“Which am I? The first I toll you’s the true. But Lor’, I’s up to so many dodges I gets what you may call confounded; sometimes I’s a widder, and wants me ’art rejoiced with a copper, and then I’s a hindustrious needle-woman thrown out of work and going to be druv into the streets if I don’t get summut to do. Sometimes I makes a lot of money by being a poor old cripple as broke her arm in a factory, by being blowed hup when a steam-engine blowed herself hup, and I bandage my arm and swell it out hawful big, and when I gets home, we gets in some lush and ’as some frens, and goes in for a reglar blow-hout, and now as I have told yer honour hall about it, won’t yer give us an ’apny as I observe before?”
It is very proper that the Parks should be closed at an early hour, when such creatures as I have been describing exist and practise their iniquities so unblushingly. One only gets at the depravity of mankind by searching below the surface of society; and for certain purposes such knowledge and information are useful and beneficial to the community. Therefore the philanthropist must overcome his repugnance to the task, and draw back the veil that is thinly spread over the skeleton.
The Dependants of Prostitutes.
Having described the habits, &c., of different classes of prostitutes, I now come to those who are intimately connected with, and dependant upon, them. This is a very numerous class, and includes “Bawds,” or those who keep brothels, the followers of dress lodgers, keepers of accommodation houses, procuresses, pimps, and panders, fancy men, and bullies.
Bawds.—The first head in our classification is “Bawds.” They may be either men or women. More frequently they are the latter, though any one who keeps an immoral house, or bawdy-house, as it is more commonly called, is liable to that designation. Bawdy-houses are of two kinds. They may be either houses of accommodation, or houses in which women lodge, are boarded, clothed, &c., and the proceeds of whose prostitution goes into the pocket of the bawd herself, who makes a very handsome income generally by their shame.
We cannot have a better example of this sort of thing than the bawdy-houses in King’s Place, St. James’s, a narrow passage leading from Pall Mall opposite the “Guards Club” into King Street, not far from the St. James’s theatre. These are both houses of accommodation and brothels proper. Men may take their women there, and pay so much for a room and temporary accommodation, or they may be supplied with women who live in the house. The unfortunate creatures who live in these houses are completely in the power of the bawds, who grow fat on their prostitution. When they first came to town perhaps they were strangers, and didn’t know a soul in the place, and even now they would have nowhere to go to if they were able to make their escape, which is a very difficult thing to accomplish, considering they are vigilantly looked after night and day. They have nothing fit to walk about the streets in. They are often in bed all day, and at night dressed up in tawdry ball costumes. If they ever do go out on business, they are carefully watched by one of the servants: they generally end when their charms are faded by being servants of bawds and prostitutes, or else watchers, or perhaps both.
There are houses in Oxendon Street too, where women are kept in this way.
A victim of this disgraceful practice told me she was entrapped when she was sixteen years old, and prostituted for some time to old men, who paid a high price for the enjoyment of her person.
“I was born at Matlock in Derbyshire,” she began; “father was a stonecutter, and I worked in the shop, polishing the blocks and things, and in the spring of ’51 we heard of the Great Exhibition. I wished very much to go to London, and see the fine shops and that, and father wrote to an aunt of mine, who lived in London, to know if I might come and stay a week or two with her to see the Exhibition. In a few days a letter came back, saying she would be glad to give me a room for two or three weeks and go about with me. Father couldn’t come with me because of his business, and I went alone. When I arrived, aunt had a very bad cold, and couldn’t get out of bed. Of course, I wanted to go about and see things, for though I didn’t believe the streets were paved with gold, I was very anxious to see the shops and places I’d heard so much about. Aunt said when she was better she’d take me, but I was so restless I would go by myself. I said nothing to aunt about it, and stole out one evening. I wandered about for some time, very much pleased with the novelty. The crowds of people, the flaring gas jets, and everything else, all was so strange and new, I was delighted. At last I lost myself, and got into some streets ever so much darker and quieter. I saw one door in the middle of the street open, that is standing a-jar. Thinking no harm, I knocked, and hearing no sound, and getting no answer, I knocked louder, when some one came and instantly admitted me, without saying a word. I asked her innocently enough where I was, and if she would tell me the way to Bank Place. I didn’t know where Bank Place was, whether it was in Lambeth, or Kensington, or Hammersmith, or where; but I have since heard it is in Kensington. The woman who let me in, and to whom I addressed my questions, laughed at this, and said, ‘Oh! yes, I wasn’t born yesterday.’ But I repeated, ‘Where am I, and what am I to do?’
“She told me to ‘ax,’ and said she’d heard that before.