Eva Smith / Daisy Renton

• One Eva Smith has gone - but there are millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us
• Both her parents were dead, so that she’d no home to go back to
• She hadn’t a penny and was going to be turned out of the miserable back room she had
• … the foreman there told me he was ready to promote her
• … this girl, Eva Smith, was one of (the ring leaders) … she’d had a lot to stay - for too much - so she had to go
• I couldn’t remember her name or where she lived
• Just used her for the end of a stupid drunken evening, as if she was an animal
• They wanted the rates raised so that they could average about twenty-five shillings a week
• She knew it couldn’t last - hadn’t expected it to last
• I became at once the most important person in her life
• I told him that if they didn’t get rid of that girl […] I’d persuade mother to close our account
• She refused to take any more (when she found the money was stolen)