of laughter now and then came bounding through the crowd that fringed the dancing-floor and roved about the adjacent sheds in search of company; but that gone by, you heard very plainly the sigh of the poplar, the surging gossip of the tulip-tree, and the plash of the little embowered fountain that served two plaster children for an endless shower-bath. The function of the very band appeared to be to drown not noise, but stillness.”

CHAPTER XVII.
THE PLAIN FACTS AND FIGURES OF PROSTITUTION.

Statistics of Westminster, Brompton, and Pimlico—Methods of conducting the nefarious Business—Aristocratic Dens—The High Tariff—The Horrors of the Social Evil—The Broken Bridge behind the Sinner—“Dress Lodgers”—There’s always a “Watcher”—Soldiers and Sailors—The “Wrens of the Curragh.”

Let us in the first place consider the extent to which the terrible malady in question afflicts us. I am not aware if more recent returns have been made than those I have at hand. Were it possible to obtain exact statistics of this as of almost every other branch of social economy, I should have been at the trouble of inquiring for them further than I have; but I find that the calculations made differ so widely one from the other, and are, as a whole, so irreconcilable with probability, that it will be better to take an authentic return, albeit ten years old, and make allowance for time since. The Metropolitan-Police authorities are responsible for the accompanying figures.

It appears that at the date above indicated there were within the Metropolitan-Police district the enormous number of 8600 prostitutes, and they were distributed as follows:

Without entering into repulsive detail, I will endeavour to give the reader some idea of the different methods under which the nefarious business is conducted. The “houses of ill-fame” differ as widely in the extent and quality of their dealings as the houses of honesty and fair commerce. There are houses of “ill-fame” in the most fashionable quarters of the town, just as there are in Wapping—houses that are let and sub-let until they reach a rental as high as three and four hundred pounds a-year. It is not in those aristocratic dens of infamy, however, that women suffer most; none but the most costly wares are on sale at such establishments, and it is to the interest of the hucksters who traffic in them to deal with them delicately as circumstances will permit, to humour and coax and caress them as pet animals are coaxed and humoured. Nor would the creatures themselves tolerate anything in the shape of brutal treatment at the hands of those who harbour them. They “know their value,” and as a rule are exacting, imperious, and insolent towards their “landlords.” Unlike their sister unfortunates lower sunk in iniquity, they would experience no difficulty in procuring new “lodgings.” The doors of a hundred establishments such as that she now honours with residence are open to her. With a handsome face and a full purse, the whole of the devilish crew of brothel-keepers are her slaves, her fawning, cringing slaves, ready to lick the dust from her shoes, so that she pays regularly her rent of ten guineas a-week, and fails not to induce her “friends” to drink champagne at a guinea a bottle.

Possibly the gay lady may come to the “bitter end” some day, but at present, except from the moral point of view, she is not an object for commiseration. She at least has all that she deliberately bargains for—fine clothes, rich food, plenty of money, a carriage to ride in, the slave-like obedience of her “inferiors,” and the fulsome adulation of those who deal with her for her worth. Very often (though under the circumstances it is doubtful if from any aspect this is an advantage) she finds a fool with money who is willing to marry her; but whether she is content to accept the decent change, and to abide by it, of course depends on her nature. Whether her husband adheres to his rash bargain is a question that time only can solve. He at least, if he be a vicious man as well as a fool, may argue that she will be little the worse than when he found her if he leaves her; while possibly she may gather consolation from the same method of argument.

Anyway, she has a long way to descend before she may be branded as “common.” At present she is not even included in the police-returns. Any blue-coated guardian of the peace, in humble hope of earning a sixpence, would be only too eager to touch his hat to her and open her carriage-door to-morrow, and that even at the door of her genteel residence, which is in a neighbourhood much too respectable to permit it to be stigmatised as a “brothel.”

The police-report just quoted specifies that the 8600 prostitutes infesting the metropolis include 921 well-dressed and living in houses of ill-fame. This on the face of it, however, is significant of how very little the police really know of the matter they venture to report on. The women here alluded to are of the unobtrusive and orderly sort, the mainstay of whose occupation is to pass as respectable persons. They would be the last to resort for permanent lodging at houses whose fame was so ill that the greenest policeman on beat could point them out. It is altogether too hard to fasten the imputation of infamous on the holders of the houses in which this class of unfortunate seeks lodging. In very many cases the women are actuated by a twofold reason in gaining admission to the house of a householder who does not suspect her real character. In the first place, and as already stated, she wishes to pass in the immediate neighbourhood as respectable; and in the next place she not unnaturally seeks to evade payment of the monstrously high rate of rent that the common brothel-keeper would impose on her. Moreover, the peculiar branch of the terrible business she essays prospers under such management, where it would not if it were otherwise conducted. As a body, the women in question must be regarded as human creatures who have not gone altogether to the bad; and though in grim truth it may be in the highest degree absurd for anyone to cast herself deliberately into a sea of abomination, and then to affect a mincing manner of seriousness, much allowance should be made for the possibility that the fatal leap was not taken with cool forethought, or that the urging to it was due to some devilish genius whom there was no resisting. Anyhow, it would be hard on them, poor wretches, to compel them to give up their endeavours to conceal their degradation if, apart from mercenary motives, they are heartily desirous of concealing it.

“A vast proportion of those who, after passing through the career of kept mistresses, ultimately come upon the town, fall in the first instance from a mere exaggeration and perversion of one of the best qualities of a woman’s heart. They yield to desires in which they do not share, from a weak generosity which cannot refuse anything to the passionate entreaties of the man they love. There is in the warm fond heart of woman a strange and sublime unselfishness, which men too commonly discover only to profit by,—a positive love of self-sacrifice, an active, so to speak, an aggressive desire to show their affection by giving up to those who have won it something they hold very dear. It is an unreasoning and dangerous yearning of the spirit, precisely analogous to that which prompts the surrenders and self-tortures of the religious devotee. Both seek to prove their devotion to the idol they have enshrined, by casting down before his altar their richest and most cherished treasures. This is no romantic or over-coloured picture; those who deem it so have not known the better portion of the sex, or do not deserve to have known them.”

It would soften the hearts of many, and hold the hands of those who would break down the bridge behind the sinner, could they know the awful misery that frequently attends the life of a fallen woman. The 921 questionably quoted as “well dressed, and living in houses of ill-fame,” do not at all represent the horrors of the social evil in all its ghastly integrity. Such women are at least free to a certain extent to act as they please. No restriction is set on their movements; they may remain at home or go abroad, dress as they please, and expend their miserable gains according to their fancy. But they have sisters in misfortune to whom the smallest of these privileges is denied. They are to be found amongst the unhappy 2216 who are described as “well dressed, and walking the streets.” Unlike the gay lady, who makes her downynest in the topmost branches of the deadly upas-tree, and is altogether above suspicion or vulgar reproach, this poor wretch is without a single possession in the wide world. She is but one of a thousand walking the streets of London, the most cruelly used and oppressed of all the great family to which they own relationship. They are bound hand and foot to the harpies who are their keepers. They are infinitely worse off than the female slaves on a nigger-plantation, for they at least may claim as their own the rags they wear, as well as a share of the miserable hut common to the gang after working-hours. But these slaves of the London pavement may boast of neither soul nor body, nor the gaudy skirts and laces and ribbons with which they are festooned. They belong utterly and entirely to the devil in human shape who owns the den that the wretched harlot learns to call her “home.” You would never dream of the deplorable depth of her destitution, if you met her in her gay attire. Splendid from her tasselled boots to the full-blown and flowery hat or bonnet that crowns her guilty head, she is absolutely poorer than the meanest beggar that ever whined for a crust.

