I have not yet discovered any shelter or lodging house where such help is forthcoming. The Salvation Army Centre in Mare Street do their best to deal with human down and outs, and if they are employable, will find them work and supply a wardrobe. But, as I have said, a very large proportion of the women who walk the pavements have gone beyond regularised assistance, and before they could fit themselves for work, they would have to be found some tiny home of their own where they could recover their powers of resistance. Meanwhile, they endure physical hardships which could be alleviated by a small expenditure of money and the cost of some trouble and thought. Once you have seen the feet of the outcast, you realise the most burning and most practical thing to do, next to the provision of a bed, is to find boots.

The homeless are, I admit, difficult to help through the ordinary channels. People who come under sectional headings⁠—discharged prisoners, convicted prostitutes, unmarried mothers⁠—are more easily assisted. Human nature has a weakness for labels. It is distressed, almost affronted, by the silence of apparently inexplicable human wreckage.