Page:Wrong and Right Methods of Dealing with Social Evil - Elizabeth Blackwell (1883).djvu/34

24 to the women who have been forced into subjection to the English Contagious Diseases Acts. They are registered, inspected, and subjected to police regulations, and protected as long as they observe the police requirements. There are many intermediate steps leading toward the complete Bastiles of vice as seen in Brussels and Paris. The so-called Maisons de Société of Nice, which train giddy, frivolous girls into soulless debauchery, and sell their temporary use to vicious Americans and English for 1,000 francs, are only variations of the same essentially false principle.

Thirdly, there exists an increasing population of poor working-women, whose wages are not sufficient to maintain them, but are eked out by prostitution. This population, in order to preserve its independence, hides from the police, who vainly strive to capture them.

M. Treit, who has been the legal adviser to the British Embassy in Paris for 25 years, gives the following noteworthy evidence of the police system arranged to entrap women. To quote his own words, "If a woman is suspected of prostitution, one or two or three inspectors, under a different dress—