XXI. RUSSIA…

XXI. RUSSIA

Ancient Manners.--Peter the Great.--Eudoxia.--Empress Catharine, her dissolute Conduct and Death.--Peter's Libertinism.--Anne.-- Elizabeth.--Catharine II., infamous Career and Death.--Paul.-- Alexander I.--Countess Narishkin.--Nicholas.--Court Morality.-- Serfage.--Prostitution in St. Petersburg.--Excess of Males over Females.--Marriage Customs.--Brides' Fair.--Conjugal Relations among the Russian Nobility.--Foundling Hospital of St. Petersburg.-- Illegitimacy.

The brutality, drunkenness, and debauchery which accompany semi-barbarism, and of which the old Russian manners had more than a due proportion, continued to be characteristic of the people of that country until a very recent period; while their amiability, their plastic disposition, their highly imitative faculty in the arts, and their capabilities of improvement, are noted by many writers. Just emerged from savage life as a nation, they have been moulded and welded as one mass by the steady and undeviating policy of their sovereigns, among whom we have examples of vast mental powers and towering ambition, combined with the lowest depravity and the most shameless profligacy, exemplifying in the same individual the extremes of human nature.

Previous to Peter the Great, Russia was comparatively unknown, and in the Elizabethan age of England the Czar of Muscovy was considered only as a barbarian, whose subjects were far inferior in civilization to the Tartars of the Crimea. Indeed, it was not till the eighteenth century that the Russians were admitted within the pale of European politics, or their power reckoned as an element in the calculations of statesmen.

The most important, we might almost say the only lawgiver previous to Peter the Great, was Ivan III., who reigned in the early part of the sixteenth century. Among the laws of that period, which were all sanguinary, was one fixing the value of a female life, in case of death by misadventure, at half the life of a man. Slavery was the institution of the state, each child being the absolute property of its parent. The women were more enslaved than among the Asiatics, no law protecting them against their husband's violence. A wife who killed her husband was to be buried alive up to the neck, and a guard was set around her to see that no one supplied her with food or the means of ending her sufferings.[271] Females lived in the strictest seclusion, and had no weight nor authority in the household. Their duties were to spin, to sew, and to do menial work.

Peter I. came to the throne, as most Russian sovereigns have done, either through intrigue or usurpation. Both before and after Peter, the will and caprice of the ruling power was paramount. He might appoint his successor, either during life or by will, and such appointment was often set aside by a more powerful competitor. In Peter's public life, in his aspirations for the general welfare, in his self-devotion, in his conceptions of all that was wanting to his country's elevation and greatness, and in his iron will and supernatural energy, he was a hero; in his private life, in his passions, his tastes and habits, he was on a level with the lowest of mankind.

Our object is the delineation of national characteristics, and individual propensities or delinquencies are unimportant except so far as they illustrate national character. It has been well observed that a people's virtue or vice does not consist in the arithmetical increase or decrease of immoral actions, but in the prevailing sentiment of an age or people, which condemns or approves them. It is in this respect that the conduct of monarchs and courtiers becomes of importance in the estimate of national manners, especially in a despotism. The Czar of Russia is at once the religious and political leader of his people, and his personal conduct becomes the standard of their moral relations, offering encouragement and support to the good, or sanction and justification to the depraved.

Peter's first wife, Eudoxia, was a woman of virtue and merit. Neither her youth nor beauty secured the affections of her husband. She did not escape the voice of slander. Gleboff, her alleged lover, was impaled by Peter, who went to see him writhing in his death agonies, when the wretched man avenged himself in the only way left him: he spat in the Czar's face. Eudoxia was subsequently sent to a nunnery at Moscow by Peter's orders, and at last took the veil under the name of Helena.

Scarcely had Peter attained the crown when he formed a connection with Catharine. The romantic history of her origin and elevation is too well known to repeat here. Her husband, a Swedish dragoon, was living; and she was the mistress first of Marshal Sheremeloff, then of Mentchikoff, in whose house Peter saw her, and whence he took her. She acquired great influence over the Czar's untamed ferocity, and, to her infinite credit, this influence was always used to mitigate the fearful rigor of his punishments, and to soothe his otherwise implacably revengeful spirit. During the lifetime of her husband and of his first wife, Peter married her.

The pleasing traits of Catharine's character were obscured by the irregularity of her life. Raised, by the affection of Peter, to the imperial throne, she set an example of dissoluteness to her subjects. There is ample reason for believing that she had several intrigues during Peter's lifetime, but the case of Moens de la Croix is beyond question, and the discovery of her infidelity in this instance led to her separation from Peter and the death of her lover.

In 1724, after the campaign against the Turks, in which Catharine had accompanied the Czar, and had, by her spirit and example, kept up the courage of the army amid great difficulties and reverses, Peter determined on publicly crowning her; a ceremony very unusual in Russia, and almost tantamount to declaring her his successor.

Moens de la Croix was the young brother of Anne de la Croix, one of Peter's early mistresses. He was Catharine's chamberlain. His office brought him in close attendance on the empress, and an intimacy was established. This was for a time notorious to every one except Peter himself. At length, however, his suspicions were aroused, and, by setting spies on Catharine, he became a personal witness to her infidelity. The first explosion of his resentment was terrific, and he was on the point of executing both the empress and her paramour, but by the temperate advice of some of his friends, who counseled him to avoid a scandal, it was determined to arrest Moens on a false charge of conspiracy.

Moens and his sister were accordingly seized and confined in an apartment in the winter palace. Peter permitted nobody to approach them, and took them their food with his own hands. When they were examined as to the conspiracy, Moens, to save the empress with the public, confessed to every thing. He was accordingly condemned and beheaded. His sister was knouted and sent to Siberia.

Catharine had presented her lover with her miniature on a bracelet, which he always wore. As he walked to his death, he managed to deliver it, unperceived, to the Lutheran minister who accompanied him, with instructions to convey it back to the empress privately, which was accomplished. The Czar was a spectator of the execution, after which the head of the culprit was fixed on a stake, according to custom. To terrify Catharine the more effectually, Peter drove her round the head of her lover. Happily for her, she managed to preserve self-control during the torture of this horrid spectacle. After this the Czar only spoke to her in public.

At Peter's death, Catharine ascended the throne of Russia by virtue of a pretended dying declaration of her husband. She went through a pantomime of sorrows and tears over his body, but, as soon as she was firmly seated, she abandoned herself to pleasure and voluptuousness, and had two lovers, Prince Sapicha and Loewenwolden, at the same time. "These two rivals equally strove to please her, and alternately received proofs of her tenderness, without suffering their happiness to be marred by jealousy." The irregularity of the empress's life, and her intemperate use of ardent liquors, hastened her death, which took place in her thirty-ninth year.

Peter himself was a wretched example of conjugal infidelity and low debauchery. His associates were often of the very lowest of the populace. It is true that in his time the highest were not much removed from their inferiors in decency of manners; while the inferiors often had the advantage, if not of intellectual cultivation, at least of practical intelligence, in which Peter took delight. He spent many of his hours drinking brandy and other liquors with sailors, carpenters, and artisans, irrespective of his temporary assumption of the working man's pursuits. He consorted indiscriminately with women of all sorts and conditions. Eventually he contracted the venereal disease. From neglect, and the general depravity of his life, the disease became so aggravated that at last it proved the indirect cause of his death. He himself used to say that he had taken it from Madame Tchnertichoff, wife of the general and diplomatist of that name. Upon the fact being mentioned to her, whether casually or with malice prepense does not appear, she is reported to have replied very naïvely that she had not given it to him, but that he, on the contrary, had such loose habits and low associates that he had given it to her.[272]

It was in 1722 that Peter was attacked with this malady, and while suffering from it he marched into Persia, and shared the fatigues of the meanest soldier throughout the campaign. The heat, drought, and constant dust increased the disease frightfully, and the pains became so excruciating that he could not conceal them from his immediate attendants. Still, however, he would not consult the court physician, but directed his servant to get advice as if for some one else. He then went to the hot baths of Plonetz, and apparently recovered. But it seems the disease was not cured; it was merely palliated by this treatment, and he was obliged, on a relapse, to have recourse to the regular physicians, and for three months his life was despaired of. At last he recovered; but now, in spite of all warnings, he resumed his usual habits of life, renewed his long and severe journeys, his public works, and his general activity of mind and body, while he in nowise amended other and more injurious pursuits and practices.

On November 5, 1724, while on a journey to Finland, he stopped at the port of Lachta. There, from the shore, he saw a small vessel full of soldiers and sailors which had struck upon a shoal. Perceiving their imminent danger, he shouted to them, but the boisterous wind drowned his voice. He sprang into a skiff, pulled out to the shoal, and, having reached the vessel, jumped into the water, got her off, and landed the passengers all safe. He neglected all the precautions necessary in the then state of his health, and was seized with violent fever, and at the same time his former pangs came on with all their old force. He was taken back to St. Petersburg, where he obtained partial relief from his sufferings. He employed one of his intervals of ease in celebrating the great festival of blessing the waters of the Neva, and by his intemperance in the festivities renewed his attack, and after a period of protracted agony, died on the 28th of January, 1725.

Peter is described as having been excessively libidinous in temperament, and his coarse promiscuous amours were made the common subject of his jocularity, even in the presence of Catharine. He was even addicted to abominable depravities, which are stated by contemporary writers to have been the common practice of the Russians at that time.[273] Peter at times gave way to fits of lust, in which, like a furious beast, he regarded neither age nor sex. Unnatural vices were punished in the Russian army at this time by an express military regulation, and the crime was a standing reproach with the people, who were said to have acquired it from the Greeks of the lower empire.[274]

Anne, the successor of Peter and Catharine, had two publicly avowed lovers--Dolgorouki and Ernest John Biren. The latter was the better known, as his influence and importance during Anne's reign were very great. Dolgorouki had become one of the deputies to announce to Anne her succession to the throne, which office he accepted, with the hope of being able to resume his former intimate relations with his future sovereign. When he entered the apartments, he found a man in mean apparel seated by the side of the princess. He ordered him to withdraw, and, upon his inattention to the order, took him by the arm to turn him out, when the empress stopped him. This unknown person was Biren, who became regent of the empire.[275]

Anne was not sunk in the same abyss of profligacy as her successor Elizabeth, nor in brutality as her ancestor Peter. She had been brought up in Courland, and had acquired some little refinement of ideas and manners. Gluttony and drunkenness were somewhat less in vogue at her court, but dissipation, ruinous gambling, and boundless extravagance were in full fashion. The whole court became a body of buffoons and jokers, and the most absurd and preposterous fashions of dress, the rudest and most boisterous romps and gambols were generally practiced. As a specimen of court manners, the practical joke played on Prince Galitzin, in which there was as much malice as fun, may be remembered.

Having given offense by changing his religion, the prince was compulsorily married to a girl of the lowest birth. A palace was built in his honor, but the material was ice, and all the furniture was composed of the same. The wedding procession, consisting of more than three hundred persons in their national costumes, who had been collected from all the provinces of Russia, passed along the streets. The newly-married couple were mounted in a pagoda on the back of an elephant. When the ball was over, the bride and bridegroom were conducted to their nuptial chamber, like the rest of the house, all of ice, and were there installed in an ice bedstead, and guards were posted at the door to prevent them escaping from the room before morning.

Anne died in 1740, and, after a short interregnum, Elizabeth, daughter of Peter I., came to the throne. She inherited all her father's vices and sensuality, but none of his great qualities. Before she became empress, Elizabeth had outraged all propriety; had openly carried on an improper intercourse with the sub-officers and soldiers of the guards who had been quartered near her dwelling. The lust and drunkenness in which she wallowed indisposed her from all longings after greatness. But there were others who needed her name, and a conspiracy being formed, she became empress in spite of herself. Her chief paramour at the time was Grunstein, sergeant in the guards, who was elevated to the rank of major-general. The other soldiers and non-commissioned officers who had been the ministers of her lewdness were made officers. These individuals frequented the common public houses, got drunk, made their way into the houses of persons of condition, and committed all sorts of depredations with impunity. When the men who could boast of the empress's favors became intolerable, they were drafted off to the army, as officers in regiments on service.

Elizabeth is said to have been privately married to Razamoffsky, as also to the well-known Chevalier d'Eon, who visited the court of Russia in the disguise of a woman, and undoubtedly enjoyed Elizabeth's favors, whatever may be the truth about her marriage to him. Elizabeth withdrew herself for whole months from business, and was drunk for days or even weeks consecutively. She had a reputation for humanity; but, although she sentenced no one to death, not less than eighty thousand of her subjects were tortured or sent to Siberia during her reign. Her extravagance was such that when she died there were in her wardrobe some fifteen thousand dresses, thousands of pairs of sleeves, and several hundred pieces of French and other silks.

Catharine II. of Russia was, like Peter, a compound of the noblest intellectual endowments, with a moral organization of unsurpassed depravity. She has usually been considered a monster of lust; but she was no less infamous for her cruelty, and for the total absence of all those qualities and feelings which form the chief grace and beauty of woman's inner life. Her favorite dining-room in the Tauric palace was adorned with pictures representing the sacking of Ohkzakoff and Ismail, in which the painter had surpassed the gloomy vision of a Carravaggio, and had depicted the assault, the carnage, the mutilation, and all the hideous details of such scenes. In these Catharine is said to have taken great delight. She hated music, and never could permit other sounds than those of drums, trumpets, and similar barbaric instruments within her hearing; and yet it is said that, in her outset in life as Princess of Anhalt Zerbst, she had a womanly heart, delicacy of taste, and refinement of intellect;[276] that it was not till long after her husband, Peter III., had insulted her by open neglect of her very winning person and youthful graces, and had abandoned her for the vulgar and ugly Princess Woronzoff, that she committed herself to the terrible career which she afterward pursued so steadily.

The Duchesse d'Abrantes, in her memoir of Catharine, tells us that her first lover, Soltikoff, was forced upon her as a matter of public policy by the crafty and unscrupulous Bestujeff, the able minister of Elizabeth, for the sake of procuring an heir to the Grand Duke Peter. Catharine remonstrated, and threatened to complain. "To whom will you complain?" asked the minister, coldly. Catharine submitted, and accepted the lover thus imposed upon her. At the time of this adultery for expediency sake, Catharine was deeply intent upon study, with a view to qualify herself worthily for her future destiny, disgusted as she was with the indecencies of the Russian court!

Subsequently, it was considered expedient to remove Soltikoff. Catharine had given birth to a child, and was not pleased with this dismissal; but the impassible Bestujeff only sneered at her remonstrances and professions of affection for the dismissed lover, and recommended her to choose another. This was a lesson she was not slow to carry out. The list of her paramours was little less numerous than that of Elizabeth.

After Catharine had caused Peter III. to be murdered, and had ascended the throne as empress in her own right, she abandoned herself to the fullest gratification of her passions, both royal and personal. Besides the vulgar crowd whom she selected as the recipients of her filthy favors, the world knew, as the public and recognized paramours, the names of Orloff, by whom she had a son called Count Bobruski, Wassilitchikoff, Potemkin, Louskoi, Mornonoff, and Zuboff.

These were appointed in a manner that was reduced to a system, and an etiquette was established as precise as that of naming a state minister. When Catharine was tired of her present favorite, one of her intimate friends was commissioned to look out for another. At other times, her notice having fallen on some young man who pleased her fancy, she signified her wishes to some female friend, and thereupon an entertainment was arranged at the lady's house, which the empress honored with her presence, and thereby gained an opportunity of closer acquaintanceship with the chosen individual. He then received orders to attend at the palace, where he was introduced to the court physician, and examined as to his general health and physical condition. After this he was placed under the charge of a certain Mademoiselle Protasoff.[277] The various examinations having been successfully passed, the favorite was installed into the regular apartments of office, which were immediately contiguous to those of the empress. On the first day of his installation he received one hundred thousand rubles (about twenty-five thousand dollars) for linen, and an allowance of twelve thousand rubles per month; besides which, all his household expenses were defrayed. He was required to attend the empress wherever she went, and was not permitted to leave the palace without her permission. He might not converse familiarly with other women, and if he dined with his friends, it was imperative that the mistress of the house should be absent.

When a favorite had completed his term of service he received orders to travel, and from that moment all access to her majesty was denied. The favorites rarely rebelled against their destiny in this particular; but Potemkin and Orloff, who had far other views than those of dalliance, had the temerity to disobey the order, and succeeded in retaining power and the friendship of the empress long after their personal claims on her tenderness were at an end. On terminating the intimacy, the favorite usually received magnificent gifts. Potemkin, after he had ceased his functions as favorite, became pander to his royal mistress, thereby securing the double advantage of the favor of the empress and the patronage of the favorite, from whom he levied a handsome fee for the introduction. Potemkin and Orloff were at one period rivals, in which contest Orloff was at last defeated; but when Potemkin reached his pride of place, he became so necessary to Catharine in his higher capacity that he set up and pulled down the favorite of the hour as he pleased, and even ventured upon the most extravagant flights of insolence and personal disrespect to the empress. Orloff had been also the rival of Poniatowski, but his superior capacity and brutal energy of will made him respected and feared by Catharine long after she had ceased to like him.

The pecuniary results to the state, enormous as was the plunder, was perhaps the least of the evils sustained through this system of iniquity. The registered gifts to the twelve favorites amounted to upward of one hundred million dollars.[278] Lanskoi, who had held no political offices, and the whole of whose fortune was drawn from the flagitious profits of his post of dishonor, died, after less than four years of office, worth, in cash only, and exclusive of valuables, seven millions of rubles. Potemkin's wealth, which was accumulated from all sources of public robbery and private extortion, was fabulous. At his death he owned two hundred thousand serfs; he had whole cupboards filled with gold coin, jewels, and bank-bills; he held thirty-two orders, and his fortune was estimated at sixty million dollars.[279]

In the closing days of Catharine's reign she found a lower deep into which to plunge. When upward of sixty, she took into office, as her favorite, Zuboff, who was not quite twenty-five. She now formed the Society of the Little Hermitage. This was a picked company of wits and libertines, of both sexes, over whose scenes of debauchery and revelry the empress presided. An inner penetralia even of these orgies was established, and called the Little Society.

The pernicious influence of such an example, set for so long a period of time by a sovereign distinguished for ability, and whose reign had been rendered famous by its successful foreign enterprises, was the almost universal corruption of the Russian court and aristocracy of both sexes. The women, in imitation of her majesty, kept men, with the title and office of favorites. This was as customary as any other piece of fashion, and was recognized by husbands. Tender intrigues were unknown; strong passion was still more rare; marriage was merely an association. There was a club, called the club of natural philosophers, which was a society of men and women of the highest classes, the object of whose meetings was indiscriminate sexual intercourse. The members met to feast, and after the banquet they retired in pairs chosen by lot. This club was afterward put down by the Russian police, in common with all other secret societies. A hospital was founded by Catharine for fifty ladies affected with venereal disease. These were all to be taken care of; no question was permitted as to name or quality, and the linen of the establishment was marked with the significant word "discretion."

Catharine's end was sudden and frightful. She had grown corpulent, and her legs and body had swollen and burst. She moved about with considerable difficulty, although her imperious will would not allow her to give way in her career either of ambition or profligacy. She was at the Little Hermitage November 4, 1796, in remarkably high spirits, and even joked her buffoon, Leof Nauskin, among other things, as to his death and his fears thereupon. The next morning the dread messenger, of whose advent she had made sport, brought his orders for her. She fell into an apoplectic fit, and, after thirty-seven hours of insensibility, died unblessing and unblessed, to be succeeded by Paul, her detested son by her first lover Soltikoff.

The emperor, or as he was better known by Napoleon's sobriquet, the mad Emperor Paul, was too remarkable for his eccentricities to make himself conspicuous for his gallantries. Even in this particular he preserved his eccentricity. He neglected his wife, an amiable and handsome woman, the mother of Alexander and Nicholas, for an ugly mistress, Mademoiselle Nelidoff, and for another, Mademoiselle Lapukhin, who would not accept his addresses, but to whom he nevertheless professed the patient devotion of Don Quixote. The most noteworthy circumstance, in this connection, of Paul's life was the indirect effect of female frailty in procuring his murder. The enemies who subsequently plotted his downfall and destruction procured their return from banishment through the offices of a certain Mademoiselle Chevalier, a French actress who ruled Kutaisoff, who on his part ruled the Czar.

As we approach our own times, the description of historical characters becomes liable to the tinge of prejudice or partiality.

Alexander, the son and successor of Paul, was distinguished by the amenity of his disposition and the philosophical tone of his political theories. He was married at an early age by order of his grandmother Catharine, who in his case insisted on making him a good husband, and took numerous precautions for that purpose, all of which her example neutralized or belied. The selection made for him might, under the conditions of humble life or a free choice, have turned out happily. As it was, he preferred the society of the ladies of his court, and in particular of the Countess Narishkin, by whom he had three children. The countess proved inconstant, and all his children by her died, to Alexander's deep grief.

