HOMELESS GIRLS.
It was a fortunate event for our charity which led, in 1861, a certain
New York merchant to accept the position of President of our Society.
Mr. William A. Booth had the rare combination of qualities which form a
thorough presiding officer, and at the same time he was inspired by a
spirit of consecration to what he believed his Master's service, rarely
seen among men. His faculty of "rolling off" business, of keeping his
assembly or board on the points before them--for even business men have
sometimes the female tendency of rather wide-reaching discussions and
conversations--his wonderful clearness of comprehension, and a judicial
faculty which nearly always enabled him to balance with remarkable
fairness both sides of a question, made him beyond comparison the best
presiding officer for a business-board I have ever seen. With him, we
always had short and very full sessions, and reached our points rapidly
and efficiently. He had, too, the capacity, rare among men of organizing
brains, of accepting a rejection or rebuff to any proposition he may
have made (though this happened seldom) with perfect good humor. Perhaps
more than with his public services in our Board, I was struck with his
private career. Hour after hour in his little office, I have seen
different committees and officials of numerous societies, charities, and
financial associations come to him with their knotty points, and watched
with admiration as he disentangled each question, seeming always to
strike upon the course at once wise and just. A very small portion of
his busy time was then given to his own interests, though he had been
singularly successful in his private affairs. He seemed to me to carry
out wonderfully the Christian ideal in practical life in a busy city;
living day after day "for others," and to do the will of Him whom he
followed.
In our first labors together, I feared that, owing to his stricter
school of Presbyterian theology, we might not agree in some of our aims
and plans; but the practical test of true benefit to these unfortunate
children soon brought our theoretic views to a harmony in religious
practice; and as we both held that the first and best of all truths to
an outcast boy is the belief and love of Christ as a friend and Saviour,
we agreed on the substantial matter. I came, year by year, greatly to
value his judgment and his clear insight as to the _via media._
Both with him and our Treasurer, Mr. Williams, the services of love
rendered so many years to this cause of humanity, could not, as mere
labor, have been purchased with very lucrative salaries.
Mr. Booth's wise policy with the Society was to encourage whatever would
give it a more permanent foot-hold in the city, and, in this view, to
stimulate especially the founding of our Lodging-houses by means of
"funds," or by purchasing buildings.
How this plan succeeded, I shall detail hereafter.
At this present stage in our history, his attention was especially fixed
on the miserable condition of the young street-girls, and he suggested
to me what I had long been hoping for, the formation of a Lodging-house
for them, corresponding to that which had been so successful with the
newsboys.
As a preparatory step, I consulted carefully the police. They were
sufficiently definite as to the evil, but not very hopeful as to the
cure.
THE STREET-GIRLS.
I can truly say that no class we have ever labored for seemed to combine
so many elements of human misfortune and to present so many discouraging
features as this. They form, indeed, a class by themselves.
[Illustration: THE HOMELESS.]
Their histories are as various as are the different lots of the
inhabitants of a populous town. Some have come from the country, from
kind and respectable homes, to seek work in the city; here they
gradually consume their scanty means, and are driven from one refuge to
another, till they stand on the street, with the gayly-lighted house of
vice and the gloomy police-station to choose between. Others have sought
amusement in the town, and have been finally induced to enter some house
of bad character as a boarding-house, and have been thus entrapped; and
finally, in despair, and cursed with disease, they break loose, and take
shelter even in the prison-cell, if necessary. Others still have
abandoned an ill-tempered step-mother or father, and rushed out on the
streets to find a refuge, or get employment anywhere.
