The Press.
London, England, 1858-04-03 00:00:00

" THE GREAT SOCIAL EVIL."

WE begin to nauseate this subject, and so, it
is probable, do most of our readers. If we go
into the discussion of it, then, it is from no en-
joyment we have in meddling with garbage;
but from a sense of duty. We have seen honest
men and dishonest men, wise men and fools,
all on various wrong scents, and all doing quite
as much harm as good. The right course is
familiar to us ; and we are induced to take up
our pen at last, simply to tell the aforesaid
wise men and fools, and all whom it may con-
cern, what that right course is. And in so
doing we shall not gratify any self conceit of
our own, or exalt ourselves to the disparage-
ment of others ; for we are not going to speak
of what we have discovered, but simply of what
we have learned ,

The greater part of the irrelevant romance
and twaddle which has been published in the
Times on this subject, has been spent upon
the question of the comparative guilt, or un
guiltiness, of prostitutes. The greater part
of the speaking at divers vestry-meetings in
St. James's, Marylebone, &c., has turned upon
what was to be done with the prostitutes.
Some were for invigorating the police—others
would appeal to the Government ; but all
were for some increased action against the
prostitutes. Now, all these ideas are merely
various parts of one great mistake. Those
who would wage war successfully with " The
Great Social Evil," must learn to look at the
poor women less as offenders than as victims.
Any hostile measures taken against them, will
probably fail; inasmuch as the charitable and
compassionate feelings of the people will
often be enlisted on their behalf, and a single
false step will lay whoever takes it under the
charge of persecution.
Most of what has been written, then, and
much of what has been spoken, has been ill-
directed. It may have been clever or cogent,
but its drift was altogether a mistaken one.
The evil may be attacke 1, and ought to be at-
tacked, from a totally different quarter.
Leave the poor women unmolested ; they are
often, in fact usually, very much to be pitied.
But there is another class for whom none will
feel any sympathy, and who may and ought to
be assailed continually and unrelentingly.
We mean the traders in prostitution. Few, very
few indeed, of the women of the town who
live in London, are householders. They
generally belong to one of the two following
classes : either they live in an establishment
of saleable women, and are let out as other
traders let out horses; or else they hire
lodgings for themselves, at about three times
the current price, and so live, each apart, but
paying an enormous rent to the people who
give them accommodation. Now, both of
these kinds of traders in prostitution break
the law—those who keep women, and those
who merely let them apartments; but it
is their trade—a vile and filthy trade ; and
that trade ought to be limited, cramped, dis-
countenanced, in every possible manner.
The mistake, then, which most speakers
and writers on this subject have made, is that
of not rightly directing their anger and their
efforts. Let them organize, raise funds, and
devise efficient means, to annoy and punish
those who live on the profits of prostitution.

The profits. we say, for the poor creatures
themselves do little more than exist by their
evil courses. We speak not hastily, or without
sufficient knowledge, when we say that by
organized efforts of this kind, " The Great
Social Evil" might be prodigiously diminished.
To show this, we will name one or two facts in
proof of what we are asserting.
Twenty years ago we lived in a neighbour-
hood in which this evil had grown into an in-
tolerable nuisance. In a parish of very mode-
rate size there were fifteen houses of ill
repute, the lodgers in which poured into the
streets every evening, and made the wain
thoroughfares unfit for the use of decent
females or the young. When this pestiferous
state of things had become a matter of genet al
complaint, one gentleman called his neigh-
bours together, and they agreed to form them-
selves into a Protective Association. Funds
were soon raised, and an active Committee
was nominated. And, from first to last, this
Committee never took any one step against the
women. They attacked the nests—well know-
ing that if the resorts of vice were cleated
away, the frequenters of them must go else-
where.

Their first step was to give legal notice to
all the fifteen keepers of houses of evil cha-
racter, that if they did not remove themselves
away, and close their houses within a fort-
night, prosecutions would be commenced.
Thirteen of the fifteen took the alarm, and
fled before the expiration of the fortnight.
The other two waited till they saw the prose-
cutions actually commenced, and then they
too struck their flags, and evacuated the place.
Thus, within one month after the commence-
ment of operations, the field was won. There
was not one house of bad character left in the
parish ; there was not one prostitute known
to be inhabiting it. And, as a natural conse-
quence, when the nests were thus destroyed,
the vermin quitted the place, and the streets
became passable, even for respectable women,
at all hours of the night. Prostitutes will
not ply at a distance from their' lodgings.
Those whom they entrap will not take a long
walk to reach their dwellings. _

