The inquiry pursued in the course of this Essay is not designed to comprehend such constitutional measures as are employed by either Church or State, for the suppression of vice and crime; but rather to draw from their obscurity, and to give prominence to those resources and expedients which society itself adopts, for the defence and preservation of its own interests.
The Society for the Suppression of Vice, which was established in 1802, has for its objects the repression of attempts “to spread infidelity and blasphemy by means of public lectures, and printed publications.” The operations of the Society have also been directed to the suppression of disorderly houses, the punishment of fortune-tellers, and other important objects. “It is represented that by means of this Society many convictions have taken place, and persons have been sentenced to imprisonment for selling obscene publications and prints,” while their works have been either seized or destroyed. With such admirable intentions and useful objects, to commend it to benevolent support, and with the entire voice of public opinion in its favour, the only wonder is that this Society does not carry on its operations with greater publicity, vigilance, and efficiency. Unhappily the loathsome traffic in Holywell Street literature is still carried on with bold and unblushing effrontery, and its existence, although greatly diminished in the country, is too notorious and too patent, in certain portions of the metropolis, to need any extraordinary efforts to promote exposure and punishment.
The demoralizing influence of low theatres, and the licentious corruptions of the Coal Hole, and Posés Plastiques, might surely afford scope for vigorous prosecutions under the Society’s auspices; and yet these dens, in which the vilest passions of mankind are stimulated, and every sentiment of religion, virtue, and decency grossly outraged, or publicly caricatured, are allowed to emit their virulent poison upon all ranks of society without the slightest let or hindrance! Only let a man smitten by the plague or with any other infectious disease, obtrude himself by unnecessary contact upon the public, and his right to free agency would be summarily disposed of, by speedy incarceration within the walls of a hospital; but provided only the disorder be a moral one—and therefore far more to be dreaded, in its pestiferous influence and baneful effects upon society—it is forsooth to be tolerated as a necessary evil! Proh tempora et mores!
The Associate Institution, formed in 1844, has been in active operation fifteen years, and has been instrumental in effecting a large amount of good, by improving and enforcing the laws for the protection of women. It has maintained a strenuous crusade against houses of ill-fame, and has since its establishment conducted upwards of 300 prosecutions, in most of which it has been successful in bringing condign punishment upon the heads of those, who have committed criminal assaults upon women and children, or who have decoyed them away for immoral purposes.
Important as these results have been, a larger amount of good has probably been achieved by means of lectures and meetings held in various parts of the country by Mr. J. Harding, the Society’s travelling secretary, whose faithful and stirring appeals and bold denunciations of vice have contributed not a little to the spread of sounder and more wholesome views on social questions, and to the removal of that ignorance of profligate wiles and artifices, which, in so many cases, proves fatal to the unsuspecting and unwary.
Two Bills prepared by this Association, one for the protection of female children between 12 and 13 years of age, and the other to simplify and facilitate the prosecution of persons charged with keeping houses of ill fame, were this year submitted to parliament, but unhappily without success, having been lost either on technical grounds, or for want of support. It is refreshing to turn from the supineness of statesmen to the energy and decision manifested by private associations in resisting the encroachments of vice. The East London Association, composed of a committee partly clerical and partly lay, and including most of the influential parochial clergy in the district, was instituted four years ago for the purpose of checking “that class of public offences, which consists in acts of indecency, profaneness, drunkenness, and prostitution.”
Its modes of action are as follows:—
1. To create and foster public opinion in reprobation of the above-named acts.