Lights and Shadows of New York Life

J >> James D. McCabe >> Lights and Shadows of New York Life

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"The wages of sin is death!" Never were truer words written. Ask any
one whose duties have called him into constant contact with the shadowy
side of city life, and he will tell you that there is no escape from the
doom of the fallen women. Let no woman deceive herself. Once entered
upon a life of shame, however brilliant the opening may be, the end is
certain, unless she anticipates it by suicide. The longer her life, the
greater her suffering. It is very hard for a woman to reform from such a
life. Not one in a hundred feels the desire to reform. Everything is
against her. Her mode of life is utterly destructive of her better
nature, her higher impulses. There is but one means of safety. Avoid
the first step. There is no turning back, when once a woman enters upon
the downward path. "The wages of sin is death!"--death in its most awful
form.

It is generally very hard to learn the true history of these
unfortunates. As a rule, they have lively imaginations, and rarely
confine themselves to facts. All wish to excite the sympathy of those to
whom they speak, and make themselves as irresponsible for their fall as
possible. It is safe to assert that the truly unfortunate are the
exceptions. Women of cultivation and refinement are exceptionally rare
in this grade of life. The majority were of humble position originally,
and either deliberately adopted or allowed themselves to be led into the
life as a means of escaping poverty and gratifying a love for fine
clothes and display. The greater part of these women begin their careers
at second and third class houses, and, as a matter of course, their
descent into the depths is all the more rapid. Very many are led astray
through their ignorance, and by the persuasions of their acquaintances
engaged in the same wretched business. The proprietors of these houses,
of every class, spare no pains to draw into their nets all the victims
that can he ensnared. They have their agents scattered all over the
country, who use every means to tempt young girls to come to the great
city to engage in this life of shame. They promise them money, fine
clothes, ease, and an elegant home. The seminaries and rural districts
of the land furnish a large proportion of this class. The hotels in this
city are closely watched by the agents of these infamous establishments,
especially hotels of the plainer and less expensive kind. These harpies
watch their chance, and when they lay siege to a blooming young girl,
surround her with every species of enticement. She is taken to church,
to places of amusement, or to the park, and, in returning, a visit is
paid to the house of a friend of the harpy. Refreshments are offered,
and a glass of drugged wine plunges the victim into a stupor, from which
she awakes a ruined woman.

A large number of the fallen women of this city are from New England.
The excess of the female population in that overcrowded section of the
country makes it impossible for all to find husbands, and throws many
upon their own resources for their support. There is not room for all at
home, and hundreds come every year to this city. They are ignorant of
the difficulty of finding employment here, but soon learn it by
experience. The runners of the houses of ill-fame are always on the
watch for them, and from various causes many of these girls fall victims
to them and join the lost sisterhood. They are generally the daughters
of farmers, or working men, and when they come are fresh in constitution
and blooming in their young beauty. God pity them! These blessings soon
vanish. They dare not escape from their slavery, for they have no means
of earning a living in the great city, and they know they would not be
received at home, were their story known. Their very mothers would turn
from them with loathing. Without hope, they cling to their shame, and
sink lower and lower, until death mercifully ends their human sufferings.
As long as they are prosperous, they represent in their letters home that
they are engaged in a steady, honest business, and the parents' fears are
lulled. After awhile these letters are rarer. Finally they cease
altogether. Would a father find his child after this, he must seek her
in the foulest hells of the city.

When other arts fail, the wretches who lie in wait for women here seek to
ruin them by foul means. They are drugged, or are forced into ruin. A
woman in New York cannot be too careful. There are many scoundrels in
the city who make it their business to annoy and insult respectable
ladies in the hope of luring them to lives of shame. Young girls have
been frequently enticed into low class brothels and forced to submit to
outrage. Very few of the perpetrators of these crimes are punished as
they deserve. Even if the victim complains to the police, it amounts to
nothing. The same species of crime is practised every year.

