Statistics of Westminster, Brompton, and Pimlico—Methods of conducting the nefarious Business—Aristocratic Dens—The High Tariff—The Horrors of the Social Evil—The Broken Bridge behind the Sinner—“Dress Lodgers”—There’s always a “Watcher”—Soldiers and Sailors—The “Wrens of the Curragh.”

Let us in the first place consider the extent to which the terrible malady in question afflicts us. I am not aware if more recent returns have been made than those I have at hand. Were it possible to obtain exact statistics of this as of almost every other branch of social economy, I should have been at the trouble of inquiring for them further than I have; but I find that the calculations made differ so widely one from the other, and are, as a whole, so irreconcilable with probability, that it will be better to take an authentic return, albeit ten years old, and make allowance for time since. The Metropolitan-Police authorities are responsible for the accompanying figures.

It appears that at the date above indicated there were within the Metropolitan-Police district the enormous number of 8600 prostitutes, and they were distributed as follows:

Brothels. Prostitutes.
Within the districts of Westminster, Brompton, and Pimlico, there are 153 524
St. James, Regent-street, Soho, Leicester-square 152 318
Marylebone, Paddington, St. John’s-wood 139 526
Oxford-street, Portland-place, New-road, Gray’s-inn-lane 194 546
Covent-garden, Drury-lane, St. Giles’s 45 480
Clerkenwell, Pentonville, City-road, Shoreditch 152 349
Spitalfields, Houndsditch, Whitechapel, Ratcliff 471 1803
Bethnal-green, Mile-end, Shadwell to Blackwall 419 965
Lambeth, Blackfriars, Waterloo-road 377 802
Southwark, Bermondsey, Rotherhithe 178 667
Islington, Hackney, Homerton 185 445
Camberwell, Walworth, Peckham 65 228
Deptford and Greenwich 148 401
Kilburn, Portland, Kentish, and Camden Towns 88 231
Kensington, Hammersmith, Fulham 12 106
Walham-green, Chelsea, Cremorne 47 209

Without entering into repulsive detail, I will endeavour to give the reader some idea of the different methods under which the nefarious business is conducted. The “houses of ill-fame” differ as widely in the extent and quality of their dealings as the houses of honesty and fair commerce. There are houses of “ill-fame” in the most fashionable quarters of the town, just as there are in Wapping—houses that are let and sub-let until they reach a rental as high as three and four hundred pounds a-year. It is not in those aristocratic dens of infamy, however, that women suffer most; none but the most costly wares are on sale at such establishments, and it is to the interest of the hucksters who traffic in them to deal with them delicately as circumstances will permit, to humour and coax and caress them as pet animals are coaxed and humoured. Nor would the creatures themselves tolerate anything in the shape of brutal treatment at the hands of those who harbour them. They “know their value,” and as a rule are exacting, imperious, and insolent towards their “landlords.” Unlike their sister unfortunates lower sunk in iniquity, they would experience no difficulty in procuring new “lodgings.” The doors of a hundred establishments such as that she now honours with residence are open to her. With a handsome face and a full purse, the whole of the devilish crew of brothel-keepers are her slaves, her fawning, cringing slaves, ready to lick the dust from her shoes, so that she pays regularly her rent of ten guineas a-week, and fails not to induce her “friends” to drink champagne at a guinea a bottle.

Possibly the gay lady may come to the “bitter end” some day, but at present, except from the moral point of view, she is not an object for commiseration. She at least has all that she deliberately bargains for—fine clothes, rich food, plenty of money, a carriage to ride in, the slave-like obedience of her “inferiors,” and the fulsome adulation of those who deal with her for her worth. Very often (though under the circumstances it is doubtful if from any aspect this is an advantage) she finds a fool with money who is willing to marry her; but whether she is content to accept the decent change, and to abide by it, of course depends on her nature. Whether her husband adheres to his rash bargain is a question that time only can solve. He at least, if he be a vicious man as well as a fool, may argue that she will be little the worse than when he found her if he leaves her; while possibly she may gather consolation from the same method of argument.

