The personal column is also used to publicly advertise the residences of women of the town. The following are specimens:
MISS GERTIE DAVIS, FORMERLY OF LEXINGTON avenue, will be pleased to see her friends at 106 Clinton place.
ERASTUS—CALL ON JENNIE HOWARD at 123 West Twenty-seventh street. I have left Heath’s. 132. ALBANY.
The World very justly remarks: “The cards of courtesans and the advertisements of houses of ill-fame might as well be put up in the panels of the street cars. If the public permits a newspaper to do it for the consideration of a few dollars, why make the pretence that there is anything wrong in the thing itself? If the advertisement is legitimate, then the business must be.”
IX. THE MIDNIGHT MISSION.
With the hope of checking the terrible evil of immorality which is doing such harm in the city, several associations for the reformation of fallen women have been organized by benevolent citizens.
One of the most interesting of these is “The Midnight Mission,” which is located at No. 260 Greene street, in the very midst of the worst houses of prostitution in the city. It was organized about four years ago, and from its organization to the latter part of the year 1870, had sheltered about 600 women. In 1870, 202 women and girls sought refuge in the Mission. Twenty-eight of these were sent to other institutions, forty-seven were placed in good situations, fifteen were restored to their friends, and forty-nine went back to their old ways. The building is capable of accommodating from forty-five to fifty inmates. The members of the Society go out on the streets every Friday night, and as they encounter the Street Walkers, accost them, detain them a few moments in conversation, and hand each of them a card bearing the following in print:
This invitation is sometimes tossed into the gutter or flung in the face of the giver, but it is often accepted. More than this, it is a reminder to the girl that there is a place of refuge open to her, where she may find friends willing and able to help her to escape from her life of sin. Even those who at first receive the card with insults to the giver, are won over by this thought, and they come to the Mission and ask to be received. Many of them, it is true, seek to make it a mere lodging-house, and deceive the officers by their false penitence, but many are saved from sin every year. The inmates come voluntarily, and leave when they please. There is no force used, but every moral influence that can be brought to bear upon them is exerted to induce them to remain. The preference is given to applicants who are very young. Those seeking the Mission are provided with refreshments, and are drawn into conversation. They are given such advice as they seem to need, and are induced to remain until the hour for prayers. Those who remain and show a genuine desire to reform are provided with work, and are given one-half of their earnings for their own use.