The History of Prostitution Part 30

The number of brothels in London has been variously estimated. The whole number of houses at the last census was three hundred thousand and upward.

Among them it was calculated, and probably correctly, that there were five thousand brothels, including houses of a.s.signation. The rents of these establishments vary as much as the houses and situations (from fifteen hundred down to one hundred dollars a year). In good neighborhoods we should be slow to believe that landlords had any previous knowledge of the purposes to which their houses are to be applied. Independent of moral objection, such a house deteriorates the character of the property.

Indeed, the clauses in leases of the great London properties are very strict, and include all objectionable trades as causes of forfeiture.

The owners of the houses are of all cla.s.ses. The Almonry of Westminster, once the abode of Caxton, which within these six or eight years has been pulled down, was one of the vilest aggregations of vice and crime in existence. This was the property of the dean and chapter of Westminster Abbey. The common law of England, as already mentioned in the matter of dress, prohibits the recovery of the rents of houses let for immoral purposes. Many of the brothel-keepers themselves hire houses, furnish them, and sublet them. It has been made a matter of reproach that landlords should, even indirectly, derive income from such sources. But poverty and vice are closely allied; where poverty exists, vice will come.

It is impossible for a landlord to exclude any cla.s.s of tenants in a particular neighborhood suited to them, and those who know aught about the improvement and ventilation of large cities, and the breaking up of bad neighborhoods, are well aware that they are accompanied with a fearful amount of extra misery to the very poor.

In a subsequent portion of this work we have endeavored to a.n.a.lyze the causes of prost.i.tution as it exists in the city of New York. It may be reasonably supposed that the same reasons would be applicable to the kindred people of Great Britain. We give the following, mainly deduced from English writers, as indicating the sentiments of the best-informed in that kingdom as to the sources of so deep-rooted an evil, which must be sought in a variety of circ.u.mstances, national as well as personal.

A professional man, Mr. Tait, to whose pages we have turned for information as to prost.i.tution in Great Britain, cla.s.sifies the causes as natural and accidental. The natural he subdivides into licentiousness of disposition, irritability of temper, pride and love of dress, dishonesty and love of property, and indolence. The accidental include seduction, ill-a.s.sorted marriages, low wages, want of employment, intemperance, poverty, defective education, bad example of parents, obscene publications, and a number of minor causes. Without a.s.senting to the cla.s.sification, we will accept the enumeration.

The operation of s.e.xual desire on the female s.e.x is a mooted question among English writers on prost.i.tution. Whether it is latent, and never powerful enough to provoke evil courses until it is itself stimulated and roused into energy by external circ.u.mstances, or whether it be an active principle impelling the ill-regulated female mind to sacrifice self-respect and reputation in the gratification of dominant impulses, has been frequently discussed. Many consider that its influence on the inducement of prost.i.tution is no less unsatisfactory of solution than the physiological problem, alleging that those who have followed the bent of their natural appet.i.tes would undoubtedly prefer to ascribe their lapse to other circ.u.mstances. This subject is treated more fully elsewhere, and it is needless to repeat here the views there expressed.

That s.e.xual desire, _once aroused_, does exercise a potent influence on the female organization, can not be questioned. Self-abuse, which is a perverted indulgence of the natural instinct, is well known to English physicians as being practiced among young women to a great extent, though in a far less degree than among young men. Its frightful influences upon the latter have been the subject of the liveliest anxiety to those who have made the care of youth their profession, and this source of trouble is shared to some degree by female teachers. Such subjects seem by common consent to be banished from rational investigation by the majority of people, as if shutting one's eyes to the fact would prove its non-existence. This false delicacy is more injurious than is commonly supposed; for the unchecked indulgence in such habits is not only destructive of health, but in the highest degree inimical to the moral feeling, and directly subversive of all self-respect, leaving but one step to complete the final descent.

SEDUCTION.--The effect of undue familiarity, and too unrestrained an intercourse between the s.e.xes, can not be exaggerated as paving the way for the last lapse from virtue. It is precisely these familiarities which, in ill-regulated minds, excite the first impulses of desire; and even where such a result does not immediately flow from too free an intercourse, it breaks down that modesty and reserve which so much enhance the beauty of woman, and const.i.tute her best safeguard. The inclined plane by which the female who permits the first freedom glides unchecked to final ruin, though gradual, is very difficult to retrace. The unrestricted intercourse permitted, or rather encouraged between the s.e.xes at places of public amus.e.m.e.nt much facilitates the opportunities of seduction.

