The preceding chapters have given a statistical and descriptive account of prostitution in New York. Before considering what measures can be best applied for the amelioration of its accompanying evils, it will be necessary to ascertain the extent of the system, and this inquiry must include the number of abandoned women in the city, and the amount of venereal infection propagated through their agency.

It has been assumed in these pages that the two thousand women whose replies form the basis of the statistical tables, represent about one third of the aggregate prostitution of New York. This is allowing an increase of twenty per cent. during the winter of 1857-8, in consequence of the commercial panic of last autumn, and the resulting paralysis of trade, and suffering of the laboring community.

In the progress of this investigation it was deemed advisable to consult those whose acquaintance with the details of city life would entitle their opinions to confidence, as to the actual number of prostitutes within our limits; and in addition to much information obtained privately, the following correspondence took place with the then Chief of Police:

This communication, in addition to the facts gleaned from other sources, was amply sufficient to warrant the conclusion that the known public prostitutes in New York did not exceed five thousand in number at the close of the year 1856. Then ensued the summer, with its artificial inflation—that false prosperity which excites unbounded hopes and stimulates to measureless extravagance, followed by the revulsion and panic of the fall and winter. Trade was literally dead: operatives, never too well paid, were threatened with starvation; females, particularly, felt the rigid pressure of the times. In many families the embarrassments of the fathers compelled a reduction of the servants employed, and a large number of domestics were added to the aggregate of that class already out of situations. The occupations of the army of seamstresses, dress-makers, milliners, and tailoresses were suspended, and their struggles for bread were merged in the general cry for labor. It was, in short, a trying time alike for the sufferers and the observers. But one resort seemed available; the poor workless, houseless, foodless woman must have recourse to prostitution as a means of preserving life.

As usual in any time of great excitement, surmise ran actually wild as to the extent of the consequences, and extravagant theories abounded; one gentleman actually stating in a public meeting that a thousand virtuous girls were becoming prostitutes every week through sheer starvation! An assertion so appalling as this is its own refutation. It assumes that one woman in every hundred of the female population of New York City, between the ages of fifteen and thirty years, became a prostitute every week; and therefore, during the six months of fall and winter, twenty-six thousand women, one fourth of the inhabitants of the ages named, one in every four of all the women under middle age, would have been forced into vice! The practice of “jumping at conclusions” upon serious matters like this is much to be reprehended. An exaggerated statement made in the fervor of enthusiasm, while advocating a benevolent object, must always recoil to the injury of the cause it is intended to promote. It will be necessary only to consider for a moment the financial condition of New York to be convinced that such an increase of prostitution was impossible. It can not be denied that the number of abandoned women is regulated by the demand; or that the only inducement which could lead virtuous girls to the course alleged must have been the necessity to earn money for subsistence. But this necessity to earn money was felt as strongly by men as by women. The revulsion for a time left a large portion of the community without resources. Merchants, manufacturers, and store-keepers found their receipts inadequate to meet their expenditures. Commercial employÉs, book-keepers, clerks, salesmen, and agents were discharged. Mechanics in every branch were without work, and consequently without wages. Merchants from other parts of the country had no money to meet their liabilities or make fresh purchases, and therefore did not visit the city as usual. These causes combined to reduce the business of houses of prostitution, and instead of large accessions to the ranks of courtesans, many of this very class were forced to seek a refuge in the public charitable institutions. Hence arose the increase in the denizens of Blackwell’s Island, where hospital, alms-house, work-house, and penitentiary were alike over-crowded. Some of the places vacated by these recipients of eleemosynary aid were doubtless filled by new recruits; but the supposition that a thousand were added every week would imply a change in the whole corps every six weeks, or a change nearly five times completed during the fall and winter.

That female virtue was yielded in many instances can not, unfortunately, be doubted, but the sufferers did not become public prostitutes. Poor creatures! they surrendered themselves unwillingly to some temporary acquaintance, probably in gratitude for assistance already rendered, or anticipating aid to be afforded. There is something truly melancholy in the consideration that bread had to be purchased at such a price; that the only alternative lay between voluntary dishonor and killing indigence. It is but charity to conclude that the woman who thus acted, if her subsequent course was not a continuous life of abandonment, was impelled by the stern necessity of the times rather than induced by a laxity of moral feeling. Unchaste as she must be admitted, she can scarcely be deemed a prostitute in the ordinary acceptation of the word.

It would be foolish to deny all increase of prostitution since the date of the correspondence just transcribed. The population of New York is now some thirty or forty thousand more than at that time, and female degradation has extended as a natural consequence. Relying upon the estimate of five thousand as correct at the time made, the subsequent augmentation of inhabitants would suppose an addition of about three hundred prostitutes, but to take the widest scope, and assume that the debasement required by hunger degenerated into a habit of confirmed vice, it may be admitted that the number of abandoned women in New York has increased from five thousand in 1856 to six thousand in 1858. This is a very liberal estimate, and the total assigned is certainly not too small. How much it may be in excess can not be said with precision, but in an argument of this nature it is safer to err in the direction of overstating an evil than to be lulled into false security by too flattering a representation.

The known public prostitutes of New York are thus presumed to amount to six thousand at the present day. But to this number exceptions might be taken. To secure farther accuracy, additional evidence was sought. In the month of May, 1858, the assistance of the Board of Metropolitan Police Commissioners was requested, and, under the direction of its president (General James W. Nye), to whom our acknowledgments are respectfully tendered for his courtesy and aid, a list of queries was submitted to the Inspector of each Police precinct. Below is a copy of the circular, with a synopsis of the replies.

SYNOPSIS OF REPLIES.

Precincts.	Reported by		Houses of Prostitution.	Houses of Assignation.	Dancing-saloons, Liquor or Lager-beer Stores, where Prostitutes assemble.	Estimated Number of Prostitutes.
1	Inspector	James Silvey	22	...	3	76
2	"	Hart B. Weed	1	...	1	2
3	"	J. A. P. Hopkins	9	...	...	26
4	"	Morris De Camp	35	13	8	750
5	"	Henry Hutchings	63	7	46	420
6	Acting Inspector Lush		52	6	12	228
7	Inspector	John Cameron	6	...	4	100
8	"	C. S. Turnbull	43	15	...	300
9	"	Jacob L. Sebring	...	...	...	50
10	"	T. C. Davis	26	1	4	100
11	"	Peter Squires	...	...	12	50
12	"	Galen P. Porter	...	...	...	...
13	"	Thomas Steers	15	4	8	150
14	"	J. J. Williamson	39	5	...	125
15	"	G. W. Dilks	5	19	7	175
16	"	Samuel Carpenter	6	4	10	500
17	"	J. W. Hart	20	3	6	150
18	"	Theron R. Bennett	1	...	3	250
19	"	James Bryan	5	1	2	30
20	"	F. M. Curry	15	1	5	250
21	"	Francis Speight	15	10	6	75
22	"	James E. Coulter	...	...	14	50
	Totals		378	89	151	3857

Upon some of the reports are notes, which may be extracted.

Inspector Silvey, 1st district, says, in answer to question 4, “There are to my knowledge seventy-six common prostitutes living in this precinct.”

