The European Slave Trade in English Girls
by
Alfred S. Dyer
London:
Dyer Brothers
Amen Corner, Paternoster Row
1880
IN order properly to understand the subject of the foreign slave traffic in English girls, it is necessary to know something of the system of slavery, which this traffic exists to supply with victims.
In nearly every country on the Continent of Europe, prostitution is licensed by the public authorities: The pleas for this action are principally these : that prostitution being a necessary evil, it is right that Government should regulate it, so as to make it the cause of as little public scandal as possible ; and, that it is desirable that women leading a life of prostitution should be periodically subjected to surgical examination, and if found diseased, to imprisonment in hospital till cured, in order to protect the public health. The first plea is one of order, the second is one of hygiene. Prostitution is authorised so long as it does not outrage public decency; and the public health is sought to be promoted by the sequestration of women when in a condition to infect the immoral men who consort with them. On the grounds of morality and religion such a system is indefensible. It is equally indefensible on the ground of common justice between two equally guilty parties, one of whom is treated as a criminal that the other may be protected from the natural consequence of his vices. But recent investigations have also proved the sanitary failure of this system. It is not possible to permanently lessen disease by a method that increases the vice by which the disease is caused.
In Continental countries, under this system of regulated vice, houses devoted to prostitution are licensed, and publicly and conspicuously distinguished; and their inmates are forbidden to appear alone in the streets. Other fallen women are licensed to live in private apartments. It is not surprising that such an unblushing recognition by the authorities of the necessity of prostitution demoralises the population. In Brussels, where the system is said to have reached its highest degree of perfection, the Chief of the Police advises that licensed houses be situated at convenient places, because “men, for whom houses of debauchery area necessity, seldom care to take long journeys to find them,” and failing to find licensed houses would resort to unregulated prostitution. Immorality, indeed, becomes so general under this system that it loses its shame. A cynicism is induced which refuses to believe in the possibility of virtue. The women in families reputed respectable become familiar with the immoral practices of their male relatives, which practices they are led to regard as universal among men. Instead of chastity being inculcated, boys are early introduced to dens of sin, with the knowledge and consent of their parents, and grow up under the unrestrained influence of their passions. Thus society is corrupted, and the patrons of houses of debauchery are to be found everywhere, in high official as well as in nonofficial circles.
The female inmates of houses of prostitution are in a state of veritable slavery. Whatever may be the varying official ordinances in regard to the regulation of debauchery, the women and children who are its victims are practically without rights and protection, either of person or property. From the day they enter these houses they are not allowed to wear their own clothing, but are forced to accept garments of a disgusting nature, for the hire of which, and also for everything they require, they are charged exorbitant prices. They are thus kept deeply in debt and terrified with the threat of imprisonment if they dare to attempt to leave without paying. They are frequently brutally treated and beaten if they show any signs of insubordination, or resist the wishes of the profligates who frequent the houses. Moreover, as the letter of the law forbids the reception of girls who are minors, such girls are registered by their buyers or betrayers under false names with false certificates of birth, with or without the connivance of the officials, for which registration the girls are liable to imprisonment for forgery — a penalty which the keepers of the houses hold over them as a means of maintaining them in subjection.
If suspected of an intention to escape, they are re-sold to keepers of similar houses in other towns, sometimes hundreds of miles distant. Hired bullies, frequently ex-convicts, are at hand to frustrate any attempt at their rescue. In order to make escape or rescue more difficult, the street doors are so constructed that while entrance is easy, exit is impossible without the door being unlocked by the person in charge within. The windows of the houses in most cities are fitted with venetian blinds on the outside, which are kept always closed, so that the inmates are unable to see into the street, and, in many cases, daylight is never visible from one month’s end to another. In some houses, where the inmates are treated with exceptional violence and brutality, the walls of the rooms and the outer doors are padded, to prevent the cries of the victims and the sounds of drunken orgies reaching the street.
It is well known on the Continent that the patrons of these places soon become satiated with the ordinary forms of immorality, and, in the craving of their lust for novelty, the poor inmates are made the subjects of the most inhuman, unnatural, and diabolical outrages, the nature of which it is impossible to mention in print, and difficult to allude to even in private conversation. To pander to this craving for novelty, the keepers of the houses provide a constant succession of fresh victims, including sometimes a negress, and in a recent case in Brussels, a Zulu girl. The more childish and innocent the victims, the more profitable they are. The wealthy Continental debauchee, reared under the influence of the moral blight of licensed debauchery, whose respect for womanhood has dwindled to an outward politeness of behaviour, but whose unrestrained and now uncontrollable passions have sunk him to a position in which, notwithstanding his outward politeness, he is morally half brute and half devil, will pay an amount equal to a poor man’s annual income for the opportunity of violating a betrayed, terrified and helpless virgin. Hence, as the head of the police of Brussels acknowledges, the keepers of licensed houses of prostitution enter into costly researches for new, and if possible, perfectly innocent victims; and hence also, English-speaking girls, who are perhaps the most valuable because the most in request by Continental debauchees, are systematically sought after, entrapped, and sold into a condition of slavery infinitely more cruel and revolting than negro servitude, because it is slavery not for labour but for lust ; and more cowardly than negro slavery, because it falls on the young and helpless of one sex only. The public have been known to be informed of the arrival of an English girl by an advertisement in a newspaper ; and the keepers of licensed dens of infamy have their cards like ordinary tradesmen, which are widely circulated, some of them being handsomely printed, and in the preparation of which, Art is prostituted to produce figures designed to excite the passions.
The beginning of my personal knowledge of the condition of the things I have described was towards the close of last year, (1879). On leaving the Friends’ Meeting House, Clerkenwell, London, one Sabbath evening, one of my friends told me he had heard that a young English girl was confined in a licensed house of prostitution in Brussels, and was contemplating suicide as the only means of escape from her awful condition. I found on enquiry that his informant, a man of some position in London, had actually visited the house a few weeks previously, and although this girl implored him with tears to aid her to escape, he left her to her fate, probably fearing that any attempt at her rescue would end in publicity, and thus compromise his reputation. On hearing this, I said that an effort must be made to save this girl. I went to my friend’s informant. He said the girl told him in substance that she was courted in London by a man of gentlemanly exterior, who promised her marriage if she would accompany him for that purpose to Brussels. Inexperienced in the world, only nineteen years of age, and away from the home of her parents, she was induced to accept the offer. On their arrival at Calais, she was introduced to another individual of gentlemanly appearance, who spoke French only. She was then told by her ” lover” that he had spent all his money, and would have to pawn his watch to enable him to return to England to obtain more, but he would meet her, he said, at Brussels, to which place his friend would accompany her. She protested that she would not go with this man. Her ” lover,”’ however, pushed her into the railway carriage, slammed the door, and the train started. She was alone with a stranger. Worse still, she was on her way to a city where she knew no one, and where a language was spoken of which she was unable to understand a single word. Arrived in Brussels, she was taken straight to a licensed house of ill-fame, where the slave trader received his reward and left. Under a false name, without her consent, she was placed on the official register of infamy. The man who courted her in London never came — as of course he never intended to come — to fulfil his promise. Not allowed to go outside the house, forced continually to submit her person to the last indignity that can be inflicted on a woman, here she was as much a slave as was ever any negro upon Virginian soil.
