The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1902-11-14
LONDON SIGHTS DESCRIBED

Lady Henry Somerset Tells Of the
Endeavors to Rescue Women Victims
of Drink.
1.-The Story of Our Farm" which
Lady Henry Somerset tells in the
November number Of the, North
American Review, is story of bene-
VIOLENT and, in very large measure,
successful endeavor to rescue from ruin
woman who have fallen prey to the
appetite for drink. Lady Henry paints
a dark and mournful picture of the
conditions which surround the poor Of
London and of the extent to which
drunkenness prevails among them
men, women and children. 1t was to
do something to save the women and
children that Lady Henry Somerset
established an industrial farm colony
for inebriate women at Duxhurst in
Surrey, the first institution of the kind
opened in England; and her account of
the means by which her farnll-is year
by year raising the afilen, and restor-
ing them in their right minds to the
Which, LltGi1 WIG IIltuG uG-
solate, if full of encouragement to those
who are interested in the philanthropic
work of a similar kind. Here is part of
Lady Henry's description of what is to
he seen daily in some Of the streets of
London:
But in order rightly to understand
what this colony means we must leave
for moment the fields and the flowers
and the birds and beasts, and go into
the dingy city, and pass the courts and
alleys and the pawnbrokers' shops and
the old clothes shops; we must go down
into the kitchens where the rats share
the damp darkness with the inhabi-
tants, and then walk out again into the
dusty street; and then we shall begin
to understand what is the center of
attraction to the dWellers in the narrow
court and gloomy Stun. At the corner
Of the street there is a public house;
and, if we watch that swining door for
moment, we shall be able to realize
why it is that in England there are
more drunken women than in any other
nation, and how it is that brewers
have made larger fortunes than can be
amassed at any other trade. Between
the hours of l and o'clock, you will
see in this squalid district from 100 to
200 women enter the drink shop with
little babies in their arms; and, as those
women crowd into that public house
and stand to drink, they will often give
the baby share of the liquor, and the
little mouth and will greedily suck the
spoon that has in it the taste of gin.
Between those hours, too, you will see
$50 or 200 girls, with tattered clothes,
torn pinaforces some almost shoeless
all ragged, all dirty all disheveled,
entering with jugs to carry away the
drink to their miserable homes. AS
many boys under the age of IA and Ii
will be there, too making total in one
afternoon of 500 children. I remember
on one occasion standing in front Of
| just such a public house (and if you
look down the street, you will see there
are twenty n1ore,) with an American
and when she saw the women going
into the public house, some of them re-
| specially clad, she said: Are they go.
| ing to hold a crusade meeting there, az
| they did in America twelve years ago?'
It seemed to her inconceivable =, thai
women were going there to drink; but
| to us it has become commonplace, an6
those who know anything of the social
life of the people in England have lons
realized that children are drunk, for tht
first time in their mothers arms, Oh
cursed with the appetite before they
are born. In their earliest association
the public house stands as the mos
pominent factor in their existence, ant
has stored their minds with the i'm
pressions of everything that is vile ant
bad"
Pm innocent and I can prove it il