CHAPTER XXXVII.

LEADING DOWN TO DEATH.

It is seldom possible to watch the whole career of an abandoned woman. As they step lower and lower in abasement they keep moving from city to city until they reach a stage where the next descent must be into the grave. It is, therefore, difficult to trace their progress, from the “high-toned” fast house to the hospital pallet where they finish a life of loathsomeness by a still more loathsome death.

It has been calculated that the average span of existence for a woman who embraces a life of shame does not average more than five or six years. A year of the irregular life suffices to seriously impair that youth and their good looks, and then they begin to experience the bitterness and the hatefulness of the terrible trade which they have launched themselves. The extravagance and improvidence of their natures soon put them completely in the power of the soulless harridan who keeps the house. She contrives that they shall always be owing her money. She has good security in their wardrobes, and their lives from this time out become one long struggle with debt, hatred of the landlady who oppresses them, ill-health, and disease.

Information derived from many quarters shows with unmistakeable distinctness

THE AWFUL PUNISHMENTS

which follow hard upon the heels of the sin of unchastity. Interviews with medical men set forth a state of affairs the recital of which beggars language to give it due utterance. All that is horrible in human misery and possible in physical debility and degradation visits the bodies of these poor outcasts of the earth.

“When I was a young man,” said a physician to the writer, “I used to think that if a woman who had just taken her first step in infamy were to visit certain of the wards in the great hospitals and see the masses of living putrescence, which were once fair women, who are there rotting away on their last couches, the sight would serve to drive them back into the paths of rectitude and virtue, though all other argument on earth would fail to do so. Doctors get used to terrible sights, but the venereal ward of an hospital never ceases to shock and disgust. No amount of use can make the physician on each recurring visit less sensible of the overwhelming calamity that has overtaken these hapless victims of brutal lust.”

So certain are these terrible consequences to ensue on a life of shame, that women of this class seldom put in a year of the life without contracting one or other of the dreadful diseases which afflict and pursue them to the grave. Their time is spent between the bagnio and the hospital, and each recurrence of their disorders makes them more and more whited sepulchres, moving like an incarnate plague, dealing out poisoned contamination to their guilty male associates, a contamination that confirm in a striking way the terrible dictum of scripture, that the sins of the father shall be visited on the children unto the third and fourth generation. Verily “Her house is the way of hell, leading down to the chambers of death.”

No matter what opinion may be entertained with regard to the proper methods of

LESSENING THE EVILS OF PROSTITUTION

it is impossible to witness the downward course of its victims without regret and pity. Even in cases where the life has been chosen with the utmost deliberation from the worst of motives, it is but natural that the condign punishment that surely awaits the modern Magdalen should awaken our sympathy, and kindle in the philanthropic mind a desire to turn out of the road of such calamity the erring feet of wilful women. It is not the purpose of these sketches to preach. The aim has been merely to point out what exists in our midst, and leave public opinion in its aggregate wisdom to settle the problems which these facts present. Every right-thinking person must sympathize with the efforts that Christian men and women make to rescue this class from their lives of sin. The legislators of the province in establishing the Mercer prison, dealt with the question both in a penal and reformatory spirit. Other lesser institutions have been founded by philanthropic persons entirely reformatory and helpful in their character. Of this nature are the Magdalen asylum and the Haven. Both of these undoubtedly do commendable work. The percentage of reformations effected is certainly small, but small as it is it encourages the willing workers to go on. Their chief endeavors should be directed towards eradicating from public sentiment the feeling that the woman who loses her honor

CAN NEVER CLIMB BACK

into respectability and forgiveness again.

This is the philanthropic aspect of the base. But it has another. It has its criminal aspect.

County Crown Attorney Fenton, who is the secretary of the Society for the Prevention of Vice, was asked what his society was doing in regard to the social evil.

“The society,” he said, “is in statu quo at present. The gentlemen who compose it did what they could and got a great deal of help from the police commissioners but they could not get Major Draper into their way of thinking. Letters passed between the chief and me but nothing ever came of it. My last letter requested him to give me a list of the houses known to the police to be houses of ill fame, but this he refused to do on the ground that he did not know what use I was to make of the information.”

Here Mr. Fenton laughed very heartily.

“What were the plans of the society for the eradication of the evil?”

“I don’t think the society had any hope of wiping out the evil. All they hoped to do was to keep it in check. I know that my views were simply these. The law of the land declares that keeping a house of ill-fame, or being an inmate thereof, are offences punishable by

FINE AND IMPRISONMENT.

The chief constable and all his men are sworn to enforce the laws of the land, and I proposed they should do so in this particular class of cases.”

“There were some raids made about that time. What were the results of them?”

“Well, during the discussion of the question large numbers of the women took fright, and they left the city in droves. Quite a number were arrested when the raids were made, and a few sent to the Mercer, and more fined. Two or three keepers were frightened out of the business.”

“Didn’t the girls disappear off the public streets at that time?”

“Yes; I am told they did.”

“But are they not now as bold and as numerous as ever there?”

“I really couldn’t say. The society may give the subject its serious attention soon, and if it does, I’ll endeavor to make it as hot for these ‘high-toned’ houses as for the more miserable ones.”

The reporter could have told him that the public promenades are thronged these days with females exhibiting the richest fabrics which the shops afford.