The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-05-01

form close friendships and inspire bitter
enmities. Removing them to unfamiliar
break up coteries of law-defers. defects a
great deal of temptation and begets a
wholesome regard for the mutability of
human affairs. One of the results of this
systematic effort at general reformation is
that hundreds, and perhaps thousands. of
deprayed women are being driven from
the open haunts of vice into private and
secret avenues. A gentleman told me
yesterday that he had been compelled
to remove his family from an apartment
house uptown because three women of bad
character had succeeded in establishing
themselves there. The general impression
is that in pursuing this policy society does
not cure itself of its vicious assesses. but
merely scatters them. Inspector Byrnes
used to have g theory that in dealing with
the criminal and vicious classes of the
community, the best thing that could be
done was TO keep them in one particular
quarter of the city. Decent people would
have no call to visit that section, and the
contamination would naturally be much
less than if the whole mass
of abandoned and degraded humanity
were scattered indiscriminately. This idea
cannot be said to be new one in dealing
with this most serious problem of great
municipalities. When James 1. came
British throne he found London about as
wicked and depraved as Sodom and
Gomorrah combined. In his shrewd,
Scotch way he arrived at the conclusion
that the best thing to do for the town was
to coop up all the thieves scoundrels and
wicked women in one section and keep
them under restraint. That old part of
London known as Whitefriars was the
district assigned to the off-color pop
nlafiOp line of a -1lorr
rounded the district, and SO long
as the crooks stayed inside of what
was called "AIsatia" nobody cared-not
even the sublime translators of the Bible
in St. James palace-what they did or how
they did it. According to the veracious
chronicler of "The Fortunes of Nigel, !" the
outcasts Of Alsatia had sort of indie
pendent government within their lines of
jurisdiction. They had chief who settled
their ordinary disputes, and they seemed
to get along pretty well. 1t was only when
they attempted to make sorties for pur-
poses of plunder that they got themselves
into trouble. | suppose the time came
when the goody-good people of London of
high reformatory impulses concluded
wickedness and divide it with the
community. / don't know how the
system worked in the olden time, but do
know that today there is not city on the
face of the globe where there is SO much
open, shameless and repulsive vice as can
be found in London, day or night And
that. too. in decent, semi-respectable Sec
tons. Whether DR.. Parkhurst's efforts
will be productive of lasting good or not l
am not prepared to say. He has certainly
stirred the stagnant pools of corruption
and the odors that permeate the commun-
ity are not pleasant. I suppose things will
rectify themselves in due time. As the old
Western philosopher used to say: when
things are bad they never get much better,
but when they're darned bad they just cut
loose and better themselves"