Why should a woman, if she can pay, be compelled to sleep in a dirty bed when for the same price a man can get a clean one? I have walked from one end of London to the other, looking for a bed, and I have been treated as though I was a criminal trying to steal. I could not have dreamed that in this day of feminine emancipation from political disabilities that trade union leaders, women preachers and doctors, barristers, lawyers and under secretaries, would all have passed by on the other side, leaving their sisters to find refuge in squalor, or to spend the night walking the inhospitable streets.

I have run the gamut of lodging house accommodation. I have slept in the same room as matchsellers, tramps and prostitutes, and the general conditions⁠—always excepting the Salvation Army⁠—are a standing reproach to every woman who believes in what she calls social reform or has any touch of feeling for her sex.

That I speak with knowledge will be shown in the detailed accounts herein following of the places I have visited.