Public morals / [James Marchant, editor].

Date:
[between 1900 and 1910]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Public morals / [James Marchant, editor]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    fPublic a single lustrum, no fewer than 5500 came under the latter category; that is, were admitted from conditions of grave moral danger. Annie and Ella, therefore, may well be described as types. They stand for an army of thousands who are compassed round with nameless perils, and who stand daily and nightly, even in our midst to-day, in need of the kindly hand and the outstretched arm. We see them in all our great city centres of population. It saddens the heart to contemplate this stream of little innocents carried downwards in one ceaseless stream to the terrible Niagara of Destruction which will inevitably engulf them unless our aid is prompt to deliver and to save. Poor hearts, numbers of them have never been taught to see the light! “ The beginning of a man's doom is that vision be withdrawn from him; that he see not the reality, but the false spectrum of the reality ; and\ following that, steps darkly, with more or less velocity, downwards to the utter dark; to Ruin, which is the great Sea of Darkness But what, then, of these forlorn children ? For myriads of them have never possessed vision at all! They have never been taught to see. They know not their right hand from their left; they know not right from wrong, reality from falsehood, light from shadow. What wonder if they go “ downwards to the utter dark; to Ruin, which is the great Sea of Darkness ”! But they may be saved, if taken in hand at once and delivered from their dread surroundings. “Better, says Ellice Hopkins, in her oft- quoted words, “ the fence at the top of the precipice than the ambulance at the bottom.” Thank God