LONDON’S GREAT INIQUITY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 707, 18 September 1885, Page 6

LONDON’S GREAT INIQUITY.

The revelations made by the Pall Mall Gazette inquiry have caused a great stir amongst English speaking people, and especially in the colonies is the subject regarded with sad interest, for “ human nature is human nature all the world over, and it is self-evident that, as population increases in these parts, vice of all kinds will be liable to increase, unless early and effectual means are taken to check it. People in masses seem to breed iniquity of revolting phases by a sort of intuitive process, and although the subject is repelling in the extreme—indeed, sickening to the healthily-constituted mind it must be looked at—aye, and even grappled with in the general interests of humanity, in order that “ safety may be plucked out of the nettle danger,” and purity out of the seething, horrible corruption which the investigations of the Pall Mall Gazette Commission have laid bare. It is possible to carry delicacy to an extreme very prejudicial to moral we being. There are abuses and vices that cry aloud for exposure and remedy, and of such are the desperate wickednesses the Gazette tells us of. We cannot publish all the Gazette says ; it is too utterly horrible and revolfcl ing, but we give below extracts from the

Commissioners’ report which will serve as so many beacons to mark dangers that may arise in our midst. And upon one point we cannot all be too well agreed. The only escape from such hideous peril lies in the moral and intellectual enlightenment and advancement of the people, and the prevention of extreme poverty. It is the gnawing, debasing poverty of the thousands of poor wretches in great cities that drags them far below brute level, or at any rate down to the level of swine, which will devour their own progeny, let alone their own kind. Poverty, allied with that bitter uncharitableness that makes no allowance for the first offence, that has no hand to stretch out to an erring brother or sister ; that regards the sins and mistakes of fellow creatures with a kind of fiendish gratification, or, under the influencs of “ unco guidism” turns shudderingly away from the morally afflicted; that especially has no mercy upon the deviation of women from the strict paths of virtue ; that would cast her out as a leper for a first offence; that is pitiless in connection with her laches, and bid 3 her have no hope. These are facts. It is thus erring women are treated, as a rule, in town and country, and it is thus that we create fiends, of the first water, for no greater devil need be looked for than an outraged woman rendered thoroughly selfish and stripped of all moral consideration. It is fiends like these and their progeny that do the devil’s work in London and Paris and Hew York, and nearer home, in Sydney and Melbourne. And if care—the greatest care—is not exercised, the infection will continue to be, as it is, endemic—wherever people do congregate in large numbers, where extremes of wealth and poverty and superstition, and her twin sister ignorance, prevail. But to quote the Gazette. In his introduction to the nauseous subject, the Commissioner says : Liberty for Vice, Repression fob Crime.

To avoid all misapprehension as to the object for which I propose to set forth the ghastly and criminal features of this infernal traffic, I wish to say emphatically at the outset that, however strongly I may feel as to the imperative importance of morality and chastity, I do not ask for any police interference with the liberty of vice. I ask only for the repression of , crime. Sexual immorality, however evil it may be in itself or in its consequences, must be dealt with not by the policeman but by the teacher, so long as the persons contracting are of full age, are perfectly free agents, and in their sin are gufity of no outrage on public morals. So far from demanding any increased power for the police, I would rather incline to say to the police, “ hands off/’ when they interfere arbitrarily with the ordinary operations of the market of vice. But the more freely we permit absolute legal liberty of vice to adults, the more stringent must be our precautions against the innumerable crimes which spring from vice, as vice itself springs from the impure imaginings of the heart of man. These crimes flourish on every side, unnoticed and unchecked. To extirpate vice by Act of Parliament is impossible ; but because we must leave vice equally free, that is no reason why we should acquiesce helplessly in. the perpetration of crime. And that crime of the most ruthless and abominable description is constantly and systematically practised in London, withoutlet or hindrance, lamin a position to prove. Those who are constantly engaged in its practice naturally deny its existence. But I speak of that which I do know, not from hearsay or rumor, but of my own personal knowledge. How the Facts were Verified

