There is no need for me to go into the details of the way in which men and women,whose whole livelihood depends upon their success in disarming the suspicions of their victims and luring them to their doom,contrive to overcome the reluctance of the young girl without parents,friends,or helpers to enter their toils.What fraud fails to accomplish,a little force succeeds in effecting;and a girl who has been guilty of nothing but imprudence finds herself an outcast for life.The very innocence of a girl tells against her.A woman of the world,once entrapped,would have all her wits about her to extricate herself from the position in which she found herself.A perfectly virtuous girl is often so overcome with shame and horror that there seems nothing in life worth struggling for.She accepts her doom without further struggle,and treads the long and torturing path-way of "the streets"to the grave.
"Judge not,that ye be not judged"is a saying that applies most appropriately of all to these unfortunates.Many of them would have escaped their evil fate had they been less innocent.They are where they are because they loved too utterly to calculate consequences,and trusted too absolutely to dare to suspect evil.And others are there because of the false education which confounds ignorance with virtue,and throws our young people into the midst of a great city,with all its excitements and all its temptations,without more preparation or warning than if they were going to live in the Garden of Eden.
Whatever sin they have committed,a terrible penalty is exacted.
While the man who caused their ruin passes as a respectable member of society,to whom virtuous matrons gladly marry--if he is rich--their maiden daughters,they are crushed beneath the millstone of social excommunication.Here let me quote from a report made to me by the head of our Rescue Homes as to the actual life of these unfortunates.
The following hundred cases are taken as they come from our Rescue Register.The statements are those of the girls themselves.They are certainly frank,and it will be noticed that only two out of the hundred allege that they took to the life out of poverty:--CAUSE OF FALL.
Drink .14
Seduction .33
Wilful choice .24
Bad company .27
Poverty .2
----
Total 100
CONDITION WHEN APPLYING.
Rags.25
Destitution .27
Decently dressed 48
----
Total 100
Out of these girls twenty-three have been in prison.The girls suffer so much that the shortness of their miserable life is the only redeeming feature.Whether we look at the wretchedness of the life itself;their perpetual intoxication;the cruel treatment to which they are subjected by their task-masters and mistresses or bullies;the hopelessness,suffering and despair induced by their circumstances and surroundings;the depths of misery,degradation and poverty to which they eventually descend;or their treatment in sickness,their friendlessness and loneliness in death,it must be admitted that a more dismal lot seldom falls to the fate of a human being.I will take each of these in turn.
HEALTH.--This life induces insanity,rheumatism,consumption,and all forms of syphilis.Rheumatism and gout are the commonest of these evils.Some were quite crippled by both--young though they were.
Consumption sows its seeds broadcast.The life is a hot-bed for the development of any constitutional and hereditary germs of the disease.
We have found girls in Piccadilly at midnight who are continually prostrated by haemorrhage,yet who have no other way of life open,so struggle on in this awful manner between whiles.
DRINK.--This is an inevitable part of the business.All Confess that they could never lead their miserable lives if it were not for its influence.
A girl,who was educated at college,and who had a home in which was every comfort,but who,when ruined,had fallen even to the depth of Woolwich "Dusthole,"exclaimed to us indignantly--"Do you think Icould ever,ever do this if it weren't for the drink?I always have to be in drink if I want to sin."No girl has ever come into our Homes front street-life but has been more or less a prey to drink.