Prost.i.tutes frequently, and we believe with truth, allege seduction as the first step toward their abandoned course of life, and the allegation itself should induce a sympathy for the misfortune of their present existence. Although in some cases the story can not be implicitly believed, at the same time there is no doubt that a heartless seduction is but too frequent a circ.u.mstance in such cases, and contributes its sad quota of heavy account to prost.i.tution.

It is a general opinion that cases of (so called) seduction in England occur between employers and female servants, and that of these are vast numbers. By seduction in such circ.u.mstances is meant the inducement to do wrong by promises or other suasives, in opposition to the commonly received idea, which makes the fall the result of strong personal attachment. In a work like this we must notice the largest definitions, and can not consistently limit ourselves to the inducement customarily brought forward in law proceedings, namely, "a promise of marriage." In this sense, illegitimate children may be said to be the consequence of seduction. Certainly not all of them, however, because many persons, voluntarily and with their eyes open, enter upon cohabitation arrangements; but doubtless many are. Once seduced, of course the female becomes herself the seducer of the inexperienced.

The policy of English law, of late years, has been to compel the woman to protect herself--in the main, a wise policy. But the balance of human justice is very unevenly maintained. The male, the real delinquent, incurs no legal punishment, and but little social reprobation. Actions for seduction are very unpopular, and those brought bear but an infinitesimal proportion to the occurrence of the crime. The _onus_ of proof in b.a.s.t.a.r.dy affiliations of course rests upon the woman. Of late years the alterations in the law have thrown great difficulties in her way by what is called the necessity of corroborative evidence, namely, some kind of admission, direct or indirect, or some overt act which will furnish oral or doc.u.mentary testimony other than the woman's unsupported statement. This may be strictly expedient, but it renders the man almost irresponsible if he only play his part with knavish prudence. Lastly, popular feeling is against charges of rape: acquittal is very frequent, and the usual reb.u.t.tal is to impeach the character of the prosecutrix. The opinion of one of England's greatest judges has pa.s.sed into a proverb: "No charge so easy to make, none so difficult to disprove." Queen Elizabeth's mode of proving her disbelief of rape is also expressive of public opinion.

From the combination of these circ.u.mstances, it would seem that seduction must, almost as a matter of course, lead to prost.i.tution, inasmuch as, in ordinary English parlance, the mother of a b.a.s.t.a.r.d and a prost.i.tute are almost synonymous.

OVERCROWDED DWELLINGS.--The natural impulses of animal instinct in both s.e.xes seem to be implicated in the effect of crowded sleeping apartments, as met with in the habitations of the poor both in town and country. In the latter we have the show, and sometimes the reality, of family life and virtuous poverty. In the towns we find abodes of poverty sometimes honest, sometimes in closest propinquity or intimacy with vice, and there too we have the dwelling-places of the lowest depravity and vagabondism.

Those who have not given their attention to the condition of the poor, and the relation which their lives hold to the ordinary habits of decency and morality, have much difficulty in comprehending, or even believing, statements which embody the plainest every-day truths. It is hard to realize things as they are, if the mind has been full of ideal pictures of things as they should be. The Dives of society has been often reproached with his ignorance of Lazarus. The sin lies exactly in that ignorance. As Carlyle finely says, "The duty of Christian society is to find its work, and to do it." Negative virtue is of no practical use to the community.

But yet the ignorance is natural enough, and no easier of removal than other ignorance. It has been generally attributed to the wealthy and upper cla.s.ses of society, but it exists just the same, differing only a little in degree, in the middle cla.s.s and moderately rich members of the English social system.

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 a.s.sociations, which have in view the employment of capital in improving and cheapening the dwellings of the working cla.s.ses.[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 a.s.sociations, 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 p.u.b.erty 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 s.e.xes, 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 s.e.xes 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, a.s.sistant 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 s.e.xes. The accommodation for sleeping is such as necessarily to create early and illicit familiarity between the s.e.xes."

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 prost.i.tution, if not of prost.i.tution for hire, certainly of prost.i.tution from corrupt and profligate motives, is engendered by the vicious habits induced by habitual proximity of the s.e.xes in early life.

