Nothing was more noticeable in both lodging-houses than the existence of at least three descriptions of prostitutes. There was the apparently quiet, modest one, whom you would take to be a respectable girl. One of these gave an account of how "her boy" had met her and spent an hour or two trying to persuade her to go away and get work. He even cried! But apparently he did not move her. She promised him as a put-off. This quiet sort of girl is most to be dreaded; she may act as a tempter.
There was, in the second place, the good-natured girl, naturally affectionate. "Everyone likes me wherever I go," said the girl who had a home. This girl should have been a happy wife and mother. Her fate lies at the door of him who wronged her. Once in "the life," the ties of friendship and a vivacious, sociable disposition would draw her to it again and again.
The third kind may be the second gone to ruin, or those who, having had a worse bringing up, are naturally more shamelessly immoral. Drink has fascinations for them. They go "on the town" to get drink. One such, who was drunk over night, gave a long and involved history of her doings in the morning. She had received money and drink from three soldiers, but she declined to descend to the level of "Soldiers' Jinny," whose unmentionable doings were related at length. She left them and got more drink, piloted a couple to a "safe house" and was tipped for it, was treated to "bottled stout"--much to her disgust, as she preferred other drink--came along certain streets gloriously drunk, daring policemen, and arrived home happy, just sufficiently quarrelsome to get a free berth from everyone. She was a handsome dark girl of a low class. Her language was unspeakably foul, every sentence being interspersed with gory adjectives. She evidently expected admiration from her hearers for a sort of dare-devilry.
It was pitiable, as the evening went on, to see the state of many. Two elderly women in the other room carried on a maudlin conversation, just on the edge of a quarrel, the substance of which was that they "understood one another," and would not blab each other's secrets!
All the time this was going on a man, and sometimes other men, were in the passage frequently. There was in this passage a locked door, constantly unlocked, leading to the next door men's lodging-house. Apparently the husband caretaker in our house was also caretaker in this, hence comings and goings. I have no reason to suppose there was any illicit communication as regards the house itself; but girls were frequently asked for by name, and the presence of a man or men was not desirable. The caretaker himself was familiarly addressed as "Pa."