STREET GIRLS.
THEIR SUFFERINGS AND CRIMES.
A girl street-rover is to my mind the most painful figure in all the
unfortunate crowd of a large city. With a boy, "Arab of the streets,"
one always has the consolation that, despite his ragged clothes and bed
in a box or hay-barge, he often has a rather good time of it, and enjoys
many of the delicious pleasures of a child's roving life, and that a
fortunate turn of events may at any time make an honest, industrious
fellow of him. At heart we cannot say that he is much corrupted; his
sins belong to his ignorance and his condition, and are often easily
corrected by a radical change of circumstances. The oaths,
tobacco-spitting, and slang, and even the fighting and stealing of a
street-boy, are not so bad as they look. Refined influences, the checks
of religion, and a fairer chance for existence without incessant
struggle, will often utterly eradicate these evil habits, and the rough,
thieving New York vagrant make an honest, hardworking Western pioneer.
It is true that sometimes the habit of vagrancy and idling may be too
deeply worked in him for his character to speedily reform; but, if of
tender years, a change of circumstances will nearly always bring a
change of character.
With a girl-vagrant it is different. She feels homelessness and
friendlessness more; she has more of the feminine dependence on
affection; the street-trades, too, are harder for her, and the return at
night to some lonely cellar or tenement-room, crowded with dirty people
of all ages and sexes, is more dreary. She develops body and mind
earlier than the boy, and the habits of vagabondism stamped on her in
childhood are more difficult to wear off.
Then the strange and mysterious subject of sexual vice comes in. It has
often seemed to me one of the most dark arrangements of this singular
world that a female child of the poor should be permitted to start on
its immortal career with almost every influence about it degrading, its
inherited tendencies overwhelming toward indulgence of passion, its
examples all of crime or lust, its lower nature awake long before its
higher, and then that it should be allowed to soil and degrade its soul
before the maturity of reason, and beyond all human possibility of
cleansing!
For there is no reality in the sentimental assertion that the sexual
sins of the lad are as degrading as those of the girl. The instinct of
the female is more toward the preservation of purity, and therefore her
fall is deeper--an instinct grounded in the desire of preserving a
stock, or even the necessity of perpetuating our race.
Still, were the indulgences of the two sexes of a similar character--as
in savage races--were they both following passion alone, the moral
effect would not perhaps be so different in the two cases. But the sin
of the girl soon becomes what the Bible calls "a sin against one's own
body," the most debasing of all sins. She soon learns to offer for sale
that which is in its nature beyond all price, and to feign the most
sacred affections, and barter with the most delicate instincts. She no
longer merely follows blindly and excessively an instinct; she perverts
a passion and sells herself. The only parallel case with the male sex
would be that in some Eastern communities which are rotting and falling
to pieces from their debasing and unnatural crimes. When we hear of such
disgusting offenses under any form of civilization, whether it be under
the Rome of the Empire, or the Turkey of to-day, we know that disaster,
ruin, and death, are near the State and the people.
This crime, with the girl, seems to sap and rot the whole nature. She
loses self-respect, without which every human being soon sinks to the
lowest depths; she loses the habit of industry, and cannot be taught to
work. Having won her food at the table of Nature by unnatural means,
Nature seems to cast her out, and henceforth she cannot labor. Living in
a state of unnatural excitement, often worked up to a high pitch of
nervous tension by stimulants, becoming weak in body and mind, her
character loses fixedness of purpose and tenacity and true energy. The
diabolical women who support and plunder her, the vile society she
keeps, the literature she reads, the business she has chosen or fallen
into, serve continually more and more to degrade and defile her. If, in
a moment of remorse, she flee away and take honest work, her weakness
and bad habits follow her; she is inefficient, careless, unsteady, and
lazy; she craves the stimulus and hollow gayety of the wild life she has
led; her ill name dogs her; all the wicked have an instinct of her
former evil courses; the world and herself are against reform, and,
unless she chance to have a higher moral nature or stronger will than
most of her class, or unless Religion should touch even her polluted
soul, she soon falls back, and gives one more sad illustration of the
immense difficulty of a fallen woman rising again.