On receiving this information, friends in Brussels were at once communicated with, and with some difficulty the girl was found in hospital suffering from a disease with which she had been infected, but was being cured, preparatory to being returned, under the authorization of the police des meurs, to the licensed den from which she came. Through the persevering agency of Pastor Leonard Anet, of Brussels, she was eventually returned to London, where I met her and received a corroboration of the foregoing story from her own lips. To test the truth of her story I had already visited her parents and seen persons who had employed her in domestic service, and received satisfactory replies to my enquiries regarding her character before she was betrayed and sold into slavery in Belgium.
On the second day of the new year (1880), a week after I met this poor girl in London, I published the facts of her case in a letter to several London daily newspapers, together with the statement of another case that I had recently received from Brussels. This latter was as follows, and came to light during the search for the other girl.
“On Thursday 16th October, Mr. ——— , a lieutenant of Artillery, just having finished his service at the bar racks of St. Elizabeth, was walking along the Rue ———, which is at right angles with the Rue ———. He saw a gathering of people, among whom were several honour able citizens. In the midst of them was a young girl weeping bitterly and declaring aloud that she had that moment made her escape from the house of prostitution, No. 28, Rue ———, into which she had been decoyed and retained against her will. The girl, who did not speak a word of French, affirmed that she was deceived in London by a Belgian agent who engaged to bring her to Holland, where he had found a place for her, he said, as governess in a good family. She added that she came of respectable parents who had willingly consented to her accepting this engagement. Instead of keeping his promise, this agent had brought her straight to that house, where she had been forcibly detained till that hour. Mr. ———, and some of the other gentlemen, whose names and addresses I can give you, moved by pity, subscribed on the spot a little sum of money to place her in a safe shelter, because the keeper of the house was already loudly claiming her back. To this end they took her to a neighbouring hotel of good character, confiding her to the care of the master. Shortly afterwards an individual appeared, openly declaring himself to have been sent there by the police judiciaire, and politely invited the young girl to accompany him to the police office to give her evidence on the sad affair. This individual proved to be another of the gentlemanly agents of the houses of prostitution, and took the girl straight off and securely lodged her in another house of infamy, where she now is.”
On the publication of the foregoing cases, a correspondence immediately arose in The Daily News, The Standard, and The Daily Chronicle, some of the writers bearing testimony to the existence of a foreign traffic in English girls, while others characterised my letter as sensational, and attempted to ridicule and discredit my statements. The most important among the latter was E. Lenaers, Chief of the Brussels Police, who declared that ” no woman can be admitted [to a licensed house of prostitution] before she has formally declared to a police officer appointed for that pur pose that she enters of her own free will, and that in cases of strangers the interrogatory is always in their own language, and never in the presence of the keeper of the place into which the girl asks to be received. This latter precaution is taken for the purpose of securing to the girl interested in the matter the full exercise of her personal liberty and freedom of action.”
Conscious that the mode of procedure mentioned by this writer, although it might exist in theory, was not carried out in practice, and that consequently his reassuring declaration was untrue, I determined to devote myself to further inquiries in order to demonstrate its falsity by further facts from within the sphere of his own jurisdiction.
While this correspondence was taking place in the newspapers in London, and was being commented upon in the press abroad, a French advocate forwarded to one of the secretaries of the British and Continental Federation for the Abolition of Government Regulation of Prostitution, a report of a trial (at which he was present) which had taken place a month before in France, and which tended to substantiate the strong belief that the traffic in English girls was not spasmodic, or conducted between Great Britain and one Continental country alone, but was systematic and wide spread. Of the accuracy of this belief there is now no doubt. It transpired at this trial that Jean Sallecartes (known by numerous aliases) and Jean Deroo, both Belgians living in London, promised two English girls, aged 18 and 19 years, to find them first-class situations in France. They took the girls on board the General Steam Navigation Company’s steamer “Cologne,” bound for Boulogne. Sallecartes was recognised by some of the crew as having some time since been on board another of the same Company’s steamers in charge of two girls whom he had inveigled from London for immoral purposes, and whom the Captain of the ship had saved and taken back to England. Sallecartes and Deroo were therefore watched.
On arrival at Boulogne, “the two Belgians, desirous of waiting till the darkness of night, walked into a public house, where once again they offered the women spirits. After a long stay at this estaminet the two confederates walked out with the girls ; three sailors, Mitchell, Outram and Barron, of the steamer `Cologne,’ following at a safe distance. The party turned to that part of the town to which houses of prostitution are relegated. When they had got some fifty yards from the nearest of these houses, and the nefarious purpose of the Belgians became quite evident, Mitchell (who is an elderly man) urged his younger shipmates to run ahead, for fear the poor girls, not knowing the character of these houses, should be led or forced into one. Outram and Barron ran on, stopped the party, and Mitchell coming up adjured the girls, as the father of a family, not to move one step more which would consign them to a life of infamy worse than slavery, his companions confirming his declaration that they had been brought already within a few yards of a house of prostitution. The girls now tried to escape from the two confederates, who continued to declare that they were very nice places they had found for them, and that it would be for their interest to come in; but seeing that their urgent assertions were unavailing, Sallecartes tried force in order to accomplish his purpose. After a struggle the two girls were rescued and brought back to the steamer `Cologne.’ The Captain, after hearing their sad story, compassionately sent them under proper escort to the Captain of the steamer `Dolphin,’ about to start for London a few minutes later. By this boat a free passage home was granted them, thus saving them in their hour of direst peril from a life of misery and infamy.”
