The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon III: the Report of our Secret Commission (cont..)

W.T. Stead, (The Pall Mall Gazette, July 8, 1885)

HOW THE LAW FACILITATES ABDUCTION

It is sometimes said that these children ought to be looked after by their parents, but those who resort to that argument forget that the law plays into the hands of the abductor. Suppose a child of thirteen, either in a fit of temper or enticed by the bribes of a procuress, once gets within the precincts of a brothel, what is the parent to do? The brothel-keeper has only to keep the door locked to defy the father. If she had stolen a doll he could have got a search warrant for stolen property, but as it is only his daughter he can do nothing. It is true that there is a mode of procedure by habeas corpus, but that is so cumbrous and so costly that it is practically unavailable for the poor. Counsel's opinion was recently taken by the abductor of a boy as to what steps could be taken to prevent the father obtaining possession of his son. The answer was as follows:— Refuse father admittance. You can keep the boy until Habeas Corpus is obtained. At the very earliest this can not be secured until after twenty-four hours at least. The hearing of the case to show cause will wait about a week for a turn. The costs are uncertain, from £30 to £50.

What is the use of a remedy which at the earliest cannot be brought into operation in less than twenty-four hours, even if it could be had for nothing? A girl may be ruined in ten minutes. By habeas corpus a father has a means of gaining his end, but he could no more raise the £50 needed than he could fly. A remedy that involves a preliminary expenditure of £50, and can then only get into action in a week, is virtually non-existent for the poor.

Take another case. In Hull last August a man kept a child's brothel, locally known as "the Infant School." He kept no fewer than fourteen children there, the eldest only fifteen, and some as young as twelve. The mothers had gone to the house to try and claim their children, and had been driven off by the prisoner with the most horrible abuse, and had no power to get the children away or even to see them. Fortunately, the old reprobate had sold drink without a licence. For this offence, and not for his stealing children, the police broke into his house and secured his conviction. By law abduction is no offence unless the girl is in the custody of her father at the time of her abduction.

How easy it is for a man to seduce a child with impunity the following record taken from the report of a case heard in Hammersmith police-court last March will show:—

Walter Franklin, who lived in North-avenue, Fulham, was summoned for unlawfully taking Annie Summers, an unmarried girl, under the age of sixteen, out of the possession of her master, and against the will of her father. Mr. Gregory said he appeared on behalf of the Society for the Protection of Young Girls to support the summons. The girl, who was fourteen, was in service, and met the defendant while on her way to her father to obtain a change of linen. He invited her to his house, where he kept her all night, and turned her out in the morning. She was found by her father in Chelsea. Mr. Sheil referred to the case of "Queen and Miller," and thought no charge had been disclosed, as she was not in the custody of her father. The case fell in with the decision in "Queen and Miller." In that case it was the converse. The girl had left her father, and was on the way to her mistress. Mr. Gregory: Yon think she was not in the custody of either? Mr. Sheil replied in the Affirmative. The summons was then withdrawn.

ENTRAPPING IRISH GIRLS

I have already spoken of procuring children and silly London girls. Of a deeper shade of criminality is the system of trapping innocent girls by inveigling them into houses of ill-fame which are represented as respectable lodging-houses. A few years ago, when great numbers of Irish girls used to arrive in the Thames, they formed a constant source of revenue to the brothel keepers of Ratcliffe-highway. The modus operandi was very simple. The moment the steamer touched the landing it was hoarded by men retained by the brothel keepers to bring girls home. Sometimes they accosted the girl, saying that if she wanted a cheap respectable lodging they could take her to exactly the kind of place she wanted. More frequently they seized her box and marched off with it, assuring her that they were taking it to the place where she had to stop. The Irish girl, being innocent and inexperienced, setting foot for the first time in a foreign city, without friends and not knowing where to go, followed the porter, and was soon safely housed A highly respectable Irish girl in the service of one of my friends had the utmost difficulty in extricating her box from the grasp of one of these harpies. As, however, it was the second visit, and as she knew the address where a situation awaited her, she succeeded in compelling him to leave her box, and let her go to the place. A less experienced girl, who had no address to which to go, would have fallen an easy prey. When the girl is once within the brothel she is about as helpless as a sparrow when caught by the falling brick of the schoolboy's trap. The method of her gaoler is very simple. The object being in all cases purely mercenary, the first thing is to strip her of all her scanty store of money. This is done not by theft, but by running up a bill for board and lodgings, and to this end every impediment is placed in the way of finding her a situation. The mere fact of her lodging in such a house stands in the way of her success, even without the many simple but effective expedients which can be employed to prevent her engagement.

