ANOTHER BIRD OF PREY.

and philosophers. The impossibility of satisfactorily drawing and thousands like him, to trifle with the health of the people, social and political lines is the standing problem of the age. This immediately bestirred itself when the majesty of those having is equally so in modern science. You cannot define a plant from authority was assailed. So this fellow was immediately aranimal; a horse-chestnut bears a physical as well as a rested for exhibiting these gross placards, was committed by a logical relation to a chestnut horse. You cannot draw the magistrate, and last week was brought to trial at the Old limit between the forms of physical force; they are correlative Bailey. and convertible. Nature used to abhor a vacuum. She has Perhaps the scene in Court was one of the most- audacious That wonderful lad, every schoolboy, exhibitions of what is called the " liberty of counsel," (which overcome this distaste. knows that now she is indifferent on this score. She has sub- seems to mean taking liberties,) ever witnessed. The prisoner stituted a modern abhorrence of limitation. Where to draw was attired decently, placed at the bar, and told to plead the line in any domain of thought or action ? There is the rub. guilty to the charge brought against him. Then thus spake How to distinguish between economy and stinginess, between the learned sergeant retained on his behalf :prudence and meanness, courage and fool-hardiness, liberality "The defendant, he was instructed, was a ’medical gentleand indifference, enthusiasm and fanaticism, piety and cant. man’ of great skill and of considerable practice, residing in Some figures emanating from a committee on Beneficent Westminster, and in a moment of excitement he had put forth Institutions of the Statistical Society may well set us certain placards which were undoubtedly of an illegal cha. racter, and he had explained to him that they were so, and the thinking upon the difficulty of defining the limit between defendant was now satisfied that he had done wrong, and he useful and well-meant charity, and an ill-conceived prohad pleaded guilty, and would undertake not to repeat the digality which apes the name of Benevolence. From a series offence." of complete returns from all the dispensaries and hosAnd thus the fellow got off on the plea of belonging to a pitals in London, we learn that upwards of .Sl,000,000 of profession, to which his relation is about on a par with that of money is spent in the metropolis in the bestowal of medical the pediculus to the human being on whom it preys. aid, and that nearly 700,000 persons-one-tenth of the whole Verily, justice is very blind, and the criminal lawyers, her population-receive medical service for which they do not pay. dutiful sons-in-law, take most noble and honourable advantage Here is a gigantic abuse. It is not possible that one-tenth of of her failing. It is told that the little animal which supplies the population are entitled to this gratuitous service. Ill- the ermine is caught by driving it towards a muddy place, directed charity becomes injustice here. It is a double-edged when the hunter wades through the dirt, however foul, to evil; it wrongs the medical man; it injures those who impro- seize it; since the little creature will sooner be taken than soil perly lean upon his kindly staff, by giving birth in them to an its delicate fur. The purity of those who sit on the judicial bench is above doubt; but we should be sorry to think that improvident spirit of dependence. These startling figures may suggest another thought. Is it the seekers after the judge’s ermine, like the fur-hunters, are charity, or a penurious and deceptive imitation of it, which careless what amount of dirt they go through to attain it. prompts Dives in Belgravia to subscribe the annual guinea that entitles his gouty butler or dyspeptic valet to the best A HINT FOR EXAMINING BOARDS. medical advice in London ? or which induces Mercator in THE proceedings disclosed in the subjoined correspondence eastern Babylon to barter an annual three guineas for the are of importance both to the profession and the public. That power of giving hospital letters and immediate dismissal to his sick "young men"? Under this aspect, these tables supply such frauds are frequent cannot be supposed; but that their perpetration is possible speaks little for the care exercised by an index to some very indifferent pages in our social economy. examining boards. We suppress the names, but these, as well They represent a vast amount of unrewarded labour and unpaid as the original letters, are in our possession. A correspondent service unjustly exacted from the most laborious, intelligent, writes that, having advertised in August last for a situation, and of professional men-the members, we mean, of the staff of hospital and dispensary medical officers in this he received the following answer :" In reply to your advertisement in THE LANCET, I am commetropolis. missioned to obtain for a country practitioner, in the West Riding of this county, an assistant; and will, therefore, thank A MEDICAL GENTLEMAN ! you to forward me references and qualifications. The situation A WRETCHED, illiterate mountebank, named James Cowan, is one of permanency and the salary liberal if the party suits." He forwarded his references, &c., and then received the subwas brought before one of the magistrates some time ago for a number libellous in of of obscene and front placards joined detailed account :exposing " his house. He was a slovenly old creature, who, after having In reply to your letters, I beg to say that my employer been several times in prison, had undertaken to cure all human requires a gentleman to go up for him for examination at one ailments, at a miserable hovel in Pimlico ; this trade in health of the boards that is empowered to grant licences to practise in and life being the only business which our merciful and con- England. He is an M.D. of a foreign university, but has no from London, Edinburgh, or Dublin; and he is siderate Government specially invites any individual without qualification desirous of obtaining a qualification that will enable him to conscience, capital, or education to enter upon. The theory is, register himself according to the pending Act of Parliament." that if people are " fools enough to entrust their lives to such Our correspondent wrote with indignation at such a proposifellows, they deserve the certain prolongation and probable tion, but received his letter again through the dead-letter office. increase of their disease as a reward for their folly." Now this Possibly the scoundrel who could thus calmly suggest someman Cowan applied the same theory in a new form. He plathing very like perjury had met with a needy adventurer as carded the-walls of his house with seditionary, " libellous, and unscrupulous as himself; for we have many black sheep in the obscene placards, calculated to create dissension amongst the flock. As a guide to the members of examining boards before Queen’s troops-one of these contained a most indecent attack whom such a fraudulent impersonation would be attempted, upon an illustrious personage." The theory so blandly mouthed we may state that the letters above-quoted are forwarded from where the health of the people is concerned, was equally appli- Riccall, Escrick, Yorkshire, and that the proposer of this little cable when the political health was threatened. If fools be- arrangement is stated to reside in the West Riding. lieved these placards, they would deserve the punishment entailed by any active ’demonstration of their folly. Mùtatis ANOTHER BIRD OF PREY. mutandis—the argument was just as good-i. e., good for In the nothing. advertising sheet of The Time. occurs the subjoined But the impartial law which permitted this creature Cowan, I an

