There are two classes of milliners’ girls. In the first class are those who live in the house at which they work, receiving for their labour board, what passes for lodging, and as much pay as a governess--a sum that may be twelve or twenty pounds, or may be even four times that amount, per annum. Girls in this class are stimulated by some prospect of promotion: they may live to be forewomen, or to have shops of their own. The second class consists of day-workers, who go to the milliners, at eight in the morning, after an early breakfast, and (with an allowance of time during which they may depart in search of dinner) work until eight or nine at night; sometimes in the season, until ten or eleven. Work over, the labourers return to their own lodgings. A young woman in this class earns about seven shillings a week, wherewith to pay for lodging, food, and clothes. If she have any relatives in London to whose homes she can betake herself, then it is well; if she be a solitary worker, forced to earn an independent livelihood--a young girl from the country, or an orphan--she goes to her garret; and there, sitting in utter cheerlessness, suffers temptations which there is no poor man, even though a rogue, who would not wish to see his daughter spared. These workers labour in support of luxury all the day long: their sense of pleasure, love of ornament and colour, is developed, and their honest earnings only suffer them to lodge in dingy garrets chiefly found among back streets. Two shillings a week, or at the utmost, half-a-crown, is all that can be spared, for rent out of an income that is only fourteen pence a working day; at most a penny-farthing for the working hour. Half-a-crown or two shillings is the rent of a dilapidated room, even among the pauperised inhabitants of Bethnal Green. Necessarily it can purchase no very pleasant dwelling, we may be assured, in the purlieus of Regent Street.