Drunkenness has darkened the childhood of some, and made home a hideous
place, till they have been glad to sleep in the crowded cellar or the
bare attic of some thronged "tenement," and then go forth to pick up a
living as they could in the great metropolis. Some are orphans, some
have parents whom they detest, some are children of misfortune, and
others of vice; some are foreigners, some native. They come from the
north and the south, the east and the west; all races and countries are
represented among them. They are not habitually vicious, or they would
not be on the streets. They are unlucky, unfortunate, getting a
situation only to lose it, and finding a home, to be soon driven from
it. Their habits are irregular, they do not like steady labor, they have
learned nothing well, they have no discipline, their clothes are
neglected, they have no appreciation of what neatness is, yet if they
earn a few shillings extra, they are sore to spend them on some foolish
gewgaw. Many of them are pretty and bright, with apparently fine
capacities, but inheriting an unusual quantity of the human tendencies
to evil. They are incessantly deceived and betrayed, and they as
constantly deceive others. Their cunning in concealing their indulgences
or vices surpasses all conception. Untruth seems often more familiar to
them than truth. Their worst quality is their superficiality. There is
no depth either to their virtues or vices. They sin, and immediately
repent with alacrity; they live virtuously for years, and a straw seems
suddenly to turn them. They weep at the presentation of the divine
character in Christ, and pray with fervency; and, the very next day, may
ruin their virtue or steal their neighbor's garment, or take to
drinking, or set a whole block in ferment with some biting scandal. They
seem to be children, but with woman's passion, and woman's jealousy and
scathing tongue. They trust a superior as a child; they neglect
themselves, and injure body and mind as a child might; they have a
child's generosity, and occasional freshness of impulse and desire of
purity; but their passions sweep over them with the force of maturity,
and their temper, and power of setting persons by the ears, and
backbiting, and occasional intensity of hate, belong to a later period
of life. Not unfrequently, when real danger or severe sickness arouses
them, they show the wonderful qualities of womanhood in a power of
sacrifice which utterly forgets self, and a love which shines brightly,
eyen through the shadow of death.
But their combination of childishness and undisciplined maturity is an
extremely difficult one to manage practically, and exposes them to
endless sufferings and dangers. Their condition fifteen years ago seemed
a thoroughly hopeless one.
There was then, if we mistake not, but a single refuge in the whole
city, where these unfortunate creatures could take shelter, and that was
Mr. Pease's Five Points Mission, which contained so many women who had
been long in vicious courses, as to make it unsuitable for those who
were just on the dividing line.
Our plan for their relief took the shape of
THE GIRLS' LODGING-HOUSE.
It is no exaggeration to say that this instrument of charity and reform
has cost us more trouble than all our enterprises together.
The simple purpose and plan of it was, like that of our other efforts,
to reform habits and character through material and moral appliances,
and subsequently through an entire change of circumstances, and at the
same time to relieve suffering and misfortune.
We opened first a shelter, where any drifting, friendless girl could go
for a night's lodging. If she had means, she was to pay a trifling
sum--five or six cents; if not, she aided in the labor of the house, and
thus in part defrayed the expense of her board. Agents were sent out on
the docks and among the slums of the city to pick up the wayfarers;
notices were posted in the station-houses, and near the ferries and
railroads depots, and even advertisements put into the cheap papers. We
made a business of scattering the news of this charity wherever there
were forlorn girls seeking for home or protection, or street-wandering
young women who had no place to lay their heads.
We hoped to reach down the hand of welcome to the darkest dens of the
city, and call back to virtue some poor, unbefriended creature, who was
trembling on the very line between purity and vice. Our charity seemed
to stand by the ferries, the docks, the police-stations, and prisons,
and open a door of kindness and virtue to these hard-driven, tired
wanderers on the ways of life. Our design was that no young girl,
suddenly cast out on the streets of a great city, should be without a
shelter and a place where good influences could surround her. We opened
a House for the houseless; an abode of Christian sympathy for the
utterly unbefriended and misguided; a place of work for the idle and
unthrifty.
The plan seemed at once to reach its object: the doors opened on a
forlorn procession of unfortunates. Girls broke out of houses of vice,
where they had been entrapped, leaving every article of dress, except
what they wore, behind them; the police brought wretched young
wanderers, who had slept on the station-floors; the daughters of decent
country-people, who had come to the town for amusement or employment,
and, losing or wasting their means, had walked the streets all the night
long, applied for shelter; orphans selling flowers, or peddling about
the theatres; the children of drunkards; the unhappy daughters of
families where quarreling and abuse were the rule; girls who had run
away; girls who had been driven away; girls who sought a respite in
intervals of vice,--all this most unfortunate throng began to beset the
doors of the "Girls' Lodging-house."
We had indeed reached the class intended, but now our difficulties only
began.
