Commercialized Prostitution in New York City Part 11

$15 for his, the lawyer's services, and

$25 to go to the arresting officer for his testimony.

It is alleged that the lawyer in question has agents on Sixth Avenue keeping tab on the street walkers. When the girl is "picked up," these agents are on the ground and see that he gets the case; he guarantees to turn her out for $50 or more, whatever he can get, but under no conditions accepts less than $35. If the girl has no ready money and has jewelry, that is taken as security. The first thing he does is to have the case adjourned for two days, which means no less than $15 for bail. During the two-days' adjournment, the lawyer "feels out" the plain clothes man who "picked up" the girl. If the detective falls, he usually gets $15 from the lawyer's fee. If the detective insists on prosecuting, the lawyer has a man ready to swear that it was he who was in conversation with the woman at the time she was arrested, though this is not usually necessary. If the plain clothes man has made an affidavit prior to the granting of the adjournment and is ready to "fall," he will permit the lawyer to entangle him in his cross-examination and to bring it out that he, the plain clothes man, approached the girl, and, in other ways, will contradict himself "safely." This is resorted to when the affidavit is unfavorable to the girl.

Despite the enormous volume of prost.i.tution in Manhattan, the actual number of convictions is small, and the main culprits go scot-free.

During a period of nine months, ending September 30, 1912, 143 disorderly house cases were tried in Special Sessions. Twenty-five pleas of guilty were entered, 82 were convicted, 32 acquitted, and other disposition was made of 4.

The total number of disorderly house cases received in this court from January 1, 1912, to October 1, 1912, was 180, and on September 30, 1912, there were 62 actions still pending.

Of the 107 cases in which the defendants were found guilty or pleaded guilty, the following dispositions were made:

Jail sentences 80 Average term being 3 months and 27 days

Fines 18 The total amount being $2,325.00 or an average fine of 129.00

Suspended sentences 9

In general, the convictions secured were those of employees, the prevailing rules of evidence making it almost impossible to reach the princ.i.p.als.

In the matter of saloons, for the year ending September 30, 1912, the Excise Commission in New York County brought revocation proceedings which resulted in the denial of the privilege of traffic in liquor for one year in only 6 cases. During the same period, the Commissioner brought 143 actions to recover the penalty under bond, of which 18 were cash bond places. These cases, we understand, refer particularly to disorderly hotels.[303]

From October, 1911, to September, 1912, 159 arrests were made for prost.i.tution in tenement houses under Section 150 of the Tenement House Law. Of these, 36 were discharged and 123 convicted. Eighty-four of those convicted were sent to the workhouse for six months, 27 were put on probation, and other dispositions were made of 12.

Between January 1, 1912, and December 31, 1912, or approximately during the period of this investigation, the Tenement House Department recorded 247 prost.i.tution complaints at 211 separate addresses in Manhattan. The time which elapsed between the receipt of the complaint and the report of the inspector was: returned the same day, 5 cases; from 1 to 5 days, 55 cases; 6 days to 2 weeks, 139 cases; 15 days to 1 month, 38 cases; and over 1 month, 9 cases and one unknown. The average number of days which elapsed between the receipt of the complaint and the final report of the Tenement House Inspector is 10.75, which represents prompter action than was previously obtained. In the period from August 1, 1902, to October, 1908, the average length of time which elapsed between the receipt of a prost.i.tution complaint and the final report of the inspector was 11.28 days.

In conclusion, it is proper to state that the purpose of the foregoing chapter is to picture a situation and not by implication to indicate the responsibility for it. Whether the discrepancies between our reports and official records are due to bad laws impossible of enforcement, to the instructions emanating from superior officials, to inefficiency, to corruption, to the existence of evils with which no official machinery can cope, or finally to all these causes operating together, we do not undertake to say or to imply. The facts are as stated above; the situation portrayed by them actually exists. It is for the community to consider their significance, and to devise such measures as careful reflection may approve.