The police are frequently called upon by persons from other parts of the
country, for aid in seeking a lost daughter, or a sister, or some female
relative. Sometimes these searches, which are always promptly made, are
rewarded with success. Some unfortunates are, in this way, saved before
they have fallen so low as to make efforts in their behalf vain. Others,
overwhelmed with despair, will refuse to leave their shame. They cannot
bear the pity or silent scorn of their former relatives and friends, and
prefer to cling to their present homes. It is very hard for a fallen
woman to retrace her steps, even if her friends or relatives are willing
to help her do so.

Last winter an old gray-haired man came to the city from his farm in New
England, accompanied by his son, a manly youth, in search of his lost
daughter. His description enabled the police to recognize the girl as
one who had but recently appeared in the city, and they at once led the
father and brother to the house of which she was an inmate. As they
entered the parlor, the girl recognized her father, and with a cry of joy
sprang into his arms. She readily consented to go back with him, and
that night all three left the city for their distant home.

A gentleman once found his daughter in one of the first-class houses of
the city, to which she had been tracked by the police. He sought her
there, and she received him with every demonstration of joy and
affection. He urged her to return home with him, promising that all
should be forgiven, and forgotten, but she refused to do so, and was deaf
to all his entreaties. He brought her mother to see her, and though the
girl clung to her and wept bitterly in parting, she would not go home.
She felt that it was too late. She was lost.

Many of these poor creatures treasure sacredly the memories of their
childhood and home. They will speak of them with a calmness which shows
how deep and real is their despair. They would flee from their horrible
lives if they could, but they are so enslaved that they are not able to
do so. Their sin crushes them to the earth, and they cannot rise above
it.

Drunkenness is very common among women of this class. Generally the
liquors used are of an inferior quality, and do their dreadful work on
the health and beauty of their victim very quickly. The use of narcotics
is also very common. All the drug stores in the vicinity of these houses
sell large quantities of opium, chloroform, and morphia. Absinthe is a
popular drink. This liquor is a slow but deadly poison, and destroys the
nervous system and brain, and produces insanity. Suicides are frequent,
and many of the poor creatures fall victims to the brutality of the men
who seek their society.

II. HOUSES OF ASSIGNATION.

There are over one hundred houses of assignation of all kinds in the city
known to the police. This estimate includes the bed-houses, of which we
shall speak further on. Besides these, there are places used for
assignations which the officials of the law do not and cannot include in
their returns. These are the smaller hotels, and sometimes the larger
ones. Sometimes women take rooms in some of the cheap hotels, and there
receive the visits of men whose acquaintance they have made on the street
or at some place of amusement. Very often the proprietor of the house is
simply victimized by such people, and several respectable houses have
been so far overrun by them that decent persons have avoided them
altogether. One or two of the smaller hotels of the city bear a most
unenviable reputation of this kind. Even the first-class hotels cannot
keep themselves entirely free from the presence of courtezans of the
better class. Rich men keep their mistresses at them in elegant style,
and the guests, and sometimes the proprietors, are in utter ignorance of
the woman's true character. Again, women will live at the fashionable
hotels, in the strictest propriety, and live by the proceeds of their
meetings with men at houses of assignation.

The best houses are located in respectable, and a few in fashionable
neighborhoods. In various ways they soon acquire a notoriety amongst
persons having use for them. In the majority of them, the proprietress
resides alone. Her visitors are persons of all classes in society.
Married women meet their lovers here, and young girls pass in these
polluted chambers the hours their parents suppose them to be devoting to
healthful and innocent amusements. There are many nominally virtuous
women in the city who visit these places one or more times each week.
They come in the day, if necessary, but generally at night. A visit to
the theatre, the opera, or a concert is too often followed by a visit to
one of these places. It is said by those who claim to know, that
sometimes women of good social position even possess pass keys to such
houses. The hot-house fashionable society, to which we have referred
elsewhere, sends many visitors here. Some married women visit these
places because they love other men better than their lawful husbands.
Others sin from mercenary motives. Their limited means do not allow them
to gratify their taste for dress and display, and they acquire the
desired ability in this infamous manner.

