London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 4

by Henry Mayhew

“We are not afraid, however, to meet this argument on philosophical grounds; and we affirm, confidently, that the rescue of every fallen woman is a social boon. Admitting the possibility that, eventually, her place will be supplied by another—for we can approach no nearer to the truth—is it not better to remove a present evil than to provide for a remote contingency? Supposing that in the long vista of future years, the immolation of a fresh victim is the price of every individual rescue, do we overlook the fact, that in the mean time a powerful temptation is removed, and that not merely units, but probably hundreds, of the young of the opposite sex are delivered from the toils of the strange woman? Is nothing achieved by the temporary removal of one tempter from the streets, and is society a loser in the end, by the reformation of one whose sole occupation is to waylay and ruin the youth of the opposite sex? Let our moral economists escape from this dilemma if they can; the philanthropist and the Christian need no further arguments to convince them that they have not only the law of God, but the inexorable logic of common sense on their side.

“Who can tell the pestiferous influence exercised on society by one single fallen woman? Who can calculate the evils of such a system? Woman, waylaid, tempted, deceived, becomes in turn the terrible avenger of her sex. Armed with a power which is all but irresistible, and stript of that which can alone restrain and purify her influence, she steps upon the arena of life qualified to act her part in the reorganization of society. The lex talionis—the law of retaliation—is hers. Society has made her what she is, and must be now governed by her potent influence. The weight of this influence is untold: view it in the dissolution of domestic ties, in the sacrifice of family peace, in the cold desolation of promising homes; but, above all, in the growth of practical Atheism, and in the downward tendency of all that is pure and holy in life! One and another who has been educated in an atmosphere redolent of virtue and principle, and has given promise of high and noble qualities, falls a victim to the prevalence of meretricious allurements, and carries back to his hitherto untainted home the noxious influence he has imbibed. Another and another, within the range of that influence, is made to suffer for his sacrifice of moral rectitude, and they, in their turn, become the agents, and the originators of fresh evils. Who, in contemplating this pedigree of profligacy resulting from a solitary temptation, will venture to affirm that the temporary withdrawal of a single prostitute is not a social blessing? Surely for such immediate results we are justified in dispensing with considerations of future expediency; and, acting upon the first principles of Christian ethics, may help to reform the vicious and profligate, leaving it in the hands of a merciful God to avert the contingency of ruin overtaking the as yet unfallen woman.”[9]

In reference to all such Christian efforts to reclaim the fallen, it has been truly said that “You may ransack the world for objects of compassion. You may scour the earth in search of suffering humanity, on which to exercise your philanthropy; you may roam the countless hospitals and asylums of this vast city; you may penetrate the dens and caves of all other profligacy; you may lavish your bounty upon a transatlantic famine, or dive into Neapolitan dungeons, or scatter the Bible broadcast throughout the great moral wildernesses of heathendom: but in all the million claims upon your faith, upon your feeling as a man, upon your benevolence as a Christian, you will never fulfil a mission dearer to Christ, you will never promote a charity more congenial to the spirit of this gospel; you will never more surely wake up joy in heaven, and force tears into the eyes of sympathising angels, than when you can bring a Magdalene face to face with her Redeemer, and thrill her poor heart, even to breaking, with the plaintive music of that divine voice, calling her by name—Mary.”

LONDON LABOUR
AND THE
LONDON POOR.

THOSE THAT WILL NOT WORK.

INTRODUCTION.

I enter upon this part of my subject with a deep sense of the misery, the vice, the ignorance, and the want that encompass us on every side—I enter upon it after much grave attention to the subject, observing closely, reflecting patiently, and generalizing cautiously upon the phenomena and causes of the vice and crime of this city—I enter upon it after a thoughtful study of the habits and character of the “outcast” class generally—I enter upon it, moreover, not only as forming an integral and most important part of the task I have imposed upon myself, but from a wish to divest the public mind of certain “idols” of the platform and conventicle—“idols” peculiar to our own time, and unknown to the great Father of the inductive philosophy—and “idols,” too, that appear to me greatly to obstruct a proper understanding of the subject. Further, I am led to believe that I can contribute some new facts concerning the physics and economy of vice and crime generally, that will not only make the solution of the social problem more easy to us, but, setting more plainly before us some of its latent causes, make us look with more pity and less anger on those who want the fortitude to resist their influence; and induce us, or at least the more earnest among us, to apply ourselves steadfastly to the removal or alleviation of those social evils that appear to create so large a proportion of the vice and crime that we seek by punishment to prevent.

Such are the ultimate objects of my present labours: the result of them is given to the world with an earnest desire to better the condition of the wretched social outcasts of whom I have now to treat, and to contribute, if possible, my mite of good towards the common weal.

But though such be my ultimate object, let me here confess that my immediate aim is the elimination of the truth; without this, of course, all other principles must be sheer sentimentality—sentiments being, to my mind, opinions engendered by the feelings rather than the judgment. The attainment of the truth, then, will be my primary aim; but by the truth, I wish it to be understood, I mean something more than the bare facts. Facts, according to my ideas, are merely the elements of truths, and not the truths themselves; of all matters there are none so utterly useless by themselves as your mere matters of fact. A fact, so long as it remains an isolated fact, is a dull, dead, uninformed thing; no object nor event by itself can possibly give us any knowledge, we must compare it with some other, even to distinguish it; and it is the distinctive quality thus developed that constitutes the essence of a thing—that is to say, the point by which we cognize and recognise it when again presented to us. A fact must be assimilated with, or discriminated from, some other fact or facts, in order to be raised to the dignity of a truth, and made to convey the least knowledge to the mind. To say, for instance, that in the year 1850 there were 26,813 criminal offenders in England and Wales, is merely to oppress the brain with the record of a fact that, per se, is so much mental lumber. This is the very mummery of statistics; of what rational good can such information by itself be to any person? who can tell whether the number of offenders in that year be large or small, unless they compare it with the number of some other year, or in some other country? but to do this will require another fact, and even then this second fact can give us but little real knowledge. It may teach us, perhaps, that the past year was more or less criminal than some other year, or that the people of this country, in that year, were more or less disposed to the infraction of the laws than some other people abroad; still, what will all this avail us? If the year which we select to contrast criminally with that of 1850 be not itself compared with other years, how are we to know whether the number of criminals appertaining to it be above or below the average? or, in other words, how can the one be made a measure of the other?