Richmond planet. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1883-1938, 1903-10-31
WOMEN WHO DRINK.
Lady Henry Somerset Declares That
England Has an Appalling
Number OF Them.

OF
But in order rightly to understand"
| says Lady Henry Somerset, writing
| about London in the North American
Review, 1--WE must leave for a moment
the fields and flowers and birds and
beasts, and go into the dingy city. and
pass the courts and the alleys and the
pawnbrokers' shops and the old clothes
shops; we must so down into the kitch-
ems where the rats share the damp
darkness with the inhabitants, and
! then walk out again into the dusty
street; and then We shall begin to I'M
derstand what is the center OF attrac-
ton to the dwellers in the narrow
court and gloomy slum. At the corner
of the street there is public house,
and, II We watch the swinging door for
moment, we shall be able TO realize
why 1t Is that in England there are
more drunken women than in any 9TH
er nation, and how 1t is that the brew
ers have made larger fortunes than can
be amassed at any otner trade.
Between the hours OF one and three
O'Clock you will see in this squalid dis
trict from 100 to 200 women enter the
| 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 or the glass
that has in it the taste Of gin. Be
tween those hours. too, you will see
$50 or 200 girls, with tattered clothes.
torn pinafores, 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 ID or 10
VIII be there, too, making, perhaps,
total in one afternoon of 500 children
l remember on one occasion of stand
Ing In front of just such public house
land if you look down the street you
| will see that there are 90 more), with
an American, and when she saw the
women going into the public house.
some of them respectfully clad. she
said: Are they going to hold crusade
meeting there. as they did in America
20 years ago?'
1T seemed to her inconceivable that
women were going there to drink; but
to us it has become a commonplace,
and those who know anything of the
| social life of the people in England
have long realized that children are
drunk for the first time in their moth
ers' arms, or cursed with the appetite
before they arc born. In their earliest
association, the public house stands as
the most pr1 minent factor in their
existence, and has stored their minds
with the impressions of everything
that is vile and bad.
but there is another picture of our
social life of which L have to speak
before / go back again to the country
farm, and, in order to bring this be-
fore the minds Of those who are inter-
ested in social problems. I must ask
them to go inside large London drink
den. There you will find a great num-
Der OF entrances, six, eight or ten, and
each of these entrances leads into a
separate small bar, and, If you are in
clined to sit for a moment and ask for
a glass of lemonade, you can watch
those who pass in and out
"a young girl, we'll dressed and of
respectable parentage, will come I'm.
accompanied by the young man to
whom she is engaged. and they will
call for glass of spirits or beer and
sit down to drink as = matter of course
middle-aged woman, who has known
better days, draws her mantle about
her, and looks around to see II any one
has noticed that she has crossed the
threshold; her face is pale and drawn.
and she has anxious lines around her
eyes. Employment is hard to get. and
m t,-xy
cult 1t is to live, as she carries I'm her
thin, trembling hand a glass of neat
spirit to the further corner OF the bar.
Then there are middle-aged man and
his wife, who ask FOR beer. a woman
with baby and young husband: the
baby cries, and the mother dips her
nnger in the glass and rubs its Inns.
little noise in another bar tells us
that there different class has assem-
bled. and there we see the ragged den
liens of the slums; but every class IS
represented, and among them women
are prominently TO be found.
What wonder, then, that as we read
the annals of the English police courts
we realize that drunkenness has not
only invaded the homes OF the poorest
OF the people, but also that drinking
Is alarmingly on the increase among
women Of the wealthy and the leisured
classes; that not only are destitute and
degraded women committed to our
prisons, who are unable to pay the fine.
but that women in apparently respect
able positions are continually convict
ed OF drunkenness. until it may be tru-
ly said that scarcely family exists
but fas some record of this hideous
disease"
The Ruin of n College Man
Harvard graduate fba eoso- "a