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.
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.