Numbers of the women kept by the wealthy and the titled may occasionally be seen in the Haymarket, which is the only centre in the metropolis where all the various classes of prostitutes meet. They attend the Argyle Rooms and the Alhambra, and frequently indulge in the gaieties of the supper rooms, where their broughams are often seen drawn up at the doors. In the more respectable circles they may be regarded with aversion, but they here reign as the prima-donnas over the fast life of the West-end.
Occasionally genteel and beautiful girls in shops and workrooms in the West-end, milliners, dressmakers, and shop girls, may be seen flitting along Regent Street and Pall Mall, like bright birds of passage, to meet with some gentleman on the sly, and to obtain a few quickly-earned guineas to add to their scanty salaries. Sometimes a fashionable young widow, or beautiful young married woman, will find her way in those dark evenings to meet with some rickety silver-headed old captain loitering about Pall Mall. Such things are not wondered at by those acquainted with high life in London.
We now come to take a survey of the general state of prostitution which prevails over the metropolis, having Bishopgate, Shoreditch, and Waterloo Road more particularly in our eye as a sample of the other districts. These prostitutes in general reside in the dingy lanes and courts off the main streets in these localities, and have small bed-rooms poorly furnished, for which they pay four shillings and upwards a-week. They live in disreputable houses, occupied from the basement to the attics by prostitutes—some young, others more elderly; some living alone, others cohabiting with some low wretch of a man, a “tail” pickpocket, labourer, or low mechanic.
The prostitutes of these localities generally belong to the third and fourth class. The better educated and more genteel girls who live by prostitution in most cases go to the Haymarket. Numbers may occasionally be seen in the neighbourhood of the Bank of England, at Islington, near the Angel tavern, in the City Road, New North Road, Paddington, at the Elephant and Castle, and other localities; though in most cases they only come out occasionally on the sly, and are engaged in shops, factories, warerooms, and workrooms, during the day, or secluded in their houses, supported by tradesmen, mechanics, shopmen, clerks, or others, and only live partially by prostitution.
We shall refer to the two classes of open prostitutes generally to be seen over the various districts of the metropolis, such as those residing in the disreputable neighbourhoods we have mentioned. Some of the better class have the appearance of girls who serve in coffee-houses, barmaids, and servants, and others of the lower orders. Numbers of them are good-looking and tolerably well dressed. Some have been ironing girls, and others have sold small wares on the streets, and been engaged in similar employment.
Many of these unfortunate girls have redeeming traits in their character. Some are kind-hearted and honest, and not a few are even generous and self-denying. The great mass, however, are unprincipled and base, ever ready to take an advantage when an opportunity occurs. The vast majority of them are thieves, similar to the third class we have sketched in the Haymarket. They not only steal from the persons they meet on the street under the dark cloud of night in by-streets and courts, but take men to their houses, and plunder them. They rifle the pockets of those who go for a short time with them, and steal their gold pins, watches, and money. This is generally done in low houses of accommodation. They frequently decamp with the clothes of their victim, who has taken a bed with them for the night, and leave him in a strange house in a state of nudity. Married men frequently get into this sad predicament, but the matter is in most cases hushed up. When it does get abroad, the party robbed, to screen his profligacy from his wife and relatives, pretends in many cases that he has been drugged.
These prostitutes, some of them good-looking and handsome, often accost men in the street, retire with them into some by-lane or by-street, and patter about their pockets, while they encourage him to use indecent freedoms with their persons; and while they inflame his passions, rifle his pockets, and decamp with his money. This is frequently done in cases where the man does not have carnal connection with them.
They are generally dressed in a light cotton or merino gown, a light or brown mantle, a straw bonnet trimmed with gaudy ribbons and flowers, and sometimes with a pork-pie hat and white or red feather.
Some of these girls in those lower localities have better traits in their character than many of the more brilliant-dressed girls in the Haymarket, and are sometimes better looking. Not a few of them are very sedate, and will not go with any man whom they do not like. But there are many others more unscrupulous.
When they meet a man the worse of liquor, they decoy him into a brothel and get his money from him, when they try to get up a quarrel with him, and run off crying out they are ill-used by the man. They do this frequently where they do not allow the drunken man to have carnal dealings with them—not from a lustful purpose, but to get his money or other property.