After the loss of these illegitimate children, the affections of Alexander were turned toward the empress, whose true worth he recognized when it was too late. She was struck with disease, and he was on a journey to Southern Russia to select a suitable spot for a residence for her, when he was seized with the fever of which he died.

If Alexander's mild character had but little influence on his subjects, the name of his successor, Nicholas, has been identified with the very existence of the Russian people, as much as any sovereign since Peter the Great. His example and expressed will have had immense effect, both for good and evil. It is almost impossible to arrive at the true character of Nicholas at the present time, for the reasons just mentioned. In his private life as husband and father, and in his public life as ruler and politician, writers are diametrically opposed to each other. Party prejudice denies him all worth, or makes him a very Socrates. Golovin and authors of the democratic school affirm, in addition to his other offenses, that Nicholas had several illegitimate children, and also "that no woman could feel herself secure from Nicholas's importunities;" while writers like Von Tietz, Jermann, and other panegyrists of the Russian court, describe Nicholas as an exemplary husband and father, a model to his subjects in his domestic relations. They allege farther, that the gross immorality which has been the chief feature of Russian society was very much discouraged, and rendered altogether unfashionable by the estimable manners of the imperial family.

Truth is rarely found in extremes. The prevalent usage among sovereigns in this century has been "to assume a virtue if they have it not," and to maintain a respectable exterior for the sake of public opinion. So politic a ruler as Nicholas was not likely to reject this. He did all that could be done to bring virtue into good repute at court. But too many little incidents are told of him to justify a belief in his perfect spotlessness. The characters of individuals, even as rulers, would be unimportant to us were it not that in Russia society is in a transition state, and shows itself plastic in the hands of an energetic emperor. "The state! I am the state!" was perfectly true in the mouth of Nicholas. By his subjects he was held in an esteem little short of idolatry, and he was, in every sense of the word, the most remarkable man in his vast dominions.

Thompson, an English traveler, who has spoken very favorably of the personal worth of the Emperor Nicholas, says of the morality of the upper classes among the Russians, "Denied the advantages of rational amusement and innocent social enjoyments, deprived of those resources which, while they dispel ennui, elevate the feelings, the mind resorts to sensual indulgences and to the gratification of the passions for the purpose of finding recreation and relief from the deadening pressure of despotism. Immorality and intrigue are of universal prevalence, and (in a social sense) are hardly looked upon as criminal acts, while gambling and debauchery are the natural consequences of the tedious monotony from which all seek to escape by indulging in gross and vicious excitement."

Under the system of serfage, now approaching its end, it was almost impossible that there should be such a thing as public morality in the lower classes. The Russians, both noble and serf, are false and dishonest to a proverb. Prostitution in such cases is a superfluous term: a woman had no right or opportunity to be virtuous.

The morality of St. Petersburg is undoubtedly of the lowest, and yet we have not met with any accounts of local prostitution there. It is a city of men, containing one hundred thousand more males than females.[280] Kelly says the women form only two sevenths (2/7) of the entire population, and calls it "an alarming fact." The climate is unfavorable to female beauty, and it is generally conceded that the men are handsomer than the women. The German girls have an almost exclusive reputation for good looks in St. Petersburg. By reason of the disproportion of the sexes, it is said that ladies can not venture out unattended. This is etiquette among the higher classes of all Continental Europe, and the simple fact, without the reason, would not be surprising.

The attention to minutiæ which distinguishes a despotism, and which is so remarkable a feature of Russian state craft, does not allow us to suppose there are no statistical papers on the subject of prostitution; on the contrary, it is perfectly well known that such are in existence. The secrecy which is scrupulously maintained in all public matters, and the watchful vigilance of the police over strangers, prevents them obtaining any information except on the most patent and notorious subjects. The remarks of travelers on Russian society are very vague and general, and unsupported by any of those details which could alone authenticate them.

We have already alluded to the ancient Oriental seclusion of women among the Russians. This was so strict that a suitor never saw, or at least was presumed never to have seen, the face of his bride before marriage. In 1493, Ivan the Great told a German embassador who demanded his daughter in marriage for the Margrave of Baden, that Russians never showed their daughters to any one before the match was decided. Peter the Great abolished this lottery, and directed that the parties might see each other, but he still found it necessary to promulgate a strong ukase against parents compelling children to marry against their wishes.

The compromise of the ancient custom which has been brought about by this law is that the elders of the family usually pre-contract for the juniors: then succeeds the bridal promenade, at which the young people, if unknown to each other, are led accidentally to meet in the same walk. Having thus managed an interview, the father of the young man, if all the preliminaries have been satisfactory so far, sends to the bride's father, and a general family meeting takes place, at which the arrangements are completed, the dowry determined, and then follows the betrothal. The elect pair kneel down on a fur mat and exchange rings. The preparations for the marriage are commenced, during which time the lovers have frequent opportunities of meeting and becoming better known to each other; this is a general period of visiting and parties. On the wedding-day the bridemaids unbraid the lady's hair, and she receives her husband with flowing locks. This is a remnant of ancient Russian usage, when the greatest outrage that could be committed on a woman was to unbraid her hair. It is generally believed that among the lower orders the wife is bound to draw off her husband's boots on the wedding-day, and also that the Russian peasant beats his wife at the commencement of her married life, so as to indicate supremacy. As to the substantial observance of the latter practice modern travelers differ, although it would seem that symbolically it is still maintained.[281]

A curious exhibition takes place on Whitsunday in the Petersburg summer garden, called "The Bride's Fair." All the marriageable daughters of the Russian tradesmen turn out on that day for a promenade. The young men, in their best attire, come forth to view them. The brides expectant do not limit their display to their charms, but second them by attractions of a more substantial character, adorning themselves with trinkets, jewels, or even now and then with silver tea-spoons, plate, and other valuables useful in housekeeping. This has been inveighed against as indicative of the prevalent indelicacy of the Russians, a sort of bride-market. Is it more reprehensible than many customs nearer home? It is now, however, falling into disuse.

The conjugal relations of the Russian nobility were extremely loose and indefensible during the time when vice was fashion, and virtue in a courtier would have been deemed condemnation of the higher powers. Then, and even down to the reign of the Emperor Nicholas, marriage was simply an affair of convenience--the husband living at Moscow or St. Petersburg, the wife in Paris or Italy; such separations frequently lasting for years.[282]

The Foundling Hospital at St. Petersburg, the Wospitatelnoi Dom, is the most magnificent foundation of the kind in Europe, and it pleases the authorities to give information upon its features. The endowments are enormous, owing to the munificence of successive sovereigns, who have made it a kind of state caprice. The annual expenditure exceeds five millions two hundred thousand rubles.[283] The number of children in this institution is commensurate with its wealth. Upward of twenty-five thousand are constantly enrolled on its books.

The lodge is open day and night for the reception of infants. The daily average of children brought is about twenty. The only question asked is if the child has been baptized, and by what name. If not baptized, the ceremony is performed by a priest of the Greek Church. At the time of leaving, the mother receives a ticket, the duplicate of which is placed around the child's neck. The mortality which takes place among these helpless victims of sin and misfortune is enormous. Some die in the lodge when just received; more perish during the tedious ceremonies of their baptism, which last several hours. The total number of deaths among children in the asylum and those out at nurse is probably three thousand per annum, or about one in four of the whole number committed to its charge.[284]

The children are given in care of wet nurses for about six weeks, when they are sent into the country until six years old. They are then brought back to the institution and educated in a superior manner; the girls being qualified as governesses in Russian families, and the boys as artisans in the imperial manufactories. In cases of special capacity, they receive a scientific or musical education.

An incident which is said to have occurred at this institution has gone the rounds of the press. The story is, that one of the young women having given birth to an infant, and the delinquent not being discovered, the Emperor Nicholas heard of the occurrence, and made a visit of inspection. Having summoned the pupils before him, he demanded to know the guilty one, adding that, if she came forward, she should be pardoned. No one obeyed the invitation, and he was going away, with threats of disgracing the whole body, when one girl, to save her companions, came forward, threw herself at his feet, and confessed her fault. Nicholas kicked her out of the way, exclaiming that it was too late.[285]

A Lying-in Hospital is one of the appendages of this establishment. Pregnant women may enter there four weeks before their confinement, and the strictest secrecy is maintained as to their name and character. Even the omnipotent Czar respects the privileges of the place.

The institution at Moscow is on a similarly gigantic scale, and is managed after the same fashion.

The empress is the mother of the foundlings, which, be it observed, are mostly the children of such as can not or do not desire to keep their offspring. Free access, on appointed days, is permitted to the parents of the children; and, under special circumstances, the empress will permit a child to be removed from the institution, if the parents prove their means and disposition to support it properly.

Kohl, who gives us particular, and even minute accounts of the management and arrangement of the public hospitals, makes no mention whatever of the syphilitic wards. The high system of efficiency in which the military infirmaries are maintained might have encouraged a hope for more detailed information on this subject.

XXII. SWEDEN AND NORWAY

Comparative Morality.--Illegitimacy.--Profligacy in Stockholm.-- Infanticide.--Foundling Hospitals.--Stora Barnhordst.--Laws against Prostitution.--Toleration.--Government Brothels.--Syphilis.--Marriage in Norway.

The ancient Scandinavian peninsula, land of the Scald and the Rune, with its Vikings and Beisckers, has sent down to us many a legend of war and conquest, but few of social manners or moral relations. The high esteem in which the ancient Germans held their women, and the affinity of laws and customs between the Norsemen and the Teutons, justify us in believing that the blue-eyed maids of the Scandinavian heroes were as much respected for virtue as beloved for beauty. The eternal virgins in the Walhalla of Western mythology were not associated with the grosser pleasures with which the impure fancy of the Koran invested the houris of the Mohammedan Paradise; and the Norsemen, through their posterity, the Normans, introduced, among the other amenities of chivalry, that prominent obligation of true knighthood, "devoir aux dames," perhaps not the least humanizing incident of the institution.

Passing, by a long stride, at once to modern times, we find in the joint kingdom of Sweden and Norway two territories as distinct in their social condition as they are in their geographical divisions. Norway has always been remarkable for a simple and hardy population of fishermen and small farmers, elements in the highest degree favorable to virtue and independence, and their poverty and isolation from the continental interests of Europe have exempted them from politics and war. Sweden, on the other hand, though not much wealthier as a nation, has had an hereditary nobility, and the ambition and ability of some of her monarchs, especially of the great Gustavus, caused her to play a part in history wholly disproportionate to her territorial importance. If, however, the historical significance of Sweden be somewhat greater than that of the less pretentious sister kingdom, statistics do not accord to the former the same estimation, in point of morals, as they concede to the latter.

The average of illegitimate births, though not infallible, is generally accepted as a fair test of the immorality of a people. Taken by this standard, Sweden ranks lower than almost any country of Europe. But if the character of the general population be indifferent, that of Stockholm "out-Herods Herod."

In Stockholm, in 1838, there were 1137 illegitimate to 1577 legitimate; in 1839 there were 1074 illegitimate to 1492 legitimate births.

The average of illegitimate to other births in the capital and throughout the country was as follows:[286]

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | | 1835. | 1838. | 1839. | |-----------------------|------------|------------|------------| |In Stockholm | 1 in 2·44 | 1 in 2·47 | 1 in 2·38 | |In other towns | 1 in 6·18 | 1 in 6·18 | 1 in 6·40 | |In the country | 1 in 20·41 | 1 in 20·01 | 1 in 20·01 | |Throughout the kingdom | 1 in 15·20 | 1 in 14·69 | 1 in 14·94 | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

As regards the average of the whole kingdom, the proportion is much the same as that of England and France. What, then, must be the condition of the towns, and, in particular, of the capital?[287] The figures are such as to justify the allegation against Stockholm of being the most immoral capital in Europe, and also the presumption that the late decrease in its population, from which it is but recently recovering, is a direct consequence of the vice that stains it.

With so large an amount of illegitimacy, it is not surprising that infanticide should be of common occurrence. The penalty of this crime is death, although, from a growing aversion to capital punishment, it is generally commuted.

There are numerous foundling hospitals throughout the kingdom of Sweden; one in particular, the Stora Barnhorst in Stockholm, established by Gustavus Adolphus, originally intended for the children of military men of broken health and fortunes. It has been perverted from the simplicity of its original foundation, and now receives children of all comers, who pay an entrance fee of about thirty-five dollars. No questions are asked on the presentation of an infant to the asylum, and, excepting the fee, it is in no respect different from the ordinary foundling hospitals. This very fee, however, it is considered by some writers, makes all the difference, as it in some measure justifies those parents who, having adequate means, choose to release themselves of the care and expense of their offspring, and who use this payment as a salve to their consciences, considering that they have to that extent done their duty. The Stora Barnhorst is wealthy, having an income of above one hundred and fifty thousand dollars per annum.

In 1836, prostitution was forbidden, by express enactment, throughout all Sweden, and women who had not a legally recognized occupation were liable to imprisonment as disorderly characters. The prostitute, of course, came within the category. It was asserted at the time that there was no common prostitution, but a counter statement was made by the jurist Angelot, who affirmed that every house of entertainment was a brothel, and every servant a loose woman.

This prohibitory system did not work so well as had been anticipated, and in 1837 a change was effected. A large hotel was taken by the corporation, and, after the plan of various cities in the Middle Ages, was managed by public officers. Thus a government brothel was established. Nor did this lewdness by authority have the desired effect. The brothel was filled with women, but no customers appeared. Private brothels were resorted to for a time, and were opened under regular licenses. They have now disappeared, and as the inefficient police management never succeeded in repressing illicit prostitution, even while tolerated brothels were in existence, it will surprise no one to learn that Stockholm is now one vast, seething hot-bed of private harlotry.

There are Lock Hospitals throughout Sweden, established by public funds, and kept up by direct taxation as a charge upon the municipal rates. The Stockholm Hospital for syphilis in 1832 received seven hundred and one patients, of whom one hundred and forty-eight were from the country, and the remainder from the city. The capital contained in that year 33,581 persons of both sexes above the age of fifteen, consequently one person in every sixty-one was affected with syphilis.

The superficial aspect of society in Sweden is certainly not such as here described. The upper classes are cultivated, polite, and observant of all the usual refinements of modern society, while to the humbler classes, excepting that intercourse is free and unrestrained among them, there is no ground for attributing any unusual departure from modesty and propriety. Neither are the laws remarkably stringent: although difficulties are thrown in the way of affiliation, they are the same in principle as those which have been adopted by the modern statute law of England. Still, that there is such an excess of immorality can not be doubted. The official statistics of the country prove it, were any possible doubt thrown upon the statements of the many travelers, of the highest repute for correctness and reliability, who have noticed it. The latest publication upon the matter is from Bayard Taylor, who, writing from Stockholm under date May 1, 1857, says,

"I must not close this letter without saying a word about its (Stockholm's) morals. It has been called the most licentious city in Europe, and I have no doubt with the most perfect justice. Vienna may surpass it in the amount of conjugal infidelity, but certainly not in general incontinence. Very nearly half the registered births are illegitimate, to say nothing of the illegitimate children born in wedlock. Of the servant-girls, shop-girls, and seamstresses in the city, it is very safe to say that scarcely one out of a hundred is chaste, while, as rakish young Swedes have coolly informed me, a large proportion of girls of respectable parentage are no better. The men, of course, are much worse than the women, and even in Paris one sees fewer physical signs of excessive debauchery. Here the number of broken-down young men and blear-eyed, hoary sinners is astonishing. I have never been in any place where licentiousness was so open and avowed, and yet where the slang of a sham morality was so prevalent. There are no houses of prostitution in Stockholm, and the city would be scandalized at the idea of allowing such a thing. A few years ago two were established, and the fact was no sooner known than a virtuous mob arose and violently pulled them down. At the restaurants young blades order their dinners of the female waiters with an arm around their waists, while the old men place their hands unblushingly upon their bosoms. All the baths in Stockholm are attended by women (generally middle-aged and hideous, I must confess), who perform the usual scrubbing and shampooing with the greatest nonchalance. One does not wonder when he is told of young men who have passed safely through the ordeals of Berlin and Paris, and have come at last to Stockholm to be ruined. * * * * Which is best, a city like Stockholm, where prostitution is prohibited, or New York, where it is tacitly allowed, or Hamburg, where it is legalized?"

We have spoken of the difference between Sweden and Norway in their moral relations. At first this is not apparent, for illegitimacy is as frequent in one as the other; but there are attendant qualifying circumstances, which go to constitute a material variation in the conclusion to be drawn from the unexplained fact. We may remark that street-walking and open prostitution are rare. Illegitimacy is of considerable extent, averaging one in five, or, in some parts, one in three of the total births.

The people are betrothed by the practice of the Lutheran Church a long time before the actual marriage. This is considered as nothing more than a wholesome check upon hasty unions in a general point of view. In Norway, however, this probationary period is extended to a limit beyond the endurance of flesh and blood. The wedding is a prodigious merry-making, and it is absolutely indispensable that the means for an extravagant hospitality should have been accumulated before the parties dare attempt the public ceremony. The profusion is so great as sometimes to dissipate a whole year's earnings. The obligation to this expense increases the delay required by the Church, and it frequently happens that the affianced cohabit before the nuptial benediction is pronounced. As the betrothal is a half-marriage, the arrangement loses part of its offensive character in the eyes of the parties themselves, and also of their neighbors. The children are legitimatized by the subsequent marriage, which takes place in by far the largest number of cases. In those occasional instances where the wedding ceremony is not duly completed, there is a particular legal act by which a child can be acknowledged. Failure of marriage under such circumstances, or failure of natural duty to offspring, is against the sentiment of the people. While these facts do not alter the actual concubinage or illegitimacy, it is easy to understand that a considerable difference exists between such conduct, however reprehensible, and those habits which may be fairly characterized as licentiousness or profligacy.

Norway is very far from being free of syphilis. Bayard Taylor says, "Bergen is, as I am informed, terribly scourged by venereal diseases. Certainly I do not remember a place where there are so few men, tall, strong, and well made as the people generally are, without some visible mark of disease or deformity. A physician of the city has recently endeavored to cure syphilis in its secondary stage by means of inoculation, having first tried the experiment upon himself, and there is now a hospital where this form of treatment is practiced upon two or three hundred patients, with the greatest success, another physician informed me. I intended to have visited it, but the sight of a few cases around the door so sickened me that I had no courage to undertake the task." We have no means of ascertaining whether the malady exists with the same virulence in the interior as on the coast. The habits of the people would seem adverse to the supposition that it does.

XXIII. GREAT BRITAIN.--HISTORY TO THE TIME OF THE COMMONWEALTH

Aboriginal Morals and Laws.--Anglo-Saxon Legislation.--Introduction of Christianity.--St. Augustine.--Prostitution in the Ninth Century.-- Court Example.--Norman Epoch.--Feudal Laws and their Influences.-- Civil and Ecclesiastical Courts.--General Depravity.--Effects of Chivalry.--Fair Rosamond.--Jane Shore.--Henry VIII.--Elizabeth.--James I.

The first references to prostitution which we find in the works of the early British annalists are so vague that it is difficult to derive from them any very definite idea as to its extent and character. Among the crude efforts at legislation there are laws to enforce chastity among women, but whether the necessity for these enactments was owing to general licentiousness or to the existence of a regular class of prostitutes does not appear.

At the period of the Roman invasion, the morals of the Britons were as low as might be expected from their nomadic habits. The population was divided into small communities of men and women, who appear to have lived promiscuously, no woman being attached to any particular man, but all cohabiting according to inclination, the carnal instinct being the feeling which regulated sexual intercourse. A sort of marriage was instituted, but with no idea that either of the parties to it should be restricted by its obligations. Its only object seemed to be to provide means for rearing the children, and to fix somewhere the responsibility of their nurture and support. A society constituted as this was can, of course, be considered scarcely a step removed from barbarism. The regulation to provide for the children was necessary to prevent depopulation; its tendency was to remove from the woman's path every obstacle to lust; over the man it exercised but very slight control.

A still farther proof of the demoralized condition of the people is found in the gross ceremonies attending these marriages. The man appeared on his wedding day dressed in all the rude trappings of the time; the woman was entirely naked. A repulsive coarseness marked their licentiousness, and the rudeness of manners was nowhere more conspicuous than in the relations existing between the sexes.

It is to be presumed that the Anglo-Saxons imported into England the laws and customs prevailing in their own country. The rules they made against adultery were frightfully severe. When a couple were detected in the commission of the offense, the woman was compelled to commit suicide, to avoid the greater tortures awaiting her if she refused. Her body was then placed on a pile of brushwood and consumed. Nor did her partner in guilt escape punishment; he was usually put to death on the spot where her ashes lay collected. These penalties would appear to be sufficiently severe, but in some instances worse were inflicted. Where the case was one of peculiar aggravation, the adulteress was hunted down by a number of infuriate demireps of her own sex, each armed with a club, a knife, or some other formidable weapon, and stabbed or beaten to death. If one party of her pursuers became weary of the sport, another took their places until the victim expired beneath the blows.

