The Cincinnati daily star. [volume] ([Cincinnati, Ohio]) 1875-1880, 1880-01-05
The Work Girls of London.
THE END.
Edward King in Boston Journal


Along the embankment between Black
friars and Westminster the student OF
social science may on Sunday evening
observe the most remarkable spectacle in
Europe. There Is not city on the con-
tinent, not even Vienna, in which any
thing like it can be seen. Under the
CLEAN of the electric lights thousands
and thousands of men and women are
strolling, and it is easy to see that all of
them belong to the humblest walks of
life.
1t is no exaggeration to say that thou
sands of young girls may be seen wander
ing, entirely unprotected by any male
escort, and laughing, jeering, pushing,
dancing, shouting, sometimes behaving
in what the French would call an "un-
qualifable manner" These are the work
girls of London. Heaven help them!
And they are SO little conscious Of their
degradation that they seem to take posi-
tive delight in it. "Do you suppose they
are happy?" I asked an old Londoner.
"Happyl They're pleased as Punch with
what they call q lark! Lor' bless you,
they don't think they're doing wrong.
They're not brought up in way to
know much about the finer feelings !
can tell you" They see immortality all
around them, and never know anything
else themselves. If one of them remains
reasonably pure it is considered great
stroke of chance. They are ignorant as
savages of ten thousand things which
they ought to know for their own pro-
lection. They wander here by the river,
talking sometimes in language which
pen may not record.
1t is easy to see that many of them
have been visiting the public houses and
by the time they reach the paternal roofs
protecting shadow some of them are OBJ
livious of external circumstances. Large
gangs of men and boys Of all grades,
from the coarse and dangerous villain in
hob-nailed shoes to the small city clerk
with his too tight-ftting clothes and his
jargon of the counting house, parade the
broad sidewalks, now engaged in an anna
1 teur dance with some merry party of
girls, now talking to some other groups
in language which would be insulting if
they chose to consider it so and now get
ting into sound encounter at fisticuffs.
| A fight among the girls is not at all
uncommon. And all these are the future
mothers of the working classes; these the
creatures that must be in shop and mar.
ket at sunrise and remain there until sun.
set every day except Sunday. And what
use they make Of their Sunday! Oh
\ course the fathers and mothers, careless
and callous as the majority of them are
still would feel a certain compunction
about allowing their daughters to wande,
through the streets alone until long after
midnight, if it were not custom which
4 has become time-honored.
| What per cent. of the working girls OF
i London are thus exposed to every
| danger of great metropolis l do not
know, but it must be very great. Judg
ing from the language which one hears
from these Sunday promenades on the
embankment, they have been touchec
by no moral influence whatever, nor by
any esthetical one, except that procured
by a view of the public house walls anc
rows Of lights around "Cleopatra
i Needle"