Thieving and Prostitution live. It becomes the only means of driving away painful reflections." (p. 307.) Mr POYNDER, Under-Sheriff of London, observed "To the effects of liquor multitudes must refer, both their first deviation from virtue, and their subsequent continuance in vice......Perhaps it would be impossible for them, without that aid, to continue such a life, or to endure the scenes they are called to witness." (p. 418.) These facts are well known to the Traffickers, and were expressed by an aged Distiller, at a public dinner of the trade, in the coarse toast, "The distillers' best friends-the poor whores of London." (Report, p. 428.) Mr W. TAIT, the Police Surgeon, of Edinburgh, in a little work on Magdalenism, confirms all this, and points out the physical cause. 'Many, it is true, had no claim to the title of drunkards before surrendering themselves to a life of licentiousness; but comparatively few have yielded to the entreaties of their first seducer without being previously brought under the influence of intoxicating liquors. In the poorer classes, a tendency to dissipation cannot be supported otherwise than by prostitution; whilst, in the richer, no woman who is under the influence of liquor is capable of resisting attempts upon her virtue."* 6 § 108. Mr TAIT relates the case of a girl who, on her sick bed, "confessed with tears that she could not speak to a gentleman in the street without being under the influence of ardent spirits." Mr W. LOGAN, author of the excellent little work on The Moral Statistics of Glasgow, says :- "Often have the poor girls said to me, Ah! Sir, we never could go on in our miserable course, were it not for intoxicating liquors: it is the last thing at night, and generally the first thing in the morning."" The Hon. and Rev. S. G. OSBORNE describes a recent visit of inspection to one of these Glasgow dens-reeking, to use his expressive phrase, with 'Immortal Sewerage'.† Sewerage indeed! and this in a City of Churches and Palaces. "There were many young, almost infant girls,-not brazened in their course, for they had never known shame, but wearing the appearance of their childish debauchery as the clothing of their very nature. Virtue would indeed have appeared as an exotic on such a soil. was the returned convict, but little clothed, on a filthy bed, a prisoner again to the woman who had enticed him there, robbed him of the rest of his clothes, and thus kept him captive to his nakedness. There were young girls, who had followed sin from their birth; they had returned from their nightly pursuance of it, and wore yet the tawdry finery above their rags and dirt, There * A Parish Minister, in an agricultural district of Scotland, lately told us, that illegitimacy was very frequent, notwithstanding Schools and Churches, and that, from enquiries of the mothers of the girls, he had ascertained that 9-10ths of them originated in the meeting at the Farmers' houses, and that the girls, though never drunk, had in all cases drank their toddy. + Immortal Sewerage. p. 13. 1853. with which they had endeavored to hide the fact that they were the very dregs of the base. 'Drunk', said one; of course I am. I like it. I am always drunk when I can get the drink.' She might have been some 21 years of age. وو $109. Mr POYNDER says—“The ruin of multitudes of females for life, takes place at so early an age as is perfectly shocking to humanity. In most of such cases I have found the parents to be the tempters and destroyers of their own children. I think there is little hope of effecting an alteration in this lamentable traffic so long as the parents are rendered insensible to their children's interests by their own addiction to drinking." The Rev. Mr WORSLEY remarks, that "the Prison Reports afford many instances in which girls under 12 or 13 years of age had been forced into the streets in order to supply a brutalized parent with drink."* Mr LOGAN, as the result of enquiry of a great number of these unfortunates, found that "one-fourth of the girls had been servants at Inns or Public-houses, where they were seduced by persons frequenting such places." § 110. And what are the consequences of this vice, so constantly fostered, in its remote beginnings, in its full play, and in its collateral circumstances, by the Traffic? Mr D. W. HARVEY, the Free-trader in drink, even he would not allow this trade to be 'free and open,' though it could not exist a week without the other! Referring to London (with its 10,000 fallen ones), he says:-"We now have hundreds of prostitutes parading the streets "from Temple Bar to Aldgate Church, seducing and alluring the young men, hundreds in number, belonging to the great esta"blishments of the city." And why invoke the interference of the law? "TO PRESERVE MANY YOUNG MEN FROM CONTAMINATION. Every word of this plea is our own for the protection of ALL-falling or fallen, young or old, pure or impure, from the all-devouring blight of the Traffic. We demand protection from this agency of contamination, and also from its feeder-the cause of the cause. But we must think, not only of the consequences to the seduced, the victims of the dissipation, loss of money, dishonesty, and ultimate ruin of social position,-of physical disease carried into innocent families, and, in the shape of scrofulous tendencies, transmitted to posterity!