in which these girls live continually, makes them reckless of
consequences, and large numbers commit suicide who are never heard of.
A West End policeman assured us that the number of prostitute-suicides
was terribly in advance of anything guessed at by the public.

DEPTHS TO WHICH THEY SINK.--There is Scarcely a lower class of girls
to be found than the girls of Woolwich "Dusthole"--where one of our
Rescue Slum Homes is established. The women living and following their
dreadful business in this neighbourhood are so degraded that even
abandoned men will refuse to accompany them home. Soldiers are
forbidden to enter the place, or to go down the street, on pain of
twenty-five days' imprisonment; pickets are stationed at either end to
prevent this. The streets are much cleaner than many of the rooms we
have seen.

One public house there is shut up three or four times in a day
sometimes for fear of losing the licence through the terrible brawls
which take place within. A policeman never goes down this street alone
at night--one having died not long ago from injuries received there
--but our two lasses go unharmed and loved at all hours, spending
every other night always upon the streets.

The girls sink to the "Dusthole" after coming down several grades.
There is but one on record who came there with beautiful clothes, and
this poor girl, when last seen by the officers, was a pauper in the
workhouse infirmary in a wretched condition. The lowest class of all
is the girls who stand at the pier-head--these sell themselves
literally for a bare crust of bread and sleep in the streets. Filth
and vermin abound to an extent to which no one who has not seen it can
have any idea. The "Dusthole" is only one, alas of many similar