These extremely rigid ideas of the Anglo-Saxons do not seem to have been consistent, for while adultery was punished in the severe manner described, incest was not only permitted, but commonly practiced; and it was even the custom for relations to marry within the closest degrees of consanguinity.

But they were not long located in England before the more savage traits of their character were softened down, and the women soon found amusement more suitable to their sex than that of chasing their erring sisters as quarry. The marriage ceremonies also assumed a more refined and decent character, although the wife continued to be regularly purchased by her husband, and the contract was still considered a mere matter of bargain and sale. By the laws of Ethelbert marriageable women were made commodities of barter, and enactments of this character are to be found in existence long subsequent to his reign.

As the Anglo-Saxons were a hardy, vigorous race, and existed chiefly by hunting, fishing, and a rude and imperfect system of agriculture, it is not probable that prostitution existed among them to any great extent. The fatigues of the chase and field exhausted the energy of the body, and diminished the desire and capacity for sexual indulgence, and, living in small detached communities as they did, they knew nothing of the stimulating incentives of city life.

Yet that prostitutes existed, and lived by the wages of their profession, is proved by the fact that women (who were entitled by law to hold and dispose of property) bequeathed their wealth to their daughters, with the occasional stipulation that they should live chaste lives in the event of their remaining single, and not earn money by prostituting their persons.

In the reign of Canute a law was enacted by which any one found guilty of adultery was to be punished by the loss of the nose and the ears.[288] In the course of time the crime came to be punished by a fine paid to the husband of the woman. This penalty soon fell into disrepute, as it was found that some husbands and wives took advantage of it to extort fines from persons possessing more money than prudence. By a subsequent enactment the male adulterer became the property of the king, who might send him to the wars, or employ him at hard labor as he pleased. By a law of Edgar's time the adulterer of either sex was compelled to live, for three days in each week, on bread and water for seven years. This was treating the evil on physiological principles.

We can not infer any very strict condition of morals as the result of this harsh legislation. When punishment is carried to an extreme entirely disproportioned to the offense, it is as likely to fail in its object as mistaken lenity. Forgery and arson were more frequent in England when punished with death than they are at present; and although we have no statistics of the time from which we can deduce any positive conclusions, we may reasonably imagine that neither the death penalty, nor the other barbarous punishments substituted for it, exercised any very powerful influence in the diminution of the crime among our hardy progenitors. It may have taught them greater caution and dissimulation in the prosecution of their evil purposes, but it did not render them the less eager to profit by the opportunities thrown in their way.

It has been already shown that the founders of Christianity treated illicit sexual indulgence as a sin, and resorted to extreme measures for its suppression, but yet, to some extent, tolerated prostitution. Shortly after he had established himself in Britain, Augustine put some curious queries to the Pope touching the manner in which chastity among converts to the new faith should be enforced. The nature of these interrogatories and replies forbids their appearance here.[289]

That Augustine required to be instructed on such prurient details proves that he was a believer in the Jewish observances of physical ablutions and cleansing of the person being necessary to the removal of moral impurities, and that he carried his scrutiny into the morals of his flock much farther than was consistent with modesty and good sense. However much his religious teachings might have improved the manners of the people, the regulations alluded to would have exercised no very salutary or efficacious influence over them.

The lives of the early kings and rulers of Britain serve to illustrate the morals of the nation during their respective reigns, not only by exhibiting individual examples where the condition of the masses is hidden from view, but by affording us an index to that condition when it is considered that the manners of the court have, in all ages and all countries, exercised an important influence on those of the people.

Augustine converted Ethelbert, but his son Endbald deserted the Christian Church because it refused its sanction to his mother-in-law becoming his wife. It is true that he afterward divorced her, and returned to Christianity, but in this he was influenced rather by satiety than by the promptings of a reviving faith. Many of the other kings of the Heptarchy were as remarkable for the headstrong ardor of their passion as Endbald. Canulph of Wessex had, in the year 784, an intrigue with one of his female subjects, and frequently quitted his court to enjoy her society in the country. During one of these clandestine excursions he was surprised and surrounded in the night by the followers of Kynchard, a rival pretender to the throne, and murdered in the arms of his mistress.

In the ninth century prostitution seems to have been a prevailing vice throughout the country, and frequent references are made to it in the discussions of the period. In the arguments used in favor of tithes, in the time of Athelstan, it was held by some canonists that the clergy had a right to demand one tenth of the profits earned by prostitutes in the exercise of their calling. It is but right to add that the Church did not persist in enforcing this extraordinary claim.[290]

Edwy, who ascended the throne at the early age of seventeen, became involved in a controversy with the monks on the question, then first started, of the celibacy of the clergy. The celebrated Dunstan favored the new doctrine, but Edwy opposed it. The youthful and inexperienced prince was no match for his sagacious antagonist, as he soon after discovered. On the day of his coronation, which took place soon after his marriage with his cousin Elgiva, whom he loved and resolved to wed, though she was within the degrees of consanguinity prohibited by the Church, his nobles were indulging in the pleasures of the banquet, when it was discovered that Edwy had stolen away. Dunstan and Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury, conjecturing the cause of his absence, proceeded to the private apartments of the queen, and found him in her company. They tore him from her, and dragged him back to the party. Elgiva's face was seared with a red-hot iron to destroy her beauty, and she was transported to Ireland. Her wounds being soon healed, and all trace of the injuries removed, she returned to her own country, but was met by a party the archbishop had sent to intercept her, and put to death. Thus, professedly to preserve the morals of the king, these high ecclesiastics committed crimes of far greater gravity than a marriage even between persons more nearly related than Edwy and Elgiva.

Edgar, who succeeded Edwy, was of a still more passionate and licentious disposition. He broke into a convent, and carried off one of the nuns, named Editha, who was remarkable for her beauty. In the heat of passion, he violated her person; and for the double offense of abduction and rape, the Church, according to the peculiar morality of the times, punished him by compelling him to resign his crown for the period of seven years. By a curious inconsistency, he was permitted to retain possession of Editha, who lived with him as a concubine.

Another of his mistresses he obtained by a less violent process. In passing through Andover, he accidentally met the daughter of a neighboring noble, who fascinated him by her remarkable beauty. Listening only to the suggestion of his passion, he proceeded immediately to the residence of the maiden's mother, and, informing her of the violent love with which she had inspired him, demanded that she should be permitted to share his bed that night. The mother, fearing to excite the king's anger by a refusal, resorted to a stratagem, by which she hoped to evade his wrath, and, at the same time, preserve the chastity of her daughter. She directed a handsome waiting-maid to introduce herself into the young lady's chamber, and the king was admitted after dark. When Edgar discovered the trick which had been played on him, he manifested no resentment, and the accidental partner of his bed became afterward his favorite mistress.

These were not his only amours. Elfrida, daughter of the Earl of Devonshire, was distinguished by extraordinary beauty, and the fame of her charms reached the court, although she resided in the country in strict retirement, and had never been a mile from home. Edgar, hearing of her beauty, and doubting whether her appearance justified the extravagant praise lavished on it, sent one of his trusted favorites, Earl Athelwold, to her father's residence to make a report to him on the subject. Athelwold himself, like many a similar envoy, fell in love with the young lady, and informed the king that rumor had greatly exaggerated her merits, and that she was positively ungainly. This was sufficient to allay the king's curiosity, and Athelwold shortly afterward secured the young lady's hand in marriage. He explained the matter to Edgar by remarking that it was her fortune which induced him to overlook her homely features. The king desired him to introduce her at court, and Athelwold persistently refusing, the king suspected the true state of the case. He intimated to the earl that he had determined to visit the castle where she resided, and the husband, dreading the consequences, implored his wife to conceal her beauty as much as possible. Elfrida, woman-like, did precisely the contrary, and set off her charms by the richest and most becoming toilette in her wardrobe. Edgar was so enraged at the deception practiced on him that he put the unfortunate earl to death, and married the widow.

The infusion of Danish blood does not seem to have exercised an improving influence on Anglo-Saxon manners. Judging from the following, the contrary may be inferred.

Ethelred kept a number of Danish troops in his pay, who were stationed in different parts of the country. A complaint was made to the king that the Danes had attained such a pitch of refinement, and made such an advance in luxury, that they combed their hair daily, and were guilty of other acts of personal embellishment equally reprehensible. Worse still, it was averred that the women looked with favor on these practices of the Danes, and that the latter debauched the wives and daughters of the English, and disgraced the nation.[291] It is evident that women who could thus easily be led away were only virtuous from the want of opportunity.

The legislation of this period shows that prostitution was not only tolerated, but indirectly encouraged.

If a man seduced the wife of another, he was compelled, by an early Saxon law, to pay a fine to the husband, and to procure for him another woman, whom he was to remunerate for admitting him to her bed.[292] This was not only offering a direct premium to prostitution by providing for the debauching of a woman every time another chose to be seduced, but it shows that females were in the habit of cohabiting with men for hire. The fines for adultery were graduated according to the rank of the woman. If she happened to be the wife of a nobleman, her chastity was valued at the moderate sum of six pounds sterling (about thirty dollars); while the wife of a churl brought to her husband as a salve for his injured honor about a dollar and a half. The effect of these enactments could not but exercise a demoralizing and injurious influence on the manners of the people. They reduced the estimate of female chastity to that of a cheap marketable commodity, whose loss could be repaid by a small money compensation.

By the laws of Ethelbert a man was permitted to buy a wife, provided the purchase was made openly, and many such transactions are recorded, the price being sometimes paid down in money, and sometimes in palfreys and other kinds of property. The practice, however, was soon modified, and it became necessary to obtain the consent of the bride. The husband was compelled to support and protect her, and to treat her with respect. A couple desirous of contracting marriage were formally betrothed in presence of the priest, and this practice, having something of an ecclesiastical obligation without any of its legal force, was frequently productive of the same evil consequences as in Norway at the present day. This custom of betrothal prevailed down to the time of Elizabeth.

The Normans introduced into England, if not a higher standard of morals, at least a greater refinement in vice. Their laws were moulded by the spirit of the feudal system which they imported with them. Under their sway society was divided into two classes--feudal lords and their vassals. The lord could dispose of the person and property of the vassal, limited, indeed, by certain restrictions, but still leaving so much power in his hands as to render the latter a virtual slave.

Thus, by the laws of the time, a vassal who seduced or debauched his lord's wife or near relative, or who even took improper liberties with them, might be punished by the forfeiture of his land. When a baron died, the estate escheated to the king, who took immediate possession, and kept it until the heir applied to do homage for it, and pay such a fee as the king might demand. If the heir happened to be a minor, the king retained possession of the estate until he reached his majority; and when the inheritance devolved on a female, the king might give her any husband he thought proper. He often turned this privilege to account by selling the right to the hand and fortune of an heiress. Geoffrey de Mandeville paid Henry III. a sum equal to about twenty thousand dollars for permission to wed Isabel, countess of Gloucester, with the right to all her lands and revenues. Even a male heir could not select his own bride except by purchasing permission from the king, otherwise he had to accept his majesty's choice.

We have no means of estimating the amount of licentiousness arising from these arbitrary regulations, but we only require a little acquaintance with human nature to arrive at the conclusion that they must have been a prolific source of vice. The husband being selected by the king from purely mercenary or interested motives, no attention was, of course, paid to disparity of ages, or other circumstances on which the purity of the marriage-bed depends. When the inclinations are forced in this way, women, as well as men, are apt to revenge themselves on their partners by seeking illicit enjoyments. Mercenary marriages, when projected, as they are even in our day, from sordid motives on the part of parents or guardians, almost invariably lead to infidelity, and many an old dotard, who forces himself upon a girl under age, merely serves as a screen for her clandestine amours.

In the reign of Henry III., grave disputes occurred between the civil and ecclesiastical courts on the subject of bastardy. The common law deemed all children to be illegitimate who had been born before marriage. By the canon law they were held to be legitimate if the parents married subsequent to their birth.

When a dispute of inheritance arose, it was customary for the civil to issue writs to the spiritual courts, directing an inquiry to be instituted into the legitimacy of the claimants; and as the bishops always returned answers in accordance with the canon law, all persons whose parents had married at any period were legitimate. When it is considered how strongly most parents feel for the honor of their offspring, the tendency of such decisions to increase prostitution becomes apparent. It may be considered unjust to inflict disabilities on the child for the sins of the parent, but such penalties undoubtedly have the effect of imposing a check upon concubinage.

We have stated that the king claimed the disposal of the hands and fortunes of heiresses: the barons claimed a still greater privilege from their tenants. In some localities the feudal lord insisted upon enjoying the person of one of the daughters of each tenant who happened to be blessed with a plurality of them. He returned her to her parents within a given time.

Every extreme is followed by a reaction in the opposite direction. The abject condition of women, as indicated by the foregoing facts, led to the institution of chivalry, which elevated her from the position of a slave, and the mere instrument of sensual gratification, to that almost of a deity, thus assigning her a rank as much above her real sphere as her former one had been beneath it.

Previous to the advent of this system, women could not appear at any public exhibition or place of amusement unless accompanied by a band of armed retainers. Any female encountered alone and unprotected was liable to insult.

Chivalry, if it did not put an end to, greatly modified this state of things. By its rules each of its members was constituted a champion of female virtue and honor. No man was admitted into the order whose valor was not above suspicion, and a word uttered by him derogatory to the beau sexe excluded him from its ranks. No woman, however, was deemed worthy of knightly protection who had not preserved her honor, it being to that quality alone that knighthood volunteered its safeguard. At public ceremonies, if a woman of easy virtue ventured to take precedence of a woman of honorable fame, she was immediately reminded of the impropriety of her conduct by some member of the order, and compelled to retire to the rear.

This recognition of virtue had a strong tendency to promote female chastity. It could not put a stop to voluntary prostitution, but it at least prevented virtuous women being necessitated to yield their honor to force. It held out, moreover, an attractive premium to correct conduct among the sex by making it the object of heroic exploits, celebrated in the romantic lays of minstrels and troubadours. Its observances have a fantastic aspect in the light of modern civilization, but they unquestionably exercised a powerful corrective influence over the female character, so degraded at its commencement, while, at the same time, they elevated that of the male sex by teaching them to respect themselves.

In the wars of the period, it was against the rules of chivalry to take women prisoners. When a town was captured and entered by victorious troops, the first step taken was to make proclamation that no violence should be offered to any female. This conduct was so much at variance with the notions and habits of soldiery, that the feelings which sustained chivalry must have taken deep root in the minds of all classes to restrain the passions of the military, strengthened as they were by dissolute habits, and the absence of opportunity for their gratification during service in the field.

To such an extreme was this feeling of deferential courtesy to the sex carried, that the Normans were severely censured for their conduct at the capture of the castle of Du Guesclin, it being alleged that they disturbed the repose of the ladies. But as the tendency of every human institution is to degenerate from its original purpose, the rigid purism which marked the foundation of chivalry soon began to relax, and disorders crept in and sapped the basis of a system which was too theoretically perfect to have any extended duration.

It is difficult to ascertain the precise character of the relations which existed between the Troubadours and the mistresses to whose service they devoted themselves, and who were frequently married women. The knight Bertram happened to lose the favor of his mistress, the wife of Talleyrand de Perigord, in consequence of stories which had been related to her implicating his fidelity, and charging him with dividing his knightly attentions. He protests his innocence of these accusations in a lay as impassioned as that of a lover to the object of his adoration, and invokes a number of knightly calamities upon himself if his devotion to her be not above suspicion.

It is hardly credible that the loves of such ardent admirers was immaculate Platonism. On the other hand, the fact that husbands were rarely or never jealous of them, goes some way to refute the idea that they had a more serious character. The lords of those times were proud of the protestations of regard offered to their ladies, and rewarded the Troubadours with rich and valuable presents. The lords of our day, grown wise by experience, make a point of keeping all such interlopers at a distance.

While chivalry poised its lance in defense of the Lucretias, and then of the Dulcineas of the day, the religious view of the commerce of the sexes was particularly ascetic.

Although the most profound devotion was paid to woman in the abstract by the order, the Church sought to encourage perpetual celibacy, the seclusion of women, and the separation of the sexes. The clergy were forbidden to marry, and the idea seemed to prevail that it was impossible for men and women to mingle without being under the influence of lascivious ideas, and ready to carry them into practice as soon as opportunity offered. The attempt to organize society on such a basis had an inevitable tendency to produce demoralization. Its obvious result, instead of promoting chastity was to increase secret licentiousness and encourage prostitution.

Even the voluntary vows of knights and troubadours were, in the end, as little observed as these ecclesiastical precepts. The profligacy of the Troubadours became open and undisguised, and the virtue of their mistresses naturally kept pace with their example. The knights who enlisted in the Crusades, with a large amount of zeal and but a small share of wealth, supported their retainers by robberies on the way, and the females who accompanied them acted as camp followers usually do. No institution which deals merely in external observances can restrain immorality in circumstances favorable to its development, and hence chivalry was forced to yield before more powerful influences. That it served its purpose in elevating the condition of woman, and in giving a better tone to society at large, it would be unjust to deny.

Even when chivalry declined and ceased to inspire feats of knight-errantry, we find women, instead of falling back into the degrading position they had formerly occupied, employing themselves in intellectual pursuits, publishing books, mixing in public controversies, distinguishing themselves in the acquisition of languages, and even taking a leading part in the political affairs of the times.

Among the women who acquired a historical notoriety by their position as royal mistresses, during the epoch comprised between the Norman conquest and the reign of Henry VIII., were the Fair Rosamond, concubine of Henry II., and Jane Shore, the mistress of Edward IV. The misfortunes, as well as the generous qualities of these fair sinners have thrown a sort of halo around them.

Rosamond, surnamed the Fair on account of her exquisite beauty, was the daughter of Walter, Lord Clifford, and was educated in the nunnery of Godstow. The popular tradition concerning her is that Henry, hearing of her charms, paid her a visit, but, finding her virtue inflexible, had to exercise his authority as sovereign to compel her to yield to his wishes. He placed her in a building erected in the midst of a labyrinth at Woodstock, access to which could only be obtained by a clew of thread. Henry located her here to protect her from the jealousy of his queen Eleanor. She bore the king two sons, William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, and Geoffrey, Bishop of Lincoln. During the king's absence in France he intrusted the keeping of Woodstock and the care of the Fair Rosamond to one Lord Thomas, who endeavored to seduce her. In revenge for the rejection of his overtures, the faithless warden conducted Queen Eleanor to her retreat, and the latter is said to have mixed a cup of poison, which her minions compelled the unfortunate Rosamond to drink. It is also alleged that the queen struck the poor girl on her lip with her clenched hand.[293] Some assert that Rosamond died a natural death in a convent at Oxford, and attribute the origin of the story of poisoning to the figure of a cup which was sculptured on her tomb. It is more probable that this effigy was placed there to commemorate the actual event. Rosamond was buried in the church of Godstow, opposite the high altar, where her remains lay undisturbed until they were ordered to be removed, with every mark of indignity, by Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, in the year 1191. She was regarded by the people as a saint, if not a martyr, and wonderful legends were related concerning her.

Jane Shore, the celebrated concubine of Edward IV., was the wife of Matthew Shore, a goldsmith in Lombard Street, London. Edward possessed a good figure and pleasing address, and was fond of athletic sports and exercises, which he enjoyed in company with the citizens, among whom he became exceedingly popular. His popularity extended to many of the citizens' wives, and it was not considered out of the natural course of things that Mrs. Shore should be removed from Lombard Street to shine at court as the royal favorite. Historians represent her as extremely beautiful, remarkably gay in temperament, and of uncommon generosity. The king, it is said, was no less charmed with her temper and disposition than with her person. She never made use of her influence over him to the prejudice of any one, and if she ever importuned him it was in favor of the unfortunate.

After the death of Edward she attached herself to Lord Hastings, and when Richard III. cut off that nobleman as an obstacle to his schemes, she was arrested as an accomplice on the ridiculous charge of witchcraft. This accusation, however, terminated in a public penance, with the loss of whatever little property she possessed. Notwithstanding the severities exercised against her, it is certain that she was alive in the reign of Henry VIII., when Sir Thomas More mentions having seen her, poor and shriveled, without the least trace of her former beauty. Mr. Rowe, in his tragedy of "Jane Shore," has adopted the popular story related in the old ballad, of her perishing from hunger in a ditch where Shoreditch now stands, but Stow assures us that that street was thus named previous to the time of Jane Shore.

The example of none of the English kings had a greater influence in bringing the marriage tie into disrepute than that of Henry VIII. An effort has been made by Mr. Fronde, in his new history of England, to redeem the character of this monarch from some portion of the obloquy with which it is covered, but there is no doubt that he was an unmitigated monster. Curious to say, during his youth and early manhood he betrayed no evidence of the brutal passions which afterward moved him. He was the husband of Catharine for seventeen years before his domestic conduct incurred reproach. At that late period of his career he conceived a violent passion for Anne Boleyn, and, in order to get her to share his bed, sought to divorce his wife. From this period he seemed to become the prey of a restless concupiscence, which sought gratification in new objects of indulgence, and his passion for the women he married and beheaded was as short-lived as it was violent.

