Gotham's streets were overflowing with orphans, but that did not mean every child in the city was an orphan. Nor did having parents necessarily mean anything good. Families at the very bottom of society had too little to offer their children, while some parents driven mad by life demanded too much. It was hard to say whether children with parents were fortunate or unfortunate.
But there was one kind of child that was the luckiest in Gotham: children who had never been born. Misfortune did not begin with their generation. At the bottom of society, too many mothers had no choice but to give up their children for all kinds of reasons.
This could not even be called a moral choice. If they chose to give birth, it meant they might be unable to work at full capacity for several months. For people at the bottom, who had almost no room for error, that was terrifying. It was simply humanity's most basic survival instinct.
But that did not mean they would not be heartbroken. Even if the child's arrival had not been expected, people's longing for a happy family life never changed. As long as they had ever longed for such a life, the pain of losing a child was inevitable.
Having lived in the Slums for some time, Bruce knew where to find the most tears shed by mothers. Just like the "hospital" he had once seen in the East End, there were places in the Slums specifically meant to deal with this sort of trouble.
The girls who came here were all quite young. Some were so young that Bruce wanted to kill someone.
But only young girls came here, really. They had usually only recently entered the trade and lacked experience, while women who had worked for