Sallecartes and Deroo were arrested, charged with an attempt to decoy and kidnap two girls under age for purposes of debauchery. It was stated that Sallecartes was well known to the London Metropolitan Police, and had for years carried on the infamous business of selling English girls to keepers of houses of prostitution. In the absence of the girls at the trial, however, the original charge was abandoned, and one of assault substituted. In the amended charge, Jean Deroo was released, because he had used no force, and Sallecartes was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment, a fine of 200 francs to the State, and the costs of the prosecution.
In pursuance of my determination to further investigate the subject of the European slave trade in English girls, and at the request of a Committee which had now been formed in London to deal with the matter, I started for Brussels at the close of the second month of the present year. A week later, after acquiring considerable information about the system of regulated debauchery, the officials who administer it, and the state of morality in that city, I entered several licensed houses of prostitution in company with a Belgian gentleman and an English friend. Before starting, I was warned that any attempt to aid an English girl to escape from houses in a certain street would endanger my life, as there were always a number of ex-convicts and others hanging about the place to help the proprietors in case of need. I entered a house in that street, and saw a young Englishwoman of whom I had previously heard that she was anxious to escape. I entered into conversation with her in a room devoted to drinking. To avoid the object of my visit being suspected, I ordered some wine, which, however, being a total abstainer, I did not drink. The young woman told me with emotion, and with an air that seemed to betoken sincerity, that her parents, who had no idea where she then was, were country people of much respectability ; that she had occupied a position in a large West-end draper’s shop in London, where she was courted by a fellow who represented himself as a medical man, and who eventually managed to seduce her ; that her parents were very angry ; and that on the representation of this man that he would obtain for her a good situation in a draper’s shop in Brussels, she came over with him, and was taken straight to one of these licensed hells. On my saying that I would aid her to escape, she appeared overcome with joy, which, however, was in a few moments dispelled by an apparent sense of agonized bewilderment as she began to realise her true position. She pointed out to me that she could not leave in the clothing she had on ; that although she had a box of good clothes of her own upstairs, she could not get at them then ; and that, moreover, if I were to endeavour to aid her to leave, such violence would be used as would probably frustrate her escape, and I should be half-killed in the attempt. Eventually, she begged me to come on the following morning, when she would have her own clothes ready, and make the endeavour to get away.
On leaving the house I consulted with my friends. I reminded them of the statements which had recently appeared in certain London newspapers, in answer to my letter, that not only the English but the Belgian officials were desirous of giving every facility to English girls to leave these houses. Notwithstanding that they viewed these statements with some degree of incredulity; it was thought well that I should apply on the morrow to the Procureur du Roi to send a trustworthy policeman with me to assure the girl that she should not be subjected to violence should she wish to leave the house. In the morning, as early as he could be seen, I made this application to the Procureur du Roi. I was accompanied by Alexis Splingard, LL.D., advocate, of Brussels, a gentleman who has manifested much sympathy with the victims of this traffic. The Procureur du Roi very coolly listened to my application and the reasons for it. He said the girl had a right to leave the house at any moment. I replied that legally that might be so, but practically she was the victim of intimidation. He then said that he had no power to grant my request. I reminded him of the statements in English newspapers of the willingness of the Belgian authorities to protect Englishwomen, and appealed to his courtesy as a gentleman, if he could not help me officially, at least to give me a private note to the person who had power to comply with my request. He answered that he could not be sure that I was the individual I represented myself to be. Hereupon my companion, as a solicitor, offered at once to prove my identity. But it was all in vain. He said, however, (ignoring the fact that we were appealing for protection for a young woman and not for ourselves) that if we were subjected to personal violence on going to the house he would take cognizance of it — an observation which subsequently called forth the remark from my colleague that in order to be protected in Belgium we must be killed first! All the satisfaction we could obtain, after some further pressure, was the tardy communication that we might apply to the commissioner of police in the district, who could help us if he pleased. We went straight to the police office indicated. The commissioner was not there, but we finally saw his deputy. Although he said the young woman might leave if she wished to do so, after first visiting the dispensary, he also refused to comply with my request, and began to speak in passionate tones about the necessity of protecting such houses on account of the capital invested in them by their keepers. He then suddenly declared that he would go to the house himself and see whether she desired to leave. I asked to be allowed to accompany him. This he refused, saying that my presence might influence the decision of the girl, and he practically admitted the slavery of the system by remarking also that I might be an agent of another house trying to cheat the keeper by selling the girl over again. He having refused my presence, Dr. Alexis Splingard offered to accompany him as interpreter. He declined, and rushed out of the policestation. It was later in the day that the Vice-Consul re marked to me that the police are so entangled with the keepers of these houses that they cannot be trusted. A similar opinion I had received from many other sources. When, therefore, this policeman returned in a few minutes, having been unaccompanied, and said that he had questioned the girl in the presence of the keeper of the house and also alone, and that she denied the statement she had made to me, what guarantee could I have that he had even seen her?
I felt that I dare not leave the young woman to her fate on such unsupported testimony. Still accompanied by Dr. Alexis Splingard as a witness, and by my London friend, I proceeded to the house. As is usual the entrance to this place was so arranged that there was ready ingress, but no exit without the street-door being unlocked each time. We therefore easily entered, one of us holding the door to prevent it closing. The mistress was standing with another woman in the hall, her face white with rage. We asked to be allowed to see the young Englishwoman (mentioning the name). The mistress replied, in tones clearly intimating a menace, ” You shall not see her; and, for your advice, let me tell you not to come here again, for you will not be well received.” It will be observed that this woman answered as a slave-owner would answer in regard to a slave, not “I will ask her whether she will see you,” but “You SHALL NOT see her.” Being refused an interview we left the house, but had scarcely walked thirty yards, when a great brutal looking fellow ran and overtook us, and shaking his fist, first in the face of one and then of another, exclaimed in loud and passionate tones that if we came to that house again he would break the heads of all three of us. Not wishing to create a breach of the peace, we refrained from answering and walked on. But we reflected that if this fellow would threaten three men in a public thoroughfare, what would he not do to a defenceless woman sequestered in his own house.