These women are known as “dress lodgers.” They are poor wretches who somehow or another are reduced to the lowest depths of destitution. Sometimes illness is the cause. Sometimes, if a girl gets into a bad house, and is as yet too new to the horrible business to conform without remonstrance to the scandalous extortions practised by the brothel-keeper, she is “broken down and brought to it” by design and scheming. A girl not long since confided to a clergyman friend of mine the following shocking story. Rendered desperate by the threats of the wretch who owned her, she applied to him for advice. “I was bad enough before, I don’t deny it; but I wasn’t a thief. I hadn’t been used to their ways for more than a month, and had a good box of clothes and a silver watch and gold chain, when I went to lodge there, and it was all very well while I spent my money like a fool, bought gin, and treated ’em all round; but when I wouldn’t stand it any longer, and told her (the brothel-keeper) plain that I would pay her the rent and no more (nine shillings a-week for a small back room), she swore that she’d break me down, and ‘bring me to her weight.’ I didn’t know that at the time; I didn’t hear of it till afterwards. She was fair enough to my face, and begged me not to leave her, flattering me, and telling me she would be ruined when her customers found out that the prettiest woman had left her. That’s how she quieted me, till one day, when I came home, she accused me of robbing a gentleman the night before of a diamond shirt-pin, and there was a fellow there who said he was a ‘detective,’ and though my box was locked he had opened it before I came home, and swore that he had found the pin, which he showed me. It was all a lie. I had been with a gentleman the night before, but he wore a scarf with a ring to it; that I could swear to. But it was no use saying anything; I was the thief, they said, and I was to be taken into custody. What was I to do? I begged of the detective not to take me; I implored Mother H— to intercede for me, and she pretended to. She went into another room with the detective, and then she came back and told me that the man would take ten pounds down to hush it up. I’ve seen that man since; he is a ‘bully’ at a bad house in the Waterloo-road, but I truly believed that he was a private-clothes policeman, as he said he was. Of course I didn’t have ten pounds, nor ten shillings hardly; but Mother H— said that she would lend the money ‘on security;’ and I made over to her—sold to her, in fact—in writing, every scrap of clothes that I had in my box and on my back. ‘Let’s have them too, Meg,’ Mother H— said, ‘and then you’re safe not to run away.’ I made over to her the box as well, and my watch, and gave her an I O U besides for five pounds, and then she ‘squared’ it with the detective, and he went off.

“That’s how I came to be a ‘dress lodger.’ She didn’t wait long before she opened her mind to me. She up and told me that very night: ‘You’ve got a new landlady now, my fine madam,’ said she; ‘you’ve got to work for your living now; to work for me, d’ye understand? You can’t work—can’t earn a penny without you dress spicy, and every rag you’ve got on is mine; and if you say one wry word, I’ll have ’em off and bundle you out.’ So what could I do or say?” continued the poor wretch, tears streaming down her really handsome face; “all the girls there were ‘dress lodgers,’ and I believe that they were glad to see me brought to their level. They only laughed to hear Mother H— go on so. I’ve been a ‘dress lodger’ ever since, not being able to get a shilling for myself, for she takes away all I get, and besides is always threatening to strip me and turn me out, and to sue me for the five pounds I owe her.”

My informant asked her, “How does she exercise this amount of control over you? She is not always with you; you leave her house to walk the streets, I suppose?”

“So I do, but not alone. Dress lodgers are never allowed to do that, sir. I haven’t been one long, but long enough to find that out. There’s always a ‘watcher.’ Sometimes it’s a woman—an old woman, who isn’t fit for anything else—but in general it’s a man. He watches you always, walking behind you, or on the opposite side of the way. He never loses sight of you, never fear. You daren’t so much as go into a public for a drain of gin but he is in after you in a minute, and must have his glass too, though he isn’t allowed to do it—to have the gin, I mean; and you ain’t allowed it either, not a drop, if the old woman knows it. You’re supposed to walk about and look for your living, and the watcher is supposed to see that you do do it—to take care that you look sharp, and above all that you don’t take customers anywhere but home. And what do you get for it all? You’re half fed, and bullied day and night, and threatened to be stripped and turned out; and when you’re at home, the watcher is generally hanging about, and he’ll ‘down’ you with a ‘one’r’ in the back or side (he won’t hit you in the face, for fear of spoiling it) if Mother H— only gives him the wink, though perhaps you’ve risked getting into trouble, and stood many a glass of gin to him the night before.”

It is difficult, indeed, to imagine a human creature more deplorably circumstanced than the one whose sad story is above narrated, and who is only “one of a thousand.” There are those of the sisterhood who appear in a more hideous shape, as, for instance, the horde of human tigresses who swarm in the pestilent dens by the riverside at Ratcliff and Shadwell. These may have fallen lower in depravity, indeed they are herded in the very mud and ooze of it, but they do not suffer as the gaily-bedizened “dress lodger” does. They are almost past human feeling. Except when they are ill and in hospital, they are never sober. As soon as her eyes are open in the morning, the she-creature of “Tiger Bay” seeks to cool her parched mouth out of the gin-bottle; and “— your eyes, let us have some more gin!” is the prayer she nightly utters before she staggers to her straw, to snore like the worse than pig she is.

Soldiers’ women are different from sailors’ women. As a rule, they are much more decent in appearance, and they are insured against habits of bestial intoxication by the slender resources of the men on whose bounty they depend. It is not possible to dip very deeply into the wine-cup or even the porter-pot on an income of about fourpence-halfpenny per diem, and it painfully illustrates what a wretched trade prostitution may become that it is driven even to the barracks.

Beyond the barracks; out on to the wild bleak common, where, winter and summer, the military tents are pitched.

A year or so since there appeared in the pages of the Pall Mall Gazette three graphic and astounding letters concerning the dreadful condition of a colony of women who “squatted” amongst the furze of Curragh Common, and subsisted on such miserable wage as the soldiers there quartered could afford to pay them. These creatures are known in and about the great military camp and its neighbourhood as “wrens.” They do not live in houses, or even huts, but build for themselves “nests” in the bush. To quote the words of the writer in question, these nests “have an interior space of about nine feet long by seven feet broad; and the roof is not more than four and a half feet from the ground. You crouch into them as beasts crouch into cover, and there is no standing upright till you crawl out again. They are rough misshapen domes of furze, like big rude birds’-nests, compacted of harsh branches, and turned topsy-turvy upon the ground. The walls are some twenty inches thick, and they do get pretty well compacted—much more than would be imagined. There is no chimney—not even a hole in the roof, which generally slopes forward. The smoke of the turf-fire which burns on the floor of the hut has to pass out at the door when the wind is favourable, and to reek slowly through the crannied walls when it is not. The door is a narrow opening, nearly the height of the structure—a slit in it, kept open by two rude posts, which also serve to support the roof. To keep it down and secure from the winds that drive over the Curragh so furiously, sods of earth are placed on top, here and there, with a piece of corrugated iron (much used in the camp, apparently—I saw many old and waste pieces lying about) as an additional protection from rain. Sometimes a piece of this iron is placed in the longitudinal slit aforesaid, and then you have a door as well as a doorway. Flooring there is none of any kind whatever, nor any attempt to make the den snugger by burrowing down into the bosom of the earth. The process of construction seems to be to clear the turf from the surface of the plain to the required space, to cut down some bushes for building material, and to call in a friendly soldier or two to rear the walls by the simple process of piling and trampling. When the nest is newly made, as that one was which I first examined, and if you happen to view it on a hot day, no doubt it seems tolerably snug shelter. A sportsman might lie there for a night or two without detriment to his health or his moral nature. But all the nests are not newly made; and if the sun shines on the Curragh, bitter winds drive across it, with swamping rains for days and weeks together, and miles of snow-covered plain sometimes lie between this wretched colony of abandoned women and the nearest town. Wind and rain are their worst enemies (unless we reckon-in mankind) and play ‘old gooseberry’ with the bush-dwellings. The beating of the one and the pelting of the other soon destroy their bowery summer aspect. They get crazy, they fall toward this side and that, they shrink in and down upon the outcast wretches that huddle in them, and the doorposts don’t keep the roof up, and the clods don’t keep it down. The nest is nothing but a furzy hole, such as, for comfort, any wild-beast may match anywhere, leaving cleanliness out of the question.”

