The poor women recommended by the Governors and subscribers are received on Wednesdays and Fridays, from eleven o’clock till one. From the account of this hospital published by order of the Governors.
For the other lying-in hospitals, besides the two above mentioned, see the articles London Lying-in Hospital, and Middlesex Hospital.
Lyon’s Inn. See Lion’s Inn.
M.
Macclesfield street, Gerrard street, Soho.
Maddox street, Swallow street.†
Maggot’s court, Piccadilly.†
Magdalen House, for the reception of penitent prostitutes, in Prescot street, Goodman’s fields, is a plain, neat building, with a wall and a small area before it. To prevent these penitents being exposed to the public eye, the windows next the street are concealed by wood work sloping up from the bottom of each, so as to admit the light only at the top; the sides are also inclosed, so that there is no possibility of these once unhappy women either seeing or being seen by any person who passes by. This sloping projection of the blinds, placed in a regular series before all the windows in each story, and painted white like the walls, has a very singular appearance; for, at a distance, the house seems falling into the street.
Though this is one of the latest of those excellent charitable foundations that do honour to the present age, it being proposed and carried into execution in the year 1758, there is reason to believe that it will not be the least useful. It is obvious that there cannot be greater objects of compassion than poor, young, thoughtless females, plunged into ruin by those temptations to which their youth and personal advantages expose them, no less than those passions implanted by nature for wise, good, and great ends; surrounded by snares the most artfully and industriously laid; snares laid by those endowed with superior faculties, and all the advantages of education and fortune; who offer too commonly to transport the thoughtless girls from want, confinement, and restraint of passions, to luxury, liberty, gaiety and joy: but when once seduced, how soon do their golden dreams vanish! abandoned by the seducer, deserted by their friends, contemned by the world, they are not only deprived of their innocence, and every pleasing hope of domestic happiness, but are left to struggle with want, despair and scorn, and even, in their own defence, to plunge deeper and deeper in sin, till disease and death conclude a miserable being. It is too well known that this is, sooner or later, the case with most of the prostitutes, in their several degrees, from those pampered in private stews, to the common dregs infesting our streets: and that far the greatest part of those, who having taken to this dreadful life, are thus seeking disease, death, and eternal destruction, not through choice, but necessity. The seeds of virtue would frequently have exerted themselves; but alas! before this foundation was formed, the possibility was removed; and the same necessity obliging them to prey on the unwary, to diffuse contagion, to propagate profligacy, and to spread ruin, disease, and death, through a great part of the human species.