CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE SCARLET WOMAN.
The pickpocket who steals your watch, the burglar who invades your house in the middle of the night, or the foot-pad who knocks you down with a sand-bag, are citizens whom it is rather unpleasant to have any experience with, but it were better a thousand times to become the prey of any of these hawks of the night than that of those pitiless kites—the scarlet women of a great city. Against the thief the good burgher locks his doors and bars his windows, but these legionaries of passion assail a citadel where the master himself opens the gates and lets the insidious foe enter unopposed, if not with welcome.
Every city on this continent, not to speak of other lands at all, is afflicted with this army of iniquitous women. They form by far the largest section of the vicious classes in every great community of people. The evils they inflict on society, and the terrible consequences of their manner of life to themselves, temporally and spiritually, have constituted a theme for the moralist and a problem for the social reformer in all lands and in all ages.
Toronto, as has been before remarked in these sketches, is not a particularly wicked city. Few great crimes are perpetrated in our midst and but few great criminals claim this city as their home. But the fact that about 400 women openly live by a life of shame in this city speaks for itself. In the day time the public promenades are liberally sprinkled with
FLASHY FEMALES
arrayed in costly garments and costlier jewels. Beside these carrion birds of beauteous plumage the poor man’s wife or daughter looks like a daw. Other forms of crime skulk in the daylight, coming forth only when the dark hours favor their calling, but these birds of prey hang out the signs of their nefarious calling at high noon, and strut the streets shaming the honest and demoralizing the weak. The girl who has worked all day until brain and fingers and limbs are tired, returning homewards at nightfall, compares her uneventful, dreary lot with the seemingly joyous existence of these women, looks at her own shabby gown and at their rich ones, and inwardly wonders if honesty, truth and worth are, after all, the best. The foolish youth who returns their smiles as he passes them on the pavement does not know that that little gloved hand is as cruel as the tiger’s claws. That mother realized that the other day when she heard her eighteen-year-old boy doomed to wear the disgraceful livery of a convict. But her heartrending sobs did not ruffle a lace on the stony front of the fair-haired, showy enchantress, to buy whose mercenary caresses he had robbed his employer. He was a smooth-cheeked, good-looking, clean-limbed boy, with candor marked in every line of his face. His deeds found no record in the straightforward look of his blue eyes. But drag him away from his mourning mother, policeman, and let him break his spirit among the other jail-birds. Let Circe go free and entice other boys into her toils. She didn’t know he was stealing the goods—no, not she. Yes, let her go free, but before she goes to sleep each night let her think of a room wherein another woman stands in
DUMB, TEARLESS AGONY,
before the picture of her son. Let there be no desire, however, to lessen that son’s infamy who forgot a mother’s love and a sister’s devotion for the smiles of a harlot.
“There is a great deal of soft-hearted nonsense talked about these women of the town,” said a gentleman connected with the Society for the Prevention of Vice. “My firm conviction is that not one in ten is deserving of any more sympathy than we give to other criminals. People talk about men’s brutal instincts and women’s weakness, but a long experience and a good deal of thought on the subject has brought me the conclusion that not one quarter of the bad women of this city have drifted into their present lives through deceit on the part of men. What I mean to say is that in the fall of the majority of those women they had an equal share of sin with the men.”