Around 1930, you could hardly move along the pavement nearest the open-air market in Military Road, Chatham, in the evening, because of the ladies plying for trade. At that time, Chatham was a huge naval depot, it was ‘home’ to the Royal Engineers and the Royal Marines and the Royal Army Service Corps and that all meant an abundant supply of young and foolish men with money in their pockets. The ladies descended in swarms from London for the weekend business and went back on the Monday mornings to pay their 'minders’ and put what remained in their banks as provision for their old age.
The Navy and the Army provided pickets to patrol the streets, but there was little they could do to keep the lads out of trouble. Truth to tell, there was little they wished to do, for invariably they would have been ‘looked after’ by the girls’ ‘minders’ and consequently saw and heard nothing. The only time they went into action was when fighting broke out in the pubs, and then they were into the contestants with staves and truncheons. Whistles blew, the naval and military vehicles arrived, the bloodied belligerents were tossed inside and whisked back to the punishment cells in their barracks. And the pickets quaffed their pints as the landlords swept up the broken glass and mopped away the blood. Peace reigned once more.
The police? The suspicion was that they, too, had been 'looked after’, but nothing was ever proved or, indeed, said. From time to time civic leaders and church people lamented the situation and urged the authorities to embark upon a cleaning-up drive and, from time to time, there was a big show of cleansing, all duly reported at length in the newspapers. In a couple of weeks, though, it was business as usual again.
What was done on a regular basis, just to show willing, was the Saturday-night roundup. To keep the establishment more or less happy and to enable the Chief Constable to pad out his periodic reports with hard evidence of constabular alertness, Chatham police would collect up 20 or 30 ladies from the Military Road promenade every Saturday and take them to Northcliffe for detention. Why Northcliffe? Because Chatham police station had only six cells. Then, on the Monday morning, the ladies would be wheeled up before the Chatham magistrates and fined a couple of pounds apiece. This satisfied the establishment, showed that the police would not tolerate the unbecoming trade in their fair city and did not unduly incommode the ladies. Everybody was happy.
Chairman of the Bench at Chatham on Monday mornings was an ample Councillor by the name of Bessie Jane Parr. A staunch Labour campaigner and a dedicated worker for innumerable good causes, Bessie was, behind her political and magisterial facade, a kind-hearted Mum. So when, on one particular Monday morning, a fresh-faced, pretty and vivacious young girl faced her from the dock, her heart was touched. Throughout her career as a magistrate when dealing with the weekly round-up of ladies of the night, she had wondered time and time again what on earth possessed men to have dealings with such unlovely creatures. They looked what they were-and especially in the unromantic surroundings of a police court. So when, instead of a raddled, painted harridan in the dock she saw a bright young girl with a half-smile on her lips, Bessie’s curiosity was aroused.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you here before, have I?” she asked the girl.
“No, your Worship," replied the girl. “I’ve never been to Chatham before.”
“Where do you live?"
“New Cross, your Worship. Came down here on a visit.”
“On a visit? Then how did you come to be arrested?”
The girl chuckled. “Oh, no,” she explained, “I didn’t mean just an ordinary visit, to look around, like. I came down with two others, just for the weekend.”
“You mean to solicit prostitution?”
“If you put it like that, your Worship, yes. I’m on the game, like all the others.”
Bessie shook her head in despair. “How old are you, young woman?”
“Twenty, Ma’am."
“Are there any previous convictions?" Bessie asked the Police Sergeant.
“Not here, Ma’am," he replied. “Quite a number in London, though.”
Addressing the girl, Bessie said she was on a downward path that would lead only to misery. “You are young and you are attractive," she went on. “Your whole life is before you. You have made a bad start but it is not yet too late to turn aside from your sordid beginning and start afresh. There are countless opportunities for a young person like you. Don’t spurn them. Grasp them and make something of yourself. I am speaking as someone old enough to be your Mother and I beg you to give thought to my words."
The girl, eyes downcast, nodded her head.
Sighing, Bessie said that as she had pleaded guilty to the charge, she would have to pay a fine of £2.
The girl, now animated, asked: “Can I have time to pay, please?”
The court was astounded. Never had such a request been made by any of the ’Monday morning girls’.
“What do you say to that, Sergeant?" Bessie asked.
“I’ve never heard such an application before, your Worship. I have no cause to object to time to pay, though, as she’s never been in trouble in this division."
“Very well," said Bessie, to the girl. “How long do you want?"
The girl smiled brightly, “’alf an hour, I reckon," she said.
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