or the Reclamation of our
Fallen Sisters; and they expect self-respecting girls of that profession
to enter it....

I once attended one of these shows in a North London slum. The people
responsible for it have the impudence to send women-scouts to the West
End thoroughfares at eleven o'clock every night, there to interfere with
these girls, to thrust their attentions upon them, and, if possible,
lure them away to a service of song--Brief, Bright, and Brotherly. It
was a bitter place in a narrow street. The street was gay and loud with
humanity, only at its centre was a dark and forbidding door, reticent
and inhuman. There was no sign of good-fellowship here; no warm touch of
the flesh. It was as brutal as justice; it seemed to have builded itself
on that most horrible of all texts: "_Be just before you are generous._"

I went in at an early hour, about half-past ten, and only two victims
had been secured. The place stunk of _The Church Times_ and practical
Christianity. In the main room was a thin fire, as skimpy as though it
had been lit by a spinster, as, I suppose, it had. There was a bare deal
table. The seating accommodation was cane chairs, which I hate; they
always remind me of the Band of Hope classes I was compelled to attend
as a child. They suggest something stale and cheesy, something as
squalid as the charity they serve. On a corner table was a battered urn
and a number of earthenware cups, with many plates of thick, greasy
bread-and-butter; just the right fare to offer a girl who has put away
several benedictines and brandies. The room chilled me. Place, people,
appointments, even the name--Midnight Crusade for the Reclamation of our
Fallen Sisters--smacked of everything that is most ugly. Smugness and
super-piety were in the place. The women--I mean, ladies--who manage the
place, were the kind of women I have seen at the Palace when Gaby is on.
(For you will note that Gaby does not attract the men; it is not they
who pack the Palace nightly to see her powder her legs and bosom. They
may be there, but most of them are at the bar. If you look at the circle
and stalls, they are full of elderly, hard women, with dominant
eyebrows, leering through the undressing process, and moistening their
lips as Gaby appears in her semi-nakedness.)

The walls of the big bedroom were adorned with florid texts, tastefully
framed. It was a room of many beds, each enclosed in a cubicle. The beds
were hard, covered with coars