AN APPEAL TO FALLEN WOMEN 
Charles Dickens
  
(Dickens wrote this leaflet in 1849 for distribution among women taken into police 
custody, in the hope of directing them to a Home at Shepherd's Bush established by his 
friend Angela Burdett Coutts.) 
  
You will see, on beginning to read this letter, that it is not addressed to you by name. 
But I address it to a woman--a very young woman still--who was born to be happy and 
has lived miserably; who has no prospect before her but sorrow, or behind her but a 
wasted youth; who, if she has ever been a mother, has felt shame instead of pride in her 
own unhappy child. 
  
You are such a person, or this letter would not be put into your hands. If you have ever 
wished (I know you must have done so some time) for a chance of rising out of your sad 
life, and having friends, a quiet home, means of being useful to yourself and others, 
peace of mind, self-respect, everything you have lost, pray read it attentively and reflect 
upon it afterwards. 
  
I am going to offer you, not the chance but the certainty of all these blessings, if you 
will exert yourself to deserve them. And do not think that I write to you as if I felt 
myself very much above you, or wished to hurt your feelings by reminding you of the 
situation in which you are placed. God forbid! I mean nothing but kindness to you, and I 
write as if you were my sister. 
  
Think for a moment what your present situation is. Think how impossible it is that it 
ever can be better if you continue to live as you have lived, and how certain it is that it 
must be worse. You know what the streets are; you know how cruel the companions 
that you find there are; you know the vices practised there, and to what wretched 
consequences they bring you, even while you are young. Shunned by decent people, 
marked out from all other kinds of women as you walk along, avoided by the very 
children, hunted by the police, imprisoned, and only set free to be imprisoned over and 
over again--reading this very letter in a common jail you have already dismal 
experience of the truth. 
  
But to grow old in such a way of life, and among such company--to escape an early 
death from terrible disease, or your own maddened hand, and arrive at old age in such a 
course--will be an aggravation of every misery that you know now, which words cannot 
describe. Imagine for yourself the bed on which you, then an object terrible to look at, 
will lie down to die. Imagine all the long, long years of shame, want, crime, and ruin 
that will arise before you. And by that dreadful day, and by the judgment that will 
follow it, and by the recollection that you are certain to have then, when it is too late, of 
the offer that is made to you now, when it is NOT too late, I implore you to think of it 
and weigh it well. 
  
There is a lady in this town who from the windows of her house has seen such as you 
going past at night, and has felt her heart bleed at the sight. She is what is called a great 
lady, but she has looked after you with compassion as being of her own sex and nature, 
and the thought of such fallen women has troubled her in her bed. 
  
She has resolved to open at her own expense a place of refuge near London for a small 
number of females, who without such help are lost for ever, and to make a HOME for 
them. In this home they will be taught all household work that would be useful to them 
in a home of their own and enable them to make it comfortable and happy. In this home, 
which stands in a pleasant country lane and where each may have her little 
flower-garden if she pleases, they will be treated with the greatest kindness: will lead an 
active, cheerful, healthy life: will learn many things it is profitable and good to know, 
and being entirely removed from all who have any knowledge of their past career will 
begin life afresh and be able to win a good name and character. 
  
And because it is not the lady's wish that these young women should be shut out from 
the world after they have repented and learned to do their duty there, and because it is 
her wish and object that they may be restored to society--a comfort to themselves and 
it--they will be supplied with every means, when some time shall have elapsed and their 
conduct shall have fully proved their earnestness and reformation, to go abroad, where 
in a distant country they may become the faithful wives of honest men, and live and die 
in peace. 
  
I have been told that those who see you daily in this place believe that there are virtuous 
inclinations lingering within you, and that you may be reclaimed. I offer the Home I 
have described in these few words, to you. 
  
But, consider well before you accept it. As you are to pass from the gate of this Prison 
to a perfectly new life, where all the means of happiness, from which you are now shut 
out, are opened brightly to you, so remember on the other hand that you must have the 
strength to leave behind you all old habits. You must resolve to set a watch upon 
yourself, and to be firm in your control over yourself, and to restrain yourself; to be 
gentle, patient, persevering, and good tempered. Above all things, to be truthful in every 
word you speak. Do this, and all the rest is easy. But you must solemnly remember that 
if you enter this Home without such constant resolutions, you will occupy, unworthily 
and uselessly, the place of some other unhappy girl, now wandering and lost; and that 
her ruin, no less than your own, will be upon your head, before Almighty God, who 
knows the secrets of our breasts; and Christ, who died upon the Cross to save us. 
  
In case there should be anything you wish to know, or any question you would like to 
ask about this Home, you have only to say so, and every information shall be given to 
you. Whether you accept or reject it, think of it. If you awake in the silence and solitude 
of the night, think of it then. If any remembrance ever comes into your mind of any time 
when you were innocent and very different, think of it then. If you should be softened 
by a moment's recollection of any tenderness or affection you have ever felt, or that has 
ever been shown to you, or of any kind word that has ever been spoken to you, think of 
it then. If ever your poor heart is moved to feel truly, what you might have been, and 
what you are, oh think of it then, and consider what you may yet become. 
  
Believe me that I am indeed, 
  
YOUR FRIEND

THE END.