The next thing is to get her into debt, and this also is easily accomplished by the same means. All the time the bill is running up, the girl is insidiously tempted. She is plied with drink, significant hints are dropped as to the money she might make if she would "do as the others do;" possibly a lover is found for her, no stone is left unturned to sap her virtue. If she is obdurate to the last, two things happen. Her box containing all her worldly goods is seized and she is turned penniless into the street, late at night, without a friend or acquaintance in the whole world, and with dire threats of being handed over to the police for not paying her bill. What is she to do? A country girl of seventeen or eighteen without a penny in her pocket in Ratcliff-highway at midnight is marked down for destruction. The very contemplation of such a position is sufficient to coerce the girl, if not into complying at least into considering her captors' proposals. Forlorn and desperate, she is tempted to drink, some snuff is put in her beer, she becomes unconscious, and when she wakes with a splitting headache in the morning, the girl is lost. This is no fancy picture. Priests and harlots both agree that it is the simple truth. Cardinal Manning assured me that so terrible was the havoc among these immigrants that one notorious procuress in those parts boasted that no fewer than 1,600 girls had passed through her hands. That, however, was some years ago. The Irish immigration has almost ceased.

The influx of Irish immigration is comparatively small, but some girls still arrive in London from Liverpool. The snaring of these girls is accomplished with more art than by the lassoing method that used to prevail in Ratcliff-highway. One of the most ingenious, but most diabolical methods of capture is that which consists in employing a woman dressed as a Sister of Merry as a lure. This I have been assured by ladies actively engaged in work among the poor is sometimes adopted with great success. The Irish Catholic girl arriving at Euston is accosted by what appears to be a Sister or Mercy. She is told that the good Lady Superior has sent her to meet poor Catholic girls to take them to good lodgings, where she can look about for a place. The girl naturally follows her guide, and after a rapid ride in a closed cab through a maze of streets she is landed in a house of ill fame. After she is shown to her bedroom the Sister of Mercy disappears, and the field is cleared for her ruin. The girl has no idea where she is. Every one is kind to her. The procuress wins her confidence. Perhaps a situation is found for her in another house belonging to the same management, for some broth-keepers have several houses. Drink is constantly placed in her way; she is taken to the theatre and dances. Some night, when worn out and half intoxicated, her bedroom door is opened — for there are doors which when locked inside will open by pressure from without — and her ruin is accomplished. After that all is easy — except the return to a moral life. Vestigia nulla retrorsum.

DECOY GIRLS AND THEIR ARTS

It is by no means only Irish girls who are the prey of the procuress. English and Scotch are picked up with even greater facility. There are decoy girls in every great thoroughfare — agents of the procuress in almost every railway station. Children as they go to and from day school and Sunday school are noted by the keen eye of the professional decoy—waited for and watched until the time has come for running them down. "Baker-street station," said a female missionary," is regularly haunted by an old decoy, who entices little children to a place in Milton-street. Watch has been kept for weeks at a time, but she is wary, and when the watch is on the decoy goes elsewhere. As soon as the watch is removed we hear from children whom she has tempted that she is back at her old haunts." Most respectable little girls of the middle class are sometimes accosted when looking into shop windows by pleasant-spoken, well-dressed ladies, who offer to buy anything they take a fancy to in order to win their confidence and get them away.