It would not do to turn our Lodging-house into a Reformatory for
Magdalens, nor to make it into a convenient resting-place for those who
lived on the wages of lust. To keep a house for reforming young women of
bad character would only pervert those of good, and shut out the decent
and honest poor. We must draw a line; but where? We attempted to receive
only those of apparent honesty and virtue, and to exclude those who were
too mature; keeping, if possible, below the age of eighteen years. We
sought to shut out the professional "street-walkers." This at once
involved us in endless difficulties. Sweet young maidens, whom we
guilelessly admitted, and who gave most touching stories of early
bereavement and present loneliness, and whose voices arose in moving
hymns of penitence, and whose bright eyes filled with tears under the
Sunday exhortation, turned out perhaps the most skillful and
thorough-going deceivers, plying their bad trade in the day, and filling
the minds of their comrades with all sorts of wickedness in the evening.
We came to the conviction that these girls would deceive the very elect.
Then some "erring child of poverty," as the reporters called her, would
apply at a late hour at the door, after an unsuccessful evening, her
breath showing her habit, and be refused, and go to the station-house,
and in the morning a fearful narrative would appear in some paper, of
the shameful hypocrisy and cruel machinery of charitable institutions.
Or, perhaps, she would be admitted, and cover the house with disgrace by
her conduct in the night. One wayfarer, thus received, scattered a
contagious disease, which emptied the whole house, and carried off the
housekeeper and several lodgers. Another, in the night dropped her
newly-born dead babe into the vault.
The rule, too, of excluding all over eighteen years of age caused great
discontent with the poor, and with certain portions of the public. And
yet, as rigidly as humanity would allow, we must follow our plan of
benefiting children and youth.
It soon turned out, however, that the young street-children who were
engaged in street-trades, had some relative to whom their labor was of
profit, so that they gradually drifted back to their cellars and attics,
and only occasionally took a night's lodging when out late near the
theatre. Those who were the greatest frequenters of the House proved to
be the young girls between fourteen and eighteen.
And a more difficult class than these to manage, no philanthropic mortal
ever came in contact with. The most had a constitutional objection to
work; they had learned to do nothing well, and therefore got but little
wages anywhere; they were shockingly careless, both of their persons and
their clothing; and, worse than all, they showed a cunning and skill of
deceit and a capacity of scandal, and of setting the family by the ears
in petty quarrels and jealousies, which might have discouraged the most
sanguine reformer.
The matron, Mrs. Trott, who had especially to struggle with these evils,
had received a fitting preparatory training: she had taught in the "Five
Points." She was a thorough disciplinarian; believed in work, and was
animated by the highest Christian earnestness.
As years passed by, the only defect that appeared in her was, perhaps,
what was perfectly natural in such circumstances. The sins of the world,
and the calamities of the poor, began to weigh on her mind, until its
spring was fairly bent. Society seemed to her diseased with the sin
against purity. The outcast daughters of the poor had no chance in this
hard world. All the circumstances of life were against the friendless
girl. Often, after most self-denying, and, to other minds, successful
efforts to benefit these poor creatures, some enthusiastic spectator
would say, "How much good you are doing!" "Well," she would say, with a
sigh, "I sometimes hope so!"
Once, I asked her if she could not write a cheerful report for our
trustees, giving some of the many encouraging facts she knew.
To my dismay, when the document appeared, the first two pages were
devoted to a melancholy recollection of the horrible typhus which had
once desolated the household! I think, finally, her mind took almost a
sad pleasure in dwelling on the woes and miseries of humanity. Still,
even with this constitutional weight on her, she did her work for those
unfortunate girls faithfully and devotedly.
The great danger and temptation of such establishments, as I have always
found, are in the desire of keeping the inmates, and showing to the
public your "reforms." My instruction always was, that the "Girls'
Lodging-house" was not to be a "Home." We did not want to make an asylum
of it. We hoped to begin the work of improvement with these young girls,
and then leave them to the natural agencies of society. To teach them to
work, to be clean, and to understand the virtues of order and
punctuality; to lay the foundations of a housekeeper or servant; to
bring the influences of discipline, of kindness, and religion to bear on
these wild and ungoverned creatures--these were to be the great objects
of the "Lodging-house;" then some good home or respectable family were
to do the rest. We were to keep lodgers a little while only, and then to
pass them along to situations or places of work.
The struggles of Mr. and Mrs. Trott, the superintendent and matron,
against these discouraging evils in the condition and character of this
class, would make a history in itself! They set themselves to work upon
details, with an abounding patience, and with a humanity which was not
to be wearied.