deserving

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quite ready to endorse Mr. Acton’sjudgarticle,) that there are three vulgar errors popular theory concerning prostitution, I am as certain that the road to recovery and the regaining a position *Who is this sabbath-breaker ? What is the purport of his of social respect and happiness is always difficult—often not attainable at all, and most likely to be gained and kept by advertisements, and whom does he seek to entice? Some some such course of testing as is adopted in our reformatories. labours of love and some works of necessity our profession The very fact that we should recoil from the notion of taking a demands of us, even on the seventh-day of rest. The calls of common girl as a domestic servant into our families shows this, disease and suffering are of the highest stringency. But a and surely it is only in a season of infatuation or sensual love, deliberate and low attempt to drive a secret Sunday trade that any man can deliberately take such an one as the chosen of his life. calls for the deepest reprobation. Latet anguis in herba. We companion Such being the humble aim of reformatories, I hardly think suspect a reptile beneath the grass. No well-favoured features it fair to say that they have " comparatively failed." It is No man who retained a spark of true they have done little, very little; but that is simply from ever wore so ugly a mask. regard for professional character could devise such an adver- want of funds. What little they have done has been done tisement. We suspect this is some new form of the Protean successfully. The Magdalen, up to the end of the year 1844, and iniquitous dodgery of the crew of advertising quacks; had admitted 6968 fallen women; of these, two-thirds turned out well. The Female Aid Society, from its first establish-making even the holy rest of the sabbath-day subserve their ment in 1836, up to the close of 1854, had restored and provided for 1016 penitent women; while in the Church peniteniniquitous greed. tiaries and refuges, a work of as recent origin as the year 1851, out of 930 penitents received up to the end of the year 1856, 369 had been either satisfactorily placed in service, or restored to their friends; 19 had died; 326 were still in refuges or peni-

’" A medical man requires the use of two furnished sittingrooms from ten to four on Sundays, to see his patients in reply ’to advertisements, and offers lOs. to 20s. each Sunday. Will bring his own servant. No meals required."

although I And ment, (quoted in in the

Correspondence.