Inspector De Camp, 4th district, says, in answer to question 4: “350 who reside in houses of prostitution, 150 kept mistresses, 150 who reside in the ward, and prostitute themselves in this and other wards, and probably 100 occasional prostitutes.”

Inspector Hutchings, 5th district, in answer to question 3, classifies the resorts as

Dancing-rooms		2
Saloons and cigar-stores		31
Lager-beer-stores		13
		46

and, in answer to question 4, subdivides the prostitutes into

Whites		360
Blacks		60
		420

Acting Inspector Lush, 6th district, says, in answer to question 4: “One hundred and seventy-eight known prostitutes whose names we have; supposed to be at least fifty more residing in the district.”Inspector Cameron, 7th district, in answer to question 3, classifies the resorts into

Lager-beer-stores		3
Cigar-store		1
		4

and, in answer to question 4, says: “Can give no reliable information; probably one hundred.”

Inspector Sebring, 9th district, says, in answer to question 1, “This precinct does not contain any houses of prostitution that I am aware of;” and in reply to question 4: “Scattered through the precinct there are probably fifty.”

Inspector Squires, 11th district, says, in answer to question 1: “None, properly speaking. There are many low drinking places where dissipated persons of both sexes often meet, and where, no doubt, prostitution is sometimes practiced, but no regular houses of that character.” To question 3: “There are about a dozen lager-beer-saloons where Dutch girls of loose character assemble and dance at night. They do not remain long in the same place, but when driven from one place they locate in another.” To question 4: “I presume there are fifty young women and married women, some of whom pass for respectable persons, who are in the habit of going across to the eighth, fifteenth, and other disreputable wards for purposes of prostitution, and some of the lowest of these are even said to visit the fifth ward, but I have never been able to ascertain this fact positively.”

Inspector Porter, 12th district says, “This precinct, comprising all that portion of the island north of 86th street, is not infested with any of the evils enumerated in the within questions.”

Inspector Williamson, 14th district, says, in answer to question 4, “I should suppose about 125.”

Inspector Carpenter, 16th district, says, in answer to question 4, “It is generally conceded by those of us who presume to know that there are in this precinct at least five hundred prostitutes, of all ages, nations, grades, and colors.”

Inspector Hartt, 17th district, says, in answer to question 4, “This being a hard question to answer, the answer must be taken as entirely guess-work: supposed to be about one hundred and fifty.”

Inspector Curry, 20th district, says, in answer to question 4: “Probably two or three hundred, but this is mere guess-work. We know there are a great many; some of them very young.”

Those reports from which no extracts have been made consist simply of figures without any remarks, and are given fully in the synopsis. It will be observed that all the officers quoted give the number of prostitutes more as a conjecture than a certainty; and although their avocations would lead them to know most of the disreputable women in their several districts, none of them assume to be so thoroughly informed as to be enabled to answer positively. To the numbers they give must be added the floating prostitute population of station-houses, city and district prisons, hospitals, work-house, alms-house, and penitentiary, which varies from one thousand to two thousand, and may be taken at an average of one thousand five hundred. This, with those known to the police, makes a total of 5357, and the balance of six hundred and forty-three (643), required to raise the number to six thousand (6000), is but a moderate allowance for those who have escaped the eyes of the officers when taking the census. As before remarked, it is better to overestimate than underestimate the abandoned women of the city.

But to this number are to be added those whose calling is so effectually disguised as to prevent its being known—those who practice prostitution in addition to some legitimate occupation, and those who resort to illicit pleasures for the indulgence of their passions. To obtain information on these points some supplementary questions were addressed to the captains of police at the commencement of this investigation in 1856, and their replies are now submitted.

The first inquiry was, “How many houses of assignation are there in your district?” It was known when this interrogatory was propounded that the secrecy maintained in these places would in some instances baffle the keenness, not often at fault, of our shrewdest police officers, and no surprise was felt when their replies indicated that only seventy-four (74) of these houses were known to them. Reliable information from other sources led to the conviction that this was understated. The investigation of May, 1858, fixes the number at eighty-nine (89), which is also too low; and we shall be perfectly justified in estimating the number of houses of assignation in New York at one hundred (100).

The next question was, “What, to the best of your belief, are the average number of visitors to such houses every twenty-four hours?” The replies gave an average of six couples to each house every day, or an aggregate of six hundred women every twenty-four hours. This was followed by the query, “Are all the females who visit these houses of assignation known public prostitutes? If not, of what class do you suppose or know them to be?” From the replies it was found that about two fifths were known as prostitutes, the remainder being sewing or shop girls, kept mistresses, widows, and some married women.

Again: “State your opinion as to how many kept mistresses there are in your district?” In the twenty-two districts two hundred and sixty-eight (268) were ascertained, and the presumption was that there were more. The number may be safely taken at four hundred. The next question was, “How many women, to the best of your belief, and that you have not previously examined, are there in your district that obtain a livelihood in whole or in part by prostitution?” To this the numbers are stated (upon belief, for the nature of the question precludes any positive information) as about four hundred. “Can you form an opinion as to how many women in your district, who are not impelled by necessity, prostitute themselves to gratify their passions?” No definite answers were obtained to this, the general suppositions ranging from one third to one fourth of those who were not recognized as public prostitutes. “To what extent, in your opinion, is prostitution carried on in the tenant houses in your district?” It is generally admitted that there is some, but no calculation can be made with any accuracy. Many of what may be called private prostitutes live in this class of houses, but their visitors would be taken to houses of assignation, where the numbers are included in the estimate given. “It is believed that there are many women who follow prostitution living in nearly all the respectable portions of the city. They (singly or in couples) hire a suite of rooms, and under the garb of honest labor, sewing, etc., pass as respectable among those living near them. It is also known that such as these are the great frequenters of houses of assignation. How many such women (to the best of your belief) are there in your district?” The officers reply that they have ascertained that there are about two hundred, but they believe there are many more.

Thus much for the information we have been enabled to collect. There are six hundred women who visit these houses of assignation every day, of whom two fifths are known as public prostitutes, and the remainder are of other classes. It may be assumed that the known prostitutes visit such houses at least once every twenty-four hours, which leaves over three hundred visits daily for the others. Kept mistresses or married women who resort there for the gratification of their passions probably amount to one hundred per day. It can scarcely be supposed that such visit houses of assignation more than once a week as a general rule, while the others, sewing or shop girls, etc., who resort there to augment their income, would probably take this step two or three times per week, which would bring their number to about four hundred. It thus appears that a very fair estimate of the total number of frail women who are now in New York may be stated as follows:

Known public prostitutes		6000
Women who visit houses of assignation for sexual gratification		1260
Women who visit houses of assignation to augment their income		400
One half the number of kept mistresses, assuming the other half to be included in those who visit houses of assignation		200
Total		7860

It will be seen that, to arrive at this conclusion, all are included who are suspected to be lost to virtue, although of the number who visit houses of assignation for sexual gratification many are guiltless of promiscuous intercourse.