Success, then, entire success, attended this
effort. Nor was it transitory. The Couimittee
continued to meet; reports were made, from
time to time, of attempts to creep back again,
by some of the dealers ; but all such attempts
were instantly frustrated. No sooner was a
house reopened than a notice was immediately
served, and if it was not closed, a prosecution
was instantly commenced. And in no one in-
stance did a prosecution ever fail !
This, then, is the only efficient way of deal-
ing with the " Great Social Evil " It is useless,
and often wrong, to annoy the poor women.
But the creatures who scrape together we:llth
—as many do—by trading in their profligacy
and ruin, deserve no mercy; and if we hunt
them down, as we would hunt down the most
noxious of reptiles, we shall be doing an un-
mixed good.
We are aware of one objection, which will be
taken by those who dislike trouble. They will
exclaim, " What is the use of driving these
" people about ?—if they are driven out of ono
" place, they will go into another." We answer
that, in order to clear a street after a fall of
snow, the authorities give notice that every
man is to clear away the snow before his own
dwelling ; and thus, every one taking his part,
the street is cleansed. So, also, if every parish
in London determined to tolerate no haunts
of vice, by degrees all would be closed. What
St. Ann's parish has done, St. Paul's parish
can do, and then St Mary's and St. Peter's,
till the whole town is purified.
Do we expect, then, to eradicate vice? Cer-
tainly not. We are no believers in the per-
fectibility of human nature. But we know
that vice of this kind increases and spreads
enormously by the help of temptation and
facility. Expose, as they do in some conti-
nental towns, half-naked women for sale in
the windows of the principal streets, and let it
be a matter of no disgrace for passers-by to
drop in to hire them, and how many men of
moral habits will there be in that town at the
year's end? Our object should be to go to the
other extreme—to make vice infamous, and to
make its practice difficult. And this, we
know, can easily be done, by the means we
have just pointed out.

II

THE MAIN DRAINAGE QUESTION.
DEAN SWIFT says of BLACKMORE—

He took his Muse at once, and dipt her
Right in the middle of the Scripture.
With equal abruptness we have just seen an
English country gentleman, the brother of a
duke, taken from the Leicestershire Hunt, and
plunged, with scarcely an hour's notice, into
the very midst of the " Main Drainage " contro-
versy, which has perplexed all the engineers
and hydraulic surveyors of England for more
than a dozen years past ! Still, courage ! my
lord ! You have come into this controversy at
a not unhappy moment. The question, after
long agitation, is now ripe for decision ; and
there will be honour, as well as some trouble,
connected with its settlement. We will take
the liberty to sketch its history, and to indi-
cate the path which leads to a safe conclusion.
More than a dozen 'years have already been
spent in the investigation of this question.
Two Commissions were formed, by the Royal
fiat, between 1847 and 1855, consisting of
some of the ablest men of the day ; but internal
dissensions, and the want of means, prevented
them from accomplishing anything; and, at
last, the Government of Lord PALMERSTON
gave us the METROPOLITAN BOARD OF WORKS,
chiefly with a view to constitute a taxing-
machine, which might raise a sum of five or
six millions from the inhabitants of the metro•
polia, without burdening the Government with
the unpopularity of this new taxation.
The two defunct Commissions had accom-
plished thus much :—They had examined, with
sharp engineering eyes, various plans for
draining the metropolis, and had arrived at
certain safe conclusions. The matter was
therefore prepared for decision ; and the con-
sequence was, that the Metropolitan Board of
Works could act at once. That body has been
accused of delay ; but there never was a more
groundless accusation. It came into existence
in January, 1856 ; several weeks were required
to complete its organization and appoint its
officers; but before the first summer had
ended, it had adopted an elaborate plan for
the drainage of the metropolis, and had depo-
sited it at the office of the Chief Commissioner.

Three or four mouths were then wasted in
disputes about the point of outfall. The
Board had fixed on a point two miles on this
side of Erith. After much discussion, Sir B.
HALL indicated a point about a mile and a
half further down, as the one to which he
would consent. The plan, therefore, thus
adjusted, was ready for adoption before the
Board had been in existence for one whole
year.

Sir BENJAMIN HALL now created a new delay
of seven months, by an error peculiarly his
own He plunged into all the troubles of a
" double government." His proper function
was merely that of a president—to approve, or
disapprove, of the plan laid before him. But
he went beyond this. He appointed a new
Commission, of three engineers, to consider
the plan of tho Board, and all other plans,
and to devise, if it were possible, some new
scheme of their own.
We had now two bodies, each separately
empowered and instructed to prepare a plan.
As these two bodies were very differently con-
structed, it was almost inevitable that they
should disagree. A greater practical blunder
never was committed, than the construction
of this second Board, to rival, or amend, the
plans of the first.

The first result was, the loss of seven months.
Three engineers, empowered and ordered to
go into the whole question, could scarcely
have been expected to produce the result of
their inquiries in a shorter time. Nor, as they
were not inst►ucted simply to approve or dis-
approve the plan of the Board, was it likely
that they should bring up a simple Yes or No.
And so we find that, after seven months'
labour. carried on at a large expense, they do
two things :-
1: They report, that the plan of the Metro-
politan Board is, after all, substantially, the
only plan which can be adopted.
2. They recommend certain enlargements
of that plan—especially the carrying the