for the five years ending in 1860, shows a total of 1130 inquisitions
on the bodies of children under two years of age, all of whom had been
murdered. The average is 226 yearly.
Here we have 226 children killed yearly by their parents: this either
shows that our institutions are defective, or that great depravity
is inherent amongst Englishwomen. The former hypothesis is much more
likely than the latter, which we are by no means prepared to indorse.
This return, let it be understood, does not, indeed cannot, include the
immense number of embryo children who are made away with by drugs and
other devices, all of whom we have a right to suppose would have seen
the light if adequate provision could have been found for them at their
birth.
A return has also been presented to Parliament, at the instance of Mr.
Kendal, M.P., from which we find that 157,485 summonses in bastardy
cases were issued between the years 1845 and 1859 inclusive, but
that only 124,218 applications against the putative fathers came on
for hearing, while of this number orders for maintenance were only
made in 107,776 cases, the remaining summonses, amounting to 15,981,
being dismissed. This latter fact gives a yearly average of 1,141
illegitimate children thrown back on their wretched mothers. These
statistics are sufficiently appalling, but there is reason to fear
that they only give an approximate idea of the illegitimate infantile
population, and more especially of the extent to which infanticide
prevails.
_Those who live in Low Lodging Houses._
In order to find these houses it is necessary to journey eastwards, and
leave the artificial glitter of the West-end, where vice is pampered
and caressed. Whitechapel, Wapping, Ratcliff Highway, and analogous
districts, are prolific in the production of these infamies. St.
George’s-in-the-East abounds with them, kept, for the most part, by
disreputable Jews, and if a man is unfortunate enough to fall into
their clutches he is sure to become the spoil of Israel. We may,
however, find many low lodging-houses without penetrating so far into
the labyrinth of east London. There are numbers in Lambeth; in the
Waterloo Road and contiguous streets; in small streets between Covent
Garden and the Strand, some in one or two streets running out of Oxford
Street. There is a class of women technically known as “bunters,”
who take lodgings, and after staying some time run away without
paying their rent. These victimise the keepers of low lodging-houses
successfully for years. A “bunter,” whose favourite promenade,
especially on Sundays, was the New Cut, Lambeth, said “she never paid
any rent, hadn’t done it for years, and never meant to. They was mostly
Christ-killers, and chousing a Jew was no sin; leastways, none as she
cared about committing. She boasted of it: had been known about town
this ever so long as Swindling Sal. And there was another, a great
pal of her’n, as went by the name of Chousing Bett. Didn’t they know
her in time? Lord bless me, she was up to as many dodges as there was
men in the moon. She changed places, she never stuck to one long; she
never had no things for to be sold up, and, as she was handy with her
mauleys, she got on pretty well. It took a considerable big man, she
could tell me, to kick her out of a house, and then when he done it she
always give him something for himself, by way of remembering her. Oh!
they had a sweet recollection of her, some on ’em. She’d crippled lots
of the ---- crucifiers.” “Did she never get into a row?” “Lots on ’em,
she believed me. Been quodded no end of times. She knew every beak as
sot on the cheer as well as she knew Joe the magsman, who, she _might_
say, wor a very perticaler friend of her’n.” “Did he pay her well?”
This was merely a question to ascertain the amount of remuneration that
she, and others like her, were in the habit of receiving; but it had
the effect of enraging her to a great extent. My informant was a tall,
stout woman, about seven-and-twenty, with a round face, fat cheeks,
a rather wheezy voice, and not altogether destitute of good looks.
Her arms were thick and muscular, while she stood well on her legs,
and altogether appeared as if she would be a formidable opponent in a
street-quarrel or an Irish row.
“Did he pay well? Was I a-going to insult her? What was I asking her
sich a ’eap of questions for? Why, Joe was good for a ---- sight more
than she thought I was!--“polite.” Then she was sorry for it, never
meant to be. Joe worn’t a five-bobber, much less a bilker, as she’d
take her dying oath I was.” “Would she take a drop of summut?” “Well,
she didn’t mind if she did.”
