Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1903-01-02
COLONY FOR INEBRIATEs.
ndastrial In.tatutioa in England for
the Rescue of Women aEa
Children.

ssThe Story of Our Farm" which
Lady Henry Somerset tells in the
North American Review, is a story of
benevolent and. in very large measure,
successful endeavor to rescue from
ruin women 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 to the extent TO
which drunkenness prevails among
them-men, women and even 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 institu-
ton of the kind opened in England;
and her account of the means by
which her farm is year by year rails
ing the fallen, and restoring them in
their right minds to the homes which
their vice had made desolate, is full
of encouragement to those who are
interested in the philanthropic work
of similar kind. Here is part of
Lady Henry's description of what is
to be seen daily in some OF the streets
IF London:
'BEt in order to rightly understand
what this colony means, we must
leave for a 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 pawnbrok-
ers' shops and the old clothes shops;
we must go down into the kitchens
where the rats share the damp dark
ness with the inhabitants, 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 slum. At the corner of the
street there is a public house, and if
we watch that swinging door for a
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 is it that brew
ers have made larger fortunes than
can be amassed at any other trade.
Between the hours of one and three
o'clock, you will find 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 a share of the liquor and the
little mouth 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 pinafores, some almost shoeless,
all ragged and dirty, all disheveled,
entering with jugs to CARRY away the
drink to their miserable homes AS
many boys under the age of IA and Is
will be there, too, making a total in
one afternoon of 500 children. 1 re-
member on one occasion standing in
front of just such a public house (and
If you look down the street, you will
see there are 20 more), with an Amer
lean, ard when she saw the women
going into the public house, some of
them respectfully clad, she said: Are
they going to hold a crusade meeting
there, as they did in America II years
ago?' 1t seemed to her inconceivable
that women were going there to
drink; but to us it has become COM
monplace, and those who know any
thing of the social life of the people
in England have long ago realized
that children are drunk for the first
time in their mothers arms, or cursed
with the appetite before they are
born. In their earliest association,
the public house stands as the most
prominent factor in their existence,
and has stored their minds with the
Impressions of everything that is
yi!en