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xxxiii
I have a case at the present time of a girl who is seven months pregnant; the common lodging
house and the Church Army shelter cannot give her a bed as their licence forbids then to receive girls
. over six months' gone, and I have nothing to offer her but the workhouse, because she is a married
woman.
She cannot live with her husband on account of his violence. This I know to be true. He is
an habitual methylated spirit drinker, and I have unfortunately myself witnessed some of his brutal
attacks on his wife. I asked her the other day where she had been sleeping, and she replied "On the
Embankment."
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The rise in the number of girls on the streets I consider is due to the high wages they had
been receiving on munitions and their inability now to obtain situations to enable them to live as
they had been during the war.
Many of the girls have come from the Midlands or Ireland to London with the inflated idea that
they could easily get situations and high wages here.
Some of them work during the day, and have told me they make up the financial deficiency on
the streets at night; this is highly dangerous to the public, as I am convinced many of them are infectious.
Night coffee stalls are often the meeting places of prostitutes and undesirable men, and these
eventually persuade this class of girl into other sins in addition to prostitution. Some of them act as
decoys and lead soldiers and others with money into pre-arranged places for the purpose of robbery.
Great danger of infection must exist at many of these coffee stalls and the hard-working carman
or traveller must frequently fall an innocent victim thereto, and even possibly carry the scourge home
to his family. I have counted as many as 30 prostitutes at one stall at one time. Rescue work has its
disappointments, but assuming we can save 75 per cent. of our girls, and by so doing protect large
numbers of our boys, surely our work merits proper facilities in the way of immediate accommodation
for those whom we have a chance of saving.
* * * * * * *
If we could have a properly equipped and staffed building where we could take a woman or a
girl, no matter what the hour of night or day, and no matter what her condition—pregnant, venereal
disease, or verminous—I am more than convinced that not only the girl but the community at large
would eventually benefit.
We want a place where the cases could be investigated and the proper measures taken at once—
measures that will mean permanent good; the girl must be persuaded to have medical treatment and
first got into a healthy condition, and although the battle seems rather difficult, I am positive it is not
so, if the case is handled with care and tact. Many of them are like putty in our hands if met and dealt
with at the proper moment.
From this clearing and rest house, after the girl has been medically treated, she could later pass
to existing agencies.
I find after putting the whole position up to the girl, her past, her present, and her future, and
being able to say to her, " Now, girlie, in six months you will be a clean girl once more; in time you
will live down the past and become as good a citizen as anyone," she becomes interested and turns to my
point of view.
At the end of this period of medical treatment, if there is any grit in her, the girl will want her
independence, and this is quite understandable. She has been under the influence of the right kind of
people, she has been in wholesome moral and spiritual surroundings, has been helped again to lead a well
regulated life, and at the close of six months' training, she will be ready to go to some post with a cleaner
mind and a new outlook on life.
Of course there are exceptions, and there must be some failures.
There are some who are morally imbecile, and they must be dealt with by quite a different method.
* * * * * * *
Many cases could be cited to prove the need for some such home as is suggested.
Two or three must suffice.
A young Irish girl, not yet 20, recently came to us saying she would give up the life and take a
situation if we would help her. It was very late at night, and there was nowhere we could take her to
at that time. Had we had the proposed home, we could at once have placed her under the matron's
care and got her off the streets right away. We have seen her since, but she is wavering in her desire
and has gone wrong again. We hope still to save her, but the case is just hanging in the balance owing
to our not being able to provide for her promptly the first time she came.
* * * * * * *
A few weeks ago a shop girl was handed over to us by the police from whom she had been making
enquiries for a maternity home. This was her story. She had been betrayed by a man at a dance.
She had carried on at work as long as she was able, and then had to seek a place for her confinement,
and did not know what to do or where to go.
We were making arrangements for her to go to a maternity hostel when a medical inspection,
which they required, revealed disease, and they could not take her. We could do nothing but place her
in the workhouse infirmary, though in one sense the girl was too respectable for it.
(There has been a happy ending here, for after the baby was born the man was found and has
married the girl.)
In this case the proposed home would have been invaluable.
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