This is but the expression of an airy fancy. There are still destitute men and women on the streets of London and, night after night in the cold weather, the Adelphi Arches are crowded with tired souls. They are very silent as a rule, keeping themselves to themselves for the most part, and rarely exchanging confidences. The men there⁠—fewer in number than the women⁠—keep together, a short distance from the other sex, who huddle close, friend and stranger, for the sake of warmth. There is the same tragic resignation in their faces as you find throughout their world, a blind acceptance of fate that has marked them out, for no direct fault or failing, as wanderers of the streets, sentenced to a perpetual walking about, with occasional periods of rest upon the stones, or, rarer still, a night in a lodging house.

Many of these women could afford a few pence if there were accommodation for them. But social reformers, political leaders, charitable workers, do not see the necessity for such provision. They are outcasts⁠—let them sleep in the streets⁠—and the same individual who will fight fiercely to secure man his human rights, will remain unmoved by an urge to do the same for woman.