When the Criminal Law Amendment Bill was talked out, just before the defeat of the Ministry, it became necessary to rouse public attention to the necessity for legislatian on this painful subject. I undertook an investigation into the facts. The evidence taken before the House of Lords Committee in ISB2 was useful, but the facts were not up to date ; members said things had changed since then, and the need for legislation had passed. It was necessary to bring the information up to date, and that duty—albeit with some reluctance —I resolutely undertook. For some weeks, aided by two or three coadjutors of whose devotion and selfsacrifice, combined with a race instinct for investigation and a singular personal fearlessness, I cannot speak too highly, I have been exploring the London Inferno. It has been a strange and unexampled experience. For a month I have oscillated between the noblest and meanest of mankind, the saviours and destroyers of their race. London beneath the gas glare of its innumerable lamps became not like Paris in 1793 —‘a

naphtha lighted city of Dis’—but a resurrected and magnified City of the Plain, with all the vices of Gomorrah, daring the vengeance of long suffering Heaven. It seemed a strange, inverted world, that in which I lived those terrible weeks—the world of the streets and of the brothel. It was the same, yet not the same, as the world of business and the world of politics. I heard of much, the same people in the houses of ill-fame as those of whom you hear in caucuses, in law courts, and on ’Change. But all were judged by a different standard, and their relative importance was altogether changedIt was es if the position of our world had suddenly been altered, and you saw most of the planets and fixed 3tars in different combinations, and of altogether different magnitudes, so that at first it was difficult to recognise them. After a time the eye grows familiar with the foul and poisonous a : r, but at the best you wand er in a Circe’s isle, where the victims of the foul enchantress’s wand meet you at every turn. But with a difference, for whereas the enchanted in olden times had the heads and the voices and the bristles of swine, while the heart of a man was in them still, these have not put on m outward form “ the inglorious likeness of a beast,” but are in semblance as other men, while within there is only the heart of a beas t—bestial, ferocious, and filthy beyond the imagination of decent men. For days ana nights it is as if I had suffered the penalties indicted upon the lost souls in the Moslem

hell, for I seemed to have to drink of the purulent matter that flows from the bodies of the damned. But the sojourn in this hell has not been fruitless. The faets which I and my coadjutors have verified I now place on record, at once as a revelation and a warning—a revelation of the system, and a warning to those who may be its victims. In the statement which follows I give no names and I omit addresses. My purpose was not to secure the punishment of criminals but to lay bare the working of a great organisation of crime. But as a proof of good faith, and in order to substantiate the accuracy of every statement contained herein, I am prepared, after an assurance has been given me that the information so afforded will not be made use of either for purpose of individual exposure or of criminal proceedings, to communicate the names, dates, localities referred to, together with full and detailed explanations ‘'of the way in which I secured the information, in confidence to any of the following persons : His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. Mr Samuel Morley, M.P. The Earl of Shaftesbury. The Earl of Dalhonsie, as the author of the Criminal Law Amendment Bill ; and Mr Howard Vincent, ex-Director of the Criminal Investigation Department.