am

your

226 had left with more or less doubtful intentions. I have few statistics on which to base any comparison concerning " the enormous expenditure of’the reformatories considering the work done," of which you speak. The report of the (the first year of its estaPenitentiary last lishment, and, therefore, probably more expensive, as well as bearing fewer fruits than we may hope for in other years,) shows that the expenses of rental, management, &c., (exclusive of furniture purchased, &c.,) were X13 i 3 12s. 8d.; in this year 13 were restored to their friends, or placed in service-i. e., at the rate of £101 per penitent. I have set by the side of this the Church Missionary report of last year, and I find that with an expenditure of £118,657 15s. Sd., there were, as near as I can calculate,* 1197 adult baptisms-i. e., at the rate of 99 per adult convert. Or to take as a parallel (not perhaps strictly analogous) the cure of mental diseases, what will you say tothe expenses of Colney Hatch Asylum last year being £37,683, with a result of 64 discharged cured, and 137 deaths ? I think we hardly know with sufficient accuracy the statistics of the varying numbers of prostitutes, to assert with any confidence, while so very little has been done, that " the diminution of prostitution stimulates its growth." It is at best anopen question, and my own opinion is, that with the awful number of London prostitutes, estimated at 80,000, it has never entered into the calculations of any one as she entered on that wretched life, that because some few had left their evil courses, there was more room, and a better prospect for themselves. I have already trespassed so much on your space, that I can hardly enlarge as I should wish to do on the means of checking and controlling the evil. To suppress it is impossible, as long as this world lasts; but it is our duty as a Christian nation to keep it under some curb, to prevent its going beyond certain bounds, and so "openly disgracing our country, and making

tentiaries ;

"Audi alteram partem."

PROSTITUTION AND REFORMATORIES.

Highgate

year,

To the Editor of THE LANCET. am SIR,—I glad to find in the number of your very practical journal, published on the 14th inst., something practicable proposed for restraining prostitution. The fact that the public press, whether medical, political, or religious, is universally urging the necessity of some control over the unblushing license with which prostitution is carried on amongst us, is a sure sign that a less prudish tone of feeling pervades the community, and a guarantee that something must be done ere long by Government (who alone can do it) effectually to check the prurient growth of this gigantic evil; and I cordially agree with your valuable suggestion, that a Board or Commission of Public Morality should be instituted, with power to inspect brothels, and prosecute habitual street-walkers, and seducers of women as well as of men. Of some of the which, I think, should be given to such a commission I will speak presently; but to revert to your article on the subject, I must say that I think you have been somewhat misled in your statement of the object and end, as well as of the expense and success of reformatories. No one of common understanding can really " think that enough is done when they read of a certain number of reformatories being established." If the object and aim of establishing reformatories were to cleanse the Augean stables, or to kill the hydra, our morality a byword amongst nations." "faecundo vulnere...fertilis, et damnis dives ab ipse suis," they Of course to do this, we must, as you suggest, prevent its must fail; they begin entirely at the wrong end to accomplish easy recruitment. And the remedy is partly in our own such a work. But such is not the aim the promoters of re- hands. Let the parents of the better classes encourage their formatories have generally* had before them. Reformatories, sons to and earn their own livelihood rather than marry penitentiaries, refuges, as the names show, are not intended ashang idly and early, about home until they can have a dissolutely stand in are to the cures. not intended but preventives, They of their father’s wealth; and until they can ’ goodly portion way of, or to take the place of, any efforts to prevent, or keep’ marry, let their parents surround their homes, as much as posunder, the actual disease; their highest aim is to rescue those’ sible, with healthy innocent pleasures, so that they shall not who have fallen victims to it, and who, sorry for their fall, asbe led to seek other pleasures elsewhere. I remember spending assuredly many are, find it very difficult to rise up again. one of my long vacations with an Oxford reading party, at a Incidentally, indeed, they may prevent those who have oncecathedral town in North Wales, and the Dean of the Cathedral, fallen from becoming habitual prostitutes; as, e. g., in the St. on whom we had no claim or called immediately introduction, James’s Home for Penitents, there are at present two, who,on us and invited us to his house; which he continually did, having been seduced and outcast, would have had, by theirwith no common hospitality, during the whole of our stay own admission, no alternative but to throw themselves on the and on one occasion he told me that he always made a streets for a livelihood, had not a refuge been thus opened tothere, of the same when young men from the Universities ’ point them. But so far from feeling that reformatories do, or that were in doing the town, knowing that if young men had not good any number of them will keep prostitution under efficaciouscompany, they would be sure to seek bad. Worthy man! who control, the promoters of them have continually raised theircan tell from how much misery he has saved his town-from voices, and appealed to our rulers to adopt measures whichhow much evil he saved many a youth, just freed from the realone can curb it. straints of home, and ready to rush into libertinism ! * There is, I know, a Society for the Suppression of Vice, another for the * Prevention of Juvenile Prostitution, &c., but the control of prostitution is only The figures given in their report are, 4251 baptisms. Of these, 903 were partially or incidentally the work of such institutions. In fact I know of no adults, 2304 children, 1044 not specified. Taking the ascertained numbers as evil bold tackle the and It to is the a test of the proper proportions, I infer that 750 of those not specified were not enough plainly Society singly. work, of a Society in our limited Fense of the word, but ofa nation. children, 294 adults, giving a total of 1197 adults.

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