A LETTER FROM MELBOURNE.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1983, 13 May 1875, Page 2

A LETTER FROM MELBOURNE.

(To the Editor of the Evening Star.)

Djeab Sib, —I am greatly indebted to my friends of the kind old Star for sending mo papers so often, and keeping me posted up in Thames matters. I feel sorry that Ohinemuri is yet a little dubious and more " mundic " cropping up than is good for goldfields prospecting; but, perhaps, ere this reaches you, some lucky digger may hare lighted on a good " find," when all will go swimmingly,-and no one will be more glad than I.

Please don't copy the unkind remarks of the Temperance News and other papers about me ; it might give a wrong impression of the opinion in which I am held in Melbourne. Tho fact is, I hare hosts of good friends, but a section of the Press at the outset decided that I wa3 a Yankee agitator of the most advanced type of strong minded females; an apostle of free love, infidelity, and all the other heresies that respectable home-loving people regard with horror. Than this opinion, nothing could be further from the truth, and Melbourne people are beginning to discover this, and, so the newspapers in question have to eat their words, and the flavour does not agree with them, so they spit out a little reaom at the points of their pens. lam now connected with a movement for providing nightly shelter for women^ out of service, hawkers, needle-women, &c. It is called, the Model Lodging • House for-Women, 78 and 80 Gore-street, Fitzroy. In Auckland there would be great confidence in my managing such, an institution, for (whatever, my faults) my old friends know me well and would trust to a faithful and conscientious carrying out of tho principles of the institution to. the best of my means and ability., But s here some: of-,.the..-news'- i j papers, and, noticeably. the Argus which | should know better, have tried to write ' down a much needed institution with a persistent blindness to its usefulness, and a rancour of expression that leads to the fear that they must bo actuated by personal animosity against myself, and that nothing I can do can be right unless I | could consent to sit quietly in a corner with my fingers in my eyes, and acknowledge that I deserve disgrace because I chose to lift one voice, even against a multitude of dissentients," on behalf of women who seem to me to get much more the worst of it here than in New Zealand; for wife-beaters, even when their crime amounts almost to murder, get off very easily, whereas an unfortunate vagrant woman gets it very hot in Court as compared with her male associates and employers ; and if a letter is sent to some of the papers, calling at-' tention to this, "it is , not inserted." But to return to poor - women here. To be sure drink is at the foundation of much of the poverty and misery, but a good deal of need and trouble exists from delicate health, desertion by husbands and other causes Tho • Argus proposes domestic service as a cure for all ills, and it would answer for many; but women delicately reared/ or past the prime of life, or with young babies, or bad health, are not suited to be Servants, nor can they readi'y obtain employment even if tfiey

try to. The sovereign panacea for all evils is not of universal application. A word to women in JNew Zealand, not satisfied "with their success : " stay where you are." It will take immense foi'titude, ability, and courage to fight your way against the thick wall of prejudice Victorians have against strangers. Protection and non-emigration have transformed the place from one of tho most hospitable to one of the most inhospitable in the world, and even poor me, whose " all" in tho shape of my husband's means, was swallowed up by swindling Victorian speculations, gets many a rub and many an insult because I am a '• stranger," and, it is to bo feared, that whilst I am doing my best to help others I may possibly bo doing Rome thing to help myself. Still there are m«ny in Victoria who sincerely deplore " the good old times," and long, as I do, for a return to thai, free-hearted, hospitable spirit which once made tho name VA Victorian " a synonym for all that was cordial and kind. So much has this lodginghouse boon needed, that we arc, with our present resource^ entirely unable to meet the demand upon u§ for beds.-,'We have some trouble to pnrgo tho place from loafers, drunkards, and thieve.ll!: but we temporarily shrltor many .very decont women.

.Now, I fenr, thi« ifi a moat egotistical budget this tirno, bul< I renlly don't know what to write. I can inform the ladies that no one wcara (firings to th«ir bonnets ; every one, wears i'alh i every (nut wears a kick-up to thoir half, that you mmt wear your dre.s« aa tightly drawn rr>tmd you as is consistent with (.U'C-'iicyf in front, and "pile on" the fulness, any amount, behind ;• that a jacket with sleeves is an abomination; and black, loaded with jet, the most distingue* wear. And now having made up-to rich ladies for troubling them with such a long dissertation on poor women, and for erer forfeited my claim to strongmindedness by showing the weakness of watching the fashions, —I remain, &c,

Mast A. Colclotjgh.