entail on themselves, must evidently act as a sufficient reason for caution with the police.

:

6

There are penitentiaries' for the reform of fallen women; but there is a fatality about these institutions,-they want classification and the result of this defect is, that there exists a disinclination on the part of all prostitutes, except those of the very lowest class, to enter them. Indeed, how can we wonder that a woman, who, however degraded she may be in her present condition, is, nevertheless, a lady by birth, education, and feeling, should prefer perishing in misery, to being classed with women of the most abject, the most brutal, and the most uncivilised of their sex? We by no means object to the establishment of penitentiaries; but if they are to exist at all, they should be public penitentiaries, regulated by public control, and under the management and care of the legislature.

One main reason why so few steps have hitherto been taken to remove these miseries is to be found in the popular ignorance on the subject. The world at large has no idea of the facts of the case. Let us produce some calculations and statistics, furnished by the best authorities, and to be found collected in Leon Faucher's book, 'The greatest of our Social Evils,' translated and enlarged by a Physician.' It is computed that 400,000 persons are, directly and indirectly, connected with prostitution in London; and that a sum of 8,000,000l. is expended annually there on that vice alone. There are at least 5,000 brothels there, and not less than 80,000 prostitutes.* This number is, in proportion to the population of London, much greater than the number of prostitutes in Paris. Immense multitudes, of children are prostitutes in London. In eight years 2,700 cases of venereal disease, the result of prostitution, in children of from 11 to 14 years of age, were admitted into three London hospitals at the same places a still greater number were refused admission, for want of room. Two-thirds of the prostitutes of London are under 20 years of age. The great majority of the whole body are themselves thieves, and the agents and accomplices of thieves. Such a machinery for decoying, importing, and using women for the vilest purposes, exists in London, as is to be found in no other European nation. The number of years during which prostitutes in London live is, at the highest average, 7; at the lowest, 4. Many perish by suicide; many become mad. Epidemic fevers invariably carry off multitudes of them. Many end their lives as felons in gaol, or at the antipodes. Dr. Holland calculated that prostitution causes annually 1,652,500 cases of venereal disease in

* With reference to these appalling figures, we find authorities differ. The number of prostitutes is variously given as from 10,000 to 80,000. The first of these statements is bad enough, the last incredible.-ED.

England:

The Facts of the Case.

77

England but this calculation was based on the very erroneous theory, that there are not more than 50,000 prostitutes in the United Kingdom. Dr. Holland's estimate ought to be at least tripled, if not quadrupled. Of the recruits for the militia, onefourth are found, on examination, to be suffering from some form of venereal disease.

Two-thirds of the known thieves of London are in confederacy with the keepers of brothels. These houses furnish thieves with the means of refuge in case of pursuit; with complete organisation and head-quarters; and with money to baffle, or, at all events, resist justice, in case of apprehension. Of 10,000 persons arrested, in one year, in London, 3,605 were prostitutes. Yet only a small portion of the robberies and crimes committed by these women are ever brought to light; because men who have been robbed and half murdered in brothels are generally unwilling, because ashamed, to prosecute. Dr. Ryan states, that near Fleet-ditch almost every house is a low and infamous brothel. Liverpool exceeds in vice even London itself. But it is impossible to make even a probable guess at the multitude of prostitutes to be found at a given moment at this port, because they are perpetually on the move, coming and going. In Manchester, according to the last Report presented to the Watch Committee, by the head constable, Mr. Willis, in the year 1856, there were 263 brothels, and 615 prostitutes. These, in a population of 330,690, are not large numbers. But the mingling of the sexes in our manufactories must be a fruitful and frightful cause of demoralisation. In Edinburgh, with a population of 166,734, according to the valuable calculations of Mr. Tait, there are 800 public, and 1,160 secret prostitutes. These figures, however, are undoubtedly far below the truth.

M. Leon Faucher, from whose book these statistics have been taken, is an able and valuable writer. We regret, however, to see that his English editor, A Physician,' throws out constant, and, we may add, most unjust taunts against those moral and religious societies now established amongst us, and which have endeavoured to check public vice. They may have done but little, as compared with what they desire to do; but they have awakened public attention to most important social and moral questions; they have directed and concentrated public thought; they have cleared the way in the public mind for the reception of the Physician's' statistics.

We are certain that we have produced enough facts to prove the enormous and awful evils of prostitution. Our space will not permit us to do more than glance at some of its more immediate causes. The first and most striking of these is to be found in the dwellings of the poorer orders. When men, women, boys and

girls, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters;-when multitudes of people of both sexes and all ages herd and sleep together in the same room;-it is obvious that the preservation of any moral sense is impossible. Children literally begin the business of prostitution without knowing the nature of what they are doing. The details of this dreadful system have been published by Mr. Mayhew, and renewed by others, especially by Dr. Acton, in his

able book on Prostitution.

This is an evil which it ought to be a primary duty of Government to redress; and there can be no doubt that, in its grosser and more atrocious forms at least, Government could redress it.

Another immediate cause of prostitution is to be found in the inadequate wages which multitudes of women, particularly needle-. women, receive. They are we will not say driven-but strongly tempted, to gain additional money enough to furnish them with the necessaries of life, by going into the streets. The field for female labour in England is almost confined to needle-work and domestic service. Multitudes of men are employed in shop-work, which ought to be done by women.