This total number falls very far short of the estimates made at different times by various persons, that there are from twenty to thirty thousand prostitutes in New York City! Such rash conclusions, hastily formed in the excitement of the moment—sometimes influenced by the fact that “the wish is father to the thought”—must give place to the results of a careful and searching investigation made for this special purpose. The modus operandi of examination in the city rendered it incumbent on those having it in charge to approximate to the facts, and is itself a sufficient guarantee of correctness.[398]

If it were possible to parade the six thousand known public prostitutes in one procession, they would make a much larger demonstration than the mere printed words “six thousand” suggest to the reader. It requires a man who is in the habit of seeing large congregations of persons to comprehend at a glance the aggregate implied in this statement. Place this number of women in line, side by side, and if each was allowed only twenty-four inches of room, they would extend two miles and four hundred and eighty yards. Let them march up Broadway in single file, and allow each woman thirty-six inches (and that is as little room as possible, considering the required space for locomotion), and they would reach from the City Hall to Fortieth Street. Or, let them all ride in the ordinary city stages, which carry twelve passengers each, and it would be necessary to charter five hundred omnibuses for their conveyance. These simple illustrations will make the extent of the vice plain to many who could form but an inadequate idea from the mere figures.

Yet the estimate will probably appear low to those residents of the city who have been accustomed to believe New York reeking with prostitution in every hole and corner, while it will seem excessively large to readers residing in the country. For the information of the latter it may be remarked, that vicious as Manhattan Island unquestionably is, much as there may be in it to need reform, in this matter of prostitution it must not bear all the blame of these six thousand women, for although they certainly reside in it, a very large number of their visitors do not dwell there. Brooklyn, the villages on Long Island, Fort Hamilton, New Utrecht, Flushing, and others; Jersey City, Hoboken, Hudson, Staten Island, Morrisania, Fordham, etc., contain numbers of people who transact their daily business in New York, but reside in those places. In very few of these localities are any prostitutes to be found, nor would they be encouraged therein while New York is so close at hand and so easy of access. Again, the strangers flocking into this city from all parts of the world average from five to twenty thousand and upward every day, and they must relieve it of some part of this obloquy.

The population of New York at the last census (1855) was officially stated to be (in round numbers) 630,000, and the proportionate increase for three years to the present time will bring it very near 700,000. If illicit intercourse here were carried on only by permanent residents, its proportion of public prostitutes would be one to every one hundred and seventeen (117) of the inhabitants; but the calculation must include the denizens of the places already enumerated, and, adding 500,000 for them and the number of strangers constantly visiting the city, we have a total of 1,200,000 persons; making the proportion of prostitutes only one in every two hundred, including men, women, and children. It is desirable, however, to ascertain what proportion courtesans bear to the classes who patronize them, and the census shows that males above the age of fifteen form about thirty-two per cent. of the population. A wider range might have been taken, as it is notorious that many boys under fifteen years old, especially among the lower classes, practice the vice; but assuming that to be the standard, there is one prostitute to every sixty-four adult males, certainly not a large proportion in a commercial and maritime city. It is impossible to form any idea of the proportion of male inhabitants and visitors who encourage houses of prostitution. Marriage is not always a check to indiscriminate intercourse, and professions of religion are often violated for illicit gratification. Still there are a vast number whom these obligations bind, and, if they could be exactly ascertained, this would make a corresponding difference in the proportions.

As the case now is, New York City stands somewhat in the position of a seduced woman, and has to endure all the odium attached to the number of prostitutes residing within her limits; while her neighbors and strangers who largely participate in the offense are like seducers, and escape all censure, self-righteously saying, “How virtuous is our town (or village) compared with that sink of iniquity, New York.” It has been already stated what the effect would be if all visitors to New York were moral men, and, although the remark need not be repeated, its appositeness is apparent.

From the prostitutes within our borders emanates the plague of syphilis, and when the number of abandoned women is considered in conjunction with the certainty that each of them is liable at any moment to contract and extend the malady; when the probabilities of such extension are viewed in connection with the acknowledged fact that each prostitute in New York receives from one to ten visitors every day (instances are known where the maximum exceeds and sometimes doubles the highest number here given), there can be no reasonable doubt of the danger of infection, nor any surprise that the average life of prostitutes is only four years.

The actual extent of venereal disease must be the first point of inquiry, and here the records of public institutions are of great service. The hospitals on Blackwell’s Island, under the charge of the Governors of the Alms-house, present the largest array of cases, the principal part of which were treated in the Penitentiary (now Island) Hospital. The number of these cases was in

1854		1541
1855		1579
1856		1639
1857		2090

Upon these facts the writer of these pages remarked in his annual report to the Board of Governors for 1856:

“The ratio of venereal disease on the gross number of patients treated in 1854 was		374/10	per cent.
The ratio of the same disease in 1855 was		587/10	"
Showing an increase in the year 1855 of		213/10	"
The ratio of venereal disease on the gross number of patients treated during 1856 was		731/10	"
Showing an increase in 1856, as compared with 1855, of		144/10	"
Or an increase, as compared with 1854, of		357/10	"

This steady increase, 21³/10 per cent. in one year, and 14⁴/10 per cent. in the next, or 35⁷/10 per cent. within two years, may be considered an incontrovertible proof of the progress of this malady in the city of New York. The fact that the people regard the Penitentiary Hospital as a dernier resort, an institution to which nothing but the direst necessity will compel them to apply, justifies the conclusion that the cases treated are but a fraction of the disease existing, and its increase here may be taken as a sure indication of a corresponding or larger increase among the general population.”[399]

Again, on the same subject in 1857:

“In my last report I took the opportunity to submit to your Honorable Board facts proving the increase of venereal disease, and I then gave the ratio of that malady on the gross number of patients treated as 73¹/10 per cent. In the year 1857 the ratio was 65²/10 per cent.; but this reduction of 7⁹/10 per cent, must be considered in connection with the fact that other diseases, much beyond the general average, have been treated in the last year, so that a larger number of venereal cases will yet show a smaller percentage. The cases of phthisis pulmonalis (consumption), which have advanced from 58 in 1856 to 159 in 1857, sufficiently explain that the decrease of venereal affections is apparent and not real.”[400]

An investigation beyond the statistics upon which these remarks were based, and including the Penitentiary Hospital, Alms-house, Work-house and Penitentiary, had shown that of the total number admitted to these several institutions 59½ per cent. had suffered or were suffering from venereal disease at the time the inquiry was made. Of this proportion 45 per cent. of the total were suffering directly at the time of investigation, and 19 per cent. were suffering indirectly, or, in non-professional language, were laboring under diseases more or less consequent on the syphilitic taint.

The following detailed statistics of venereal disease treated in the Penitentiary Hospital for four years ending December 31, 1857, will be found to embrace many subjects which have been alluded to in these pages.