Feeling now that the very life of this woman was perhaps insecure, I went to the residence of the British Minister to claim the protection of British authority for a woman who, notwithstanding her imprisonment in a licensed house of ill-fame, was a British subject. I sent up my card, having first written on it in a few words the object for which I wished an interview. He sent one of the secretaries of the Legation to say that he declined to see me, but that I might state my business to this secretary. After entering a protest against the refusal of the British Minister to see me on such a subject, I related the foregoing facts. I remarked that seeing there was some reason to fear that the life of this young Englishwoman was in hourly danger, I thought it would not be more than adequate to the gravity of the case for Sir Saville Lumley, the Minister, to have her removed at once to some place of safety, while he caused a thorough investigation to be made into her statements. The secretary went away to tell Sir Saville Lumley what I had said, and returned with the answer that the matter was in the department of “Mr. Maltby, the Vice-Consul,” with whom I must communicate; that the Vice-Consul would investigate the case in conjunction with the Belgian authorities; and that should redress then fail to be obtained, he would apply to the Belgian Government. I answered that as I had cause to fear that the life of the young woman was in imminent danger, I had appealed to the highest official authority in order to have immediate steps taken to insure her safety; that in doing this I considered I had discharged my duty ; that, therefore, it would be a matter of consideration for me when I left that house whether I would apply to the Vice-Consul or not; but that if the young woman should be the victim of violence, the responsibility would rest with the British Minister.
Determined, however, that no effort should be wanting on my part, I went to the office of the Vice-Consul. The office was closed. The Vice-Consul leaves daily at four o’clock. It was then twenty minutes past five. I ascertained that he resided in a village about five miles from Brussels. I took a cab and drove there. Again I made my statement. I appealed to him to take steps that night to protect the girl. He said I ought to have applied to the British Minister. I remarked that I had done so. He then said that the matter was more in the department of Thos. E. Jeffs, the Pro-Consul, than in his own, and to him he referred me. I drove to the residence of the Pro-Consul, who said he would communicate with the proper authorities. Subsequently he stated that he would see the girl himself. I appealed to him also to have her removed at once from the house in which she then was, to some place of safety, and I said that no investigation into her statements could be satisfactory while she remained in that house. He answered that he had no power to have her removed.
In communicating these facts to The Christian newspaper immediately on my return to England,1 I said — ‘ It is possible that the `proper authorities’ may report that I have been deceived, and that the girl’s story was a pure fabrication designed to excite my sympathy. Such a report may satisfy the persons who make it, and the other persons who wish the matter to be hushed up. But the British public will ask, who has the greater interest in deceiving me, a young woman who has nothing to gain by falsehood, or Belgian officials who naturally desire to conceal dishonourable facts? In a case of this kind, a short time since, the police department which regulates houses licensed for immorality, was set to investigate a charge against itself, thus presenting the extraordinary spectacle of the same department being at once the culprit and the judge!”
The result was as I feared. Although I have received no communication from either the Belgian or British authorities in Brussels on the subject, I have learned privately that instead of complying with my request and taking a course calculated to elicit the truth about the detention of the young woman; three Belgian functionaries, including their own interpreter, and wholly unaccompanied by any representative of the British Embassy, went to the house where the young woman was detained, and conducted what I cannot but term a sham investigation. I have in my hands their own account of what took place. They did not tell her they had come to afford her an opportunity of escape. She was brought into their presence by the brothel-keeper, and these men, strangers to her, except perhaps the police official, whom she had no reason to regard as her friend, commenced to put a series of cold official questions, more adapted to lead her to think that they wished to incriminate rather than to release her. It is not surprising that she replied to these foreign functionaries in a way that seemed likely to preserve her from the unknown horrors of another fate. This one-sided investigation ; this examination of a cowed and terrified girl in the house from which she wished but feared to attempt to escape; this enquiry without the presence of one impartial witness; this judicial farce was afterwards quoted by the Procureur du Roi in the Fournal de Bruxelles as a conclusive refutation of my statement that the young woman was detained in a life of infamy against her will.
When I saw this young woman in Brussels her whole frame trembled with excitement, and she was overcome with emotion at the prospect of escape. These things cannot be feigned with success. No subsequent investigation can explain them away. The fact remains, that she wished to escape at that moment, but was deterred from doing so chiefly by fear.
The same day I entered several other licensed houses of prostitution, and saw other English girls who were either anxious er willing to escape, but who were intimidated from doing so.
For more than two months my friends had been making fruitless endeavours to ascertain the fate of the second young woman mentioned in my letter to the London daily press, who had disappeared, and concerning whom no satisfactory explanation could be obtained. The Procureur du Roi told one tale ; the principal officer of the Police des Meurs told another; and the Juge d’Instruction told a third, each contradicting the other. It was evident that the chief judicial and police officials in Brussels could not or would not disclose the real truth. In the course of the enquiries made by Pastor Leonard Anet, Dr. Alexis Splingard and others, they found an English girl, seemingly much under age, about whom their suspicions were excited, and whom they wished me to see, confined in the hospital of St. Pierre, to which the inmates of licensed houses of prostitution are sent when infected with disease.
Having managed to procure an introduction from an eminent doctor, I went to that hospital, accompanied by the wife of Pastor Anet, immediately before leaving Brussels. We saw this English girl, who was then nineteen years of age, but who appeared much younger.2 She told us that she was decoyed to Brussels in the expectation of marriage ; that she was immediately immured in a licensed house of prostitution ; that although she was not, nor had been suffering from disease, she had been kept in that hospital for four months, where she had to associate with the most debased characters ; and that on leaving the hospital she would have to undergo 15 days’ imprisonment because she had been registered on the rolls of licensed prostitution in a false name. As the girl, in her modest, earnest, natural manner, told us these and other particulars, and promised to disclose all when she could do so safely in England, if she should ever reach England again, I became impressed with the thought that she was being kept in that place because she knew too much for it to be safe to let her out, and in order to prevent her becoming a witness against the infamous slave trade of which she was a victim. I left her my card and Pastor Anet’s address, and asked her to write to one of us directly she might know when she would be transferred from the hospital to prison. As I walked away, the impression of my interview deepened. I feared that some plan would be resorted to, to cause her to disappear. My fears subsequently proved to be not unfounded. Yet I feared more, on her account, any attempt to intercede on her behalf with the Brussels authorities. My friends were therefore entreated to keep up communication with her as far as possible ; and thus leaving the case I returned to London.3
Three weeks after my return, I received a letter from this poor girl, a copy of which I append in its entirety, that I may not seem by mere quotation to be suppressing anything.
“Salle 29, Lit 5. Hospital St. Pierre, Brussels.
“Mr. Dyer.
“I must apologise for my rudeness in not writing and thanking you for the book you kindly sent me, but I was in hope of being in England ’ere this.