There is reason to believe that his marriage with Anne Boleyn was more than adulterous. It is said Anne's mother had been more complaisant to Henry than her duty to her husband or the laws of morality would have sanctioned, and we have the authority of Bishop Fisher for concluding that Anne was the result of this illicit connection, and that, when the king expressed an intention of marrying her, Lady Boleyn exhorted him to abandon his design, as Anne was his own daughter. Henry was not to be deterred by an obstacle of this sort. He had great difficulty in procuring a divorce, and in the mean while he and Anne had become so intimate that she began to exhibit proofs of the connection which could not be concealed. A private marriage was resorted to, considerations of state rendering it prudent to keep the union secret.

Catharine was divorced through the instrumentality of Cranmer, but Henry did not long continue to repose confidence in his new bride. Soon after the marriage was made public, and she had been formally inaugurated as queen, she attended a tilting-match at Greenwich, accompanied by the king and a large concourse of spectators. The king observed her exchange amorous signals with one of the combatants, who was also one of her paramours. Henry had entertained suspicions of her connection with this man, and this proof, as he regarded it, of her infidelity aroused his jealousy. He left the scene on the instant and returned to Westminster, where he issued orders to have her immediately arrested. She was thrown into prison, and tried on the joint charges of adultery and incest. She was accused of having committed adultery with four separate members of the king's household, and of having had incestuous intercourse with her own brother, Lord Rochford. She was tried, found guilty, and executed.

Whether she committed the entire criminality laid to her charge it is impossible to say, but that the incidents of the career just described were in perfect unison with the doings of Henry and his court there is no doubt. Of the influence of such examples on the morals of the people at large, there is, unfortunately, as little question. If court manners and court styles are zealously followed, the vices that spring from them are not less assiduously improved upon.

Henry's strong sexual passions, as well as his arbitrary disposition, were bequeathed to his daughter Elizabeth. However historians may differ as to the degree of her depravity, they all agree that her right to the title of "Virgin Queen" was exceedingly ill founded. Many of her delinquencies with persons of the opposite sex were notorious, although perhaps difficult of proof. While she had not the slightest claim to beauty, she delighted in flattery, and could swallow any amount of gross and fulsome adulation. Her vanity so blinded her that she never perceived that the extravagant praises lavished on her personal attractions were merely covert satire.

It is said that Elizabeth indulged in almost indiscriminate lewdness, and that Leicester, Hatton, Essex, Mountjoy, and numerous others shared her favors. In one of the notes appended to Hume's fourth volume, the nature of Elizabeth's dealings with a large number of her favorites is set forth, the author of the statement being the Countess of Shrewsbury.

Mary, Queen of Scots, at a time when friendly relations existed between her and Elizabeth, wrote to the latter that the countess had reported that Elizabeth had given a promise of marriage to a certain courtier, but, finding the marriage inexpedient, had dispensed with the ceremony and admitted him to her bed. The countess also stated that she had been equally indulgent to Simier, the French agent, and that Hatton, another of her paramours, had spread many reports indicative of her extreme sexual passion.

The immediate successors of Elizabeth were of a different personal temperament, and did not abandon themselves to such scandalous excesses. James I. had no mistresses, and was not of a character to seek pleasure in extravagant licentiousness, but his court was not free from the scenes which had disgraced those of Henry and Elizabeth. James, being desirous of uniting the Earl of Essex with the Lady Frances Howard, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, had the young couple betrothed, although they had not attained the age of puberty. The earl was only fourteen years of age, while Lady Frances was but thirteen, and it was deemed proper for the youth to travel until both should have arrived at the maturity necessary for the consummation of the marriage relation. After four years spent on the Continent, the earl returned to England, and found his affianced bride in the full lustre of extraordinary beauty, and of the fame which great personal charms excite. He had also the mortification to find himself repulsed when he approached her as a husband, and was met by every manifestation of dislike and contempt. He complained to her parents on the subject, and they compelled her to accompany him to the country.

Although the young countess obeyed this mandate literally, the feud between her and Essex was far from terminated: she recognized him as her husband in name only, and sedulously kept herself aloof from his society, nor could any of his endeavors overcome her repugnance. The lady persisted in her obstinacy; the husband redoubled his attentions and importunities, but, finding that she was invincible, he finally abandoned the pursuit, and separated from her.

The cause of this strange conduct on the part of the countess was the passion which she entertained for a Scotch adventurer named Robert Carr, who had found a favorable reception from the king, by whom he was created Viscount Rochester. She believed that by refusing to consummate her marriage with Essex she would not be considered by the world in the light of his wife, and she hoped to procure a divorce, which would enable her to marry Rochester.[294] As their mutual attachment was ardent, and their opportunities for being together frequent, they anticipated the probability of a marriage, and indulged their passions without waiting for the ceremony. They did not find as much trouble in procuring a divorce as they had anticipated.

The king, who had a strong partiality for Rochester, favored their views, and Essex, finding that his suit was hopeless with his wife, opposed no obstacle to the nullification of his marriage. The grounds on which the countess sued out the divorce were of rather a curious character. The chief allegation against Essex was impotency. At that time a firm faith existed in the absurd notions that there were people who possessed the power of witchcraft, enabling them, among other things, to deprive a man of his virility. It was asserted and maintained that Essex had been subjected to this influence, and was therefore incompetent to occupy the position of a married man. The divorce was secured, and Rochester and the countess experienced no farther obstacle to the gratification of their desires.

Rochester had previously consulted Overbury on the difficulties of his position, and the latter strongly advised him not to marry the countess. These facts coming to the ears of Lady Frances, she induced Rochester to have Overbury poisoned. On the discovery of the murder, Rochester and his wife were brought to trial and convicted, but the mistaken clemency of the king interposed between them and the doom they so richly merited. They passed the remainder of their days in obscurity, but as bitter enemies, and although they resided in the same house for many years, no word or message was ever exchanged between them.

Chapter XXIV

GREAT BRITAIN.--HISTORY FROM THE COMMONWEALTH TO THE PRESENT DAY.

Puritans.--Results of Asceticism.--Excesses of the Restoration.-- General Licentiousness.--Art.--Literature.--The Stage.--Nell Gwynne.-- Nationality in Vice.--Sabbath at Court.--James II.--Literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth Centuries.--Lord Chesterfield.--House of Hanover.--Royal Princes.--George III.--George IV.--Influence of French Literature.--Marriage Laws.--Increase of Population.

On gaining the ascendant, the Puritans endeavored to reform the general corruption of society by cutting to the root of the disorders that afflicted it. Instead, however, of applying the knife judiciously, they excised the sound as well as the unhealthy parts. Their measures went to the extreme of killing all the affections and impulses natural to the human breast, in order to repress the excesses arising from too free an abandonment to them. Some fanatics, for instance, gravely suggested that, in order to put an end to fornication and adultery, all intercourse should be prohibited between the sexes.

In our days it is found that innocent amusements are the best safeguard against criminal indulgence, but the Puritans thought otherwise, and looked upon joyous exhilaration of any kind as almost sinful. They enforced their gloomy doctrines with a tyranny as unbending as their tenets themselves were harsh and unnatural. Theatrical entertainments, dancing, etc., were sternly placed under ban, and Puritanism presented merely a heavy and murky atmosphere, with scarcely a social star to enliven its gloomy aspect.

When the Restoration removed the oppressive weight of fanaticism from the public spirit, it rebounded as far above a healthy pitch as it had been formerly depressed below it. An immediate revolution took place in the manners and habits of the people. The theatres, which had been closed by the Puritans, were at once reopened, and the populace abandoned themselves to pleasurable excesses with an eagerness proportionate to the restraint which had been imposed on them. This license would, in time, have been checked by reflection, had not the impulse been supplied from the quarter where a repressive influence should have been exercised. The Merry Monarch and his court led the race in this national carnival, and the examples which they set only served to stimulate the public appetite for debauchery. Indeed, the court of Charles was little better than a public brothel, and the wit with which its orgies were embellished only served to increase the dangers arising from its conspicuous position, and its power over men's minds as the centre from which all rank and consideration flowed. The conduct of the courtiers was strictly modeled on that of their royal master, and their social accomplishments only imperfectly varnished over the gross features of a coarse sensuality. Women were flattered and caressed, but not respected, and the homage paid them was such as no decent woman in our time would consent to receive.

The most faithful portraiture of the manners of this epoch is to be found in its dramatic literature. The staple incidents of the pieces represented at the theatres consisted of love intrigues, seductions, and rapes. The fop of the play never elicited such hearty applause as when he recounted his exploits in the ruin of female virtue among the citizens' wives.

The theatre not only fostered lewdness by depicting it in glowing and attractive colors, but its actors spread abroad the corruption which it was their business to delineate. Their personal character corresponded, in too many instances, with the parts which they performed, and they re-enacted in private the debaucheries which they presented on the stage.

The theatre itself became a central rendezvous for immoral characters, and the place where assignations were most conveniently fixed. Lively wenches, under the pretense of selling oranges to the spectators, frequented the pit, and took their places in the front row, with their backs to the stage. It was well understood that they were as ready to sell favors as fruit, and, in fact, that they had come from the neighboring brothels for that express purpose.

Deep drinking was another characteristic feature of the times, and bacchanalian orgies were freely indulged in by all classes, from the king to the beggar, differing little in the extremes to which they were pushed. Conversation, even in what was called the best society, was disfigured by the grossest obscenity and blasphemy, and bon ton consisted in the extravagance to which this vicious conduct was extended.

Even the peasantry endeavored to imitate the costumes and carriage of the courtiers, and country women were to be seen in flaunting dresses cut so as to expose as much as possible of the person.

Up to this period no female had ever appeared upon the English stage; where women were introduced, their parts had been filled by boys. Neither was it customary for a monarch to show himself at a public representation of a play; but, when they were enacted for his amusement, the performance took place in some apartment of the royal palace. In Charles's reign, women for the first time appeared on the stage, and performed the parts allotted to the heroines of the drama.

The king and queen became regular frequenters of the theatre, and encouraged by their presence the double entendre and broad indecencies of the pieces in vogue. We may remark, parenthetically, that unmarried actresses usually adopted the title Mistress before their names, the word Miss, as then applied, signifying that she who bore it was a concubine. In modern days it is the habit to reverse this practice, as the marriage state is considered to divest the actress of half her attractions.

There were but two theatres in London at this period: the King's Theatre, where the celebrated Nell Gwynne and Mrs. Rebecca Marshall were the chief actresses, and the Duke's, where another company performed. One day the reigning favorites at the King's Theatre had a violent quarrel, and Mrs. Marshall called Nell "Lord Buckhurst's mistress." Nell contented herself with rejoining that she was but one man's mistress, though brought up in a brothel, while Mrs. Marshall bore the same relation to three or four, notwithstanding she was the daughter of a Presbyterian. Their own accounts of each other leave no doubt as to their morality.

The pieces represented in the London theatres in the time of Charles II. were, as we have before stated, filled with indecent allusions, and their interest with the public turned on the number and intensity of these prurient passages. The ladies never attended the first representation of a comedy except in masks; and when the dames of the court, with their established reputations for gallantry, were apprehensive of being seen at them, some idea may be formed of the licentious character of the pieces most in favor.

But many of these plays are still in evidence to speak for themselves. It will be seen that in the majority the plot is so framed as to admit the greatest license in libidinous allusions. The distinguishing feature of them is that the most immodest passages are put into the mouths of women, and, indeed, we know that that actress was the most successful who took the greatest liberties with the text, and most improved upon its lewdness of expression.

As a specimen of the general character of these plays, we may name "All Mistaken, or the Mad Couple," quite a favorite with the public in its day. The hero is importuned by six clamorous unfortunates whose ruin he has effected, and dunned in addition by the nurses of their illegitimate offspring for wages owing to them. The delectable superstructure of obscene dialogue which is raised on this foundation may be better imagined than described.

The usual hour at which the theatres opened their doors was four in the afternoon, and after the close of the performances the audience generally repaired to some garden or other place of public amusement. Here scenes were enacted which proved a fit sequel to those witnessed on the stage.

The orange-girls had a superior known as "Orange Moll," who occupied a position somewhat analogous to that of the modern brothel-keeper. She attended the girls to the theatre, and superintended and directed their operations there. During the entreactes lewd conversations were carried on between the orange-girls and the gallants, which were interspersed with obscene jokes, and highly relished by the audience. The custom of interpellating the gay women who frequented the theatre was continued to a period comparatively recent. Every one has heard the story of Peg Plunket and the Duke of Rutland, in the days when the gods of the Dublin theatre were esteemed the most discriminating, though boisterous and rollicking audience of the three kingdoms.

Charles selected several of his mistresses from the stage, for which he had a passionate fondness. Miss Davis literally sang and danced her way into his affections. Her conquest of the king was consummated by the manner in which she sang the popular ballad "My lodging is on the cold ground." Charles thought she was deserving of warmer quarters, and raised her to his own bed. He established her in a splendid residence, and lavished on her the most extravagant gifts.

The queen at first resented the open and undisguised infidelities of the king, and publicly manifested her sense of them on one occasion by quitting the theatre when Miss Davis made her appearance on the stage; but, finding it impossible to reclaim him from his vicious propensities, she abandoned all hopes of restricting his libertinism, or even of keeping him within the bounds of conventional decency.

The Countess of Castlemaine (afterward created Duchess of Cleveland) was of a more jealous temperament than the queen, and took a more characteristic revenge on Charles for his frailties. She took another lover, and went to reside at his house, very much to the comfort of her royal patron, who had a kingly dislike of trouble.

After quarreling with Lord Buckhurst, Nell Gwynne returned to the stage, but had not long resumed her profession when it was rumored that she had made a conquest of the king. These reports were apparently contradicted by her continued appearance at the theatre, and the progress she made in her art, which could only be the result of careful study. A tragedy by Dryden was advertised, the principal character to be performed by Nell; but, before the night of its first representation arrived, it was found necessary to postpone the performance, owing to Nell's not being in a condition to appear. From this time her connection with Charles no longer remained a secret.

Nell, like her predecessors, was not long suffered to maintain uncontested her supremacy over the king's affections. When the Duchesse d'Orleans, the sister of Charles, paid a visit to the English court in 1670, she had in her train a handsome maid, who was admired for her simple and childish style of beauty. Whether instigated by the courtiers who accompanied her mistress, whose visit was a political one, or prompted by her own sagacity, she made her acquiescence in the king's desires conditional upon his executing the shameful treaty which gave France such important advantages, and rendered Charles a mere tributary to the French king. This girl, Louise de Querouaille, became the rival of Nell Gwynne, and had a child by Charles, who was created Duke of Richmond.

So scandalously public had the relations of Charles with the loose women who surrounded him become, and so flagrant and unblushing was the conduct of the latter, that the queen could no longer reside in the palace of Whitehall, and accordingly removed to Somerset House in the Strand. This feeling of indignation on the part of her majesty soon extended to the virtuously disposed part of the public. Efforts were made to apply a remedy to the disorder which threatened to corrupt the whole framework of English society. In Parliament it was proposed to levy a tax on the play-houses, which had become undisguised nests of prostitution. The debate which ensued elicited a witticism which led to serious consequences to the gentleman who uttered it. On Sir John Birkenhead's remarking that "the players were the king's servants and part of his pleasures," Sir John Coventry was imprudent enough to inquire "whether the king's pleasures lay among the men that acted or the women." For this offense to Charles he was waylaid by some of the courtiers, who slit his nose, and otherwise maltreated him.

It is impossible, however, to deny that this very license of manners rendered the king popular with a certain class of his subjects. The only exception taken by them to his conduct was the selection of a foreigner as one of his mistresses, and even this would have passed without comment but for the political consequences of the connection. It was generally understood among the people that Mademoiselle de Querouaille, or Mrs. Carwell, as she was commonly called, was an agent used for the purpose of securing the ascendency of French interests. This brought upon her the hostility of the populace, who availed themselves of every opportunity of manifesting their dislike to her.

Nell Gwynne was an English woman, a Protestant, and the idol of the town. She was known by the title of the Protestant mistress, while Mrs. Carwell went by that of the king's Popish concubine. Nell was one day insulted in her carriage at Oxford, and came very near being mobbed by the populace in mistake for Mrs. Carwell. With her usual wit and presence of mind, she put her head out of the window, and quieted the rioters by telling them that she was "the Protestant w--e."

As the literature of the times reflected the general licentiousness of manners, it was not to be expected that the arts would escape their demoralizing influence. Most of the paintings then executed were characterized by the same freedom of expression which was used on the stage. There is an old print extant of the Duchess of Portsmouth, reclining on a bank of violets, wearing no other covering than a lace robe; and in another Nell Gwynne is represented in the same semi-nude condition. It is said that this dress had belonged to the duchess, and had been much admired by the king, but that, with her usual love of mischief, Nell had purloined it, greatly to the amusement of her royal lover, and very much to the chagrin and mortification of the duchess.

The king had his own peculiar way of celebrating the Sabbath. On that day he usually collected his mistresses around him, and amused himself by toying with them and humoring their caprices. We have a picture by a contemporaneous writer of one of his Sunday evenings at Whitehall, where the court resided. It was shortly before his death. Charles sat in the centre of a group of these women, indulging in the most frivolous amusements, and apparently in high humor. At a little distance stood a page singing love-songs for the delectation of the king's mistresses, while round a gambling-table were seated a number of his courtiers, playing for stakes which sometimes ran as high as ten thousand dollars of our money.[295] The orgies of the night were kept up until daylight broke in upon the revelers. At eight o'clock the same morning the king was seized with a fit of apoplexy, and died within a week.

James II., though of a grave and stern character, was scarcely less amorous in his temperament than Charles. They differed, however, in their tastes. Charles required beauty in his mistresses; and Nell Gwynne and some of his other concubines were not only beautiful in person but possessed of intellectual graces which gilded their gross sensuality. James cared but little for personal attractions, and lavished his favors on coarse-featured and coarse-minded women. His wife was below him in rank, and he did not stoop to her for her beauty, for she was plain, if not downright ugly in her features. He soon transferred his affections to a still plainer mistress, Arabella Churchill. His strongest attachment was, however, that which he entertained for Catharine Sedley, who possessed a powerful influence over him. She was the daughter of Sir Charles Sedley, and seems to have inherited from him the strong passions and reckless disregard of public opinion by which he was distinguished. Sedley's writings were more licentious than those of any of his contemporaries. His literary talents were not of a high order, but he possessed fair conversational abilities, which made his society attractive. The extreme dissoluteness of his life and disregard of all decency provoked censure even in that age of loose morals. On one occasion, after a drunken revel with some of his profligate companions, he presented himself on the balcony of a tavern near Covent Garden in a state of complete nudity, and commenced a harangue so full of lewdness and obscenity that the crowd pelted him with stones and other missiles, and compelled him to withdraw into the house. A daughter inheriting these propensities, and brought up under the influence of this example, could not fail to become conspicuous for similar traits of character. Her person possessed none of the attributes which render women attractive. A lank, spare figure, a hollow cheek, sallow face, and an eye of glaring brightness comprised the sum total of her charms.

Charles, whose taste was more cultivated, remarked that his confessor must have recommended Catharine to his brother as a penance for his sins. She herself had the discrimination not to be insensible to the truth of this remark, and was even in the habit of boasting of her own plain looks. Her taste for finery was as great as if she possessed attractions worth setting off by its aid. James, when he formed this connection, had advanced to middle age, and it is difficult to account for the influence which she contrived to exercise over him. On his accession to the throne he promised the queen to abandon her, but his good resolutions soon gave way. Whenever the absence of his wife afforded the opportunity, Chiffinch might be seen conducting Catharine through the private passage leading to his chamber. Notwithstanding all the affected austerity of his manners, James was, in reality, but little better than his volatile brother.

At no period in the history of England, as we have just shown, had the licentiousness of the court been greater than it was during the reigns of Charles II. and James II.; only to be exceeded, perhaps, by the fearful abyss of debauchery and atheism which a few years later was beheld in the courts of Louis XV. and the Regent of France. The vigor and intellect of the early part of the reign of Louis XIV., the magnificence of his tastes, and the glory of his enterprises, stand out in powerful contrast to the doings of the imbecile, corrupt, and utterly profligate and debased court of England. The influence of this most pernicious example it is somewhat difficult to arrive at. The great body of the people, especially in the country, in those times of difficult communication, were probably but little affected by the extravagance of the restored Cavaliers, added to which there was a powerful leaven of religious feeling working through the country, which did not for some time settle down into the apathy that called for a new manifestation of Puritan feeling in the establishment of Wesleyan Methodism. In the upper classes of society, however, the core-rottenness of the courts of Charles and James was yet felt, throughout the reigns of the succeeding sovereigns, even down to the time of George III. The writings of contemporary authors, especially of the comic dramatists, "the abstract and brief chronicles of the times," are a fair type of the public morals and intelligence in all ages. At this epoch we have from these sources overwhelming evidence of the reaction which had taken place.

