Handbill headed 'An Appeal to Working Men and Women', pressing for 'the English law to protect your girls from being led into vice'.

Author: 
Ellice Hopkins (1836-1904) and Emily Janes (d.1928), Honorary Secretaries, Ladies’ Associations for the Care of Girls
Publication details: 
January, 1885. 41, Great Russell-street, British Museum, W.C.
£225.00
SKU: 8852

On both sides of a piece of paper, 19 x 11.5 cm. Seventy-seven lines. Text clear and complete. Fair, on aged and lightly-worn paper. Contrasts the law on the continent with that in England, where 'an unruly girl at any age can go on the streets, and the person who harbours her is not guilty of a greater crime than if she were a women [sic] of thirty or forty [...] Will you not help us heart and soul in getting our English girls, - your daughters, remember, - as carefully protected as Belgian and French girls? [...] You know the fearful physical scourge that awaits them, and which has given to the Workhouse Ward, where they suffer and die, the name of the "foul ward." ' Signed in type at foot 'ELLICE HOPKINS, EMILY JANES, Hon. Secs.' A scarce piece of ephemera: no copy in the British Library, on COPAC or WorldCat.