In each of these wretched lairs, the writer—who, be it borne in mind, was an eye-witness of what he describes—goes on to inform us, companies of these awful “birds,” varying in number from three to six, eat, drink, sleep, cook, and receive company. As regards the furniture and domestic utensils with which each hut is provided, “the most important piece of furniture was a wooden shelf running along the back of the nest, and propped on sticks driven into the earthen floor. Some mugs, some plates, some cups and saucers, a candlestick; two or three old knives and forks, battered and rusty; a few dull and dinted spoons; a teapot (this being rather a rich establishment), and several other articles of a like character, were displayed upon the shelf; and a grateful sight it was. I declare I was most thankful for the cups and saucers; and as for the teapot, it looked like an ark of redemption in crockery-ware. If they were not—as I told myself when my eyes first rested on them—the only human-looking things in the place, they did give one a comfortable assurance that these wretched and desperate outcasts had not absolutely broken with the common forms and habits of civilised life.

“Beneath it was heaped an armful of musty straw, originally smuggled in from the camp stables: this, drawn out and shaken upon the earth, was the common bed. A rough wooden box, such as candles are packed in, stood in a corner; one or two saucepans, and a horrid old tea-kettle, which had all the look of a beldame punished by drink, were disposed in various nooks in the furzy walls; a frying-pan was stuck into them by the handle, in company with a crooked stick of iron used as a poker; and—undoubtedly that was there—a cheap little looking-glass was stuck near the roof. These things formed the whole furniture and appointments of the nest, if we exclude a petticoat or so hung up at intervals. There was not a stool in the place; and as for anything in the shape of a table, there was not room even for the idea of such a thing. Except for the cups and saucers, I doubt whether any Australian native habitation is more savage or more destitute: he can get an old saucepan or two, and knows how to spread a little straw on the ground. Nor were any of the other nests (and I believe I looked into them all) better or differently furnished. The only difference was in the quantity of crockery. In every one the candle-box was to be found. I discovered that it was the receptacle of those little personal ornaments and cherished trifles which women, in every grade of life, hoard with a sort of animal instinct. In every one an upturned saucepan was used for a seat, when squatting on the earth became too tiresome. In all, the practice is to sleep with your head under the shelf (thus gaining some additional protection from the wind) and your feet to the turf-fire, which is kept burning all night near the doorway. Here the use of the perforated saucepan becomes apparent. It is placed over the burning turf when the wrens dispose themselves to rest, and as there is no want of air in these dwellings, the turf burns well and brightly under the protecting pot. Another remembrance of a decent life is seen in the fact, that the women always undress themselves to sleep upon their handful of straw, their day-clothes serving to cover them.”

The “wrens” themselves are described as being almost all young, and all, without an exception, Irish. They range from seventeen to twenty-five years old, and almost all come out of cabins in country places. Occasionally a delicate-looking “wren” may be met, but as a rule they are sturdy, fine-limbed women, full of health and strength; many are good-looking. In their style of dress, no less than undress, they are peculiar. “All day they lounge in a half-naked state, clothed simply in one frieze petticoat, and another, equally foul, cast loosely over then shoulders; though, towards evening, they put on the decent attire of the first girl I met there. These bettermost clothes are kept bright and clean enough; the frequency with which they are seen displayed on the bushes to dry, shows how often they are washed, and how well. These observations apply to the cotton gown, the stockings, the white petticoat alone; frieze and flannel never know anything of soap-and-water at all, apparently. The ‘Curragh-petticoat’ is familiarly known for miles and miles round; its peculiarity seems to be that it is starched, but not ironed. The difference in the appearance of these poor wretches when the gown and petticoat are donned, and when they are taken off again (that is to say, the moment they come back from the ‘hunting-grounds’), answers precisely to their language and demeanour when sober and when tipsy.” The communistic principle governs each “nest;” and share-and-share alike is the rule observed. “None of the women have any money of their own; what each company get is thrown into a common purse, and the nest is provisioned out of it. What they get is little indeed: a few halfpence turned out of one pocket and another when the clean starched frocks are thrown off at night, make up a daily income just enough to keep body and soul together.”

Inquiry careful and judicious disclosed to the daring literary investigator that the “wrens” take it in turns to do the marketing and keep house while their sisters are abroad “on business.” As need not be mentioned, it is the youngest and best-looking women who engage in the money-getting branch. Considering how severe are their privations, and the unceasing life of wretchedness they lead, it is not without surprise that we hear that many of the “wrens” have occupied the ground they still squat on during the past eight or nine years. “I asked one of these older birds how they contrived their sleeping-accommodation before ‘nests’ were invented. Said she, ‘We’d pick the biggest little bush we could find, and lay under it, turnin’ wid the wind.’ ‘Shifting round the bush as the wind shifted?’ ‘Thrue for ye. And sometimes we’d wake wid the snow covering us, and maybe soaked wid rain.’ ‘And how did you dry your clothes?’ ‘We jist waited for a fine day.’”

The above and much more information concerning the habits and customs of these bushwomen of the Curragh was obtained in the daytime; but this was not enough for the plucky Pall-Mall adventurer. He was well aware that the wren was a night-bird, and could only be seen in her true colours by candle-glimmer within her nest, or by the light of the stars or moon while abroad hunting for prey. Setting out after dark, our friend made his way across the common towards the nests he had visited the day before, and particularly to one known as No. 2 nest, the inmates of which had shown themselves very civil and obliging.

“As I approached it,” says the writer, “I saw but one wretched figure alone. Crouched near the glowing turf, with her head resting upon her hands, was a woman whose age I could scarcely guess at, though I think, by the masses of black hair that fell forward upon her hands and backward over her bare shoulders, that she must have been young. She was apparently dozing, and taking no heed of the pranks of the frisky little curly-headed boy whom I have made mention of before; he was playing on the floor. When I announced myself by rapping on the bit of corrugated iron which stood across the bottom of the doorway, the woman started in something like fright; but she knew me at a second glance, and in I went. ‘Put back the iron, if ye plaze,’ said the wren as I entered; ‘the wind’s blowing this way to-night, bad luck to it!’ . . . I wanted to know how my wretched companion in this lonely, windy, comfortless hovel, came from being a woman to be turned into a wren. The story began with ‘no father nor mother,’ an aunt who kept a whisky-store in Cork, an artilleryman who came to the whisky-store and saw and seduced the girl. By and by his regiment was ordered to the Curragh. The girl followed him, being then with child. ‘He blamed me for following him,’ said she. ‘He’d have nothing to do with me. He told me to come here, and do like other women did. And what could I do? My child was born here, in this very place; and glad I was of the shelter, and glad I was when the child died—thank the blessed Mary! What could I do with a child? His father was sent away from here, and a good riddance. He used me very bad.’ After a minute’s silence the woman continued, a good deal to my surprise, ‘I’ll show you the likeness of a betther man, far away, one that never said a cross word to me—blessed’s the ground he treads upon!’ And fumbling in the pocket of her too scanty and dingy petticoat, she produced a photographic portrait of a soldier, enclosed in half-a-dozen greasy letters. ‘He’s a bandsman, sir, and a handsome man he is; and I believe he likes me too. But they have sent him to Malta for six years; I’ll never see my darlint again.’ And then this poor wretch, who was half crying as she spoke, told me how she had walked to Dublin to see him just before he sailed, ‘because the poor craythur wanted to see me onst more.’

