100 Years Ago - The Times and The Telegraph

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-02-22/register/a-centre-of-vice-bhfxwmg7d

FEBRUARY 22, 1917

A centre of vice

The Waterloo Road and its purlieus, which have for many years had a reputation as a centre of immorality, have been brought into prominence during the last few days by the campaign for the cleansing of London from impurity. Inquiries made by a representative of The Times show that the state of things prevailing in this district is revolting. Night after night the short stretch of road between Stamford Street and the “Old Vic” is thronged by women pursuing the trade of prostitution. Some of the most shameless openly accost soldiers as they walk along the street or loiter at corners. The writer two nights ago saw a flagrant instance of solicitation outside the doors of the Union Jack Club. A young woman, fairly well dressed, walked up to a soldier who stood aimlessly watching the traffic in and out of Waterloo Station. She spoke a few words to him, and he turned away. Unabashed, she moved a few yards and made her appeal to a second soldier. He also rejected her overtures. A little farther on she offered herself to a third man, and again she was rebuffed. In each case as she moved away she flung back a taunt at the soldier. In the third case the writer caught the words, uttered in rather shrill tones, “Well, what are you standing there for?”
Presently this woman was seen to accost another soldier, and this time, apparently, she found a victim, for the two remained talking for some time, and finally disappeared into one of the side streets.
In the course of a couple of hours the writer witnessed several cases of verbal solicitation of soldiers by prostitutes. Solicitation, however, can be practised in other ways than by spoken word, and in those other ways it goes on continuously in the area immediately outside Waterloo Station. The whole district is so infested by prostitutes that no one could walk a hundred yards in any direction without passing scores of them. But this open flaunting of vice in the main street is by no means the worst of the evils which have made the very name of the Waterloo Road noisome to everybody who has any care for the good repute of London. There is ample evidence that the back streets which spread like a net between Westminster Bridge Road and Blackfriars Road are honeycombed with “houses of accommodation” and shebeens.



http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/national-service-and-income-tax-kctts2bsl

FEBRUARY 23, 1917

National service and income‑tax

To the Editor of The Times
Sir, National service, voluntary or compulsory, will rule the coming year. May I ask how the Government is dealing with income-tax procedure? A barrister, solicitor, writer, or other professional man, has earned in l915, 1916, 1917 (say) £4,000, £5,000, £3,000 respectively, and will have to pay in (say) February, 1918, 5s at least in the £ on a statutory income of £4,000 — a matter of £1,000, plus supertax. In February of 1917 he responds to Mr Neville Chamberlain’s appeal and does national work at (say) £300 a year. Is he in February, 1918, to find this £1,200 or so of taxation out of his £300, besides living and perhaps keeping a family on it? If he has been patriotic he has given or invested all his surplus income these last years for purposes of the war, and has no balance at his bank. There must have been hard cases of this kind already since income-tax has run so high, but with national service they will be multiplied.
The only reasonable demand, of course, in these days of high tax is payment on net income for the year. The difficulty is the postponement this entails in collection — net income for the year ending April, 1918, could not be known and paid on till during that same April at earliest, whereas the present payment on statutory income is made in the previous January or February. The Government, however, can surely not contemplate that those who voluntarily respond to its appeal for national service, or those whom it forces to respond, shall find themselves in such a fix.
So much for while the war lasts. But even when it ceases income-tax will be as high as ever, and the same hardship will fall on professional men overtaken by illness, or by the disorder, shall we say, of wanting to do work for a year which will not bring in any money. For instance, they may conceivably desire to write poems and plays or paint pictures which they know to be unsaleable, or may devote themselves to microbes or the slums for the benefit of mankind. And I suggest that such efforts, rare enough and not without their use, should not be discouraged for want of a little extra elasticity in income-tax procedure.
Yours truly,
JOHN GALSWORTHY,
HôpitaI au Martouret, Die, France.