This has been known as the state of Ireland for many years, and in this condition it unquestionably was when the women who here are now prostitutes were born there. Whether the severe lessons taught by the last famine, the more enlightened and liberal policy which has governed England, since that terrible calamity, in its legislation for the sister island, the introduction of Anglo-Saxon capital and enterprise, and the large exodus of the natives of the soil, have been of advantage to the country, it is difficult to determine in the face of the conflicting testimony furnished respectively by English and Irish partisans. It seems reasonable to conclude that an improvement must have taken place under these circumstances. But this is not the place to argue the political questions so often agitated there and elsewhere; it is enough for the purpose of this work to show the poverty of twenty years ago, and the vice resulting from it now, and to remind the reader that because of the lamentable manner in which the Irish have suffered in their own country, we must be taxed in New York for the support in hospitals, alms-houses, and prisons, of the women whose poverty compelled their crime.
Question. If your mother had any business independent of your father, what was it?
| Mothers’ business. | Numbers. | |
| No independent business | 1880 | |
| Dress-makers | 35 | |
| Tailoresses | 26 | |
| Seamstresses | 12 | |
| Store-keepers | 9 | |
| Boarding-house-keepers | 7 | |
| Servants | 6 | |
| Vest-makers | 6 | |
| Laundresses | 4 | |
| Bakers | 4 | |
| Hat-trimmers | 3 | |
| Milliners | 3 | |
| Artificial Flower-maker | 1 | |
| Music teacher | 1 | |
| Nurse | 1 | |
| Umbrella-maker | 1 | |
| House-cleaner | 1 | |
| Total | 2000 | |
Only one hundred and twenty of two thousand women answer that their mothers had any business independent of their fathers, and they were mostly of the same ill-paid class as those alluded to in the portion referring to the occupations of the women themselves. The exceptions were, boarding-house, store, and bakery-keepers, amounting to twenty only, the remaining one hundred being servants or needle-women. The fact that even this number found it necessary to augment the income of their families by their own exertions is another evidence of poverty.
Question. Did you assist either your father or mother in their business? If so, which of them?
| Assisted. | Numbers. | ||||
| Assisted | neither parent | 1515 | |||
| " | both parents | 149 | |||
| " | mothers | 306 | |||
| " | fathers | 30 | |||
| Totals | 485 | 1515 | |||
| —— | 485 | ||||
| Aggregate | 2000 | ||||
To this question, thirty women reply that they were in the habit of assisting their fathers, three hundred and six say they assisted their mothers, and one hundred and forty-nine assisted both parents. The two latter answers, embracing four hundred and fifty-five cases, must be construed to mean such assistance in the ordinary work of a family as usually falls to the lot of children. The residue say that they never assisted either father or mother, or, in other words, that they were brought up in habits of idleness, which can scarcely have forsaken them in after-life, and probably had some considerable agency in their fall.
Question. Is your father living, or how old was you when he died?
| Age at fathers’ death. | Numbers. | |||||||
| Fathers living | 651 | |||||||
| Under | 5 | years | 289 | |||||
| From | 5 | " | to 10 | years | 208 | |||
| " | 10 | " | to 15 | " | 252 | |||
| " | 15 | " | to 20 | " | 389 | |||
| Unascertained | 211 | |||||||
| Totals | 1349 | 651 | ||||||
| —— | 1349 | |||||||
| Aggregate | 2000 | |||||||