CHAPTER XV.GENTEEL ADVERTISING BEGGARS.

There are other types of the shy, blunt-spoken beggar, who affect almost to resent the charity they solicit. These abound, as indeed do all street-beggars, chiefly in the severest months of winter. As long as one can remember, gangs of men have perambulated the highways in the frosty months, but until recently they were invariably “chanters,” with a legend of coming “all the way from Manchester.” But song is eschewed in modern times. It is found better to avoid old-fashioned forms, and appear as men destitute and down-trodden perhaps, but still with self-respect remaining in them. There is no occasion for them to give you a song for your money; they are not called on to give a lengthy and humiliating explanation as to how they came there;youknow all about it. You must have read in the newspapers, “that, owing to the many stoppages of public and private works, there are at the present time hundreds of able-bodied and deserving labouring men wandering the streets of London, driven to the hard necessity of begging their bread.” Well, these are of the number. Observe the unmistakable token of their having laboured on a “public work,” to wit, a railway-cutting, in the clay baked on their “ankle-jacks” and fustian trousers. Regard that able-bodied individual,the leader of the gang, with his grimy great fists and the smut still on his face, and for a moment doubt that he is a deserving labouring man. He is an engineer, out of work since last Christmas, and ever since so hard-up that he has been unable to spare a penny to buy soap with. If you don’t believe it, ask him. But to this or any other detail himself or his mates will not condescend in a general way. All that they do, is to spread across the street, and saunter along with their hands in their pockets, ejaculating only, “Out of work!” “Willin’ to work, and got no work to do!” If you followed them all day, you would find no change in their method of operation, excepting the interval of an hour or so at midday spent in the tap-room of a public-house. If you followed them after that, your steps in all probability would be directed towards Keate-street, Spitalfields, or Mint-street in the Borough, in both of which delightful localities common lodging-houses abound; and if you were bold enough to cross the threshold and descend into the kitchen, there you would discover the jolly crew sitting round a table, and dividing the handsome spoil of the day, while they drank “long lasting to the frost” in glasses of neat rum.

At the same time, I should be very sorry for the reader to misunderstand me, as wishing to convey to him the impression that in every instance the gangs of men to be met with in the streets in winter-time are vagrants and impostors. It is not difficult to imagine a company of hard-up poor fellows genuinely destitute; mates, perhaps, on the same kind of work, resortingto this method of raising a shilling rather than apply at the workhouse for it. An out-o’-work navvy or a bricklayer would never think of going out to beg alone, whereas he would see no great amount of degradation in joining a “gang.” He thus sinks his individuality, and becomes merely a representative item of a depressed branch of industry. There can be no doubt that a sixpence given to such a man is well bestowed for the time being; but it would be much better, even though it cost many sixpences, if the labourer were never permitted to adopt this method of supplying his needs. In the majority of cases, it may be, the out-o’-work man who resorted to the streets to beg for money would, when trade improved, hurry back to work, and be heartily glad to forget to what misfortune had driven him; but there are a very large number of labourers who, at the best of times, can live but from hand to mouth as the saying is, and from whom it is desirable to keep secret how much easier money may be got by begging than working. To a man who has to drudge at the docks, for instance, for threepence an hour—and there are thousands in London who do so—it is a dangerous experience for him to discover that as much may be made on an average by sauntering the ordinary length of a street, occasionally raising his hand to his cap. Or he may know beforehand, by rumour, what a capital day’s work may be done at “cadging,” and in bitter sweat of underpaid labour complain that he is worse off than a cadger. It is as well to provide against giving such a man an excuse for breaking the ice.

There are, however, other impostors amongst the begging fraternity besides those who adopt the professional dress of vagrancy, and impudently endeavour publicly to proclaim their sham distress and privation. The terrible condition of want into which thousands of the working population of London were plunged the winter before last developed the “cadger” in question in a very remarkable degree. This personage is not a demonstrative cheat. His existence is due entirely to the growing belief in decent poverty, and in the conviction that in frosty “hard-up” times much more of real destitution is endured by those whose honest pride will not permit them to clamour of their wants, and so make them known. There can be no doubt but that this is perfectly true, and, despite all that horridly blunt philanthropists say to the contrary, it is a quality to be nurtured rather than despised. As everybody knows, of late years ithasbeen nurtured to a very large extent. At the East-end of the town, in Poplar and Shadwell, where, owing to the slackness in the trade pertaining to the building of ships, poverty was specially prevalent, quite a small army of benevolently-disposed private individuals were daily employed going from house to house, and by personal inquiry and investigation applying the funds at their disposal quietly and delicately, and to the best of then ability judiciously. There can be no question that by these means a vast amount of good was done, and many a really decent family provided with a meal that otherwise would have gone hungry; but an alarming percentageof evil clung to the skirts of the good. It is a positive fact that in the most squalid regions—those, indeed, that were most notorious for their poverty—the value of house-property increased considerably. The occupants of apartments, who during the previous summertime were unable to meet the weekly exactions of the collector, now not only met current demands, but by substantial instalments rapidly paid-up arrears of rent. Landlords who for months past had been glad to take what they could get, now became inexorable, and would insist on one week being paid before the next was due. They could afford to indulge in this arbitrary line of behaviour towards their tenants. Rents were “going up;” rooms that at ordinary times would realise not more than 2s.or 2s.3d.each, now were worth 3s.6d.Ragman’s-alley and Squalor’s-court and Great and Little Grime’s-street were at a premium. They were localities famous in the newspapers. Everybody had read about them; everybody had heard the story of the appalling heart-rending misery that pervaded these celebrated places. Day after day gentlefolks flocked thereto, and speedily following these visitations came tradesmen’s porters bearing meat and bread and groceries. To be a Squalor’s-alleyite was to be a person with undoubted and indisputable claims on the public purse, and to be comfortably provided for. To be a denizen of Great Grime’s-street was to reside in an almshouse more fatly endowed than the Printers’ or the Drapers’ or the Fishmongers’.

It was impossible for such a paradise to exist withoutits fame being blown to the most distant and out-of-the-way nooks of the town. North, west, and south the cadgers and impostors heard of it, and enviously itched to participate in the good things. And no wonder! Here was bread and meat and coals being furnished to all who asked for them, at the rate of twenty shillingsworth a-week at the least; nay, they were provided without even the asking for. It was unnecessary to cross the threshold of your door to look after them, for those whose happy task it was to distribute the prizes came knocking, and in the tenderest terms made offer of their assistance. All that was needful was to secure a lodging in Ragman’s-court or Little Grime’s-street, and pay your rent regularly, and sit down and await the result. And lodgings were so secured. It is positively true that at the height of the “famine season” at the East-end of London, when day after day saw the columns of the daily newspapers heavily laden with the announced subscriptions of the charitable, hundreds of questionable characters, “working men” in appearance, quitted other parts of the metropolis, and cheerfully paid much more rent than they had been accustomed to pay, for the privilege of squatting down in the midst of what was loudly and incessantly proclaimed to be “a colony of helpless out-o’-works, famine-stricken, and kept from downright starvation only by the daily and hourly efforts of the charitable.”

This much might of course be expected of the professed beggar and the cadger by education and breeding;but it would be interesting to learn how many shiftless ones—those semi-vagabonds who labour under the delusion that they are idle men only because work is denied them, and who are continually engaged in the vague occupation of “looking for a job”—gave way before the great temptation, and became downright cadgers from that time. With such folk the barrier to be broken down is of the flimsiest texture, and once overcome, it is difficult indeed to erect it again. Not sweeter to the industrious is the bread of their labour than to the idle and dissolute the loaf unearned, and the free gift of tobacco to be smoked at ease in working hours. It is terribly hard to struggle out of a slough of laziness in which a man has lain for a length of time, with nothing to do but open his mouth and permit other people to feed him. It is extremely unlikely that such a man would make the struggle while there remained but half a chance of his maintaining his comfortable position. Having grown so far used to the contamination of mire, he would be more likely to struggle a little deeper into it, if he saw what he deemed his advantage in doing so, and by swift degrees he would speedily be engulfed in that hopeless bog of confirmed beggary from which there is no return save those of the prison statician.

The Newspaper Plan and the delicate Process—Forms of Petition—Novel Applications of Photography—Personal Attractions of the Distressed—Help,or I perish!

Besidesthose I have enumerated, there are at least two other specimens of the beggar tribe that deserve mention. They are genteel impostors both. One avails himself of the advertising columns of the newspaper to apprise the benevolent of his modest desires, while the other prefers the more private and delicate process insured by our modern postal system. Both affect the “reduced gentleman,” and display in their appeals an amount of artlessness and simple confidence in the charity of their fellow-creatures that tells unmistakably of their ample possession of that Christian virtue, while at the same time it conveys to the reader an idea of the select and highly-exclusive position they should properly occupy, and from which they have so disastrously descended. It is evident at a glance that they know nothing of the rough-and-ready ways of the world, or of its close-fistedness or proneness to suspicion. We know this, and pity them; otherwise we might be inclined toclass them with those “cheeky” ones in whose praise the young gentleman before mentioned, of “shallow” extraction, was so hearty, and to treat their impudent attempts as they deserve. But the touching simplicity of the unfortunate creatures at once disarms us of suspicion. For instance, who could refrain from immediately responding to the subjoined “petition,” which is copied strictly from the original? It was delivered through the post, and was attached as a fly-leaf to a card on which was affixed the portraits of six young children, each of whom had evidently been “got up” with extreme care, as regards hair-curling and arrangements of dress and ribbons, for the photographic process.

“Children to save.—Advertisement sent to a few taken from the London Directory. The father of these British-born Protestant children is an elderly gentleman, ruined by competition in business, and past beginning life again; and the mother is in a very precarious state of health. To seek for adopters is against parental instinct; and besides it might ultimately come to that, as by the time their schooling is over, in ten or fifteen years, they would most likely be orphans, and their willing adopters would be quite welcome to it (sic). At present the father, in his alarm for the fate of these creatures, seeks for some that would pay, not to the father, but to good boarding-schools, for their clothing, keeping, and tuition, and after school-time to see that they should not want. Willing benefactors are therefore requested to state what they would feel inclined todo for each child, by one of the numbers given at foot, to ‘Alphabet, till called for, at the Post-office, No. 1 Liverpool-street, Moorfields, E.C.,’ enclosing card or addressed envelope to insure correct address, if a reply should be wished.”

Another method of applying the photographic art to the bolstering-up of a spurious begging petition takes a form even more outrageous than that which was adopted to exhibit the personal attractions of the distressed six British-born Protestant children. In the second case it is the portrait of a handsome young lady, aged about twenty, with a profusion of lovely hair, and an expression of countenance strikingly artless and captivating. Accompanying the portrait was a note, as follows:

“Dear Sir,—I am sure, when you learn the cause, that you will pardon the liberty I take in addressing myself to you. I am impelled to do so, not only on account of your known humanity, but because I have seen you and read in your face that you will not turn a deaf ear to an appeal frankly and trustingly made to you. The fact is, my dear sir, I am absolutely in want of a sixpence to procure a meal. I am the only child of a father whommisfortunehas reduced to a condition of abject beggary. Mother I have none. One day I may have an opportunity of narrating to you the peculiar causes of our present embarrassment. I should feel it incumbent on me to do so, were I so fortunate as to make you our creditor for a small sum. Pray spare me the pain of detailing more minutely the purport of this letter. I am aware of the boldness of the step Iam taking, but the misery of my wretched father must plead for me in excuse. I enclose my likeness (taken, alas, in happier times, though scarcely six months since), so that you may see that I am not acommon beggar. Should my appeal move your compassion towards me, will you kindly send a note addressed, Adelaide F. T., Post-office, —?”

The gentleman to whom the above artful concoction was addressed is well known for his philanthropy, and his name appears frequently in the newspapers. He is an elderly gentleman, and has grown-up sons and daughters, consequently he was not a likely person to be trapped by the lovely Adelaide, who would “feel it incumbent on her to seek out and personally thank her benefactor,” in the event of his forwarding to her a pound or so. But it might have been different, if, instead of a plain-sailing shrewd man of the world, he had been a person afflicted with vanity. Here was this poor young handsome creature, who had seen him and read in his face that which induced her to make to him such a pitiful avowal of her poverty—herpeculiarpoverty! Why, the story of the “peculiar cause” that led to the sudden downfall of such a family must be worth a pound to listen to! Was it justifiable to dishonour the promise his face had assured to the poor young woman? These or similar reflections might have betrayed the better judgment of a less experienced person than Mr. L—. As it was, the artful note served but to ponder over as one of the latest curiosities in the begging-letter line; while as for the portrait, it furnishedample food for moralising on how marvellously deceptive appearances were—especially female appearances.

And if this were the end of the story, the good reader, with all his honest British inclination for giving the accused the benefit of a doubt, might be tempted to exclaim, “And, after all, who knows but that the appeal to this known philanthropist might have been genuine? To be sure, the shape it assumed was one that might well excite the suspicion of an individual alive to the surpassing cleverness and cunning of begging impostors; but at the same time there was sufficient of probability in the application to protect it from the stigma of impudent fraud.” Such readers will be glad to hear that all doubts on the matter were set at rest, and in the following singular, and for one party concerned somewhat unpleasant, manner. The portrait in question fell into the hands of a relative of Mr. L—, a gentleman with a hard heart for begging impostors, and sturdy resolution to put them down and punish them whenever he encountered them. He was particularly set against mendicants of the genteel class, and was very severe in his strictures on the abominable cheat attempted by “Adelaide F. T.” One afternoon, while walking along Oxford-street, lo, the original of the pictured culprit appeared before him, artlessly and innocently gazing into a linendraper’s window, and accompanied by another lady. The resemblance between the first lady and the photograph was so striking as to place her identity beyond a doubt; yet in order to makequitesure, our friend withdrew the latter from hispocketbook, and covertly compared it with the original. It was as certain as that he had eyes in his head. There was the hair of golden hue massed behind and raised from the temples; there was the straight nose, the small winning mouth, and the delicately-rounded chin. The stern exposer of imposture, however, was not to be moved to mercy by a pretty face; his course of duty was plain before him, and stepping up to the lady, he addressed with undisguised severity, “Miss Adelaide T., I believe?” “You are mistaken, sir.” “Not at all, madam; a friend of mine was lately favoured with a letter from you enclosing your likeness.” It was scarcely to be wondered at, that an expression of terror took possession of the lady’s face, though it was misinterpreted by the gentleman. Thinking that she was addressed by a drunken man or a maniac, the lady prudently retreated into the shop the window of which she had been regarding. More than ever convinced that he was not mistaken, L—’s friend followed her; and goodness knows what serious consequences might have ensued, had not the lady been a known customer of the draper as the daughter of a gentleman of wealth and station. This, of course, led to an explanation, and to the most earnest and humble apologies on the part of the pursuer of imposture. The photograph was produced, and undoubtedly it was a likeness of the lady. How it had got into the hands of the designing “Adelaide F. T.” no one could tell, but doubtless it was selected on account of its beauty and prepossessing artlessness. An endeavour was made to secure thecheats; but from some cause or another they took alarm, and the decoy letter, addressed “Post-office —,” remained there until it was returned through the Dead-letter Office.

By the bye, the idea of begging “not for myself, but for another,” is a dodge not confined to the epistolary impostor. In the neighbourhood in which I reside, some little time since there made her appearance a very fine specimen of disinterested generosity of the kind in question: a little old lady dressed in black, with kid-gloves on her hands, and a cloak soberly trimmed with black crape. She knocked the knock of a person used to the genteel fingering of a knocker, and might she be permitted to speak with the lady of the house? It happened that, at that moment, the gentleman of the house was going out, and he, hearing the application, suggested that possibly he might do as well. Undoubtedly, though it was a trivial matter with which to occupy the attention of a gentleman. The simple fact was, that the little old lady was bound on a mission of charity for a poor soul recently left destitute with nine small children: her aim being the purchase of a mangle and a few washing-tubs, that the widow might earn an honourable livelihood for her numerous brood. “I am too poor to supply her withallthe money out of my own slender little purse,” said the old lady, “but I have plenty of leisure, and I think that you will agree with me, sir, it cannot be employed more worthily. I do not ask for any large sum on the poor creature’s behalf; I only ask one single penny. Iwill not take more than a penny. I put the pence in this little bag, you see, and by perseverance I trust that I shall soon accomplish my aim.” As the little old lady spoke, she cheerfully produced from the folds of her cloak a stout linen bag heavy with copper money, and containing, I should say, at least twelve shillings. The little old lady’s manner was plausible and smooth, and well calculated to impose on the “lady of the house” nine times out of ten. But unfortunately for her it had been my lot to make the acquaintance of many strange little old ladies as well as of gentlemen, and I had my suspicions. I closed the outer door and confronted her on the mat. “I beg your pardon, but have we not met before?” I asked her. She looked up suddenly and sharply, with no little alarm on her wizened old face. “I—I think not, sir,” she faltered. “Do you happen to know a gentleman named Horsford?” was my next inquiry. The little old lady looked still more embarrassed. “I did not come here to discuss my own affairs, sir,” said she with a sorry affectation of indignation, “nor to answer questions that bear no relation to my charitable object. I wish you a good-morning, sir!” And with that she opened the door, and let herself out; and descending the steps quickly, trotted up the street with guilty speed, and turned the corner, and was out of sight before I could make up my mind what to do with her.

Of advertising beggars there is a large variety. A great many of them breathe a pious spirit, or rather gasp;—for it is seldom that these distressed ones mustercourage to cry out until they have endured their distress even to death’s-door. Not unfrequently the headings or “catch-lines” of these printed appeals are culled from the Bible. Here is one, for example:

“‘Help,or I perish!’—The advertiser (in his sixty-seventh birthday) was once blessed with a handsome fortune. Drink—he confesses it—has been the cause of his ruin. He still drinks; not now for pleasure and in luxury, but to benumb the gnawing of an aroused conscience. Unless this horrid propensity is checked, the advertiser feels that he must perish body and soul! Who will save him? He has two sons in Canada, who are striving men and total abstainers, and who would receive him with open arms, could he but raise money enough to purchase some poor outfit, and to pay for the voyage.—Address, X., Prescott-street, Whitechapel.”

One cannot help reflecting, that, before contributing towards a fund to assist the emigration of the aged toper—who appears only to have awoke to a sense of his abasement now that he is stinted of his gin—he would like to have the opinion of those striving men, his sons, the total abstainers in Canada. Possibly they would prefer to honour him at a distance. According to the ingenious old gentleman’s own showing, he only regards his sons as possible props to keep him out of a drunkard’s grave; and if, fettered under the weight imposed on them, they sank with their father into the same dishonourable sepulchre, it would turn out to be money decidedly ill invested. All this, supposing the appeal to be genuine, which in all probability it is not. Wereit investigated, the only truthful hit in the appeal would very likely he found to consist in the three words, “he still drinks.”

Here is another of more recent date, in the emigration line:

“A lady has an opportunity of going to America, where she could obtain a good situation as governess, but has not the means of procuring an outfit. She would be very thankful to anyone who would lend her 10l., which she would promise to return with interest at the end of the year.”

This is cool, but almost feverish compared with the annexed:

“‘Money without Security!’—Doubtless these mocking words have struck many readers besides the advertiser. In his desperate situation he has often put to himself the question, Is there to be found in this cruel world a good Samaritan who would confer on a fellow-creature a boon so precious? Is there one who, blessed with means, can find delight in raising from the slough of despond a poor wretch stranded on the bank of the black river of despair? Is there one who will account it cheap bylendingten pounds, for three months, at twenty-five per cent interest, to elevate to manly altitude a human creature who, for want of such a sum, is groaning in the dust? If so, let him send a Beam of Sunshine to G. S. R., No. 17 Model Lodging Houses, —.”

One cannot but ask the question, is G. S. R. a madman, or simply an idiot, who can regard it as a “joke”to waste five shillings for the privilege of seeing so many lines of empty rubbish in print? Or, again, are there really any grounds of five shillingsworth for supposing that amongst the fifty thousand readers of a daily newspaper one may be met with silly or eccentric or whimsical enough to entertain G. S. R.’s proposition? It is hard to believe in such a possibility. Still, therearestrange people in the world; every day furnishes evidence of this fact. Not more than a month ago it came to light that an old lady residing at Clapham has for years past been in the habit of paying an organ-grinder thirty shillings a-week—a half-sovereign on the evening of every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday—to come and play for half-an-hour under her window. Supposing a rupture between the lady and her musician, and she had put an advertisement in theTimes—“A lady, a resident in a quiet suburb, is desirous of engaging with an organ-grinder. Terms of service, three half-hours per week, 75l.a-year”—who would have regarded it but as a silly joke?

Here is another begging advertisement of the simple and affecting type:

“A Widow’s Only Comfort.—The advertiser begs the kind assistance of the kind-hearted and benevolent to rescue her pianoforte from the hands of the broker. It is but a poor old affair (valued only at 12l.), but it has been her only consolation and solace since the death of a darling only daughter, whose instrument it was, and it would break her heart to part with it. Its music and her prayers should combine to thank anyone who was generous enough to restore it to her. Address — Colebrook-row.”

One more instance, and we will have done with the advertising beggar:

“To the Aged and Unprotected.—A young man, aged twenty-two, well-built, good-looking, and of a frank and affectionate disposition, is desirous of acting the part of a son towards any aged person or persons who would regard his companionship and constant devotion as an equivalent for his maintenance and clothes and support generally. The parents of the advertiser are both dead, and he has not a relative in the wide world. Affluence is not aimed at, no more than that degree of comfort that moderate means insure. Address, O. D., —.”

Although it is difficult without a struggle to feel an interest in this young gentleman’s welfare, we cannot help feeling curious to know what success his advertisement brought him. Is he still a forlorn orphan, wasting his many virtues and manly attributes on a world that to him is a wilderness; or has he happily succeeded in captivating “some aged person or persons,” and is he at the present time acting the part of a son towards them, and growing sleek and fat “on that degree of comfort that moderate means insure”? Were his initials J. D. instead of O. D., we might imagine that it was our ancient friend Jeremiah Diddler turned up once more. O. D. stand for Old Diddler, but Jeremiah the ancient must be aged considerably more than twenty-two. We may rest assured, however, that the advertiser is an offshoot of that venerable family.

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.

Theonly 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 isnot 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 emphaticallythesocial evil. It has been urged, that “to take this species ofvice 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 arecognitionof 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 prostitutesand 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 prostitutionunder 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,darebring 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 andmerryone. 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 placewas 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 voluntarymartyrdom; 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.”

“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 voluntarymartyrdom; 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 lessprononcées. 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 thencame 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.”

“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 thencame 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.”

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 usin 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 enormousnumber of 8600 prostitutes, and they were distributed as follows:

Brothels.

Prostitutes.

Within the districts of Westminster, Brompton, and Pimlico, there are

153

524

St. James, Regent-street, Soho, Leicester-square

152

318

Marylebone, Paddington, St. John’s-wood

139

526

Oxford-street, Portland-place, New-road, Gray’s-inn-lane

194

546

Covent-garden, Drury-lane, St. Giles’s

480

Clerkenwell, Pentonville, City-road, Shoreditch

152

349

Spitalfields, Houndsditch, Whitechapel, Ratcliff

471

1803

Bethnal-green, Mile-end, Shadwell to Blackwall

419

965

Lambeth, Blackfriars, Waterloo-road

377

802

Southwark, Bermondsey, Rotherhithe

178

667

Islington, Hackney, Homerton

185

445

Camberwell, Walworth, Peckham

228

Deptford and Greenwich

148

401

Kilburn, Portland, Kentish, and Camden Towns

231

Kensington, Hammersmith, Fulham

106

Walham-green, Chelsea, Cremorne

209

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 interestof 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 dependson 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 tothe 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 gonealtogetherto 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 theman 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, anaggressivedesire 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 downand 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 thedetective 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 toworkfor your living now; to work forme, d’ye understand? You can’t work—can’t earn a penny without you dress spicy, and every rag you’ve got on ismine; 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 onso. 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; andyouain’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 buthome. 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 perhapsyou’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 notsufferas 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 thePall Mall Gazettethree 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 keepit 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, theyfall 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—undoubtedlythatwas 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:hecan 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 milesand 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 thewind.’ ‘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 pluckyPall-Malladventurer. 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 knewme 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 shespoke, 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.’

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