[6] Few are aware of the extent of prostitution carried on, on board the Eastern steamboats. Here the libertines of Boston flourish. State rooms are provided and free passages given to all young females who desire to visit their homes and return, or who, being in the country, are going to the city for employment. It is true they are poor. In the lime and basswood districts of Maine, perhaps they never had a dollar in their “born days.” And the people down there are such a simple and uninitiated race, that these daughters of chastity have never had the least knowledge of this steamboat deviltry, or of earning money by the sale of their virtue, until it is whispered to them when it is too late to make escape. It is supposed that not less than five thousand poor girls are entrapped and ruined every year by this licentious game. Under such circumstances, reaching Boston for the first time, it is not surprising that so large a part of them are prevailed upon to enter houses of ill-fame, impressed with the delusive idea that they will soon make a fortune and return. Thus they unconsciously sign their own death-warrants—aye, passports to a doom far less preferable!
The cab nuisance is a most efficient auxiliary to this work of hell. Nearly all of them are in the employ of the keepers of houses of prostitution; they hang around the landings, and get their cue from the knowing ones. Is there a girl who is entirely a stranger, and is seeking for a residence in the city, a cabman is always at hand, in the guise of one who earns an honest livelihood. She steps into his rickety vehicle, and is jotted down at the door of a temple of vice.
These poor creatures, once steeped in infamy, are generally beyond the reach of reformation. They remain in Boston while their beauty and bloom is attractive; but soon, as a matter of course, they contract odious and incurable diseases. Thus afflicted, large numbers of them migrate to New Bedford, Nantucket and Cape Cod, where, after a riotous debauch of a few years with the whalemen, they die. The enormous dividends declared by the New Bedford Branch Railroad Co. are mainly attributable to this class of passengers.
Oh, civilization! thou bringest gold to the rich man’s purse, and art the sweet nursling of murder.
[7] This is fearfully true. Many of the illustrious names of the pulpit are linked with the most damning vices. We need but cite from a host of examples on record those of Onderdonk, Johnson, Kimball, Avery, Hoyt, Mason, Kendrick—to say nothing of the reverend libertines at this time, who are yet sheltered by the wings of the faithful and stalk abroad in the face of day, as the representatives and advocates of the meek and lowly Saviour! Not a hundred days previous to her death Maria Bickford was the bed-mate of a ranting Millerite preacher of Boston!
[8] It would be culpable in us to allow this opportunity to pass without paying a feeble, but most hearty tribute of respect to Mr John Augustus of Boston, for his unwearying labors in the cause of reformation. Such disinterestedness, attended by such an overflow of blessed results, can only be appreciated by the unfortunates themselves. Philanthropy of so pure a cast is among the rarest of the emblems of human greatness; and the memory of this good man will long live in the free gratitude of many a broken heart. Mr. Augustus, more truly than any other man in America, may be likened unto that greater and crucified philanthropist of the olden time, who gloried in the work of “going about and doing good.” May his days be as many as his usefulness is great. Heaven rejoiceth over his works.
[9] Mr. Terson Paulin, of Paris, gives these lines in a petition to the Chamber of Deputies for the amelioration of the destitute classes of France: “We do not speak of girls placed in the same alternative; that which we might say, would be too painful to read. We will only remark, that it is at the period of long intermissions of work that the missionaries of prostitution recruit their proselytes from among the fairest of daughters of the people.
[10] The influence of physicians over the persons of their female patients is not less remarkable than true. This is very well, when trust is placed in such as are truly virtuous and honorable; but when otherwise, beware of a dangerous villain. It is almost a physiological impossibility for a young woman (however virtuously disposed) to resist the improper familiarities of an unprincipled physician. She may, indeed, hesitate and wonder at first, but the glisters and squills which he will administer, as indispensably necessary for the preservation of health, are charged with those drugs which excite the animal passions to an uncontrollable degree, and in this state they are a sure prey to the rapacious maw of a medical buzzard. This peace-destroying practice is carried on to an extent which almost baffles credulity. Our wives and daughters cannot be too often or too earnestly warned against employing any physician who is not known to possess the highest moral rectitude. Very old physicians should certainly be preferred; and those young bucks whose diploma is a distended pair of nostrils, should as certainly be avoided. Especially would we particularize, as one of the latter class, a pedantic simpleton, with a Scotch name, at the West End, in Boston! Shun that fellow as you would a pestilence!
To our New York readers we would instance a long-shanked, black-haired whiskerando, who hails (or did, in 1844,) from a respectable boarding-house on Lispenard street, in that city. He sports an “M.D.” and a cane, is as silly a mountebank as you will meet in many a summer’s day. His “importance” and gasconade are insufferable, and his character is a blight to all that is decent or endearing.