The misery and inconvenience which the poor suffer from the straitness of their domestic arrangements are beyond belief. Grown-up girls and boys sleep in the same bed; brothers and sisters, to say nothing of less intimate relations, are in the closest contiguity; and even strangers, who are admitted into the little home to help in eking out the rent, are placed on the same family footing. This momentous question to the moral well-being of the poor has excited very lively interest in England, and has called into active operation several philanthropic associations, which have in view the employment of capital in improving and cheapening the dwellings of the working classes.[302]
In London this system of close lodging was carried to a fearful pitch. In some places from five to thirteen persons slept in a single bed, while in the country the evil was nearly as bad, although, from the slight restraint imposed by family ties, the actual evil is positively less; though the moral contamination is of nearly the same extent, and paves the way for other relations out of doors. The facts which justify these conclusions are to be found in a variety of shapes—parliamentary reports, statistical tables, appeals from clergymen, addresses from philanthropic associations, etc., etc.[303]
The Honorable and Reverend S. O. Osborne, a clergyman well known for his philanthropic exertions in behalf of the poor, says of country life in England:
“From infancy to puberty the laborer’s children sleep in the same room with his wife and himself; and whatever attempts at decency may be made, and I have seen many ingenious and most praiseworthy attempts, still there is the fact of the old and the young, married and unmarried, of both sexes, all herded together in one and the same sleeping apartment. * * * * I do not choose to put on paper the disgusting scenes that I have known to occur from the promiscuous crowding of the sexes together. Seeing, however, to what the mind of the young female is exposed from her very childhood, I have long ceased to wonder at the otherwise seeming precocious licentiousness of conversation which may be heard in every field where many of the young are at work together.”
Mr. A. Austin, Assistant Poor-Law Commissioner, says:
“The sleeping of boys and girls, young men and young women, in beds almost touching one another, must have the effect of breaking down the great barriers between the sexes. The accommodation for sleeping is such as necessarily to create early and illicit familiarity between the sexes.”
Without entering into disgusting details, the pain of perusing which could add nothing to the value of the statements, the conclusion is indisputable that much of prostitution, if not of prostitution for hire, certainly of prostitution from corrupt and profligate motives, is engendered by the vicious habits induced by habitual proximity of the sexes in early life. The prostitutes themselves frequently assign these habits as the commencement of their career of vice, and some even admit the breach of the closest natural ties during early youth, by reason of the too great facilities thus offered.[304] The great importance of this want of decency and propriety in family life can not be overrated. The contagious nature of vice is proverbial; and it is almost impossible to imagine the power attained by ill-conditioned children, and the fatal readiness with which their sinful words and practices are propagated.
The cheap lodging-houses are a pendant to the close-packed dwellings of the poor, although they do not produce the same early pernicious results as indecency and immorality in family life. The latter prepare the way to the scenes of the common lodging-house, in which the lowest depth of vice is speedily reached. Here prostitution is habitual—a regular institution of the place. The smallest imaginable quantities of food can be purchased; adults, youths, and children of both sexes are received, and herd promiscuously together; the prices of beds are of the lowest (from three to six cents); no questions are asked, and the place is free to all. A new-comer is soon initiated, or rather forced into all the mysteries of iniquity. Obscenity and blasphemy are the staple conversation of the inmates; every indecency is openly performed; the girls recite aloud their experiences of life; ten or a dozen sleep in one bed, many in a state of nudity. Indeed, the details of these places are horrible beyond description. Unmitigated vice and lustful orgies reign, unchecked by precept or example, and the point of rivalry is as to who shall excel in filth and abomination.
Example is the next immediate cause in what may be considered the natural series. There are a few prostitutes who have children. That these latter should follow the same course is quite in the common course of events, although considerable anxiety is occasionally evinced by such women to have their children brought up to better courses. Such redemption is all but impossible. In ordinary life, however, the mind of youth is often perverted by direct evil example in the elders; and, as we have already remarked, the corruption of the human affections in their fountain-head—family life—where they ought to be sweetest and purest, is more fatally demoralizing, and more certain to insure eventual ruin than almost any other. Fathers and mothers are both wanting often enough in their duty, although it is a matter of universal faith that the influence and example of the father are of less importance than that of the mother. A bad man may have virtuous children, a bad woman hardly ever. There are cases where the mother and daughter sleep in the same bed, each with a male partner. In the city of Edinburgh there are two mothers, prostitutes, each with four daughters, prostitutes; five prostitute mothers each with three prostitute daughters, ten such with two daughters each, and twenty-four such with one daughter each, all following the practices of the mothers.[305]
Such influences brought to bear on the young are irresistible. This may perhaps account for the number of sisters who carry on prostitution. The effect of mere sisterly example would be sufficient to account for the circumstance, but the parental becomes almost a compulsion, inasmuch as the parent (in such circumstances, the mother) will not only connive at, but be the main cause of her child’s ruin for her own direct profit and advantage. This, indeed, seems more accordant with our ideas of the natural tendencies of prostitutes and procuresses, than that such persons should be excessively anxious for their children’s purity and moral welfare.