The great majority of prostitutes, it must be remembered, have had no
romantic or sensational history, though they always affect this. They
usually relate, and perhaps even imagine, that they have been seduced
from the paths of virtue suddenly and by the wiles of some heartless
seducer. Often they describe themselves as belonging to some virtuous,
respectable, and even wealthy family. Their real history, however, is
much more commonplace and matter-of-fact. They have been poor women's
daughters, and did not want to work as their mothers did; or they have
grown up in a tenement-room, crowded with boys and men, and lost purity
before they knew what it was; or they have liked gay company, and have
had no good influences around them, and sought pleasure in criminal
indulgences; or they have been street-children, poor, neglected, and
ignorant, and thus naturally and inevitably have become depraved women.
Their sad life and debased character are the natural outgrowth of
poverty, ignorance, and laziness. The number among them who have "seen
better days," or have fallen from heights of virtue, is incredibly
small. They show what fruits neglect in childhood, and want of education
and of the habit of labor, and the absence of pure examples, will
inevitably bear. Yet in their low estate they always show some of the
divine qualities of their sex. The physicians in the Blackwell's Island
Hospital say that there are no nurses so tender and devoted to the sick
and dying as these girls. And the honesty of their dealings with the
washerwomen and shopkeepers, who trust them while in their vile houses,
has often been noted.
The words of sympathy and religion always touch their hearts, though the
effect passes like the April cloud. On a broad scale, probably no remedy
that man could apply would ever cure this fatal disease of society. It
may, however, be diminished in its ravages, and prevented in a large
measure. The check to its devastations in a laboring or poor class will
be the facility of marriage, the opening of new channels of female work,
but, above all, the influences of education and Religion.
An incident occurred daring our early labors, which is worth
preserving:
EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL DURING 1854.
THE TOMBS.
"Mrs. Forster, the excellent Matron of the Female Department of the
prison, had told us of an interesting young German girl, committed for
vagrancy, who might just at this crisis be rescued. I entered these
soiled and gloomy Egyptian archways, so appropriate and so depressing,
that the sight of the low columns and lotus capitals is to me now
inevitably associated with the somber and miserable histories of the
place.
"After a short waiting, the girl was brought in--a German girl,
apparently about fourteen, very thinly but neatly dressed, of slight
figure, and a face intelligent and old for her years, the eye passionate
and shrewd. I give details because the conversation which followed was
remarkable.
"The poor feel, but they can seldom speak. The story she told, with a
wonderful eloquence, thrilled to all our hearts; it seemed to us, then,
like the first articulate voice from the great poor class of the city.
"Her eye had a hard look at first, but softened when I spoke to her in
her own language.
"'Have you been long here?'
"'Only two days, sir.'
"Why are you here?'
"'I will tell you, sir. I was working out with a lady. I had to get up
early and go to bed late, and I never had rest. She worked me always;
and, finally, because I could not do everything, she beat me--she beat
me like a dog, and I ran away; I could not bear it.'
"The manner of this was wonderfully passionate and eloquent.
"'But I thought you were arrested for being near a place of bad
character,' said I.
"'I am going to tell you, sir. The next day I and my father went to get
some clothes I left there, and the lady wouldn't give them up; and what
could we do? What can the poor do? My father is a poor old man, who
picks rags in the streets, and I have never picked rags yet. He said, "I
don't want you to be a rag-picker. You are not a child now--people will
look at you--you will come to harm." And I said, "No, father, I will
help you. We must do something now, I am out of place;" and so I went
out. I picked all day, and didn't make much, and I was cold and hungry.
Towards night, a gentleman met me--a very fine, well-dressed gentleman,
an American, and he said, "Will you go home with me!" and I said, "No."