“A few days since, Mr. Splingard, who has been very kind, sent me The Christian, where I read the account of your visit here to Brussels, and sympathise with the ill success you met with. In words I cannot express the gratification it gives me to think that friends headed by yourself are striving to have this traffic stopped. I cannot wonder that the majority of the British public scarcely credits that such a thing as this horrible traffic exists, but through my own bitter experience and the history I have heard from others, that it is alas only too true; and if it is God’s will for me to arrive safely in England, and you honour me with your aid, I will take steps to place my story and other facts, which I can prove, before the public.
“When I left London six months ago I was as innocent as a child, but it was soon taken from me, and through compulsion was obliged to take a part in deceit and other things worse. No doubt when I return to England, those that used to respect me, will scorn and brand me as a dishonourable fallen woman, but by God’s help I will prove to them that I have been sinned against, not sinned. I cannot express my feelings on this slavery. It cannot be given any other name. In my idea, it is the cruelest thing that ever existed, that innocent girls should be brought over here under false pretences, by men that get their living by it, and sold to the highest bidder of the keepers of the houses ; and once free and able to act, I will leave nothing undone to rescue the girls that are unfortunately placed in these dens, and have come under my notice while here in the hospital.
“No doubt you wonder at my long stay here in the hospital. It is far from my fault. The chief doctor came here to-day, and has promised that I shall leave next Saturday, without fail4 It is with horror that I am looking forward to going to such a dreadful place as prison for 15 days when I leave here, but will strive to bear it with fortitude, hoping such a disgrace will never happen to me again.
“On my arrival home I will immediately write to you, which I hope will be as soon as I expect. With many thanks for your kind interest in others and myself, believe me,
“Yours respectfully,”
* * * * * (Signature).
Exactly a fortnight after she wrote the foregoing letter, Dr. Alexis Splingard received a note from her, saying, that on leaving prison she should go to France, and that, therefore, his interest in her would cease. She was now dismissed from the hospital and sent to fulfil her term of imprisonment. In the fortnight between the two letters, what had taken place? Finding that she would not return to a den of prostitution through coaxing, nor listen to the promise of the mistress of the house of infamy to which she was first taken, that if she would come back again, she (the mistress) would “make it all right with the police,” nor sign a paper at the dictation of this woman, of the contents of which she was ignorant, a plot was hatched to drive her to recklessness and despair.
A bitter letter was forged and sent to her, purporting to come from her sisters in England, formally casting her off as a disgrace to the family, and telling her that “where she had made her bed, there she must lie.” At this time one of the other inmates of the hospital, who could speak a little English, pretended to have a great affection for her, sympathised with her in her broken-hearted condition at being cast off by her family, and finally persuaded her to go with her to France. The pretended friend promised to obtain the money for the journey from one of her friends, the keeper of a certain Bureau de Placement. These Bureaux are for the most part agencies to supply houses of prostitution with victims (for illustrations see page 29). If the plot to induce this English girl to go to France had succeeded, there can be no doubt that she would soon have been where she would have been unable to tell tales.
On the news of the girl’s intention to go to France instead of returning to England, reaching me, I was confident that this intention was the result of some foul plan laid for her destruction. The committee which had been formed in London several months previously for dealing with this slave traffic, and with whom I had all along been working, was immediately summoned. As the result, the mother of the girl (the father being dead) executed a document giving Pastor Anet power under the Belgian law to claim possession of her daughter on her behalf ; and one of the girl’s elder sisters, accompanied by Mrs. Mary Steward of Ongar, started for Brussels to bring her home on the expiration of her imprisonment. These two angels of mercy — for such they must have seemed to the poor deceived and imprisoned girl — on Brussels, contrived with difficulty to gain admission to the prison. The interview between the sisters is thus described by Mrs. Steward in a letter written the same day — ‘ We went to an iron grate, and after long waiting the written permit was given. The prison door was opened, and we were ushered into a small box with a wire grating. Very soon poor * * * * * entered another box at the other side of the wire grating. I was startled at the vacant look on the poor girl’s face. A very little more suffering and her mind would certainly give way. When she saw her sister, she broke out into wild cries, and for some time she could not compose herself. At last Mrs. Clark told her that she must be quiet, or she would be obliged to go away. I left the box, thinking her sister would manage her best alone, but I heard every word that passed. It was most affecting. `I have come to take you away, to take you home.’ They won’t let me go; they won’t let you have me.’ `Yes, dear, they will.’ `No, no; I know they won’t.’ We soothed her as best we could, but she was evidently in mortal fear; and she kept passing her hand to her head, and saying she had much pain there.”
The following morning she was met at the prison gates by her sister and other friends, and conveyed across the Belgian frontier toward England by the next train. She could not feel really free while she remained on Belgian soil. The remainder of the journey was made less quickly to give the released captive opportunity to rest. When I met her on her arrival in London, I realised the truth of Mrs. Steward’s statement that “A very little more suffering, and her mind would certainly give way.”
When this victim, at what was called her trial, for being on the register of prostitution in a false name, tried to explain through the interpreter how she had been betrayed and deceived, the person occupying the seat of Judge, spoke up in English and stopped her with the coarse remark that she need not come there to tell a parcel of lies, for no one would believe her. The British Pro-Consul wrote to the girl’s sister shortly after this pretended trial, and said that if it had not been for the false statements made in English newspapers (alluding to my letter to The Daily News, Standard, and other journals) the girl would probably not have been sentenced to imprisonment. The Belgian authorities, annoyed at the unpleasant facts I had revealed, caused the forms of law to be prostituted, and an innocent English girl to be condemned to imprisonment, to vindicate the purity of their administration of regulated debauchery, while there were at that moment other minor English girls in their licensed hells, who had been placed there through the connivance or carelessness of those same authorities. The real offenders against the law assume the rôle of prosecutors. Their victim is a comparative child, a foreigner, a stranger amongst them, ignorant not only of the law, but of the language of their country. Is it possible for official hypocrisy, meanness, and cowardice to go further?