An adjournment to a public-house in the immediate vicinity, where
“Swindling Sal” appeared very much at home, mollified and appeased her.
[Illustration: THE NEW CUT.--EVENING.]
The “drop of summut short, miss,” was responded to by the young lady
behind the bar by a monosyllabic query, “Neat?” The reply being in
the affirmative, a glass of gin was placed upon the marble counter,
and rapidly swallowed, while a second, and a third followed in quick
succession, much, apparently, to the envy of a woman in the same
compartment, who, my informant told me in a whisper, was “Lushing
Lucy,” and a stunner--whatever the latter appellation might be worth.
But the added “Me an’ ’er ’ad a rumpus,” was sufficient to explain the
fact of their not speaking.
“What do you think you make a week?” at last I ventured to ask.
“Well, I’ll tell yer,” was the response: “one week with another I makes
nearer on four pounds nor three--sometimes five. I ’ave done eight and
ten. Now Joe, as you ’eered me speak on, he does it ’ansome, he does:
I mean, you know, when he’s in luck. He give me a fiver once after
cracking a crib, and a nice spree me an’ Lushing Loo ’ad over it.
Sometimes I get three shillings, half-a-crown, five shillings, or ten
occasionally, accordin’ to the sort of man. What is this Joe as I talks
about? Well, I likes your cheek, howsomever, he’s a ’ousebreaker. I
don’t do anything in that way, never did, and shant; it aint safe, it
aint. How did I come to take to this sort of life? It’s easy to tell. I
was a servant gal away down in Birmingham. I got tired of workin’ and
slavin’ to make a livin’, and getting a ---- bad one at that; what o’
five pun’ a year and yer grub, I’d sooner starve, I would. After a bit
I went to Coventry, cut Brummagem, as we calls it in those parts, and
took up with the soldiers as was quartered there. I soon got tired of
them. Soldiers is good--soldiers is--to walk with and that, but they
don’t pay; cos why, they aint got no money; so I says to myself, I’ll
go to Lunnon, and I did. I soon found my level there. It is a queer
sort of life, the life I’m leading, and now I think I’ll be off. Good
night to yer. I hope we’ll know more of one another when we two meets
again.”
When she was gone I turned my attention to the woman I have before
alluded to. “Lushing Loo” was a name uneuphemistic, and calculated to
prejudice the hearer against the possessor. I had only glanced at her
before, and a careful scrutiny surprised me, while it impressed me in
her favour. She was lady-like in appearance, although haggard. She was
not dressed in flaring colours and meretricious tawdry. Her clothes
were neat, and evidenced taste in their selection, although they were
cheap. I spoke to her; she looked up without giving me an answer,
appearing much dejected. Guessing the cause, which was that she had
been very drunk the night before, and had come to the public-house to
get something more, but had been unable to obtain credit, I offered
her half-a-crown, and told her to get what she liked with it. A new
light came into her eyes; she thanked me, and, calling the barmaid,
gave her orders, with a smile of triumph. Her taste was sufficiently
aristocratic to prefer pale brandy to the usual beverage dispensed in
gin-palaces. A “drain of pale,” as she termed it, invigorated her.
Glass after glass was ordered, till she had spent all the money I gave
her. By this time she was perfectly drunk, and I had been powerless to
stop her. Pressing her hand to her forehead, she exclaimed, “Oh, my
poor head!” I asked what was the matter with her, and for the first
time she condescended, or felt in the humour to speak to me. “My
heart’s broken,” she said. “It has been broken since the twenty-first
of May. I wish I was dead; I wish I was laid in my coffin. It won’t
be long first. I am doing it. I’ve just driven another nail in, and
‘Lushing Loo,’ as they call me, will be no loss to society. Cheer up;
let’s have a song. Why don’t you sing?” she cried, her mood having
changed, as is frequently the case with habitual drunkards, and a
symptom that often precedes delirium tremens. “Sing, I tell you,” and
she began,
The first I met a cornet was
In a regiment of dragoons,
I gave him what he didn’t like,
And stole his silver spoons.
When she had finished her song, the first verse of which is all I can
remember, she subsided into comparative tranquillity. I asked her to
tell me her history.