After the removal of the compulsory restraint of Puritan control, the nation seemed at once to have lost its reason: modesty and decency were badges of Puritan Republicanism, and therefore unsuited to loyal men, who showed their attachment to the monarchy by their abandonment of decorum and violation of every moral virtue. The productions of the favorite authors teem with coarse images, unequivocal allusions, and gross facts. Wit degenerated into blasphemy, liveliness into obscenity, metaphors into lasciviousness. The scenes that took place in the court, and which constituted its daily amusements, were disgusting to the last degree. The mere commerce of the sexes, and the libertinism of the period in that respect, were the smallest vices, and might almost be considered merely follies, but the venality and corruption were open and shameless. The courtiers cast aside the last rag of patriotic propriety, and avarice, cruelty, lust, and perjury filled the measure of wickedness. On one occasion, it is said, an infant was prematurely born in one of the rooms of the palace, and Charles, with many jocular remarks, had the body conveyed to his own closet for dissection by his own hand! An incident of such brutality, which might be frequently paralleled by others equally bad in degree, though different in fact, shows the hideous destitution of all decency with which the court must have been cursed. The pages of Rochester, Etherege, Buckingham, Congreve, Vanburgh, and Fletcher, in the close of the seventeenth, and Prior, Gay, Swift, and scores of inferior writers in the commencement of the eighteenth century, all exhibit this state of affairs, while the noble Muse even of a Dryden could stoop to earn base applause by lending her powers to the decoration of vice, and voluntarily quitting her native regions to wallow in the mire.

The vices of this period must have left an ineradicable taint behind them, when, after the full tide of iniquity had swept on, and purer waters were succeeding, we find Lord Chesterfield, a British statesman of distinguished ability and high position, thus advising his own son: "Let the great book of the world be your principal study. Nocturna versate manu versate diurna, which may be rendered thus: Turn over men by day and women by night: I mean only the best editions."

While, as we have already observed, there was probably a wholesome religious element in a portion of the population, which operated as an antiseptic against the rottenness of the court, it is impossible but that the capital must have been imbued with the reckless iniquity, outrageous dissoluteness, and general immorality of the higher classes. The poets, playwrights, essayists, and biographers of the age all bear traces of the effects of bad example in high places on public manners. A critic of those days says, "The accomplished gentleman of the English stage is a person that is familiar with other men's wives and indifferent to his own, and the fine lady is generally a composition of sprightliness and falsehood." A thorough disrespect for female virtue, or rather the admiration of libertinism, tainted the life's blood of the capital. And when, passing over the coarse wit of Prior, or the perverted genius of Dryden, we come to the sober and moderate writings of essayists and satirists, we find material which gives us some little insight into the lower London life of the period, and that which has more immediate interest for us in this inquiry.

In the delightful and ever youthful pages of the Spectator, there are some incidents of great pathos touching the state of those unfortunates whose condition was then, as now, one of the disgraces of civilization. One paper contains a singularly apposite remark. "I was told," says the writer (a woman of the town), "by a Roman Catholic gentleman last week, who I hope is absolved for what then passed between us, that in countries where Popery prevails, besides the advantages of licensed stews, there are larger endowments given for the Incurabili, I think he called them. This manner of treating poor sinners has, we think, great humanity in it; and as you, Mr. Spectator, are a person who pretends to carry your reflections upon all subjects which occur to you, I beg therefore of you to lay before the world the condition of us poor vagrants, who are really in a way of labor instead of idleness."

At another time the Spectator himself meets "a slim young girl of about seventeen, who, with a pert air, asked me if I was for a pint of wine. I could observe as exact features as ever I had seen; the whole person, in a word, of a woman exquisitely beautiful. She affected to allure me with a forced wantonness in her look and air, but I saw it checked with hunger and cold. Her eyes were wan and eager; her dress thin and tawdry; her mien genteel and childish. This strange figure gave me much anguish of heart, and, to avoid being seen with her, I went away, but could not avoid giving her a crown. The poor thing sighed, courtesied, and with a blessing, expressed with the utmost vehemence, turned from me. This creature is what they call newly come upon the town."

The arts of the procuresses; their experiments on inexperienced country girls; their attendance at coach-offices and public places to hunt for and entrap the unwary; the regular customers they have for new wares; the mode, first of offering them to private sale, and, when the first gloss is worn off, casting them on the public market, are all as true of 1858 as of the day for which it was written. In one case, the Spectator, being at a coach-office, overhears a lady inquiring of a young girl her parentage and character, and especially if she has been properly brought up, and has been taught her Catechism. Desirous of seeing a lady who had so proper an idea of her duties to servants, he peeps through and sees the face of a well-known bawd, thus decoying a young girl just arrived in London. One amusing cheat in the business of these go-betweens is complained of by a lady correspondent: for a consideration, they profess to introduce some ambitious foreigner or country gentleman to the favors of ladies of high degree, ruling toasts, leading belles, etc. Some lady, Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs, is foisted upon the deluded customer, who must, of course, be ignorant of the person of his inamorata, and he walks off boasting, in great self-gratulation, of his good fortune, to the great injury of an irreproachable woman's fame.[296]

It was reserved for the reign of George III. to give a favorable turn to court morals and to make virtue respectable. The Georges I. and II. had exercised but a negative influence on their subjects. They were merely viewed as political necessities, and held in little or no personal esteem. Their uncouth manners, foreign mistresses, and decidedly heavy liaisons had no charm for either eye or fancy. With George III. and his queen, virtue in courts became in some degree fashionable; the slough of libertinism in which Louis XV. and the Regent Orleans had plunged themselves seemed in France to have created some reaction. Louis XVI. in Paris, and George III. in London, presented the rare spectacle to their respective subjects of two well-conducted men, whose domestic life and character were unimpeachable. But as the sons of George III., especially the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, attained their majority, they were surrounded by bands of flatterers and parasites, who stimulated and encouraged the natural proneness of youth to pleasure and dissipation. The libertinism and excesses of the Stuarts again became bon-ton, devoid, it is true, of political debasement and national dishonor; checked also by parental disapprobation, and by the influence of public opinion. This, though very weak, was not quite powerless; and, though lenient to the errors of youth, it drew an unfavorable comparison between the reckless extravagance and dissolute tastes of the princes, and the moderate and personally estimable conduct of the king and queen.[297]

The masses of the English people were distinguished for plain good sense, and attachment to the cause of religion and morality; and although drinking, gambling, boxing, and racing were, in honor of the royal princes, fashionable amusements, and their attainment coveted and emulated by many of the rising generation, still the general sentiment of the nation at this period was condemnatory of these vices. Those inclined to charitable views of human nature found excuses in the temptations of youth, a fine person, a commanding position, and, lastly, in the infamous counsels of those who found political capital in the encouragement of these excesses, thereby promoting a division between the heir to the throne and his sovereign parent. Others there were who beheld in George IV., whether as prince or monarch, a modern Tiberius, a man of ungovernable lusts; a ruthless libertine and a debased sensualist, without any redeeming qualities. As a fact, apart from causes and political prejudices, George IV. was undoubtedly a debauchee and a man of dissolute habits;[298] but he was a man of liberal education, of cultivated taste, of distinguished appearance, and elegant manners. He and the Count D'Artois, brother of Louis XVI., were considered the most finished gentlemen in Europe, so far as mannerism went. These externals glossed over, and even lent a charm to, the vices of his youth; and the mysterious orgies of Carlton House were associated in the public mind with the brilliant wit of Sheridan, the manly grace of Wyndham (that beau ideal of an English gentleman), the vast talent of Fox, and the enchanting grace of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the bright particular star amid a galaxy of minor luminaries. The respectability belonged to the court party; the genius and fascination were ranged on the side of the Prince of Wales.

It is difficult, even at this brief lapse of time, and when so many eye-witnesses are yet surviving, to speak with any degree of confidence of the state of general public morals in England as affected by the French Revolution, and the violent Tory and Whig contests of the period. The literature which preceded and accompanied the French Revolution went the whole length of undermining and unsettling every established institution, both of politics and religion, without building up an effective substitute in place of the structure destroyed. The doctrines of moral obligation and the balance of general convenience, which, according to the Volney, Voltaire, and Rousseau school, were to supersede the effete and worn-out dogmas of the Gospel, were little known and less liked in England. At the outset of the French movements, the cause had the sympathy of the English Liberals; but afterward, when the social and political excesses of the time disgusted even its moderate British supporters, and when the deep-rooted and apparently innate antagonism of the two nations was revived by the war, the hatred and contempt of the English people for French manners, French literature, French men, French every thing, knew no bounds. Thus, while the leaven of Parisian philosophy was fermenting in the breasts of all Continental Europe, it is our opinion that its influence in England was purely of a reactionary character; and as under the last Stuarts patriotism and libertinism went hand in hand, so, in the end of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth centuries, an Englishman's love of his own country and his hatred of France were associated with a detestation of the heresies of French philosophers and patriarchs.

Of the effect produced on the morals of the people by the loose manner in which, previous to 1753, the marriage ceremony was performed, we have the evidence brought forward in the debates on Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Bill. Anterior to that time, a boy of fourteen and a girl of twelve years of age might marry against the will of their parents or guardians, without any possibility of dissolving such marriage. The law, indeed, required the publication of banns, but custom and the dispensing power had rendered them nugatory. A dispensation could be purchased for a couple of crowns, and the marriage could take place in a closet or a tavern, before two friends who acted as witnesses. But dispensations were not always necessary. There were privileged places, such as May Fair and the Fleet, where the marriage ceremony could be performed at a moment's notice, and without any inconvenient questions being asked.

Gretna Green, on the borders of Scotland, was long a famous place for runaway matches. It has been questioned how far the Scotch law of marriage was conducive to morality; but, judging from its effects upon the people themselves, it can scarcely be considered an ally of vice. This law, which has only been repealed within a few years, treated marriage as a civil contract, valid if contracted before witnesses, and required no ceremony or preparatory notice. That unions so formed were binding, admits of no possible dispute: the question has been tried in the British courts of law on every conceivable ground, and their legality has been always affirmed, but in the case of marriages at May Fair or the Fleet the same certainty did not exist. Gretna Green is the first village after passing the dividing line between England and Scotland, and owes its fame to its locality. It has doubtless been the scene of many heartless adventures, for which the actual law of the land must be held accountable.

The marriage act which came into operation in 1754, had for its object the prevention of clandestine marriages in England, but did not interfere with the law of Scotland. It sought to effect this reform by making it necessary to the validity of a marriage without license, that it should take place after the proclamation of banns on three Sundays in the parish church, before a person in orders, between single persons consenting, of sound mind, and of the age of twenty-one years, or of the age of fourteen in males and twelve in females, with the consent of parents and guardians, or without their consent in cases of widowhood. The new marriage act of 1837 allows marriage, after notice to the superintendent registrars in every district, either in the public register offices in the presence of the superintendent registrar and the registrar of marriages, or in duly registered places of worship.

We have no statement as to the number of marriages previous to the year 1753. All we know is, that from 1651 to 1751 the population only increased sixteen per cent., the increase being only one million and fourteen thousand in one hundred years. Since the act of 1753 came into operation, the registers of marriages have been preserved in England, and show an increase of marriages from 50,972 in the year 1756, to 63,310 in 1764. "The rage of marrying is very prevalent," writes Lord Chesterfield in the latter year; and again in 1767, "In short, the matrimonial phrensy seems to rage at present, and is epidemical." After many fluctuations, the marriages rose to seventy, eighty, ninety, and one hundred thousand annually, and in 1851 to one hundred and fifty-four thousand two hundred and six. Fourteen millions were added to the population, an increase of 187 per cent., or at the rate of one per cent. annually.[299]

XXV. GREAT BRITAIN.--PROSTITUTION AT THE PRESENT TIME

Influence of the Wealthy Classes.--Devices of Procuresses.--Scene at a Railway Station.--Organization for entrapping Women.--Seduction of Children.--Continental Traffic.--Brothel-keepers.--"Fancy Men" and "Spooneys."--Number of Brothels in London.--Causes of Prostitution.-- Sexual Desire.--Seduction.--Over-crowded Dwellings.--Parental Example.--Poverty and Destitution.--Public Amusements.--Ill-assorted Marriages.--Love of Dress.--Juvenile Prostitution.--Factories.-- Obscene Publications.--Census of 1851.--Education and Crime.--Number of Prostitutes.--Female Population of London.--Working Classes.-- Domestic Servants.--Needlewomen.--Ages of Prostitutes.--Average Life.--Condition of Women in London.--Charitable Institutions.--Mrs. Fry's benevolent Labors.

The corruption of court morals alone, and without circumstances of national weight and moment, has seldom, we take it, affected the bulk of the population. It is nevertheless undeniable that a lax morality, and, à fortiori, a system of absolute profligacy among the wealthy classes of society, will contribute in a significant degree toward the increase of prostitution in metropolitan cities. It is in the service of her wealthy customers and patrons that the professional procuress is chiefly employed, and, stimulated by high gains, she plies her vile calling, and exerts all her hellish ingenuity to discover new sources of amusement and gratification for them.

In Fletcher's "Humorous Lieutenant," written in 1690, a court bawd is introduced reading her minute-book, and calling over the register of the females at her command. "Chloe, well--Chloe should fetch three hundred and fifty crowns; fifteen; good figure; daughter of a country gentleman; her virtue will bring me that sum, and then a riding-horse for her father out of it; well. The merchant's wife, she don't want money. I must find a spark of quality for her." The representation of such character is out of vogue in these days on the English stage; but, while the proprieties are observed, the omission is but a veiling of the subject. The reality exists, though unseen.

In the London Times of July, 1855, an incident is thus related by a correspondent: "I was standing on a railway platform at ----, with a friend waiting for a train, when two ladies came into the station. I was acquainted with one of them, the younger, well. She told me she was going to London, having been fortunate enough to get a liberal engagement as governess in the family of the lady under whose charge she then was, and who had even taken the trouble to come into the country to see her and her friends, to ascertain that she was likely in all respects to suit. The train coming in sight, the fares were paid, the elder lady paying both. I saw them into the carriage, and the door being closed, I bowed to them and rejoined my friend, who happened to be a London man about town. 'Well, I will say,' said he, with a laugh, 'you country gentlemen are pretty independent of public opinion. You are not ashamed of your little transactions being known!' 'What do you mean?' I asked. 'Why, I mean your talking to that girl and her duenna on an open platform.' 'Why, that is Miss ----, an intimate friend of ours.' 'Well, then, I can tell you,' said the Londoner to me, coolly, 'her friend is Madam ----, one of the most noted procuresses in London, and she has got hold of a new victim, if she is a victim, and no mistake.' I saw there was not a minute to lose; I rushed to the guard of the train, and got him to wait a moment. I then hurried to the carriage-door where the ladies were. 'Miss ----, you must get out; that person is an unfit companion for you. Madam ----, we know who you are.' That was one victim rescued, but how many are lost?"

In another case, the practices of a scoundrel named Phinn were made the subject of a public warning by the Lord Mayor of London from his judicial chair. This fellow's plan was to advertise from abroad for ladies to go to Cologne, or other places on the Rhine, to become governesses in his family, which was traveling, and whose governess had unexpectedly left them, or been taken ill, or was otherwise got rid of. The candidates were to pay their own passage to the place of rendezvous, when the appointments of the situation were to commence. In some cases in which the practices of this rascal had failed of their full effect, he had succeeded in defrauding poor women of their funds, and they had found the utmost difficulty in making their way home again.

While it is impossible to have any precognizance of the persons and circumstances among which these wretches find their prey, some cases are peculiarly within the scope of their operations. Young females who have lost their natural protectors, and are brought into contact with the world under their own guidance, are easily imposed upon by the pretended friendship of these persons, and being under a pretense of employment inveigled into their houses, are there kept until their fall is accomplished by persuasion or force. It is said that women even attend regularly at churches and Sunday-schools for the purpose of decoying female children. They first accost them, and interest them, without making any direct advances. The next time they proceed a little farther, and soon invite them to accompany them a little distance, when they lead them to a brothel. They have been known to take the children away in the presence of the teacher, who, seeing them act as acquaintances, had no suspicion of the real nature of their associations.[300]

The London Society for the Protection of Young Females have recorded instances of children of eleven years of age being entrapped by procuresses into houses of prostitution. Those who are thus decoyed are not permitted to escape, nor to go into the streets for two or three months. By that time they are supposed to be incapable of retracing their steps, or to have become reconciled to their mode of life, and are permitted to go or remain. Occasionally they are turned adrift to seek new lodgings, their places being supplied by fresh arrivals. Some of these children find their way home again, but the majority of them are of course irretrievably lost, and continue in the course into which they have been thus indoctrinated.

The procuresses have agents in different parts of London, whose business it is to discover young persons, servant-girls and others, who are dissatisfied with their earnings and condition in life, and who may be considered suitable subjects. The number of servants out of place, in London alone, is enormous--many thousands in number; and as "service is no inheritance," such a body constitutes a very favorable field of operations. The intermediate agents in these cases are small shop-keepers, laundresses, charwomen, and such others as from their avocations have the opportunity of becoming acquainted with young women in service. Common lodging-house-keepers too, residing in the suburbs of London, contribute their quota of assistance. Young women coming fresh from the country, and sleeping in such places for a night, receive recommendations to procuresses and brothel-keepers as servants. Intelligence-offices for hiring servants, which in London are called "Servants' Bazars," and are not under any license, are visited by these people in search of new faces.

In some cases procuresses are found to act on behalf of particular individuals only. In one case, such a woman kept a small shop, to which she invited servant-girls in the neighborhood after a little acquaintance. By her assistance, aided by liberal entertainment with wines and spirits, her employers (two men of property) were enabled to corrupt eight servant-girls in a short space of time.

A constant trade in prostitution is carried on between London and Hamburg, London and Paris, and London and the country. Three or four years ago a trial took place at the Central Criminal Court (London) of a man and woman who were engaged in the importation of females for purposes of prostitution. The prisoners were convicted. The details of the trial show that a regular organization existed. In some cases, Parisian prostitutes were hired in Paris for the London market by the ordinary agents in such contracts; in other cases, the parties in both capitals decoyed young women into their service on pretense of reputable engagements, and shipped them over to their consignees. Of course, every care is taken in these matters to keep the transaction confidential; for, although the English laws are practically most defective, still, in cases exciting any degree of notoriety, and in which the offense can be satisfactorily established by legal proof, prosecutions do take place.

We can not close this branch of our subject better than by once again quoting from the Spectator, and giving a genuine letter, which, although written a century and a half ago, is just such a one as might, for a similar purpose, be penned at the present day. It as accurately describes the mode in which "articles of trade" in the procuress line are disposed of now as then.

"MY LORD,--I having a great esteem for your honor, and a better opinion of you than of any of the quality, makes me acquaint you of an affair that I hope will oblige you to know. I have a niece that came to town about a fortnight ago. Her parents being lately dead, she came to me, expecting to have found me in so good a condition as to set her up in a milliner's shop. Her father gave fourscore pounds with her for five years. Her time is out, and she is not sixteen: as pretty a gentlewoman as ever you saw; a little woman, which I know your lordship likes; well-shaped, and as fair a complexion for red and white as ever I saw. I doubt not but your lordship will be of the same opinion. She designs to go down about a month hence except I can provide for her, which I can not at present. Her father was one with whom all he had died with him, so there is four children left destitute; so, if your lordship thinks fit to make an appointment, where I shall wait on you with my niece, by a line or two, I stay for your answer, for I have no place fitted up, since I left my house, fit to entertain your honor. I told her she should go with me to see a gentleman, a very good friend of mine; so I desire you to take no notice of my letter by reason she is ignorant of the ways of the town. My lord, I desire, if you meet us, to come alone, for, upon my word and honor, you are the first that I ever mentioned her to."

Next to procuresses in this gradation of iniquity are the brothel-keepers, who, although often procuresses, are not necessarily so. Shakspeare, who included all human existence in the sphere of his observation, says of them,

"A bawd! a wicked bawd! The evil that thou causest to be done, That is thy means to live: do thou but think What 'tis to cram a maw or clothe a back From such a filthy vice; say to thyself, From their abominable and beastly touches I drink, I eat, array myself, and live. Canst thou believe thy living is a life? So stinkingly depending."