What is the story of this girl ? She was the daughter of a commercial traveller in a lucrative position, and was brought up in comparative luxury, but on the death of her father, when she was sixteen and a half years old, the home was broken up, and shortly afterwards she came to London and entered domestic service. She held successively two situations where she bore an excellent character, and was waiting a few days to enter a third, when one day early in last autumn (1879) she met a man in Tottenham Court Road, who had spoken to her in a casual way on a previous occasion when she was drying her waterproof at the fire in the waiting-room at Tulse Hill Railway Station. This man politely accosted her, and invited her to take a glass of wine, to which in an impulsive moment she innocently and foolishly assented. It must be remembered that she was totally ignorant of the social evils which exist in society, and had never been warned and knew absolutely nothing of the nature of the traps which are so often laid for unsuspecting girls. The man, who went by the name of Sullie, was affable, and entered into a general conversation, during which the girl told him that she was at present out of a situation. He asked her if she would like to go to Paris. She answered that that would depend upon circumstances. Her story may be continued at this point in her own words. She says5 — “He said no more about that [going to Paris], but said he had an appointment with a gentleman close by, who would not detain him many minutes, would I go with him and accompany him for a stroll afterwards. I consented and went. The French gentleman who met us appeared to be very stylish, and to have plenty of money; to me he was very fascinating and courteous, and insisted upon my going with them into a café, where they gave me different intoxicating liquors till I scarcely remember what I said. My first acquaintance translated the compliments of the second. He told me after a time that his friend had taken a great fancy to me; that he would like to take me to Paris, and that if after seeing his grand house, carriages, &c., I would like to be his wife, he would marry me. If I did not like it I could come back. Not having my right senses through the drink they had given me, I consented to think about it, and as it was getting late, went home to the house of my first acquaintance, whose wife gave me a lodging for the night. The next morning before breakfast, my host took me to meet his friend, giving me a glass of gin as a preparation. I was introduced to other friends of these conspirators, and several times during the day made feeble efforts to escape them, but as I was plied at intervals with coffee and brandy, claret and brandy, &c., my will was weak, and I was bewildered into going just where I was taken. In the evening I found myself one of a party under the care of the man whom I was to marry, en route for the Continent. Stupid with drink, I slept a great part of the journey. When I was on the boat I entered into conversation with one of my fellow travellers, and learned that our destination was Brussels, and not Paris. I then began to suspect that some evil was in store for me, but knowing absolutely nothing of what I was afterwards to learn by dreadful experience, and, being told I should be sent back if I did not like it, I made no vigorous attempt to escape.”
On her arrival at Brussels she was taken to the licensed house of prostitution kept by the foreigner who had brought her over from London, her supposed lover, and sent straight to bed, without learning the character of the house. The next morning about ten o’clock this man and a woman in his employ, took her with two other girls in a cab to a place which they said was the Custom House, but which was the Dispensary, or office for the registration of prostitutes. She was led to believe that she was taken there simply to go through certain formalities required of all foreigners entering into Belgium. She says6 — `I was told to say that I was 21 years of age, and that my name was Ellen Cordon, for that, if it were known, I could be heavily punished for coming to the country before I was 21.’ None of the officials at this place spoke English, the woman who accompanied us acted as interpreter, and when called upon to answer questions, I was quite at her mercy. I found the officials had in their hands a certificate of birth of Ellen Cordon, with which I certainly did not supply them. I had not only to say, but to write the false name; the woman said I should be sent to prison if I did not sign it, and that perhaps `we should all be hung.’ It was not explained to me that I was thus registering myself as a common prostitute, and signing away my liberty.” This is an instructive comment on the declaration of Lenaers, Chief of the Brussels Police, that “in cases of strangers the interrogatory is always in their own language, and never in the presence of the keeper of the place into which the girl asks to be received.”
After she had signed, to her horror she was sent into another room and subjected to medical violation by the official doctor. She was then taken back to the licensed house of prostitution. In a Declaration which she has made, which has been forwarded to Earl Granville, and which she attended before the chief magistrate of the City of London to swear as an affidavit, but was informed she could not do so except in the course of legal proceedings, because it incriminated other persons, she says —
“The doctor who regularly visited this house and examined me and the other girls was the same as he who examined me at the dispensary, but owing to my physical defect before mentioned in Paragraph 7, he did not and could not examine me with the instrument as he did the others; and although he knew and had said that I was a virgin, and knew also that I was incapable of sexual intercourse, the cruel villain let me remain in this den of infamy to be subject to treatment worse than that of a slave, for whilst here, not only was all liberty taken from me, but I was the helpless victim of every outrage and brutality that heartless profligates, in their unrestrained and unnatural lust, chose to inflict upon me. Violence was several times used towards me by those who visited the place, in their endeavours to effect their purposes ; and one ruffian, who bore a title, treated me so brutally, I thought I should have died under it. At another time they made me drunk in order that a rich customer might be the better able to gratify his passions; but in both these, as in all other attempts, the only result was to inflict upon me indescribable torture both of body and mind.
“These atrocities caused an abscess, and nearly drove me mad ; and about the 5th November the medical man before mentioned sent me to the hospital which is provided by the municipality for the treatment of persons afflicted with venereal diseases. Two days after my admission to this hospital I was sent for by the police authorities for having given a false name, and whilst in their custody they attempted to examine my person with an instrument which put me to terrible pain, and seemed to chill my blood ; and one result of it was that * * * * * * * [this cannot be published], and I was seriously ill in consequence. After this examination I was taken back again to the hospital by the police.
“Although I had not, when I was sent to the hospital, and never have had any venereal disease, I was detained there for six months, and during the first half of that time I was treated for the illness caused by the cruel examinations and yet more cruel lust of which I had been the victim. When I began to recover from that illness fresh horrors were in store for me, and they commenced to operate upon me for the purpose of making me capable of prostitution. They did not even give me chloroform, but the students held my hands and feet, whilst the operator seemed to tear and cut away my living flesh, inflicting upon me agonies I can never describe, besides the intolerable shame. This was repeated at intervals about seven times, and during the operations my screams and appeals to my tormentors for mercy were heard, as the other patients told me, over the whole building, and the other girls who were there used to cry at the sight of my sufferings. The principal, Dr. ——— seemed to hate me, and take a pleasure in prolonging my torments. He would delay the operation, and stop to explain to the surrounding students what was being done, and took no heed of my cries for mercy.
“When I had been in the hospital some time, I begged my tormentor to take pity on me and let me go, as he did other girls whom he could not cure, although they had been there a much shorter time than I had ; but he would not, and I believe if I had not soon escaped from his hands, he would have tortured me to death or madness ; but fortunately I was again sent for by the police, on the charge before mentioned, of having given a false name, and I was committed to prison for two weeks.”
This is the sort of thing which has been going on unrevealed, under cover of the system of regulated debauchery. The system itself is so repellant that good people do not care to enquire into it. It is left to revolve amidst its own rottenness. It is impossible for it to be administered without corrupting the officials engaged in its execution. By a natural law, these officials descend to the level of their work — to the level of the profligates for the gratification of whose passions they provide, under the hypocritical pleas of public health and public order, — and thus atrocities become possible such as ordinary English men and women would never dream of.