I do not propose to communicate this information to any member of the executive Government, as the responsibilities of their position might render it impossible for them to give the requisite assurance as to the eonfidential.character of my communication. More than this I could not do unless I was prepared (1) to violate the confidence reposed in me in the course of my investigation, and (2) to spend the next six weeks of my life as a witness in the Criminal Court. This I absolutely refuse to do. I am an investigator ; I am not an informer. The entrapping of young girls is a subject upon which even the coolest and most scientific observer may well find it difficult to speak dispassionately in a spirit of calm, and philosophic investigation. The facts, however, as they have been elucidated in the course of a careful and painstaking inquiry, are so startling, and the horror which they excite so overwhelming, that it is doubly necessary to approach the subject with a scepticism proof against all but the most overwhelming demonstration. It is, however, a fact that there is in full operation amongst us a system of which the violation of virgins is one of the ordinary incidents ; that these virgins are mostly of tender age, being too young in fact to understand the nature of the crime of which they are the unwilling victims ; that these outrages are constantly perpetrated with almost absolute impunity ; and that the arrangements are made with a simplicity and efficiency incredible to all who have not made actual demonstration of the facility with which the crime can be accomplished. To avoid misapprehension, I admit that the vast majority of those who are on the streets in London have not come there by the road of organized outrage. Most woman fall either by the seduction of individuals or by the temptation which well-dressed vice can offer to the poor. But there is a majority which has been as much the victim of violence as the Bulgarian maidens with whose wrongs Mr Gladstone made the world ring some eight years ago. Some are simply snared, trapped, and outraged, either when under the influence of drugs or after a prolonged struggle in a locked room, in which the weaker succumbs to sheer downright force. Others are regularly procured ; bought at so much per head in some cases, or enticed under various promises into the fatal chamber from which they are never allowed to emerge until they have lost what women ought to value more than life. It is to this department of the subject that I now address myself. Before beginning this inquiry I had a confidential interview with one of the more experienced officers who for many years was in a position to possess an intimate acquaintance with all phases of London crime. I asked him, “ Is it or is it not a fact that, at this moment, if I were to go to the proper houses, well introduced, the keeper would, in return for money down, supply me in due time with a maid—a girl who has never been seduced?” “ Certainly,” he replied without a moment’s hesitation. “At what price?” I continued. “That is a difficult question,” he said. “I remember one case which came under my official cognizance in Scotland-yard, in which the price agreed upon was stated to be £2O. Some parties in Lambeth undertook to deliver a maid for that sum to a house of ill fame, and I have no doubt it is frequently done all over London.” “But,” I continued, “are these maids willing or unwilling parties to the transactions ?” He looked surprised at my question, and then replied emphatically : “ Of course they are rarely willing, and as a rule they do not know what they are coming for.” “ But,” I said in amazement, “then do you mean to tell me that in very truth actual violation, in the legal sense of the word, is constantly being perpetrated in London on unwilling virgins, purveyed and procured for rich men at so much a head by keepers of brothels ?” “ Certainly,” said he, “there is not a doubt of it.” “ Why,” I exclaimed, “ the very thought is enough to raise hell.” “ It is true,” he said ; “ and although it ought to raise hell, it does not even raise the neighbors.” “But do the girls cry out?” “ Of course they do. But what avails screaming in a quiet bedroom ? Remember, the utmost limit of howling or excessively violent screaming, such as a man or woman would make if actual murder was being attempted, is only two minutes, and the limit of screaming of any kind is only five.” “ But the policeman on the beat?” “ He has no right to interfere, even if he heard anything. Suppose that a constable had a right to force his way into any house where a woman screamed fearfully, po’icemen would he almost as regular attendants at childbed as doctors. Once a girl gets into such a house she is almost helpless," and may be ravished with comparative safety.” “ But surely such violation is a felony punishable with penal servitude. Can she not prosecute ?” “Whom is she to prosecute? She does not know her assailant s name. She might not even be able to recognise him if she met him outside ? As womau who has

lost her chastity is always a discredited witness, the fact of her being in a house of ill fame would possibly be held to be evidence of her consent. The keeper of the house and all the servants would swear that she was a consenting party ; they would swear that she had never screamed, and the woman would he condemned as an adventuress who wished to levy blackmail.” “ And this is going on to-day ?” “ Certainly it is, and it will go on, and you cannot help it, as long as men have money, procuresses are skilful, and women are weak and inexperienced.”

The report then goes on to describe the various modes adopted to keep up the supply demanded by perverted, brutish men. How girls are enticed when on their way to and from school, and their parents never see them again ; how the procuress goes into the country and visits the houses of the poorer people, and induces them to entrust her with their children in order to secure them good situations in London, and then when they reach there they are subjected to force and drugging and atrocity unmentionable, if they do not give consent. Their ruin once accomplished, they became common prostitutes. The confessions of some of the brothel-keepers are absolutely appalling. Here is a sample of it : Another very simple mode of supplying maids is by breeding them. Many women who are on the streets have female children. They are worth keeping. When they get to be twelve or thirteen they become merchantable. For a very likely “mark” of this kind you may get as much as £2O or £4O. I sent my own daughter out bn the streets from my own brothel. I know a couple of very fine little girls now who will be sold before very long. They are bred and trained for the life. They must take the step some time, and it is bad business not to make as much out of that as possible. Drunken parents often sell their children to brothelkeepers. In the East-end you can always pick up as many fresh girls as you want. In one street in Dalston you might buy a dozen. Sometimes the supply is in excess of the demand. There is a man called 3—whom a famous house used to employ to seduce young girls and make them fit for service when there was no demand for maids, and there was a demand for girls who had been seduced. Did I ever do anything else in the way of recruiting? Yes. I remember one case very well. The girl, a likely “mark,” was a simply country Jass living at Horsham. I had heard of her, and I went down to Horsham to see what I could do. Her parents believed that I was in regular business in London, and they were very glad when I proposed to engage her daughter. I brought her to town and made her a servant in our house. We petted her and made a good deal of her, gradually initiating her into the kind of life it was ; and then I sold her to a young gentleman for £ls, When I say I sold her, I mean that he gave me the gold and I gave him the girl to do what he liked with. He took her away and seduced her. I believe he treated her rather well after wards, but that was not my affair. She was his after he paid for her and took her away. If her parents had inquired, I would have said that she had been a bad girl and run away with a young man. How"could I help that ? The East is the great market for the children who are imported into West End houses, or taken abroad wholesale when trade is brisk. I know of no West End houses, having always lived at Dalston or thereabouts, but agents pass to and fro in the course of business. They receive the goods, depart, and no questions are asked.

