The women who avail themselves of this ‘Ann Fowler’ Home are of all ages and in various employments.  One, I was told, was a lady separated from her husband, whose father, now dead, had been the mayor of a large city.

A Liverpool Institution of another class, known as ‘The Hollies,’ is an Industrial Home for fallen women, drunkards, thieves, and incorrigible girls.  It holds thirty-eight inmates and is always full, a good many of these being sent to the place from Police-courts whence they are discharged under the First Offenders Acts.

I saw these women at their evening prayers.  The singing was hearty and spontaneous, and they all seemed happy enough.  Still, the faces of most of them (they varied in age from forty-six to sixteen) showed traces of life’s troubles, but one or two were evidently persons of some refinement.  Their histories, which would fill volumes, must be omitted.  Suffice it to say that this Home, like all the others, is extremely well-arranged and managed, and is doing a most excellent and successful work.

When the women are believed to be cured of their evil habits, whatever they may be, they are for the most part sent out to service.  There are two rooms in the place to which they can return during their holidays, or when they are changing situations, at a charge of 5s. a week.  This many of them like to do.

Next door to ‘The Hollies’ is another Home where young girls with their illegitimate babies, and also a few children, are accommodated.  It is arranged to hold twenty-four mothers, and is generally full.  A charge of 5s. a week is supposed to be made, but unless the cases are sent from the workhouse, when the Guardians pay, in practice little is recovered from the patients.  When they are well again, their babies are put out to nurse, as at the London Maternity Home, and the girls are sent to service, no difficulty being experienced in finding them places.  During the two years that this Home had been open eighty-two girls had passed through it, and of these, the Matron informed me, there were but ten who were not doing so well as they might.  The rest were in employment of one sort or another, and seemed to be in the way of completely regaining their characters.

I visited this place late at night, and in the room devoted to children, as distinct from infants, saw one girl of nine with a curious history.  This child had been twelve times in the hands of the police before her father brought her to the Army on their suggestion.  Her mania was to run away from home, where it does not appear that she was ill-treated, and to sleep in the streets, on one occasion for as long as five nights.  This child had a very curious face, and even in her sleep, as I saw her, there was about it something wild and defiant.  When the Matron turned her over she did not yawn or cry, but uttered a kind of snarl.  I suppose that here is an instance of atavism, that the child throw back for thousands or tens of thousands of years, to when her progenitors were savages, and that their primitive instincts have reasserted themselves in her, although she was born in the twentieth century.  She had been ten months in the Home and was doing well.  Indeed, the Matron told me that they had taken her out and given her opportunities of running away, but that she had never attempted to avail herself of them.