London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 4

by Henry Mayhew

To form an accurate notion of the total number of the criminal population at the above period, we must add to the preceding amount the number of persons resident within the walls of the prisons. These, at the time of taking the last census, amounted to 19,888, which, added to the 130,000 above enumerated, gives within a fraction of 150,000 individuals for the entire criminal population of the country, as known to the police in 1837.

Let us now, for a moment, turn our attention to the number and cost of the honest and dishonest poor throughout England and Wales. Mr. Porter, usually no mean authority upon all matters of a statistical nature, tells us, in his “Progress of the Nation,” p. 530, that “the proportion of persons in the United Kingdom who pass their time without applying to any gainful occupation is quite inconsiderable! Of 5,800,000 males of 20 years and upwards living at the time of the census of 1831, there were said to be engaged in some calling or profession 5,450,000, thus leaving unemployed only 350,000, or rather less than six per cent.” “The number of unemployed adult males in Great Britain in 1841,” he afterwards informs us, “was only 274,000 and odd.”

But this statement gives us no accurate idea of the number of persons subsisting by charity or crime, for the author of the “Progress of the Nation,” strange to say, wholly excludes from his calculation the mass of individuals maintained by the several parishes, as well as the criminals, almspeople, and lunatics throughout the country! Now, according to the Report of the Poor-law Commissioners, the number of paupers receiving in and out-door relief, in 1848, was no less than 1,870,000 and odd. The number of criminals and suspicious characters throughout the country, in 1837, we have seen, was 150,000. In 1844 the number of lunatics in county asylums was 4000 and odd; while, according to the occupation abstract of the population returns there were in 1841 upwards of 5000 almspeople, 1000 beggars, and 21,000 pensioners. These, formed into one sum, give us no less than 2,000,000 of individuals living upon the income of the remainder of the population. By the above computation, therefore, we see that, out of a total of 16,000,000 souls, in England and Wales, one-eighth, or twelve per cent. of the whole, continue their existence either by pauperism, mendicancy, or crime.

Now, the cost of this immense mass of vice and want is even more appalling than the number of individuals subsisting in such utter degradation. The total amount of money levied in 1848 for the relief of the poor throughout England and Wales, was 7,400,000l. But, exclusive of this amount, the magnitude of the sum that we give voluntarily towards the support and education of the poorer classes, is unparalleled in the history of any other nation, or of any other time. According to the summary of the returns annexed to the voluminous reports of the Charity Commissioners, the rent of the land and other fixed property, together with the interest of the money left for charitable purposes in England and Wales, amounts to 1,200,000l. a year; and it is believed that, by proper management, this return might be increased to an annual income of at least two millions of money. “And yet,” says Mr. MʻCulloch, “there can be no doubt that even this large sum falls far below the amount expended every year in voluntary donations to charitable establishments. Nor can any estimate be formed,” he adds, “of the money given in charity to individuals, but in the aggregate it cannot fail to amount to an immense sum.” All things considered, therefore, we cannot be very far from the truth, if we assume the sums voluntarily subscribed towards the relief of the poor to equal, in the aggregate, the total amount raised by assessment for the same purpose (the income from voluntary subscriptions to the metropolitan charities alone equals 1,000,000l. and odd); so that it would appear that the well-to-do amongst us expend the vast sum of 15,000,000l. per annum in mitigating the miseries of their less fortunate brethren.

But though it may be said that we give altogether 15,000,000l. a year to alleviate the distress of those who want or suffer, we must remember that this vast sum expresses not only the liberal extent of our sympathy, but likewise the fearful amount of want and suffering, on the one hand, and of excess and luxury on the other, that there must be in the land. If the poorer classes require fifteen millions to be added in charity every year to their aggregate income in order to relieve their pains and privations, and the richer can afford to have the same immense sum taken from theirs, and yet scarcely feel the loss, it shows at once how much the one class must have in excess and the other in deficiency. Whether such a state of things is a necessary evil connected with the distribution of wealth, this is not the place for me to argue. All I have to do here is to draw attention to the fact. It is for others to lay bare the cause, and, if possible, discover the remedy.

There still remains, however, to be added to the sum expended in voluntary or compulsory relief of the poor, the cost of our criminal and convict establishments at home and abroad. This, according to the Government estimates, amounts to very nearly 1,000,000l.; then there is the value of the property appropriated by the 150,000 habitual criminals, and this, at 10s. a week per head, amounts to very nearly 4,000,000l.; so that, adding these items to the sum before-mentioned, we have, in round numbers, the enormous amount of 20,000,000l. per annum as the cost of the paupers and criminals of this country; and, reckoning the national income, with Mr. MʻCulloch and others, at 350,000,000l., it follows that the country has to give upwards of five per cent. out of its gross earnings every year to support those who are either incapable or unwilling to obtain a living for themselves.

OF THE PROSTITUTE CLASS GENERALLY.

We have now seen that the two modes of obtaining a living other than by working for it are, by forcibly or stealthily appropriating the proceeds of another’s labour, or else by seducing the more industrious or thrifty to part with a portion of their gains. Prostitution, professionally resorted to, belongs to the latter class, and consists, when adopted as a means of subsistence without labour, in inducing others, by the performance of some immoral act, to render up a portion of their possessions. Literally construed, prostitution is the putting of anything to a vile use; in this sense perjury is a species of prostitution, being an unworthy use of the faculty of speech; so, again, bribery is a prostitution of the right of voting; while prostitution, specially so called, is the using of her charms by a woman for immoral purposes. This, of course, may be done either from mercenary or voluptuous motives; be the cause, however, what it may, the act remains the same, and consists in the base perversion of a woman’s charms—the surrendering of her virtue to criminal indulgence. Prostitution has been defined to be the illicit intercourse of the sexes; but illicit is unlicensed, and the mere sanctioning of an immoral act could not dignify it into a moral one. Such a definition would make the criminality of the act to consist solely in the absence of the priest’s licence.

In Persia there are no professional prostitutes permitted; but though the priest’s sanction there precedes the surrendering of the woman’s virtue in every instance, still the same immoral perversion takes place—it being customary for couples to be wedded for a small sum by the priest in the evening, and divorced by him, for an equally small sum, in the morning. Here, then, we find the licensed intercourse assuming the same immoral cast as the unlicensed; for surely none will maintain that these nuptial ephemeræ are sanctified, because accompanied with a priestly licence. Nor can we, on the other hand, assert that the mere fact of continence in the association of the sexes, the persistence of the female to one male, or the continued endurance of an unsanctioned attachment, can ever be raised into anything purer than cohabitation, or the chastity of unchastity.

Prostitution, then, does not consist solely in promiscuous intercourse, for she who confines her favours to one may still be a prostitute; nor does it consist in illicit or unsanctioned intercourse, for, as we have seen, the intercourse may be sanctioned and still be prostitution to all intents and purposes. Nor can it be said to consist solely in the mercenary motives so often prompting to the commission of the act; for fornication is expressly that form of prostitution which is the result of illicit attachment.