		1854.		1855.		1856.		1857.
Total number of patients treated		4058		2657		2083		3158
Cases of primary syphilis		606		660		650		882
"of secondary and other forms of syphilis		935		919		989		1208
Total of syphilitic diseases		1541		1579		1639		2090
Nativities:
Natives of United States		410		489		531		673
Foreigners		1131		1090		1108		1417
		1541		1579		1639		2090
Ages:
Under 16 years		65		72		77		68
From16"to 20 years		481		457		472		593
"21"to 25"		490		481		494		631
"26"to 30"		314		304		311		423
"31"to 40"		128		151		165		190
"41"to 50"		42		99		101		157
"51"and upward		21		15		19		28
		1541		1579		1639		2090
Education:
Good		175		227		231		175
Imperfect		787		794		830		1161
Uneducated		579		558		578		754
		1541		1579		1639		2090
From the total number of venereal patients under treatment		1541		1579		1639		2090
Deduct those discharged each year		1253		1316		1389		1710
Leaving to add to the next year’s account		288		263		250		380
Of the numbers discharged the following is the
Result of Treatment:
Cured		874		1051		1201		1491
Relieved		370		263		183		213
Not relieved		7		...		...		1
Died		2		2		5		5
		1253		1316		1389		1710
Duration of Treatment:
5 days and under		13		16		17		83
6"to 10 days		57		36		68		102
11"to 20"		80		59		81		131
21"to 30"		154		121		137		187
1 month to 2 months		293		333		453		528
2 months to 3 months		304		443		340		328
3"to 4"		220		245		207		260
4"and upward		132		63		86		91
		1253		1316		1389		1710

Some few remarks may be made on the subject of primary syphilis. The proportion of the cases of this malady to the gross number of patients treated was in

1854		149/10	per cent.
1855		252/10	"
1856		312/10	"
1857		279/10	"

By the term “primary syphilis,” non-professional readers will understand the commencement of the disease, or symptoms which are the direct consequence of an impure connection, in contradistinction to “secondary syphilis,” which is the comparatively remote result of infection; never appearing until after the primary symptoms are well developed, and frequently not until all traces of them are removed. He will thus see that every case of primary syphilis is in itself a proof of recent intercourse with a diseased person. These cases, then, have increased from 15 per cent. in 1854 to 31¼ per cent. in 1856, and 28 per cent. in 1857. The remarks recently quoted explain how 882 cases in 1857 make a smaller percentage than 650 in 1856. The fact of this increase compels us to but one conclusion, and that is a very important and suggestive one, namely, that commerce with prostitutes in 1857 was attended with nearly twice the risk of infection incurred in 1854; and, of course, the health of abandoned women has deteriorated in the same proportion. This is not said with any wish on the part of the writer to be considered an alarmist. The facts are those which have come under his personal observation: the inference is but a plain and natural deduction.

But the Hospital, although the chief, is not the only institution on Blackwell’s Island where patients are treated for venereal disease. The Alms-house, Work-house, and Penitentiary have each a share of sufferers from this malady, to what extent will be shown by the annexed table:

		1854.		1855.		1856.		1857.
Alms-house		33		173		85		52
Work-house		65		31		5		56
Penitentiary				176		234		430

Bellevue Hospital, New York City, also under charge of the Governors of the Alms-house, is not professedly available to venereal cases. By a report from the Medical Board of that institution, which will be found in the next chapter, it is seen that they estimate “not far from 10 per cent. of the inmates of Bellevue Hospital are admitted for affections which have their origin remotely in venereal disease.” These data are sufficient to fix the numbers thus treated as follows:

Year.		Total number of patients.		10 per cent for venereal cases.
1854		7033		703
1855		6697		670
1856		6392		639
1857		7676		768

In regard to the Nursery Hospital on Randall’s Island, it is stated by Dr. H. N. Whittlesey, the Resident Physician, that “nine tenths of all diseases treated in this hospital during the past five years have been of constitutional origin, and for the most part hereditary. The exact proportion which hereditary syphilis bears to this sum of constitutional depravity can not be stated with accuracy.” It is an estimate far within the bounds of probability to assume that one half of the diseases referred to by Dr. Whittlesey are complicated with or by syphilitic taint, and the numbers in the Nursery Hospital will therefore stand as follows:

Year.		Total number of patients.		50 per cent for venereal cases.
1854		2199		1100
1855		2310		1155
1856		1275		638
1857		1469		734

Following the institutions in charge of the Governors of the Alms-house is the New York State Emigrants’ Hospital on Ward’s Island, New York City, under the direction of the Commissioners of Emigration, in the reports whereof the following cases of venereal disease are noted:

1853		657
1854		732
1855		856
1856		511
1857		559

The New York Hospital, Broadway, next claims attention. The reports for the under-mentioned years give the number of venereal cases as follows:

1852		478
1853		338
1856		372
1857		405

These embrace the principal public hospitals of New York. There are other institutions, such as St. Luke’s Hospital, St. Vincent’s Hospital, the Jews’ Hospital, etc., but they are of recent origin, and their practice will not form an element in this calculation.

The dispensaries of the city relieve yearly a large amount of sickness. In the New York Dispensary, Centre Street, the cases of venereal disease are reported as follows:

1855		1154
1856		1393
1857		1580

This gives an average of about three per cent. of all the patients treated.

The Northern Dispensary, Waverley Place, does not publish any detailed report of the diseases treated, and to make an estimate it will be necessary to assume that the proportion is the same as in the New York Dispensary, namely, three per cent. By this rule the following results are obtained:

Year.		Total number of patients.		3 per cent. for ven. cases.
1850		19,615		588
1851		20,680		620
1852		21,941		658
1854		14,075		422
1855		12,378		371
1856		11,797		354
1857		10,895		327

The Eastern Dispensary, Ludlow Street, does not give any detailed report of the diseases treated, and the same approximation will be made as previously:

Year.		Total number of patients.		3 per cent. for ven. cases.
1855		25,612		768
1856		21,017		630

To the Demilt Dispensary, Second Avenue, the same system of approximation will be applied:

Year.		Total number of patients.		3 per cent. for ven. cases.
1852-3		2,197		66
1853-4		9,006		270
1854-5		14,034		421
1855-6		20,004		600
1856-7		20,684		620
1857-8		26,785		803

The Northwestern Dispensary, Eighth Avenue, subjected to the same rule gives

Year.		Total number of patients.		3 per cent. for ven. cases.
1854		9,264		277
1855		11,581		347
1856		11,477		344

Cases of venereal disease are treated in the Clinical Lectures at the three medical colleges of New York City. From the New York University Medical College the following report of patients has been obtained. It is undoubtedly much too low an estimate.

1855		47
1856		53
1857		69

and assuming that the practice of the others is of the same extent, we have as the venereal cases treated in the three colleges:

1855		141
1856		159
1857		207

As many of the patrons of New York houses of ill fame reside out of the city, some further information must be sought beyond our own limits. Without professing to inquire into the public health in all the suburbs previously enumerated, it will be sufficient to take the reports of the superintendents of the poor of King’s County to ascertain what amount of syphilitic infection has been treated at the public cost in Brooklyn and its environs. The reports of Doctor Thomas Turner, Resident Physician of the King’s County Hospital, show the following cases:

1853		165
1855		362
1857		311

or about ten per cent. on the total number treated.

In the Brooklyn City Hospital the cases of venereal disease received and treated were in

1854		158
1855		173
1856		160
1857		186
1858 (to May 1)		65

It has been already stated that sailors are great patrons of prostitutes, and to obtain any true statement of venereal disease among them, some estimate respecting this class must be made. For this purpose the reports of Dr. T. Clarkson Moffatt, Physician-in-chief of the “Seaman’s Retreat,” Staten Island, New York, are available. The number of cases treated in the several years is here given:

1854		657
1855		473
1856		355
1857		365
1858 (to April 1)		82

This is nearly twenty-four per cent. on the gross number treated.

