The night side of London / by J. Erving Ritchie.

  • Ritchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing), 1820-1898.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The night side of London / by J. Erving Ritchie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    than eight years; and if you see them in the day- time,, before they are painted and dressed up—with their red eyes and bloated faces, you will think few of them will last even that short time ; but they pass on one by one to the spirit land, not as did Antigone, conscious of duty done, though wailing her unwedded state, nor as Jephtha^s high-souled daughter, for whom Hebrew maidens devoutly wept —but with body and soul alike loathsome and steeped in sin. The gay women, as they are termed, are worse off than American slaves, and the men at the best are but drunken fools frittering away time and money and health, and rooting out from their hearts all traces of innocence that may be yet lingering there. The West is the more fashionable quarter, and no loose woman of any pretension to respectability, under ordinary cir- cumstances, comes near Temple-bar. Catherine-street is a busy place by day (it does a great business in the newspaper line, and about four or five in the afternoon it is used by the acute newsboys of the metropolis as a kind of '’Change), but it was busier far by night, and the later the hour the more active and lively it grew.