6 8 Hitman Physiology. 



sixteen, thrown upon the streets of London, is something so 

 frightful to contemplate, that I cannot wonder if many people 

 resolutely shut their eyes against such horrors. It is so dread- 

 ful, and it seems so hopeless ! 



The portion of London lying along the Docks, east of 

 London Bridge, with its large floating population of native and 

 foreign sailors, and its vast and crowded resident population 

 of dock labourers, coalwhippers, &c., presents a spectacle of 

 human depravity such as can be found only in great English and 

 American seaports. The principal streets seem to consist chiefly 

 of public-houses ; the side streets are lines of brothels. Of 230 

 houses in one district of the parish of St. George's in the East, 1 50 

 are houses of ill-fame, mostly belonging to publicans, who own, 

 the women; as really as a Cuban proprietor owns his negroes. 

 Every public-house, as a rule, has its dancing-room behind the 

 bar-room; and every week-day night the blowsy and tipsy girls 

 o^the house, tricked out in coarse finery, and exposing their 

 persons as freely as a West End belle, induce the sailors to 

 dance, drink, -treat, get rid of their senses and money as soon as 

 possible, so that after a few days and nights of drunken debauch, 

 in which they are robbed of the earnings of months, they may 

 be sent dead drunk upon an outward-bound ship, and tugged 

 down the river. 



This is life at the East End of London. I have alluded to 

 the fact of somi. scores of wretched girls sleeping in the sum- 

 mer in Hyde fjPark ; others have been arrested for making, 

 their home in the Great Park at Windsor, sleeping under the 

 trees, washing their faces and clothes in the Deer Pond, and 

 running abcut half naked while they were drying on the 

 trees. For combs they used small pieces of wood, or lucifer 

 matches, a?id their rude toilettes had been performed without 

 shame in, the presence of the general public, and ladies in 

 carriages as they passed through the park. They were princi- 

 pally supported by the soldiers, who brought them their rations,. 