This concludes the published reports of charitable institutions, and the question next arises, What amount of syphilis is treated by physicians in private practice? It is impossible to obtain any reliable data upon this head. The Medical Board of Bellevue Hospital, composed of some of the leading members of the profession in the city, state that they “are unable to say what proportion of the practice among regular and qualified physicians in this city is derived from the treatment of venereal diseases, but they know it is large, and that many receive more from this source than from all other sources together.”There are also a very large number of advertising pretenders who offer their services for the treatment of secret diseases; and many drug-stores whose main business is derived from a similar source; together with an infinity of patent medicines announced and sold as specifics for all venereal maladies. Upon the simple commercial principle of supply and demand these are so many proofs of the extent of the evil they profess to relieve. Should the number of cases of venereal disease treated in private practice by qualified physicians and by advertisers, added to the number of patients who supply themselves with patent or other medicines from drug-stores, be regarded as equal to the aggregate of those treated in public institutions, the estimate could not be deemed extravagant.

The design is now to ascertain how much venereal disease exists in New York at the present time, and to do this it will be necessary to recapitulate the information already given. The cases below are those treated in 1857:

Institutions.		Cases.
Penitentiary Hospital, Blackwell’s Island		2090
Alms-house, Blackwell’s Island		52
Work-house, Blackwell’s Island		56
Penitentiary, Blackwell’s Island		430
Bellevue Hospital, New York		768
Nursery Hospital, Randall’s Island		734
New York State Emigrants’ Hospital, Ward’s Island		559
New York Hospital, Broadway		405
New York Dispensary, Centre Street		1580
Northern Dispensary, Waverley Place		327
Eastern Dispensary, Ludlow Street		630
Demilt Dispensary, Second Avenue		803
Northwestern Dispensary, Eighth Avenue		344
Medical Colleges		207
King’s County Hospital, Flatbush, Long Island		311
Brooklyn City Hospital, Brooklyn, Long Island		186
Seaman’s Retreat, Staten Island		365
Total		9847

Medical men, and those acquainted with the internal arrangements of public institutions, need not be reminded that the general system of record in hospitals includes only what may be called the prominent malady. Thus, if a man were admitted with a broken limb, it would be registered as a fracture; and if the same man were suffering indirectly from syphilis at the same time, no entry would be made thereof, although the physician rendered him every professional assistance toward its cure. It is estimated that in this manner a large number of the cases of venereal disease treated in all public institutions, except such as make a specialty of those maladies, is never recorded elsewhere than on the private case-books of the attending physicians. More particularly is this the rule in institutions supported wholly or in part by voluntary contributions. Their benevolent directors have not yet outlived the prejudice which formerly held it almost as disgraceful to treat as to contract syphilis. Some of the spirit which drove the unhappy men and women so afflicted from civilized life to perish in the fields or woods, as in London, Edinburgh, and Paris, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and at a later period drew from the Papal government a bull recognizing the affliction as a direct punishment from the Almighty for the sin of incontinence, still survives in the present generation. The trustees of more than one of the dispensaries in New York have directed their medical officers not to prescribe for such complaints, and a hospital in a sister city, which receives a yearly grant from public funds, has in its printed rules and regulations: “No person having ‘Gonorrhoea’ or ‘Syphilis’ shall be admitted as a charity patient.” Some remarks are made hereafter upon this course, and the facts are mentioned now to explain why many cases of venereal disease never appear upon the reports of institutions where patients are treated.

Practically such prohibitions are a dead letter. No physician of a public institution, applied to by a poor wretch suffering from syphilis, could pass him by without attempting to relieve, let the orders of the board of trustees be what they may. His mission is simply to apply the aid of science and skill to the alleviation of any ailment which may be presented to his notice, and his appreciation of the responsibility of his office is too keen to allow him to refuse the prayer of such an applicant. Hence arises the circumstance that the case is treated under some other name.

If then the cases recorded are but two thirds of the aggregate, the numbers stand thus:

Cases recorded in public institutions		9847
Cases not recorded		4923
Total		14770

cases in the year 1857 in public institutions.

The difficulty of forming an opinion as to the extent of venereal disease treated in private practice has been already mentioned. In the absence of all information, collateral circumstances form the only guide to a conclusion. The amount is unquestionably very large; so large that, if its full magnitude could be discovered and announced, every reader must be astonished. The first consideration to support this view may be found in the army of advertising empirics who make it a source of revenue. Each of these men must have numerous patients; he could not keep up his business without them. Any practical advertiser knows that to insert an announcement of some twenty or thirty lines every day in at least two daily papers, to repeat the same in weekly journals, and, in addition to this, to post handbills on the corner of every street, and employ men or boys to deliver them to passengers at steam-boat docks, ferry landings, and rail-road depÔts, can not be done without a considerable outlay, whatever its prospective advantages may be. No one supposes these charlatans to be actuated by pure disinterested benevolence. They crowd the columns of our journals, and insult us with their printed announcements in the public thoroughfares, simply because “it pays.” These means obtain them customers, and whenever this result ceases the announcements will be discontinued. While they appear there is positive proof that their issuers are gathering patronage.

The number of patent medicines always in the market for the cure of secret diseases, and which the vendors announce “can be sent any distance securely packed, and safe from observation,” affords a corroboration. They are made and sold as a business speculation. When their reputation diminishes, and the public become doubtful if all the virtues of the materia medica are comprised in a single bottle of “Red Drop,” or “Unfortunate’s Friend,” the manufacture will soon stop, and the inventors will resort to some other employment for their capital. The extent to which advertising empirics and patent medicines are flourishing is an undeniable proof of the prevalence of the maladies they professedly relieve.

The legitimate business of drug-stores affords another link in the chain of evidence. Beyond the regular nostrums, almost every druggist in the city sells large quantities of medicine for the cure of venereal disease. Sometimes a man will candidly tell the storekeeper that he has contracted disease, and ask him to make up something to cure it. At other times a prescription, which has been efficacious in a former attack, will be presented, or the sufferer has taken counsel among his friends and companions, and obtained some infallible recipe from one of them. In short, there are so many different means taken by persons who have contracted disease that it is impossible to enumerate the various methods in which the aid of the drug-store may be invoked.

There are many traditional recipes which can be used without the necessity of purchasing ingredients of a druggist. One favorite remedy among the lower classes is “Pine Knot Bitters.” Bottles of this preparation are kept for sale in liquor stores, particularly in those neighborhoods where prostitutes “most do congregate.”

Another reason may be submitted why a large amount of venereal disease must be treated privately. Many of the victims are men who move in a respectable sphere of society, and have probably been led to the act which resulted so disastrously in a moment of uncontrollable passion. Their social position would be irreparably damaged should they enter a public hospital, and the desire to retain their status forces them to secrecy, even if the natural repugnance of every man to the former course did not exist. It is vain to deny that, while medical institutions designed for the public good are so managed as to inflict a disgrace upon their inmates, their benefits are circumscribed, and will never be accepted by any but the poor unfortunates who have no other means of obtaining relief. In the case of syphilis this is particularly to be regretted from the nature of the disease. Every day it is neglected it becomes in a tenfold degree more aggravated, and entails proportionate misery in after life.

