GIRLS IN A TRAP

Hokitika Guardian, 9 April 1932, Page 6

GIRLS IN A TRAP

FIGHT WITH WHITE SLAVERS.

CONSTANT BATTLE OF WITS.

A great fight, all unseen by the general* public, is being waged in Liverpool to make travel safe for girls and to stive them from the white slave agent tind other social pests.

The main problem is presented by the large and increasing numftß of Irisn colleens who desert their quiet home towns and villages to seek careers and fortunes in England by way of Juverpool. Hit. has reached such dimensions that it is causing alarm to church leaders of denominations, philantropic organisations, ..and vigilance societies. That it is formidable may he gathered from the fact that out of 532 women and children who were assisted by officials of the Liverpool Society for the Prevention of International Traffic in Women and Children last year no fewer than 447 were Irish.

. .“Decoys” spare neither pains nor ex■peii.se to entrap their unwary victims. Here is an example. It is one of many recorded by the society just mentioned, whose officials maintain sleepless watch throughout the port and the city. Among the steerage passengers on an inward Irish boat one of the., society workers found a pretty 16-jyeai'-old colleen carrying a : small paper bag, which contained gll her possessions. She fevcaled -that’ --she had never >'been to England before and-that she was going, 0- friends Who .1 ived in a-: Liverpool .suburb?"- ; ' , they-'. Were... talking they were joinejfiy a well-dressed woman passenger, who declared; she knew the gi'd i and would see her to her destination, | When they disembarked the official noticed that the woman took the girl to a bus'bound for a railway terminus from which the girl’s destination could not he reached, .* | The official hoarded the bus, and during the temporary absence of the woman at the station learned from the girl tliat she had met the woman on the ship for the first time, and being a i stranger to Liverpool had accepted her help. | When the suspicious official said she personally would see the girl to her destination and invited - the woman to I accompany them, the latter .qluietly j slipped away without a word of . coin- • | ment. - j \ “It’s a battle of wits,” an official if j the society confessed. “Wie white j slave agents and those whose special j joy in life seems to he to defile the itij nocent are cunning beyond belief. \. “But the society is a livc to their tricks, and with patience and vigilance

we hope to make Liverpool a danger spot for these social pests.”