One fine child of fourteen in the Brompton-road was promised by "such a nice little lady" rides on her beautiful quiet pony as often as she liked, if she would only go home with her. The thing is not done impromptu. It is a carefully organized system, worked by professionals, whose earnings are large and whose risk is small. Of 3,000 cases of which particulars have been taken in Millbank nearly 900, or about 30 per cent, attributed their ruin to decoy girls. When once a child is enticed away she is often too much ashamed to go back, and even if she wished, good care is taken to keep her in the toils. As for tracing her, a needle in a bottle of hay is as easily found as a child among the four millions of London. Some years ago an old procuress enticed away the daughter of a city missionary. The girl disappeared for six months. The police were put on the alert. Handbills were printed and circulated broadcast. Everything was done to track the girl, and everything was done in vain. Her mother almost lost her reason, and all hope was abandoned when the girl turned up one day at a refuge. It was then discovered that she had never been out of London, that at one time she had been in the workhouse, and that she never had made any attempt at keeping out of view. She was simply lost in the Babylonian maze.

RUINING COUNTRY GIRLS

The country girl offers an almost unresisting quarry. Term time, when young girls come up to town with their boxes to seek situations, is the great battue season of the procuress. To such a pass has it come that when a member of the Girls' Friendly Society comes to town to a situation, the society deems it indispensable to send some one to meet her to see that she does not fall into bad hands. In dealing with English girls the woman is sometimes dressed as a deaconess instead of a sister of mercy. "It makes one's heart bleed," said a porter at one of the Northern railway stations," to see these poor girls snapped up by these bad women." Even if they escape from the railway station they are often trapped in the street. Here is a case which came under the personal knowledge of the chaplain at Westminster prison, A country girl arrived by the Great Northern Railway at King's Cross. She put her boxes in the left-luggage room and went out, as thousands have done before her, to see what London looked like, and to inquire her way about.

After some little time, being hungry and tired, she asked an apparently respectable woman where she could get something to eat. The woman took her to a refreshment house, where they had some food. The drink was apparently drugged, for the girl remembered nothing until several hours after, when she came to consciousness in a police cell. She had been found lying, apparently drunk, in the street, and had been run in. On recovering herself she found that her purse had been taken, the tickets for her luggage carried off, most of her underclothing had been taken away, and that she was very sore and scratched about the thighs. Apparently disturbed before they were able to proceed to the last extremity, the criminals had hurriedly dressed her in a few clothes and deposited her in the street, where she was found still unconscious by the policeman. On inquiry at the Left Luggage Office, it was found that her boxes had been removed by some one who had produced the ticket, but who he was no one has ever been able to discover any trace. The girl was proved to be very respectable. A place was found for her, and she has done well ever since. Mr. Merrick, who saw her repeatedly and questioned her closely, has no doubt whatever that she gave a truthful statement of what actually took place, and but for an accident she would have been outraged as well as robbed. Others less lucky are now on the streets; but their stories of course are easily dismissed.

Here is another case, the accuracy of which is vouched for by a lady engaged in rescue work at Pimlico. A young girl, aged sixteen or seventeen, coming from the country on a visit to her uncle, a wealthy tradesman, was looking after her boxes at the railway station, when a woman, addressing her by her name, asked her where she was going. "To my uncle, who lives at ———." The woman replied, "I have been sent to fetch you." She took the girl in a cab and landed her in a brothel, from which she was not rescued for some time. The woman had read the girl's name in the address on her boxes.

These malpractices are by no means confined to London. Here is a tale for the truth of which Mr. Charrington is ready to vouch:—

A young lady applied to the proprietor of a provincial music-hall for an engagement, and as the photograph showed a very pretty girl of some eighteen Summers, a favourable reply was sent, and respectable (?) lodgings were procured for her. He allowed her to sing one night, but ere the second night was passed he had drugged her, seduced her, and communicated to her a foul and loathsome disease. My friend (who told me her story) found her literally rotting on some straw in an outhouse where the proprietor had left her to starve. At first he thought there was no hope of recovery, but her life was saved, although her beauty and her eyesight were both gone.

