One of the factors that drove seamstresses to the grave was the way they were paid. Not only did they earn mere pennies for their labor, but they usually had to post a one-dollar deposit with their employer to get work at all. One “can have no idea of the sacrifices, hardships and humiliations to be passed through before sufficient means can be raised to enable them to make the necessary deposit,” stated the Tribune. Some employers used the threat of confiscating the deposit to keep their workforce docile. Despite promising five cents per shirt, they would criticize the quality of the sewing when the finished shirts were returned and pay only four cents, threatening to keep the deposit if the needlewoman complained. Or the employer might return the deposit but refuse to pay for the work, claiming the shirts had been ruined. “No serf in the middle ages,” concluded the Tribune, “was ever more helplessly under the absolute control of his superior lord as are the needle women to the employers.”37
Some seamstresses fought back. When shirt manufacturer John Davis of 48 William Street would neither pay two seamstresses for their work nor return their deposit, they sued him. The court ordered Davis to pay the workers the promised six cents per shirt, return their deposits, and reimburse the seamstresses for time lost in pursuing the lawsuit. Still, many employers continued to cheat their workers. Five years later, Davis again found himself in court, sued by another group of seamstresses for the same offense. One can only imagine how many defenseless women Davis had managed to cheat in the intervening years. Another seamstress asked her employer for work that paid better than shirts and was given pillowcases, but failed to ask exactly how much she would earn. When she returned a day later with the finished cases and received only fifteen cents, she told the Herald in 1853, “my heart was nearly ready to break.”38
Sensing their virtual helplessness at the hands of unscrupulous employers, a group of needlewomen and reformers in March 1851 organized the Shirt-Sewers’ Association of the City of New-York. Its primary function was to establish a “Shirt Depot” at 9 Henry Street (just east of the Five Points neighborhood) so that “mechanics and others” could order shirts directly from the sewers, thus putting the seamstresses “beyond the caprice of employers” and directing all profits to the needlewomen. The organization seemed at first to hold some promise of success. Tribune publisher Horace Greeley and Rev. Henry Ward Beecher endorsed it, and by the end of its first year the association employed as many as one hundred seamstresses. But their made-to-order work apparently could not compete with the convenience of choosing a ready-made shirt from a merchant’s stock. By June 1853, only forty or fifty needlewomen worked at the association’s shop. The overwhelming majority of seamstresses continued to labor under the grueling conditions that would characterize the needle trades into the twentieth century.39
As in other occupations, a seamstress’s work life had seasonal swings. According to the Tribune, winter was the worst time for seamstresses because they had less work to do but had to pay more in fuel and lighting expenses. Yet summer was hardly better. The Tribune referred to late summer as “‘the hurrying season’” because garment wholesalers rushed to complete orders for the retailers, who sold large quantities of clothing as the weather turned colder. A seamstress could count on plenty of work at this point, and perhaps even a penny or two more per shirt. But the stress was overwhelming, as each needleworker strained her eyes and muscles to complete as many shirts as possible in order to squirrel away funds for the winter. It was during these late summer months that the life of the seamstress most resembled that of the fictional needlewoman in the English poet Thomas Hood’s “Song of the Shirt”:
. . . Work, work, work,
Till the brain begins to swim,
And work, work, work,
Till the eyes are heavy and dim.
Seam and gusset and band,
Band and gusset and seam,
Till o’er the buttons I fall asleep
And sew them on in my dream.40
Many Five Points seamstresses who lived with brothers, parents, or husbands did not have to work this hard. They sewed to supplement the family income, not to support an entire household. But the suffering of those who had no other means of support cannot be exaggerated.41
While half the employed women in antebellum Five Points worked in the needle trades, another quarter toiled as domestic servants. Most domestics lived in the neighborhood with their employers, but one-third commuted to work. The proportion of Five Points women who would eventually work as domestics was probably much higher than the 25 percent indicated in the census, as many daughters would leave the neighborhood to take live-in positions as domestics when they turned nineteen or twenty. Significant numbers of Five Points housewives also may have worked as domestic servants before finding their mates.
