Letter V. To Robert Dingley, Esq.; being a proposal for the relief and employment of friendless girls and repenting prostitutes / [Jonas Hanway].

Jonas Hanway

Date:: 1758

Credit: Letter V. To Robert Dingley, Esq.; being a proposal for the relief and employment of friendless girls and repenting prostitutes / [Jonas Hanway]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$\ The Tailor looks on his flame as a widow. In a year or two, if they chute to flay, all ill-natured dories die : but fuppofing they fhould not, there are, many indances of men who have gloried in thus faving the unfortunate ; and I my- V felf, fays the writer, have heard an honed fellow fay ; let the man anfwer it to his confcience who made you difhoneft: I have more pie a Jure in making you honcjl, than ever he had in making you otherwife, * t 1 VL 11 J• - *«*' • f '* ' * ' * ■* +* ■ » Why fuch a fcheme fhould not be fet about, and brought to perfection in Eng¬ land, I cannot tell. It Teems a mod charitable age •, and it' was but t’other day that I read in one of the papers of a new hofpital for ruptures. Think how many parents, in an hour of kind relenting, might, by thefe means, find out their daugh¬ ters again, which it would tire out the bed diligence to do in this metropolis. Changing names and places of abode renders this impoflible, and many a poor girl dies in an hofpital, or a prifon, at the very indant her friends are in fearch of her, and willing to bring her home. In the third letter the writer has very ingenioufiy introduced, a vifionary plan by way of dream, with the regulations necefiary for an hofpital, fuch as he thinks would anfwer the end propofed. I really thought, fays he, that I faw a building already ereCted, fomewhat near the Foundling Hofpital *, and, as Toon as I entered, the pannels in the hall, or vedibula, appeared filled with the names of many kind benefactors. But as I fhould premile to you, that, to make the dream more real, on my knocking at the outer gate, the porter, like mod porters at a gate, not coming immediately, I faw a group of females^ notjfuch whofe language befjfakej a real goodnefs of heart, for they call’d the houfe a ned of nady, dinking, poifon’d whores. But, to go. on, the edifice was what builders call an half H. The centre made a good chapel, and the wings were the lodging, and working rooms, of the feveral inhabitants. To make the reader dill underdand it better, the form was$