The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1903-10-05
WOMEN WHO DRINK.
England Seems to Have More Than
Enough Of Them.

England Seems to Have More Than
| Enough Of Them.
But in order rightly to understand. 81
says Lady Henry Somerset, writing
about London in the North American
Review. 1--WE must leave for a moment
| the fields and flowers and the birds and
beasts. and go into the, dingy city, and
pass the courts and the alleys ard the
pawnbrokers' shops and the old clothes
shops; we must go 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 thenwe shall begin to understand
what is the center Of attraction to the
dweIlers in the narrow court and
gloomy slum. At the corner Of the
street. there is a public house, and, if
we watch the swinging door for mo-
ment we shall be able to realize why it
is that in England there are more
drunken women than il anv other ma
ton, AMI how it is that the brewers
have made larger fortunes than can De
dlIldSSeu d. any OlISl tAouCs
Between the hours of one and three
o'clock you will see in this squalid dis
trict from one hundred to two hundred
women enter the drink shop with little
bales in their arms. and as those wo-
men crowd into that public house and
stand to drink, they win often give the
baby a share of the liquor, and. the lit
tie mouth will greedily suck the spoon
or the glass that has in it the taste of
gin. Between those hours, too, you will
see a hundred and fifty or two hundred
girls with tattered clothes torn pima
fores, some almost shoeless, all ragged,
all dirty, all dishevelled, entering with
jugs to carry away the drink to their.
miserable homes. AS many boys under
the age of fourteen or fifteen will be
there, too, making, perhaps, total in
one afternoon Of five hundred children.
l remember ON one occasion standing
front of Just such a public house (and
If you look down the street, you will
see that there are. twenty moreJ, 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 meet
ing there. as they did in America twen-
ty years ago?'
ut seemed to her inconceivable that
women were going there to drink; but
TO US it has become 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 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 impress
sions of everything that is vile and bad.
But there is another picture of our
social life of which have to speak be-
fore go back again to the country
farm, and, in order to bring this before
the minds Of those who. are interested
in social problems, must ask them
to 90 inside a large London drink den.
There You will find that the finest
houses are supplied with great num-
Der Of entrances, six. eight or ten, and
each OF these entrances leads into a
separate small bar and IL you are in
cltned to sit for moment and ask for
q glass Of lemonade, you can watch
those who pass I'm and out. e.