-there is the poor 'waif of womanhood'-herself at once a victim and a social Nemesis! Hers is not life so much as Death-in-Life. And hence, so often, before the last corruption comes on, she seeks the sombre arches of the 'dark-flowing river.' Mad from Life's history,- Anywhere, anywhere, Out of the world! * Prize Essay on Juvenile Depravity. In our judgment, there is, in the catalogue of crimes, no isolated foe to a Nation's civilization so potent as this !-for it strikes at once at the core of vitality, ruining both body and soul; and pierces, with its poisoned dart, into the health of the future! For this evil this saddest of social diseases, a putrefying sore on the body politic there are many palliatives, as with the mother Traffic; there is only one PANACEA. It will lessen only in proportion as its causes are lessened; and as true civilization advances. Prostitution, which grows with a rank and rapid vegetation in the pestilential atmosphere of the Traffic, would wither and well-nigh perish in the vital air of a civilized prohibition. Moral agencies could then cope with the one remaining natural cause of it, but with the unnatural apparatus of physical and social temptation which now exists, expressly nourishing it with the sewerage' and 'miasma' of the Traffic, it cannot fail to rise up into a monstrous luxuriance of evil, which saddens the heart of Moral Enterprize, and makes Hope almost hopeless ! All honor, however, even to efforts in that direction! It is high time that the lesson of the Saviour should be taken to heart both by the Church and the World. Let us not reject the penitent Magdalene! nor wait till her brows are dark with the dews of death, to treat her tenderly. Better while life and hope are hers, and power to aid is ours, that we entreated her in her sin and sorrow to accept the sympathy of Virtue, and rise up from her lost estate; better that we should guard her sex by the frown of Virtue upon the seducer, and the sword of righteous Law to punish. We look with pleasure upon the 'Ninth Report of the Associate Institution for the Protection of Women'-with joy upon every Magdalene Asylum, and every Industrial Refuge for this too-long neglected class-and we pray that the Divine bless ing may follow their efforts, so that, like the Ragged Schools, they may prosper and go on, until they are no longer needed. Do this, we say, by the way-but leave not the greater and wiser thing undone. Demand, with us, and for us, the Ægis of Protection from the great fountain of all this corruption-the Liquor Traffic. The Report' thus states its object: 'The Society aims at reducing the facilities which exist for the extension of this vice, and the multiplication of its victims" (p. 7). It follows, inevitably, from this sound principle, that they must seek to reduce the business and houses of the Traffic to zero. § 111. On the subject of ACCIDENTS, arising from Intempe rance, little need be said, because the fact is, on the one hand, so patent to all, and on the other so clearly beyond the scope of precise statistics. A few indications, and a few illustrations, will enable the reader to comprehend the vastness of the Interest of life, welfare, and wealth, involved in this aspect of the question. 1st. Accidents may happen to the person, attended with injury, loss of time, and often of limb, and costs of various kinds. Loss of Life, with permanent loss to survivors and dependent relatives, and to society; or, 2nd. Accidents may happen to property, involving loss of capital, destruction of fixed capital, of the instruments of wealth and re-production, and attended by derangement of Trade. Now the Traffic is perpetually occasioning accidents, associated with losses of all these descriptions, by land and by sea; in our fixed habitations, or while travelling abroad; and whether sleeping quietly in our beds, or engaged in our industrial pursuits. Take that recent frightful Boiler Explosion at Rochdale, where, in consequence of the drinking of the engineer leading to neglected duty and incompetent management of the steampower, a whole neighborhood suffered shock and injury, and some score of innocent persons-fathers-sons-daughters-were blown and blasted into hideous death, or bruised and mangled into life-long decrepitude. Take that recent Fire, near Leicester Square, London, where, in consequence of a lodger, returned from a drinking-house at midnight, igniting his bed-curtains, a conflagration raged for hours, destroying some £5,000 worth of property, burning down several houses, and consuming in its flames nine innocent persons who were sleeping in their beds! Take, again, the stately Man of War, or the Packet Ship, or the great sea Steamer, with the prodigious wealth and precious hopes they bear, and the hundreds of souls on board-how many of these have been consumed