ge a proportion this is true; there are no
data which would serve as a basis for exact estimation,[172] and it is
impossible to expect that respectable married women would admit that they
had ever been "on the streets"; they would not, perhaps, always admit it
even to themselves.

The following case, though noted down over twenty years ago, is
fairly typical of a certain class, among the lower ranks of
prostitution, in which the economic factor counts for much, but
in which we ought not too hastily to assume that it is the sole
factor.

Widow, aged thirty, with two children. Works in an umbrella
manufactory in the East End of London, earning eighteen shillings
a week by hard work, and increasing her income by occasionally
going out on the streets in the evenings. She haunts a quiet side
street which is one of the approaches to a large city railway
terminus. She is a comfortable, almost matronly-looking woman,
quietly dressed in a way that is only noticeable from the skirts
being rather short. If spoken to she may remark that she is
"waiting for a lady friend," talks in an affected way about the
weather, and parenthetically introduces her offers. She will
either lead a man into one of the silent neighboring lanes filled
with warehouses, or will take him home with her. She is willing
to accept any sum the man may be willing or able to give;
occasionally it is a sovereign, sometimes it is only a sixpence;
on an average she earns a few shillings in an evening. She had
only been in London for ten months; before that she lived in
Newcastle. She did not go on the streets there; "circumstances
alter cases," she sagely remarks. Though not speaking well of
the police, she says they do not interfere with her as they do
with some of the girls. She never gives them money, but hints
that it is sometimes necessary to gratify their desires in order
to keep on good terms with them.

It must always be remembered, for it is sometimes forgotten by socialists
and social reformers, that while the pressure of poverty exerts a markedly
modifying influence on prostitution, in that it increases the ranks of the
women who thereby seek a livelihood and may thus be properly regarded as a
factor of prostitution, no practicable raising of the rate of women's
wages could possibly serve, directly and alone, to abolish prostitution.
De Molinar