Human Physiology. 69 



which they were enabled to take from the barracks without 

 attracting observation, by concealing the food within the lining 

 of their caps. 



Every garrison is surrounded with its colony of prostitutes ; 

 every barrack is the nucleus of a cluster of houses of ill-fame. 

 Every seaport swarms with the lower order of prostitutes. 

 Every ship in her Majesty's navy, besides officers, sailors, 

 marines, &c., has her complement of these outcasts of society, 

 who as really live on the taxes, and are provided for in the 

 estimates, as if they had honourable mention by the Secre- 

 taries. An army of so many thousand gallant men means 

 another army of so many hundred abandoned women. And 

 the civil population of every town has its own similar provision 

 its multitude of victims to what many believe to be an 

 inevitable condition of things a necessity of civilisation. 



Every class of men, single and married for, as we shall 

 soon see, it is not the single alone for whom the " social evil" 

 exists has its corresponding class of women, from those who 

 drive in their elegant carriages in the West End Parks to those 

 who frequent the dancing-rooms in RatclifTe Highway from 

 those whose portraits adorn the shop-windows of Regent 

 Street, to the lowest street-walkers of the lowest streets of the 

 metropolis. And among them one sees, at times, beauty, 

 grace, kindness, tenderness, and often a frank simplicity and 

 honesty of character, which compel respect and pity, and 

 one ceases to wonder that great numbers of such find men 

 who are willing to forget what they have been, and rescue 

 them from the evil course into which they have been pushed, 

 or have fallen. 



Miss Mulock tells us that many are lost through pure ignor- 

 ance, and that the best girls are most likely to be seduced. She 

 has found them capable of deep love and self-sacrifice, and of 

 becoming excellent mothers and nurses. Mr. Acton stated to 

 a Commission of the House of Lords, that London prostitutes 



