MARRIAGE IN THE SLUMS.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13421, 19 March 1914, Page 8

MARRIAGE IN THE SLUMS.

Workers in the poorer districts of London are often -faced with the problem that, after marriage, girls lose pride, in their personal appearance. The headmistress of a girls' school at Limehouse has reported to the London County Council that long experience compels her to confess to a feeling of grave uncertainty respecting the lasting effects of the efforts to secure improvements in personal cleanliness, general tidiness, and self-respect. It cannot be denied that material success attends the action of the teachers while the child remains at school. But the evanescent character of the improvement is marked in slum districts soon after the pupil reaches "leaving" age. Another headmistress says that the poorest girl will still marry a man who is out of work, who she knows will not work, and to whom she will give pocket money out of her own earnings. It is only by raising the level of these girls, so that they will refuse to marry a man who has no permanent employment, that the casual and the , loafer will cease to be. A prominent social worker, discussing the question with a newspaper representative, said the poorer parts of London were filled with matrimonial tragedies. Tho reason for these unhappy marriages and the girl's untidy appearance is at once obvious. The child-wife is brought up against the hard facts of life before her niihd has been properly opened to the world in which she lives. She finds herself invested with now and strange responsibilities, and the struggle to keep together a poor home becomes daily more irksome. Thus she loses interest in her home, and in her personal appearance. She has entered upon an unknown-task without proper equipment. Is it any wonder that from be-, ing a smart, attractive young girl she degenerates into a slatternly housewife?