institutions, and wide as the sympathy is which they have awakened, it
is clear that the means of rescue are as yet wholly disproportioned to
the numbers claiming assistance.
Calculating the number of fallen women in London at _eighty thousand_,
which is probably not far wide of the truth, and computing the number
at present in the different institutions to be 1,000, the chance of
rescue through the only recognized medium for female reformation is
offered to _one woman in every eighty!_
This is _the high-water_ mark of public charity, and the utmost
provision made by Society for the rescue of these 80,000 outcasts!
And yet there are special reasons which seem to give them a strong
claim upon the sympathy and compassion of the benevolent public. The
brief term of their existence, the average length of which is at best
but a few years, and the fact that large numbers of them are driven
upon the streets by a stern necessity, and compelled to live by sin
as a trade, while everything contributes to prevent their escape from
the mode of life into which they have been involuntarily forced, are
surely considerations calculated to stimulate Christian effort on their
behalf. But more than this,--it is well known that they are hanging as
it were over the mouth of the bottomless pit.
“Their life-blood is ebbing at a fearful rate, and their souls are
drifting madly to eternity. Their fate is certain; their doom impends:
and, for their death-bed, there is not even the faintest glimmer
of hope which charity can bequeath to the dying sinner. All others
_may_ find peace at last; but these, suddenly overtaken by death,
and perishing _in_ and _by_ their sins, _must_ be irrevocably lost.
And who are they on whose warm vitals the ‘worm feeds sweetly,’ even
on this side the grave, and around whose heads the unquenchable fire
prematurely burns? Who are those whose souls, in countless numbers,
are now glutting the chambers of hell? Not swarthy Indians nor sable
Africans, whose deeds of violence and superstition have spread horror
and astonishment among civilized nations, but delicately-nurtured Saxon
women, who in infancy were lovingly fondled in the arms of Christian
mothers, and received ‘into the ark of Christ’s Church’ in baptism,
before a praying congregation; young girls, for whom pious sponsors
promised that they should be ‘virtuously brought up to lead a godly and
a Christian life,’ and who, in the faithful discharge of this promise,
were trained in our Sabbath-schools, and ‘taken to the Bishop to be
confirmed by him.’ They have sung the same hymns which we now sing;
our congregational melodies are still familiar to them. They have read
the same Scriptures which we now read, worshipped in the same temple
in which we assemble, offered up the same prayers, listened to the
same exhortations, and looked forward to the same glorious fruition of
future blessedness. But where are they now? What are their hopes and
expectations, and what the probable end of their existence? Let those
answer these questions who sneeringly ask why such prodigious efforts
are made to rescue the fallen.
“It not unfrequently happens, however, that the benevolent promoters
of such schemes are perplexed and disheartened by those who assume a
tone of expediency and argue thus: ‘Yes, it is all very true; and we
can sympathise with your efforts, and pity the poor unhappy objects of
your solicitude; but, then, this is a necessary evil, and any attempts
to remove it are altogether mistaken, and are sure to end in failure,
or to produce greater mischief. Besides, the demand will always create
the supply, and for every fallen woman you snatch from the streets,
an innocent, and hitherto virtuous girl, must be sacrificed. No, we
are sorry for them, but better let them perish than save them at the
sacrifice of other victims.’
“First then, this is a ‘_necessary_ evil.’ Falsehood is sufficiently
patent upon the face of this foolish and monstrous assertion. Could the
Creator have pronounced his work ‘very good’ with such an inseparable
appendage to social life? Again, how comes it that a ‘_necessary_ evil’
only exhibits itself in _certain localities_, and under particular
circumstances, disappearing altogether in uncivilized countries,
and gathering strength and virulence in the most refined states of
society? Will any modern philosopher favour us with a solution of this
difficulty?
