A plan for establishing a charity-house, or charity-houses, for the reception of repenting prostitutes. To be called the Magdalen Charity / [Anon].

  • Hanway, Jonas, 1712-1786.
Date:
[1758]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A plan for establishing a charity-house, or charity-houses, for the reception of repenting prostitutes. To be called the Magdalen Charity / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    he drinks or no, a bowl is immediately circulated, and if he chance to deep till morning, as perhaps he may, he finds a reckoning of four or five pounds to dif- charge ; though not a tenth part of the liquor charged, even at their extortionary price, has been drank. 11 he does not pay it, he will be arrefted and expofed ; there¬ fore he prefers the impofition, and the rogues triumph. Thefe mifcreants are conflantly enquiring after pretty girls that are a little in debt, and if they can contrive to buy up their notes, perhaps at a crown in the pound, they arreft them, detain them at their houfe in quality of a fpunging-houfe, and make their property of them. The debt, perhaps of two or three pounds, ftiil remains, if they were to earn them a hundred pounds *, fo that they are never after, out of their clutches, till they are rotten and unfit for fervice, when they are call into the flreets, and become real objedts for a reformatory. The melancholly end of a beautiful young gentlewoman, who was lately trepan¬ ned into one of thefe houfes, not many miles from Jamesflreet in the Hay-market, has given me fuch a deteftation of them, that it was with the greateft mortification. Sir, I learnt that the peace officers, in their late fearch in Hedge lam, never once thought of James-Jlreet, fo near, and fo notorious to every pafienger. V This unhappy girl had the misfortune to be debauched by an officer quartered at Guildford, where her parents lived in reputation, and being an only child, had (pared no pains in cultivating thofe advantages nature had beftowed on her. The affair being, as ufual in country places, made the talk of the town, fhame and remorfe drove her from her father’s houfe, who, overwhelmed with grief, did not long fure¬ vive her lofs. She came to London in company with a girl under the like circum- ftances, in hopes, by changing the feene, to bury in oblivion her pad misfortune.— But, alas 1 inftead of a genteel- fervice, which fhe was. recommended to, fhe tc-o late found herfelf in the hands of a notorious bawd : if fhe bewailed her misfortune, or mentioned returning to her unhappy parents, writs and a goal were the threatned confequen-