| A Midnight Meeting—Rev. Baptist Noel speaking | [Frontispiece] |
| Greek Dancing Girl—Hetaira—Age of Socrates | Page [45] |
| Roman Brothel—Imperial Era | [47] |
| Women of the Bosjes Race | [59] |
| Girls of Nubia—Making Pottery | [65] |
| Woman of the Sacs, or “Sau-kies,” Tribe of American Indians | [85] |
| Dyak Women—Borneo | [103] |
| Chinese Woman—Prostitute | [129] |
| Scene in the Gardens of ‘Closerie des Lilas’—Paris | [213] |
| A Night House—Kate Hamilton’s | [217] |
| The New Cut—Evening | [223] |
| The Haymarket—Midnight | [261] |
| Boys Exercising at Tothill Fields’ Prison | [301] |
| Cell, with Prisoner at Crank Labour in the Surrey House of Correction | [345] |
| Friends Visiting Prisoners | [377] |
| Liberation of Prisoners from Coldbath Fields’ House of Correction | [387] |
INTRODUCTION.
THE AGENCIES AT PRESENT IN OPERATION WITHIN THE METROPOLIS FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF VICE AND CRIME.
One of the most remarkable and distinctive features of the present age is the universal desire for analytical investigations. Almost every branch of social economy is treated with a precision, and pursued with an accuracy, that pertains to an exact science. Demonstration has been reduced to a mathematical certainty; figures and statistics everywhere abound, and supply data for further research.
Too often, however, it happens that the solution of the social problem, or the collation of facts tending to throw light upon the moral and religious condition of our country, forms the goal, and not the starting point of our labours.
Having accomplished a diligent, and often a laborious, search, and succeeded in eliminating truth from a mass of contradictory evidence, men are generally satisfied with the mere pleasure derived from success. Their knowledge, the hard pursuit of which has called forth immense energy and perseverance, and entrenched largely on their time and capital, is no longer the means to an end, but the end itself. Having gathered a few pebbles from the exhaustless arcana of social philosophy, they complacently enjoy their newly-found treasures, without a thought of the practical uses to which they may be applied.
Other men are found who enter into their labours, and use the materials thus collected as the basis of further philanthropic investigations.
While thus perpetually rising higher in the scale of intelligence, and arriving at closer approximations to truth, men too often neglect to turn their discoveries to any utilitarian or practical purpose, and rest content with merely theoretical results.
Thus it is that while an inductive philosophy is built up from a series of statistics and particulars, very little is being done to reduce this knowledge to practice. The science of investigation is admirable as far as it goes, and the pursuit of truth is at all times an object worthy of human ambition; but it must become the pioneer to tangible results, or its utility will by no means be apparent; and indeed it becomes a question, in an active state of existence, how far knowledge, which is final in its character and valuable merely for its own sake, is calculated to reward the efforts expended on its acquisition. It is true that the old philosophers held a contemplative life to be the highest development of human happiness, but their dreamy and fluctuating views are hardly likely to carry weight in an age of bustling activity; and it is equally certain that the bare, quiescent contemplation of evil in all its endless ramifications and hideous consequences, apart from all remedial efforts, is not likely to prove satisfactory to the philanthropist, nor consolatory to the Christian.
It is only so far as knowledge opens up to us the path of usefulness, and directs us how and where to plant our energies for the benefit of the human race, that it becomes really valuable. If, however, knowledge be power, and if the discovery of an evil be half-way towards its cure, then have we a right to expect that our humanitarian and other appliances for the alleviation of misery and the prevention of crime, should at least keep pace with modern developments of social science. Hitherto men have been content to declaim against these evils, wherever they existed, without suggesting any feasible remedies.