“Oh, I’m a seduced milliner,” she said, rather impatiently; “anything
you like.”
It required some inducement on my part to make her speak, and overcome
the repugnance she seemed to feel at saying any thing about herself.
She was the daughter of respectable parents, and at an early age had
imbibed a fondness for a cousin in the army, which in the end caused
her ruin. She had gone on from bad to worse after his desertion, and at
last found herself among the number of low transpontine women. I asked
her why she did not enter a refuge, it might save her life.
“I don’t wish to live,” she replied. “I shall soon get D. T., and then
I’ll kill myself in a fit of madness.”
Nevertheless I gave her the address of the secretary of the Midnight
Meeting Association, Red Lion Square, and was going away when a young
Frenchmen entered the bar, shouting a French song, beginning
Vive l’amour, le vin, et le tabac,
and I left him in conversation with the girl, whose partiality for the
brandy bottle had gained her the suggestive name I have mentioned above.
The people who keep the low lodging-houses where these women live, are
rapacious, mean, and often dishonest. They charge enormously for their
rooms in order to guarantee themselves against loss in the event of
their harbouring a “bunter” by mistake, so that the money paid by their
honest lodgers covers the default made by those who are fraudulent.
Dr. Ryan, in his book on prostitution, puts the following extraordinary
passage, whilst writing about low houses:--
“An _enlightened medical gentleman_ assured me that near what is called
the Fleet Ditch almost every house is the lowest and most infamous
brothel. There is an aqueduct of large dimensions, into which murdered
bodies are precipitated by bullies and discharged at a considerable
distance into the Thames, without the slightest chance of recovery.”
Mr. Richelot quotes this with the greatest gravity, and adduces it as a
proof of the immorality and crime that are prevalent to such an awful
extent in London. What a pity the enlightened medical gentleman did not
affix his name to this statement as a guarantee of its authenticity!
When speaking of low street-walkers, the same author says:--
“These truly unfortunate creatures are closely watched whilst walking
the streets, so that it is impossible for them to escape, and if they
attempt it, the spy, often a female child, hired for the purpose, or
a bully, or procuress, charges the fugitive with felony, as escaping
with the clothes of the brothel-keeper, when the police officer on duty
immediately arrests the delinquent, and takes her to the station-house
of his division, but more commonly gives her up to the brothel-keeper,
who rewards him. This inhuman and infamous practice is of nightly
occurrence in this metropolis. When the forlorn, unfortunate wretch
returns to her infamous abode, she is maltreated and kept nearly naked
during the day, so that she cannot attempt to run away. She is often
half starved, and at night sent again into the streets as often as she
is disengaged, while all the money she receives goes to her keeper
whether male or female. This is not an exaggerated picture, but a fact
attested by myself. I have known a girl, aged fifteen years, who in one
night knew twelve men, and produced to her keeper as many pounds.”
“Paucis horis, hæ puellæ sex vel septem hominibus congruunt, lavant et
bibunt post singulum alcoholis paululum (vulgo brandy vel gin) et dein
paratæ sunt aliis.”
With what a vivid imagination the writer of these striking paragraphs
must have been gifted. The Arabian Nights and the Tales of the Genii
that are so charmingly improbable, are really matter of fact in
comparison. If we multiply 12 by 365, what is the result? We never
took such interest in arithmetic before: 12 × 365 = 4380. This total
of course represents pounds; why, it is nearly equal to the salary
of a puisne judge! But perhaps the young lady whose interesting age
is fifteen, is not so fortunate every night. Let us reduce it by one
half; 4380 ÷ 2 = 2190. Two thousand one hundred and ninety pounds
per annum is a very handsome income; and after such a calculation,
can we wonder that a meretricious career is alluring and attractive
to certain members of the fair sex, especially when “hæ puellæ” make
it “paucis horis?” So lucrative a speculation cannot be included in
the category of those who are “kept nearly naked during the day, and
often half starved.” We suggest this on our own responsibility, for
we have not been an “eye-witness” of such precocious profligacy; but
we make the suggestion because it is something like nigger-keeping in
the Southern States of America. A full-grown, hearty negro is a flesh
and blood equivalent for a thousand or two thousand dollars. If he
were “larruped” and bullied, he would perhaps die, or at any rate not
work so well, and a loss to his owner would ensue that Pompey’s massa
would not be slow to discover. By parity of reasoning the white slave
of England must also be treated well, or it naturally follows that she
will not be so productive, and the 12_l._ received from as many men in
a few hours, may dwindle to as many shillings, gleaned with difficulty
in a great number of hours.