The majority of the houses are well known, and are scarcely conducted
with secrecy, which is the chief requisite. The better class houses are
handsomely furnished, and everything is conducted in the most secret
manner. The police have often discovered assignation houses in
residences which they believed to be simply the homes of private
families. All these houses bring high rents. Men of "respectable"
position have been known to furnish houses for this use, and have either
engaged women to manage them, or have let them at enormous rents,
supporting their own families in style on the proceeds of these dens of
infamy.

The prices paid by visitors for the use of the rooms are large, and the
receipts of the keeper make her fully able to pay the large rent demanded
of her.

The city papers contain numerous advertisements, which reveal to the
initiated the locality of these houses. They are represented as "Rooms
to let to quiet persons," or "Rooms in a strictly private family, where
boarders are not annoyed with impertinent questions," or "A handsome room
to let, with board for the lady only," or "Handsome apartments to
gentlemen, by a widow lady living alone." These advertisements are at
once recognized by those in search of them. Families from the country
frequently stumble across these places by accident. If the female
members are young and handsome, they are received, and the mistake is not
found out, perhaps, until it is too late.

Public houses of prostitution are bad enough, but houses of assignation
are worse. The former are frequented only by the notoriously impure.
The latter draw to them women who, while sinning, retain their positions
in society. The more secret the place, the more dangerous it is. The
secrecy is but an encouragement to sin. Were the chance of detection
greater, women, at least, would hesitate longer before visiting them, but
they know that they can frequent them habitually, without fear of
discovery. Their outward appearance of respectability is a great
assistance to the scoundrels who seek to entrap an innocent female within
their walls. They form the worst feature of the Social Evil, and
something should be done to suppress them.

III. THE STREET WALKERS.

Strangers visiting the city are struck with the number of women who are
to be found on Broadway and the streets running parallel with it, without
male escorts, after dark. They pass up and down the great thoroughfares
at a rapid pace peculiar to them, glancing sharply at all the men they
meet, and sometimes speaking to them in a low, quick undertone. One
accustomed to the city can recognize them at a glance, and no man of
common sense could fail to distinguish them from the respectable women
who are forced to be out on the streets alone. They are known as Street
Walkers, and constitute one of the lowest orders of prostitutes to be
found in New York. They seem to be on the increase during the present
winter; and in Broadway especially are more numerous and bolder than they
have been for several years. The best looking and the best dressed are
seen on Broadway, and in parts of the Fifth and Fourth avenues. The
others correspond to the localities they frequent. They are chiefly
young girls, seventeen being the average age, but you will see children
of twelve and thirteen among them. Very few promenade Broadway below
Canal street. The neighborhoods of the hotels and places of amusement
are the most frequented. Some of the girls are quite pretty and affect a
modest deportment, but the majority are hideous and brazen. New faces
are constantly appearing on Broadway, to take the places of those who
have gone down into the depths.

Many of these girls have some regular employment, at which they work
during the day. Their regular earnings are small, and they take this
means of increasing them. The majority, however, depend upon their
infamous trade for their support. There have been rare cases in which
girls have been driven upon the streets by their parents, who either wish
to rid themselves of the support of the girl, or profit by her earnings.
We have known cases where the girls have voluntarily supported their
parents by the wages of their shame. There were once two sisters, well
known on Broadway, who devoted their earnings to paying off a heavy debt
of their father, which he was unable to meet. Such instances, however,
are very rare.

As a rule the girls seek the streets from mercenary motives. They begin
their wretched lives in the society of the most depraved, and are not
long in becoming criminals themselves. They are nearly all thieves, and
a very large proportion of them are but the decoys of the most desperate
male garroters and thieves. The majority of them are the confederates of
panel thieves. They are coarse, ugly, and disgusting, and medical men
who are called on to treat them professionally, state that as a class
they are terribly diseased. A healthy Street Walker is almost a myth.

