| <The Saturday Review June 7, 1862>
| <The Haymarket>
| <pb n="644">
| On Saturday last, what is called an influential 
| deputation ~~ that is to say, a deputation that gets 
| reported in the newspapers ~~ waited on the Home 
| Secretary.  The subject-matter of their complaint was 
| the nightly gaieties of which the upper part of the 
| Haymarket and several neighbouring streets are the 
| scene.  It is indeed a striking sight ~~ one which no 
| foreigner who wishes to study our national morality 
| in all its aspects ought to overlook.  It is seen in all its 
| glory on a fine summer's night at one o'clock.  It is a 
| sort of hour of restitution in which Vice indemnifies 
| herself for the arrogant and domineering attitude 
| which Virtue maintains in other places and at other 
| times.  There are, indeed, few occasions in which 
| Vice does not maintain at least an equal claim to 
| notice in this, the most moral capital in the world.  
| But here she reigns without a rival.  The pavement is 
| occupied in force by crowds of men and women, who 
| saunter about in the blaze of gaslight which issues 
| from the aggregation of gin-palaces and oyster-shops 
| of which the street consists.  They enjoy themselves, 
| on the whole, after the manner of English people, 
| <hi rend="italic"> moult tristement, </hi> occasionally 
| dancing and shouting, but more generally simply 
| lounging.  A sharp quarrel here and there, not limited 
| to words, is the only outward evidence of the gin they 
| have been consuming.  Their conversation, it is 
| needless to say, is frank and candid, expressing 
| pointedly and unreservedly the subject-matter of their 
| meditations and the desires of their hearts.  There is 
| no room for any charitable self-delusion as to the 
| character of this assemblage of men and women, or 
| the nature of the <?> in whose worship they are 
| engaged.  Some intrusive respectability, too sleepy 
| and too anxious to get home to be eager for the 
| service either of Silenus or Cytherea, may perhaps 
| find his way into the street.  But unless he is anxious 
| for unsought caresses, under whose ambiguous 
| importunity either lust or larceny may lurk, he will 
| carefully avoid the footway and stick to the middle of 
| the street.  Sharp granite edges, or muddy pools, or 
| the danger of being run over by a cab, are light risks 
| compared to the certainty of being hustled, bonneted, 
| and probably robbed by the half tipsy, half-amorous 
| Sirens of the pavement.  By this last phrase we should 
| be sorry to contribute to the disappointment of any 
| lover of melody by implying that beautiful voices 
| would be among the snares employed here to entrap 
| him.  One of their most repulsive peculiarities is the 
| raven-like croak in which their endearments to the 
| passer-by are conveyed.  But we labour under heavy 
| verbal disabilities.  We have a difficulty in giving a 
| generic name to the women with the sight of whom 
| <reg orig="every one"> everyone </reg> who has to 
| walk through the greater streets after night-fall must 
| be as familiar as he is with the lamp-posts.  The 
| straightforward names that our fathers used have been 
| repudiated by the delicacy of our age.  In coarser 
| times words were employed to represent facts; but in 
| proportion as the facts become more numerous, more 
| notorious, and more obtrusive, the words which 
| represent them have become obsolete and shocking:  
| ~~
| <q> </q>
| Many circumlocutions have undoubtedly been 
| invented to describe, without falling into the 
| coarseness of St. Paul or even of Addison, the 
| highly-tinted Venuses who form so favourite a study of the 
| connoisseurs of the Haymarket.  Some call them <p> 
| "social evils;" </p> others, who are more 
| compassionate, call them <p> "unfortunate women;" 
| </p> others, who are more respectful still, are 
| satisfied to describe them as <p> "gay persons."  </p> 
| But, on the whole, the nicest, the softest, the most 
| poetical designation we have heard, is that which the 
| Penitentiaries have invented ~~ <q> </q>.  The time 
| will no doubt come when this, too, will be thought too 
| coarse and too direct; but for the present we shall 
| adopt it as decidedly the most delicate phrase that has 
| been devised.
| It is fair to the influential deputation to say that they 
| were not restrained from stating their case in all its 
| nudity by any fears of shocking the sensitive ears of 
| Sir George Grey.  The matter had assumed a practical 
| and prosaic form to them, which blunted the edge of 
| their prudery very perceptibly. The soiled doves were 
| becoming a formidable nuisance to the whole 
| neighbourhood.  Light sleepers could get no night's 
| rest for their incessant cooings.  Respectable women 
| could not pass the streets for fear of being pecked at 
| by them. Philanthropists who had taken the trouble to 
| visit all their haunts, in which the said philanthropists 
| must have cut a very amusing figure, stated to Sir 
| George Grey, for his information, that soiled doves 
| were to be frequently found in the ginshops of the 
| Haymarket, and that their presence in the streets acted 
| as a temptation to young men.  It is grievous to think 
| how much unwelcome affection these good men must 
| have exposed themselves to, in order to obtain this 
| knowledge, which probably did not shed any new 
| light over the Home Secretary's mind.  But there was 
| a far more serious complaint than this.  The soiled 
| doves, though charming as companions, are not 
| popular as neighbours; and rents, in consequence, are 
| falling rapidly in the neighbourhoods to which they 
| resort.  The modesty of the landlords has endured a 
| great deal; but when it comes to the falling of rents, 
| they must speak out.
