It looks so easy to live on twenty-two shillings a week and no furniture to buy, and no parson to pay.
So a cheap ring is slipped on, and hand in hand the doomed couple go to Adullam Street, which receives them with open arms, and hugs them so long as six shillings and sixpence weekly is forthcoming in advance.
Their progress is very rapid; when the first child arrives, the woman's earnings cease, and Adullam Street knows them no more.
Ticket-of-leave men, ex-convicts, heroes of many convictions, come to Adullam Street and bring their female counterparts with them.
They flourish for a time, and then the sudden but not unexpected disappearance of the male leads to the disappearance of the female.

She returns to her former life; Adullam Street is but an incident in her life.
So there is a continual procession through Adullam Street; very little good enters it, and it is certain that less good passes out.
Where do its temporary inhabitants go?
To prisons, to workhouses, to hospitals, to common lodging-houses, to shelters, to the Embankment and to death.
Although those who seek sanctuary in Adullam Street are already inhabitants of the underworld, a brief sojourn in it dooms them to lower depths.

I suppose there must be places of temporary residence for the sort of people that inhabit it, for they must have shelter somewhere.
But I commend this kind of property to the searching eyes of the local authorities and the police.
But furnished apartments can tell another tale when they are not situated in Adullam Street.

For sometimes a struggling widow, or wife with a sick husband, or a young married couple seek to let furnished apartments as a legitimate means of income.

When they do so, let them beware of the underworld folk who happen to be better clothed and more specious than their fellows, or they will bitterly rue it.
Very little payment will they get.