CHAPTER VIII

A STUDY OF PROSt.i.tUTES COMMITTED FROM NEW YORK CITY TO THE STATE REFORMATORY FOR WOMEN AT BEDFORD HILLS

_By Katharine Bement Davis, Superintendent._

_Sources_:--The materials for this study are found in the records of 647 prost.i.tutes committed from New York City to the State Reformatory for Women at Bedford Hills.[304] Of these, 279 were in the inst.i.tution at the time the study was made. The remainder were either on parole or had been discharged on completion of sentence. The data are gathered from the girls' own stories supplemented by information from their families, from correspondence with previous employers, interviews with officials of other inst.i.tutions, letters received and sent by the women themselves; from the officers who chaperone all visits to the girls while in the inst.i.tution and from personal acquaintance extending in every case from three months to several years. The difficulties inherent in the compilation of such statistics are obvious. Certain data, such as birthplace, age, size of family, education, religion and previous occupation, are probably very nearly accurate. When we leave the domain of facts easily verifiable and come to the question of causes of prost.i.tution, earnings of prost.i.tution, reasons for coming to New York City, past inst.i.tution records, conjugal condition, there is always a possibility of error. But we believe the study is, on the whole, a fair picture of the New York City prost.i.tute who is convicted in the New York City courts. It may be said that the women convicted in the courts are not a fair sample of New York prost.i.tutes as a cla.s.s, for the reason that the more prosperous ones are so protected as not to suffer molestation from the police. A comparison, however, of the tables of the inst.i.tution cases with the cases of women on the streets which include all grades from those who frequent the more expensive hotels down, will not show wide variations.

_Birthplace and Parentage_:--New York's population is composed of as heterogeneous elements as any city on the continent. It is the meeting place of the nations. What effect has this on the composition of a body of New York prost.i.tutes? Does the native-born American who has enjoyed the economic and social advantages of this country contribute a greater or less percentage than the various groups of foreign-born? Interesting from the point of view of our immigration problem is the proportionate number contributed by each of the chief races in New York City.

An a.n.a.lysis of the 647 Bedford cases shows that American-born whites contribute 62.75 percent of the entire number; American-born colored women furnish 13.14 percent while the foreign-born women are 24.11 percent of the total. (See Table I.) A preliminary bulletin issued by the United States Census Bureau for the Census of 1910, places the native white population of New York City at 57.3 percent, while the foreign population is estimated at 40.4 percent of the entire population. According to this, the American-born contribute more and the foreign-born less than their proportion to the Bedford prost.i.tutes. But 647 cases are a very small number on which to base any judgment. We have at hand, however, some other statistics. The histories of 610 prost.i.tutes in other inst.i.tutions have been a.n.a.lyzed.[305] Of these, 168 or 27.2 percent were white foreign-born and 68.5 percent were white American-born. In the study of 1,106 street cases, all white women, made in connection with this report, we find 31 percent foreign-born and 68.9 percent American-born.[306] The percentage of foreign-born is here somewhat higher than in the inst.i.tution cases because practically no colored women were included among the street cases and few in the inst.i.tutions other than Bedford. Combining the three sets of records, or 2,363 cases, we have 67 percent American-born white as against 28 percent foreign-born; a poor showing for the American-born.

(See page 250, Table XLIX, columns III and IV.)

Taking up a comparison of the different nationalities, we find that in the Bedford cases the countries in the order of their numerical contributions stood as follows: Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Ireland, England-Scotland, France, and Italy. (See Table XLIX, column II.) Ranking the contributions to the 610 cases in the other inst.i.tutions in the same way, the first five places on the list were identical. Canada comes sixth and France is relegated to eighth place. (Table, column III.) Examining the street cases in the same way, Russia comes first, Germany and Austria-Hungary exchange places as do Ireland and England-Scotland, France and Italy occupying sixth and seventh places. (Table, column IV.) Combining all records, the order is the same as for the street cases with the exception that Ireland and England-Scotland are reversed. (Table, column V.) Ranking the foreign-born population of New York City in point of numbers, we have Russia, Germany, Ireland, Austria-Hungary, England-Scotland, and France. (Table, column IV.) Dropping out Italy, the order remains as in column V.

Table L shows numbers and percentages. From this, it would seem that, with the exception of Italy, the various foreign groups contribute prost.i.tutes in numbers proportioned to their numerical rank but not in proportion to their percentage of the total population; thus, Russia forming a trifle over 10 percent of the population contributes only about 8.3 percent of prost.i.tutes; Germany and Austria-Hungary come very near to contributing their full quota; Ireland only about half, while England-Scotland send us a very few more and France a good many more than their proper proportion.