Unhappily, however, the British public are easily misled by official assurances. When I first revealed in the London daily newspapers, the existence of the infamous traffic in our own flesh and blood, which has called forth this pamphlet, I received communications from parents whose daughters were missing. One instance I vividly recollect. A fine looking man, apparently a person of good position and culture, called upon me to ask if I would be willing to help in finding his absent daughter, whom, from information he had been able to obtain, he suspected had been decoyed abroad. He seemed much broken down, and spoke with hesitation, evidently under the influence of deep feeling. I said that if he would bring me full particulars, I would do my best. He thanked me with earnestness, and promised to call with the written facts the next morning. The next morning a letter appeared in the London daily newspapers from the British Pro-Consul at Brussels, the closing words of which were — “From the experience I have gained in thoroughly investigating these and other similar cases, I can confidently assure the parents of all really `virtuous girls,’ that there is no fear whatever of finding their children in the same position as the girls referred to in Mr. Dyer’s letter.”
It is not altogether surprising that after this statement, the gentleman I have spoken of, never came, and that I had no more enquiries from parents concerning their missing daughters. I am sorry for the sake of the sorrowing parents who might otherwise have found their lost ones, that such a letter appeared; I am sorry for the sake of the poor girls who may in the meantime have died in human hells, who might otherwise have been rescued and restored ; I am sorry for the sake of the Pro-Consul, who I think must be himself sorry, for of all the officials on whom I called in Brussels, he was the one who bore the most respectable reputation. By this time he has probably learnt how grossly he has been deceived, and that it is not always those who trust to the reports of persons who administer a system who are the best informed. Much against the will of his immediate superior in office, he has occupied himself in sending a few English girls back to their native land, one seemingly being allowed to get into his hands now and again as a kind of sop to stop enquiry, but nothing effective has been done to strike at the root of the diabolical traffic. Had he been more energetic, his official superiors might have caused his services to be dispensed with. Of course such a possibility will be denied, and the public, who know nothing of what takes place behind the scenes, will be expected to believe the disclaimer. Stories of other cases, besides those already given, not only of English, but of Scotch and Irish girls who have been decoyed into slavery abroad, have come to my knowledge, which neither I nor the London committee have yet been able to investigate, but which bear upon their faces the appearance of truth. I select one to illustrate how girls are deceived, entrapped, and enslaved through the agency of Continental Bureaux de Placement or Registry Offices for Servants. My evidence against these places, however, does not at all rest upon this one case. Their business is well understood by those who have the power to suppress them. But houses of debauchery being authorised and licensed by the authorities, it is necessary to keep them supplied with inmates, and Bureaux de Placement are so many doors through which victims enter, often unsuspectingly, into a life of slavery to licensed lust. The young woman in question was born in Ireland, where she lived till the age of 17. At that time she held a situation as lady’s-maid. At the request of her mistress she went abroad with her, and on the return of this lady, the girl obtained a similar situation in Brussels. But in a few months she left her place, and went to a town in France, where one of her friends was in service, and where she hoped also to obtain employment; in this she failed, and returning to Brussels, applied to a Registry Office keeper to obtain a situation for her. In her friendless condition, this fellow contrived to seduce her, and then forwarded her to a licensed house of prostitution in Antwerp. A friend of mine residing abroad, a gentleman in an influential position, but whose name I am not permitted to mention,7 has furnished me with the particulars of several very painful cases where girls of other nationalities than our own went in a bona fide way to Bureaux de Placement to obtain employment; were told that excellent situations had been found for them; and were sent direct to licensed brothels, where they were plied with intoxicants, and when they awoke their virginity had been taken from them. Many of such victims are mere children.8
It is beyond doubt that a large and well organized traffic exists in supplying licensed houses of debauchery on the Continent of Europe with English girls, young, good-looking, and whenever possible, innocent and virtuous, for these can be sold for the most money. All manner of devices and stratagems are resorted to, the most frequent being proposals of marriage with persons of wealth, or offers of lucrative situations. It may be said that girls are silly to listen to such offers. No doubt they are. But girls in the best ordered families are not very wise at the age of seventeen ; and it must be remembered that the victims of this infamous traffic are mostly in unsheltered positions, away from home, and often times orphans. Because a British girl, perhaps when out of work, and therefore ready to catch at almost any straw that promises an honest livelihood, is silly enough to listen to the plausible proposals of a well-dressed fiend in human shape, it is no reason why the debased inhabitants of a foreign country should be allowed to keep her in a condition of bestial slavery. I will go further. Even in cases where a girl has fallen before she is taken abroad, and enters with full knowledge into a licensed house of prostitution (a case which I never knew, and which I believe hardly ever occurs), she is still a British subject, and, as such, has a right to be protected from a state of bondage, from which fraud, corruption, and violence conspire to prevent her escape.9
No so-called precautionary measures on the part of the administrators of licensed prostitution will prevent innocent British girls being sold into slavery, and kept there. Precautionary measures may look satisfactory on paper (notice as an illustration the declaration of Lenaers already alluded to), but there is no such measure that the human mind can conceive, that can provide against the corruption which is the inevitable concomitant of the system of legalized debauchery, and which is as inseparably associated with it as the association of cause and effect. The British public will probably hear a great deal from Brussels, not only of precautions to prevent girls entering houses of prostitution against their will, but also of the facilities(!) which the authorities there afford to girls to leave such houses. We have seen how those facilities work. But in estimating the value of any theoretic facilities that it may yet be proposed to enact, let it be borne in mind that the first object of a keeper of a house on the arrival of a girl is to intoxicate her, and with drugged liquor if other will not suffice. She is then violated. On awaking, or on recovering her senses, the first impulse of a girl in that position is to give herself over to despair, to curse herself for her folly, and to wish to hide herself and the knowledge of her shame from her friends. The keeper of the house then takes care to ply her again with drink, and her will is weakened by her being kept in a perpetual state of semi-intoxication. The inmates of these houses are intoxicated daily. This is not a matter of choice, but a necessity of their condition. They are compelled to drink. They are compelled to drink and smoke at the expense of the customers, partly because these things add to the profits of the slave-owners. This daily intoxication is the great obstacle to any pre-arranged plans for their escape, because in such a state secrecy can not be relied upon, nor can their friends be certain of finding them sober. What mockery, then, to talk of providing facilities for the betrayed inmates to leave, when their wills grow weaker day by day, not only through the influence of the intoxicants they are made to swallow, but through the enervating effect of turning night into day, and of the sensualism in which they are forced to participate. Indeed it often happens that in six months from entering into such a house, every vestige of womanhood is gone, and the pure and lovely girl of six months before, becomes literally a wild beast. Thus it is, that sometimes when girls, through the persistent efforts of their friends, have been released, after a captivity of only a few weeks, it is found that every trace of modesty is obliterated. The system of licensed prostitution has transformed a virtuous maiden into an animal, who returns like a dog to its vomit, although not to the confinement and horrors of a licensed hell.
