The History of Prostitution Part 57

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 prost.i.tution 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 6-1/2 per cent. of the total relieved on that island. The expenses for 1857 were $109,000, and the share chargeable to prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution 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 a.s.sistance it will be necessary to recapitulate the outlay of the public inst.i.tutions mentioned.

Inst.i.tutions. 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 a.s.sistance 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 inst.i.tution; 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 a.s.serted that all these were prost.i.tutes, 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 cla.s.s whom poverty, sickness, or friendlessness may have driven to accept a shelter in the inst.i.tution.

The expenses of the Work-house for the year amounted to $76,000, and the share of cost incurred on behalf of prost.i.tutes 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 a.s.sume that all these women were prost.i.tutes; 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 prost.i.tutes, 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 prost.i.tutes. To pursue this subject in all its _minutiae_ 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 prost.i.tution.

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 prost.i.tutes; others are virtuous women whose poverty has driven them there; but many are broken down prost.i.tutes who have lost whatever of attraction they once possessed, and with ruined health and debilitated const.i.tutions 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 cla.s.s in this inst.i.tution 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 a.s.sertion, 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 prost.i.tution. The support of the Alms-house in 1857 cost the city of New York $63,000, and the proportion resulting from prost.i.tution, on the above data, is $15,750 per year, or $303 per week.

The children on Randall's Island may be cla.s.sified according to the rule already adopted in reference to disease in the nursery hospital there; namely, to a.s.sume 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 prost.i.tution; 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 prost.i.tution and its concomitant crimes and sufferings. The aggregate forms a large amount, and will be rather a surmise than an a.s.sertion. 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 prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution 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 s.e.xual gratification.

RECAPITULATION.

Weekly Yearly Expenditure. outlay. outlay.

INDIVIDUAL EXPENSES: Paid to prost.i.tutes $60,000 $3,120,000 Spent for wine and liquor by visitors 40,000 2,080,000 Paid by visitors to houses of a.s.signation 12,600 655,200 Spent for wine and liquor by visitors to houses of a.s.signation 5,000 260,000 Spent in dancing-saloons, liquor and lager-beer stores frequented by prost.i.tutes 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 a.s.sistance 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 munic.i.p.al expenditure of New York City.

Comment upon these figures would be superfluous. They present the monetary effects of prost.i.tution 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 a.s.sent 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 prost.i.tution 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, Ma.s.sachusetts, 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:

(Copy.)

"Mayor's Office, New York City, Sept. 1, 1856.

"TO HIS HONOR THE MAYOR OF THE CITY OF ------:

"DEAR SIR,--Below you will receive from Dr. Sanger a note containing a few questions concerning Prost.i.tution and Prost.i.tutes in your city, which I shall feel obliged if you will have the kindness to answer.

"Very truly yours, "FERNANDO WOOD, Mayor New York City."

"DEAR SIR,--During the past six months, with the aid of His Honor, Mayor Wood, of this city, and the police force at his command, I have been collecting materials for a report on Prost.i.tution, as it exists in New York at the present time. I inclose you a list of questions that have been asked all the women examined here.[401] Of course I do not expect that you will or can give answers to these questions from the prost.i.tutes in your city, but I would wish to have your replies to the following queries:

"1. How many houses of prost.i.tution are there in your city?

"2. How many houses of a.s.signation are there in your city?

"3. How many public prost.i.tutes are there in your city?

"4. How many private prost.i.tutes are there in your city?

"5. How many kept mistresses are there in your city?

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