The Express.
London, England, 1865-01-16 00:00:00

MIDNIGHT MHZTINGS.

Another of these periodical gatherings was held
ca Thursday evening last at the Victoria Hall,
triar-itrust, Elisakfnera-road. Acting up to its
established rule, the Midnight Meeting Society
chooses • differed part of London for each meeting,
and on Thursday had seamed the assistance of
Mr. William Carter, a master chimney-sweep, of
some celebrity as an energetic preacher in the
theatres and other unconventional places of wor-
ship. With Mr. Carter were a small band of friends
and disciples, amongst whom were an ex-prise-
fighter, an ex-binglar, an ex-street conjuror, and
others, who were stated to be tried men and true
in the important work he has at heart. We saw
but very few of the gentlemen who were at St.
James's-ball, and it would seem that the society
had availed itself of the machinery and local in-
fluence ready to their hands, and that they bad for
the night amalgamated with Mr. Carter, on the under-
standing that he ancl his friends should do their utmost
to rouse the fallen women present to a sense of sin,
while the society provided means of escape to those
influenced by their pleadings. The proceedings
commenced by a short practical address from Mr.
Carter, after which refreshments were served out.
There was as much difference between the quantity
and quality of these and the meagrely /3annecitial
repast at St. James's-hall, as between the de-
meanour of the women there and hers, and it may
be middy conceded that Mr. Stabb's statement as
to the insufficiency and insubstantiality of food
ha vim much to do with the signs of dissatisfaction
and rebellion we noted, was strictly true. Fallen
women do not Loss every characteristic of human
nature, and the plenteous and toothsome meal of
hot tea and coffee, bread and butter and plum cake,
provided on Thursday at the Victoria-hall, ap-
peared to render them as placidly content as com-
fortable repletion and amy digestion is known to do
at other and come pretentious banquets. It is
certain that amongst the hundred and twenty poor
creatures present we saw no case of decided mis-
behaviour. During the prayer and address
there were here and ther whisperings and
furtive smiles, bat these were not evoked
by a spirit of mockery, but were rather
alight efforts at relaxation during unwonted
tension, and were indeed little more than would
be perceptible during a close scrutiny of
the congregation of soy fashionable church. The
women, who were nearly all young, were far better
representatives of the district we were in than were
those assembled at St. James's-hall of the locality
about it. The common harlot of the low neighbour-
hoods and by-places of London, the from
girl
whose shabby clothes seem shabbier from being
picked out with a little cheap filmy, who is half-
work-girl half-prostitute, sad whose earnings at
both callings are miserably small, was here.
Common gaudy beads, hair nets of vivid bees,
bonnets decorated with the cheap, coarse flowers
we see on tire-screens, sad shawls and dresses that
a servant of all work would despiee, in many in-
stances made up her attire. On the other hand,
there were very few painted cheeks, and, though the
red and gloveless hands frequently bore paltry
rings, they had on them traces of work, as if their
owners knew the hardships, without tasting the Do-
odled luxuries of vice.

During the process of the meal, the various
leaders were distributed amongst the girls, some
sitting with them at the tables, others strolling
about the room—a spacious, lofty, and well-lit
one, fitted up as a chapel with roomy galleries, but
the ground-floor of which alone iris occupied—
throwing in a timely word or interchanging •
pleasant greeted as rsocsaioa allowed. The perfect
familiarity with whisk the most solemn mysteries
were spoken of dank seriously on as unaccustomed
ear. The speakers were obviously earnest and
sincere, bat their jubilations on the spiritual con
filets out of which they had come victorious, the
calm .businses way in which their own regenera-
tion was spoken of as sea accomplished fact, and
their constant use of Biblical symbols in ordinary
conversation, made their talk peculiar and excep-
tionaL There was no cant. Everyone was cheer-
ful almost to conviviality. The sentiment, " Look
at me, see how happy lam ; why won't you be
happy too ?" ran like an undercurrent through
all the tea-table discussions. Asceticism, penance,
self-dsoial, were never heard of, and if Chnstianity
were • grand schema for making things pleasant, it
could not have been more comfortably and con-
genially represented than by the little knot of teachers
with whom we talked. The precise time, place, and
circumstance of each man's conversion, were given
with complete freedom and particularity, while the
girls looked on half pualed, half pleased at the
jovial bearing of their interlocutors. " I'm only a
little boy, though an old sinner," was the proposi-
tion laid down by a man of forty, who after a
pause, supplemented it with, " Csusewhy, I wasonly
born agin last Easter Tuesday was a twelvemonth,
over on"(rising, and pointing tothe exact place with
an enthusiasm apparently sincere) "that bench in
the come there." " And I," chimed in another
with a cheerful laugh, "am only two days older
than our dear brother here," for I wasn't born agin
till (naming date), and was engaged at the time to
fight (specifying rival pugilist) in Bell's Life for five-
and-twenty a aide." " You've a harder one to
fight now, old friend," said another speaker,
who rapidly symbolised the principle of evil as •
member of the prize ring, and who askei, almost
in the same breath, whether his friend " had not
once fought Tom Sayers." This the converted prize-
fighter, who is really • gentle-mannered, genial,
intelligent, and well-looking young man, repu-
diated, and the conversation gradually passed into
other channels—the streetwalkers at the same
table taking their share therein. The ex-street
conjuror, thinking his vocation incompatible with
his new profession as a Christian, had after his
conversion renounced it for the trade of brace-
making ; and he assured all present that he was
now so " sppy in his feelings" that he had
on one occanon sat up all night with a friend
singing hymns. Nor must any one of the speeches
be hastily coudemnsd as irreverent. They rather
seemed JOe the outspoken expressions of untutored
men, whose minds were similarly attuned, and upon
whose rugged natures the terms, phrases, and
characters of Scripture had taken deep and forcible
hold. The effect upon the women near was mible
and marked. They saw and heard people who a few
months before were confessedly in similar plight to
themselves, and who were now better dressed,
better fed, better oared for, than they could, under
existing circumstances, ever hope to be, who wcre
prosperous and rejoicing, and who, after hospitably
profferiug plum-cake and hot tea, asked those near
them to permanently share the condone they had
to proffer. How much the hope of material and
temporal benefit alloyed the spiritual and moral
effects of conversation and discourse it would be
perhaps unwise to inquire, but it is certain that
most of the women present listened with interest,
while many were apparently convinced of the truth
of what they heard—convinced, it may be urged,
as any other alms would be who bad the offer of a
sudden rise in the social scale. To accept the invi-
tation to call on Mr. Stabb on the following or
succeeding days, to be provided first with a home,
and subsequently with a situation, and to have the
protection and intermit of a kind and sympathetic
sodomy of gentlemen, would be to any one of the
girls assembled in the Victoria-hall on Thursday,
as it would be to any virtuous needlewoman or stay-
maker, such a positive and substantial gain, that we
confidently expect to hoar of numerous applications
being made. The arguments are in their CNN al-
most all on one side, for taking away the unre-
strained liberty tiff now enjoy, a liberty which
must resemble what Maniplay called " the desolate
freedom of the wild ass," what have these poor
wretches to attach them to their present life I It
is a totally different thing to offer an asylum to such
as these, and to the dashing, proeperous harlot who
is living sumptuously and well, whose income
may be fluctuating, and vicissitudes occasionally
severe, but the common run of whose life is in all
externals vastly superior to the sordid home and
mineable surroundings she has left ; and it is essen-
tial, when estimating the good wrought and the
difficulties besetting it, to keep this distinction pro-
minently in view.
After ample time had been allowed for mavens-
tins and refrainment, Mr. Btabb, the bosomy