Were these women dependent for their custom upon the city people, who
know them for what they are, they would starve. They know this, and they
exert their arts principally upon strangers. Strangers are more easily
deceived, and, as a rule, have money to lose. Hundreds of strangers,
coming to the city, follow them to their rooms, only to find themselves
in the power of thieves, who compel them on pain of instant death to
surrender all their valuables. The room taken by the decoy is vacated
immediately after the robbery, the girl and her confederate disappear,
and it is impossible to find them.

I know that this whole subject is unsavory, and I have not introduced it
from choice. The Social Evil is a terrible fact here, and it is
impossible to ignore it, and I believe that some good may be done by
speaking of it plainly and stripping it of any romantic features. It is
simply a disgusting and appalling feature of city life, and as such it is
presented here. I know that these pages will find their way into the
hands of those who contemplate visiting the city, and who will be
assailed by the street girls. To them I would say that to accompany
these women to their homes is simply to invite robbery and disease. New
York has an abundance of attractions of the better kind, and those who
desire amusement may find it in innocent enjoyment. Those who
deliberately seek to indulge in sensuality and dissipation in a city to
which they are strangers, deserve all the misfortunes which come to them
in consequence.

The police do not allow the girls to stop and converse with men on
Broadway. If a girl succeeds in finding a companion, she beckons him
into one of the side streets, where the police will not interfere with
her. If he is willing to go with her, she conducts him to her room,
which is in one of the numerous Bed Houses of the city. These bed houses
are simply large or small dwellings containing many furnished rooms,
which are let to street walkers by the week, or which are hired to
applicants of any class by the night. They are very profitable, and are
frequently owned by men of good social position, who rent them out to
others, or who retain the ownership, and employ a manager. The rent,
whether weekly or nightly, is invariably paid in advance, so that the
landlord loses nothing.

[Picture: THE RESULT OF FOLLOWING A STREET WALKER.]

The girl leads her companion to one of these houses, and if she has a
room already engaged, proceeds directly to it; if not, one is engaged
from a domestic on the spot, the price is paid, and the parties are shown
up stairs. The place is kept dark and quiet, in order to avoid the
attention of the police. The houses are more or less comfortable and
handsome, according to the class by which they are patronized. They are
sometimes preferred by guilty parties in high life, as the risk of being
seen and recognized is less there than in more aristocratic houses.
These houses have a constant run of visitors from about eight o'clock
until long after midnight.

The Street Walkers not only infest the city itself, but literally overrun
the various night lines of steamers plying between New York and the
neighboring towns. The Albany and Boston lines are so thronged by these
women that ladies are subjected to the greatest annoyance.

We have referred once or twice to panel thieving. This method of robbery
is closely connected with street walking. The girl in this case acts in
concert with a confederate, who is generally a man. She takes her victim
to her room, and directs him to deposit his clothing on a chair, which is
placed but a few inches from the wall at the end of the room. This wall
is false, and generally of wood. It is built some three or four feet
from the real wall of the room, thus forming a closet. As the whole room
is papered and but dimly lighted, a visitor cannot detect the fact that
it is a sham. A panel, which slides noiselessly and rapidly, is arranged
in the false wall, and the chair with the visitor's clothing upon it is
placed just in front of it. While the visitor's attention is engaged in
another quarter, the girl's confederate, who is concealed in the closet,
slides back the panel, and rifles the pockets of the clothes on the
chair. The panel is then noiselessly closed. When the visitor is about
to depart, or sometimes not until long after his departure, he discovers
his loss. He is sure the girl did not rob him, and he is completely
bewildered in his efforts to account for the robbery. Of course the
police could tell him how his money was taken, and could recover it, too,
but in nine cases out of ten the man is ashamed to seek their assistance,
as he does not wish his visit to such a place to be known. The thieves
know this, and this knowledge gives them a feeling of security which
emboldens them to commit still further depredations. The panel houses
are generally conducted by men, who employ the women to work for them.
The woman is sometimes the wife of the proprietor of the house. The
robberies nightly perpetrated foot up an immense aggregate. The visitors
are mainly strangers, and many of these go into these dens with large
sums of money on their persons. The police have been notified of losses
occurring in this way, amounting in a single instance to thousands of
dollars. The majority of the sums stolen are small, however, and the
victims bear the loss in silence. The police authorities are thoroughly
informed concerning the locality and operations of these establishments,
but they suffer them to go on without any effort to break them up.