Many of these persons have been prostitutes themselves, and when past service in the one branch of business have naturally fallen into the other. Others, without having been such, adopt the trade from inclination or circumstances. The condition of these people and the interior of their houses are as various as the people themselves. At the west end of London there is a considerable degree of style; in the lower parts of the town they are sordid and filthy habitations, fit only for deeds of darkness. They are confined to private streets, alleys, and lanes out of the great thoroughfares. The law is usually put in operation in England against the brothel-keepers as the representatives of the whole class. As they get the chief profits of the trade, so they run all the legal risks. The indictments against them, however, are comparatively few. There is no public prosecutor in England, as with us. The police administration of the metropolis, perhaps the best organized, the most efficient and cheapest department of the public service, does not include the prevention of brothels within its duties, which are confined to the preservation of life and property. The prosecution of brothel-keepers and abolition of their establishments are usually undertaken by the parish authorities when the places are so conducted as to become a nuisance to the neighborhood; and police officers merely interfere to prevent the assemblage of prostitutes in the public streets, or the solicitation of passengers by them. Virtually this provision is little better than a dead letter, and the women evade it by walking when an officer is in sight, and thus deprive him of the only proof which would enable him to make an arrest.[301]

Some of the girls who pay exorbitant board also stipulate to give their mistresses one half of their cash receipts, which are frequently very large in the case of attractive women, amounting sometimes to one or two hundred dollars a week. The mistress is treasurer, and the prostitutes rarely succeed in receiving back what ostensibly belongs to them. The very prosecution before mentioned originated in a French girl's being cheated by the brothel-keeper. The clothing is furnished by the mistress, and for this she charges prices which absorb the entire earnings of the girls. She even contrives to furnish them with such a number of showy and useless garments that she keeps them always in her debt, and so has a lien on each to prevent her leaving as long as she is a profitable member of the establishment. Some girls who have been seduced have, when entering on a life of prostitution, extensive and valuable wardrobes. The mistress runs them into debts of her own contracting, and if they become dissatisfied with their treatment and desire to leave, they are held for the debt. By the common law of England, all debts incurred for an immoral purpose are void, but this law is of little value to those who are ignorant of its existence; besides which, the brothel-keepers have possession of the booty, and thus effectually drive the debtor to an adjustment of the matters in dispute.

Such of the brothel-keepers as have no lawful husbands form intimacies with some man whom they support. In slang dialect, there is a class of men called "spooneys," who support the women, or furnish them with funds when necessary. They set them up in business, become responsible for their debts, and assist them in all their difficulties. The "fancy men" are those who do nothing for them, but live at their expense. The lower class of brothel-keepers have no "spooneys," but they invariably have "fancy men," who act as bullies, and settle by physical force any disputes that may arise between the inmates and their visitors. These men spend the day in taverns, and the night in the particular brothels to which they are attached, and are frequently felons of the deepest dye.

Some of the brothel-keepers are married women, and even mothers of families. The husbands are lazy, worthless wretches, addicted to gambling and drinking, and brutally indifferent to the sources from which their luxuries are supplied. In some cases the wealthier individuals have been known to send their children to good schools away from home, and to have kept them in ignorance of their own wretched vocation. Thus sin entails its own punishment.

The number of brothels in London has been variously estimated. The whole number of houses at the last census was three hundred thousand and upward. Among them it was calculated, and probably correctly, that there were five thousand brothels, including houses of assignation. The rents of these establishments vary as much as the houses and situations (from fifteen hundred down to one hundred dollars a year). In good neighborhoods we should be slow to believe that landlords had any previous knowledge of the purposes to which their houses are to be applied. Independent of moral objection, such a house deteriorates the character of the property. Indeed, the clauses in leases of the great London properties are very strict, and include all objectionable trades as causes of forfeiture.

The owners of the houses are of all classes. The Almonry of Westminster, once the abode of Caxton, which within these six or eight years has been pulled down, was one of the vilest aggregations of vice and crime in existence. This was the property of the dean and chapter of Westminster Abbey. The common law of England, as already mentioned in the matter of dress, prohibits the recovery of the rents of houses let for immoral purposes. Many of the brothel-keepers themselves hire houses, furnish them, and sublet them. It has been made a matter of reproach that landlords should, even indirectly, derive income from such sources. But poverty and vice are closely allied; where poverty exists, vice will come. It is impossible for a landlord to exclude any class of tenants in a particular neighborhood suited to them, and those who know aught about the improvement and ventilation of large cities, and the breaking up of bad neighborhoods, are well aware that they are accompanied with a fearful amount of extra misery to the very poor.

In a subsequent portion of this work we have endeavored to analyze the causes of prostitution as it exists in the city of New York. It may be reasonably supposed that the same reasons would be applicable to the kindred people of Great Britain. We give the following, mainly deduced from English writers, as indicating the sentiments of the best-informed in that kingdom as to the sources of so deep-rooted an evil, which must be sought in a variety of circumstances, national as well as personal.

A professional man, Mr. Tait, to whose pages we have turned for information as to prostitution in Great Britain, classifies the causes as natural and accidental. The natural he subdivides into licentiousness of disposition, irritability of temper, pride and love of dress, dishonesty and love of property, and indolence. The accidental include seduction, ill-assorted marriages, low wages, want of employment, intemperance, poverty, defective education, bad example of parents, obscene publications, and a number of minor causes. Without assenting to the classification, we will accept the enumeration.

The operation of sexual desire on the female sex is a mooted question among English writers on prostitution. Whether it is latent, and never powerful enough to provoke evil courses until it is itself stimulated and roused into energy by external circumstances, or whether it be an active principle impelling the ill-regulated female mind to sacrifice self-respect and reputation in the gratification of dominant impulses, has been frequently discussed. Many consider that its influence on the inducement of prostitution is no less unsatisfactory of solution than the physiological problem, alleging that those who have followed the bent of their natural appetites would undoubtedly prefer to ascribe their lapse to other circumstances. This subject is treated more fully elsewhere, and it is needless to repeat here the views there expressed.

That sexual desire, once aroused, does exercise a potent influence on the female organization, can not be questioned. Self-abuse, which is a perverted indulgence of the natural instinct, is well known to English physicians as being practiced among young women to a great extent, though in a far less degree than among young men. Its frightful influences upon the latter have been the subject of the liveliest anxiety to those who have made the care of youth their profession, and this source of trouble is shared to some degree by female teachers. Such subjects seem by common consent to be banished from rational investigation by the majority of people, as if shutting one's eyes to the fact would prove its non-existence. This false delicacy is more injurious than is commonly supposed; for the unchecked indulgence in such habits is not only destructive of health, but in the highest degree inimical to the moral feeling, and directly subversive of all self-respect, leaving but one step to complete the final descent.

SEDUCTION.--The effect of undue familiarity, and too unrestrained an intercourse between the sexes, can not be exaggerated as paving the way for the last lapse from virtue. It is precisely these familiarities which, in ill-regulated minds, excite the first impulses of desire; and even where such a result does not immediately flow from too free an intercourse, it breaks down that modesty and reserve which so much enhance the beauty of woman, and constitute her best safeguard. The inclined plane by which the female who permits the first freedom glides unchecked to final ruin, though gradual, is very difficult to retrace. The unrestricted intercourse permitted, or rather encouraged between the sexes at places of public amusement much facilitates the opportunities of seduction. Prostitutes frequently, and we believe with truth, allege seduction as the first step toward their abandoned course of life, and the allegation itself should induce a sympathy for the misfortune of their present existence. Although in some cases the story can not be implicitly believed, at the same time there is no doubt that a heartless seduction is but too frequent a circumstance in such cases, and contributes its sad quota of heavy account to prostitution.

It is a general opinion that cases of (so called) seduction in England occur between employers and female servants, and that of these are vast numbers. By seduction in such circumstances is meant the inducement to do wrong by promises or other suasives, in opposition to the commonly received idea, which makes the fall the result of strong personal attachment. In a work like this we must notice the largest definitions, and can not consistently limit ourselves to the inducement customarily brought forward in law proceedings, namely, "a promise of marriage." In this sense, illegitimate children may be said to be the consequence of seduction. Certainly not all of them, however, because many persons, voluntarily and with their eyes open, enter upon cohabitation arrangements; but doubtless many are. Once seduced, of course the female becomes herself the seducer of the inexperienced.

The policy of English law, of late years, has been to compel the woman to protect herself--in the main, a wise policy. But the balance of human justice is very unevenly maintained. The male, the real delinquent, incurs no legal punishment, and but little social reprobation. Actions for seduction are very unpopular, and those brought bear but an infinitesimal proportion to the occurrence of the crime. The onus of proof in bastardy affiliations of course rests upon the woman. Of late years the alterations in the law have thrown great difficulties in her way by what is called the necessity of corroborative evidence, namely, some kind of admission, direct or indirect, or some overt act which will furnish oral or documentary testimony other than the woman's unsupported statement. This may be strictly expedient, but it renders the man almost irresponsible if he only play his part with knavish prudence. Lastly, popular feeling is against charges of rape: acquittal is very frequent, and the usual rebuttal is to impeach the character of the prosecutrix. The opinion of one of England's greatest judges has passed into a proverb: "No charge so easy to make, none so difficult to disprove." Queen Elizabeth's mode of proving her disbelief of rape is also expressive of public opinion.

From the combination of these circumstances, it would seem that seduction must, almost as a matter of course, lead to prostitution, inasmuch as, in ordinary English parlance, the mother of a bastard and a prostitute are almost synonymous.

OVERCROWDED DWELLINGS.--The natural impulses of animal instinct in both sexes seem to be implicated in the effect of crowded sleeping apartments, as met with in the habitations of the poor both in town and country. In the latter we have the show, and sometimes the reality, of family life and virtuous poverty. In the towns we find abodes of poverty sometimes honest, sometimes in closest propinquity or intimacy with vice, and there too we have the dwelling-places of the lowest depravity and vagabondism.

Those who have not given their attention to the condition of the poor, and the relation which their lives hold to the ordinary habits of decency and morality, have much difficulty in comprehending, or even believing, statements which embody the plainest every-day truths. It is hard to realize things as they are, if the mind has been full of ideal pictures of things as they should be. The Dives of society has been often reproached with his ignorance of Lazarus. The sin lies exactly in that ignorance. As Carlyle finely says, "The duty of Christian society is to find its work, and to do it." Negative virtue is of no practical use to the community. But yet the ignorance is natural enough, and no easier of removal than other ignorance. It has been generally attributed to the wealthy and upper classes of society, but it exists just the same, differing only a little in degree, in the middle class and moderately rich members of the English social system.

The misery and inconvenience which the poor suffer from the straitness of their domestic arrangements are beyond belief. Grown-up girls and boys sleep in the same bed; brothers and sisters, to say nothing of less intimate relations, are in the closest contiguity; and even strangers, who are admitted into the little home to help in eking out the rent, are placed on the same family footing. This momentous question to the moral well-being of the poor has excited very lively interest in England, and has called into active operation several philanthropic associations, which have in view the employment of capital in improving and cheapening the dwellings of the working classes.[302]

In London this system of close lodging was carried to a fearful pitch. In some places from five to thirteen persons slept in a single bed, while in the country the evil was nearly as bad, although, from the slight restraint imposed by family ties, the actual evil is positively less; though the moral contamination is of nearly the same extent, and paves the way for other relations out of doors. The facts which justify these conclusions are to be found in a variety of shapes--parliamentary reports, statistical tables, appeals from clergymen, addresses from philanthropic associations, etc., etc.[303]

The Honorable and Reverend S. O. Osborne, a clergyman well known for his philanthropic exertions in behalf of the poor, says of country life in England:

"From infancy to puberty the laborer's children sleep in the same room with his wife and himself; and whatever attempts at decency may be made, and I have seen many ingenious and most praiseworthy attempts, still there is the fact of the old and the young, married and unmarried, of both sexes, all herded together in one and the same sleeping apartment. * * * * I do not choose to put on paper the disgusting scenes that I have known to occur from the promiscuous crowding of the sexes together. Seeing, however, to what the mind of the young female is exposed from her very childhood, I have long ceased to wonder at the otherwise seeming precocious licentiousness of conversation which may be heard in every field where many of the young are at work together."

Mr. A. Austin, Assistant Poor-Law Commissioner, says:

"The sleeping of boys and girls, young men and young women, in beds almost touching one another, must have the effect of breaking down the great barriers between the sexes. The accommodation for sleeping is such as necessarily to create early and illicit familiarity between the sexes."

Without entering into disgusting details, the pain of perusing which could add nothing to the value of the statements, the conclusion is indisputable that much of prostitution, if not of prostitution for hire, certainly of prostitution from corrupt and profligate motives, is engendered by the vicious habits induced by habitual proximity of the sexes in early life. The prostitutes themselves frequently assign these habits as the commencement of their career of vice, and some even admit the breach of the closest natural ties during early youth, by reason of the too great facilities thus offered.[304] The great importance of this want of decency and propriety in family life can not be overrated. The contagious nature of vice is proverbial; and it is almost impossible to imagine the power attained by ill-conditioned children, and the fatal readiness with which their sinful words and practices are propagated.

The cheap lodging-houses are a pendant to the close-packed dwellings of the poor, although they do not produce the same early pernicious results as indecency and immorality in family life. The latter prepare the way to the scenes of the common lodging-house, in which the lowest depth of vice is speedily reached. Here prostitution is habitual--a regular institution of the place. The smallest imaginable quantities of food can be purchased; adults, youths, and children of both sexes are received, and herd promiscuously together; the prices of beds are of the lowest (from three to six cents); no questions are asked, and the place is free to all. A new-comer is soon initiated, or rather forced into all the mysteries of iniquity. Obscenity and blasphemy are the staple conversation of the inmates; every indecency is openly performed; the girls recite aloud their experiences of life; ten or a dozen sleep in one bed, many in a state of nudity. Indeed, the details of these places are horrible beyond description. Unmitigated vice and lustful orgies reign, unchecked by precept or example, and the point of rivalry is as to who shall excel in filth and abomination.

EXAMPLE is the next immediate cause in what may be considered the natural series. There are a few prostitutes who have children. That these latter should follow the same course is quite in the common course of events, although considerable anxiety is occasionally evinced by such women to have their children brought up to better courses. Such redemption is all but impossible. In ordinary life, however, the mind of youth is often perverted by direct evil example in the elders; and, as we have already remarked, the corruption of the human affections in their fountain-head--family life--where they ought to be sweetest and purest, is more fatally demoralizing, and more certain to insure eventual ruin than almost any other. Fathers and mothers are both wanting often enough in their duty, although it is a matter of universal faith that the influence and example of the father are of less importance than that of the mother. A bad man may have virtuous children, a bad woman hardly ever. There are cases where the mother and daughter sleep in the same bed, each with a male partner. In the city of Edinburgh there are two mothers, prostitutes, each with four daughters, prostitutes; five prostitute mothers each with three prostitute daughters, ten such with two daughters each, and twenty-four such with one daughter each, all following the practices of the mothers.[305]

Such influences brought to bear on the young are irresistible. This may perhaps account for the number of sisters who carry on prostitution. The effect of mere sisterly example would be sufficient to account for the circumstance, but the parental becomes almost a compulsion, inasmuch as the parent (in such circumstances, the mother) will not only connive at, but be the main cause of her child's ruin for her own direct profit and advantage. This, indeed, seems more accordant with our ideas of the natural tendencies of prostitutes and procuresses, than that such persons should be excessively anxious for their children's purity and moral welfare.

POVERTY is an integral part of nearly all the conditions of life which we have to consider as incentives to prostitution. In some instances, more, perhaps, than may be generally credited, poverty is a direct and proximate cause of this vice. In other words, "women previously and otherwise virtuous do prostitute their bodies for bread." In most of the cases enumerated except that purely natural, but rare one, innate sexual desire, poverty is a remote cause. From the number of the human race who are under its griping, chilling pressure, poverty may be set down as a fruitful source of prostitution.

The connection of political circumstances with the phases of public morals is more intimate than the consideration of the superficial differences of the two matters would at first sight imply. But an attentive comparison of the state of public prosperity with the state of public crime will show that crime is somewhat dependent on food: the man with a well-filled stomach is no foe to order. Prostitution, as a means of supplying the cravings of hunger, is part of the same connection. It is true that in England there are poor-laws and work-houses, from and in which every destitute person, without reference to character, has a right to food and shelter. In the first place, however, the work-houses are objects of unmitigated aversion to the poorer classes. Various rules, in themselves hard, but rendered necessary by consideration for the rate-payers as well as for the beneficiaries, such as separation of husband and wife while receiving relief, separation of child and parent, etc., make the work-house system odious to the worthy and honest poor; while the strict rules, and the restraint and discipline enforced within the walls, make it still more odious to those who place their happiness in license and irregularity; added to this, in populous and poor districts, the claims upon the work-house in seasons of distress are too numerous for its capabilities. It is an awful truth that, notwithstanding the enormous revenues, nearly fifty millions of dollars per annum, collected for poor relief, and the immense establishments instituted throughout the country for the support and shelter of the distressed, sometimes the number of applicants is so great that their demands can not be met. Possibly, if these unfortunates could be distributed throughout the kingdom, so that the poverty of one spot could be balanced by the comparative prosperity of another, the fearful starvation in the midst of plenty, which is occasionally witnessed, need not occur. But in the mean while, and until the time when all the schemes and devices of modern improvement and advancement shall be finally perfected, and universal happiness attained, there is a mass of inconceivable wretchedness to be dealt with. In "Household Words" for November, 1855, Mr. Dickens gives a harrowing picture of London distress, of which he was himself an eye-witness.

It was a dark, rainy evening, and close against the wall of Whitechapel Work-house lay five bundles of rags. Mr. Dickens and his friend looked at them, and attempted to rouse them in vain. They knocked at the door, were admitted, saw the master of the work-house, and asked him if he knew there were five human beings--females--lying on the ground outside, cold and hungry. He did--at first he was annoyed--such applications were frequent--how could he meet them?--the house was full--the casual ward was full--what could he do more? When he found that Mr. Dickens's aim was inquiry, not fault-finding, he was softened. The case was certainly shocking: how was it to be met? Mr. Dickens said he had heard outside that these wretched beings had been there two nights already. It was very possible. He could not deny or affirm it. There were often more in the same plight--sometimes twenty or thirty. He (the master) was obliged to give preference to women with children. The place was full. Unable to do more, Mr. Dickens left. On getting outside, he roused one of these poor wretches. She looked up, but said nothing. He asked her if she was hungry; she merely looked an affirmative. Would she know where to get something to eat? she again assented in the same way. "Then take this, and for God's sake go and get something." She took it, made no sign of thanks--"gathered herself up and slunk away--wilted into darkness, silent and heedless of all things."

To what will not such misery as this compel suffering human nature? In times of commercial depression the police of London note an increase of street prostitution. It is said in the cities of England that the permanent prostitution of each place has a numerical relation to the means of occupation. In Edinburgh there are but few chances of employing female labor. Glasgow, Dundee, and Paisley are the seats of manufactures, and employ female labor extensively. According to Tait, the prostitution of Edinburgh far exceeds its proportion of prostitution to population as compared with the manufacturing towns.[306]

It seems unnecessary to multiply instances of poverty and indigence, inasmuch as the fact is most miserably indisputable: shirt-making at three cents, pantaloon-making at five or six cents--unceasing labor of fourteen hours a day bringing in only sixty or eighty cents a week, and competition even to obtain this. As the London Times once said, "The needle is the normal employment of every English woman; what, then, must be the condition of those tens of thousands who have nothing but that to depend upon?" Of late years, too, a still farther competition has been introduced in that ingenious invention of our country, the sewing machine.

In order to show the relation between unpaid and excessive labor and prostitution, we will instance a few cases.

One young woman said she made moleskin pantaloons (a very strong, stiff fabric) at the rate of fifteen cents per pair. She could manage twelve pairs per week when there was full employment; sometimes she could not get work. She worked from six in the morning until ten at night. With full work she could make two dollars a week, out of which she had to expend thirty-eight cents for thread and candle. On an average, in consequence of short work, she could not make more than seventy-five cents a week. Her father was dead, and she had to support her mother, who was sixty years of age. This girl endured her mode of existence for three years, till at length she agreed to live with a young man. When she made this statement she was within three months of her confinement. She felt the disgrace of her condition, to relieve her from which she said she prayed for death, and would not have gone wrong if she could have helped it.[307]

Such a case as this scarcely comes within the term prostitution, but she stated that many girls at the shop advised prostitution as a resource, and that others should do as they did, as by that means they had procured plenty to eat and clothes to wear. She gave it as her opinion that none of the thousands of girls who work at the same business earn a livelihood by their needle, but that all must and do prostitute themselves to eke out a subsistence.

Another woman, a case more directly in point, also said she could not earn more than seventy-five cents. She was a widow, and had three children when her husband died. Herself and her children had to live on these seventy-five cents. She might have gone into the work-house, and been there better supported than by her labor. Had she done so, the laws of the work-house are inexorable, she would have been separated from her children. Although one child died, she was now so reduced that she could not procure food. She took to the streets for a living, and she declared that hundreds of married and single women were doing the same thing for the same reasons.

A widow who had buried all her children could not support herself. From sheer inability to do so she took to prostitution.

A remarkably fine-looking young woman, whose character for sobriety, honesty, and industry was vouched by a number of witnesses as unimpeachable, had been compelled to work at fine shirts, by which she could not earn more, on an average, than thirty-five cents a week. She had a child, and, being unwilling to go to the work-house, she was driven by indigence to the streets. Struck with remorse and shame, and for the sake of her child determined to abandon prostitution, she fasted whole days, sleeping in winter-time in sheds. Once her child's legs froze to her side, and necessity again compelled her to take to her former course. Her father had been an Independent preacher.