Another horrible phase of the subject is the way children are ensnared and demoralised by procuresses beforehand. A procuress marks her quarry—a child of poor parents, professes to feel for their distress, and in benevolent guise loans small sums of money to the child and her mother. By-and-bye the debt has to be paid. Ia one case the child was over thirteen year 3 old, and so of legal age to dispose of herself, and she absolutely persisted in taking the fatal step to relieve her parents and satisfy the elaims of the devil who had her in her clutches. And this, too, notwithstanding the efforts of two philanthropic ladies who had taken her in hand. The Ruin of Children.

Under this heading, the report goes on to say :

The advocates of the Criminal Law Amendment Bill are constantly met by two mutually destructive assertions. On one side it is declared that the raising of the age of consent is entirely useless, because there are any number of young prostitutes on the streets under the legal age of thirteen, while, on the other, it is asserted as positively that juvenile prostitution below the age of fifteen has practically ceased to exist. Both assertions are entirely false. There are not many children under thirteen plying for hire on the streets, and there are any number to be had between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. There are children, many children, who are ruined before they are thirteen ; but the crime is one phase of the incest which, as the Report of the Dwellings Commission show's, is inseparable from overcrowding. But the number who are on the streets i 3 small. Notwithstanding the most lavish offers of money, I completely failed to procure a single prostitute under thirteen. . I have been repeatedly promised children under twelve, but they either never appeared or when produced admitted that they were over thirteen. I have no doubt that I could discover in time a dozen or more girls of eleven or twelve who are leading immoral lives, but they are very difficult to find. This direct evidence is by no means all that is available to show the deterrent effect of raising the age of consent. The rescue Society, of Finsbury-paveinent, which has an experience of thirty-one years, has kept for twenty-five years a record of the ages at which those whom they have rescued lost their character. The following are the numbers of the rescued who vrere seduced at the ages of twelve and thirteen from 1862 to 1875, when the close time was raised to

thirteen—33, 55, 65, 107, 102, 103, 77, 60, 78, 62, 40, 43, 30; total, 855, or 66 per annum between the ages of twelve and thirteen. From 1875 to 1883 the figures are as follows : 22, 24, 19, 20, 16, 14, 15, 10, 7; total, 147 ; average, 16 per annum. Allowance must be made for the fact that the total number rescued in 1883 was only half that rescued in 1867, but even then th • numbers of children seduced at twelve and thirteen would have been reduced to onehalf owing to the raising of the age. All those who have the best means of knowing how the law would work, gaol chaplains and the rest, are strongly in favor of extending the close time. The preventive operation of the law is much more effective than I anticipated, for it is almost the sole barrier against a constantly increasing appetite for very young children. That this infernal taste prevails is unfortunately beyond all gainsaying, and for proof we need go no further than the reports of the numerous refuges and homes which have been opened of late years in the neighborhood of London. But in the ordinary market the supply is limited to girls who are over thirteen. The Ruin of the Very Young.

