Daily Times [Leavenworth, Ks],
October 12, 1861
Our attention has been repeatedly called to the alarming increase of degraded women who nightly infest our streets, but as we could not suggest a remedy, we have forborne comment. One of the unfortunate class, who subscribes herself “A Penitent,” has written as follows: The writer is not a denizen of Cincinnati, says the Commercial, but it will serve as well for this locality as any:
“Every now and then a cry is made against us, and the public prints teem with articles about the sisterhood to which I belong who appear to know little more about the question than that the evil exists and can not be checked. People writing about people they know little of, for the best reason that those who know all about us never care to think of and expose a system they encourage. I am one of the fallen ones, degraded in the eyes of the world, spurned by the good, ill treated by the bad, caressed by a few, but shunned in the daylight by everybody. My fall was that of thoughtless indiscretion; discovered and turned adrift upon the world, this life became a necessity for food and raiment, and followed now, not from choice, for I loathe it. To escape from it is impossible; and, as thousands more do, I go on day after day, thinking sometimes sadly what the end will be, deadening my day thoughts with drink, and spending my evenings in maddening excitement. You, with others, ask why? And my answer is simply that there is no escape, and for this reason, I never speak to those who would help me; and those who come in contact with me are as bad as I am, and men of the world. It is nonsense to suppose that even those of us who would, can reform; our relatives will not receive us, and the good shun us. Many of us have been brought up as ladies, without any employment. Work, if we could do it, is denied to us all; for a penitent telling what she is is looked upon as venomous by those who could help her. “Alas for the rarity of Christian charity.” Tell me, if you can, Mr. Editor, what we can do to alter our lives, and I, with thousands more, will not be a pest to your streets; but tell us, too, that in our transit from bad to good we shall not have scornful treatment and contempt, such no human creature can endure, and will flock around those who would save us, as we do around those who go madly rushing on through life with us, in the glitter and excitement of our night houses.”