The strict watch kept upon the liquor saloons contributed equally to improve the condition of children. Many were in the habit of being sent by confirmed drunkards to buy the "liquid poison!" They thus promoted this vice whose hardened subjects would prolong It even beyond the grave by asking that "a bottle of whiskey may be put in their coffin." The obedience of the children was rewarded by invitations to drink, which initiated them in debauchery. It was among women abandoned to drink that lived Eliza Clark, a child of eleven years, paying for the drinks [93] with the gains which she realized from dancing or singing; in return, the women gave her brandy to drink and tobacco to smoke, so that when she was found she resembled "a beast more than a human creature." They also suppressed the playing of pool for drinks by minors, instituted by saloon keepers to induce them to drink liquor, which was the reward of those whom fortune favored in the game.
The police of the theatres performed their duty conscientiously, and the statutes were obeyed. The necessity of being accompanied by an adult was felt to be a strange restraint by these gamins eager for the theatre, whose attractions led them to abandon school, work, and family, and to procure the money for their admission by stealing it from their parents, or at a pinch from strangers; and where they would mingle, between the acts, with pick-pockets and low characters who encouraged them in the ways of vice. And for a stronger reason, the child was more carefully protected against the perils of the stage than against those of the auditory. Juvenile performances were forbidden, and the youthful performers were excluded successively from the Columbia Opera House or Theatre des Folies, from the Italian Opera, from the Gem Theatre, from Parker's American Theatre, and from the Juvenile Opera. Permissions for individual performances were peremptorily refused even to parents who were actors. Here the work of the society encountered serious obstacles, and it is necessary to quote from Mr. Elbridge T. Gerry in order to appreciate the motives by which the society was actuated in combating with vigorous purpose the opposition which it met with: "The Press, which is influenced to a considerable extent by the representations of theatrical managers, often criticises severely any attempt to deprive the public of what it is pleased to call its legitimate amusements, by the suppression of such entertainments. And many pronounced patrons of the dramatic art even maintain that such exhibitions are indispensable to the proper development of a dramatic education, and that when the necessities of the parents require it, charity should encourage the children to procure this means of obtaining a livelihood. But let us examine the other side of the question. When the curtain rises in the theatre, a draught of warm air rushes from the audience on to the stage, and often paralyzes for some moments the vocal chords of the actors. When the curtain falls, the cold air comes down from the flies, and the children, who have become over heated by their physical exertions, shiver to the marrow before they are able to accustom themselves to this sudden change of temperature. Every night these things are renewed. During the day the children sleep as best they can. Their nervous system is rapidly undermined; their digestion becomes impaired. It is rare that one can point to instances of children arriving early at positions of eminence in the dramatic art. It is true that there are a few who shine as stars in the theatrical profession, and who entered upon their dramatic career in early childhood; but these are rare exceptions."
It is not only on the stage that the morals of the children have been protected; [94] the keepers of low resorts have been prosecuted by the society.
It has shut up the den of the too celebrated Owney Geoghegan, who long defied the law and the police, encouraging the efforts of prostitutes to debauch young girls. Women of notorious reputation, who enticed away the children of respectable mechanics to sell them for money, have been severely punished. In short, not content with bringing to justice these outrageous offenders with a firmness which has made it the terror of these oppressors of childhood, the society has been the instrument of checking acts even of carelessness or imprudence. It no longer permits the drunkard to keep his children in a cellar where the rats bite their feet; or the mercenary father to allow his son to engage in a wager, dangerous to his health, to make a hundred miles in twenty-four hours; or a man to ride a bicycle bearing on his shoulders his five-year-old daughter.
So great a work demanded accommodations of corresponding magnitude. In 1881, and at the price of $43,000, the society purchased a large building situated at the corner of 23rd street and 4th avenue, one of the most important thoroughfares of New York. Not far from the offices, in the main part of the building, is found a collection of all the instruments of cruelty seized in the legal proceedings,—rods of iron, whips, firebars (barres de poeles), pokers, cudgels (gourdins), and other instruments. These furnish convincing proofs of the sufferings of the children,—for example those of Maggie Scully, when she said: "I do all the work at my aunt's house, and if you do not believe that I have been beaten, look at me, for my aunt has beaten me this morning with a poker." Adjoining the offices are the rooms for the officers and the archives of the institution, containing the papers in each case setting forth the facts and the evidence. On the upper floor is a dormitory, where the children are kept until final disposition is made of them, that is to say, generally during one night. In fact, the work is going on without interruption at all hours of the day and night. If at night a call by telephone is received from the police-station, an officer of the society responds immediately to this appeal.
As is most frequently the case, he finds a drunken woman in the street, with three or four ragged children gathered about her, covered with vermin, without fire or lodging, having been abandoned by the father. The mother is detained at the station, but the children are taken to the society, where they are washed, fed, and for the first time in their lives, perhaps, put to sleep in a bed. On the following day, the children are taken to court. If the parents or guardians are worthy, they are returned to them; if not, the justice commits them to some charitable institution. Some of these have a religious character, and others a secular one; the American judge, in rendering his decision, is influenced by interests of family, of nationality, of race, or of religion of the child, as well as by the requirements of the law. Sick children and nursing infants are sent to the hospital on Randall's Island, the Ladies' Deborah Nursery, and the Child's Hospital. Each of the charitable institutions receives a per capita allowance for children during the time that they remain in their care.
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The society does not abandon them, and if a complaint arises of improper treatment, it causes legal proceedings to be instituted against those who are responsible therefor.
A recent case of this kind was that of the "Old Gentlemen's Home."