There is fortunately no need to dwell upon this revolting phase of criminality, for it is recognised by law, and the criminals when caught are heavily punished* My object throughout has been to indicate crimes virtually encouraged by the law ; but it is necessary to refer to cases where even penal servitude has not deterred men from the perpetration of this most ruthless of outrages, in order to show the need for strengthening the barrier which alone stands between infants and the brutal lusts of dissolute men. Here, for example, is the case now of a tiny little mite, in the care of a rescue officer of our excellent Society for the Protection of Children. Her name is Annie Bryant, and she is just now five years old. Yet that baby girl has been the victim of an outrage. She was enticed, together with a companion, into a house in New Cut on May 28, and forcibly outraged, first by a young man named William Hemmings, and then by a fellow-lodger. The scoundrel is now doing two years’ penal servitude, but his accomplice escaped. A penny cake was the lure which enticed the baby to her ruin. As I nursed her on my knee, and made her quite happy with a sixpence, the matron of the refuge where the little waif was sheltered told how every night before she went to sleep she would shudder and cry, and whisper in her ear. And not until the poor child was solemnly assured and reassured that the door was fast, and that no “bad man” could possibly get in, would she dare to go to sleep. Every night it was the same, and when I saw her it was nearly three weeks since her evil fate had befallen her ! This instance of a child of such tender years being subjected to outrage is not an isolated one. A girl of eighteen who is now walking Regent-street had her little sister violated by a “gentleman” whom she had brought home. She had left the room for a feiv minutes, and he took advantage of her absence to ruin the poor child, who was sleeping peacefully in another corner of the room. The man in this case escaped unpunished. As a rule the children who are sent to homes as “ fallen” at the age of ten, ; Eleven and twelve, are children of prostitutes, bred to the business, and broken in prematurely to their dreadful calling. There are children of five in homes now who, although they have not technically fallen, are little better than animals possessed of an unclean spirit, for the law of heredity is as terribly true in the brothel as elsewhere. One child in St. Cyprian’s was turned out on to the streets by her mother to earn a living when ten. At St. Mary’s Home they do not receive any children over sixteen. Sister Emma has at present more than fifty children in her home at Hants. She receives none under twelve. In only four cases was the man punished. The proportion of victime among the protected is, however, comparatively small to those who have passed the fatal age of thirteen. If Mr Hastings, who would fix the age of consent at ten, or Mr Warton, who was in favor of even a lower age than ten, was allowed to have his way, we should probably have to start homes to accommodate infants of four, five, and six who had been ruined “by their own consent.” What blasphemy ! How Criminals are Shielded ey the Law. , This frightful development of fantastic vice is directly encouraged by law, which marks off all girls over thirteen as fair game for men. It is only in the spring of this year that a man was sentenced to a term of imprisonment for indecent assault upon a child. It was shown in evidence that he had violated more than a dozen children just over thirteen, whom he had enticed into back yards by promises of sweetmeats, but they were over age, and so he escaped scot free, until one day he was fortuuately caught with a child under thirteen, and was promptly punished. The Rev. J. Horsley, the chaplain at Clerk - enwell, stated last year“ There is a monster now walking about who acts as clerk in a highly respectable establishment. He is fifty years of age. For years it has been his villainous amusement to decoy and ruin children. A very short time ago sixteen cases were proved against him before a magistrate on the Surrey side of the river. The children were all fearfully injured, possibly for life. Fourteen of the girls were thirteen yearsold,and wave therefore beyond the protected age, and it could not be proved that they were not consenting parties. The wife of the scoundrel told the officer who had j the case in charge that it was her opinion that her husband ought to be burned. Yet by the English law we cannot touch this monster of depravity, or so much as inflict a small fine on him.” How the Law Facilitates Abduction. It is sometimes said that these children ought to be looked after by their parents,but those who resort to that argument forget that the law plays into the hands of the abductor. Suppose a child of thirteen, either in a fit of temper or enticed by the bribes of a procuress, once gets within the precincts of a brothel, what is the parent to do ? The brothel-keeper has only to keep the door locked to defy the father. If she had stolen a doll he could have got a search warrant for stolen property, but as it is only his daughter he can do nothing. It is true that there 13 a mode of procedure by habeas corpus, but that is so cumbrous and so costly

that it is practically unavailable for the poor. Counsel’s opinion was recently taken by the abductor of a bpy as to what steps could be takm to prevent the father obtaining possession of his son. The answer was as follows :—Refuse father admittance. You can keep the boy until habeas corpus is obtained. At the very earliest this cannot be secured until after twenty-four hours at least. The hearing of the ease to show cause will wait about a week for a turn. The costs are uncertain, from L3O to LSO. What is the use of a remedy which at the earliest cannot be brought into operation in less than twenty-four hours, even if it could be had for nothing ? A girl may be ruined in ten minutes. By habeas corpus a father has the means of of gaining his end, but he could no more raise the LSO needed than he could fly. A remedy that involves a preliminary expenditure of LSO, and can then only get into action in a week, is virtually non-existent for the poor. Take another case. In Hull last August a man kept a child's-brothel, locally known as “ the Infant School.” He kept no fewer than fourteen children there, the eldest only fifteen, and some as young as twelve. The mothers had gone to the house to try and claim their children, and had been driven off by the prisoner with the most horrible abuse, and had no power to get the children away or even to see them. Fortunately, the old reprobate had sold drink without a license. For this offence, and not for his stealing children, the police broke into his house and secured bis conviction. By law abduction is no offence unless the girl is in the custody of her father at the time of her abduction.