“From this woman, so strangely compounded, I learned that she had suffered so much privation last winter, that she had made up her mind not to stay in the bush another such a season. ‘At the first fall of snow I’ll go to the workhouse, that I will!’ she said in the tone of one who says that in such an event he is determined to cut his throat. ‘Why, would you belave it, sir?—last winter the snow would be up as high as our little house, and we had to cut a path through it to the min, or we’d been ruined intirely.’

“. . . Presently the report of a gun was heard. ‘Gunfire!’ cried my companion. ‘They’ll be back soon now, and I hope it’s not drunk they are.’ I went out to listen. All was dead quiet, and nothing was to be seen but the lights in the various bushes, till suddenly a blaze broke out at a distance. Some dry furze had been fired by some of the soldiers wandering on the common, and in search of whom the picket presently came round, peeping into every bush. Presently the sound of distant voices was heard; it came nearer and nearer, and its shrillness and confusion made it known to me that it was indeed a party of returning wrens, far from sober. They were, in fact, mad drunk; and the sound of their voices as they came on through the dense darkness, screaming obscene sounds broken by bursts of horrible laughter, with now and then a rattling volley of oaths which told that fighting was going on, was staggering. I confess I now felt uncomfortable. I had only seen the wren sober, or getting sober; what she might be in that raging state of drunkenness I had yet to find out, and the discovery threatened to be very unpleasant. The noise came nearer, and was more shocking because you could disentangle the voices and track each through its own course of swearing, or of obscene singing and shouting, or of dreadful threats, which dealt in detail with every part of the human frame. ‘Is this your lot?’ I asked my companion with some apprehension, as at length the shameful crew burst out of the darkness. ‘Some of ’em, I think.’ But no, they passed on; such a spectacle as made me tremble. I felt like a man respited when the last woman went staggering by. Again voices were heard, this time proceeding from the women belonging to the bush where I was spending such an uncomfortable evening. Five in all,—two tipsy and three comparatively sober,—they soon presented themselves at the door; one of them was Billy’s mother. At the sound of her voice the child woke up and cried for her. She was the most forbidding-looking creature in the whole place; but she hastened to divest herself outside of her crinoline and the rest of her walking attire (nearly all she had on), and came in and nursed the boy very tenderly. The other wrens also took off gown and petticoat, and folding them up, made seats of them within the nest. Then came the important inquiry from the watching wren, ‘What luck have you had?’ to which the answer was, ‘Middling.’ Without the least scruple they counted up what they had got amongst them—a poor account. It was enough to make a man’s heart bleed to hear the details, and to see the actual money.

“In order to continue my observations a little later in a way agreeable to those wretched outcasts, I proposed to ‘stand supper,’ a proposition which was joyfully received, of course. Late as it was, away went one of the wrens to get supper, presently returning with a loaf, some bacon, some tea, some sugar, a little milk, and a can of water. The women brought all these things in such modest quantities that my treat cost no more (I got my change, and I remember the precise sum) than two shillings and eightpence-halfpenny. The frying-pan was put in requisition, and there seemed some prospect of a ‘jolly night’ for my more sober nest of wrens. One of them began to sing—not a pretty song; but presently she stopped to listen to the ravings of a strong-voiced vixen in an adjoining bush. ‘It’s Kate,’ said one, ‘and she’s got the drink in her—the devil that she is.’ I then heard that this was a woman of such ferocity when drunk that the whole colony was in terror of her. One of the women near me showed me her face, torn that very night by the virago’s nails, and a finger almost bitten through. As long as the voice of the formidable creature was heard, everyone was silent in No. 2 nest—silent out of fear that she would presently appear amongst them. Her voice ceased: again a song was commenced; then the frying-pan began to hiss; and that sound it was, perhaps, that brought the dreaded virago down upon us. She was heard coming from her own bush, raging as she came. ‘My God, there she is!’ one of the women exclaimed. ‘She’s coming here; and if she sees you she’ll tear every rag from your back!’ The next moment the fierce creature burst into our bush, a stalwart woman full five feet ten inches high, absolutely mad with drink. Her hair was streaming down her back; she had scarcely a rag of clothing on; and the fearful figure made at me with a large jug, intended to be smashed upon my skull. I declare her dreadful figure appalled me. I was so wonder-stricken, that I believe she might have knocked me on the head without resistance; but, quick as lightning, one of the women got before me, spreading out her petticoat. ‘Get out of it!’ she shouted in terror; ‘run!’ And so I did. Covered by this friendly and grateful wren, I passed out of the nest, and made my way homeward in the darkness. One of the girls stepped out to show me the way. I parted from her a few yards from the nest, and presently ‘lost myself’ on the common. It was nearly two o’clock when I got to Kildare from my last visit to that shameful bush-village.”

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE QUESTION.

The Laws applying to Street-walkers—The Keepers of the Haymarket Night-houses—Present Position of the Police-magistrates.—Music-hall Frequenters—Refreshment-bars—Midnight Profligacy—“Snuggeries”—Over-zealous Blockheads.

Six or seven years since, such alterations were made in the laws applying to nocturnal street-walkers and disorderly persons generally, as enabled the London magistrates, with the assistance of the police, to reduce the great Haymarket disgrace to manageable dimensions. To completely abolish so renowned and prodigious a nuisance at a blow was more than could be expected; but the public generally were quite satisfied with the gradual and successful working of the plans adopted for the final extinction of the infamous “oyster-shops,” and cafÉs, and wine-shops, that in the olden time made night hideous from St. James’s-street to Piccadilly. Suddenly, however, the good work has received a serious check. According to the usual custom, the keeper of a refreshment-house, on being summoned before the magistrate (Mr. Knox) for an infringement of the Act, was fined for the offence; and nothing else was expected but that the fine would be paid, and, except for its salutary effect, there an end of it. But it would seem that the fined “night-house” keeper had cunning advisers, who assured him that the conviction was bad, and that he had only to appeal to a superior court to insure its being set aside. The course suggested was adopted, and crowned with success. Mr. Knox’s decision was reversed, it not being clearly shown that the loose women discovered on the premises were really assembled for an immoral purpose.

The Times, commenting on this, says: “It is matter for general regret, since its probable result will be that in future the keepers of the Haymarket ‘night-houses’ will do pretty much what they please, without let or hindrance. It was decided by Sir William Bodkin and his brother magistrates sitting at the Middlesex Sessions, on an appeal brought from Marlborough-street, that no case is made out against the keeper of a ‘night-house,’ unless the police can prove that the women found in the house were assembled there for an immoral purpose; it was possible they might be there merely for the legitimate purpose of refreshment, and not in prosecution of their wretched trade. It is perfectly obvious that this interpretation of the law, whether or not true to the letter, utterly violates the spirit. The character of the women who frequent these ‘night-houses’ is perfectly well known. They have, moreover, but one possible object in frequenting them. It is clear, therefore, that they come within the spirit of the law against harbouring improper characters quite as much as if they visited these houses actually in company of men; and hence it follows that no new principle of legislation, requiring long consideration and repeated discussion, would be introduced if the law were made to reach them. We should, in fact, be not making a new law, but giving an old law its proper effect—an effect actually given it, as Mr. Knox points out, for seven years, and latterly with admirable results. Under these circumstances, we can see no objection to replacing the law on its former satisfactory footing by the simple expedient of a short clause in the Habitual Criminals’ Bill. The Bill already deals with the low beer-houses, which are the favourite resorts of certain dangerous classes of the community; and the addition of a few words would enable it to deal with such ‘night-houses’ as those we have been discussing. This would not interfere with subsequent more mature and more comprehensive legislation on the subject, while it would obviate the delay which has driven the police authorities to desperation, and which threatens to give a fresh lease to a grave national scandal, just as it was in the way of being repressed.”