In a report on the social condition of Edinburgh drawn up by Mr. Fairbairn, a city missionary in 1883, he says:—

Some houses which are nominally temperance hotels are in reality brothels (they take the name of temperance hotels because they are thus open to receive people, and at the same time escape police supervision, having no licence). Into these places girls are entrapped as servants, and drugged or made drunk, and then seduced, and tempted to abandon themselves to prostitution. In two such cases known to the missionary, the keepers have been sent to prison. At a famous brothel at Liverpool, country girls were frequently trapped—excursionists and cheap trippers being the favourite prey.

IMPRISONED IN BROTHELS

It is easy enough to get into a brothel, it is by no means easy to get out. Apart from the dress houses, where women are practically prisoners, forbidden to cross the doorstep and chained to the house by debt, cases are constantly occurring in which girls find themselves under lock and key. Every now and then fervid Protestantism lashes itself into wild fury over the alleged abduction of some girl who is believed to have been spirited away from convent to convent. These abductions and imprisonments are constantly going on in the service of vice, but no one pays any heed. The labyrinth of London, like that of Crete, has many chambers and underground passages; the clue that leads to the entrance is easily broken. Here, for instance, is one case in which a girl who is now in a respectable situation was imprisoned until her ruin was effected.

K. S., a nursemaid, under fifteen, was once asked to take tea by a woman whose acquaintance she had made. She entered and was not allowed to go out. She was detained in the house, but kindly treated. One night she was drugged, rendered unconscious, and when in that condition she was ruined, it was said, by a nobleman. He kept her there for some months, when at last she succeeded in making her escape. The house is in a street near the Marble Arch, kept by Miss——, who pretended to keep a dyer's shop. The girl was sent to Cheshire from the Lock Hospital, and is now doing well.

Here is another case reported by a Westminster Rescue Home:—

Fanny F., fifteen, was imprisoned in the brothel. Her father was denied all access to the house. He was in great trouble, but at last he got her out by help of other girl inmates, who had heard of the father's grief.

Even when they do escape the brothel keeper seizes possession of their things. The case of Esther Prausner, a Polish girl, which came before the Thames police court at the end of June, is—

She came to England from Germany a few months since, for the purpose of getting a livelihood. After she had been over here a few weeks she was persuaded to live at Poplar in a house of ill fame, and the unfortunate girl while there was compelled to lead an immoral life. At last she declined to stay any longer in the house, and left. When she demanded her box, containing all her things, and also those of a young man whom she intended to marry, the landlady refused to give them up, saying that she should not have them at all. The girl had paid not only the rent for all the time she lived in the house but also a week's rent in advance in lieu of notice to quit. Still her box was not given up. She asked the magistrate's advice as to what she should do to recover her property. Mr. Lushington having directed one of the warrant officers to go to the house and try and obtain the box, was informed, later on in the day, that the woman would not give it up. He then directed a summons, free of charge, to be issued against the person referred to for illegally detaining the things. The young girl, who was nineteen, and appeared in great distress, then withdrew.

A case which came more immediately under my personal knowledge was one which occurred only last year in St. John's-wood. Although I have not been able to see the girl herself I have received from two trustworthy and independent sources narratives of her adventure which are substantially identical. It is as follows:—