The prost.i.tutes themselves frequently a.s.sign 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 prost.i.tution is habitual--a regular inst.i.tution of the place. The smallest imaginable quant.i.ties of food can be purchased; adults, youths, and children of both s.e.xes 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 l.u.s.tful 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 prost.i.tutes 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, prost.i.tutes, each with four daughters, prost.i.tutes; five prost.i.tute mothers each with three prost.i.tute 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 prost.i.tution. The effect of mere sisterly example would be sufficient to account for the circ.u.mstance, but the parental becomes almost a compulsion, inasmuch as the parent (in such circ.u.mstances, 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 prost.i.tutes and procuresses, than that such persons should be excessively anxious for their children's purity and moral welfare.

POVERTY is an integral part of nearly all the conditions of life which we have to consider as incentives to prost.i.tution. _In some instances, more, perhaps, than may be generally credited, poverty is a direct and proximate cause of this vice._ In other words, "_women previously and otherwise virtuous do prost.i.tute their bodies for bread_." In most of the cases enumerated except that purely natural, but rare one, innate s.e.xual desire, poverty is a remote cause. From the number of the human race who are under its griping, chilling pressure, poverty may be set down as a fruitful source of prost.i.tution.

The connection of political circ.u.mstances with the phases of public morals is more intimate than the consideration of the superficial differences of the two matters would at first sight imply. But an attentive comparison of the state of public prosperity with the state of public crime will show that crime is somewhat dependent on food: the man with a well-filled stomach is no foe to order. Prost.i.tution, as a means of supplying the cravings of hunger, is part of the same connection. It is true that in England there are poor-laws and work-houses, from and in which every dest.i.tute person, without reference to character, has a right to food and shelter. In the first place, however, the work-houses are objects of unmitigated aversion to the poorer cla.s.ses. Various rules, in themselves hard, but rendered necessary by consideration for the rate-payers as well as for the beneficiaries, such as separation of husband and wife while receiving relief, separation of child and parent, etc., make the work-house system odious to the worthy and honest poor; while the strict rules, and the restraint and discipline enforced within the walls, make it still more odious to those who place their happiness in license and irregularity; added to this, in populous and poor districts, the claims upon the work-house in seasons of distress are too numerous for its capabilities. It is an awful truth that, notwithstanding the enormous revenues, nearly fifty millions of dollars per annum, collected for poor relief, and the immense establishments inst.i.tuted throughout the country for the support and shelter of the distressed, sometimes the number of applicants is so great that their demands can not be met. Possibly, if these unfortunates could be distributed throughout the kingdom, so that the poverty of one spot could be balanced by the comparative prosperity of another, the fearful starvation in the midst of plenty, which is occasionally witnessed, need not occur. But in the mean while, and until the time when all the schemes and devices of modern improvement and advancement shall be finally perfected, and universal happiness attained, there is a ma.s.s of inconceivable wretchedness to be dealt with. In "Household Words" for November, 1855, Mr. d.i.c.kens gives a harrowing picture of London distress, of which he was himself an eye-witness.

It was a dark, rainy evening, and close against the wall of Whitechapel Work-house lay five bundles of rags. Mr. d.i.c.kens and his friend looked at them, and attempted to rouse them in vain. They knocked at the door, were admitted, saw the master of the work-house, and asked him if he knew there were five human beings--females--lying on the ground outside, cold and hungry. He did--at first he was annoyed--such applications were frequent--how could he meet them?--the house was full--the casual ward was full--what could he do more? When he found that Mr. d.i.c.kens's aim was inquiry, not fault-finding, he was softened. The case was certainly shocking: how was it to be met? Mr. d.i.c.kens said he had heard outside that these wretched beings had been there two nights already. It was very possible. He could not deny or affirm it. There were often more in the same plight--sometimes twenty or thirty. He (the master) was obliged to give preference to women with children. The place was full. Unable to do more, Mr. d.i.c.kens left. On getting outside, he roused one of these poor wretches. She looked up, but said nothing. He asked her if she was hungry; she merely looked an affirmative. Would she know where to get something to eat? she again a.s.sented in the same way. "Then take this, and for G.o.d's sake go and get something." She took it, made no sign of thanks--"gathered herself up and slunk away--wilted into darkness, silent and heedless of all things."

