J2 Human Physiology. 



frequently before the police magistrates for being "drunk and 

 disorderly"? 



Prostitution is very open and bold in England; tolerated, 

 recognised, written about in public journals, investigated by 

 Royal Commissioners, recorded in statistics, discussed by 

 writers on medical and social science, morals, philanthropy, 

 and religion. It is contrary to law ; but the law does not even 

 attempt to suppress, and only in a bungling and spasmodic way 

 to restrict or regulate it. It is contrary to morality; yet moral, 

 respectable, and even religious people, are not ashamed to 

 grow rich upon the profits of such immorality. It is contrary 

 to religion; yet how seldom is its tolerance and support 

 denounced from the pulpit. The hundreds of houses of ill- 

 fame in London are well known to the police and public 

 authorities, but how seldom are they disturbed ; and there is no 

 thought of their being abolished. The ball-rooms, casinos, and 

 other notorious resorts of public women, are kept open year 

 after year, and many streets of London are thronged night after 

 night by thousands of these women plying their vocation 

 offering to sell themselves to every comer at the lowest prices 

 for which human bodies and souls were ever sold. I have seen 

 the infamous traffic going on in a church-yard. Philanthropic 

 societies and religious communities, like the Sisters of the Good 

 Shepherd, pluck a few brands from the burning, but the num- 

 bers seen everywhere, and the prices demanded, show that the 

 supply exceeds the demand that there are more women 

 anxious to sell their bodies for only bread enough to escape 

 from starvation than there are men ready to buy them. For 

 it is certain that women every day go into the streets to get 

 bread for sick, perhaps drunken, husbands, and needy parents, 

 and starving children, and hundreds seem to know no other 

 way to live, and are driven to this dreadful trade by sheer 

 want. And the worst of all is, that no real, generous, earnest, 

 effectual effort is made to remedy this gigantic evil. Society 