The old law alluded to by the Times is the Act of Parliament of the 2d and 3d Vict. cap. 47, and is entitled “An Act for further empowering the Police in and near the Metropolis;” being an amendment of Sir Robert Peel’s original statute, the 10th Geo. IV. Clauses 44, 52, 54, 58, and 63, bear especially on the penalties incurred by disorderly fallen women.The 44th clause runs as follows:

“And whereas it is expedient that the provisions made by law for preventing disorderly conduct in the houses of licensed victuallers be extended to other houses of public resort; be it enacted that every person who shall have or keep any house, shop, room, or place of public resort within the Metropolitan-Police district, wherein provisions, liquors, or refreshments of any kind shall be sold or consumed (whether the same shall be kept or retailed therein, or procured elsewhere), and who shall wilfully or knowingly permit drunkenness or other disorderly conduct in such house, shop, room, or place, or knowingly suffer any unlawful games or any gaming whatsoever therein, or knowingly suffer or permit prostitutes, or persons of notoriously bad character, to meet together and remain therein, shall for every such offence be liable to a penalty of not more than five pounds.”

The 52d clause of the same statute provides:

“That it shall be lawful for the Commissioners of Police from time to time, and as occasion may require, to make regulation for the route to be observed by all carts, carriages, horses, and persons, and for preventing obstructions of the streets or thoroughfares within the Metropolitan-Police district, in all times of public processions, public rejoicings, or illuminations; and also to give directions to the constables for keeping order and for preventing any obstruction of the thoroughfares in the immediate neighbourhood of her Majesty’s palaces and public offices, the High Court of Parliament, the courts of law and equity, the police-courts, the theatres, and other places of public resort, and in any case when the streets or thoroughfares may be thronged or may be liable to be obstructed.”

The 54th clause provides, in continuation:

“That every person who, after being made acquainted with the regulations or directions which the Commissioner of Police shall have made for regulating the route of horses, carts, carriages, and persons during the time of divine service, and for preventing obstructions during public processions, and on other occasions hereinbefore specified, shall wilfully disregard, or not conform himself thereto, shall be liable to a penalty of not more than forty shillings. And it shall be lawful for any constable belonging to the Metropolitan-Police force to take into custody, without warrant, any person who shall commit any such offence within view of any such constable.”

The same 54th clause also provides:

“That every common prostitute or night-walker, loitering, or being in any thoroughfare or public place, for the purpose of prostitution or solicitation, to the annoyance of the inhabitants or passengers, shall be liable to a penalty of not more than forty shillings, and to be dealt with in the same manner.”

And again, that “every person who shall use any profane, indecent, or obscene language to the annoyance of the inhabitants or passengers;” and also “every person who shall use any threatening, abusive, or insulting words or behaviour with intent to provoke a breach of the peace, or whereby a breach of the peace may be occasioned,” may be also so dealt with. The 58th clause enacts:

“That every person who shall be found drunk in any street or public thoroughfare within the said district, and who while drunk shall be guilty of any riotous or indecent behaviour, and also every person who shall be guilty of any violent or indecent behaviour in any police station-house, shall be liable to a penalty of not more than forty shillings for every such offence or may be committed, if the magistrate by whom he is convicted shall think fit, instead of inflicting upon him any pecuniary fine, to the House of Correction for any time not more than seven days.”

The 63rd clause enacts:

“That it shall be lawful for any constable belonging to the Metropolitan-Police district, and for all persons whom he shall call to his assistance, to take into custody, without a warrant, any person who within view of such constable, shall offend in any manner against this Act, and whose name and residence shall be unknown to such constable, and cannot be ascertained by such constable.”

The police are, under the same Act, empowered to deal with disorder, drunkenness, disorderly conduct brawling, loitering and obstruction, whether coming by prostitutes or others. Habitual loitering upon certain fixed spots they already keep in check, generally speaking, without tyranny; and next comes to be considered what can be done in case of what is called “solicitation” or importunity, a prominent feature in the general hill of indictment against prostitution.

To a person uninitiated in the law’s subtleties, it would seem that the clauses of the Act of Parliament above quoted armed the police with all necessary authority, and that all that was requisite was to compel the observance of the said clauses, strictly and without favour, to insure a considerable mitigation of the great evil. Indeed, as has been shown, believing themselves justified in the course they have been for years pursuing, the police have undoubtedly effected a vast and important change in the aspect of the Haymarket and its neighbourhood after midnight. The result, however, of the Assistant-Judge’s decision appears to have put the worthy and indefatigable Mr. Knox quite out of heart, as may be gathered from the subjoined newspaper account of the last case that was brought before him:

“Rose Burton, keeper of a refreshment-house in Jermyn-street, lately known as Kate Franks, appeared to answer two summonses for harbouring prostitutes. The police gave the usual evidence. They visited the house at night. They found men and women there; the women known prostitutes, some taking refreshment. There was no disorder, and the usual signal by ringing a bell had been given when the police presented themselves at the house. For the defence it was urged, that the evidence was similar to that given before the Middlesex magistrates on appeal, after hearing which they quashed the conviction, and that the magistrate should dismiss the summonses. Mr. Knox said he must send the case to the Sessions in order to get a clear declaration of what was meant. If the judgment of the Court was against him, he must wash his hands of the matter. He should inflict the reduced fine of 10s. in order that the conviction should be taken to the Sessions. Mr. Froggatt asked for a decision in the second case. Mr. Knox would act in it the same as in the last case. It was, so to say, a last desperate effort. If he failed, his honest determination was to take no further trouble in the matter; but to report to the Home Office that the efforts to reform the condition of the Haymarket had entirely broken down. Mr. Edward Lewis, after some consultation with Mr. Allen jun. and Mr. Froggatt, said that, owing to technical difficulties, it would be impossible to get an appeal to Quarter Sessions before the 24th July. Mr. Knox said that would be too late for Parliament to deal with the matter, as the session would most probably close early in August. There was no help for it; the nighthouse-keepers must go on in their own way; the police might give up their supervision and refrain from taking out summonses, as he certainly should decline to convict. He should cancel the three convictions that day, and dismiss the summonses; he was powerless, and therefore disinclined to enforce what for seven years had been considered as law, but what had been suddenly upset at Quarter Sessions. Mr. Knox then requested Mr. Superintendent Dunlop to communicate what had occurred to the Commissioners of Police.”