How easy it is for a man to seduce a child with impunity the following record taken from the report of a case heard in Hammersmith police court last March will show : Walter Franklin, who lived in Northavenue, Fulham, was summoned for unlawfully taking Annie Summers, an unmarried girl under the age of sixteen, out of the possession of her master, and against the will of her father. Mr Gregory said he appeared on behalf of the Society for the Protection of Young Girls to support the summons. The girl, who was fourteen, was in service, and met the defendand while on her way to her father to obtain a change of linen. He invited her to his house, where he kept her all night, and turned her out in the morning. She was found by her father in Chelsea. Mr Sheil referred to the case of “ Queen v Miller,” and thought no charge had been disclosed, as she was not in the custody of her father. The case fell in with the decision in “ Queen and Miller.” In that case it was the converse. The girl had left her father, and was on her way to her mistress. Mr Gregory : You think'she was not in the custody of either ? Mr Sheil replied in the affirmative. The summons was then withdrawn.

What we have here published is nothing, almost, compared with the grim totality of the Gazette’s statements. The latter would fill about ninety octavo pages. We only desire to keep our adult readers fairly posted with what is going on in the world around them. Necessarily there is much that is sinful, revolting, and distressing, but to suppress this, to parade the little good and hide the great evil would be tantamount to encourage the residence of newspaper readers in a “ fool’s paradise.” Men, and women, too, should know these things. “ Forewarned is forearmed.’’ We conclude with the Gazette’s comments on the action and attitude of the London police. We may add that all that has been told as to the inveiglement of English girls to France, Spain, and other countries, for the worst of purposes, is only too true. The Police and the Foreign Slave Trade. The Criminal Law Amendment Bill, as framed by Sir W. Harcourt, was not so much a Bill for raising the age of consent and increasing the stringency of the provisions against procuration and the traffic in English girls, as a Bill for increasing the arbitrary power of the police in the streets. No one who has any acquaintance with the enormous variety of the duties which modern civilisation imposes upon the police can sympathise with the abuse so ignorantly and uncharitably showered upon the force. The constable is the official upon whom modern society has devolved all the duties of the ancient knight-errant. There is no more useful being in the world, and there are fewer nobler ideals of human activity than the daily life of a really public-spirited, chivalrous policeman. But the majority of policemen, being only mortal, are not more to be trusted than any other human being, especially over the other sex. Its possession leads to corruption, and the more that power is increased the more mischief is done. I have no wish to bring any railing accusations against a body of men who are constantly performing the most arduous duties in the public service ; but those who think most highly of the force should be most anxious to save it from any increase of a temptation which already seriously impairs both its morals and its efficiency. In this, I am informed, I am expressing not only the unanimous opinion of our Commission, but also the matured conviction of some of the best authorities iu the force.

The power of the police over women in the street is already ample, not merely for the purposes of maintaining order and for preventing indecency and molestation, but also for the purpose of levying blackmail upon unfortunates. I have been assured by a chaplain of one of Her Majesty’s gaols, who perhaps has more opportunities ©f talking to these women than any other individual in the realm, that there is absolute unanimity in the ranks that if they do not tip the police they get run in. From the highest to the lowest, he informs me, the universal testimony is that you must pay the constable, or you get into trouble. With them it has come to be part of the recognised necessities of their profession. Tipping porters is contrary to the by-laws of the railway companies, yet it is constantly done by passengers ; and tipping the police is as constant a practice on the part of the women of the street. Some pay with purse, others with person —many poor wretches

