Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II.: Or, The Rambles and Adventures of Bob Tallyho, Esq., and His Cousin, the Hon. Tom Dashall, Through the Metropolis; Exhibiting a Living Picture of Fashionable Characters, Manners, and Amusements in High and Low Life (1821)Badcock, John, active 1816-1830
General
Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II.: Or, The Rambles and Adventures of Bob Tallyho, Esq., and His Cousin, the Hon. Tom Dashall, Through the Metropolis; Exhibiting a Living Picture of Fashionable Characters, Manners, and Amusements in High and Low Life (1821)
Badcock, John, active 1816-1830
London (England) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
“An unfortunate girl, apparently about eighteen years of
age, and of the most interesting and handsome person, but
whose attire indicated extreme poverty and distress, applied
to the sitting magistrate, Richard Bimie, Esq. under the
following circum-stances:--It appeared from the statement,
that she had for the last three weeks been living at a house
of ill fame in Exeter-street, Strand, kept by a man named
James Locke: this wretch had exacted the enormous sum of
three guineas per week for her board and lodging, and in
consequence of her not being able to pay the sum due for the
last week, he threatened to strip her of her cloaths, and
turn her naked into the street. This threat he deferred
executing until yesterday morning (having in the mean time
kept her locked up in a dark room, without any covering
whatever,) when in lieu of her cloaths, he gave her the
tattered and loathsome garments she then appeared in, which
were barely sufficient to preserve common decency, and then
brutally turned her into the street. Being thus plunged into
the most abject wretchedness, without money or friends, to
whom she could apply in her present situation, her bodily
strength exhausted by the dissipated life she had led, and
rendered more so by a long abstinence from food; her spirits
broken and overcome by the bitter and humiliating
reflection, that her own guilty conduct debarred her from
flying to the fostering arms of affectionate parents, whom
she had loaded with disgrace and misery; and the now
inevitable exposure of her infamy, it was some time ere her
wandering senses were sufficiently composed to determine
what course she should pursue in the present emergency, when
she thought she could not do better than have recourse to
the justice of her country against the villain Lock, who had
so basely treated her; and after extreme pain and
difficulty, she succeeded in dragging her enfeebled limbs to
the Office. During the detail of the foregoing particulars,
she seemed overwhelmed with shame and remorse, and at times
sobbed so violently as to render her voice inarticulate. Her
piteous case excited the attention and sympathy of all
present; and it was much to the general satisfaction that
Mr. Bimie ordered Humphries, one of the conductors of the
Patrol, to fetch Lock to the Office. On being brought there,
the necessary proceedings were gone into for the purpose of
indicting the house as a common brothel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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