The hospitals / [W.I. Bicknell].

  • Bicknell, W. I
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The hospitals / [W.I. Bicknell]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and desertion. By their own family and friends, they had been neglected because of the vices into which they had been betrayed ; and, hence, nothing remained but a course of sin. It became therefore essential that the hospital, besides the cure of disease, should be made, an asylum for these unhappy wanderers, in which their moral renovation should be attempted, and means taken for their restoration to respectable society. Many females have, no doubt, by these benevolent means been restored to the bosom of their afflicted parents, and to the parental roof which they had left; others have gone into service, and given substantial proof of having abandoned that wretched course of life to which they had previously been devoted, Yet, it must be confessed, that the number of females who have permanently remained in a course of virtue after a life of shame, amounts to a very small number indeed. It is most lamentable to think that, with the hor- rors consequent upon a life of prostitution, there appears such fascination in a life of idleness and dissipation, that very few are ever permanently reformed, excepting, per- haps, those who are relieved in the very incipient stages of vice. The difficulty of overcoming the strong power of temptation seems to require superhuman agency to effect. So true to the letter is the declaration of scripture, that it happens to them according to the true proverb, “ The dog is turned to his own vomit again ; and the sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire ! ” Still it is to be hoped that much moral, as well as physical good, has resulted from the efforts made by this institution, Of five hundred cases received into the asylum, the following is given as the result:—