IV. THE CONCERT SALOONS.

There are about seventy-five or eighty concert saloons in New York,
employing abandoned women as waitresses. The flashiest of these are
located on Broadway, there being nearly twenty of these infamous places
on the great thoroughfare between Spring and Fourth streets. During the
day they are closed, but one of the most prominent sets out before its
doors a large frame containing twenty or thirty exquisite card
photographs, and bearing these words, "Portraits of the young ladies
employed in this saloon." It is needless to say that the pictures are
taken at random from the stock of some photograph dealer, and have no
connection whatever with the hags employed in the saloon. The Bowery,
Chatham street, and some of the streets leading from Broadway, contain
the greater number of these concert saloons. The majority are located in
the basements of the buildings, but one or two of the Broadway
establishments use second story rooms. These places may be recognized by
their numerous gaudy transparencies and lamps, and by the discordant
strains of music which float up into the street from them. The Broadway
saloons are owned by a few scoundrels, many of them being conducted by
the same proprietor. A writer in the New York _World_ was recently
favored with the following truthful description of these places by one of
the best known proprietors:

"A concert saloon is a gin-mill on an improved plan--that's all, my
friend. I don't pay the girls any wages. They get a percentage on the
drinks they sell. Some saloon-keepers pays their girls regular wages and
a small percentage besides, but it don't work. The girls wont work
unless they have to. Now, my girls gets a third of whatever they sell.
The consequence is, they sell twice as much as they would if they was on
wages. You never can get people to work faithfully for you unless they
can make money by it. The liquor is cheap, and I don't mind telling you
its d---d nasty, then we charge double prices for it. Now, I charge
twenty cents for drinks that a regular gin-mill would sell for ten. Then
there are a lot of drinks that the girls takes themselves, which we
charges fifty cents for. They don't cost us more than four or five, but
after a girl has said what she'll take, and a man has ordered it, he
can't go back on the price. Then hardly any man stops at less than two
or three drinks here, when he would take only one at a bar. The lights
are the same as they would be anywheres else, and the music don't cost
much. Then there's other ways to make in this business. But you don't
want to know all about the speculations. There's keno, for instance.
The keno business is attached to lots of saloons. You see the girls
manages to get young fellows that come here--like those hounds
yonder--pretty full, and then they says: 'Why don't you try your luck in
the next room, and go shares with me?' So the fool he bites at once, and
goes in for keno. Of course luck goes against him, for he's too drunk to
play--O, the game's a square one--and he finally comes back for another
drink. The girls then takes care that he doesn't go away till he's too
drunk to remember where he lost his money. Even if he goes away sober,
he seldom splits. I'll give the fellows that much credit. Bad as they
are, they seldom splits."

The concert saloons derive their names from the fact that a low order of
music is provided by the proprietor as a cover to the real character of
the place. It may be an old cracked piano, with a single, half-drunken
performer, or a couple or more musicians who cannot by any possible means
draw melody from their wheezy instruments.

Persons entering these places assume a considerable risk. They
voluntarily place themselves in the midst of a number of abandoned
wretches, who are ready for any deed of violence or crime. They care for
nothing but money, and will rob or kill for it. Respectable people have
no business in such places. They are very apt to have their pockets
picked, and are in danger of violence. Many men, who leave their happy
homes in the morning, visit these places, for amusement or through
curiosity, at night. They are drugged, robbed, murdered, and then the
harbor police may find their lifeless forms floating in the river at
daybreak.