with both. There are good policemen wk would not touch the money of a harlot c drink with her. But there are great nun bers who regard these things as the pel quisites of their office, and who act on thei belief. The power of a policeman over -: girl on the streets, although theoretical! very slight, is in reality almost despotic. I you quarrel with a policeman you are doa for” is not far from the truth. The esprii de corps of the force is strong, and-botl prostitutes and policemen agree in this, thai if a girl were once to tip and tell she might just as well leave London at once. would be harried out of division aftks division, and never allowed to rest until she was outside the radius of the metro 4 politan district. If policemen can do that to avenge a breach of faith, it need not bd> pointed out that they are able materially.; to effect a girl’s position and prospects without absolutely doing anything wrong. They" have only to appear inconveniently inquisi-s tive when a bargain is being driven in orderJ to scare off a customer, aud at any time, if-;.: they choose tx be animated by a sever®?! sense of public duty, they can discover i evidence sufficient to justify at least a'’ threat of apprehension. A girl’s livelihood * is in a policeman’s hands, and in too many cases he makes the most of his opportunity, To increase by one jot or one tittle the power of the man in uniform over the women who are left unfriended even by their own sex is a crime against liberty and justice, which no impatience at markets of vice, or holy horror at the sight of girls on the street, ought to be allowed to excuse. If we say that the policeman is constantly temped to transmute his power into cash, we only say that he is human and that her is poor. But it is too bad to convert the truncheoned custodians of public order into a set of “ ponies” in uniform, levying a disgraceful tribute on the fallen maidens of modern Babylon.

An Unnatural Alliance. If the police are constantly in danger of being corrupted by the arbitrary power which they possess over prostitutes, the temptation presented by brothels is still more insidious. Every one knows how Mrs Jeffiries tried to tip Minahan, and his superiors laughed him to scorn because he did not take hush money like the rest. The - policeman theoretically has no power over the houses of ill fame. But if he chooses he can make it almost impossible for any of them to do good business. The police,, by • simple refusal to-day to accept an inter-, pretation of their duty on which they had . acted the previous afternoon, made North-? umberland-street impassable and delayed the publication of the “Pall Mall Gazette” > by three hours. W hatever may have been the reason it was not until a question waa asked in the House of Commons and a formal complaint lodged at the JHonae Office, that the police abandoned an inter- ' pretation of their duty which for the greater part of the day rendered it impossible for any one to gain access to our premises, oir. for the ordinary and legitimate business of a newspaper to be carried on. Now, if the. police can do this in dealing with an influential journal, with powerful friends in both Houses of Parliament and an immense following in the country, what can they not do in dealings with a brothel-keeper, who is constantly within an ace of breaking the law, even if he does not, as a great many of them do, convert his house into a shebeen ? - The inevitable result follows. Every brothel becomes more or less a source of revenue to the policeman on the beat. “The police are the brothel-keepers’ best friend,” said an old keeper to me sententiously. “ ’Cps why ? They keep things snug. And the brothel-keepers are the police’s best friend, ’cos we pay them.” “ How much did you pay the police ?” I asked. “£3 a week, year in and year out,” he said reflectively, “ and mine was only a small house.” I have been told that at one famous house in the East end the police allowance is as much as £SOO a year, to say nothing of free quarters\ when they are wanted for either the con* stables or the detectives. This, of course, I cannot verify, I can Only say that it is a matter of common repute in the East, and if Sir Richard Cross wishes to know the name and the address of the house for purposes of independent inquiry they are at his service. What is the natural result ? . An alliance is struck up between the brothelkeeper and the constable. A lady skilled in rescue work, and in a position to speak authoritatively, told me that if ever she wished to save a girl from the bad houses in the West-end, she had to take • the greatest care not to allow a whisper of her intention to reach the ears of the police. “ If I do,” she said, “ I nearly always find that the keeper has received a warning, and that the poor girl has been spirited off to some other house.” It is better in the East ; but in the West, if you want to circumvent the men whose crimes I have been exposing, don’t tell the police. The Black Sheep op the Flock:, Of course there are police and police. Some of the best men, others very much the reverse. Until Colonel Henderson put his foot down, and gave his superintendents te understand that the roughs were not to fee allowed to maltreat the processions of the Salvation Army, the difference between a perfectly peaceful demonstration and a general riot depended almost entirely upon' the goodwill or the reverse of the constable on" the beat. Hence an enormous responsibility depends upon those who are charged with the maintenance of the high character of the force. Some of the superintendents are excellent men, and many of the inspectors. Others hardly deserve such praise. Mr Charrington assures me that when he has gone to try and rescue some poor little outraged children the police have done their best to prevent him. On one occasion he declares twopolicemenaetually handedhimover to the bullies from the brothels to be murdered, saying at the same time they would go round the comer and not see it. “ Only a few weeks ago when some good honest policemen did do their duty and protected me by taking into custody a man who insulted me, they were immediate y taken away from the spot and ordered not to go near it, while the scoundrel who did his best to get me murdered was allowed to remain.” An exofficer of long standing assured me that “ policemen and soldiers between them ruin more girls than any other men in London. * From Edinburgh I received a report from a

