by, you heard very plainly the sigh of the poplar, the surging gossip of the tulip-tree, and the plash of the little embowered fountain that served two plaster children for an endless shower-bath. The function of the very band appeared to be to drown not noise, but stillness.” CHAPTER XVII. THE PLAIN FACTS AND FIGURES OF PROSTITUTION. _Statistics of Westminster_, _Brompton_, _and Pimlico_—_Methods of conducting the nefarious Business_—_Aristocratic Dens_—_The High Tariff_—_The Horrors of the Social Evil_—_The Broken Bridge behind the Sinner_—“_Dress Lodgers_”—_There’s always a_ “_Watcher_”—_Soldiers and Sailors_—_The_ “_Wrens of the Curragh_.” LET US in the first place consider the extent to which the terrible malady in question afflicts us. I am not aware if more recent returns have been made than those I have at hand. Were it possible to obtain exact statistics of this as of almost every other branch of social economy, I should have been at the trouble of inquiring for them further than I have; but I find that the calculations made differ so widely one from the other, and are, as a whole, so irreconcilable with probability, that it will be better to take an authentic return, albeit ten years old, and make allowance for time since. The Metropolitan-Police authorities are responsible for the accompanying figures. It appears that at the date above indicated there were within the Metropolitan-Police district the enormous number of 8600 prostitutes, and they were distributed as follows: Brothels. Prostitutes. Within the districts of Westminster, 153 524 Brompton, and Pimlico, there are St. James, Regent-street, Soho, 152 318 Leicester-square Marylebone, Paddington, St. 139 526 John’s-wood Oxford-street, Portland-place, 194 546 New-road, Gray’s-inn-lane Covent-garden, Drury-lane, St. Giles’s 45 480 Clerkenwell, Pentonville, City-road, 152 349 Shoreditch Spitalfields, Houndsditch, 471 1803 Whitechapel, Ratcliff Bethnal-green, Mile-end, Shadwell to 419 965 Blackwall Lambeth, Blackfriars, Waterloo-road 377 802 Southwark, Bermondsey, Rotherhithe 178 667 Islington, Hackney, Homerton 185 445 Camberwell, Walworth, Peckham 65 228 Deptford and Greenwich 148 401 Kilburn, Portland, Kentish, and Camden 88 231 Towns Kensington, Hammersmith, Fulham 12 106 Walham-green, Chelsea, Cremorne 47 209