Dr. Michael Ryan evidently possesses an extensive acquaintance among
remarkable men. Let us examine the statement of “my informant, a truly
moral character, a respectable citizen, the father of a family,” who
gives the following account of bullies:--
“Two acquaintances of his, men of the world” (we submit with all
humility that truly moral characters, respectable citizens, and fathers
of families ought to be more select in their acquaintance, for birds of
a feather, &c.), “were entrapped in one of the Parks by two apparently
virtuous females, about twenty years of age, who were driving in a pony
phaeton, to accompany them home to a most notoriously infamous square
in this metropolis. All was folly and debauchery till the next morning.
But when the visitors were about to depart, they were sternly informed
they must pay more money. They replied they had no more, but would
call again, when their vicious companions yelled vociferously. Two
desperate-looking villains, accompanied by a large mastiff, now entered
the apartment and threatened to murder the delinquents if they did
not immediately pay more money. A frightful fight ensued. The mastiff
seized one of the assaulted by the thigh, and tore out a considerable
portion of the flesh. The bullies were, however, finally laid
prostrate: the assailed forced their way into the street through the
drawing-room windows; a crowd speedily assembled, and on learning the
nature of the murderous assault, the mob attacked the house and _nearly
demolished it before the police arrived_” (where _were_ the police?).
“The injured parties effected their escape during the commotion.”
What a surprising adventure! Haroun Alraschid would have had it written
in letters of gold. The man of the world, who had a considerable
portion of the flesh torn out of his leg by the terrible mastiff, must
have been the model of an athlete to effect his escape and punish his
bully after such a catastrophe, more particularly as he jumped out of
the drawing-room window. Then that mob, that ferocious mob that nearly
demolished the house before the police arrived! Mob more terrible than
any that the faubourgs St. Antoine or St. Jacques could furnish during
a bread riot in Paris, to harry the government, and erect barricades.
What a horror truly moral characters must entertain of apparently
virtuous females driving pony phaetons in the Parks! A little further
on the same respectable citizen informs us, in addition, “that in a
certain court near another notoriously profligate square, which was
pulled down a few years ago, several skeletons were found under the
floor, on which inquests were held by the coroner.” What ghastly ideas
float through the mind and obscure the mental vision of that father of
a family!
That rows and disturbances often take place in disorderly houses, is
not to be denied. A few isolated instances of men being attacked or
robbed when drunk may be met with; but that there are houses whose
keepers systematically plunder and murder their frequenters our
experience does not prove, nor do we for an instant believe it to be
the case. Foreigners who write about England are only too eager to meet
with such stories in print, and they transfer them bodily with the
greatest glee to their own pages, and parade them as being of frequent
occurrence, perhaps nightly, in houses of ill fame.
Prostitutes of a certain class do not hesitate to rob drunken men, if
they think they can do so with safety. If they get hold of a gentleman
who would not like to give the thief in charge, and bring the matter
before the public, they are comparatively safe.
_Sailors’ Women._
Many extraordinary statements respecting sailors’ women have at
different times been promulgated by various authors; and from what has
gone forth to the world, those who take an interest in such matters
have not formed a very high opinion of the class in question.
The progress of modern civilization is so rapid and so wonderful, that
the changes which take place in the brief space of a few years are
really and truly incredible.
That which ten, fifteen, or twenty years might have been said with
perfect truth about a particular district, or an especial denomination,
if repeated now would, in point of fact, be nothing but fiction of the
grossest and most unsubstantial character. Novelists who have never
traversed the localities they are describing so vividly, or witnessed
the scenes they depict with such graphic distinctness, do a great deal
more to mislead the general public than a casual observer may at first
think himself at liberty to believe.
