London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 4

by Henry Mayhew

Some of these females are young, strong, healthy girls. When they have been for some years in this mode of life, they become dissipated in appearance, and their constitution is often broken up by their irregular wild life. The younger girls keep themselves more reserved for a time, but the bad example of the others very soon induces them to abandon themselves to all kinds of dissipation.

If a young woman is so unfortunate as to come among them and to keep herself reserved, the others bully her out of it, unless she go to the same excess of dissipation as themselves.

Their mode of stealing is to get people to their houses, where they plunder them. A sober man seldom thinks of going to their infamous abodes. In most cases the persons who go are the worse for liquor. On their way home they go into a public-house with the girls, after which they accompany them to their room, where they get some more liquor.

The companions of a girl may see her coming home with a man, and may suppose him, from his appearance, to have money. They come into the house, and get a portion of the drink. In some instances the drunken person gives the woman money to go out for drink, when she decamps, and gets some of the prostitutes in the adjoining room to bully him out of the place. In other instances the girls wait their time till he goes to sleep, when they plunder him.

There are seldom fastenings on their doors, which are never locked. There is an understanding between parties in the same house, and some persons in the adjoining rooms enter while the man is in bed, and carry away his clothes and money. He cannot accuse the girl in the room, as she is lying in bed beside him.

In some cases the girl disappears during the night, and leaves the man naked in the room. She may remove to some other neighbourhood if the booty is of value, and live in some other part of Westminster. The dupe is seldom or never able to identify her, as he may have been much the worse for liquor while in her company.

These prostitutes chiefly look out for drunken men, whom they decoy to their houses, and afterwards plunder. They prowl along Parliament Street and Whitehall Place, and other streets in the vicinity. A great number of them go as far as Knightsbridge, where there are concert rooms. They loiter about these localities till these places close, and are to be seen about the doors of those public-houses where persons resort after leaving the concert rooms. When they pick up a drunken man they bring him home in the manner already described.

Many of these girls come from different parts of the country, and have formerly been servants in town. A good number have been orphans left without friends, and have been basely seduced. The relatives of some have taken them home into the provinces, but they have come back again to London.

The police constables often find as many as four girls in one small room at night—two lying on a miserable bed, and two lying on the hard floor, with scarcely any covering but their petticoat thrown over them. Two soldiers are frequently found lying in the room with them, or one is seen lying between two girls.

It is surprising that any soldiers, however poor, who have an ordinary regard to decency, should lie down among such heaps of filthy rags; far less should we expect such base and unmanly conduct from the Queen’s Foot Guards, when we look to the fine appearance and manly bearing of many of them on parade. It kindles our indignation when we learn that not a few of those poor degraded females were formerly in the service of respectable families, and were there seduced and driven to open prostitution by some of these unprincipled soldiers, who still add to their villainy the despicable crime of basely plundering the poor girls they have ruined of the wretched earnings of their dishonour and crime.