| Reconciled and restored to friends, placed in service, or otherwise provided for | 1543 | |
| Discharged from various causes | 631 | |
| "at their own request | 350 | |
| Emigrated | 47 | |
| Sent to their parishes | 23 | |
| Died | 28 | |
| Remaining in Penitentiary | 95 | |
| Total | 2717 |
The Guardian Society was established in 1812, and from that period up to 1843 had admitted 1932 wretched outcasts to partake of the advantages it offered. The results were:
| Restored to their friends | 533 | |
| Placed in service, or satisfactorily provided for | 455 | |
| Discharged or withdrawn | 843 | |
| Sent to their parishes | 53 | |
| Died | 17 | |
| Remaining in institution | 31 | |
| Total | 1932 |
Besides these institutions, others have been established with similar objects, namely, The British Penitent Female Refuge, The Female Mission, The South London Penitentiary, and one or two others. As compared with the great number of unfortunate women in London, these institutions have effected but a very small amount of good. During seventy-seven years, ending 1835, ten thousand and five females were received within the walls of four of the London asylums, of which number six thousand two hundred and sixty-two (more than three fifths) were satisfactorily provided for, and two thousand nine hundred and eighty were discharged for misconduct. Taking the whole of the institutions in London up to that time, it may be fairly estimated that fourteen or fifteen thousand prostitutes have had the opportunity of returning to a virtuous life.
Those who, like the Pharisee, content themselves with thanking God that they are not as other men, and even as these unfortunates, are a very impracticable set to deal with, and if such there be who read these pages, we pass them by, and pray for the better health of their souls. The gentle spirits who, imitating a blessed example, think it not pollution to extend their sympathy and saving help to publicans and harlots, may, in the following lines, written by a prostitute and found in her death-bed, see matter for meditation, and ground for the belief that all efforts in the cause of the sinner will not be unsuccessful. They were headed
“VERSES FOR MY TOMB-STONE, IF EVER I
SHOULD HAVE ONE.
“The wretched victim of a quick decay,
Relieved from life, on humble bed of clay,
The last and only refuge for my woes,
A love-lost, ruined female, I repose.
From the sad hour I listened to his charms,
And fell, half forced, in the deceiver’s arms,
To that whose awful veil hides every fault,
Sheltering my sufferings in this welcome vault,
When pampered, starved, abandoned, or in drink,
My thoughts were racked in striving not to think
Nor could rejected conscience claim the power
To improve the respite of one serious hour.
I durst not look to what I was before;
My soul shrank back, and wished to be no more.
Of eye undaunted, and of touch impure,
Old ere of age, worn out when scarce mature;
Daily debased to stifle my disgust
Of forced enjoyment in affected lust;
Covered with guilt, infection, debt, and want,
My home a brothel, and the streets my haunt,
For seven long years of infamy I’ve pined,
And fondled, loathed, and preyed upon mankind,
Till, the full course of sin and vice gone through,
My shattered fabric failed at twenty-two.”
The enormous extent of this evil, its deep-rooted causes, the difficulty of combating it, either by religious arguments, legislative provisions, or appeals to common sense and physical welfare, may well deter the philanthropist from the attempt to purify this stable of Augeas; but benevolence has accomplished tasks as arduous, and we can not conclude this chapter better than by a short description of the discouragements which attended the first efforts of Mrs. Fry in the reformation of the prostitute felons in Newgate, and of the blessed results of her indomitable perseverance and immovable faith.[318]
This admirable woman, on her first visit to Newgate, found the female side of the jail in a condition which no language can describe: “Nearly three hundred women, sent there for every gradation of crime, and some under sentence of death, were crowded together in two small wards and two cells. They all slept, as well as a crowd of children, on the floor, at times one hundred and twenty in a ward, without even a mat for bedding. Many of them were nearly naked. They were all drunk, and her ears were offended by the most terrible imprecations.” The authorities of the prison, of course, advised her against going among them: they were sure that nothing could be effected! She, however, determined to make the trial; she went alone into what she felt was like a den of wild beasts. In vain the governor reasoned with her: “She had put her hand to the plow and was not to be turned back.” In one short month, such was the effect of her merely moral agency and religious instruction, that she felt herself justified in inviting the lord-mayor, the sheriffs, and several of the aldermen to satisfy themselves, by personal investigation, of the result of the exertions which she herself and some few lady members of the Society of Friends, who had joined her in the good work, had effected.
Thus was conviction forced upon the obtuse intellects of corporate authorities, and hence was dated the era of Prison Reform in England.
In our own country, where the means of diffusing intelligence are unbounded, and whose reformatory system for criminals has already claimed the attention of European statesmen and philanthropists, there can be no insuperable barrier even in so difficult an undertaking as that to which our labors are directed. Paraphrasing the opinion of one of the most distinguished essayists of this century,[319] we venture to assert that “it is impossible that social abuses should be suffered to exist in this country and in this stage of society for many years after their mischief and iniquity have been made manifest to the sense of the country at large.”