The entire number of children reported is 2,978. Brought by parents, 279. Brought on personal charges for offences, 756. Lost, 1,498. The monthly reports of these devoted Matrons, to the Associated Committees, are filled with special cases of interest, and stir all true devotion to earnestness to devise new plans to reach and help the sufferers. Mrs. L. W. Fletcher of the 6th District and Mrs. J. Poole of the 19th District are the oldest matrons in the work, having held appointment since September, 1886. Mrs. Fletcher has to do with that known as the tenderloin section, Eleventh street above Race. Within this district dwells a larger portion of girls and women whose vocation makes them liable to arrest more than any of the other thirty districts. Mrs. Fletcher has proved well-fitted for the work, the combination of good common sense, sympathetic gentleness and determined spirit which is hers, is one that is needed in the Sixth District more than any other perhaps. Mrs. Fletcher speaks of the many unfortunate girls brought to her as “her girls.” “They are to be pitied as much as condemned. Force of circumstances, I have learned, drives the majority of them into the lives they lead. Contact with them has taught me that few of them are wholly bad. Many can be made to see the folly of vice and led to abandon it.” She speaks authoritatively, and keeps track of many reclaimed, who are happy in their several employments as wage-earners, and owe their present happiness to her timely advice and sympathy. Chinatown is in this division, and it exerts its worst influence; but kindness wins. They are not locked up in cells, but the matron places them in an upper room or ward. The matron is very seldom used roughly, her appearance seems to command respect, even from the most abandoned. She often accompanies them to court trial, and it is a comfort to them, they never fail to appreciate. All our seventeen police matrons seem to be well-fitted for their work. Some of our lieutenants who have heretofore opposed having matrons for the female portion at station-houses, are beginning to see the folly of their former judgment. Our statute law requires every station-house to have a matron. Why is it not obeyed in the other fourteen districts? WOMAN’S PRISON.--The women of the city of Brooklyn, N. Y., are urging the establishment there of a Woman’s Prison. How much better if it were a Reformatory. This is sadly needed in State of Pennsylvania, and especially in Philadelphia for the 350 women in our Penitentiary, County Prison and House of Correction; at the present time there is a movement to ask the Legislature to establish a Reformatory prison for women in the eastern part of Pennsylvania. [Illustration: MRS. L. W. FLETCHER, Police Matron, Sixth District, Philadelphia.] TWELFTH ANNUAL REPORT OF JOHN J. LYTLE, GENERAL SECRETARY.