The attempted suicide was a girl who had tired of the life which she had led since she was fourteen years old and saw no other way out of it. She had made three unsuccessful attempts before she was sentenced to Bedford.
Previous Records:—The law prohibits the sentencing of women to the reformatory who have previously served a term in a state prison. With this limitation the judge has the power of sending those who have served numberless previous sentences for minor offenses if in his judgment there is hope of reform in the particular case. Contrary to the impression of many people, it is a very rare thing for a girl or woman to be sentenced to an institution for what is really a first offense. Never in our experience has a previously innocent girl been so sentenced.
Throwing light on the history of the prostitutes committed to Bedford, [Table XXV] gives us some information as to the various institutions in which they spent time previous to the Bedford commitment. The first section of the table shows that 305, or 47.1 percent have had previous institution experiences. In cases where these girls have been in more than one institution, this first portion of the table gives the institution in which she has spent the most time. Out of 647 cases, 255, or 39.4 percent only, are not known to have been at least previously arrested. These figures give the data that we know. The probabilities are that the tables understate the facts. The latter half of the table shows the variegated experience of a number of the women. We have no comparable data for the cases from other institutions.
Conclusion:—As this is a statistical study, we have not touched upon various phases of the lives of prostitutes which are of general public interest. This is because we had not sufficiently accurate data to warrant giving figures or percentages. For example, the relation of the women to the men whom they support is a matter where verifiable data are very hard to get. An increasingly large percentage of the women under our care state that they were turning over the whole or a part of their wages to their lovers. In other cases we were pretty well assured that this was the case although it was denied by the girl.
As a result of our twelve years’ experience we believe that there is an increasing number of young women who live in furnished rooms and take their patrons to hotels. A larger proportion of prostitutes in our early days lived in houses of ill fame. Now in many instances, even if their work is in these houses, they live outside and go to the houses only for business purposes. A case in point is that of a girl only sixteen years of age who worked in one of the houses conducted by the so-called “syndicate.” She was living with a young Italian who had lured her from her home. He conducted her to this house every afternoon at four o’clock, calling for her at five or six next morning and receiving her earnings from the woman who ran the house.
A number of the young women included in this study have figured in white slave cases. These commercialized phases of the social evil are dealt with elsewhere in this report.
STATISTICAL TABLES