We do not pretend that we have remedies to propose for these evils; but it is a great thing, in endeavouring to apply a remedy to a disease, whether in the natural or the political body, to ascertain the real seat and cause of it.

Dr. Acton thinks, and with justice, that educated youths should be warned and advised by their moral guides and instructors of the ruinous nature and consequences of sensual indulgence. Instead of this, the subject of all others the most important to them, is scarcely ever alluded to. We will add, that the ministers of religion ought to make this matter the subject of their discourse from the pulpit. Why is the most ruinous and degrading of all vices to be passed over in silence?

People who never hear a vice alluded to are not unreasonably apt to think it a venial vice, or one that, if not conventionally permitted, is not to be severely condemned. But when Dr. Acton proposes (p. 177) that a man who seduces a woman should be obliged to pay a sum of money to the community, recoverable in the county court or superior court, at the suit of its engine, the union,'-we cannot agree with him. It is evident that he is proposing an enactment which will have no terror for the rich man, and will lessen the enormity of sin in the judgment of the

woman.

Seduction ought to be rendered a crime in law: at present it is no crime. The law provides no penalty for it. Yet the man who really seduces a woman is a deeper villain, and commits a more cruel sin against domestic happiness, than the highwayman who lives by plunder on the road. But we must have done.

We

We have been unwillingly compelled to touch with brevity on matters of the highest import to the moral and social interests of the state; but we feel that a great point has been gained, inasmuch as the public mind has now assumed so wholesome a tone, that we can venture to treat this social evil as a legitimate subject of public discussion.

ART. VII.-Liverpool Police Report, 1857.

O Institutions can more truly adopt Meliora' as their motto and watchword than Reformatory Schools; for they not only aim at rendering better, in the highest and holiest sense, the unfortunate boys and girls who are the subject of them,-better now, far better in their future life in this world, and infinitely better prepared for the eternal state;-but they have a direct bearing on the next generation, and through it, indirectly, on all future men.

This may seem an exaggerated statement to those who take a superficial view of the subject, or who regard Reformatory Schools only as the offspring of a recent popular movement zealously taken up by a few enthusiasts, and likely soon to share the fate of so many that have had their day and disappeared. But those who comprehend the full bearing of the question, and who have taken a personal share in the work, know full well that it is not so. They believe the words of Him who cannot lie-that just as much at the present day as four thousand years ago, the iniquities of the parents are visited on the children to the third and fourth generation; and will be so for ever, unless those who strive to be fellow-workers with Christ and God, do their very utmost, using every means that experience, and wisdom, and love can dictate, to seek and to save them that are spiritually lost.

The trustful faith in all that is good and holy which the word 'meliora' implies, is especially needed in the reformatory work. Such faith gives trust that every good seed sown by an earnest loving hand will be watered by the heavenly Father's dews, and warmed into life by His sun, and that, while daily watched and tended with prayerful care, it will receive an increase given by no human means;-that a small mustard-seed now, as truly as in the days of the Apostles, may become a large and beneficent tree, shadowing thousands. Such faith had Wichern, when with his mother he gathered two or three miserable children, the outcasts of society, into his 'rough house ;'* now his spirit has gone forth,

A German engraving of Das alte Rauhe Haus,' with its large overshadowing tree, and the inmates engaged under it in their daily work, has inscribed under it, in a fac-simile of Wichern's handwriting, the verse Luc xiii. 19.'

and

and those that have been saved, first through his faithful work, none may number. So did the venerable John Pounds continue for more than thirty years, with no help but the Divine Spirit within him and his own loving heart, to draw around him as many neglected young ones as his narrow room would hold: bystanders only wondered at the strange taste of the uncouth lame old cobbler; but he was really working out every principle which has now been found essential to the true action of Ragged Schools; and these have touched with Christ's hand of mercy, and will continue to touch, millions, rather than thousands. And when more recently, Sheriff Watson, undaunted by the apparent failure of his first Industrial School, because it did not reach the very class that needed its action, knew that his principle was right, and that he must overcome all hindrances in the way of doing his Master's work, he had that same faith, though he probably little imagined that the system which he was then steadily developing would be carried out extensively and most beneficially, within no very long lapse of years, not only in his own, but in the sister country.

It is proposed in this series of papers, to state succinctly the actual position of the Reformatory movement, confining ourselves to such part of it as is directed especially to the young of the present generation, but embracing all Schools which aim at influencing a class of children, either in the way of prevention or of cure, who, through the extreme poverty, vice, or negligence of their parents, are untouched by the educational movement of our country. Our particular object will be what are commonly called Reformatory Schools, whether voluntary, or certified by Government for the legal detention of convicted children, embracing both boys and girls. Then, after having taken a general survey of the position of this movement in England, it is intended to enter into such practical details of various institutions, as may help those who either are, or purpose to be, fellow-workers in the

cause.

A few preliminary remarks are, however, needed, for on this subject a clear and distinct idea of the nature of the evil we are attempting to remove, and of its causes, is especially needed to guide us in our attempts to remove it.

Reclamation from habits of theft, which are injurious to society, is the obvious intention of Reformatories; teaching habits of industry to begging and vagrant children, and giving them food because they cannot otherwise have it, is the general notion of an Industrial School; teaching in an inferior school little ragged children who are too poor and too miserable to go to the British and National Schools, is the prevalent idea of a Ragged School. The existing evils are commonly believed to be extreme poverty,