The social evil practically considered : a paper read at a meeting of the Lay and Clerical Union / by James Charles Whitehorne.

  • Whitehorne, James Charles.
Date:
[1858]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The social evil practically considered : a paper read at a meeting of the Lay and Clerical Union / by James Charles Whitehorne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    3rd. The first cause I have mentioned, affects the low of both sexes. I will instance next, one that affects poor females especially. The few means of earning’ money honestly that are open to women, and the low wages they receive. This is so familiar a cause, that it need only be mentioned here. Men do half the women’s work with us; women have very little they can do, and there are very many to do it, and they are delivered over to political economy, the laws of supply and demand,—and prostitution. 4th. The foregoing are causes that account for a great deal of the prostitution engendered among those to whom daily bread is a matter of some anxiety. It is clear that though a vast amount of evil arises, and is maintained among these, much is caused by the idle passion, or deliberate villainy of the “ superior classes” as they are called. It is certain that the most dangerous and offensive; and, it is more than probable, that the most extensive form of prosti- tution is that caused and supported by a class of men, who are above most of their victims in station, such as clerks of all grades, the professions, and so on, up to members of parli- ament and peers. The causes that affect these, our class, the middle class especially, in their contribution to the general abomination, are those I would next note. And first and foremost I place the increasing difficulty, or rather impossibility, of marriage. Not to labourers, mind, nor to humble artizans, nor to soldiers and sailors; but to that vast army who call themselves gentlemen, the most dangerously fascinating, be it remembered, of all, to the girls just below them. I have read, as hundreds have, the recent discussions on this subject in the public prints, and have been bitterly grieved to see and to hear, what I believe to be so awfully serious a subject treated in so light and idle a tone. It seems to me only too clear a proof that the rapid increase of the wickedness is telling more and more on the moral sense of the community.