The upper ten thousand and the middle-classes as a rule have to combat
innumerable prejudices, and are obliged to reject the traditions of
their infancy before they thoroughly comprehend the actual condition of
that race of people, which they are taught by immemorial prescription
to regard as immensely inferior, if not altogether barbarous.
It is necessary to make these prefatory remarks before declaring that
of late years everything connected with the industrious classes has
undergone as complete a transformation as any magic can effect upon
the stage. Not only is the condition of the people changed, but they
themselves are as effectually metamorphosed. I shall describe the
wonders that have been accomplished in a score or two of years in and
about St. Giles’s by a vigilant and energetic police-force, better
parochial management, schools, washhouses, mechanics’ institutes,
and lodging-houses that have caused to disappear those noisome,
pestilential sties that pigs would obstinately refuse to wallow in.
The spread of enlightenment and education has also made itself visible
in the increased tact and proficiency of the thief himself; and
this is one cause of the amelioration of low and formerly vicious
neighbourhoods. The thief no longer frequents places where the police
know very well how to put their hands upon him. Quitting the haunts
where he was formerly so much at home and at his ease, he migrates
westwards, north, south, anywhere but the exact vicinity you would
expect to meet him in. Nor is the hostility of the police so much
directed against expert and notorious thieves. They of course do not
neglect an opportunity of making a capture, and plume themselves when
that capture is made, but they have a certain sort of respect for a
thief who is professionally so; who says, “It is the way by which I
choose to obtain my living, and were it otherwise I must still elect
to be a thief, for I have been accustomed to it from my childhood. My
character is already gone, no one would employ me, and, above all, I
take a pride in thieving skilfully, and setting your detective skill at
defiance.”
It is indeed the low petty thief, the area-sneak, and that _genus_ that
more especially excites the spleen, and rouses the ire of your modern
policeman. The idle, lazy scoundrel who will not work when he can
obtain it at the docks and elsewhere, who goes cadging about because
his own inherent depravity, and naturally base instincts deprive him
of a spark of intelligence, an atom of honest feeling, to point to a
better and a different goal. Emigration is as a thing unexisting to
them; they live a life of turpitude, preying upon society; they pass
half their days in a prison, and they die prematurely unregretted and
unmourned.
Whitechapel has always been looked upon as a suspicious, unhealthy
locality. To begin, its population is a strange amalgamation of Jews,
English, French, Germans, and other antagonistic elements that must
clash and jar, but not to such an extent as has been surmised and
reported. Whitechapel has its theatres, its music-halls, the cheap
rates of admission to which serve to absorb numbers of the inhabitants,
and by innocently amusing them soften their manners and keep them out
of mischief and harm’s way.
The Earl of Effingham, a theatre in Whitechapel Road, has been lately
done up and restored, and holds three thousand people. It has no boxes;
they would not be patronized if they were in existence. Whitechapel
does not go to the play in kid-gloves and white ties. The stage of the
Effingham is roomy and excellent, the trap-work very extensive, for
Whitechapel rejoices much in pyrotechnic displays, blue demons, red
demons, and vanishing Satans that disappear in a cloud of smoke through
an invisible hole in the floor. Great is the applause when gauzy nymphs
rise like so many Aphrodites from the sea, and sit down on apparent
sunbeams midway between the stage and the theatrical heaven.
The Pavilion is another theatre in the Whitechapel Road, and perhaps
ranks higher than the Effingham. The Pavilion may stand comparison,
with infinite credit to itself and its architect, with more than one
West-end theatre. People at the West-end who never in their dreams
travel farther east than the dividend and transfer department of
the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street, have a vague idea that
East-end theatres strongly resemble the dilapidated and decayed Soho
in Dean Street, filled with a rough, noisy set of drunken thieves
and prostitutes. It is time that these ideas should be exploded.
Prostitutes and thieves of course do find their way into theatres and
other places of amusement, but perhaps if you were to rake up all the
bad characters in the neighbourhood they would not suffice to fill the
pit and gallery of the Pavilion.