If it be assumed that the private cases of venereal disease equal in number those treated in public institutions, an aggregate is obtained of more than 29,500 cases every year. If the former are double the number of the latter, the sum will be over 44,000 cases per annum. Either of these conjectures is below the truth, and we are satisfied, from professional experience and inquiry, that there is no exaggeration in estimating the number of patients treated privately every year for lues venerea as at least quadruple the cases receiving assistance in hospitals and charitable establishments. The result is the enormous sum of seventy-four thousand cases every year! If each person suffered only one attack each year, this would represent one sixth of the total population above fifteen years of age. But many persons, especially among abandoned women and profligate men, are infected several times in the course of twelve months, and any attempt to say what proportion of individuals are represented in these 74,000 cases would be mere speculation without a particle of conclusive evidence to support it.

Notwithstanding the magnitude of the result, a very brief consideration will show that it is not extravagant. In addition to the arguments already advanced in this chapter, the reader will recollect that in a previous section it has been shown that two out of every five prostitutes in New York confessed the syphilitic taint. Supposing a girl relinquishes her calling as soon as she becomes aware of being diseased, several days may have elapsed before she discovered her condition, and during that interval she must have infected every man who had intercourse with her. To take the most liberal view, it may be conceded that the portion who acknowledged infection were not all suffering from the primary or communicable form; many of them had doubtless recovered from that; but if only one half were so suffering, and each of these infected only one man, the result would be 365,000 men diseased every year.

This is not an exaggerated estimate. As was said when alluding to the prostitutes who admitted their contamination, there can be no possible suspicion that they would acknowledge sickness if they could avoid doing so, and consequently the sick are certainly not overrated. It may be objected that the numbers who owned disease were spread over a considerable space of time, but this can be met with the fact that the inquiry which produced this result was in progress simultaneously in all parts of the city. At the farthest it did not extend three months from the time of commencement to completion, and the natural presumption would be that, as during that time the health of the women was neither better nor worse than in any other three months of any year, the same proportion of diseased women could be found whenever an investigation was made; in other words, that two out of five prostitutes in New York are diseased.

The calculation that of these diseased women one half only are affected in a manner which renders them liable to infect their paramours is also a liberal one. Syphilis, when manifested in its secondary stage in the shape of sores, eruptions, and blotches upon the face or person, is so disgusting that no prostitute thus disfigured could retain her place in any brothel, unless it was one of the very lowest grade, because her appearance would immediately repel all visitors. In its primary or local form it is of course concealed from her customers, and may be so concealed for a considerable length of time. These facts borne in mind, is it not almost too liberal an estimate to assume that one half who admit syphilis are suffering in the secondary or palpable form?

This line of argument, supported by the facts given, is perfectly justifiable, view it in what light you may, and proves that the estimate of 74,000 cases of venereal disease annually is much too small.

Another course of reasoning may be adopted. The time occupied in taking the census is stated at three months. This included all the needful preliminary measures, the instructions to examiners, the conferences with police captains, etc; and the final proceedings, such as arranging and writing out reports. Allow one third of the time for these introductory and concluding adjuncts, and it will leave about sixty days, including Sundays, or fifty-two working days devoted to the actual inquiry. The inquiry resulted in the discovery of syphilis in such a proportion of women as would amount to an aggregate of two thousand on the total number of public prostitutes. Suppose the disease of two thousand women equally distributed over the fifty-two days; or, in other words, that an average number were infected and confessed it every day, and the result is thirty-eight women diseased every twenty-four hours. We wish to make this argument as plain as possible, and the reader will pardon what may appear needless repetition. If this disease existed in each woman for four days before she was conscious of it, or it became so troublesome as to force her from her calling, and during this interval of four days each woman had intercourse with only one man per day, over fifty thousand men would be exposed to the risk, almost the certainty of contracting infection in the course of the year. As the Medico-Chirurgical Review said, in the course of a similar argument upon syphilis in London, this estimate is “ridiculously small.” In the first place, a majority of the women would not abandon their calling in four days after infection, but would continue it as long as they could possibly submit to the suffering involved. Every resident of New York will remember the excitement caused in the spring of the year 1855 by the arrest of a large number of prostitutes in the public streets, their committal to Blackwell’s Island, and their subsequent discharge on writs of habeas corpus, on account of informality in the proceedings; but it is not generally known that of those arrested at that time a very large proportion, certainly more than one half, were suffering from syphilis in its primary form, and many of them in its most inveterate stage. We make this assertion from our own knowledge, the result of a professional examination, and mention the circumstance now to prove that women will not abandon their calling when they know themselves diseased, so long as they can possibly continue it. If the estimate had been made that each woman continued prostitution for eight days instead of four days after she was infected, it would have been a closer approximation to the truth, and it would have shown over one hundred thousand (100,000) men exposed to infection every year.

Again: The supposition that a prostitute submits to but one act of prostitution every day is “ridiculously small.” No woman could pay her board, dress, and live in the expensive manner common among the class upon the money she would receive from one visitor daily; even two visitors is a very low estimate, and four is very far from an unreasonably large one.

But suppositions might be multiplied, and the argument extended almost ad infinitum. One more calculation shall be submitted, and then the reader can form his own conclusion upon the question whether the theory of seventy-four thousand cases of venereal disease in New York every year has not been supported by a mass of evidence far more weighty than can ordinarily be adduced to establish a controverted point.

It shall be assumed that the thirty-eight women infected every day continue their calling for six days after the appearance of venereal disease, and during such six days one half of them shall submit to one, and the other half to two sexual acts daily. Then, in the course of a year, one hundred and twenty-five thousand men would be exposed to contamination. To this add the number of women infected, which, at thirty-eight daily, would amount to nearly thirteen thousand in the year, and a total of one hundred and thirty-eight thousand will be presented, or nearly double the number assumed as a basis for remark. It is needless to advance farther reasons in support of the soundness of that opinion.

Next in order will be the consideration of the amount of money prostitution costs the public. The amount of capital invested in houses of ill fame, and the outlay consequent thereupon presents a total which can not but surprise all who have not deeply reflected upon the ramifications of the evil. The police investigation of May, 1858, quoted a few pages back, gives the total number of houses of prostitution as 378, and the worth of property thus employed can be ascertained with a tolerable degree of accuracy from information obtained, in many cases, by actual inquiry. The value of real estate where it was owned by the keepers of these houses has been already given in some instances, and in others the rent may be assumed equivalent to ten per cent. per annum upon the cost of the property, which is certainly not an undue valuation. Dividing the total number of houses into four classes the estimate stands as follows:

80	houses of the first class are estimated, from actual inquiry, to be worth, including real estate and furniture, $13,800 each, or a total of		$1,104,000
100	houses of the second class are estimated at twenty-five per cent. less than those of the first class, namely, $10,350 for each, or a total of		1,035,000
120	houses of the third class at $5000 each		600,000
78	houses of the fourth class at $1000 each		78,000
378	houses of prostitution are estimated worth		$2,817,000
	Add for houses of assignation:
25	houses of the first class at $12,000 each		300,000
25	"second" 9,000"		225,000
35	"third" 5,000"		175,000
15	"fourth" 3,000"		45,000
100	Total for houses of prostitution and assignation		$3,562,000
	In addition to this are 151 dancing-saloons, liquor and lager-beer stores, mainly dependent upon the custom of prostitutes and their companions. Any place in which it is possible to carry on either of these businesses must be worth $200 a year rent, which would give a value of $2000 each, or a total of		302,000
	The necessary stock, fixtures, and implements can not be worth less, on an average, than $100 in each place: this gives a total of		15,100
	and an aggregate capital of		$3,879,100

invested in the business of prostitution. That this is not an extravagant estimate will be admitted by any real estate owner or person acquainted with the value of property in the city; especially if he takes into consideration the location of many of the houses, and calculates how much more the adjacent lands and buildings would be worth if these resorts of vice and infamy were removed.

