V
The Price of a Bed
The young, pretty prostitute of the humbler walks of harlotry is a growing problem. The older women, who have long graduated in the profession, are of a different category; with these I did not come into contact, except in one or two instances where circumstances had pushed them from comparative prosperity into destitution. The type of girl I encountered in the public lodging houses is, as a rule, fresh, amusing and very friendly.
How do they find themselves members of this calling? The reasons are various; but sheer vice is not one of them. Viciousness is generally accompanied by a peculiarly cold commercial sense, which very speedily increases a woman’s earning capacity in this particular walk of life. The majority of girls are victims of circumstance. I do not mean that they have had illegitimate children, but that accident has pushed them into their position. A number of them have been domestic servants who have stayed out late on their evening off, and been too apprehensive to return after the appointed hour. In some cases these girls find refuge in a Salvation Army Shelter, but, very often, things turn out differently. It is not difficult for an attractive young thing to form an acquaintance, and in sheer high spirits and love of fun she will go to lengths she had never contemplated, and wake up the next morning in a man’s bed.
Once this has happened, it is very difficult for a girl to get back to routine work. To begin with, she will have no reference, for—and this is an important point—in the majority of instances she will not face her former mistress and give a tangible account of her absence, nor will she tell the truth. Most girls in such a case prefer to lose the wages due to them and forfeit their clothes—and the pressure of hard facts soon sends them on to the street.
I have mentioned that many of these girls come from the North of England, particularly from Liverpool. The explanation for this is interesting. In Liverpool, as elsewhere, if a girl be convicted a number of times for solicitation, she is more or less marked down by the police, and the surveillance renders it difficult, if not impossible, for her to approach likely clients. For this reason she migrates to London with its larger area and its many avenues of escape from official espionage. As a rule, it is but rarely that this type of prostitute is arrested. Of necessity she plies her trade in out-of-the-way spots, not venturing into competition with her more opulent sisters of Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly.
A very high standard of generosity obtains among them, and much devotion, even heroism. A Scotswoman whom I met in a North London lodging house told me that “her man” had lost both his legs in the war. He had come down from his native place to London where he had secured admission to an institution. They had hoped to get married, and when he was maimed from the war she was heartbroken. She could not live without him and followed him to London without a penny and without work. She took the way of prostitution to keep body and soul together. He did not know what she did, and every visiting day would welcome her with unfailing affection. He was a heavy smoker and she could never get him enough tobacco. She would go without food to buy him cigarettes; indeed, she only lived for those few hours twice weekly when she forgot everything but her love. She was not a showy-looking girl; she was built on peasant lines, and one felt she would make a splendid mother of sturdy sons. Her avocation had not dulled her mind or coarsened her manner. I do not think her soul, in any sense, was seared by what she did.
“What else can I do?” she asked me, her wide eyes staring.
And this is the question which must be faced in any discussion of social conditions. The usual alternative to the streets offered to the prostitute is work at a washtub. “Homes for Fallen Women”—the name emblazoned all over the building—lay great stress on the curative properties of a laundry. Clear starching, it would seem, cleanses all sin, and an expert ironer can cheerfully put her record behind her. It is thought, apparently, that residence in a place of this description, where femininity is herded together, devoid of that cold, brutal masculinity without which women in the herd cannot keep sane, will purge them of all desire for their old calling. Frankly, the majority of them have no “desire” for prostitution. If they could get their living any other way and, at the same time, retain their liberty of action, there would not be much hesitation. But it is not feasible to expect that a young woman should prefer the undiluted society of her own sex, varied by long arduous hours of physical toil, to the chances of a life of adventure, even though that life means frequently going without a bed.
I think the only avenue of hope lies in a different direction. In the first place a number of public lodging houses, properly sanitated and equipped, should be established. These could be run on the lines which at present obtain; the necessary payment being the only qualification for admission. There could be, however, an official attached to the house to whom the girls could go for advice, if they wanted any. There should not be the least hint of compulsion, but an unprejudiced woman of good manners and humanity, in such circumstances, might be of real assistance. If, for instance, a girl has a taste for dressmaking—and so many of them do wonders with their needle—the Registrar or Secretary, whatever her title might be, could take a note of the applicant’s qualifications and put her in touch with a firm in need of a hand. This is but one branch of commerce for which these young and quick-brained creatures would be eligible. There is plenty of capacity among them, and, as I have said, very little vice. What has happened to them is what happens to many. They have missed the train of life at a certain junction and have been left behind. The least little assistance—proffered frankly and uncoloured by preaching—would help them catch the train at the next stopping place. Stern, inflexible officialdom, the solution of the reformatory, institution, or “Fallen Home,” is worse than useless; they are all tarred with the same brush; they all postulate the same thing—that the prostitute is intrinsically evil and must be purged by fire. It is the entire absence of moral superiority that gives the Salvation Army such a great influence. Your social reformer wants always to reform; the Salvation Army, so far as I know it, wants only to help. There is a whole world of difference in the result of these two opposite ideals.