These circumstances, and innumerable others, will establish incontestably the intimate relation which poverty bears to prostitution. A consideration of such circumstances as the foregoing, and the every-day observation of hosts of others of a similar character which will come within the cognizance of any one who searches into human motives, must incline all but the most outrageously virtuous to judge more tenderly of the failings and errors of their fellow-creatures.

All young females engaged in sewing are liable to the same distress, and the same resource against it is, of course, open to all. The hard labor and long hours are the least part of the evil, although in that light even there would be ground for commiseration.[308] The real grievance is that the most patient and industrious can not, by any hours of labor, earn a sufficiency to support themselves. It is true that the work-house is the legal refuge of the poor; but the tender mercies of the work-house have passed into a proverb. The policy of the poor-laws as administered is to deter the needy from applying for relief except in very extreme cases. Hence many rules are made, and much formality is interposed, which render the legal provisions so irksome and unbearable that many fly to the nearest means of satisfying their wants rather than demand their legal rights.

DOMESTIC SERVANTS are, in respect of their removal from absolute want while in service, more happily situated than those who are thus dependent upon the needle. But they are open to influences of another kind--we mean seduction by masters and male members of the household. Where this evil begins is an exceedingly difficult question to determine. When corrupted, they become themselves, by the very opportunities they possess, ready and dangerous instruments of corruption, and contribute to disseminate the poisons of immorality and of bodily disease. We have already incidentally mentioned that this class is at times open to a great deal of poverty and distress, namely, when out of service, and at such times they are peculiarly the mark for the lures of persons who make seduction their business and profitable occupation.

The domestic servants and the sewing-women are the principal adult laborers of Great Britain, except the factory girls. In 1851 there were,

Female domestic servants 905,165 Dress-makers 270,000 Seamstresses 72,940 Stay-makers 12,969

and of these one third were under twenty years of age.

PLACES OF PUBLIC AMUSEMENT in England are few when compared with those of the Continent, and their influence must be proportionately less. On the Continent dancing saloons are a prominent feature; in England this character of entertainment is almost unknown. In London there are a few places of this sort, such, for example, as Cremorne Gardens. Mr. Tait lays some stress on the evil effects of dancing-houses in Edinburgh. We should be inclined to think the cases of misconduct traceable to these places actually few in number, though not unworthy of notice. The single females who frequent dancing-rooms, theatres, and other similar places in England, without friends or family escort, have very little virtue to risk. The country fairs are far more injurious; they are indiscriminately attended by all ages and sexes, and their effects upon the female agricultural population are often very pernicious. Greenwich Fair, a three days' scene of rollicking and junketing, was held at Easter and Whitsuntide, in the outskirts of London, but is now abolished. It had its uses a century or two ago, but recently had been attended by all the idlers of London, of both sexes, and was justly dreaded by the friends of youth. It is proverbial that more young women were debauched at Greenwich Fair (allowing for its duration) than at any other place in England.

ILL-ASSORTED MARRIAGES are decidedly a cause of prostitution. Certainly breach of the marriage vow is one thing, prostitution for hire another. In estimating the number of prostitutes in Edinburgh at eight hundred, Mr. Tait adds two hundred to them under the head of married women, which he considers accrue from ill-assorted marriages. That the marriage was ill-assorted is plainly shown by its result, and that want of congeniality and temperament is the cause of prostitution to the extent thus named we have no ground to question. He speaks of such women selling their favors generally to one lover only, occasionally to any one who will pay; although the latter forms what is commonly known as prostitution, no other construction can be put upon the former.

LOVE OF DRESS is another incident which many writers, and Mr. Tait among them, have introduced into the direct causes of prostitution. We should consider it doubtful if any woman ever positively sold her virtue for a new gown or a knot of ribbons. Of course, after the Rubicon is crossed, all subsequent steps are easy, and may be taken from any motive. The love of admiration, which, under regulation, is sometimes a commendable instinct, when uncontrolled, becomes a snare. The love of dress is a modification of this sentiment, and may help to work out the effect when other causes have overthrown the balance of the mind.

JUVENILE PROSTITUTION.--We have now arrived, in the consideration of the causes of prostitution in England, at decidedly the most painful of all the phenomena connected with this condition of human life, namely, the immense extent of juvenile depravity. We have already sketched the evils of insufficient house accommodation and its noxious effects upon the morals of the rising generation. In this connection, also, bad example is particularly prominent; perhaps, indeed, with respect to the young, evil communications are the greatest dangers.

The work-house was formerly one great hot-bed of vice, and the greatest license and irregularity prevailed in every department. That children born or brought up in such a place should grow up debased was perfectly in the expected course of things. Now, however, under the new Poor-Laws Commission, the scene is stripped of its more revolting accessories. The sexes do not mingle, children do not associate with adults: some modicum of education is given. The sweetest and holiest of all ties, that of family, is yet wanting, and self-respect is totally deficient. In the absence of these protective influences, the wonder is, not that so many children should turn out ill, but that so many girls should turn out well. Formerly, also, there was a system of compulsory pauper apprenticeship, and the interests of the parish apprentice out of doors were very little looked after. This, again, has been altered, both in town and country, and the improvement is marked.

Even with all this, it is recorded in the London Times (June, 1848) that a correspondent, visiting one of the metropolitan work-houses, was struck by the happy and healthy appearance of the female children, and inquired of the master of the work-house what became of all of them. He was informed that they were sent out, at the age of fourteen, as servants or in other capacities, and that nine tenths of them, after coming backward and forward from their places to the work-house, eventually got corrupted and took to the streets.

FACTORIES are made accountable by many writers for much juvenile immorality and prostitution. Factories in England are, as most of our readers are aware, institutions materially differing in some respects from those of our own country. In no feature is there so wide a dissimilarity as in the character of the work-people. The factory children of England are the offspring of the poorest of the community, whose only heritage is pauperism, with wages at no time too good, and often at starvation point. The miserable earnings of the factory operatives are still farther reduced by constant strikes and contests with their employers, in which it is a foregone conclusion that the workmen must yield. Macaulay tells us that, two centuries ago, the employment of children in factories, and the dependence of the parent's bread upon the children's earnings, was a notorious fact, much condemned by philanthropists. The introduction of machinery and the value of child-labor gradually aggravated all the horrors of the factory system, the enormity of which called down the indignation of the non-manufacturing community, and compelled the protective interference of Parliament. The Ten Hours' Bill, the Factory Childrens' Education regulations, appointment by government of factory commissioners and inspectors, have all contributed to ameliorate the hard lot of the factory child. The employment of very young children in factories is still to be regretted, or rather its necessity, for probably it is better they should be employed in a not very laborious occupation than left to roam the streets.

The direct influence of factory work on juvenile prostitution is insisted on by many writers; by others, some reservations have been introduced, such as, The young associate only during hours of recreation. In business hours they are generally employed in different parts of the building. They have a certain amount of education. Their parents are generally, or very often, employed in the same establishment. Assume that these children were not in the factory, where would they be, and what could they do? Are evil influences rife only in the factory? The overcrowding at home; the frequent drunkenness and debauchery of their parents and associates; the endless indigence; the frequent visits to the work-houses, are all circumstances which have been considered and argued in the case. But of the fact of juvenile prostitution and depravity in factory populations none can doubt; of its being exclusively or chiefly attributable to factory life, others are not certain.

That children who labor in factories, and thereby contribute to the family earnings and their own support, could do better in the present condition of English society, is doubtful. Mill-owners are required to devote a portion of their time to education. Sunday-schools are established; personal attention is paid by leading mill-owners to the improvement of the poor; many build good cottages (for which, by the way, they receive a good interest in the way of rent); many inspect the schools; some build school-houses and pay the teachers. The good example of benevolent mill-owners in a measure compels others, whose moral perceptions are less keen, to follow them.

We would not be supposed to argue that English cotton factories are types of the Millennium, any more than are similar institutions on this side of the Atlantic. In fact, we have a very decided opinion on the matter, but common honesty requires that the opinion of all who have investigated the subject should be fairly recorded. In submitting the various arguments adduced in favor of factory labor and its bearing on immorality, we present merely subjects for consideration.

DISEASE IN CHILDREN.--A fact of importance to public health is the disease acquired by children. In the first address issued by the London Society for the Protection of young Females, it is stated that in three of the London hospitals during the preceding eight years there had been no less than two thousand seven hundred cases of venereal disease in children between eleven and sixteen years of age.

Dr. Ryan, on the same subject, speaking from his professional experience as medical officer of several charities, mentions the shock he felt on seeing numerous cases of venereal disease in children.

Mr. Miller, of Glasgow, testifies to the same fact.

The very imperfect data which exist on this important branch of our subject will not enable one to form any sound opinion on the spread of disease from these juvenile sources. It is, however, reasonable to conclude, from the few facts, and from the very facilities afforded at their age for intercommunication between children, that the spread of disease from direct contamination, and the deterioration of health and constitution from unknown excesses, must be very great.

OBSCENE PUBLICATIONS.--Of these there are vast numbers, and the extent of juvenile contamination from this source must be very great. The Society for the Suppression of Vice, in London, reports having seized, at different periods, thousands of obscene books, copper-plates, and prints, all of which they caused to be destroyed. Within a period of three years they procured the destruction of

Blasphemous and impure books 279 Obscene publications 1,162 Obscene songs (on sheets) 1,495 Obscene prints 10,493

and even this was but an item in the calculation.

The police of London take but little interest in this matter. The above-mentioned society is the principal agent in the repression of this infamous species of depravity. There are certain places in London in which the trade still lives and flourishes, notwithstanding the attacks made upon it. Holywell Street, in the Strand, and the vicinity of Leicester Square, are places of disgraceful notoriety in this respect. The secret is, that wherever there is a public demand, no repressive laws will ever prevent trade. The attempt at repression but makes it more profitable.

To the corruption of the youthful mind and the preparatives for prostitution these publications must contribute. It is matter of question what number of prostitutes have become such directly from this cause. The results of visitorial inspection do not show among London prostitutes, any more than elsewhere, a taste for books and prints of an obscene tendency. Their taste in literature is that which would prevail among persons of low intellectual calibre. Startling tales, romances with a plentiful spice of horrors, thrilling love-stories, highly wrought and exaggerated narratives, are their taste. In the practice of prostitution, the use of indecent or prurient prints is chiefly for the adornment of visitors' rooms in brothels.

EDUCATION.--In the relations between education and crime are found no distinctive marks whereby prostitution may be separated from any other development of vice or immorality. It is to be presumed that the same general laws which apply to the unregulated manifestation of the passions apply to those with which prostitution is chiefly implicated.

In the present generation it is generally assumed that crime is the offspring of ignorance, therefore Education! is the cry. Education has become a party watchword in England. The necessity of education, the quality and the quantity, with all the minor propositions that branch off from the main question, are, and have been for years, the subject of the hottest polemics. But recent results, evolved from statistical inquiries, would seem to call up the previous question as to the value of education at all. The present work is not the place in which to discuss the fact, or to point out a remedy, or indicate the deficiencies of a system which can suffer such a question to arise. We give the facts. From the Parliamentary reports of 1846-1848, it appears that the number of educated criminals in England was at that time more than twice, and in Scotland more than three and a half that of the uneducated:

+---------------------------------------------------------+ | Years. | England. | Scotland. | |--------|------------------------|-----------------------| | | Educated.| Uneducated.| Educated.| Uneducated.| |--------|-----------|------------|----------|------------| | 1846 | 16,963 | 7698 | 3155 | 903 | | 1847 | 19,307 | 9050 | 3562 | 1048 | | 1848 | 20,176 | 9671 | 3985 | 911 | +---------------------------------------------------------+

In calculating a percentage on certain criminal returns during the undermentioned years, the results were:

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | |1839.|1840.|1841.|1842.|1843.|1844.|1845.|1846.| |--------------------|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----| |Uneducated |33·53|33·32|33·21|32·35|31·00|29·77|30·61|30·66| |Imperfectly educated|53·48|55·57|56·67|58·32|57·60|59·28|58·34|59·51| |Well educated |10·07| 8·29| 7·40| 6·77| 8·02| 8·12| 8·38| 7·71| |Superior education | 0·32| 0·37| 0·45| 0·22| 0·47| 0·42| 0·37| 0·34| |Unascertained | 2·60| 2·45| 2·27| 2·34| 2·91| 2·41| 2·30| 1·78| | |-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----| | |100· |100· |100· |100· |100· |100· |100· |100· | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+

This table, which on its face conclusively establishes an increase in criminals imperfectly educated, and a decrease both in those who could read and write well, and those who could not read or write at all, may be, and has been made, the subject of much pseudo-philosophical remark, as proving the injury of education. In the first place, it only shows the effects of partial education, if it shows any thing. But the misfortune of statistical results is that they are relied on too implicitly, with a narrow-minded subservience to figures and facts, whereas they require to be accompanied with explanatory circumstances, which may either enhance their value up to the point of mathematical demonstration, or may so pare them away as to render them perfectly worthless. In the consideration of the above figures, all that would seem to appear is that there was an increase of education keeping pace with the increase of population, and that in the statistics of crime the increase of imperfectly educated people would be as perceptible as elsewhere. Mere reading and writing, unaccompanied by moral elevation, will not reform mankind. Alone, they will not prevent a hungry man from satisfying his hunger. The words of Cæsar apply to criminals equally as to conspirators:

"Let me have men about me that are fat, Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o'nights: Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look."

Pursuing this question, and turning to the population tables of 1851, the period of the last census, we find that Middlesex was the most generally educated county, taking the signature of the marriage register as the test of education. Eighty-two per cent. signed the marriage register, yet in the list of criminality Middlesex stood third of all the counties of England. Gloucester, which was first in crime, was far from being the most ignorant. There sixty-five per cent. signed the register. The general average of the whole population by the same list is forty per cent. Here again is a qualifying circumstance. London is included in Middlesex, with its vast seething mass of human misery and corruption to swell the record of crime, while its general population is, of course, about the most intelligent of the British empire, so that in the same spot is found at once the greatest intelligence and the greatest misery. We are not aware of such qualifying circumstances in Gloucestershire.

Dr. Ryan, writing on this point, refers to the Metropolitan Police Report for 1837, by which it appears that of prostitutes arrested in that year there

Could not read or write 1773 " read and write imperfectly 1237 " " " " well 89 Had received a good education 4 Total 3103

This is a tolerably fair criterion; for although, as before said, the police only interfere with peace-breakers, and all these came under the technical term of "drunk and disorderly," still we believe the state of prostitution in London to be such that an average proportion of all classes of courtesans pass through the hands of the police during the year.

Mr. Tait, speaking of Edinburgh, confirms the view put forward as to educational influences. A large proportion of the Edinburgh prostitutes (eighty-seven per cent.) read and write. The Scottish peasantry are perhaps the best-educated in Europe, and those girls who come to Edinburgh from the country are no exception to the rule. The uneducated, Mr. Tait thinks, are city girls.

As to the religious denomination of prostitutes, for that a prostitute may have a religion we may say, in the kindly spirit of Corporal Trim, but doubtingly, "A negro has a soul, your honor." In Edinburgh they include all sects except Independents, Baptists, and Quakers. There may be those who smile at the idea of a prostitute having any belief. How many of us are there whose actions are accordant with our religious professions? Of London we have no data on this point.

ILLEGITIMATE BIRTHS seem, by common consent of most writers, to be classed with details of prostitution. In France, it is said by those who profess intimate local knowledge, there is almost a prejudice against marriage, although it can be performed as a legal ceremony. We think Bayle St. John states this fact. In the poorer districts of London, the east end, for example, it is notorious that numbers live in a state of concubinage. Again: in the country, and away from the dense population of towns, a woman of immoral habits may often be found who has had two or three illegitimate children by different men with whom she has cohabited. Such a woman would most probably have been a prostitute in a town; as it is, she is no better; still, she is not a prostitute for hire. But to proceed to details.

The number of illegitimate births in every thousand births in the various counties is as follows:

Cumberland 108 Norfolk 105 Hereford 100 Salop 99 Nottingham 91 Cheshire 89 Westmoreland 87 Suffolk 81 Derby 81 Berks 79 Leicester 79 North Wales 78 South Wales 72 York 71 Stafford 69 Sussex 68 Cambridge 66 Lincoln 64 Middlesex 40

Cumberland is a pastoral and mountainous county, with a thinly-settled population. Norfolk is an agricultural and grazing county, broken up into large farms. Neither county has many large towns. Stafford is a manufacturing county, with a long list of thickly-populated small towns, in which as great indigence and misery can be found as in any part of England. Middlesex contains London. Here, then, we see at once that illegitimacy and prostitution are not the same thing. Where there are no prostitutes there are bastards, but the women in the country are mostly employed; they are obliged to work in the fields, rough country labor, or in some domestic manufacture such as button-making, stocking-making, etc.

An apparent paradox may be here mentioned, although not intimately affecting these investigations. The preponderance of bastards is accompanied by a preponderance of early marriages. This has been accounted for by the theory that both are dependent on sexual instincts precociously or excessively stimulated, which seek marriage when practicable, or illicit intercourse where not.[309]

Illegitimacy is somewhat regulated by the disproportionate number of the sexes. In an excess of females there are few bastards; in an excess of males there are many. Upon this fact, unattended by qualifying circumstances, might be based an argument as to the innate sexual instinct in females. It might have been expected the relations would be somewhat different, namely, an increase of prostitution with an excess of men, but an increase of bastards with an excess of women.

The number of rapes in England seems to be governed by the excess of men over women. Where the number of illegitimate children exceeds the average, rape is less frequent.

The cases of abuse of children between the ages of ten and twelve are three in every ten million of the whole population. There is some difficulty in this matter, arising from a legal technicality on the subject of age. In any case, neither of the last items of criminality is of any value, inasmuch as they include only those cases judicially investigated and proved to conviction. Many are guilty, yet acquitted; and many more are never charged with the offense. Shame prevents parties prosecuting; or, in the case of children, the fact does not transpire, or else it is compromised.

Keeping a brothel is, as we have said, an offense at common law. We have a computation of the number of offenses of this kind based upon every ten million of the population. In Middlesex it was two hundred and ninety-six, in Lancashire one hundred and eighty-three. Both counties include the most populous towns in England. Lancashire contains Manchester and Liverpool. This fact also is of little value, owing to the peculiar administration of the law on the subject. Remote or indirect injuries to the public safety are not noticed in England. The police may be well aware of crime meditated and planned, and of the haunts of crime, but the theory of public justice is cure, not prevention.

Concealment of birth is an offense which, as it emanates from undue sexual intercourse, is generally associated with prostitution. In Hereford and other counties, the proportion of illegitimate births is eighty-eight out of every thousand born, and there were twenty-two concealments to every thousand bastards.

In four counties the illegitimate births were fifty-eight in a thousand, and the concealments thirteen in a thousand illegitimates.

In fifteen counties there were fifty-three illegitimates in every thousand births, and twenty-seven concealments to every thousand illegitimates.

With the largest proportion of illegitimates there are the fewest concealments; namely, with seventy-nine illegitimates out of a thousand births, there were only twelve concealments to a thousand illegitimates.

It is absolutely impossible to ascertain the number of prostitutes in London with any degree of certainty, and even a satisfactory approximation is exceedingly difficult; nevertheless, it is most important to attain as nearly as possible to the actual facts, because without this knowledge no adequate idea can be formed of the vast seed-bed of disease and corruption in constant action in a great capital city, shedding forth and disseminating its pernicious growth on every side, through channels unknown and unsuspected.

Mr. Colquhoun, a magistrate of the British metropolis toward the close of the last century (1796), made an arbitrary enumeration, fixing the number of prostitutes in London at fifty thousand. Drs. Ryan, Campbell, Mr. Talbot, and others, carry their estimate in 1840 to eighty thousand!

Mr. Mayne (now Sir Richard Mayne), chief commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in 1840, made an estimate of the number of regular London prostitutes, which he considers were then eight thousand and upward. The seemingly irreconcilable discrepancy of these numbers is no doubt to be found in the loose terminology of the one party, and the technicality of the other. The term "prostitute" would seem to be best applied to those unhappy females who make prostitution their sole calling, and may therefore be styled "regular" prostitutes, while the larger estimate includes all shades, both "regular" and "occasional" or "irregular," by which is understood those females with whom prostitution is auxiliary to some reputable calling.

We can not find that any reliable or detailed returns have been made on this branch of public life by the London police, although they must possess peculiar and exclusive powers of preparing them. As long back as 1837 the following rough calculation was made.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | 1st | 2d | 3d | | | |Class.|Class.|Class.|Total.| |----------------------------------------|------|------|------|------| |Well-dressed prostitutes in brothels | 813 | 62 | 20 | 895 | |Well-dressed prostitutes walking the | | | | | | streets | 1460 | 79 | 73 | 1612 | |Prostitutes infesting low neighborhoods | 3533 | 147 | 184 | 3864 | | |------|------|------|------| | | 5806 | 288 | 277 | 6371 | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+

On this return Mr. Mayne very probably based his estimate of 1840.[310]

Mr. Talbot, the secretary of the Society for the Protection of Young Females, made the subject one of special inquiry, both personally and with the aid of the local police of the different cities; and although his details are very meagre, he professes to have satisfied himself of the general accuracy of the following figures, showing the regular prostitutes in various cities.