On a scale correspondingly large is the amount of money actually spent upon prostitutes. The weekly income of each woman can not be less than ten dollars. Many pay much more than that sum for their board alone, and in first-class houses it is not uncommon for a prostitute to realize as much as thirty or fifty dollars, or upward, in a week. But if the income is taken at the lowest point, the aggregate receipts of six thousand courtesans amount to $60,000 per week, or $3,120,000 per year.

Every visitor to a house of prostitution expends more or less money for wines and liquors therein. In some cases this outlay will be larger than the cash remuneration given to the women, but other men are not so lavish in their hospitality; and it is fair to assume that such expenditures amount to two thirds of the previous item—a weekly total of $40,000, or $2,080,000 spent for intoxicating drinks in houses of prostitution every year.

In describing the customers of houses of assignation, it has already been remarked that in the first class many of the female visitors take that step, not for gain, but impelled by affection or sexual desire. They would spurn the idea of being paid for their company; but the houses at which their intrigues are consummated being luxuriously furnished, and conducted by women of known discretion and secrecy, have a high tariff of prices as one of their features. Visitors must pay as much there for accommodation as the rent of a room and compensation to a female would amount to in places of less pretension. It is assumed that 4200 visits are paid to houses of assignation every week, and for the foregoing reason estimating them to cost the men the same in every instance, and fixing that cost at three dollars for each visit, this item will amount to $12,600 per week, or $655,200 per year.

The consumption of wine and liquor is small in houses of assignation, as compared with houses of prostitution. It may probably amount to $5000 per week, or $260,000 per year.

The income of the dancing-saloons, liquor, and lager-beer stores, frequented and mainly supported by prostitutes and their friends, can not be less than $30 per week for each house, and as there are 151 establishments of that description, the aggregate of money disbursed in them will be $4530 per week, or $235,560 per year.

These sums exhibit the outlay for the pleasures of prostitution: the ensuing items give its penalties. Of the inmates of the Island (late the Penitentiary) Hospital, in 1857, over 65 per cent. were afflicted with venereal disease. The total expense of that institution for the year was $35,000, and the pro rata amount for syphilitic patients would be $22,750 during the year, or $438 per week.Bellevue Hospital cost to maintain it during 1857, $70,000 in round numbers. The Medical Board say that ten per cent. of its inmates are treated for diseases originating in the syphilitic taint, and this proportion of the expenses being chargeable to prostitution amounts to $7000 per year, or $135 per week.

The Nursery Hospital on Randall’s Island cost the city of New York $17,000 for maintenance during 1857. One half its infant patients are treated for diseases resulting from venereal infection, and $8,500 per year, or $163 per week, is the quota of expense caused by this vice and its sequel.

The number of cases of venereal disease treated in the New York State Emigrants’ Hospital on Ward’s Island was 6½ per cent. of the total relieved on that island. The expenses for 1857 were $109,000, and the share chargeable to prostitution will be $7075 per year, or $136 per week.

In the New York City Hospital, Broadway, 14 per cent. of the patients during 1857 were treated for venereal disease. The cost of maintenance for that year was $59,000, and the share caused by prostitution was $8260 per year, or $159 per week.

The cases treated in dispensary practice have been averaged at three per cent. throughout the city. The yearly expenses of those charities are as follows:

New York Dispensary		$9100
Northern Dispensary		3550
Eastern Dispensary		3700
Demilt Dispensary		5300
Northwestern Dispensary		2630
Total		$24,280

and the proportion chargeable to syphilis must be $728 per year, or $14 per week.

Very little expense is incurred by the medical colleges in the cases of syphilis treated at their clinical lectures, as the relief is generally confined to a prescription or a slight operation, and if medicine is supplied in a few cases the amount is so small that in a calculation of this sort it is not worth notice.

The expenses of the King’s County Hospital, Long Island, for 1857, amounted to $75,300. About ten per cent. of the patients treated were venereal sufferers, and the cost for them amounts to $7530 per year, or $145 per week.

In the Brooklyn City Hospital the proportion of venereal patients is twenty-seven per cent. of the aggregate. The total annual expenses are $17,200, and the amount incurred on account of this disease is therefore $4644 per year, or $89 per week.

In the Seaman’s Retreat, Staten Island, New York, twenty-four per cent. of the inmates suffer from venereal disease. The expenses during the year 1857 were $43,500, of which $10,540 per year, or $203 per week, must be considered the proportion rendered necessary by syphilis.

To ascertain the amount expended for private medical assistance it will be necessary to recapitulate the outlay of the public institutions mentioned.

Institutions.		Yearly Outlay.		Weekly Outlay.
Island Hospital, Blackwell’s Island		$22750		$438
Bellevue Hospital, New York		7000		135
Nursery Hospital, Randall’s Island		8500		163
Emigrants’ Hospital, Ward’s Island		7075		136
City Hospital, New York		8260		159
Dispensaries		728		14
King’s County Hospital, Long Island		7530		145
Brooklyn City Hospital, Long Island		4644		89
Seaman’s Retreat, Staten Island		10540		203
Total		77027		1482

These totals must be multiplied by four, and the product will show the amount paid for private medical assistance as $5928 weekly, or $308,108 yearly. This is calculated on too liberal a scale, for no one believes that an individual requiring professional aid can obtain it so economically in private life as in a public institution; nor would even the fact that in the latter case the patients are boarded and supplied with all necessaries more than counterbalance the sums which must be paid for individual medical attendance. The desire not needlessly to exaggerate facts which are sufficiently comprehensive without such a procedure is the only reason that induces so low an estimate.

But there are yet other items of expenditure which must be noticed before the long array is completed. Foremost of these is the cost for support of abandoned women in the Work-house and Penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island. The proportion of females committed to the Work-house during 1857 was three fifths of the total commitments. It is not asserted that all these were prostitutes, but it is certain that the larger part were unchaste, and for argument’s sake we will take the ratio as two abandoned to one virtuous woman, the latter representing the class whom poverty, sickness, or friendlessness may have driven to accept a shelter in the institution. The expenses of the Work-house for the year amounted to $76,000, and the share of cost incurred on behalf of prostitutes would therefore be $30,400 per year, or $585 per week.The females sentenced to the Penitentiary from courts of criminal jurisdiction during 1857 amount to twenty-seven per cent. of the total number incarcerated. It will violate no probability to assume that all these women were prostitutes; there may be exceptions to the rule, but so rare are they as not to invalidate the principle. The Penitentiary was supported during 1857 at an outlay to the tax-payers of nearly $89,000, and the proportion chargeable to prostitutes, at the ratio given above, is $24,030 per year, or $462 per week.

