Drunken Women of London.

Manawatu Standard, Volume X, Issue 1458, 18 September 1885, Page 4

Drunken Women of London.

Walk along Fleet-street, go slowly along'the Strand, or any one ot. the many streets, lanes, and alleys crossing these two great arteries at right angles, look into the beer or whiskey shops at any hour of the day or night and count the souls there. You will find more women than men — women with babies at the breast, young girls from sixteen up, old women witli bloated faces and every tender lineament of their sex bloted fi;om their countenances by the brutalizing agency of alcohol ; old women, ioo, scarcely able to stand from the combined effects of age and dissipation. It is a horrible spectacle, which I have never seen m any other part of the world. These poor female wretches huddled together outside the bar m rooms ten feet square perhaps inbibing tlie soft poison from morn till night, cheering each other mayhap by ribald talk and jests, neglecting all the duties of woman-hood for the sake of the loved dram or pint, and alter spending all their pennie3 or ha'pence as the case may be, reeling out into thebusy^ street with some muddled thonghl' of getting " home again " before husband, father, or brother returns.