There are yet other cases of culpable indifference. These same proscribed houses of prostitution are suffered to exist uncontrolled, and to spread disease and increase crime and vagrancy in all parts of the city. It has been generally conceded that they can not be suppressed. What effort has been made to hold in check their baneful influence? None—literally none. The statesman has looked on appalled at an evil of whose magnitude he could form no correct idea; the clergyman has hesitated to encounter those who he judged would not respectfully receive his admonitions; the masses of society have shrunk from considering a subject which was repugnant and distasteful. Is there no guilty indifference in this? There can be but one answer to this query; but one opinion as to the share this general apathy has had in fostering the evil.
To substitute for this apathy a healthy action is the object of this investigation. It is but the means to an end. In themselves, as mere matters of information, the facts and deductions presented in the following pages can do nothing but demonstrate the necessity of exertion; but of this necessity they do afford overwhelming demonstration.
Thus much for the general arguments as to the necessity of a work of this nature. There are other special and local causes which led to its accomplishment in the present form.
“The Governors of the Alms-House of the City and County of New York,” or, as they are more generally known, “The Ten Governors,” is a body called into existence by an act of the State Legislature passed April 6, 1849, specially to take charge of the vagrant and pauper institutions of the city. The present members of the Board are the following well-known citizens:[1]
C. Godfrey Gunther, Esq., President.
Isaac J. Oliver, Esq., Secretary.
Washington Smith, Esq.[2]
Anthony Dugro, Esq.[3]
Cornelius V. Anderson, Esq.
Isaac Townsend, Esq.
Daniel F. Tiemann, Esq.
Joseph S. Taylor, Esq.
P. G. Moloney, Esq.
Benjamin F. Pinckney, Esq.
At the time these investigations commenced two other prominent men were also members of the organization, Hon. Edward C. West (now Surrogate of the city) and Simeon Draper, Esq. Both of these gentlemen had served as President of the Board of Governors with honor to themselves and satisfaction to their colleagues and the public; both took a lively interest in the projected inquiry, and to both am I indebted for much valuable assistance.
The act establishing the Board of Governors assigned to them, with their other duties, the medical care of all persons who had contracted infectious diseases in the practice of debauchery, and who required charitable aid to restore them to health. The result was that a very large number of persons, both male and female, chargeable to the citizens of New York through the medium of the institutions on Blackwell’s Island, came under their cognizance, and they became convinced that some measures were necessary in connection therewith.
Individual members had held this opinion for some time before any official action was taken, and foremost among such was Governor Isaac Townsend. This gentleman was one of the originally appointed Governors, and has been connected with the Board by re-election ever since—a circumstance which made him perfectly acquainted with all the workings of the present system, and to him the public is indebted for the conception of this undertaking. For years has he labored to bring about this result, with an indomitable energy and perseverance equaled only by his known benevolence and honesty of purpose. He frequently made the practicability of such a measure the subject of conversation with the gentleman who preceded me as Resident Physician of Blackwell’s Island, and, on my appointment (1853), the subject was again urged by him; nor could I be unaware of its importance. No official action was taken until the commencement of the year 1855. At that time Mr. Townsend was President of the Board, and one of his first acts in that capacity was to submit a list of interrogatories on the subject, which were adopted and transmitted to me. I transcribe them from the Minutes of the Board:
“At a meeting of the Board of Governors of the Alms-House, held January 23, 1855, the following interrogatories were presented by the President:
“1. What proportion of the inmates of the institutions on Blackwell’s Island under your medical charge are, in your opinion, directly or indirectly suffering from syphilis?