He said, "I will give you twenty shillings," and I told him I would go.
And the next morning I was taken up outside by the officer.'
"'Poor girl!' said some one, 'had you forgotten your mother? and what a
sin it was!'
"'No, sir, I did remember her. She had no clothes, and I had no shoes;
and I have only this (she shivered in her thin dress), and winter is
coming on. I know what making money is, sir. I am only fourteen, but I
am old enough. I have had to take care of myself ever since I was ten
years old, and I have never had a cent given me. It may be a sin, sir
(and the tears rained down her cheeks, which she did not try to wipe
away). I do not ask you to forgive it. Men can't forgive, but God will
forgive. I know about men.
"'The rich do such things and worse, and no one says anything against
them. But I, sir--_I am poor!_ (This she said with a tone which struck
the very heart-strings.) I have never had any one to take care of me.
Many is the day I have gone hungry from morning till night, because I
did not dare spend a cent or two, the only ones I had. Oh, I have wished
sometimes so to die! Why does not God kill me!'
"She was choked by her sobs. We let her calm herself a moment, and then
told her our plan of finding her a good home, where she could make an
honest living. She was mistrustful. 'I will tell you, _mein Herren;_ I
know men, and I do not believe any one, I have been cheated so often.
There is no trust in any one. I am not a child. I have lived as long as
people twice as old.'
"'But you do not wish to stay in prison?'
"'O God, no! Oh, there is such a weight on my heart here. There is
nothing but bad to learn in prison. These dirty Irish girls! I would
kill myself if I had to stay here. Why was I ever born? I have such
_Kummerniss_ (woes) here (she pressed her hand on her heart)--I am
poor!'
"We explained our plan more at length, and she became satisfied. We
wished her to be bound to stay some years.
"'No,' said she, passionately, 'I cannot; I confess to you, gentlemen. I
should either run away or die, if I was bound.'
"We talked with the matron. She had never known, she said, in her
experience, such a remarkable girl. The children there of nine or ten
years were often as old as young women, but this girl was an experienced
woman. The offense, however, she had no doubt was her first.
"We obtained her release; and one of us, Mr. G., walked over to her
house or cabin, some three miles on the other side of Williamsburgh, in
order that she might see her parents before she went to her new home.
"As she walked along, she looked up in Mr. G.'s face, and asked,
thoughtfully. Why we came there for her? He explained. She listened, and
after a little while, said, in broken English 'Don't you think better
for poor little girls to die than live?' He spoke kindly to her, and
said something about a good God. She shook her head, 'No, no good God.
Why am I so? It always was so. Why much suffer, if good God?' He told
her they would get her a supper, and in the morning she should start off
and find new friends. She became gradually almost
ungoverned--sobbed--would like to die, even threatened suicide in this
wild way.
"Kindness and calm words at length made her more reasonable. After much
trouble, they reached the home or den of the poor rag-picker. The
parents were very grateful, and she was to start off the next morning to
a country home, where, perhaps finally, the parents will join her.
"For myself, the evening shadow seemed more somber, and the cheerful
home-lights less cheerful, as I walked home, remembering such a
history.
"Ye who are happy, whose lives have been under sunshine and gentle
influences around whom Affection, and Piety, and Love have watched, as
ye gather in cheerful circles these autumn evenings, think of these
bitter and friendless children of the poor, in the great city. But few
have such eloquent expressions as this poor girl, yet all inarticulately
feel.
"There are sad histories beneath this gay world--lives over which is the
very shadow of death. God be thanked, there is a Heart which feels for
them all, where every pang and groan will find a sympathy, which will
one day right the wrong, and bring back the light over human life.
"The day is short for us all; but for some it will be a pleasant
thought, when we come to lay down our heads at last, that we have eased
a few aching hearts, and brought peace and new hope to the dark lives of
those whom men had forgotten or cast out."
[Illustration: THE STREET-GIRL'S END.]