THE LEGION OF THE LOST.
ERY different estimates have been made as to the extent of the Social Evil in London, but that made some fifteen months ago by the Right Reverend Dr. Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, from facts and figures furnished him by medical men, the police returns, and the minor clergy, places the number of abandoned or public women in London, at the startling aggregate of eighty thousand unfortunates.
This estimate of Vice and Sin is certainly calculated to intimidate and terrify the Christian people of England, were it not for the fact that a hundred agencies are constantly at work, upheld and supported by good men and women, to lessen the number of these fair and frail members of the Legion of the Lost.
The great parade ground of the abandoned women of London, is the Haymarket, when all London is at rest—when bed-room blinds are drawn down, and street doors locked and chained—when lights are rarely seen but in the windows of the sick wards of hospitals—then the Haymarket is in its glory, gay and lively as a ball-room, and swarming with gaudily dressed women sauntering and flaunting up and down its broad pavements, crowding them as on an illumination night. The dissolute and idle, the debauchee and the debauched, pour into this market of sin, this Exchange of Vice and Harlotry, like moths attracted by the glare that must sooner or later utterly destroy them. This street is always at night full of cabs, drunken men, noisy women, jugglers, and thieves.
The Haymarket is the Republic of Vice, where all who enter are hale fellows well met, for every one knows why the other has come here, and caution being cast off for the time, all ranks and stations mingle.
"SCOTT'S" IN THE HAYMARKET.
Outside the tavern doors are gathered clusters of swells talking to the poor souls, who, disguised by some flash dressmaker, have hidden the figure of the servant-maid under the toilette of the mistress. The heir to a title stands bowing to some pretty faced girl, who mixes her bad grammar with oaths. The door of a public house swings back to let the hope of a family enter, who is about to sip wine at the counter with the chip bonnet at his side.
