The Opelousas courier., 1894-05-26
English Women Drink.

Drunk as a thchess" is a popula,
phrase in the mouth of the English PEG.
pie just now, and it's a phrase powerful
ly suggestive of a striking and SHOCKING
condition of affairs in English society
coming, as all such bywords do, from
apt appreciation of prominent features
OF the life and affairs Of to-day.
Drinking, among Women in the high
er and highest social ranks of English
society, is developing into il national
scandal, says Lady Henry Somerset
But drinking is not an attribute merely
OF women in high life. What is more
serious and which touches the life of
the whole nation is the prevalence and
increase of drunkenness among women
OF all classes throughout the kingdom.
don Daily News characteriZes the start
ling revelations that have been made
recently through public meetings, off
cial reports and a general investigation
and open discussion concerning the
great evil.
1t was made a subject Of special in
curry by a committee of Parllment this
year, and startling testimony as to the
prevalence of the vice among women
was given by magistrates, cOroners, Of
ticers Of public institutions and medi-
cal men of high standing, the latter
headed by no less a man than the late
Sir Andrew Clark, Gladstone's old
physician.
Of an average of $4,000 women COM
mitted to prison annually in the Unit
ed Kingdom in the last few years,
eighty per cent. were sent there for
drunkenness. The testimony of the
police courts is that the vice is preva-
lent among all classes in the east end of
Lobdon. Not alone women of a dis
reputable class come before tie magis-
trates charged with drunkenness, but
wives of respectable workingmen and
young women earning their living, and
respectable way. All ages, as we'll as
all classes are victims of the vice.
There are many records of women
drnnkards of eighty and eighty-tive
years Of age, and many of those but fif-
teen to eighteen years old. Five un-
married girls, seventeen years old, were
charged with drunkenness in one court
IN a single day, and girls of tenderer
years are found in tho streets in the
early morning, helpless from a nights
debauch.
The public mind, or that portion
which has been aroused to an active in
terest in this matter, is trying to stop
the further spread of the scorge. 1t is
conceded by those best able to Judge
that incarceration in prison is of no
benefit whatever in the case of women
d%runkards. Sir Andrew Clark's propo-
sition for compulsory %seclusion and cure
OF drunkards in retreats under State
control finds many supporters. He
said he would run the act of compulsion
as close as the feeling of the English
people for the freedom of the person
would allow, and would especially en-
force 1t in the earliest stages of the
vice in the case OF women. He said,
aud he spoke from a great experience,
especially in private dealings with
drunkards, that the drinking habit was
difficult to cure in men, but it was all
but impossible in women When taken
in hand early, cures We're obtained in
both sexes, but, in his experience, even
then the proportion OF cures of ONE
were painfully small.
The governor of PeEtunviiie prison
says when il woman is thoroughly bad
in this vice of drunkenness she is thor
hopeless. These deductions
have been partly explained by the fact
that iii the case of women of the better
class especially, among whom Dir. Clark
lie could not recount five cures,
walnen are screened in the practice
of the vice for ii considerably longer
than men and become very much
addicted to it before Il cure is attempt
ed. Drunkenness among women has
indeed, in England, become a " nation
al slhame."-Chicago Record.