CRUEL TREATMENT.--The devotion of these women to their bullies is as remarkable as the brutality of their bullies is abominable.Probably the primary cause of the fall of numberless girls of the lower class,is their great aspiration to the dignity of wifehood;--they are never "somebody"until they are married,and will link themselves to any creature,no matter how debased,in the hope of being ultimately married by him.This consideration,in addition to their helpless condition when once character has gone,makes them suffer cruelties which they would never otherwise endure from the men with whom large numbers of them live.
One case in illustration of this is that of a girl who was once a respectable servant,the daughter of a police sergeant.She was ruined,and shame led her to leave home.At length she drifted to Woolwich,where she came across a man who persuaded her to live with him,and for a considerable length of time she kept him,although his conduct to her was brutal in the extreme.
The girl living in the next room to her has frequently heard him knock her head against the wall,and pound it,when he was out of temper,through her gains of prostitution being less than usual.He lavished upon her every sort of cruelty and abuse,and at length she grew so wretched,and was reduced to so dreadful a plight,that she ceased to attract.At this he became furious,and pawned all her clothing but one thin garment of rags.The week before her first confinement he kicked her black and blue from neck to knees,and she was carried to the police station in a pool of blood,but;she was so loyal to the wretch that she refused to appear against him.
She was going to drown herself in desperation,when our Rescue Officers spoke to her,wrapped their own shawl around her shivering shoulders,took her home with them,and cared for her.The baby was born dead--a tiny,shapeless mass.This state of things is all too common.