At the same time, it is no more than fair to lay before the reader the explanation given by the Assistant-Judge on the last occasion of the matter coming before him. It should be understood that the case in question was not that of “Rose Burton,” but of another of the fraternity who had been fined by Mr. Knox. The party in question gave notice of appeal, and the police authorities intimated their intention of supporting the magistrate in his conviction. From some unexplained cause, however, at the last moment the Commissioners of Police withdrew altogether from the case, leaving it all undefended to be dealt with by Mr. Bodkin. The judgment of the learned Assistant-Judge was as follows:

“There are two cases in the paper of appeals against convictions by Mr. Knox for causing or allowing prostitutes to assemble; and upon these two cases being called, counsel intimated that the solicitors of the Commissioners of Police had written a letter to say that they should not support these convictions. Under those circumstances no other course was open to us but to quash them. But I mention the fact now because these convictions have been the subject of considerable comment and of interrogation in the House of Commons. I can only say that there is no law in these cases at all. It is entirely a question of fact, and each case must stand upon its own merits. On one occasion we quashed a conviction on the hearing, and upon that decision a great deal has been said. The sole evidence there was, that a policeman went into the house between twelve and one and found men and women having refreshment, some of the women being prostitutes. No question was asked; and there was nothing to show that the person who kept the house knew they were prostitutes. There was nothing to show that any warning had been previously given against harbouring or encouraging them to come. There was no ringing of any bell to give notice of the approach of the police. In fact, there was nothing but the mere incident that the police, before the hour of one, when these houses should be closed, found persons in them taking refreshments—some of those persons being prostitutes. Although I do not shrink from taking on myself the chief responsibility, there were many magistrates present who formed their own opinion upon the question, which was a question of fact; and it seemed so clearly not to be a case which satisfied the requirements of the law, that we did not call upon the counsel for the appellants, but at once quashed the conviction. Indeed, after all that has been said, I have no hesitation in stating that if another case came here, and was presented to us in such a bald and unsatisfactory manner, we should again quash the conviction. We are as desirous as Mr. Knox to put an end to any nuisance, whether in the Haymarket or elsewhere; but we cannot forget that we are in a court of law, bound to act upon such testimony as is sworn before us, and not to embark upon inquiries of another kind. There was not a tittle of evidence as to ringing a bell, or of anything more than persons taking refreshment within the hours allowed by law, some of those persons being ‘unfortunates.’ I do not think that any bench of magistrates in the kingdom could, under the circumstances, have arrived at a different conclusion. If other cases come before us, we shall treat them as we treated the last, according to the effect of the sworn evidence in court, and in no other way. I am very sorry if our decision should have induced Mr. Knox, for whom I entertain a great respect, to abstain from convicting in other cases, unless those were cases of the same bald and unsatisfactory character as that which we decided.”

From one point of view maybe it is difficult to overrate the importance of this judgment, especially if, as the Times predicts, it will have the effect of giving the keepers of the Haymarket haunts of infamy liberty to do pretty much as they please. Laying too much stress on this Haymarket business, however, may be harmful in another direction. It may lead the public to the decidedly wrong conclusion that the well-known thoroughfare indicated, and the taverns and refreshment-houses it contains, are the head-quarters, the one main source, from which flows the prodigious stream of immorality that floods the town with contamination.

Now this is very far from being the fact. The extent to which the Haymarket haunts are criminal is equalled, and in many cases far excelled, in a dozen different parts of London every night between the hours of ten and one—and that without remonstrance or hindrance on the part of the police authorities or anyone else. I allude to the London music-halls. One of the most disreputable was burnt down the other day; and it would be a matter for rejoicing—for public thanksgiving almost—if the score or so of similar places of popular amusement, polluting every quarter of the metropolis, shared a similar fate. To be sure, the music-halls keep within the letter of the law in the matter of closing their doors before one o’clock; but in every other respect their operation is as mischievous as any of the prosecuted dens at the West-end. And I beg of the reader to distinctly understand that I am not quoting from hearsay. There is not a single music-hall—from the vast “Alhambra” in Leicester-square, to the unaristocratic establishment in the neighbourhood of Leather-lane, originally christened the “Raglan,” but more popularly known as the “Rag”—that I have not visited. And I am bound to confess that the same damning elements are discoverable in one and all.

At the same time it must be admitted—shameful and disgraceful as the admission is—that it is not the music-hall of the vulgar East-end or “over the water” that presents in special prominence the peculiar features here spoken of, and which, in plain language, are licentiousness and prostitution. He who would witness the perfection to which these twin curses may be wrought under the fostering influences of “music,” &c., must visit the west, and not the east or south, of the metropolis. He must make a journey to Leicester-square, and to the gorgeous and palatial Alhambra there to be found. What he will there discover will open his eyes to what a farcical thing the law is, and how within the hour it will strain at gnats, and bolt entire camels without so much as a wry face or a wince, or a wink even.

I speak fearlessly, because all that I describe may be witnessed to-night, to-morrow, any time, by the individual adventurous and curious enough to go and see for himself. There is no fear of his missing it; no chance of his fixing on a wrong night. It is always the same at the music-hall. Its meat is other men’s poison; and it can fatten and prosper while honesty starves. The bane and curse of society is its main support; and to introduce the purging besom would be to ruin the business.

At the same time, I would wish it to be distinctly understood, that I do not desire to convey to the reader the impression that the numerical majority of music-hall frequenters are persons of immoral tendencies. On the contrary, I am well convinced that such places are the resort of a vast number of the most respectable portion of the working-class. This, I believe, is a fact carefully treasured by music-hall proprietors, and elaborately displayed by them whenever their morality is attacked. They point to the well-filled body of the hall, the sixpenny part, where artisans and working-men congregate, and not unfrequently bring with them their wives and daughters; and triumphantly inquire, “Is it likely that the music-hall can be what slanderers represent, when it is so patronised?” And it is quite true that a very large number of honest and intelligent folk are attracted thither in search of harmless amusement. Let them bless God for their ignorance of the world’s wicked ways if they succeed in finding it. It is not impossible. Provided they look neither to the right nor left of them, but pay their sixpence at the door, and march to the seats apportioned them; and, still at eyes right, direct their gaze and their organs of hearing towards the stage, from which the modern “comic vocalist” doles out to a stolen tune feeble jingling idiotcies of “his own composing,”—if they are steadfast to this, they may come away not much the worse for the evening’s entertainment. But let him not look about him, especially if he have his wife or daughters with him, or he may find himself tingling with a feeling it was never his misfortune to experience before.

The honest believer in the harmlessness of music-halls would, if he looked about him as he sat in the sixpenny “pit,” discover in more quarters than one that which would open his innocent eyes. If his vision were directed upwards towards the boxes and balconies, there he would discover it. Brazen-faced women blazoned in tawdry finely, and curled and painted, openly and without disguise bestowing their blandishments on “spoony” young swells of the “commercial” and shopman type, for the sake of the shilling’s-worth of brandy-and-water that steams before them, and in prospect of future advantages. There is no mistaking these women. They do not go there to be mistaken. They make no more disguise of their profession than do cattle-drovers in the public markets. They are there in pursuit of their ordinary calling, and, splendid creatures though they appear, it is curious to witness the supreme indifference to them of the door-keepers as they flaunt past them. It makes good the old proverb about the familiarity that breeds contempt; besides, as a customer in simple, the painted free-drinking lady is not desirable. I should not for a moment wish to impute without substantial proof so dastardly a feature of “business” to any spirited music-hall proprietor in particular; but I am positively assured by those who should know, that on certain recognised nights loose women are admitted to these places without payment. I know as a fact, too, that it is no uncommon thing for these female music-hall frequenters to enlist the services of cabmen on “spec,” the latter conveying their “fare” to the Alhambra or the Philharmonic without present payment, on the chance that she will in the course of the evening “pick up a flat,” who will with the lady require his services to drive them to the Haymarket or elsewhere. How much of extortion and robbery may be committed under such a convenient cloak it is not difficult to guess. The evidence not being quite so unobjectionable as it might be, I will not mention names; but I was recently informed with apparent sincerity by one of those poor bedizened unfortunates—a “dress lodger” possibly—that a certain music-hall proprietor issued to women of her class “weekly tickets” at half-price, the main condition attaching to the advantage being that the holder did not “ply” in the low-priced parts of the hall; that is to say, amongst those who could afford to pay for nothing more expensive than pints of beer.

