CURRENT LITERATURE
IN DARKEST LONDON. By Mrs. Cecil Chesterton. (Stanley Paul, 5s. net.)
MRS. eHESTERTON is a crusader of high and militant courage Who detefinined 'to:. investigate at first hand the conditions under which her less fortunate sisters live. Her book makes grin and poignant reading. –She haunted'Laboiii Exchankes, she " charred " steps, she " washed-up " in obscene eating -houses, she peddled tawdry rubbish in the lower 'sort of " pubs " ; she resorted to that ingenious method of '.mendicancy, match-selling—the Whniqug of- which she reveals with Chatacteristic humour. The nights she passed in such hostels, homes, shelters, doss-houses as would admit a figure of . her simulated , shabbiness and penuty without the saving grace of referenees or a " character finally she suffered the Officialdom and petty tyrannie4 of a casual ward. . Tile sleeping places for women is London are the objective of her crusade. With' vehement iteration and vivid force she insists. on their loathsonfe indecency. -In them she mingled with a wreckage of vagrants, gaol-birds,' street-walkers, street-hawkers, the homeless sick and starving, footsore, weary, bleeding in body and in mind sadder still, with youthful and involuntary Magdalenes, who frequent the parks and dark alleyways in the hope of earning a few coppers to secure the shelter of even one of these dreadful dosshouses. The author conches a wrathful lance at the .L.C.C. ; her anger flames out at the persecutions to which she alleges these female outcasts are subjected. Their injurieS are her injuries. To the well-bedded, to the complacent, and to all such as are in Lc cat Authority, this book may be commended.
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