“But ‘the demand will always create the supply.’ Inexorable logic
apparently, and incontrovertible if the supply were limited to the
demand. This, however, we deny. Thousands are driven to prostitution
as the only alternative from starvation. _Necessity_, and not the
demand, here creates the supply, and it is well known that the supply
_suggests_ the demand. Is, then, the balance of vice so exact and
undeviating, that the gap occasioned by the removal of one victim must
be speedily filled by another? Is the equilibrium of profligacy so
nicely adjusted, that it would be dangerous to assert the prerogative
of virtue; and shall we desire its unhappy votaries to continue in sin
that virtue may abound? Shall we drive back anxious souls, striving to
‘flee from the wrath to come,’ with the cold-blooded assurance that,
‘for the good of society, they had better remain where they are?’ Will
it satisfy an immortal spirit, to be told that she helps to maintain
the proper equilibrium of vice; or that, by standing in the gap, she
is a benefactor to the innocent of her own sex, who would otherwise be
sacrificed? Shall we assign as our reason for not preaching the Gospel
to ‘every creature,’ that the state of society would be unhinged by
curtailing a necessary evil, or that greater injuries would result from
any attempt to rescue perishing souls? Shall we mock Him who has said
‘All souls are mine,’ by elevating a doctrine of human expediency above
the authority of a distinct command? Let us be sure that, in a case so
intimately affecting the honour and glory of God, to ‘obey is better
than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.’ In vain may we
plead political necessity as a plausible pretext for disobedience.
“We are not afraid, however, to meet this argument on philosophical
grounds; and we affirm, confidently, that the rescue of every fallen
woman is a social boon. Admitting the _possibility_ that, eventually,
her place will be supplied by another--for we can approach no nearer
to the truth--is it not better to remove a _present_ evil than to
provide for a _remote_ contingency? Supposing that in the long vista of
future years, the immolation of a fresh victim is the price of every
individual rescue, do we overlook the fact, that _in the mean time_
a powerful temptation is removed, and that not merely _units_, but
probably _hundreds_, of the young of the opposite sex are delivered
from the toils of the strange woman? Is nothing achieved by the
temporary removal of one tempter from the streets, and is society a
loser in the end, by the reformation of one whose sole occupation is to
waylay and ruin the youth of the opposite sex? Let our moral economists
escape from this dilemma if they can; the philanthropist and the
Christian need no further arguments to convince them that they have not
only the law of God, but the inexorable logic of common sense on their
side.
“Who can tell the pestiferous influence exercised on society by
one single fallen woman? Who can calculate the evils of such a
system? Woman, waylaid, tempted, deceived, becomes in turn the
terrible avenger of her sex. Armed with a power which is all but
irresistible, and stript of that which can alone restrain and purify
her influence, she steps upon the arena of life qualified to act her
part in the reorganization of society. The _lex talionis_--the law of
retaliation--is hers. Society has made her what she is, and must be
now governed by her potent influence. The weight of this influence is
untold: view it in the dissolution of domestic ties, in the sacrifice
of family peace, in the cold desolation of promising homes; but,
above all, in the growth of practical Atheism, and in the downward
tendency of all that is pure and holy in life! One and another who
has been educated in an atmosphere redolent of virtue and principle,
and has given promise of high and noble qualities, falls a victim to
the prevalence of meretricious allurements, and carries back to his
hitherto untainted home the noxious influence he has imbibed. Another
and another, within the range of that influence, is made to suffer
for his sacrifice of moral rectitude, and they, in their turn, become
the agents, and the originators of fresh evils. Who, in contemplating
this pedigree of profligacy resulting from a solitary temptation, will
venture to affirm that the temporary withdrawal of a single prostitute
is not a social blessing? Surely for such _immediate results_ we are
justified in dispensing with considerations of _future expediency_;
and, acting upon the first principles of Christian ethics, may help
to reform the vicious and profligate, leaving it in the hands of a
merciful God to avert the contingency of ruin overtaking the as yet
unfallen woman.”[9]
In reference to all such Christian efforts to reclaim the fallen, it
has been truly said that “You may ransack the world for objects of
compassion. You may scour the earth in search of suffering humanity,
on which to exercise your philanthropy; you may roam the countless
hospitals and asylums of this vast city; you may penetrate the dens
and caves of all other profligacy; you may lavish your bounty upon a
transatlantic famine, or dive into Neapolitan dungeons, or scatter the
Bible broadcast throughout the great moral wildernesses of heathendom:
but in all the million claims upon your faith, upon your feeling as
a man, upon your benevolence as a Christian, you will never fulfil
a mission dearer to Christ, you will never promote a charity more
congenial to the spirit of this gospel; you will never more surely wake
up joy in heaven, and force tears into the eyes of sympathising angels,
than when you can bring a Magdalene face to face with her Redeemer, and
thrill her poor heart, even to breaking, with the plaintive music of
that divine voice, calling her by name--MARY.”