But it is at the refreshment-bars of these palatial shams and impostures, as midnight and closing time approaches, that profligacy may be seen reigning rampant. Generally at one end of the hall is a long strip of metal counter, behind which superbly-attired barmaids vend strong liquors. Besides these there are “snuggeries,” or small private apartments, to which bashful gentlemen desirous of sharing a bottle of wine with a recent acquaintance may retire. But the unblushing immodesty of the place concentrates at this long bar. Any night may here be found dozens of prostitutes enticing simpletons to drink, while the men who are not simpletons hang about, smoking pipes and cigars, and merely sipping, not drinking deeply, and with watchful wary eyes on the pretty game of fox-and-goose that is being played all round about them. No one molests them, or hints that their behaviour is at variance with “the second and third of Victoria, cap. 47.” Here they are in dozens, in scores, prostitutes every one, doing exactly as they do at the infamous and prosecuted Haymarket dens, and no one interferes. I say, doing all that the Haymarket woman does; and it must be so, since the gay patroness of the music-halls does simply all she can to lure the dupe she may at the moment have in tow. She entices him to drink; she drinks with him: she ogles, and winks, and whispers, and encourages like behaviour on his part, her main undisguised object being to induce him to prolong the companionship after the glaring gaslight of the liquor-bar is lowered, and its customers are shown to the outer door. If that is not “knowingly suffering prostitutes to meet together” for the more convenient prosecution of their horrible trade, what else is it? And yet the cunning schemes and contrivances for misleading and throwing dust in the eyes of the police are not practised here. There are no scouts and “bells,” the former causing the latter to chime a warning on the approach of the enemy. The enemy, the police, that is to say, are on the spot. In almost every case there will be found in the music-hall lobby an intelligent liveried guardian of the public peace, here stationed that he may take cognisance of suspicious-looking persons, and eject improper characters. Should he happen, as is most likely, to be a policeman whose “beat” is in the neighbourhood, he will by sight be quite familiar with every loose woman who for a mile round in the streets plies her lawless trade. He recognises them, as with a nod of old acquaintance they pass the money-taker; he saunters to the bar, where the women gather to prime their prey, and he witnesses their doings, but he takes no notice, and never complains.

To be sure, the man is not to blame; were he ordered to disperse congregations of prostitutes wherever he found them, and to warn the persons who dispense liquors to them—just as is expected of him in the case of the ordinary public-house—that they are harbouring bad characters, and must cease to do so, undoubtedly the policeman would perform his duty. Until he receives express orders on the subject, however, he is helpless, and very properly so. Although one would desire to see ample powers for the suppression of prostitution placed in the hands of the police, it is highly necessary that the said power, in the hands of ordinary constable X, should be scrupulously watched by those who are set in authority over him. Policemen make sad mistakes at times, as witness the following monstrous instance, furnished by the police-reports not more than a month since:

At Southwark, Mrs. Catherine C—, aged twenty-eight, the wife of a respectable man in the employ of the South-Eastern Railway Company, but who was described on the charge-sheet as a prostitute, was charged by Jas. Benstead, police-constable 17 M Reserve, with soliciting prostitution near the London-bridge railway terminus. The constable said that about ten o’clock on the previous night he was on duty near the railway terminus, when he saw the prisoner accost a gentleman. Believing her to be a prostitute, he went up to the gentleman, and from what he said he took her into custody for soliciting him. The prisoner here said she had been most cruelly used. She was a respectable married woman, and lived with her husband in the Drummond-road, Bermondsey. She had been to see her sister at Peckham, and had a return-ticket for the Spa-road; but when she arrived at the London-bridge terminus, she was too late for the train; consequently she determined to walk home, and as soon as she turned into Duke-street, a gentleman stopped her and asked her whether there was an omnibus left there for Whitechapel. She told him she did not know, and as soon as he left, the constable came up and took her into custody. She had been locked up all night. The prisoner here produced the half of a return-ticket for the magistrate’s inspection. The husband of the prisoner said he was in the employ of the South-Eastern Railway Company, and resided at No. 190 Drummond-road, Bermondsey. His wife left home on the previous afternoon to visit her sister at Peckham, and he expected her home at ten o’clock. He was surprised at her absence, and as soon as he ascertained she was locked up, he went to the police-station, but was not permitted to see her. He could produce several witnesses to prove the respectability of his wife. Mr. Burcham ordered the prisoner to be discharged immediately.

And so terminated the case as far as the magistrate was concerned; but one cannot help feeling curious to know whether no more was done in the matter. The outraged and cruelly-used woman was discharged, but was Reserve-constable James Benstead permitted to retain his situation in the police-force? How did the monstrous “mistake” arise? It is evident that the poor young woman spoke the truth; Mr. Burcham settled that point by ordering her immediate discharge. From any point of view, James Benstead showed himself utterly unworthy to remain a constable. In interfering with a decently-dressed woman, who must have been a stranger to him, simply because he saw her “accost a gentleman,” he exhibited himself in the light of an over-zealous blockhead. If the woman’s statement is to be believed, he told a wicked and malicious lie when he said that he took her into custody “on account of what the gentleman told him.” Where one is left in the dark, to solve a mystery as one best may, it is not impossible that one may guess wide of the mark; but it will under such conditions occur to the recollection that before now “unfortunates,” new to the life, have given deadly offence to policemen by not “paying their footing,” as black-mail of a certain abominable kind is called; and blundering James Benstead may have sustained a pecuniary disappointment. It is to be sincerely hoped that that secret tribunal before which erring policemen are arraigned (where is it?) will not let so flagrant a case pass without notice; and if, after close investigation, policeman James Benstead is proved to be the dangerous person he appears, that he may be promptly stripped of his official uniform. Even supposing that James Benstead is nothing worse than a blundering Jack-in-office, he is just of the sort to bring the law into contempt and ridicule, and the sooner he is cashiered the better.

CHAPTER XIX.
SUGGESTIONS.

Ignoring the Evil—Punishment fit for the “Deserter” and the Seducer—The “Know-nothing” and “Do-nothing” Principle—The Emigration of Women of Bad Character.

It is easy enough to understand, if one finds the courage to face this worst of all social evils, and inquire calmly into the many shapes its origin takes, how very possible it is that there may be living in a state of depravity scores and hundreds of women who are what they are out of no real fault of their own. “Then why do they not turn, and reform their infamous lives?” the indignant reader may ask. “They may if they will. Is there not this, that, and the other asylum open to them?” Perhaps so. Only perhaps. But for reasons hinted at in the commencement of this chapter, it might be clearly enough shown that, “this, that, and t’other,” to a very large extent, really and truly represent the substantiality of the asylums to which the curse is admitted for purgation. We have foolishly and blindly ignored the evil, and consequently we have not been free to provide adequately for the reception of those who have lived in it, and are now desirous of returning, if they may, to decent life. We have some asylums of the kind; but in capacity they are about as well adapted to perform the prodigious amount of work ready for them as a ten-gallon filter would be to purify the muddy waters of the Thames.

