Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 271, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 November 1910 — GIRLS LACK HOMES [ARTICLE]

GIRLS LACK HOMES

'London Has No Respectable Refuge for Women. 'Sitter Maggie Has Strikingly Discouraging Experience— Ordinary Lodgings Unfit for HonT~ est Poor. London.— "Slater Maggie," a zealous >nd original worker connected with (the Bloomsbury Social union, Is enigaged In an effort to provide hotels for respectable girls who find thefniselves In London without money or Ifrlends. Sister Maggie claims that [young men are amply provided for In 'this respect, but that the contrary is 'the case as to girls. “In order to test the matter for myiself,” said she, “I disguised myself as a young country girl out of a situation in London and, with only nine pence In my pockets, I walked the streets to find a respectable night’s lodging. This is how I fared. After calling in many places where I was refused admittance because I had not a shilling In my pocket I spoke, to an old woman selling matches at a street corner, who directed me to a home for young women conducted by a religious body. "The first question that was put to ime there by the matron was, ‘Where ils your reference?’ I had to confess ithat I had none, so I was told I was not the ‘sort wanted there’ and was turned out on the street. I spoke to three policemen, but not one of them could help me. No person who kept furnished apartments would let me have a room for the night under the cost of a shilling. Then I went to an ordinary lodging house for women where after some bargaining I was taken in for six pence. “The house was full of women, young and old, many of whom had come to London as young girls from the country. Now every one was a moral wreck; their conversation was indescribable and finally a quarrel ibroke out in the room where they were herded together. “Perhaps because I looked respectable, the landlady blamed me for it, and I was turned out once more. After this I wandered on through street after street, always with an awful dread in my heart and always followed by some man, until at last I was directed to a house in a respectable street. I found at length what I thought was a haven of refuge. Here [the landlady welcomed me most klndlly. It was the only place I found even Ithe suggestion of human sympathy, Ibut before I was there ten minutes women, yes and many young girls of

under sixteen, began to come and go through the open door and, to my horror, I discovered the nature of the place, the only roof to which I as a poor girl had been welcomed.” Sister Maggie holds that rescue work is often hopeless and that the thing to do is to fence off the precipice rather than to try to save the pieces below. She recommends that the churches of all denominations bind themselves together to establish properly governed women’s lodging houses or inns. She says the Catholic women of Belgium have accomplished incalculable good in this way. Her idea is that notice boards at the railway stations and in the principal streets should be put up telling girls where s.uch places are to be found. The police, she thinks, might be of assistance to girls whom they meet wandering in the streets at night. Sister Maggie pronounces absolutely against the common lodging house for women. “It is no place,” says she, “to which any respectable woman can be sent.”