LONDON LABOUR
AND THE
LONDON POOR.
THOSE THAT WILL NOT WORK.
INTRODUCTION.
I enter upon this part of my subject with a deep sense of the misery,
the vice, the ignorance, and the want that encompass us on every
side--I enter upon it after much grave attention to the subject,
observing closely, reflecting patiently, and generalizing cautiously
upon the phenomena and causes of the vice and crime of this city--I
enter upon it after a thoughtful study of the habits and character of
the “outcast” class generally--I enter upon it, moreover, not only as
forming an integral and most important part of the task I have imposed
upon myself, but from a wish to divest the public mind of certain
“idols” of the platform and conventicle--“idols” peculiar to our own
time, and unknown to the great Father of the inductive philosophy--and
“idols,” too, that appear to me greatly to obstruct a proper
understanding of the subject. Further, I am led to believe that I can
contribute some new facts concerning the physics and economy of vice
and crime generally, that will not only make the solution of the social
problem more easy to us, but, setting more plainly before us some of
its latent causes, make us look with more pity and less anger on those
who want the fortitude to resist their influence; and induce us, or at
least the more earnest among us, to apply ourselves steadfastly to the
removal or alleviation of those social evils that appear to create so
large a proportion of the vice and crime that we seek by punishment to
prevent.
Such are the _ultimate_ objects of my present labours: the result
of them is given to the world with an earnest desire to better the
condition of the wretched social outcasts of whom I have now to treat,
and to contribute, if possible, my mite of good towards the common weal.
But though such be my ultimate object, let me here confess that my
immediate aim is the elimination of the truth; without this, of course,
all other principles must be sheer sentimentality--sentiments being, to
my mind, opinions engendered by the feelings rather than the judgment.
The attainment of the truth, then, will be my primary aim; but by the
truth, I wish it to be understood, I mean something _more_ than the
bare facts. Facts, according to my ideas, are merely the elements of
truths, and not the truths themselves; of all matters there are none so
utterly useless by themselves as your mere matters of fact. A fact, so
long as it remains an isolated fact, is a dull, dead, uninformed thing;
no object nor event by itself can possibly give us any knowledge, we
must compare it with some other, even to distinguish it; and it is the
distinctive quality thus developed that constitutes the essence of a
thing--that is to say, the point by which we cognize and recognise
it when again presented to us. A fact must be assimilated with, or
discriminated from, some other fact or facts, in order to be raised to
the dignity of a truth, and made to convey the least knowledge to the
mind. To say, for instance, that in the year 1850 there were 26,813
criminal offenders in England and Wales, is merely to oppress the brain
with the record of a fact that, _per se_, is so much mental lumber.
This is the very mummery of statistics; of what rational good can such
information by itself be to any person? who can tell whether the number
of offenders in that year be large or small, unless they compare it
with the number of some other year, or in some other country? but to
do this will require another fact, and even then this second fact can
give us but little real knowledge. It may teach us, perhaps, that the
past year was more or less criminal than some other year, or that the
people of this country, in that year, were more or less disposed to the
infraction of the laws than some other people abroad; still, what will
all this avail us? If the year which we select to contrast criminally
with that of 1850 be not itself compared with other years, how are we
to know whether the number of criminals appertaining to it be above
or below the average? or, in other words, how can the one be made a
measure of the other?
