I saw a bar and a bar-maid before I got actually into the place from whence the stage could be seen; there was a bar and three bar-maids half-way down the promenade, and there was a bar and two bar-maids down before me in the alcove leading to the Canteen, with a corresponding number of bars and bar-maids in the same positions on the other side of the house.
All these bars had splendid bottles, with various fluids in them, arranged with an eye to effect, making it look like a vast apothecary's window, and there were bright brass beer-pumps all in a row, and pewter and silver and metal pots and tankards, and oval glass frames with pies, sandwiches, and all kinds of lunches to satisfy the thirst and appetites of the audience. The promenade was choked with men and women, walking past each other, looking at the stage, drinking at the bars, chaffing each other in a rough way, and laughing loudly. Although the night was stormy without, the revelry was high within.
Perhaps in this audience of three thousand people, who filled the ground floor and galleries, standing and sitting, and eating and drinking, there might have been fifteen hundred women, all well, and many of them fashionably, dressed and gloved. A sergeant of police with me said:
"If there are 1,500 women here to-night, as I believe there are, you may be sure that there are 1,200 women of the town among that number, Sir."
Twelve hundred unfortunate women in one place of amusement—and half a dozen other places like this, but of an inferior class, are open this rainy, unpleasant night, with a like complement of wretched females recklessly passing the hours that intervene before the dens close at midnight. The crash of sixty pieces of fine music falls on the ear, the glare, the gas, the tinsel on the stage, the well-dressed, fine-faced women around cannot shut out my thoughts of the "Legion of the Lost" who are so merry, so thoughtless, so careless of the morrow—deep in the fallacies of sin and despair.
THE SOCIAL EVIL.
The men who are conversing with these women seem to be of a good class, and spend a good deal of money in refreshments and liquor upon their fair, frail acquaintances. These last are not allowed to go inside of the railing on the ground floor alone, but they do not care for that privilege, as there is plenty to drink outside and more of the company of the male gender. Whenever a woman on the stage capers more vigorously, or flings her leg higher than the others, the applause is loud, long, and continued, and pewter and metal pots are dented in the surfaces of the tables that are ranged before each red-cushioned seat.
The comic singers are the favorites of the audience, however, and are always encored with vociferous enthusiasm. These singers get in a place like the Alhambra as much as ten pounds a week, as the proprietors know well the value of their services. The pantomimes are of the very best kind I ever saw; the dancing is, of its kind, good; the orchestra excellent and full in numbers, the acrobatic performances very fine, and the picture at the close of the pantomime is really superb. Yet with all these excellences combined, if the Alhambra and every Music-Hall-Hell like it in London were suddenly scorched up by a fire from Heaven, it would be the most incomparable benefit ever bestowed upon the English metropolis, and a saving grace to thousands of young English men and women—both in body and soul.
And the reason for this is that women are allowed admission at the door on payment of the price, without the escort of a man. Consequently it is, with the exception of the Argyle, and Holborn Casino, the greatest place of infamy in all London. It is convenient, in a central location, and were women not admitted alone the business of the place would break up. The men under twenty-five years of age, who comprise the largest part of the male audience, would not come were these Formosas debarred from admission. The performance—a first-class one—is not heeded. The chief attraction is the women.