It is a well-known fact that Italy sends to the United States every year, many hundred unmarried men or men without their families. This probably accounts for the small proportion of Italy's contribution. It may be argued that this is not a fair rating as we have no complete census of New York prost.i.tutes, but owing to the methods employed in securing our material both in and out of inst.i.tutions, we probably have here as representative a group of prost.i.tutes as can be found, and a fair cross section of the entire number. It might be a more just comparison if we had the figures for the female population of the various national groups within the age limits of the women studied, but that is not attainable.

With the exception of the Italian and possibly some of the component parts of the Russian and Hungarian groups, the figures used here are believed to be fairly comparable.

Unfortunately, we have not the data for the parentage of any group except that of the Bedford cases. Table II shows the nationality of parents in detail with the greatest possible attainable accuracy. Table III gives the summary. The graph accompanying Table II represents the same thing to the eye.

We find that the native-born of foreign parentage is about 51 percent. The native-born of American parentage is 18.5 percent. Mixed parentage means one native-born and one foreign-born parent.

Table IV compares these percentages with the parentage of the native population of New York City. The Tribune Almanac for 1912 gives the native white of native parents as 19.3 percent of the total population while the native white of foreign parents is 38.2 percent. Comparing, we see that the native parents contribute about their proportionate quota; the foreign-born of foreign parents contribute less than their quota, while the group that contributes out of proportion to its percentage in the population, is that of the native-born of foreign parents. This is not surprising when we remember that here we have a group in which the fathers and mothers belong to a civilization with speech, tradition and habits different from those of the country in which they are living. The children, native-born Americans with American companions and American schooling, adopt American ideals often not of the highest and are very apt, even when quite young, to feel that they know more than their parents. Lacking in any feeling of reverence, they early refuse to listen to the counsels of their parents. On the other hand, the parents often stand in awe of the superior cleverness, usually superficial, of their American-born children. An observation extending over twelve years of the relations between foreign-born fathers and mothers and their American-born daughters, leads me to feel that right here lies one of the important points of attack in preventive work.

_Status of Family_:--Occupation of father. Before we are in a position to deal fairly with any problem, we must know all the elements which enter into it. The most important factor in the study of any individual is the kind of family from which he comes. The occupation of a man has very little to do with his moral worth or his good citizens.h.i.+p; but it enables us in a general way, to place him as to his position in society. By his earning capacity we can judge something of the kind of home he can make and the opportunities he can give his children. We have, accordingly, included in our Bedford study, the occupation of the girls' fathers. It will be observed from Table V that the largest single group is that of unskilled labor which forms 21.3 percent of the whole. Men engaged in the mechanical trades form the next largest group, or 18.6 percent; the professions stretched to their limit furnish only 15 individuals or 2.4 percent.

_Size of Family_:--It has sometimes been claimed that the number of children in a family has a direct bearing on prost.i.tution. One theory suggested is that prost.i.tutes are apt to be members of a large family where economic pressure is great, where a girl is either driven out by want or has failed to receive proper education and training as a result of insufficient means. In individual cases, undoubtedly, this is true. We have a young woman of German parentage, nineteen years of age, at Bedford at the present time, who was the eldest of ten children. She has never been to school a day in her life, nor to church or Sunday School. She is as much of a heathen as if she had been born in Central Africa. As a child, she had to stay at home to "mind the baby" and there was always one. As she grew older, she became tired of the over-crowded home, had never received any training which would fit her for any occupation, fell an easy prey to a young man who took her fancy; and it was but another step into prost.i.tution as a means of livelihood. We could tell a number of such stories where we feel confident that a very large family on very small means is largely to blame for the downfall of the older daughters.

On the other hand, it is held by some that only daughters are more apt to go wrong than those who have brothers and sisters to hold them up to family standards. It is claimed that an only daughter is apt to be pampered and spoiled, never learns obedience and is often discouraged from earning her own livelihood by her parents with the idea that her social position is thus bettered and she will be more likely to make a good marriage. One very marked case of this kind we have at this present moment at Bedford. The girl's father and mother are small shopkeepers, perfectly respectable but very injudicious people. The girl was allowed to believe all through her girlhood that she could have anything she wanted; and when her wants exceeded the possibility of gratification by her parents, she gratified them in any way she could.