To give the least mental value to facts, therefore, we must generalize
them, that is to say, we must contemplate them in connection with
other facts, and so discover their agreements and differences, their
antecedents, concomitants, and consequences. It is true we may frame
erroneous and defective theories in so doing; we may believe things
which are similar in appearance to be similar in their powers and
properties also; we may distinguish between things having no real
difference; we may mistake concomitant events for consequences; we
may generalize with too few particulars, and hastily infer that to
be common to all which is but the special attribute of a limited
number; nevertheless, if theory may occasionally teach us wrongly,
facts without theory or generalization cannot possibly teach us at
all. What the process of digestion is to food, that of generalizing
is to fact; for as it is by the assimilation of the substances we eat
with the elements of our bodies that our limbs are enlarged and our
whole frames strengthened, so is it by associating perception with
perception in our brains that our intellect becomes at once expanded
and invigorated. Contrary to the vulgar notion, theory, that is to say,
theory in its true Baconian sense, is not opposed to fact, but consists
rather of a _large_ collection of facts; it is not true of this or
that thing alone, but of _all_ things belonging to the same class--in
a word, it consists not of _one_ fact but an _infinity_. The theory of
gravitation, for instance, expresses not only what occurs when a stone
falls to the earth, but when every other body does the same thing; it
expresses, moreover, what takes place in the revolution of the moon
round our planet, and in the revolution of our planet and of all the
other planets round our sun, and of all other suns round the centre of
the universe; in fine, it is true not of one thing merely, but of every
material object in the entire range of creation.
There are, of course, two methods of dealing philosophically with
every subject--deductively and inductively. We may either proceed
from principles to facts, or recede from facts to principles. The one
explains, the other investigates; the former applies known general
rules to the comprehension of particular phenomena, and the latter
classifies the particular phenomena, so that we may ultimately come
to comprehend their unknown general rules. The deductive method is
the mode of _using_ knowledge, and the inductive method the mode of
_acquiring_ it.
In a subject like the crime and vice of the metropolis, and the country
in general, of which so little is known--of which there are so many
facts, but so little comprehension--it is evident that we must seek by
induction, that is to say, by a careful classification of the known
phenomena, to render the matter more intelligible; in fine, we must,
in order to arrive at a _comprehensive_ knowledge of its antecedents,
consequences, and concomitants, contemplate as large a number of facts
as possible in as many different relations as the statistical records
of the country will admit of our doing.
With this brief preamble I will proceed to treat generally of the class
that will not work, and then particularly of that portion of them
termed prostitutes. But, first, who are those that _will_ work, and who
those that _will not_ work? This is the primary point to be evolved.
OF THE WORKERS AND NON-WORKERS.
The essential quality of an animal is that it seeks its own living,
whereas a vegetable has its living brought to it. An animal cannot
stick its feet in the ground and suck up the inorganic elements of
its body from the soil, nor drink in the organic elements from the
atmosphere. The leaves of plants are not only their lungs but their
stomachs. As _they_ breathe they acquire food and strength, but as
animals breathe _they_ gradually waste away. The carbon which is
_secreted_ by the process of respiration in the vegetable is excreted
by the very same process in the animal. Hence a fresh supply of
_carbonaceous_ matter must be sought after and obtained at frequent
intervals, in order to repair the continual waste of animal life.
But in the act of seeking for substances fitted to replace that which
is lost in respiration, nerves must be excited and muscles moved;
and recent discoveries have shown that such excitation and motion
are attended with decomposition of the organs in which they occur.
Muscular action gives rise to the destruction of muscular tissue,
nervous action to a change in the nervous matter; and this destruction
and decomposition necessarily involve a fresh supply of _nitrogenous_
matter, in order that the loss may be repaired.
