ANONYMA v. MISERRMA.

Southland Times, Volume I, Issue 14, 2 July 1864, Page 3

ANONYMA v. MISERRMA .

"■ I' The London Daily yTdegraph calls | attention to the "great sin' of great; cites," with especial reference i to~two. late, police, cases; referring to' girls of 15 ; y eai& of "agef who had been seduced by the vile, artifices, of ;menr — " Scarcely a day; ; passes 1 ; on ; which we have notto record some shameful outrage on a woman— in - f some : instances; -brutal, and coarse-^-in others masked, mhder,. cunning advertisements and/cyni-j cally vicious letters. That which it behoves. us : to' recollect is 'that: the" evil' does not cease with the first betrayal—that it grows i : and mcr^eases-- ; -that ; a/,/ ,whqle' : ; lite ', is degraded and warped. 'There is no occasion for what ' men of . the world;! call ' sentimentality' on this- subject. We do not seek to make a heroine of a harlot. Many there are, following. that horrible trade, who are callous to their , shame — who adopt the life from deliberate calculation — who are not ' ruined,', but who ruin. We have heard enough/ and more than enough ; we have been surfeited with stories of Anony ma. ,Is it not time to think about Miserrima ? Miserrima has no ponies; Miserrima never drives in tho park; Miserrima is. not to be called* a pretty horsebreaker,' a 'soiled dove/ op any of those euphuisms which a low tone of morals suggests and a corrupt \ society adopts. Miserrima has nothing aiaTactive about her. Three years , ago. she was an innocent girl, poor, but pure; a scoundrel - drugged her; and now she haunts ,- the vilest purlieus of the Haymarket; scarcely a woman even : yet in years — ;but lost,, utterly lost. Tn'her abject wretchedness^ " she will swallow poison rather than live; in her extreme misery, when a child is born, she will leave the babe upon the pavement, or make its little neck purple with her strangling hands ; and for this depth of woe, this abyss of agony, this hell of crime, who is responsible ? Simply the scoundrel who seduced her. If the law cannot save, it can punish."