CHAPTER XLII.

THE LEGION OF THE LOST.

VERY different estimates have been made as to the extent of the Social Evil in London, but that made some fifteen months ago by the Right Reverend Dr. Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, from facts and figures furnished him by medical men, the police returns, and the minor clergy, places the number of abandoned or public women in London, at the startling aggregate of eighty thousand unfortunates.

This estimate of Vice and Sin is certainly calculated to intimidate and terrify the Christian people of England, were it not for the fact that a hundred agencies are constantly at work, upheld and supported by good men and women, to lessen the number of these fair and frail members of the Legion of the Lost.

The great parade ground of the abandoned women of London, is the Haymarket, when all London is at rest--when bed-room blinds are drawn down, and street doors locked and chained--when lights are rarely seen but in the windows of the sick wards of hospitals--then the Haymarket is in its glory, gay and lively as a ball-room, and swarming with gaudily dressed women sauntering and flaunting up and down its broad pavements, crowding them as on an illumination night. The dissolute and idle, the debauchee and the debauched, pour into this market of sin, this Exchange of Vice and Harlotry, like moths attracted by the glare that must sooner or later utterly destroy them. This street is always at night full of cabs, drunken men, noisy women, jugglers, and thieves.

The Haymarket is the Republic of Vice, where all who enter are hale fellows well met, for every one knows why the other has come here, and caution being cast off for the time, all ranks and stations mingle.

[Sidenote: "SCOTT'S" IN THE HAYMARKET.]

Outside the tavern doors are gathered clusters of swells talking to the poor souls, who, disguised by some flash dressmaker, have hidden the figure of the servant-maid under the toilette of the mistress. The heir to a title stands bowing to some pretty faced girl, who mixes her bad grammar with oaths. The door of a public house swings back to let the hope of a family enter, who is about to sip wine at the counter with the chip bonnet at his side.

Let us enter "Scott's" in the Haymarket. "Scott's" is the great Oyster House of London. It is a little cosy, crowded place, and not more than fifty feet deep by half as many feet in width. At any hour of the night and until two o'clock in the morning, it is possible to get oysters, fried, roasted or raw, at "Scott's." They are also cooked with cracker dust, which makes them taste as if they had been broiled in sawdust. Oysters are quite dear at "Scott's," and will cost three shillings a dozen, raw, which is a very high rate when compared with the price of our American oysters. They are small and bitter, and black, and the best of the bivalves come from Ostend in Belgium.

There is a counter at the front of the shop, and behind this counter are exposed all kinds of shell-fish, lobsters, prawns, crabs, periwinkles or "winkles," and oysters, as well as mussels. The bounding clam is unknown in England, however, and is not found amongst the edibles. Behind this counter the proprietor and his wife, and three or four male assistants in white aprons, are busily engaged opening oysters and serving up lobsters and dressed lettuce, to the customers who prefer to eat standing. To eat standing, however, is not the common custom in England, and the majority who wish to eat oysters take seats in the little stalls behind in the back room, which are exactly like our American oyster stalls, only that they are furnished with plush cushions. In these stalls are clerks, swells, men about town, Englishmen and foreigners, eating oysters and drinking Stout, or supping on lobsters and champagne, and as it is now after eleven o'clock, nearly every man in these stalls has a girl of a certain class with him, who is of course eating supper at his expense.

Upstairs there is a room somewhat similar to the one below, which is now densely crowded; but the upper room is more select. I went upstairs, and here I found a number of couples lounging in a free and easy manner, and some were calling loudly upon the waiters for brandy and water. Seated in one of these stalls is a pink-faced boy, fresh from his country home, helping with delicate attention the painted woman beside him to costly viands.

She laughs noisily as a man, flinging her arms about, and as the Champagne foams in her glass, she tosses her head like a Bacchante. But an action that by daylight would seem disgusting to the boy, is charming in the blaze of the Haymarket gaslight, and the lad looks with admiration upon the companion whom on the morrow he would pass without a nod of recognition.

