THE MIDNIGHT MISSION.
God knows it is from no persistent desire to uncover the sores and ulcers of the huge city, that I state these facts.
Great and unceasing efforts are being made by the clergy and philanthropic citizens of London to diminish this terrible Traffic in Souls, which is the distinguishing mark of infamy that clings to the Haymarket.
"MIDNIGHT MISSION."
For some years past these unfortunate women have been collected together while plying their avocation, in an apartment in the vicinity of the Haymarket, in which some slight refreshments are prepared for them, ices and cooling but temperate drinks being served up gratis to all who will attend and listen to the words of repentance and hope from the mouths of clergymen who visit this place nightly for the purpose of reclaiming these Lost Ones. This is called the "Midnight Mission," or "Meeting," and the girls are gathered by having circulars presented to them in the street as the hour nears midnight. A great number attend, and they generally listen with patience and decorum. This Mission was founded by the Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel, who first preached to the unfortunate girls.
A high officer of the London police informed me that there were in that city about seven thousand lost women who are always well dressed, well gloved, and well shod, who live comfortably, and many of them elegantly. These women, of course, are all Free Lances, and prey upon the fashionable young men of London and strangers who visit the great Babylon.
Of this number, he stated that three thousand five hundred were what is called under protection, or kept mistresses. The remainder have hired lodgings for themselves in Pimlico, Fitzroy square, Portman street, Howard street, Winchester street, Sutherland street, Gloucester street, and other respectable localities of the metropolis, paying two or three sovereigns a week for a suite of apartments, and furnishing them at their own expense. This latter class, as a general thing, live individually apart from each other, and keep each a servant of all work, to do their cooking and washing.
Some of these girls have furnished their apartments at a cost of from two to five hundred pounds, ordering the most costly articles of furniture with the extravagance and profusion peculiar to their class. Pictures, etageres, buffets, mirrors, ormolu clocks, tapestry carpets, and the most luxurious articles of bijouterie and the toilet are to be found in their apartments; and, unlike their frail sisters in New York and Paris, these London girls act with complete independence of their landladies, who in the cities mentioned, as a rule, treat the unfortunate women placed in their power more like dogs than human beings. In London, these girls are in the strictest sense their own mistresses, and therefore do not come under any police regulations; nor can they receive the designation of professionals, as they never solicit men on the street, or live in what is called a house of ill-fame. The persons who rent apartments to these girls in the districts which I have thus enumerated, are not supposed to know anything about the occupation or business of tenants, and they never, by any possibility, attempt to interfere with them.