Alice B., a Devonshire girl of twenty years of age, came to London to service on the death of her father. She was seduced when in service by a doctor who lodged in the house; but after he left she kept company with an apparently respectable young man. She was engaged to be married, and all seemed to be going well, when one Sunday afternooon (sic), as they were enjoying their Sunday walk, he proposed to call and see his aunt, who lived, he said, at No. — Queen's-road, St. John's Wood. This house, local rumour asserts, is a fashionable brothel, patronized among others by at least one Prince and one Cabinet Minister. Of that she knew nothing. Together with her sweetheart she entered the house and had tea with his supposed aunt. After tea she was asked if she would not like to wash her hands, and she was taken upstairs to a handsomely furnished bedroom and left alone. She first discovered her situation by hearing the key turn in the lock. For three weeks she was never allowed to leave the room, but was compelled to receive the visits of her first seducer, who seems to have employed her sweetheart to lure her into this den. She implored her captor to release her, but although he took her to the theatre and the opera, dressed her in fine clothes, and talked of marrying her abroad, he never allowed her to escape. When he was not with her she was kept under lock and key. When he was with her, she was a captive under surveillance. This went on for six or seven weeks. The girl was well fed and cared for, and had a maid to wait on her; but she fretted in captivity, dreaming constantly of escape, but being utterly unable to get out of the closely guarded house. At last one morning she was roused by an unusual noise. It was the sweep brushing the chimney. Her door had to be opened to allow him to enter the adjoining room. She rose, dressed herself in her old clothes -which fortunately had not been removed—and fled for her life. She found a little side door at the bottom of the back stairs open, and in a moment she was free, She had neither hat nor bonnet, nor had she a penny she could call her own. Her one thought was to get as far away as possible from the hated house. For three or four days she wandered friendless and helpless about the street, not knowing where to go. The police were kind to her and saved her from insult, but she was nearly starved when by a happy inspiration she made her way to a Salvation Army meeting at Whitechapel, where she fell into good hands. She was passed on to their Home and then to the Rescue Society, by whose agency she found a situation, where she is at the present moment.

It would be painful to discover how many girls are at this moment imprisoned like Alice B. in the brothels of London.

A LONDON MINOTAUR

As in the labyrinth of Crete there was a monster known as the Minotaur who devoured the maidens who were cast into the mazes of that evil place, so in London there is at least one monster who may be said to be an absolute incarnation of brutal lust. The poor maligned brute in the Cretan labyrinth but devoured his tale of seven maids and as many boys every ninth year. Here in London, moving about clad as respectably in broad cloth and fine linen as any bishop, with no foul shape or semblance of brute beast to mark him off from the rest of his fellows, is Dr,———, now retired from his profession and free to devote his fortune and his leisure to the ruin of maids. This is the "gentleman" whose quantum of virgins from his procuresses is three per fortnight—all girls who have not previously been seduced. But his devastating passion sinks into insignificance compared with that of Mr. ———, another wealthy man, whose whole life is dedicated to the gratification of lust. During my investigations in the subterranean realm I was constantly coming across his name. This procuress was getting girls for ———, that woman was beating up maids for ———, this girl was waiting for ———, that house was a noted place of ———'s. I ran across his traces so constantly that I began to make inquiries in the upper world of this redoubtable personage. I soon obtained confirmation of the evidence I had gathered at first hand below as to the reality of the existence of this modern Minotaur, this English Tiberius, whose Caprece is in London.

It is no part of my commission to hold up inpiduals to popular execration, and the name and address of this creature will not appear in these columns. But the fact that he exists ought to be put on record, if only as a striking illustration of the extent to which it is possible for a wealthy man to ruin not merely hundreds but thousands of poor women, It is actually Mr. ———'s boast that he has ruined 3,000 women in his time. He never has anything to do with girls regularly on the streets, but pays liberally for actresses, shop-girls, and the like. Exercise, recreation; everything is subordinated to the supreme end of his life. He has paid his victims, no doubt—never gives a girl less than £5—but it is a question whether the lavish outlay of £,3,000 to £5,000 on purchasing the assent of girls to their own dishonour is not a frightful aggravation of the wrong which he has been for some mysterious purpose permitted to inflict on his Kind.

'Tis not vain fabulous,
Though as esteem'd by shallow ignorance, 
What the sage poets, taught by the heav'nly muse,
Storied of old, in high immortal verse,
Of dire chimeras and enchanted isles.
And rifted rocks whose entrance leads to Hell;
For such there be, but unbelief is blind.

The blindest unbelief must admit that in this "English gentleman", we have a far more hideous Minotaur than that which Ovid fabled and which Theseus slew.