MELBOURNE IMMORALITY.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1135, 31 August 1882, Page 2

MELBOURNE IMMORALITY.

(The “Age.") Without any wish to exaggerate the facts, it may be declared that to the lax supervision of the police is mainly due the immense number of abandoned women to be found In Melbourne. In the city alone, it is stated that they number tome thousands, and there is not a single suburb, except Williamstown and Footscray, free from their pestilential presence. Many of them maintain establishments superbly furnished, well known to, and it is alleged, patronised by the officers and detectives of police. There exists a regular system amongst the the less reputable furniture dealers of fitting up cottages and letting them at exorbitant rents. One house of this description is said to be fitted up at an enormous cost by a well-known trader, where may be found a regular seraglio of young girls, whose presence is occasionally conspicuous in the stalls at the theatres. There are several houses of this kind—some of them the property of the occupants, and used as places of assignation for the more wealthy orders of the population. There is not a lane or by-way in the city that is clear of houses of doubtful reputation, and in the suburbs of Richmond, Collingwood, Fitzroy, and Carlton the difficulty is to find a spot wholly free from such contaminating influences. Every street has its particular set of perambulatory nymphs—the better-dressed class affecting Collins-street East, the next patrolling Bourke-street; the more retired thoroughfares at night having each its own particular contingent. In Bourke-street alone and its immediate neighborhood there are about a dozen hotels, ostensibly respectable, maintained solely by the wages of prostitution. Some barmaids are women ot the town, and depend for their remuneration upon the liberality of those whom they lure and fleece as occasion serves. Not the least significant fuot is that many of those places liave borne the same reputation for the last seven years, and still flourish, a virtuous magistracy .notwithstanding. There are also houses of ac- loinmodation which do a roaring trade. The profits made by the latter, it would seem, liave led publicans to add this branch to thedr business. One witness has declared befor e the Police Commission that when engaged in watching one of those places he observed between 30and 46 couplet entering in tlie space of a few hours, clearly for immoral purposes. It was S roved beyond all doubt that the aysmi had been worked up to such a pitch that irrespective of drinks sold, the proprietor could make £2O for the mere rent of his rooms for a single evening. Every defence and consideration is shown to the women who serve to bring this trade. Some hotels keep open till 3 or 4 in the morning, merely for the purpose of enabling the women of the town to meet their associates, In certain places the orgies deposed to are such that they will not bear description or more than passing notice in a public newspaper, In connection with some of the theatres there are rooms set apart by the licensees for the convenience of loose women and their friends sufficient regard being paid to propriety in the furniture being strictly in accordance with the nature of a drinking bar.