Aucklands shame.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5579, 26 September 1889, Page 2

Aucklands shame.

Aivki.axp, Tuesday. CunsideraMo sensation lias been caused by the puMic.iHon of a l.'ltcv l>y (lie Uev. G. B. Munro, Presbyterian Minister and one of the most prominent advocates of the Contagious Diseases Act, giving an account of a visit to houses of questionable repute, in the company of the police. He says :— " We entered twenty-four houses, and called at about thirty. In these we found over sixty girls, many intelligent and well educated, who judging from appearances, must have once moved in respectable circles. While the CD. Act was in force there were only 75 professional prostitutes known to the police, but now there are at least 400, not speaking of at least 400 who are suspected. The majority of the girls I saw were between the ages of 15 and 20, and there were scores of those living a life of vice very much under fifteen years of age. When the CD. Act was in existence juvenile prostitution was almost driven from our streets, but now you could not walk from the top to the bottom of Queen Street on a Saturday without meeting at least fifty young girls leading a life of vice. " Our visits round the city were not confined to what may be termed 'slums,' where the criminal and depraved are expected to congregate, for we entered places of questionable repute in some of the mofit respectaKlo localities, and certainly I could not have believed that there were such large and magnificently furnished houses in a comparative small city like Auckland with its present commercial depression. It is usual to argue that vice was driven into secrecy by the CD. Act, but I learned from my visits that such was not the case, for women under the surveillance of the police were only too ready to inform upon others, who were then in fact driven out of the city, but now they are coining in every day, and if something is not done soon to stem the increasing tide of vice it will be simply impossible to keep our youth pure. I also learned from my visits that the Christian Church in all her branches is only working on the surface, and that there is a mass of corruption beneath our present religious and benevolent machinery, but how such is to be reached I cannot say. It may be said that the Salvation Army reaches ami saves some of these unfortunates, and 1 do not dispute this, but I am confident they could not reach the class I refer to.