The first effort was to teach the girls something like a habit of
personal cleanliness; then, to enforce order and punctuality, of which
they knew nothing; next, to require early rising, and going to bed at a
reasonable hour. The lessons of housekeeping were begun at the
foundation, being tasks in scrubbing and cleaning; then, bed-making, and
finally plain cooking, sewing, and machine-work. Some of the inmates
went out for their daily labor in shops or factories; but the most had
to be employed in house-work, and thus paid for their support. They soon
carried on the work of a large establishment, and at the same time made
thousands of articles of clothing for the poor children elsewhere under
the charge of the Society.
A great deal of stress, of course, was laid on religious and moral
instruction. The girls always "listened gladly," and were easily moved
by earnest and sympathetic teaching and oratory.
Fortunately for the success of this Charity, one of our trustees, a man
filled with "the milk of human kindness," Mr. B. J. Howland, took part
in it, as if it were his main occupation in life. Twice in the week, he
was present with these poor girls for many years, teaching them the
principles of morality and religion, training them in singing,
contriving amusements and festivals for them, sympathizing in their
sorrows and troubles, until he became like a father and counselor to
these wild, heedless young creatures.
When, at length, the good old man departs--_et serus in coelum
redeat!_--the tears of the friendless and forgotten will fall on his
grave,
"And the blessings of the poor
Shall waft him to the other shore."
Of the effects of the patient labors of years, we will quote a few
instances from Mrs. Trott's journal. She is writing, in the first
extract, of a journey at the West:--
"Several stations were pointed out, where our Lodging house girls are
located; and we envied them their quiet, rural homes, wishing that
others might follow their example. Maggie M., a bright American girl,
who left us last spring, was fresh in our memory, as we almost passed
her door. The friendless child bids fair to make an educated,
respectable woman. She writes of her advantages and privileges, and says
she intends to improve them, and make the very best use of her time.
"Our old friend, Mary F., is still contented and happy; she shows no
inclination to return, and remains in the place procured for her two
years ago. She often expresses a great anxiety for several of the girls
whom she left here, and have turned out very bad. We were rather
doubtful of Mary's intentions when she left us, but have reason for
thankfulness that thus far she tries to do right, and leads a Christian
life. She was a girl well informed, of good common-sense, rather
attractive, and, we doubt not, is 'a brand plucked from the burning.'
"Emma H., a very interesting, amiable young girl, who spent several
months at the Lodge, while waiting for a good opening, has just been to
visit as. She is living with Mrs. H., Judge B----'s daughter, on the
Hudson. They are mutually, pleased with each other; and Mrs. B. says
that 'Emma takes an adopted daughter's place, and nothing would tempt me
to part with her.' Emma was well dressed, and as comfortably situated as
one could wish. There is no reason why she should not educate herself,
and fill a higher position in the future.
"S. A. was a cigar-girl when she came to the Lodging-house six years
ago. An orphan, friendless and homeless--we all knew her desire to
obtain an education, her willingness to make any sacrifice, and put up
with the humblest fare, that she might accomplish this end; and then her
earnest desire to do good, and her consistent Christian character, since
she united with the Church, and the real missionary she proved among the
girls, when death was in the house, leaving her school, and assisting
night and day among the sick. She is now completing her education, and
will soon graduate with honors. Her teacher speaks of her in the highest
terms.
"There was another, J. L., a very pretty little girl, who was with us at
the same time, who was guilty of the most aggravating petty thefts. She
was so modest and pleasing in her demeanor, so sincere in her
attachments, that it was difficult to believe, until she acknowledged
her guilt, that she had picked the pockets of the very persons to whom
she had made showy presents. Vanity was her ruling motive--a desire to
appear smart and generous, and to show that she had rich friends, who
supplied her with money. She was expostulated with long and tenderly,
promised to reform, and has lately united with a church where she is an
active and zealous member. We have never heard a word respecting her
dishonesty since she left us, and she now occupies a responsible
position as forewoman in a Broadway store.
"P. E. was also a Lodging-house girl, a year or more, at the same time.
She came to us in a very friendless, destitute condition. She was one of
the unfortunates with the usual story of shame and desertion--she had
just buried her child, and needed an asylum. We have every reason to
believe her repentance sincere, and that she made no false pretensions
to piety when her name was added to the list of professing Christians.
The church took an unusual interest in her, and have paid her school
expenses several years. She is now teaching.
