of preference, there is seldom found more
than one private's wife in a company.

The rest of the women, those married
with and those married without leave,
remain usually in the town from which their
regiments have marched; they are shunned
as soldiers' wives, and, being unable to gain
honest employment, the whole honest
support remaining for them is the three-pence
a-day lately allowed by government
for those married with leave, and three
half-pence for each child, with such addition as
the husband may spare from his surplus
fourpence a-day—not in general a very liberal
one, as we may readily suppose, considering
the temptations of a camp life, and its
canteens. When apart from her husband's
regiment, however, the soldier's wife has one
advantage. She may, as a young and modest
woman, support her self-respect, though
steeped to the lips in poverty; she may close
the door of her poor room against the voices
of blasphemy and riot, and before she lies
down, with her little children around her,
on the bare floor that is all the rest her
poverty allows, she can yet teach them to
fold their little hands in prayer.

Not so in the Camp at Aldershot.
Here, all the miseries, all the demoralising
influences exist, common to barrack life in
England; influences so terrible, that were it
not for the chapel which crowns the height, we
might well be forgiven for doubting if we
stood on Christian ground.

To describe the Camp at Aldershot is
unnecessary: its position on the dark heath, its
long lettered avenues flanked by black wooden
huts, its lines of fluttering linen, its schools,
parade grounds, and canteens, have become
familiar to most of us; but that to which
we now desire to draw the attention of at
least every wife and mother in England,
is the condition of demoralising misery to
which this camp and its arrangements exposes
their sister woman.

We are beginning to discover, that men
and women are pretty much what society makes
them; and, in this view, we will see what is
now doing for our race at Aldershot.

In all the lines in camp there are what are
called Married Huts, with high windows, a
door at either end, and a cooking stove in the
centre. Along the sides of these huts, are
ranged iron bedsteads in pairs; and, in cases
where not more than five married people
with their children occupy the same hut
(this, be it observed, being the minimum
of occupation), small divisions between
the beds are partially screened off by
regimental blankets, a scanty sheet or two, or a
woman's dress. Under circumstances,
however, where families are more crowded—in
which case, ten men, ten women, and eight
children, are to be found occupying one
hut—these attempted preservations of
decency are impossible. The double beds
nearly touch each other, and are without
even the scantiest attempt at screen or
curtain.

The camp has no accommodation for sick
women or children—their hospitals having
no ward set apart for them, as in Indian
military arrangements; and as lodgings are
unprocurable in the surrounding villages, the
women, if unable to travel to their homes, are
compelled to remain in the public and
crowded hut, depending on such expensive
aid as the camp may afford.

The wife of a non-commissioned officer,
who, with her young family, accompanied
her husband with his regiment from the
coast a short time since, and who is now daily
expecting her confinement, occupies a hut,
in which twenty single men live, and the
space between the beds scarcely allows
standing room, far less any provision for
privacy. In another case, not a week since,
I visited a young delicate-looking creature,
who had lately given birth to a dead infant,
here, in the room in which I saw her; a
room occupied by ten beds, all curtainless
except her own, which stood in a corner, and
which was partially concealed with blankets,
fastened to strings as they best could be with
clothes-pegs. The woman in her weakness sat
cowering over the centre stove, while, above
and around, wet clothes, the soldiers' washing,
dripped upon the floor; from among the
dirty coverings of nearly every bed, were
raised the unwashed faces of crying children,
and on benches around, men lounged, and
cursed, and quarrelled, waiting for their mid-
day meal.

The occupants of this hut belonged to the
militia, and the matter was hard and strange
enough to them. Unhappily, the women of
the line are too well trained in the
demoralising influences of our barrack system to
feel the evil, or to deplore it,—but these
women, many of them drawn from the ranks
of our peasantry, poor though they may have
been, were yet accustomed at least to the
decencies and protections of their cottage homes,
and they speak of their position with dismay.
As I have listened to their complaints, a
certain satisfaction has mingled with shame and
sorrow when I have found their nature
to be not yet wholly brutalised by the
system pursued towards them. Perhaps the
reason for this may be, that it is equally new
to all, and that in some degree they aid each
other to lessen the greatest horrors of the
position. It is otherwise in the line. There
corruption lies in wait for the new-comer.
The perhaps innocent girl, whose character
has so borne inspection, that the necessary
permission is yielded to a marriage, which
allows her the privilege of barrack accommodation,
no sooner shrinks aghast from the
mingled occupation of the room shared by
her husband, from the oaths, the foul
language, and the scenes of pollution around,
than some woman, once perhaps as innocent
as herself, laughs at her scruples, scoffs at her