Table VI, which gives the size of the families from which our 647 cases come, shows that in the largest number of cases our girls were one of three brothers and sisters. The next largest group is that of four in the family, two and five brothers and sisters having the same number of representatives. The average number of children is 3.99, not greatly above the average number of children per family in the general community which is given in the census of 1910 as 2.7 percent for New York City. Our figures, therefore, so far as they go, would seem to prove nothing special except that girls go wrong in families of all sizes.

_Occupation of Mother_:--Probably of more importance than the size of the family is the economic position of the mother, particularly during the years of the daughter's adolescence. It is a vital loss if a girl's mother is away from home all day, leaving her after school hours to a.s.sociates of whom the mother knows nothing and who may be most questionable in their influence on her developing character. In 145 instances, or in 22.4 percent of the total number of cases studied, the mother worked outside the home. Table VII gives a list of the occupations of working mothers, with the number in each group. It will be seen that the women who went out for day's work are much the largest group. They went out to wash, to clean, to scrub offices and for other unskilled labor. The laundresses were employed partly in steam laundries and partly in private families and came home at night. Of the 145 mothers who worked, there were 94 who were widows; one mother was divorced; the husband and father in one case was an inmate of a sanitarium for tuberculosis; in one case the father was in an insane asylum; in 8 cases the father had deserted his family; in 40 cases the husband and father was alive and working. The necessity for earning a livelihood explains simply the leaving of children alone in the group of widows. In the 40 cases where the husband was working, no special necessity for the mother's occupation is shown by our data. The 40 husbands and fathers whose wives went out to work, were engaged in thirty-one different occupations, no one group numbering more than four men. These were the day laborers. Three were colored cooks; three were teamsters; two were carpenters; others include a stationary engineer, a walking delegate, an insurance agent, a market man, an elevator man, etc.

Neither did the size of the family afford a special excuse, as in these forty families there was an average of four children. One family contained ten children; two families each had seven and eight respectively, while the greatest number in any one group was ten families with three children each. It may be that the father was inefficient or irregular in his occupation or the family standards of living were higher. It would be necessary to know all of these details in each family to offer any opinion as to reasons and we have not these data.

But the 94 cases of working widows do not cover all the cases where the father was dead. Of these there were 170. Thirty of the mothers had remarried; two received pensions; in three cases the mothers' whereabouts were unknown and in 41 cases she was supported by her older children or by relatives. Of the total group of fatherless girls there were 154 who had lost their fathers before they had reached an age where they could receive their working papers; 73 were over fourteen; 36 did not know the date of their fathers' death. Among these were some of the orphans and probably some girls who were not willing to tell all they knew. Of the 94 girls whose widowed mothers were employed, 61, or 64 percent lost their fathers before they had reached a working age. One hundred and two girls whose fathers were living had lost their mothers previous to their admission to Bedford. In 42 instances the father had remarried and in 20 instances the fathers' whereabouts were unknown, but they were believed to be living.

One hundred and fifteen out of 195 girls in the motherless group had lost their mothers when under fourteen years of age. Of the 93 orphans, 43 had been brought up by relatives, 10 by strangers and 20 in orphan asylums; twenty were old enough to earn their living at the time of their father's death. To summarize, only 282, or 43.5 percent of the women studied, had both parents living.

Until very recently, the Reformatory has had no field worker. Our knowledge of the families of our girls has been obtained as stated in the first section. Accordingly, much that would have a bearing on the conditions which have made our girls what they are, is unknown to us. But we do know that out of the 647 cases studied, in 130 different families there were known degenerate strains. This is shown in the following table:

HEREDITY; KNOWN DEGENERATE STRAINS Total Percent

1. Alcoholism in family 35 2. Criminality in family 5 3. Epilepsy in family 7 4. Feeble-minded (very marked) parents 2 5. General ill health of parents 9 6. Insanity 16 7. Parents s.e.x offenders 21 8. Syphilitic parents 10 9. Tubercular 25 130 20.09

It is probable on the face of it that syphilis, tuberculosis and alcoholism are likely to be much more generally present than is shown by our figures.