What I call upon my countrymen and countrywomen to demand and secure through the action of our Government, is not any additional precaution or facility, but prohibition. Nothing short of a total prohibition of the introduction of female British subjects to licensed houses of debauchery in Belgium and elsewhere, will prevent innocent British girls and children from being decoyed and sold into the cruelest, most indecent, most revolting slavery that the world has ever known. We cannot prevent other so-called civilized Governments from establishing or permitting regulations which hold their own subjects in bondage, but foreign States can justly be asked to exclude British girls from such execrable servitude. As for Belgium, where the system of regulated debauchery has attained to a degree of boasted perfection; where its agents have reached a position of bold and shameless infamy and cowardice hitherto unparalleled — the nation that permits a system capable of such atrocities as I have described, or rather as the victim of them has described, as having happened in Brussels, notwithstanding that it celebrates its independence, is a nation of slaves.10
It is also necessary that our own Legislature should make the moral crime of decoying or taking girls abroad for purposes of prostitution a heavy legal offence.
In some countries the letter of the law imposes a severe penalty on anyone, who, for pecuniary gain, shall connive at the prostitution of a girl under the age of 21 years. The enactment of a law of this kind in Great Britain would equally make it possible to reach the agents in this infamous slave traffic. At present our law appears to be unable to touch these wretches, unless the victims be under the age of 13. For purposes of prostitution a child of 13 years in this country has attained her majority, and her betrayer may escape unpunished, although for every other purpose she is held to be a minor.
These slave traders in British girls have been for years carrying on their business under the eyes and with the knowledge of the Metropolitan detective police. They know their names, their haunts, and their places of abode. Why then, has the matter not been pressed on the attention of the Government before? It may be true that the head of the Metropolitan detective force and other high officials wish the Continental system of regulated debauchery to be introduced into Great Britain, the beginning of which we already have, in a few towns, in the mis-named Contagious Diseases Acts (women), but is it possible that the people of this kingdom will allow the private wishes of police and other functionaries, however high placed, to override the interests of justice, mercy and liberty, as it regards large numbers of their unsuspecting and innocent fellow-subjects?
Let the old anti-slavery spirit speak out.
Footnotes
- The same facts were sent to the London daily newspapers at the same time, but the announcement that Parliament would be dissolved having just been made, I suppose the pressure on their space caused my letter to be excluded. Several provincial newspapers, however, spoke out warmly on the matter, and The Marquis Townshend published the whole story in his weekly periodical, Social Notes. ↩︎
- She was called into the office of the hospital to see us. The only visitors the patients are allowed to see in their wards are the brothel-keepers and the police. Should a clergyman wish to speak to a patient, which is a rare occurrence, he must do so in the office in the presence of the clerks. ↩︎
- The character of the company which this girl was compelled to associate with in the hospital, may be gathered from a remark made to Dr. Alexis Splingard by a person employed there, that ‘ any girl whatever in my idea would turn to be vicious, after only a month of association with the Prostitutes who are all together in the same room.” ↩︎
- She was not allowed to leave then. A similar promise was made week after week by this doctor, but she was detained until she yielded to persuasions not to return to England. (See the subsequent narrative.) ↩︎
- From a personal narrative published in No. 15 of The Sentinel, the monthly journal of the Association for the Improvement of Public Morals ↩︎
- Same narrative as before quoted. ↩︎
- He, however, desires me to say that he will corroborate my statements should occasion require it. ↩︎
- One French speaking girl I saw in a licensed house of prostitution in Brussels was a very little thing, apparently not more than 12 or 13 years of age. A child aged 12 years and nine months, whose father I have seen, was recently abducted to Paris by a foreigner resident in England, but by a series of fortuitous circumstances, she managed to escape. Her abductor was caught, tried at the Old Bailey, and sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment. It is not improbable that this child also was destined for a licensed house of prostitution. Mrs. Josephine E. Butler, in writing of the presence of little children in such dens of infamy says, “The presence of these children is unknown to the ordinary visitors of the house. The secret is known to none except to the wealthy debauchés who can pay large sums of money for the sacrifice of these innocents to their fastidious and shameful lusts. . . . . Picture to yourselves, fathers and mothers, what that state of degradation must be to which the men of a country have sunk who can require and take a vile advantage of the forcible subjection by money-grasping traders of terrified little girls to the service of the brutal lusts of male animals, men sunk in vice, diseased, cynical, worn out, old enough often to be these children’s fathers, or grandfathers. To what a state of hideous carnality, devoid of all human sensibility or generosity, must these men have arrived who can devour the flesh of these tender lambs, slain at the shambles for this end! who desire merely a thing to debauch, — no longer a human being, but a thing in the shape of a woman, out of which all feeling, all hope, all intelligence, have been stamped by cruelty and violence! These children sometimes cry and weep and call upon their mothers, and it is only when stupified or maddened by successive glasses of champagne that they cease to struggle.”
Such is the debasing influence of the system of legalized debauchery that, in Italy, a child under the age of twelve years has been known to be licensed to practise prostitution ( vide the newspaper Lega della Democrasia of Rome, of 16th of 6th month, 1880). ↩︎ - When a fallen girl is persuaded to leave England for a licensed house abroad, she is invariably deluded by a glowing description of the luxuries of the new life, and told that she can return at any moment when desirous of doing so. ↩︎
- Already the fiercest passions are aroused against the friends of outraged maidenhood. Dr. Alexis Splingard writes that the slave-owners have been incited to attack him, History repeats itself. In the height of the Abolitionist movement in America, William Lloyd Garrison was nearly torn to pieces by a mob of ” gentlemen of property and standing,” some of whom, no doubt, had invested as much money in their negro slaves as the keepers of licensed houses of debauchery in Brussels have invested in English girls. It will be a black day for Belgium if any attempt be made to treat this new champion of freedom with similar violence. ↩︎