Now a tree, being inactive, has little or no waste. All the food
that it obtains goes to the invigoration of its frame; not one atom
is destroyed in seeking more: but the essential condition of animal
life is muscular action; the essential condition of muscular action
is the destruction of muscular tissue; and the essential condition of
the destruction of muscular tissue is a supply of food fitted for the
reformation of it, or--_death_. It is impossible for an animal--like a
vegetable--to stand still and not destroy. If the limbs are not moving,
the heart is beating, the lungs playing, the bosom heaving. Hence an
animal, in order to continue its existence, must obtain its subsistence
either by its own exertions or by those of others--in a word, it must
be _autobious_ or _allobious_.
The procuration of sustenance, then, is the necessary condition of
animal life, and constitutes the sole apparent reason for the addition
of the locomotive apparatus to the vegetative functions of sentient
nature; but the faculties of comparison and volition have been further
added to the animal nature of Man, in order to enable him, among
other things, the better to gratify his wants--to give him such a
mastery over the elements of material nature, that he may force the
external world the more readily to contribute to his support. Hence
the derangement of either one of those functions must degrade the
human being--as regards his means of sustenance--to the level of the
brute. If his intellect be impaired, and the faculty of perceiving
“the fitness of things” be consequently lost to him--or, this being
sound, if the power of moving his muscles in compliance with his will
be deficient--then the individual becomes no longer capable, like his
fellows, of continuing his existence by his own exertions.
Hence, in every state, we have two extensive causes of allobiism, or
living by the labour of others; the one intellectual, as in the case
of lunatics and idiots, and the other physical, as in the case of the
infirm, the crippled, and the maimed--the old and the young.
But a third, and a more extensive class, still remains to be
particularized. The members of every community may be divided into
the _energetic_ and the _an-ergetic_; that is to say, into the
hardworking and the non-working, the industrious and the indolent
classes; the distinguishing characteristic of the _anergetic_ being
the extreme irksomeness of all labour to them, and their consequent
indisposition to work for their subsistence. Now, in the circumstances
above enumerated, we have three capital causes why, in every State, a
certain portion of the community must derive their subsistence from
the exertions of the rest; the first proceeds from some _physical_
defect, as in the case of the old and the young, the super-annuated and
the sub-annuated, the crippled and the maimed; the second from some
_intellectual_ defect, as in the case of lunatics and idiots; and the
third from some _moral_ defect, as in the case of the indolent, the
vagrant, the professional mendicant, and the criminal. In all civilized
countries, there will necessarily be a greater or less number of human
parasites living on the sustenance of their fellows. The industrious
must labour to support the lazy, and the sane to keep the insane, and
the able-bodied to maintain the infirm.
Still, to complete the social fabric, another class requires to be
specified. As yet, regard has been paid only to those who must needs
labour for their living, or who, in default of so doing, must prey on
the proceeds of the industry of their more active or more stalwart
brethren. There is, however, in all civilized society, a farther
portion of the people distinct from either of those above mentioned,
who, being already provided--no matter how--with a sufficient stock of
sustenance, or what will exchange for such, have no occasion to toil
for an additional supply.
Hence all society would appear to arrange itself into four different
classes:--
I. THOSE THAT WILL WORK.
II. THOSE THAT CANNOT WORK.
III. THOSE THAT WILL NOT WORK.
IV. THOSE THAT NEED NOT WORK.
Under one or other section of this quadruple division, every member,
not only of our community, but of every other civilized State, must
necessarily be included; the rich, the poor, the industrious, the idle,
the honest, the dishonest, the virtuous, and the vicious--each and all
must be comprised therein.
Let me now proceed specially to treat of each of these classes--to
distribute under one or other of these four categories the diverse
modes of living peculiar to the members of our own community, and so to
enunciate, for the first time, the natural history, as it were, of the
industry and idleness of Great Britain in the nineteenth century.