Before we are prepared to say just how many of these factors affecting home life are directly responsible for a girl's entering a life of prost.i.tution, we should be able to say that these factors were or were not present to the same extent in affecting the lives of a group of girls of about the same age, education, industrial efficiency and social status who have not "gone wrong." Would there be as many orphans, as many motherless girls, as many or more working mothers in any such group taken at random?

Until we can make such a study, it is not fair to consider the facts given in these sections on the family as anything more than a picture of the conditions from which our girls come.

_Education and Occupation_:--A girl's education and occupation are very closely connected. We have data with reference to education so far as the Bedford cases go, based on the actual examination of the girls. Table VIII has something to say for compulsory education in New York City, especially when taken in connection with the data from other inst.i.tutions and from the street cases. The table shows that 50 individuals, or 7.72 percent cannot read or write any language. Of these, 15 are American-born.

Thirty-two can read and write a foreign language; 45.3 percent have never finished the primary grades, while an additional 39.72 percent never finished the grammar grades. Of the whole number, only 7.24 percent finished the grammar grades. Thirteen individuals had entered but not finished high school; only four individuals had graduated from high school; three had had one year at a normal school and one out of 647 cases had entered college. The inst.i.tution cases other than Bedford make a slightly better showing, but here, in a large percentage of cases, we have nothing to go on but the girl's own statement. According to this, only 12 percent finished grammar grades and, according to their own admission, 11.4 percent of the street prost.i.tutes cannot read or write in any language and only 4 percent had finished the grammar grades. (See Tables.)

So far as the Bedford cases go, the industrial efficiency of the women is about on a par with their education. Table X shows the occupation of these girls before entering a life of prost.i.tution. It will be noted that 243 or the largest group are general houseworkers, forming 37.5 percent of the total number.

Almost all the studies of prost.i.tution heretofore made have noted the high percentage of women who were engaged in domestic service previous to entering the life. So far as my observation goes, I do not believe that this indicates any greater danger from domestic service itself as an occupation than from any other in which unskilled girls engage. Domestic service for women under existing economic conditions corresponds to casual labor for men. It is the job where training and experience are unnecessary in order to find work. Such services would not be desired by families where efficiency is demanded and paid for. A very large proportion of our girls were not competent workers but were girls employed in the lowest stratum of families that employ domestic help at all and where standards of service do not exist. This group includes almost all the colored girls and a considerable number of the foreign-born white girls. The factory operatives form the next largest group; clerks in department stores come third. Ninety-two individuals, or 14 percent, had never engaged in any occupation previous to having entered a life of prost.i.tution. These were either girls whose parents were fairly comfortably off and who preferred to have their daughters at home pending matrimony, or girls who married almost immediately upon leaving school and kept house until matrimony became too much for them. A large proportion of all our young women were not fit to fill any more responsible positions than those they held.

Comparing the occupations of the inst.i.tution cases other than Bedford with those shown in the Bedford table, we find that the factory operatives form the largest group or 32.46 percent, domestic service and department stores coming second and third. (See Table x.x.x.) The table of occupations of street cases makes quite a different showing, which may or may not be due to the desire of the girls to put the best foot foremost in giving their histories to the investigator. Here the department store clerks form the largest group. Nearly half of the histories, however, say that the girls have never had any occupation previous to entering the life and in 101 cases, no statistics were given. (See Table XLVI). So far as education goes, however, this group is no better equipped for filling more remunerative positions than are the girls in the inst.i.tutions. Their racial distribution is about the same. There is not much reason to believe that they were greatly different from the inst.i.tution cases in industrial efficiency.

For comparison with the occupational groups of women wage earners in New York City in the population at large, the latest statistics available are those of the United States Census of 1900. This gives the total number of wage-earning women as 329,489. The groups which run into five figures are as follows:

1. Servants and waitresses 94,789 or 28.7% 2. Factory operatives 36,458 " 11.06% 3. Dressmakers 34,306 " 10.04% 4. Saleswomen 20,578 " 6.2% 5. Seamstresses 15,845 " 4.8% 6. Laundresses 15,085 " 4.5%