Edinburgh 800 Glasgow 1800 Liverpool 2900 Leeds 700 Manchester 700

All parties are, however, agreed in representing that it is impracticable to form any thing like a correct estimate of "the number of female servants, milliners, and women in the upper and middle classes of society who might properly be classed with prostitutes, or of the women who frequent theatres, barracks, ships, prisons, etc."

In 1851, the police of Dublin published in their statistical returns the number of prostitutes in that city, which is the only public or official paper on the point having any appearance of system or accuracy. It is as follows:

1848 Brothels 385 Prostitutes 1343 1849 " 330 " 1344 1850 " 272 " 1215 1851 " 297 " 1170

This table shows a steady decrease in the number of these women. We are uninformed as to any local causes for this, nor do we know whether it has been balanced by an increase of "sly" or occasional prostitution.

From the preceding figures a calculation has been made of the regular prostitutes relatively to the population in the several towns. It appears to have been based on the number of inhabitants at the date of the various estimates. That of Dublin is according to the census of 1851, the remainder according to that of 1841.

PROPORTION OF PROSTITUTES TO POPULATION.

+----------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Proportion to Population. | | | |----------------------------------------| | | Number of | | | To total | | |Prostitutes.| To Males. | To Females. | Population. | |----------|------------|------------|-------------|-------------| |Liverpool | 2900 | 1 to 43 | 1 to 45 | 1 to 88 | |Manchester| 700 | 1 to 156 | 1 to 169 | 1 to 325 | |Leeds | 700 | 1 to 70 | 1 to 75 | 1 to 145 | |Edinburgh | 800 | 1 to 106 | 1 to 130 | 1 to 236 | |Glasgow | 1800 | 1 to 87 | 1 to 97 | 1 to 184 | |Dublin | 1170 | 1 to 101 | 1 to 119 | 1 to 220 | |Cork[311] | 350 | 1 to 113 | 1 to 134 | 1 to 247 | +----------------------------------------------------------------+

The mean of the above maybe taken as a fair representation of the general state of the kingdom. The qualifying circumstances to which we have already made allusion as peculiar to each city or district are, of course, neutralized by the aggregate.

For example, Liverpool is a great sea-port town, and a large number of regular prostitutes would be inevitable there. In Manchester, a large manufacturing city, with an immense pauper and factory operative population, the trade of prostitution would meet with less profitable custom; accordingly, we find the proportion much smaller. Glasgow is both manufacturing and commercial; there, again, the proportion is larger. Dublin has but little commerce, but is a capital city, and has a court and a large garrison. The combination of all these circumstances is found in London, and a fair estimate would be obtained by adding all the preceding proportions together, which would give a mean of about 1 in 232, and this upon the population (2,362,000) is within a fraction of ten thousand.

We have seen that Mr. Mayne in 1840 stated his opinion to be that there were about eight thousand regular prostitutes in London, qualifying that statement by a profession of total ignorance as to the irregulars who did not make prostitution their only means of living. Mr. Mayne had peculiar sources of information open to him, and it is more than probable that his opinion was well founded. From the above calculation, from the best sources available to us on this very obscure question, we are satisfied to assume ten thousand as at least a probable approximation to the number of regular prostitutes in London.

Mr. Mayne, in his statement on this subject, mentioned that there were 3335 brothels. Some authors have attempted to make a calculation of the number of prostitutes on the basis of this number of houses; one has assumed three, another ten. Dr. Wardlaw has fixed upon five women per house, without, as it appears to us, any precise reason for preferring that figure. These different opinions may be thus worked out:

5 women in each house would give 16,675 prostitutes. 4 " " " (as in Dublin) would give 13,340 " 3 " " " (as in Cork) " " 10,005 "

We have not been able to obtain Mr. Mayne's statement ipsissimis verbis, and failing that we may be in error, but we should be inclined to think that, in his official capacity as a magistrate, and in his personal character as a lawyer, Mr. Mayne would be apt to assign the term "brothel" indiscriminately to all houses trading in prostitution, whether houses of assignation or houses in which prostitutes habitually reside. If our reading of the word "brothels" in this sense be correct, it is clear that any attempt to enumerate on the basis of the women attached to each house would be fallacious. The expression used by the Dublin police is "houses frequented or occupied," and its ambiguity shows that the authorities there considered the word "brothel" in the sense given to it by English jurists.

How does this number of ten thousand regular prostitutes bear on the population?

In London there are, above twenty years of age,

Male. Female. Bachelors 196,851 Spinsters 246,124 Husbands 398,624 Wives 406,266 Widowers 37,064 Widows 110,028 ------- ------- Totals 632,545 762,418

Omitting fractions, the proportions would be,

On bachelors and widowers 1 in 23 " total male population 1 " 63 " " female " 1 " 76 " aggregate population above twenty years of age 1 " 139

This would establish ten thousand as the nucleus of the prostitution system of London. Those females who come within the designation of "irregular prostitutes" are in no respect less prejudicial to the community than the "regulars." The difference is that they have some other real or nominal occupation, which they follow according to circumstances. An even moderately correct estimate of their number is little better than guess-work, and we therefore think it expedient to put our readers in possession of our own limited means of information, and take them on to a conclusion. There are so many elements to be taken into the account, and the data are so scanty, that we only consider ourselves justified in intimating an opinion rather than announcing a satisfactory conclusion.

To show the extremes to which the doctrine of possibilities may lead in this development of misery and vice, we will recur to the statement of some of the London prostitute needle-women themselves. We quote from Mayhew's letters to the Morning Chronicle:

"I now come to the second test that was adopted in order to verify my conclusions. This was the convening of such a number of needle-women and slop-workers as would enable me to arrive at a correct average as to the earnings of the class. I was particularly anxious to do this, not only with regard to the more respectable portions of the operatives, but also with reference to those who, I had been given to understand, resorted to prostitution in order to eke out their subsistence. I consulted a friend, who is well acquainted with the habits and feelings of slop-workers, as to the possibility of gathering together a number of women who would be willing to state that they had been forced to take to the streets on account of the low prices for their work.[312] He told me he was afraid, from the shame of their mode of life becoming known, it would be almost impossible to collect together a number of females who would be ready to say as much publicly. However, it was decided that at least the experiment should be made, and that every thing should be done to assure the parties of the strict privacy of the assemblage. It was arranged that this gentleman and myself should be the only male persons visible on the occasion, and that the place of meeting should be as dimly lighted as possible, so they could scarcely see or be seen by one another or by us. Cards of admission were issued privately, and, to my friend's astonishment, as many as twenty-five came on the evening named to the appointed place, intent upon making known the sorrows and sufferings that had driven them to fly to the streets, in order to get the bread which the wretched prices paid for their labor would not permit them to obtain.

"Never in all history was such a sight seen or such tales heard. There, in the dim haze of the large bare room in which they met, sat women and girls, some with babies sucking at their breasts, others in rags, and even those borrowed in order that they might come and tell their misery to the world. I have witnessed many a scene of sorrow lately; I have heard stories that have unmanned me; but never, till last Wednesday, had I heard or seen any thing so solemn, so terrible as this. If ever eloquence was listened to, it was in the outpourings of these poor, lorn mothers' hearts for their base-born little ones, as each told her woes and struggles, and published her shame amid the convulsive sobs of others--nay, of all present. Behind a screen, removed from sight, so as not to wound the modesty of the women, who were nevertheless aware of their presence, sat two reporters from this journal, to take down verbatim the confessions and declarations of those assembled, and to them I am indebted for the following report of the statements made at the meeting."

Then follow a series of most heart-rending statements, all to the same purport as those quoted in other parts of this work, and bearing all the internal evidence of truth. The letter concludes with the following sentence:

"They were unanimous in declaring that a large number of the trade--probably one fourth of the whole, or one half of those who had no husbands or parents to support them--resorted to the streets to eke out a living. Accordingly, assuming the government returns to be correct, and that there are upward of eleven thousand females under twenty living by needle and slop work,[313] the numerical amount of prostitution becomes awful to contemplate."

Thus, then, we have it in evidence that "probably" one fourth of all women engaged in sewing occupations for a livelihood are compelled to have occasional recourse to prostitution as their only and compulsory refuge from starvation.

The number of women engaged in these sewing occupations is enormous. According to the census of 1851, they constitute, indeed, the main support of the female working population throughout Great Britain, exclusive of domestic servants, laundresses, and persons employed in agricultural pursuits, and in the cotton and linen factories. The figures for the three kingdoms are as follows:

Hatters 3,500 Straw-hat-makers 20,500 Bonnet-makers 7,600 Cap-makers 4,700 Furriers 1,900 Tailors 17,600 Shawl-makers 3,200 Milliners 267,400 Seamstresses 72,900 Stay-makers 12,700 Stocking-makers 30,700 Glovers 25,300 Case-makers 31,400

In all Great Britain this class numbers 1,787,600 Of whom there are under twenty years of age 458,168

We have not the details of the occupations of London, but the proportion which the population of the metropolis bears to that of Great Britain is about one ninth. One ninth of the above aggregate would give for London about 196,500 women engaged in the sewing trades, all of whom, it may be assumed, are over fifteen. We omit from the consideration of female trades those engaged in agricultural pursuits and factories, such occupations having comparatively few representatives in the metropolitan districts, although there are more of them than would be supposed. Laundresses are also omitted, as a very large proportion of them in and about London are, as is well known, married and middle-aged women. But another class to which all writers assign a large amount of prostitution are domestic servants, a body most numerously represented in London. There are in the metropolis 165,100 domestic servants, the peculiarly unprotected character of whom, as a class, may be inferred from the singular fact that to the work-house, the hospital, and the Lunatic Asylum they supply an immense number of inmates, exceeding that of any other class.

Thus, then, are shown two very large figures, amounting together to 361,000, as the stock from which prostitutes to any extent may be procured. Some consideration, perhaps, of the ages of prostitutes, and of other circumstances in the condition of the female population, may enable us to appreciate the state of the case without being driven to the necessity of looking on these enormous totals as incapable of reduction.

Nature would indicate the period between 15 and 45 as the age during which the trade of prostitution must be carried on. Much has been said as to the means used for decoying young children for purposes of prostitution. Of the fact we are perfectly convinced, but should think it of little numerical importance in the aggregate body. The influence of evil communication on the young is of infinitely greater mischief, and the extent of youthful depravity from this cause is very great among the poorer classes, and would oblige us to date the commencing age of prostitution back to twelve years.

As to the period of life at which the prostitute's career is terminated, it is contended by some of the English writers that only an infinitesimal proportion reach the age of forty-five in the exercise of their soul and health destroying trade. Mr. Tait says, "In less than one year from the commencement of their wicked career these females bear evident marks of their approaching decay, and in the course of three years very few can be recognized by their old acquaintance, if they are so fortunate as to survive that period. These remarks apply more especially to those who are above twenty years of age when they join the ranks of the victims." From the average of Edinburgh, Mr. Tait goes on to assume that "not above one in eleven survives twenty-five years of age; and taking together those who persist in vice, and those who, after having abandoned it, die of diseases which originated from the excesses they were addicted to during its continuance, perhaps not less than a fifth or sixth of all who have embraced this course of sin die annually." Dr. Ryan seems to adopt an opinion that the average duration of life after commencing prostitution is four years.[314] Captain Miller, of Glasgow, thinks that "the average age at which women become abandoned is from fifteen to twenty, and the average duration of women continuing this vice is about five years."

The ages of patients admitted into the Lock Hospital at Edinburgh were as follows:

Under 15 years 42 From 15 years to 20 years 662 " 20 " " 25 " 199 " 25 " " 30 " 69 " 30 " " 35 " 16 " 35 " " 40 " 6 Over 40 years 6 ---- Total 1000

These figures alone would go to make out the presumption that the ages of prostitutes are between twelve and thirty, and that 861/1000 are between fifteen and twenty-five. According to the above table, nine tenths of the number at twenty have disappeared at thirty, and according to Captain Miller's opinion that "cases of reform and abandonment of their life are very rare," the conclusion would be that their career ends in death.[315]

The duration of prostitution being ascertained, we would find the number of women between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. In the whole female population this is one fifth, but the very aged or the very youthful are necessarily excluded from the classes of work-women and servants; of servants, indeed, there are five and upward under twenty to three above twenty years of age. This, therefore, would indicate very little reduction of the numbers.

It is reasonable to suppose that some portion of the above are married women having husbands living, and if so, it is not an unreasonable supposition that their wives are not obliged to have recourse to prostitution; in fact, the poor creatures themselves seem to imply that immunity. The number of wives is about one third of the whole female population; of these wives about one fourth are employed in trades apart from those of their husbands. If we deduct only such a proportion from the sewing-women, it makes something when we have to deal with such enormous masses; we should strike off nearly 50,000, leaving only 150,000 sewing-women.

There is comfort, however, in the fact that, of these sewing-women, three fourths are known to be over twenty years of age; and if we only assume one half instead of three fourths, allowing the other fourth for the difference between twenty and twenty-five years of age, it brings our figure down to seventy-five thousand.

All these deductions are, we fear, in excess; and it must be recollected, moreover, that the above large sums by no means include all the female occupations of London,[316] but merely those classes which, either from the temptation incident to their position, or from the imperative demands of want and necessity, are, by competent authority, supposed to be peculiarly obnoxious to the risk of prostitution. If to this large number of women, which we can not assume at less than 273,000 between the ages of twelve and twenty-five, be added all the other denizens of a great city unexampled in its magnitude, embracing in itself all the peculiarities of all other cities, at once a manufacturing, a commercial, a garrison, and a capital city, and, finally, containing the largest population in the world, one such item being nearly four hundred thousand single females over twelve years of age, then, indeed, the mass of misery, wretchedness, vice, and crime there accumulated appals the mind seeking to grapple with it, and oppresses us with the apprehension that even eighty thousand, the highest estimate which has been made, is, when understood to include all contingencies, not an incredible figure.[317]

Englishmen pride themselves, and, it must be admitted, not without reason, on their numerous and admirable public charities. In this particular direction it would seem that public munificence has not been so liberally displayed as in some others. "Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth more than over ninety and nine just persons," does not, we fear, apply to minds and hearts of earthly mould. People, in charitable as in other institutions, like to see a return for their investment; and, notwithstanding the immense field for benevolent labor in prostitution, there is a general impression among both the public and officials that it is an irretrievably barren waste, and that it is worse than profitless to squander money and time upon it. The results which have been achieved would, however, show that the exertions of philanthropy, although not producing so much fruit as in some other quarters, have not been entirely vain. In reference to these results, too, it must be borne in mind that the discipline of the various institutions is severe, and even repellent, a policy ill adapted to insure a large amount of success.

The Lock Hospital is the oldest institution in London for the benefit of lost females, and is devoted entirely to the cure of venereal disease. It was founded in the year 1747, and in a century had cured 45,448 cases.

The Magdalen Hospital of London was founded in 1758, and up to January, 1844, had received 6968 females. The results were as follows:

Reconciled to their friends, or placed in service or other reputable employment 4752 Discharged at their own request 1182 " for improper conduct 720 Died 109 Sent to other institutions (being insane or afflicted with incurable diseases) 107 Eloped 2 Remaining in the Hospital 96 ---- Total 6968

A considerable number of the women, when discharged from the institution, are under twenty years of age; and it is an invariable rule not to dismiss any one (unless at her own desire, or for misconduct) without some means being provided by which she may obtain a livelihood in an honest manner.

The Lock Asylum was founded in 1787, for the reception of penitent female patients when discharged from the Lock Hospital; and up to March, 1837, the number of women received was 984. The results were:

Reconciled to their friends 170 Placed in service or employment 281 Died 22 Remaining in Asylum 18 --- Total 491

Of the remaining number, many had been sent to their parishes; some had eloped, and some had been expelled for improper conduct, but of several even of these favorable accounts had been afterward received: some of them were known to be married, and living creditably, and others were earning a living honestly. We have been unable to obtain any account of the operations of this institution since the year 1837.

The London Female Penitentiary was instituted in 1807. Of 6939 applicants, 2717 were admitted into the house. The results were:

Reconciled and restored to friends, placed in service, or otherwise provided for 1543 Discharged from various causes 631 " at their own request 350 Emigrated 47 Sent to their parishes 23 Died 28 Remaining in Penitentiary 95 ---- Total 2717

The Guardian Society was established in 1812, and from that period up to 1843 had admitted 1932 wretched outcasts to partake of the advantages it offered. The results were:

Restored to their friends 533 Placed in service, or satisfactorily provided for 455 Discharged or withdrawn 843 Sent to their parishes 53 Died 17 Remaining in institution 31 ---- Total 1932

Besides these institutions, others have been established with similar objects, namely, The British Penitent Female Refuge, The Female Mission, The South London Penitentiary, and one or two others. As compared with the great number of unfortunate women in London, these institutions have effected but a very small amount of good. During seventy-seven years, ending 1835, ten thousand and five females were received within the walls of four of the London asylums, of which number six thousand two hundred and sixty-two (more than three fifths) were satisfactorily provided for, and two thousand nine hundred and eighty were discharged for misconduct. Taking the whole of the institutions in London up to that time, it may be fairly estimated that fourteen or fifteen thousand prostitutes have had the opportunity of returning to a virtuous life.

Those who, like the Pharisee, content themselves with thanking God that they are not as other men, and even as these unfortunates, are a very impracticable set to deal with, and if such there be who read these pages, we pass them by, and pray for the better health of their souls. The gentle spirits who, imitating a blessed example, think it not pollution to extend their sympathy and saving help to publicans and harlots, may, in the following lines, written by a prostitute and found in her death-bed, see matter for meditation, and ground for the belief that all efforts in the cause of the sinner will not be unsuccessful. They were headed

"VERSES FOR MY TOMB-STONE, IF EVER I SHOULD HAVE ONE.

"The wretched victim of a quick decay, Relieved from life, on humble bed of clay, The last and only refuge for my woes, A love-lost, ruined female, I repose. From the sad hour I listened to his charms, And fell, half forced, in the deceiver's arms, To that whose awful veil hides every fault, Sheltering my sufferings in this welcome vault, When pampered, starved, abandoned, or in drink, My thoughts were racked in striving not to think Nor could rejected conscience claim the power To improve the respite of one serious hour. I durst not look to what I was before; My soul shrank back, and wished to be no more. Of eye undaunted, and of touch impure, Old ere of age, worn out when scarce mature; Daily debased to stifle my disgust Of forced enjoyment in affected lust; Covered with guilt, infection, debt, and want, My home a brothel, and the streets my haunt, For seven long years of infamy I've pined, And fondled, loathed, and preyed upon mankind, Till, the full course of sin and vice gone through, My shattered fabric failed at twenty-two."

The enormous extent of this evil, its deep-rooted causes, the difficulty of combating it, either by religious arguments, legislative provisions, or appeals to common sense and physical welfare, may well deter the philanthropist from the attempt to purify this stable of Augeas; but benevolence has accomplished tasks as arduous, and we can not conclude this chapter better than by a short description of the discouragements which attended the first efforts of Mrs. Fry in the reformation of the prostitute felons in Newgate, and of the blessed results of her indomitable perseverance and immovable faith.[318]

This admirable woman, on her first visit to Newgate, found the female side of the jail in a condition which no language can describe: "Nearly three hundred women, sent there for every gradation of crime, and some under sentence of death, were crowded together in two small wards and two cells. They all slept, as well as a crowd of children, on the floor, at times one hundred and twenty in a ward, without even a mat for bedding. Many of them were nearly naked. They were all drunk, and her ears were offended by the most terrible imprecations." The authorities of the prison, of course, advised her against going among them: they were sure that nothing could be effected! She, however, determined to make the trial; she went alone into what she felt was like a den of wild beasts. In vain the governor reasoned with her: "She had put her hand to the plow and was not to be turned back." In one short month, such was the effect of her merely moral agency and religious instruction, that she felt herself justified in inviting the lord-mayor, the sheriffs, and several of the aldermen to satisfy themselves, by personal investigation, of the result of the exertions which she herself and some few lady members of the Society of Friends, who had joined her in the good work, had effected.

Thus was conviction forced upon the obtuse intellects of corporate authorities, and hence was dated the era of Prison Reform in England.

In our own country, where the means of diffusing intelligence are unbounded, and whose reformatory system for criminals has already claimed the attention of European statesmen and philanthropists, there can be no insuperable barrier even in so difficult an undertaking as that to which our labors are directed. Paraphrasing the opinion of one of the most distinguished essayists of this century,[319] we venture to assert that "it is impossible that social abuses should be suffered to exist in this country and in this stage of society for many years after their mischief and iniquity have been made manifest to the sense of the country at large."