An astonishingly high standard of self-respect is maintained among these girls. Directly they earn a shilling they will spend fourpence of it in a bath. They neglect no opportunity of washing their underwear, and their clothes are carefully brushed, indeed I have often wondered how they manage to appear so spick and span. I have been in the kitchen of a lodging house and seen a girl whom I met a few days before, enter almost dead with exhaustion. She has been two nights without a bed and has staggered into the kitchen for half-an-hour’s rest before she “walks” again. Her feet are swollen and bleeding, the cheap silk stockings all in holes, but she still maintains a meticulous neatness about her small hat and her cheap coat and frock. Powder, rouge and lipstick repair the ravages of fatigue, a borrowed needle and cotton deal with the stockings and she sets forth again looking like a rose refreshed. Their clothes are of the cheapest, generally bought from the little shops in Soho, or in the East End of London. The material is not high class, cotton plays a great part in its composition, but the cut is very good, and not always supplied by the tailor. Very often the girl will alter it herself, with a companion’s help and the aid of a few pins. So much comprehension, such amazing generosity, such swift compassion; all wasted in prostitution for the want of common sense, help and understanding.
Furthermore, at the risk of repetition, I must state again that there is little or no drinking among this type of prostitute, and that the root cause of their condition is an economic one. It will be argued, very rightly, that a little strength of mind, a small amount of courage, would have saved them from such a plight. The domestic who has outstayed her allotted hour; the girl who has slipped out of her home; the nursery governess who has taken French leave, all these could have retrieved their position had they faced the music. But unless you have been in direct contact with the type of which I am writing, you cannot understand how difficult, if not impossible, it is for them to approach a woman of a different social caste. Embedded in their psychology is the belief that their employer will, and must, not only censure, but punish their lapse from duty, and in the main their belief is right. The average mistress, faced by her domestic after a night’s absence, or even part of a night, would inevitably tell her to go without further notice. It is to avoid this unpleasantness that the defaulting absentee does not return. She prefers to join the ranks of the destitute.
The older women, not of the prostitute class, who frequent lodging houses are semi-permanents. These semi-permanents have regular, if poorly paid work. They are office cleaners, jobbing laundresses, daily cooks at cheap restaurants. The money they pay per week for their bed would rent a room in a poor locality, but even if such accommodation were available, and they could collect the necessary furniture, there is one overwhelming obstacle to such a mode of life. For the single woman well on to middle age, to live alone is to court a desolation of spirit that saps vitality. The loneliness of such an existence is intolerable. Few of these odd women have friends, or even acquaintances; they sustain their hold on life through the younger women whom they meet at the lodging house. They feed their emotions on the emotions of these others, gaining a spurious excitement from their tragedies and amusements.
It is not only in the public lodging house that you find this particular phenomenon. You will find elderly spinsters and childless widows in all grades of society preying on the vitality of the young. Lack of occupation, in these latter cases, intensifies the desire for sensation and, whereas the office cleaner is content to observe her younger and attractive sisters, the middle class woman of certain, if small income, with nothing to do, actively oppresses her unfortunate friends and relations. The same morbid condition is noticeable in widows who have lost their husbands and sons and with them that sense of superiority which comes from male appreciation. In such cases it is the daughters who pay; for the mother, to sustain emotional contact with life, leaves very little opportunity for their privacy of feeling. But among outcasts you find a bond of fellowship almost as close and as elastic as the comradeship of man with man. They have that respect for liberty of action and privacy of thought which among women of ordered and leisured lives is rarely met with. They are void of that desire of possession which mars so many friendships. They desire to possess their own lives, they shrink from the responsibility of possessing their neighbours. So keen is this appreciation of spiritual aloofness, that it is hopeless for anybody to attempt to offer them material assistance, who does not share that same passion. Until this underlying fact is recognised, all attempts at what is known as rescue work will be unavailing.
The third class of destitute—the itinerant match-vendors—rarely come to the one and twopenny type of lodging house. They simply have not the means. They go to the unlicensed doss house, which still secretly flourishes in the backways of the city. They go also to a huge shelter in Whitechapel, concerning which I shall have much to say. But be they prostitute, office cleaner, or matchseller—whether they pay a few pence or a larger sum—they all suffer from the same crying and shameful injustice; the inadequacy of accommodation, the lack of proper bathrooms, the glaring inequality which supplies the outcast male with the decencies of life and denies them to women.