To what will not such misery as this compel suffering human nature? In times of commercial depression the police of London note an increase of street prost.i.tution. It is said in the cities of England that the permanent prost.i.tution of each place has a numerical relation to the means of occupation. In Edinburgh there are but few chances of employing female labor. Glasgow, Dundee, and Paisley are the seats of manufactures, and employ female labor extensively. According to Tait, the prost.i.tution of Edinburgh far exceeds its proportion of prost.i.tution to population as compared with the manufacturing towns.[306]

It seems unnecessary to multiply instances of poverty and indigence, inasmuch as the fact is most miserably indisputable: s.h.i.+rt-making at three cents, pantaloon-making at five or six cents--unceasing labor of fourteen hours a day bringing in only sixty or eighty cents a week, and compet.i.tion even to obtain this. As the London _Times_ once said, "The needle is the normal employment of every English woman; what, then, must be the condition of those tens of thousands who have nothing but that to depend upon?" Of late years, too, a still farther compet.i.tion has been introduced in that ingenious invention of our country, the sewing machine.

In order to show the relation between unpaid and excessive labor and prost.i.tution, we will instance a few cases.

One young woman said she made moleskin pantaloons (a very strong, stiff fabric) at the rate of fifteen cents per pair. She could manage twelve pairs per week when there was full employment; sometimes she could not get work. She worked from six in the morning until ten at night. With full work she could make two dollars a week, out of which she had to expend thirty-eight cents for thread and candle. On an average, in consequence of short work, she could not make more than seventy-five cents a week. Her father was dead, and she had to support her mother, who was sixty years of age. This girl endured her mode of existence for three years, till at length she agreed to live with a young man. When she made this statement she was within three months of her confinement. She felt the disgrace of her condition, to relieve her from which she said she prayed for death, and would not have gone wrong if she could have helped it.[307]

Such a case as this scarcely comes within the term prost.i.tution, but she stated that many girls at the shop advised prost.i.tution as a resource, and that others should do as they did, as by that means they had procured plenty to eat and clothes to wear. She gave it as her opinion that none of the thousands of girls who work at the same business earn a livelihood by their needle, but that all must and do prost.i.tute themselves _to eke out a subsistence_.

Another woman, a case more directly in point, also said she could not earn more than seventy-five cents. She was a widow, and had three children when her husband died. Herself and her children had to live on these seventy-five cents. She might have gone into the work-house, and been there better supported than by her labor. Had she done so, the laws of the work-house are inexorable, she would have been separated from her children. Although one child died, she was now so reduced that she could not procure food. She took to the streets for a living, and she declared that hundreds of married and single women were doing the same thing for the same reasons.

A widow who had buried all her children could not support herself. From sheer inability to do so she took to prost.i.tution.

A remarkably fine-looking young woman, whose character for sobriety, honesty, and industry was vouched by a number of witnesses as unimpeachable, had been compelled to work at fine s.h.i.+rts, by which she could not earn more, on an average, than thirty-five cents a week. She had a child, and, being unwilling to go to the work-house, she was driven by indigence to the streets. Struck with remorse and shame, and for the sake of her child determined to abandon prost.i.tution, she fasted whole days, sleeping in winter-time in sheds. Once her child's legs froze to her side, and necessity again compelled her to take to her former course. Her father had been an Independent preacher.

These circ.u.mstances, and innumerable others, will establish incontestably the intimate relation which poverty bears to prost.i.tution. A consideration of such circ.u.mstances as the foregoing, and the every-day observation of hosts of others of a similar character which will come within the cognizance of any one who searches into human motives, must incline all but the most outrageously virtuous to judge more tenderly of the failings and errors of their fellow-creatures.

All young females engaged in sewing are liable to the same distress, and the same resource against it is, of course, open to all. The hard labor and long hours are the least part of the evil, although in that light even there would be ground for commiseration.[308] The real grievance is that the most patient and industrious can not, by any hours of labor, earn a sufficiency to support themselves. It is true that the work-house is the legal refuge of the poor; but the tender mercies of the work-house have pa.s.sed into a proverb. The policy of the poor-laws as administered is to deter the needy from applying for relief except in very extreme cases.

Hence many rules are made, and much formality is interposed, which render the legal provisions so irksome and unbearable that many fly to the nearest means of satisfying their wants rather than demand their legal rights.

DOMESTIC SERVANTS are, in respect of their removal from absolute want while in service, more happily situated than those who are thus dependent upon the needle. But they are open to influences of another kind--we mean seduction by masters and male members of the household. Where this evil begins is an exceedingly difficult question to determine. When corrupted, they become themselves, by the very opportunities they possess, ready and dangerous instruments of corruption, and contribute to disseminate the poisons of immorality and of bodily disease. We have already incidentally mentioned that this cla.s.s is at times open to a great deal of poverty and distress, namely, when out of service, and at such times they are peculiarly the mark for the lures of persons who make seduction their business and profitable occupation.

