none are exactly to be depended on. In a great capital like
ours, where wealthy sensualists can and do pay enormous sums for the
gratification of their whims--(I have seen it stated that on one occasion
a gentleman went into a house in Norton-street with a 500 pounds
bank-note, and after staying a few hours received but 20 pounds
change)--it is not alone the professedly vicious--the class whom we call
prostitutes--who prostitute themselves. As fine shops are pointed out in
fashionable streets, which are said to be houses of the most infamous
description, in spite of the display of lace and millinery in the window,
so there are thousands of women, supposed to be respectable, and to live
in a respectable manner, who yet are to all intents and purposes
prostitutes, though they would not be classified as such. Now the number
of this latter class is much exaggerated. Towards the close of the last
century, when the population of London amounted to about a million, Dr.
Colquhoun, magistrate of the Thames Police, asserted the number of
prostitutes to be at least 50,000. If prostitution has followed the same
ratio of increase as the population, the number now must be considered as
truly appalling. But evidently the Doctor's estimate is exaggerated. At
a period much nearer to our own, Mr. Chadwick puts down the number,
excluding the City, at 7,000; Mr. Mayne, at from 8,000 to 10,000. The
City Police estimates the number at 8,000, and this estimate is supported
by Dr. Ryan, and Mr. Talbot, secretary to the Association formed in
London for the protection of young girls. This is a very high figure;
but a recent French writer tells us that in London, in the higher ranks
of life, the proportion of vicious women to virtuous are as one to three!
and in the lower ranks virtue does not exist at all!!! At any rate,
there is reason to believe that in London there are 5,000 infamous
houses. If besides we reckon up the procuresses, the keepers of low
gin-palaces and beer-shops, where women are the bait, we are lost and
bewildered, and dare not trust ourselves to give in numbers any idea of
the persons directly and indirectly connected with prostitution, or of
the sum spent annually in London on that vice alone. And all this is
carried on in the most methodical way. There are men and women whose
constant employment is to search all parts of the metropolis for fresh
victims; and to them young girls from the country and servant
maids-
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