"Our next is Mary M. Here is a bit of romance. When she first entered
our home, she was reduced to the very lowest extremity of poverty and
wretchedness. She remained with us some time, and then went to a
situation in Connecticut, where she married a young Southern gentleman,
who fell desperately in love with her (because she cared for him when
ill), returned to New York, and, when she called upon us, was boarding
at the Fifth-avenue Hotel. This was noticed at the time in several
Eastern and New York papers. She showed her gratitude to us by calling
and making presents to members of the House--looking up an associate,
whom she found in a miserable garret clothing her, and returning her to
her friends. She greatly surprised us in the exhibition of the true
womanly traits which she always manifested. This is a true instance of
the saying that a resident of the Five Points today may be found in her
home in Fifth Avenue to-morrow.
"Without going into details, we could also mention S. H., who has often
been in our reports as unmanageable; the two D---- girls, who came from
Miss Trail's school; the two M---- sisters, who had a fierce drunken
mother, that pawned their shoes for rum one cold winter's morn, before
they had arisen from their wretched bed; two R---- sisters, turned into
the streets by drunken parents, brought to our house by a kind-hearted
expressman, dripping with rain; and little May, received, cold and
hungry, one winter's day--all comfortably settled in country homes; most
of them married, and living out West--not forgetting Maggie, the Irish
girl who wrote us, soon after she went West, that her husband had his
little farm, pigs, cow, etc; requesting us to send them a little girl
for adoption. Her prospect here never would have been above a garret or
cellar.
"We have L. M. in New York, married to a mechanic. Every few months she
brings a bundle of clothing for those who were once her companions. She
is very energetic and industrious, and highly respected.
"M. E., another excellent Christian girl. She has been greatly tried in
trying to save a reckless sister from destruction; once she took her
West; then she returned with her when she found her sister's condition
made it necessary. Such sisterly affection is seldom manifested as this
girl has shown. She bought her clothing out of her own earnings, when
she had scarcely a change for herself; and, after the erring sister's
death, paid her child's board, working night and day to do so.
"These cases are true in every particular, and none of recent date.
There are many more hopeful ones among our young girls, who have not
been away from us long, and of whom we hear excellent reports."
One of the best features of this most practical "Institution" for poor
girls is a Sewing-machine School, where lessons are given gratuitously.
In three weeks, a girl who had previously depended wholly on her needle,
and could hardly earn her three dollars a week, will learn the use of
the machine, and earn from one dollar to two dollars per day.
During one year this Sewing-machine School sent forth some one thousand
two hundred poor girls, who earned a good living through their
instruction there. The expense was trifling, as the machines were all
given or loaned by the manufacturers, and for the room, we employed the
parlor of the Lodging-house.
During the winter of 1870-71, the trustees determined to try to secure a
permanent and convenient house for these girls.
Two well-known gentlemen of our city headed the subscription with $1,000
each; the trustees came forward liberally, and the two or three who have
done so much for this charity took on themselves the disagreeable task
of soliciting funds, so that in two months we had some $27,000
subscribed, with which we both secured an excellent building in St.
Mark's Place, and adapted it for our purposes. Our effort is in this to
make the house more attractive and tasteful than such places usually
are; and various ladies have co-operated with us, to exert a more
profound and renovating influence on these girls.
TRAINING-SCHOOL FOR SERVANTS.
We have already engrafted on this Lodging-house a School to train
ordinary house-servants; to teach plain cooking, waiting, the care of
bedrooms, and good laundry-work. Nothing is more needed among this
class, or by the public generally, than such a "Training-school."
Of the statistics of the Lodging-house, Mrs. Trott writes as follows:--
"Ten thousand two hundred and twenty-five lodgers. What an army would
the registered names make, since a forlorn, wretched child of thirteen
years, from the old Trinity station-house, headed the lists in 1861!
"Among this number there are many cozily sitting by their own
hearth-stones; others are filling positions of usefulness and trust in
families and stores; some have been adopted in distant towns, where they
fill a daughter's place; and some have gone to return no more. A large
number we cannot trace.
"During this period, three thousand one hundred and one have found
employment, and gone to situations, or returned to friends.
"Fifteen thousand four hundred and twenty-nine garments have been cut
and made, and distributed among the poor, or used as outfits in sending
companies West."