The domestic servants and the sewing-women are the princ.i.p.al adult laborers of Great Britain, except the factory girls. In 1851 there were,

Female domestic servants 905,165 Dress-makers 270,000 Seamstresses 72,940 Stay-makers 12,969

and of these one third were under twenty years of age.

PLACES OF PUBLIC AMUs.e.m.e.nT in England are few when compared with those of the Continent, and their influence must be proportionately less. On the Continent dancing saloons are a prominent feature; in England this character of entertainment is almost unknown. In London there are a few places of this sort, such, for example, as Cremorne Gardens. Mr. Tait lays some stress on the evil effects of dancing-houses in Edinburgh. We should be inclined to think the cases of misconduct traceable to these places actually few in number, though not unworthy of notice. The single females who frequent dancing-rooms, theatres, and other similar places in England, without friends or family escort, have very little virtue to risk. The country fairs are far more injurious; they are indiscriminately attended by all ages and s.e.xes, and their effects upon the female agricultural population are often very pernicious. Greenwich Fair, a three days' scene of rollicking and junketing, was held at Easter and Whitsuntide, in the outskirts of London, but is now abolished. It had its uses a century or two ago, but recently had been attended by all the idlers of London, of both s.e.xes, and was justly dreaded by the friends of youth. It is proverbial that more young women were debauched at Greenwich Fair (allowing for its duration) than at any other place in England.

ILL-a.s.sORTED MARRIAGES are decidedly a cause of prost.i.tution. Certainly breach of the marriage vow is one thing, prost.i.tution for hire another. In estimating the number of prost.i.tutes in Edinburgh at eight hundred, Mr.

Tait adds two hundred to them under the head of married women, which he considers accrue from ill-a.s.sorted marriages. That the marriage was ill-a.s.sorted is plainly shown by its result, and that want of congeniality and temperament is the cause of prost.i.tution to the extent thus named we have no ground to question. He speaks of such women selling their favors generally to one lover only, occasionally to any one who will pay; although the latter forms what is commonly known as prost.i.tution, no other construction can be put upon the former.

LOVE OF DRESS is another incident which many writers, and Mr. Tait among them, have introduced into the direct causes of prost.i.tution. We should consider it doubtful if any woman ever positively sold her virtue for a new gown or a knot of ribbons. Of course, after the Rubicon is crossed, all subsequent steps are easy, and may be taken from any motive. The love of admiration, which, under regulation, is sometimes a commendable instinct, when uncontrolled, becomes a snare. The love of dress is a modification of this sentiment, and may help to work out the effect when other causes have overthrown the balance of the mind.

JUVENILE PROSt.i.tUTION.--We have now arrived, in the consideration of the causes of prost.i.tution in England, at decidedly the most painful of all the phenomena connected with this condition of human life, namely, the immense extent of juvenile depravity. We have already sketched the evils of insufficient house accommodation and its noxious effects upon the morals of the rising generation. In this connection, also, bad example is particularly prominent; perhaps, indeed, with respect to the young, evil communications are the greatest dangers.

The work-house was formerly one great hot-bed of vice, and the greatest license and irregularity prevailed in every department. That children born or brought up in such a place should grow up debased was perfectly in the expected course of things. Now, however, under the new Poor-Laws Commission, the scene is stripped of its more revolting accessories. The s.e.xes do not mingle, children do not a.s.sociate with adults: some modic.u.m of education is given. The sweetest and holiest of all ties, that of family, is yet wanting, and self-respect is totally deficient. In the absence of these protective influences, the wonder is, not that so many children should turn out ill, but that so many girls should turn out well.

Formerly, also, there was a system of compulsory pauper apprentices.h.i.+p, and the interests of the parish apprentice out of doors were very little looked after. This, again, has been altered, both in town and country, and the improvement is marked.

Even with all this, it is recorded in the London _Times_ (June, 1848) that a correspondent, visiting one of the metropolitan work-houses, was struck by the happy and healthy appearance of the female children, and inquired of the master of the work-house what became of all of them. He was informed that they were sent out, at the age of fourteen, as servants or in other capacities, and that _nine tenths_ of them, after coming backward and forward from their places to the work-house, eventually got corrupted and took to the streets.