The police returns for the year 1868-9, give the following figures as to the number of public women, or prostitutes, who are known to the police in the metropolitan district of London:

Brothels. Prostitutes. Within the districts of Westminster, Brompton, and Pimlico, there are, 153 524 St. James, Regent-street, Soho, Leicester-square, 152 318 Marylebone, Paddington, St. John's-wood, 139 526 Oxford-street, Portland-place, New-road, Gray's-inn-lane, 194 546 Covent-garden, Drury-lane, St. Giles's, 45 480 Clerkenwell, Pentonwell, City-road, Shoreditch, 152 349 Spitalfields, Houndsditch, Whitechapel, Ratcliff, 471 1,803 Bethnal-green, Mile-end, Shadwell to Blackwall, 419 965 Lambeth, Blackfriars, Waterloo-road, 377 802 Southwark, Bermondsey, Rotherhithe, 178 667 Islington, Hackney, Homerton, 185 445 Camberwell, Walworth, Peckham, 65 228 Deptford and Greenwich, 148 401 Kilburn, Portland, Kentish, and Camden Towns, 88 231 Kensington, Hammersmith, Fulham, 12 106 Waltham-green, Chelsea, Cremorne, 47 209 ---- ---- 2,825 8,600

For the one public woman here registered there are five who do not reside in brothels, but live alone, hiring lodgings for which they pay from eight shillings to five guineas a week, according to the manner in which the apartments are furnished, and the character of the neighborhood in which they are situated, so that it is calculated that there are seventy to eighty thousand women in London whose names do not appear in the official list of the Lost, yet lead immoral lives, and whose sin is as great in the sight of God, but less in the sight of man, as their infamy is not of that nature that the law can punish them for it.

[Sidenote: "MIDNIGHT MISSION."]

God knows it is from no persistent desire to uncover the sores and ulcers of the huge city, that I state these facts.

Great and unceasing efforts are being made by the clergy and philanthropic citizens of London to diminish this terrible Traffic in Souls, which is the distinguishing mark of infamy that clings to the Haymarket.

For some years past these unfortunate women have been collected together while plying their avocation, in an apartment in the vicinity of the Haymarket, in which some slight refreshments are prepared for them, ices and cooling but temperate drinks being served up gratis to all who will attend and listen to the words of repentance and hope from the mouths of clergymen who visit this place nightly for the purpose of reclaiming these Lost Ones. This is called the "Midnight Mission," or "Meeting," and the girls are gathered by having circulars presented to them in the street as the hour nears midnight. A great number attend, and they generally listen with patience and decorum. This Mission was founded by the Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel, who first preached to the unfortunate girls.

A high officer of the London police informed me that there were in that city about seven thousand lost women who are always well dressed, well gloved, and well shod, who live comfortably, and many of them elegantly. These women, of course, are all Free Lances, and prey upon the fashionable young men of London and strangers who visit the great Babylon.

Of this number, he stated that three thousand five hundred were what is called under protection, or kept mistresses. The remainder have hired lodgings for themselves in Pimlico, Fitzroy square, Portman street, Howard street, Winchester street, Sutherland street, Gloucester street, and other respectable localities of the metropolis, paying two or three sovereigns a week for a suite of apartments, and furnishing them at their own expense. This latter class, as a general thing, live individually apart from each other, and keep each a servant of all work, to do their cooking and washing.

Some of these girls have furnished their apartments at a cost of from two to five hundred pounds, ordering the most costly articles of furniture with the extravagance and profusion peculiar to their class. Pictures, etageres, buffets, mirrors, ormolu clocks, tapestry carpets, and the most luxurious articles of bijouterie and the toilet are to be found in their apartments; and, unlike their frail sisters in New York and Paris, these London girls act with complete independence of their landladies, who in the cities mentioned, as a rule, treat the unfortunate women placed in their power more like dogs than human beings. In London, these girls are in the strictest sense their own mistresses, and therefore do not come under any police regulations; nor can they receive the designation of professionals, as they never solicit men on the street, or live in what is called a house of ill-fame. The persons who rent apartments to these girls in the districts which I have thus enumerated, are not supposed to know anything about the occupation or business of tenants, and they never, by any possibility, attempt to interfere with them.

One of the most frequented resorts of Lost Women in London is the Cremorne Gardens at Chelsea, on the Thames river bank, and distant about four miles from the Post Office and St. Paul's Cathedral.

