There was a boy about fourteen years of age who would daily menace his
widowed mother with denouncing her to the "office." He terrorised the
poor woman to such an extent that she allowed him to do whatever he
wanted. He never went to school, he smoked, he drank, he boxed, he went
to all the moving picture shows, and all this money he obtained from his
mother on the threat to tell the "office." The great sin the woman had
committed was that she had remarried, a young man, and the groom had
decamped with two hundred and fifty dollars that she had saved up in the
seven or eight years widowhood and beggary. The whole affair was a
secret to the institution, as the woman feared her two dollars weekly
pension would be discontinued should they learn of the marriage.
I happened to visit the home one morning. The boy was pacing the room,
almost naked, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his lower lip, his
face enraged, his eyes red, and as he paced the room he cursed the
mother, who was standing at the stove preparing the food. And the
language he used! I heard all the curses of the Bowery as I stood near
the door.
"I'll fix you up, you old rag--cough up or I'll smash your ivory."