The New York Tombs Inside and Out! / Scenes and Reminiscences Coming Down to the Present. A Story Stranger Than Fiction, with an Historic Account of America's Most Famous Prison.

by John Josiah Munro

The dense population of the lower parts of the city, the narrow streets, the ubiquitous gin mill and the dirty tenements all combine to make New York the centre of the most accessible temptations—temptations that swiftly carry ruin and demoralization to hundreds of boys and girls every year.

Perhaps it is not generally known that some of the toughest and most daring of our present-day criminals began their downward career at a tender age. There is something blushingly heroic in crime—made so by the dime novel, which the boy of the tenement reads and then emulates by personal example.

It would be most difficult to assign a reason that would explain all the conditions that have led young people into crime, but we are sure that vicious and intemperate homes, biting poverty and the godless companions of the streets have had much to do with the criminal records made by this class during the past quarter of a century.

When we think of the multiplication of evil resorts, such as the saloons, play houses, bawdy houses, gambling hells, policy shops and other places that harbor young lads for drinking and carousing purposes, my only wonder is that so few go astray.

These temptations to crime which are presented in every form to the youth of a modern city are altogether unknown in rural settlements and country villages.

A Scene in the Children’s Court, corner of Eleventh Street and Third Avenue.

We are glad to say that only a very small number of the child criminals are girls. And the reason for their downfall in almost every case is due to bad homes and profligate parents.

One of the things that impress the visitor to the Tombs prison is the large number of poverty struck faces he meets, the sallow complexions, the sunken cheeks, hectic cough, the glassy eyes and stooping frames, all indicating that the young manhood has been harshly dealt with. Some of these boys are so diminutive, that they look as if they were only ten or twelve years of age, when in reality they are sixteen or eighteen.

Here is a sample conversation with a small boy: