Letter V. To Robert Dingley, Esq.; being a proposal for the relief and employment of friendless girls and repenting prostitutes / [Jonas Hanway].

Hanway, Jonas, 1712-1786.

Date:: 1758

Credit: Letter V. To Robert Dingley, Esq.; being a proposal for the relief and employment of friendless girls and repenting prostitutes / [Jonas Hanway]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$[ ** ] gladly reform: many pour out their hearts in real, as well as fomc in disenabled forrow. Have they not reafon to complain of the want of \ * t charity with regard to thcmfelves ? Are they not real objeds of chriflian compaflion ? How many are cut off from all hopes of mercy, except the cruel mercy of thofe who afford them a temporary relief, at the wretched price of accumulated guilt, and the moft unworthy treatment ? How ma¬ ny have been feduced by the promifes of men, and fuffer all the miferies of poverty, infamy, and contempt, in confequencc of a mean and perfi-* dious violation of thofe promifes, in the guilt of which the female has properly no (hare ? Who can behold the image of God, debafed even below the vileS animal; and not vvifh to fee it reftored * Brutes follow the didates of nature, and m are obedient to their appetites; but appetite has frequently no fhare in the promifeuous commerce of thefe unhappy women ? What mifery cat! exceed that of perfons who ad perpetually in oppofition to the plaineft didates of reafon, and are plunged into a kind of neceffity of purfuing a courfe of life, the end of which they know is perdition. To languifli in a loathfome difeafe, furrounded with mifery, in a more loathfome bn> thel; to be thrown into a goal, or perfecuted by thofe very perfons who (hould afford them the means of repenting > however {hocking fuch cir- cumflances may appear, they give but a faint idea of the fufferings of many of thefe wretched women. If we confider thefe young perfons as bortr in a free country, where pure religion is profeffed $ many of them educated in the principles of virtue 5 all of them entitled to the protection of men, and defigned by the wife author of nature as their partners in the focial joys of life: and 3 turn$