66 Human Physiology. 



are by males, the earth would be a paradise. Human depra- 

 vity is shown in nothing more painfully than in the treatment 

 of women in marriage and in prostitution in marriage, when 

 it is made the excuse of gross licentiousness and cruelty ; in 

 prostitution, when thousands of women, girls, and young chil- 

 dren, are made the victims of the selfishness and lusts of men. 

 Women in England work in brickfields, chemical works, glass 

 houses, paper mills, shoddy mills, glue works, nail works, fields 

 and gardens; toil at many hard and repulsive employments. 

 Forty-three thousand work as out-door agricultural labourers ; 

 but Mr. Lecky estimates that not less than 50,000 are driven 

 to the far more degrading slavery of prostitution. He puts the 

 number in London at 18,000. Of 9000 in one English sea. 

 port, 1500 were under 15 years of age. 



" Woman is driven into prostitution," says the Westminster 

 Review ', "by the weight of all society pressing upon her." She 

 is forcibly excluded from many professions and employments ; 

 she is paid less than men in most of those which are permitted 

 to her; advantage is taken of her ignorance, her innocence, her 

 affections. In thousands of instances, she is the victim oi 

 fraud or violence, and becomes first the victim of one man, and 

 then, deserted by him, of many. 



It is stated that upwards of 400 persons in this country get 

 their living by trepanning girls from eleven to fifteen years old 

 for the purposes of prostitution. Many houses in London are 

 kept solely for girls of tender age, and frequented chiefly by old 

 men. Hundreds of women follow the trade of pimp, or pro- 

 curess, and get young and ignorant girls from the country or 

 from foreign countries, by agents, or advertisements offering 

 "nployment Men advertise for servants, apprentices, even 



^messes, to get girls into their power, whom they seduce, 



if necessary, or ravish with the aid sometimes of former 



. and then plunge them into a life of prostitution for 



Y vn gain. Sisters corrupt sisters, and mothers prostitute 