These Gardens comprise about four acres, which are covered with trees, and ornamented with fountains, flower-beds, and statues. This is the maddest place in London, after ten o'clock in the evening. Until that hour, the middle class of London citizens, shopkeepers, tradesmen, and clerks, and their wives and sweethearts, have possession of the Gardens; but at that hour they leave the place, and from thence until one and two o'clock in the morning Cremorne is in the possession of Lost Women and their male friends and abettors.

The Cremorne is in many respects very like the Mabille at Paris, but decency is better enforced, and the women at Cremorne have not such a debased look as their unfortunate sisters of the Mabille.

At Cremorne there is a circular platform on which a band of music is constantly stationed during the evening, and here the dancing is principally done. Between the dances the girls promenade, or take supper with their male friends in the numerous restaurants, which are always crowded to excess by noisy people of both sexes, drinking Champagne and Moselle, or eating lobster or devilled kidneys. Cold suppers are provided for the girls in an upper saloon, for which they are charged two shillings and sixpence a piece, without wine. Then there are fireworks, two or three theatres and music halls, Japanese jugglers, bowling alleys, shooting galleries, and other modes of diversion and amusement.

Swarms of young fashionables from the Opera, where they have been listening to the enchanting strains of a Tietjens, a Nillson, or a Patti, in evening dress with thin overcoats, may be seen here of a warm night, or perhaps they may have come from the clubs in St. James or Piccadilly, to kill time.

[Sidenote: "SKITTLES" AND THE PRINCESS MARY.]

"Skittles," now dead, who was at one time the most famous woman of her class in London, was very fond of attending Cremorne, where she was in the habit of drinking large quantities of Champagne. "Skittles" was at one time a great personage in London, and bore on her brougham the crest of a Marquis. This audacious woman had the temerity to dispute the way with the Princess Mary of Cambridge, while that member of the Royal family was riding in Rotten Row. "Skittles" was on horseback, being in full riding dress, and the Princess Mary was also on horseback, when they met, and it is said that "Skittles" lifted her dainty little riding whip at the astonished Princess, and demanded that she should give her precedence in the Ride.

Cremorne is a great place for rows between the women and the fast young men who attend the amusements there. While promenading around the Dancing Ring one evening, I noticed a crowd gathering, and heard a female voice uttering screams of distress. The young lady with the unearthly voice I ascertained was a habitue of the place, known as "Mad Rose," and the offending biped was a certain fast baronet named Sir Frederick Johnstone, who has since figured in the Mordaunt Divorce Suit.

It seems that this "Mad Rose" had been at one time under the baronet's protection, and the afternoon before the rencontre he had met her in the Park, and passed her without recognition, although she sought it from him. She was determined to have her revenge for this, besides some old scores she had to settle with him; or it was that he had not settled some old scores with her.

The girl was tall, elegantly shaped, and dressed in a tasteful and rich manner, becoming her blonde hair and complexion. Seeing the baronet with his friends, she stepped up to him, and singling him out, struck him across the face with her gloved hand, which was glittering with diamonds.

[Sidenote: A ROW AT CREMORNE.]

Then she uttered a scream of feminine distress, and a crowd of swells gathered around her. Then she knocked off his hat and screamed again. The baronet uttered no remonstrance, but backed up against a railing, his hat lying on the ground. Attempting to pick it up, she knocked it off again and screamed. This thing went on for the space of ten minutes, the girl, in a passion--whether fictitious or not, I cannot tell--slapping the exquisite in the face at intervals, knocking off his hat and screaming, but not forgetting to pour volleys of abuse upon the baronet's head in the meanwhile. A great crowd collected and enjoyed the fun. But I noticed that not a man in the assemblage offered to interfere, and the baronet's friends refused to molest her, with the exception of one, who caught hold of her wrists, and he had to let go his hold of her in an instant, as he was attacked in a body by the other girls, who put him to flight immediately. The baronet begged for mercy, but got none; and, finally, a grand charge was made on the crowd by the Cremorne police, and it was dispersed.

This movement relieved the baronet from further persecution, and the mad woman was taken away. One fact was noticeable--not a man in the crowd even attempted to raise his hand to the girl during her repeated assaults. Had it been in America, I am certain she would, under such circumstances, have met with very rough, if not brutal treatment.