Undoubtedly there are thousands of debased and wanton wretches for whom the doors of such houses of reform and refuge, did they exist in plenty, might in vain stand open. But let the reader for a moment consider how many there are at this moment whose fall was mainly due to misplaced trust and foolish confidence, and who are kept in their degradation out of a sort of mad and bitter spite against themselves. As everyone can vouch who has taken an interest in these fallen ones, and kindly questioned them on their condition and their willingness to turn from it, nothing is more common in their mouths than the answer, “I don’t care. It’s a life good enough for me. A pretty image I should appear in well-bred company, shouldn’t I? It’s no use your preaching to me. I’ve made my bed, and I must lie on it.” And it would be found in countless cases that these poor wretches did not in the original “make their bed,” as they call it, and that it reveals a wonderful amount of forgiving and generosity in them to profess that they did. If we could discover the truth, we might get at the real bed-makers—the villanous conjurers of couches of roses that were so speedily to turn to thorns and briars—in the seducer and the base deserter. If ever the Legislature finds courage enough to take up this great question in earnest, it is to be hoped that ample provision will be made for the proper treatment of the heartless scoundrel. As says a writer in an old number of the Westminster Review:

“The deserter, not the seducer, should be branded with the same kind and degree of reprobation with which society now visits the coward and the cheat. The man who submits to insult rather than fight; the gambler who packs the cards, or loads the dice, or refuses to pay his debts of honour, is hunted from among even his unscrupulous associates as a stained and tarnished character. Let the same measure of retributive justice be dealt to the seducer who deserts the woman who has trusted him, and allows her to come upon the town. We say the deserter—not the seducer; for there is as wide a distinction between them as there is between the gamester and the sharper. Mere seduction will never be visited with extreme severity among men of the world, however correct and refined may be their general tone of morals; for they will always make large allowances on the score of youthful passions, favouring circumstances, and excited feeling. Moreover, they well know that there is a wide distinction—that there are all degrees of distinction—between a man who commits a fault of this kind, under the influence of warm affections and a fiery temperament, and the cold-hearted, systematic assailer of female virtue, whom all reprobate and shun. It is universally felt that you cannot, with any justice, class these men in the same category, nor mete out to them the same measure of condemnation. But the man who, when his caprice is satisfied, casts off his victim as a worn-out garment or a damaged toy; who allows the woman who trusted his protestations to sink from the position of his companion to the loathsome life of prostitution, because his seduction and desertion has left no other course open to her; who is not ready to make any sacrifice of place, of fortune, of reputation even, in order to save one whom he has once loved from such an abyss of wretched infamy—must surely be more stained, soiled, and hardened in soul, more utterly unfitted for the company or sympathy of gentlemen or men of honour, than any coward, any gambler, any cheat!”

I may not lay claim to being the discoverer of this well-written outburst of manly indignation. It is quoted by a gentleman—a medical gentleman—who has inquired deeper and written more to the real purpose on this painful subject than any other writer with whom I am acquainted. I allude to Dr. Acton. The volume that contains it is of necessity not one that might be introduced to the drawing-room, but it is one that all thinking men would do well to procure and peruse. Dr. Acton handles a tremendously difficult matter masterly and courageously; and while really he is of as delicate a mind as a lady, he does not scruple to enunciate his honest convictions respecting the prevalent evil of prostitution, as though it were an evil as commonly recognised and as freely discussed as begging or thieving. In his introductory pages he says:

“To those who profess a real or fictitious ignorance of prostitution, its miseries and its ill-effects, and those again who plead conscience for inaction, I have this one reply. Pointing to the outward signs of prostitution in our streets and hospitals, I inquire whether we can flatter ourselves that the subject has drifted into a satisfactory state on the ‘know-nothing’ and ‘do-nothing’ principle. I hint at the perilous self-sufficiency of the Pharisee, and the wilful blindness of the Levite who ‘passed by on the other side,’ and I press upon them that, after reading this work and testing its author’s veracity, they should either refute its arguments or be themselves converted. . . . I have little to say in the way of apology for my plain-speaking. The nature of the subject has forced this upon me. To have called things here treated of by another than their right name would have been in any writer an absurdity, in me a gross one. The experiences I have collected may to optimists and recluses appear exaggerated. The visions I have indulged in may be hard to grasp. But this more complicated knot demands a swordsman, not an infant. The inhabitants of a provincial city demanded of Lord Palmerston that the angel of pestilence should be stayed by a day of national prayer and fasting. ‘I will fast with you and pray with you,’ was the statesman’s answer; ‘but let us also drain, scrub, wash, and be clean.’”

If by this taste of the preface to Dr. Acton’s book I induce my male readers to dip into it for themselves, I shall feel that I have done the cause the worthy writer has at heart good service. It will be something if the brief quotation bespeaks attention to the other extracts from the same genuine source that herein appear. On the subject of seduction and desertion, Mr. Acton writes:

“If I could not get imprisonment of the male party to a seduction substituted for the paltry fine of half-a-crown a-week, I would at least give to the commonwealth, now liable to a pecuniary damage by bastardy, some interest in its detection and punishment. The union-house is now often enough the home of the deserted mother and the infant bastard; and the guardians of the poor ought, I think, to have the right, in the interest of the commune, to act as bastardy police, and to be recouped their charges. I would not allow the maintenance of an illegitimate child to be at the expense of any but the father. I would make it the incubus on him, not on its mother; and I would not leave his detection, exposure, and money loss at the option of the latter. A young man who has a second and third illegitimate child, by different women, has not lived without adding some low cunning to his nature. It often happens that a fellow of this sort will, for a time, by specious promises and presents to a girl he fully intends ultimately to desert, defer making any payments for or on account of her child. If he can for twelve months, and without entering into any shadow of an agreement (and we may all guess how far the craft of an injured woman will help her to one that would hold water), stave-off any application on her part to the authorities, her claim at law is barred; and she herself, defied at leisure, becomes in due course chargeable to her parish or union. But not thus should a virtuous state connive at the obligations of paternity being shuffled on to its public shoulders, when, by a very trifling modification of the existing machinery, they might be adjusted on the proper back, permanently or temporarily, as might be considered publicly expedient. I would enact, I say, by the help of society, that, in the first place, the seduction of a female, properly proved, should involve the male in a heavy pecuniary fine, according to his position—not at all by way of punishment, but to strengthen, by the very firm abutment of the breeches-pocket, both him and his good resolutions against the temptations and force of designing woman. I would not offer the latter, as I foresee will be instantaneously objected, this bounty upon sinfulness—this incentive to be a seducer; but, on the contrary, the money should be due to the community, and recoverable in the county-court or superior court at the suit of its engine, the union; and should be invested by the treasurer of such court, or by the county, or by some public trustee in bastardy, for the benefit of the mother and child. The child’s portion of this deodand should be retained by such public officer until the risk of its becoming chargeable to the community quasi-bastard should be removed by the mother’s marriage or otherwise; and the mother’s share should be for her benefit as an emigration-fund or marriage-portion.”

“We cannot imagine,” says another authority, “that anyone can seriously suppose that prostitution would be made either more generally attractive or respectable by the greater decency and decorum which administrative supervision would compel it to throw over its exterior. We know that the absence of these does not deter one of irregular passions from the low pursuit; and we know, moreover, wherever these are needed for the behoof of a more scrupulous and refined class of fornicators, they are to be found. We are convinced also that much of the permanent ruin to the feelings and character which results from the habit of visiting the haunts of prostitution is to be attributed to the coarse language and the brutal manners which prevail there; and that this vice, like many others, would lose much of its evil by losing all of grossness that is separable from it. Nor do we fear that the improvement in the tone of prostitution which would thus result would render its unhappy victims less anxious to escape from it. Soften its horrors and gild its loathsomeness as you may, there will always remain enough to revolt all who are not wholly lost. Much too—everything almost—is gained, if you can retain any degree of self-respect among the fallen. The more of this that remains, the greater chance is there of ultimate redemption; it is always a mistaken and a cruel policy to allow vice to grow desperate and reckless.” It is for the interest of society at large, as well as for that of the guilty individual, that we should never break down the bridge behind such a sinner as the miserable “unfortunate” even.