Anyway, she has a long way to descend before she may be branded as “common.” At present she is not even included in the police-returns. Any blue-coated guardian of the peace, in humble hope of earning a sixpence, would be only too eager to touch his hat to her and open her carriage-door to-morrow, and that even at the door of her genteel residence, which is in a neighbourhood much too respectable to permit it to be stigmatised as a “brothel.”

The police-report just quoted specifies that the 8600 prostitutes infesting the metropolis include 921 well-dressed and living in houses of ill-fame. This on the face of it, however, is significant of how very little the police really know of the matter they venture to report on. The women here alluded to are of the unobtrusive and orderly sort, the mainstay of whose occupation is to pass as respectable persons. They would be the last to resort for permanent lodging at houses whose fame was so ill that the greenest policeman on beat could point them out. It is altogether too hard to fasten the imputation of infamous on the holders of the houses in which this class of unfortunate seeks lodging. In very many cases the women are actuated by a twofold reason in gaining admission to the house of a householder who does not suspect her real character. In the first place, and as already stated, she wishes to pass in the immediate neighbourhood as respectable; and in the next place she not unnaturally seeks to evade payment of the monstrously high rate of rent that the common brothel-keeper would impose on her. Moreover, the peculiar branch of the terrible business she essays prospers under such management, where it would not if it were otherwise conducted. As a body, the women in question must be regarded as human creatures who have not gone altogether to the bad; and though in grim truth it may be in the highest degree absurd for anyone to cast herself deliberately into a sea of abomination, and then to affect a mincing manner of seriousness, much allowance should be made for the possibility that the fatal leap was not taken with cool forethought, or that the urging to it was due to some devilish genius whom there was no resisting. Anyhow, it would be hard on them, poor wretches, to compel them to give up their endeavours to conceal their degradation if, apart from mercenary motives, they are heartily desirous of concealing it.

“A vast proportion of those who, after passing through the career of kept mistresses, ultimately come upon the town, fall in the first instance from a mere exaggeration and perversion of one of the best qualities of a woman’s heart. They yield to desires in which they do not share, from a weak generosity which cannot refuse anything to the passionate entreaties of the man they love. There is in the warm fond heart of woman a strange and sublime unselfishness, which men too commonly discover only to profit by,—a positive love of self-sacrifice, an active, so to speak, an aggressive desire to show their affection by giving up to those who have won it something they hold very dear. It is an unreasoning and dangerous yearning of the spirit, precisely analogous to that which prompts the surrenders and self-tortures of the religious devotee. Both seek to prove their devotion to the idol they have enshrined, by casting down before his altar their richest and most cherished treasures. This is no romantic or over-coloured picture; those who deem it so have not known the better portion of the sex, or do not deserve to have known them.”

It would soften the hearts of many, and hold the hands of those who would break down the bridge behind the sinner, could they know the awful misery that frequently attends the life of a fallen woman. The 921 questionably quoted as “well dressed, and living in houses of ill-fame,” do not at all represent the horrors of the social evil in all its ghastly integrity. Such women are at least free to a certain extent to act as they please. No restriction is set on their movements; they may remain at home or go abroad, dress as they please, and expend their miserable gains according to their fancy. But they have sisters in misfortune to whom the smallest of these privileges is denied. They are to be found amongst the unhappy 2216 who are described as “well dressed, and walking the streets.” Unlike the gay lady, who makes her downynest in the topmost branches of the deadly upas-tree, and is altogether above suspicion or vulgar reproach, this poor wretch is without a single possession in the wide world. She is but one of a thousand walking the streets of London, the most cruelly used and oppressed of all the great family to which they own relationship. They are bound hand and foot to the harpies who are their keepers. They are infinitely worse off than the female slaves on a nigger-plantation, for they at least may claim as their own the rags they wear, as well as a share of the miserable hut common to the gang after working-hours. But these slaves of the London pavement may boast of neither soul nor body, nor the gaudy skirts and laces and ribbons with which they are festooned. They belong utterly and entirely to the devil in human shape who owns the den that the wretched harlot learns to call her “home.” You would never dream of the deplorable depth of her destitution, if you met her in her gay attire. Splendid from her tasselled boots to the full-blown and flowery hat or bonnet that crowns her guilty head, she is absolutely poorer than the meanest beggar that ever whined for a crust.