nd no distinction
of religious creed bars their admission. This is as it should be, and
we have heard the Wells Street Home spoken of in terms of praise and
gratitude by seamen who have been boarders there. Seamen of the best
character thankfully flock to the Homes, and, consequently, captains
prefer to ship their crews from them. Mr Gore says, that in one year
112 ships were manned from the Home in Wells Street.

The Portsmouth Home was opened in April 1851, and has been greatly
supported and enlarged by the munificent contributions of the
sovereign and some of the nobility. It receives British sailors at
13s. per week for men, and 10s. for boys and apprentices. Concerning
it, Sir Edward Parry, governor of Haslar Naval Hospital, says: 'The
practice formerly prevalent with the crimps, and other sharks, of
besetting the gates of the Hospital, to waylay and beguile the
invalids on their discharge, is now almost at an end. This is, I
believe, principally to be attributed to our Portsmouth Sailors' Home,
from which establishment a boat is generally sent every discharge-day,
to give the invalids the opportunity of going there without
difficulty--the regulations of the Home being posted up in various
parts of the hospital. I am sure it is a comfort and a blessing to all
who go there.'

A Home was opened in Dublin in July 1848; and at Bristol, Plymouth,
Cork, Dundee, &c., Homes are in course of formation. A magnificent
Sailors' Home has long been in course of establishment at Liverpool;
but it is not yet opened, although nearly finished. Influential
meetings have also been held at Aberdeen, Glasgow, Greenock, &c., to
establish Homes at these several ports. No one can conceive how
absolutely necessary such institutions are but those who, like
ourselves, have seen the way in which seamen are robbed and led astray
ashore. Mr Gore gives the public a little insight into the case. 'I
visited,' says he,' a short time ago, some of the houses at Wapping
and its neighbourhood, into which the sailors are decoyed. These
houses are kept by crimps, who waylay the unsuspecting sailors; they
are by them conducted to these places, where they find music and
dancing going forward; they are induced to take up their abode there,
and are often plundered of every farthing they possess. In some
houses, I saw several foreigners; and in the days when burking was
common, many of these unfortunates were made away with. In Bristol,
when a ship arrives,