| All these complaints were laid before the Home 
| Secretary, and very courteously received; and, to 
| quicken his zeal, he was assured that the Haymarket 
| had become one of the recognised sights of London, 
| where Frenchmen were accustomed to contemplate in 
| its practical workings that example of morality which 
| we so frequently commend to them for their imitation.  
| But he could give the deputation little comfort.  He 
| could hold out hopes to them that, by putting the law 
| more rigidly into execution, or sharpening its 
| provisions, it might be possible to drive them in 
| greater multitudes into the streets; and as the whole 
| object of the deputation was to drive them out of the 
| streets, the prospect held out was anything but 
| satisfactory. As far as this deputation went, therefore, 
| the problem of clearing our streets of these open-air 
| preachers of immorality, and allowing respectable 
| people to pass through them unmolested, is as far 
| from solution as ever it was.  It was not unknown 
| either to the Secretary of State or to those applying 
| for his assistance, that England is the only European 
| country in which it is not solved.  The Continental 
| practice was frequently referred to, but only to draw 
| from both sides the unanimous judgment that <p> 
| "the state of public opinion in this country" </p> will 
| not allow it to be adopted here.  It is obvious enough 
| that the police cannot clear the streets unless they are 
| allowed to remove the obstructions, and for that 
| purpose the police must have the means of 
| recognizing without error the obstructions they are to 
| remove.  In other words, they must know the <p> 
| "soiled doves" </p> by sight.  In Continental 
| countries, measures are taken to enable them to 
| possess this knowledge.  The dove-cote is duly 
| catalogued and registered.  The result is that in Paris, 
| or Berlin, or Vienna, such a scandal as the English 
| Haymarket is never to be seen.  There, the streets are 
| safe for peaceable citizens to pass through at any time.  
| Wherever the doves wish to play their trade it is not in 
| the great thoroughfares that they are allowed to do so.  
| The sin of great Continental cities, whatever its extent, 
| confines its pernicious effects to those who are 
| sharers in its guilt.  It is not allowed to make the chief 
| streets impassable for honest men and women.  But 
| English morality will not allow us to take the 
| precautions of which these salutary results are the 
| fruit.  We do not pretend to check the growth of this 
| vice.  If we did, our pretence would be ridiculously 
| futile.  Its branches are shooting up on every side in 
| ever-increasing abundance.  Its practice becomes 
| yearly more open and shameless with high and low.  
| In the Parks, at the Opera, everywhere except in 
| private drawing-rooms, it pushes unfascinating virtue 
| aside, and boldly asserts its power.  Almost every trial 
| that gives us a glimpse into the private history of our 
| time displays it in the command of boundless 
| resources, and in the enjoyment of unexampled 
| luxury.  There is very little doubt that, so long as the 
| English theory of marriage obtains, and the holy 
| union is avowedly treated as a commercial transaction 
| between two families struggling to better themselves, 
| so long the vice to which we have referred will 
| flourish and prevail.  In the face of such facts, patent 
| to every eye, those who lead public opinion among us 
| think to atone for the evil by ignoring its existence.  
| While the ministers to the kindred vice of 
| drunkenness are under rigid restraint, they think they 
| do good service to the cause of purity by assuming 
| that no such thing as impurity exists.  And, in order 
| that this fiction may be with greater decency upheld, 
| statesmen are content to allow our streets to be 
| disgraced by a shameful traffic, which is annoying 
| and disagreeable enough to men, but which no 
| woman can pass through with self-respect.
| The open and obvious evil, which must strike the eye 
| of all who come up the Haymarket late at night, is not 
| the only one that results from our sage attempt to 
| destroy facts by shutting our eyes to them.  The secret 
| workings of a far graver evil are
| <pb n="645">
| well known to medical men.  We can but barely 
| allude to the frightful social dangers which the 
| <hi rend="italic"> police sanitaire </hi> of the Continent 
| is intended to avert.  Those who wish to know in their 
| full extent the ravages to which we refer, will do well 
| to consult the Registrar-General's report.  It must 
| never be forgotten that scrofula, with its two kindred 
| forms of madness and consumption, is, in the opinion 
| of many scientific men, but an application of the 
| natural law indicated in the Second Commandment.  
| It is impossible to follow this subject up.  It will 
| suggest to <reg orig="every one"> everyone </reg> 
| thoughts which we dare not clothe in words.  But we 
| cannot exclude from our minds dangers and evils 
| which affect those yet unborn, or listen with patience 
| to the prudish platitudes which hinder our 
| Government from taking common-sense precautions 
| to arrest the progress of a plague.  The difficulty lies 
| wholly in the scruples of the religious world.  The 
| punctiliousness of the Government is entirely 
| assumed.  They have recently approved of an 
| ordinance, granting to the colony of Hong Kong all 
| the safeguards which are provided by Continental 
| legislation.  The only obstacles to a sensible policy 
| upon this subject at home are the religious ostriches 
| who think they have extirpated an evil by hiding their 
| heads and refusing to hear its name.