2nd. “It receives into a home, for purposes of protection and instruction, young girls to be trained for service and other employments, who, from circumstances of poverty, orphanage, or sinful conduct in those who should preserve them from evil, are exposed to great temptations, and are in want of a home where there is proper guardianship and example.”
3rd. “A home and rescue is offered to women who, weary of sin, are desirous of leaving a life of awful depravity and misery;” and no depth of past degradation, provided there is any sign of amendment, presents a barrier to their reception, shelter being freely offered to the very outcast among the outcasts, to inmates of refractory wards, of workhouses, and to women freshly discharged from prison. Since the formation of the Society 4,116 servants have been admitted into the Home, and 7,622 placed in service; 2,008 young women have enjoyed the protection of the Friendless’ Home, and 2,205 have been received as penitents. Want of funds, however, has obliged the Society to curtail its operations.
The Girls’ Laundry and Training Institution for Young Servants is an industrial home, affording shelter, protection, and instruction in household duties to forty young girls, who are thus carefully trained and prepared for domestic service.
Other institutions for the accommodation, temporary relief, and permanent benefit of servants are, The National Guardian Institution, The Marylebone Philanthropic Servants’ Institution and Pension Society, The Provisional Protection Society, The General Domestic Servants’ Benevolent Institution, and The Servants’ Provident and Benevolent Society.
Among the London preventive agencies must be classed the various homes, refuges, and asylums for the relief of the utterly destitute and friendless of good character, and which severally offer food, shelter, and protection to those needing their assistance.
The Field Lane Night Refuges provide accommodation nightly for 200 men and women; and by this instrumentality many are rescued from death and crime, and are enabled to regain their positions in life, or to maintain themselves in respectability. During the past year 31,747 lodgings were afforded to persons of both sexes. Many of those thus assisted were poor needlewomen, who, during an inclement winter, had been, together with their families, turned into the street, having been stript of everything for rent.
The Dudley Stuart Night Refuge, founded by Lord Dudley Stuart in 1852, provides for the reception of the utterly destitute during the winter months. Accommodation is offered to 95 persons in two warm, spacious, and well-ventilated apartments. The relief afforded consists of a night’s lodging, bread night and morning, and medical attendance, if required. This charity has, since its foundation, alleviated a vast amount of suffering. It admits those against whom every other door is closed, and requires no recommendation beyond the utter destitution of the applicants. Upwards of 8,000 men, women, and children were admitted and relieved during last winter.
The Houseless Poor Asylum is the oldest night-refuge in London, and was opened to “afford nightly shelter and sustenance to the absolutely destitute working classes, who are suddenly thrown out of employment during the inclement winter months.” Accommodation is provided for 700; and since the opening of the Asylum 1,449,047 nights’ lodgings and 3,515,951 rations of bread have been supplied.
The House of Charity provides for the reception of distressed persons of good character, who, from various accidental causes, require a temporary home, protection, and food. Nearly 3000 persons of both sexes have been thus accommodated for an average period of a month or five weeks.
The Foundling Hospital, first opened in 1741, for the reception of illegitimate children, has undergone considerable changes and improvements, and now shelters, maintains, and educates 460 children, who, at the age of fifteen, are apprenticed or otherwise provided for, and are thus humanely rescued from the early and contaminating influence of vicious associations. No child is eligible for this charity unless there is satisfactory proof of the mother’s previous good character and present necessity, of desertion by the father, and that the reception of the child will, in all probability, be the means of replacing the mother in the course of virtue, and the way of an honest livelihood.