or cast away in consequence of intemperance? Man will never fully know, till "the sea shall give up its dead.” Take, again, that long trailing train of carriages upon the Iron Road, where the lives of hundreds are dependent on the caution of a guard, the watchfulness of a pointsman, or the sobriety of an engineer-how many frightful Collisions, with their wrack, contusions, and mangled death, are to be attributed to the drink, licensed to be sold at the Railway Stations? * § 112. The Manchester Statistical Society, some years ago, *The day after penning this paragraph, we stumbled on the following letter, from the Times of September 22, 1855. "Sir,-Will you be so good as to direct public attention to the dangerous practice (getting every day more common) of treating railway officials to drink in the refreshment rooms at the stations? Only the other day, at a certain station. I had occasion to talk to several guards and porters, and found almost every one of them to smell strongly of the bottle. Travelling by a night train lately, I observed several gentlemen treat the guard to drink. This very day, I have counted nearly a dozen railway servants in a refreshment room, all drinking. I would not attribute any of the late accidents to this cause-though, certainly, suspicion is justifiable-but the custom is really getting so common, and the possible, nay, probable consequences so awful, as to demand the attention of railway companies, or, still better, of the government, to consider whether, notwithstanding the inconvenience to the public, it would not be advisable to prohibit the sale of spirits [etc.] at railway stations. Fancy an engine-driver, or a pointsman drunk! "I am, Sir, your obedient servant, A COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER." published three papers read before it, written by its president, Mr ROBERTON, by Mr EDWIN CHADWICK, and by Mr R. RAW LINSON, engineer to the Bridgwater Trust. "A serious proportion of the accidents," says Mr ROBERTON, was owing to the men going to work more or less in a state of intoxication. One woman stated that she had laid out the corpses of 29 men, only one of whom, the last, had died a natural death." The Sheffield Iris, of the 17th May, 1834, states that "Mr BADGER, the coroner, has, within ten days, had occasion to hold inquests on 13 persons, who have come to their deaths by accidents, solely arising from drunkenness. A vast number also arise from drinking much short of drunkenness, but which are never imputed to their true cause. This is especially the case in industrial employments connected with dangerous machinery, requiring caution and steadines of eye and hand. وو Mr T. H. FITZGERALD, while Mayor of Limerick, in September, 1839, said:"As coroner, I have held about 140 inquests since the first of October, 1838; and I can safely affirm that one-half that number were caused, directly or indirectly, by intoxicating liquors. There were eight cases of death by drowning, several by burning, and many from apoplexy while in a state of intoxication; and within a short period, four individuals committed suicide while under the hellish influence of strong drink."* The following table is part of the Dublin Police Returns:→→→ «Table showing the number of CORONERS' INQUESTS during the years 1852 and 1853, specifying the Division in which such occurred, and whether Adults or Children for latter year.-Accidental, 133: burned, 16 males and 8 females; carts and carriages rolling over the body, 7 males and 3 females; crushed, 1 male and no females; drowned, 28 males and 6 females; falling of timber, 1 female; do. of buildings, 1 male; do. of carriages or horses, 2 males; do. from a height, 18 males and 1 female; do. down stairs, 1 male; railway accident, 4 males and 2 females; scalded, 5 males and 8 females; knocked down by a horse, 1 male; suffocated, 3 males and 4 females; inflam mation from a wound, 1 male; by machinery, etc., 5 males; inhaling gas, 1 male; injuries by blow of a stone, 1 female; congestion of brain by an over-dose of laudanum, 1 male; a bone swallowed, ulcerated through the intestines, 1 male; inflammation by drinking boiling water, 1 male. "FROM NATURAL' CAUSES.-Apoplexy, 13 males and 3 females; visitation of God, 3 males and 1 female; epilepsy, 2 males and 4 females; other causes, 56 males and 24 females; total, 106. "INTOXICATION.-Apoplexy, 4 males and 3 females; intemperate habits, 2 males and 1 female; intoxication only, 2 males and 1 female; total, 13. "INFANTICIDE.-Wilful neglect of parents, 2 females; exposure to cold, 5 males and 2 females, and strangulation, 1 female; total, 10. "SUICIDE.-Obstinately refusing food, none; cutting the throat under temporary derangement, 3 males; poisoning, do., 1 male; shooting, do., 3 males; strangulation, do., 4 males; precipitation from window, 1 male; total, 12 males and no females. "MANSLAUGHTER.-Carts and carriages rolling over body, I male; strik. ing, 1 male and 2 females; drowning, 1 male; and thrown down with force and violence, 1 male; total, 6. Dublin Monthly Magazine, 1842, vol. i. p. 167. |