ifcy missionary that he met with a case in hat city where a gentleman saved a girl com a policeman who had threatened to an her in unless he might have his will rith her, and, as he added significantly, for veryone which we find there may be many, lauy of the policemen are unmarried men, ivin" in barracks as much as soldiers, and are 10 more fit to‘be invested with absolute con,rol of the streets—which, after all, are the Irawing-room of the poor, than are the Guards. Sometimes there is a thoroughly oad sheep in the flock, and his presence corrupts the rest. Men, even when helmets are placed on tbeir heads, are not fit to be trusted with what is practically absolute power over women who are even weaker and less protected than the rest of their sex. Hence, I regard the excision of the clauses increasing the power of the police over women in the streets as absolutely neces»ary. _ What, then - , about the &tate of the Streets ?

Nothing can be more absurdly exaggerated than the usual talk about the scandalous state of the streets. Of course Regent-Street at midnight is a grim and soul-saddening sight, and so are one or two other neighbourhoods that might be named. It may be possible to legislate solely for those quarters where vice is congested by treating them as disorderly places, to be cleared by exceptional powers, only to be brought into exercise by the initiative of two or more residents in the neighbourhood. But we are. against exceptional pew ere, even when initiated by private citizens. If any number of people are really in earnest about abating this scandal, why can they not imitate the example of the people of St. Judes, King’scross, and organise a vigilance committee ? One or two members of this committee appeared to give evidence of general annoyance, while the police proved the individual acts of solicitation, I can hear personal testimony as to the gross exaggeration of the popular notion. I have been a night prowler for weeks. I have gone.in different guises to most of the favorite rendezvous. I have strolled along Ratcliffhighway, and sauntered round and round the Quadrant at midnight. I have haunted St. James’ Park, and twice enjoyed the strange sweetness of summer nights by the side of the Serpentine. I have been at all hours in Leicester Square and the Strand, and have spent the midnight in Mile-end-road and the vicinity of the Tower. Sometimes I was alone; sometimes accompanied by a friend ; and the deep and strong impression which I have brought back is one of respect and admiration fortheextraordinarily good behaviour of the English girls who pursue this dreadful calling. In the whole of my wanderings I have not been accosted half-a-dozen times, and then I was more to blame, than the woman. - I was turned out of Hyde Park at midnight with a drunken prostitute, but she did not begin the con- / vernation. I have been much more offensively accosted on Parisian .boulevards than I have ever been in English park or English street, and on the whole I have hrought back- from the infernal labyrinth a deep conviction that if there is one truth in the Bible that is truer than another it is this, that the publicans and harlots are nearer the kingdom of heaven than the scribes and pharisees who are always trying to qualify for a passport to bliss hereafter by driving their unfortunate sisters here to the very hell of a police despotism.. Only in one respect would I like to seo the powers of the police strengthened, and that is in exactly assimilating the law as to man and woman in molestation and solicitation.. Why should not the ma’e analogue of a prostitute —the man who habitually and persistently annoys women by solicitation be subject to the same punishment for annoying girls by offensive overtures as are women who annoy men. It would be a real gain to get rid of one little bit, however small, of the scandalous immorality of having a severe law for the weak and a lax law for the strong. .. Bo the Police know of these Crimes? There is one argument that his constantly used, which is utterly worthless.. . These things could not have happened, it is said, because the police would have found them out long ago. The police knew all about them long ago, but they do not put them down. Here is one fact for the accuracy of which we can vouch from our own personal knowledge. People doubt the existence of • the firm of procuresses Mdmes. X and Z., and their delivery of virgins. What, then, will they say when I tell them, so far from the firm having retired from business owing to the exposure with which all London is ringing, that for a week after our exposure, with the street all vocal with the cries of newsboys vending the Pall Mall Gazette s ■revelations, these worthy women of business continued day by day to deliver over virgins to be seduced, and entered into a further contract to supply a girl for export to a.rforeign brothel ? Now, do t.he police know anything of these transactions ? If they do not now, what value is the argument that facts are not facts because the police must have found out all about them long ago if they had been true ?

A final word, Npt only are the police indirectly implicated in the horrid traffic, but duly qualified medical men lend themselves to it in giving certificates, after examination, as to the condition of girls about to be sold. The social ulcer is deep-seated indeed. We have, for obvious reason, suppressed the Boys and Girls Column of the Mail this week.