The object of these women is to get the wages of prostitution and an opportunity of stealing, without incurring the anger of their paramour by prostituting their bodies to other men. It happens occasionally they are outwitted, as their schemes are beginning to be pretty well known. Their pretexts are sometimes evaded, and cases occur where they yield to prostitution rather than give back the money they have received, which classes them among prostitutes and thieves. Some women resort to this as a shift in case of necessity, while others pursue it as a mode of livelihood in different localities of London.
These persons are to be found over the chief districts of the metropolis; miserable, poorly-dressed females, as well as respectable-looking young women. Some of the poorer sort are to be found about Shoreditch, Whitechapel, Lambeth, and the Borough. Others of the better sort, in appearance, are to be met with in the City Road, New North Road, King’s Cross, and Paddington.
Hired Prostitutes.—There are a number of female prostitutes kept by Jewesses and English women of low character. These girls are dressed in good style, in silks and light muslin and cotton dresses, with their hair put up in ringlets or in fancy nets. They are mostly from seventeen to twenty-two years of age, some younger and others older, some with false hair and ringlets. The brothels we refer to are chiefly about the West-end. There is often a cigar-shop attached to them, and the best looking girls are generally found standing by the doors, or ogling through the windows to decoy the passers-by into their infamous dens. Some of these girls have been prostitutes from their girlhood, and belong to the lowest class in society, their mothers having been prostitutes before them. Several have been in these houses for a considerable number of years, who have kept their appearance better than other prostitutes who have had a more changeable and precarious mode of livelihood. Strange to say, some look nearly as young and as fresh as they did ten years ago.
You seldom see the old execrable hags who keep these houses loitering about the doors or standing at the windows. They generally keep out of sight, but are sometimes to be seen peering through the edge of the window-blinds, which are generally drawn down, in the first floor above; or you may occasionally see them in the back parlour, skulking about. They are often very stout, and look like matrons in the maturity of life. They take gentlemen into their houses during the day as well as during the evening, but mostly in the evening.
The girls are then dressed in gaudy finery, with shining head-dresses and jewellery glittering on their breast over their light dresses. Yet there is a low vulgarity in their appearance which repels and disgusts; they look, in many cases, so sensual and debased. They use no art to conceal the life they are leading, as some other prostitutes do, who try so far to screen the baseness of their profligacy.
They generally keep old female servants they call “slaveys” to do the drudgery work of the house. These degraded women live in the house with them, wash their clothes, get their meals ready, clean their boots, brush their clothes, run errands for them out of doors, and show gentlemen into the bed-rooms.
There is often a man in these brothels, a paramour of the old bawd, who is a loafer about the house, and is occasionally employed to act as a bully. These men are in general rough-looking men, dressed in black shabby clothes, and in many cases look more degraded than common thieves. Some are dissipated and pale, others are bloated, their faces covered with pimples and blotches.
As we pass along Wych Street, Strand, in the dark evenings, we see several of the brothels we refer to. There the cigar shops are lit up, and the girls are arrayed in their best attire, and beaming their most inviting smiles to entrap the unwary. We may see brilliant lights in the rooms on the flat above through chinks in the shutters and blinds, where orgies are nightly transacted too gross and disgusting to mention.
Brothels of the same kind are to be found in Exeter Street and Chandos Street, Strand, and other localities of the metropolis.