A farther portion of the expenses of the Work-house and Penitentiary might very plausibly be included in the list; namely, the share incurred by the maintenance of those men who owe their imprisonment either to crimes committed at the instigation of common women, or for the sake of supporting them; or to a course of idleness and dissipation resulting from the companionship of prostitutes. To pursue this subject in all its minutiÆ would lead to the conclusion that nearly every male prisoner owes his confinement, less or more remotely, to one or the other of these causes, and hence it could be argued that all the expenses of male imprisonment should be taken into this account. On the other hand, such a course could be opposed with the plea that crimes which send men to Blackwell’s Island are only indirect results of the system under discussion, and to recognize them would force the recognition of many other indirect consequences daily occurring elsewhere. Strictly speaking, the position is scarcely demonstrable enough to form an arithmetical calculation, but its moral certainty is so far acknowledged as to make it a serious matter of reflection in connection with the attendant evils of prostitution.

To resume: About fifty-five per cent. of the population of the Alms-houses, Blackwell’s Island, are females. Some of these are old decrepit women whom it would be impossible to consider as prostitutes; others are virtuous women whose poverty has driven them there; but many are broken down prostitutes who have lost whatever of attraction they once possessed, and with ruined health and debilitated constitutions it is impossible for them to exist even in the lowest brothels. They make the Alms-house their last resting-place, and there await the final summons which shall close their career of sin and misery. Yet another class in this institution is composed of women with young children. Some claim to be respectable married women, while others are known as disreputable characters; but the former have little to support their pretensions except their own assertion, and collateral testimony sometimes invalidates that. It is not an uncharitable conclusion, that at least one half of the female inmates of the Alms-house owe their dependence upon charity to their own prostitution. The support of the Alms-house in 1857 cost the city of New York $63,000, and the proportion resulting from prostitution, on the above data, is $15,750 per year, or $303 per week.

The children on Randall’s Island may be classified according to the rule already adopted in reference to disease in the nursery hospital there; namely, to assume that one half owe, if not their existence, certainly their support from public funds to causes that originated in vice. The nursery, exclusive of the hospital, cost during last year $60,000, one half of which must, in accordance with the previous estimate, be charged to prostitution; namely, $30,000 per year, or $577 per week.

The final charge arises from the police and judiciary expenses of the city of New York, of which it is believed that ten per cent. is caused by prostitution and its concomitant crimes and sufferings. The aggregate forms a large amount, and will be rather a surmise than an assertion. The maintenance of police-officers and station-houses, of police-justices and their court-rooms, of the city judge and recorder, with their respective courts, of the city and district prisons, and numerous contingent expenses, can not be less than two million dollars a year. The percentage chargeable to prostitution will therefore be $200,000 per year, or $4000 per week.

Thus much for preliminary explanations. It will now be possible to present the reader with a tabular statement of the weekly and yearly cost of the system of prostitution existing in the metropolis of the New World. Those who have followed us through this argument, and noted the facts upon which every calculation is based, will bear witness that nothing has been exaggerated, that no dollar is debited to the vice without strong presumptive evidence to support such charge, and that the endeavor has been throughout rather to underestimate than exceed the bounds of strict probability. Upon this ground the attention of the public is earnestly requested to the first exposition ever attempted of the amount paid by citizens of and visitors to New York for illicit sexual gratification.

Recapitulation.

Expenditure.		Weekly outlay.		Yearly outlay.
Individual Expenses:
Paid to prostitutes		$60,000		$3,120,000
Spent for wine and liquor by visitors		40,000		2,080,000
Paid by visitors to houses of assignation		12,600		655,200
Spent for wine and liquor by visitors to houses of assignation		5,000		260,000
Spent in dancing-saloons, liquor and lager-beer stores frequented by prostitutes and their friends		4,530		235,560
Medical Expenses:
Island Hospital, Blackwell’s Island		438		22,750
Bellevue"New York		135		7,000
Nursery"Randall’s Island		163		8,500
Emigrants’ Hospital, Ward’s Island		136		7,075
New York City Hospital, New York		159		8,260
Dispensaries				728
King’s County Hospital, Long Island		145		7,530
Brooklyn City""		89		4,644
Seamen’s Retreat, Staten Island		203		10,540
Private medical assistance		5,928		308,108
Vagrancy and Pauper Expenses:
Work-house, Blackwell’s Island		585		30,400
Penitentiary""		462		24,030
Alms-house""		303		15,750
Nursery, Randall’s Island		577		30,000
Police and Judiciary Expenses:
Proportion of aggregate		4,000		200,000
Totals		$135,467		$7,036,075

The footings of the columns show the total expense to be

Weekly		$135,467
Yearly		$7,036,075

over SEVEN MILLIONS of dollars! or nearly as much as the annual municipal expenditure of New York City.

Comment upon these figures would be superfluous. They present the monetary effects of prostitution in a convincing point of view, and will prepare the reader for an attentive perusal of the suggested remedial measures which form the subject of the next chapter. The American mind is said to be proverbially open to argument based upon dollars and cents. Without giving an unqualified assent to the proposition, we may be permitted to hope that financial considerations, combined with the claims of benevolence and humanity, the appeals of virtue and morality, the demands of public health, and the future physical well-being of the community at large, will exercise that influence on the public mind which is necessary to the accomplishment of any valuable practical result from the present investigation.

Before leaving the subject of the extent of prostitution it may be appropriate to remark that it was considered advisable to ascertain the prevalence of the vice in some of the leading cities of the United States, and, in order to do this effectually, a circular letter was addressed to the Mayors of

Albany, New York, Baltimore, Maryland, Boston, Massachusetts, Brooklyn, New York, Buffalo, New York, Charleston, South Carolina, Chicago, Illinois, Cincinnati, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Hartford, Connecticut, Louisville, Kentucky, Memphis, Tennessee,

Mobile, Alabama, Newark, New Jersey, New Haven, Connecticut, New Orleans, Louisiana, Norfolk, Virginia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Portland, Maine, Richmond, Virginia, Savannah, Georgia, St. Louis, Missouri, Washington, District Columbia.

(The names printed in italics are those of cities from which replies were received.)

The circular forwarded was as follows:

The following are the replies received:

Norfolk, Va.

(Copy.)

“Mayor’s Office, Norfolk, Va., Sept. 15, 1856.

“Dear Sir,—Yours of 1st instant was duly received, and in reply would state that I have endeavored to be as accurate as possible in my replies to your several interrogatories, namely,

“1. How many houses of prostitution in your city?

“Answer. About forty.

“2. How many houses of assignation in your city?

“Answer. None as such; there being no places, so far as I can learn, used as meeting-places.

“3. How many public prostitutes are there in your city?

“Answer. About one hundred and fifty.

“4. How many private prostitutes are there in your city?

“Answer. About fifty.

“5. How many kept mistresses are there in your city?“Answer. About six or eight.

“6. What is the present population of your city?

“Answer. About eighteen thousand.

“I would, in connection with the above, state that about twenty-five of the forty houses are used almost exclusively by sailors and seafaring men, and are sometimes improperly called ‘Sailor Boarding-houses,’ especially the most decent of them.

“Any other information I can give you I will most cheerfully do, should you desire any.

“I am very respectfully yours,

“F. F. Ferguson,
“Mayor City of Norfolk, Virginia.

“To Dr. Wm. W. Sanger, Resident Physician, Blackwell’s Island, New York.”