In a material sense, the live-in domestic servant lived far better than the seamstress. Some were “thrust into noxious dark bed-rooms or unventilated garrets and lofts,” but even these were far better than the typical Five Points “sleeping closet.” Domestics also ate well and lived in safer, cleaner neighborhoods than other immigrants. Although their pay was as low as that of a seamstress ($4 to $8 per month depending on experience), they received free room and board, and could therefore either send virtually all their income to relatives back in Ireland or place it in a savings account. Margaret Naylan, a County Cork native who had emigrated to America in 1848, managed in seventeen years of work as a domestic to save nearly $500, the equivalent of about $7,000 today.42
Yet there was a heavy psychological toll involved. “The relationship between the servant girl and her employer, is nearly the same as that of master and slave,” wrote a southerner commenting on life in New York. “The duties expected and exacted are precisely the same. The respect, and obedience, and humility required, are also nearly the same.” Unlike slaves, however, employers felt no obligation to care for a sick servant and might simply fire her. Servants also had very little free time. The typical servant got every other Sunday off, alternating with the cook, chambermaid, or laundress, “so that the house shall never be ‘left alone.’” This meant little if any social life, making the young Irishwoman’s already difficult task of finding a mate even more worrisome.43
Observers constantly praised the “Irish servant girl” for her propensity to send her meager salary to loved ones back in Ireland. “The great ambition of the Irish girl is to send ‘something’ to her people as soon as possible after she has landed in America,” observed a visiting Irish journalist, John Francis Maguire, in 1868. “. . . Loving a bit of finery dearly,” he continued, “she will resolutely shut her eyes to the attractions of some enticing article of dress, to prove to the loved ones at home that she has not forgotten them; and she will risk the danger of insufficient clothing, or boots not proof against rain or snow, rather than diminish the amount of the little hoard to which she is weekly adding, and which she intends as a delightful surprise to parents who possibly did not altogether approve of her hazardous enterprise. To send money to her people, she will deny herself innocent enjoyments, womanly indulgences, and the gratifications of legitimate vanity.” Men scrimped and saved to send bank drafts to Ireland as well. Maguire noted that even hardened New York criminals who might spend much of the year in jail practiced self-denial around Christmas and Easter so they could send a remittance to their old father or mother in Ireland. But of the $120 million (according to Maguire’s estimate) that Irish Americans had remitted to Ireland from 1845 to 1865, a large portion came from the purses of domestic servants.44
Some servants found it difficult to be surrounded by all that wealth and material comfort while their families suffered back in Ireland or Five Points. In 1859, for example, thirty-two-year-old Irish immigrant Ann Kelly of 54 Mulberry Street was accused by her employer of theft. Asked by the District Attorney’s Office what had happened, the servant replied that “I got drunk, and went into the lady’s wardrobe and helped myself pretty freely.” For those who could resist such t
emptations, however, work as a domestic servant offered poor Irish immigrants the chance to wield more leverage with their employers than most Five Points workers. “Whenever one thinks she is imposed upon, the invariable plan is to threaten to leave the situation at once,” noted the Tribune, “instead, as in other kinds of employment, of being fearful of losing it.” This could translate, especially for an experienced servant, into better pay, more time off, and other benefits.45
In other parts of New York, young women found work in fields such as paper box making, type founding, book folding and binding, and umbrella and artificial-flower making. But virtually no Five Points women secured jobs in these better-paying occupations in the 1850s. These employers instead hired native-born women, mostly the young daughters of artisans and mechanics seeking to earn some money before marriage. Those who did hire immigrants, such as milliners, primarily employed English and French natives. By the 1890s, poor immigrant women would dominate most of these trades, in part because natives abandoned such work but also because employers sought a cheaper workforce. Until then, these lucrative trades would remain virtually off-limits to Five Pointers.46
Even in the sphere of domestic service, the Irish faced significant prejudice and discrimination. An 1853 advertisement in the New York Sun read: “WOMAN WANTED—To do general housework; she must be clean, neat, and industrious, and above all good tempered and willing. English, Scotch, Welsh, German, or any country or color will answer except Irish.” A notice in the Herald two days later likewise specified “any country or color except Irish.” The Irish-American—organ of the Irish community in New York—condemned such prejudice, vowing to “kill this anti-Irish-servant-maid crusade” and hiring a lawyer to sue the advertisers and newspapers involved. Although the Irish-American’s crusade did halt the appearance of specifically anti-Irish advertisements, employers simply modified their wording slightly. About one in ten continued to specify “Protestants” or “Americans” (though ads seeking male employees were remarkably free of such overt discrimination). While the Irish-American might boast by 1857 that “no Irish need apply” stipulations had virtually disappeared, thinly veiled prejudice against hiring Irish Catholics, especially as domestic servants, continued to be a staple of New York life.47
One way to escape such discrimination was to run one’s own business. Five Points women usually got this opportunity only by taking over an enterprise after a spouse died. Twenty-nine-year-old Bridget Johnston, for instance, who had immigrated to New York from County Galway in 1840, operated a boardinghouse and liquor store at 8 Elizabeth Street after her husband disappeared. Forty-five-year-old widow Bridget Giblin, who had emigrated from Ireland in 1841, began to run the family’s liquor store after her husband passed away. Grocer Ann McGowan at 55 Park Street, junk dealer Mary Hynes next door at 57 Park, and second-hand dealer Jane Wilson at 68 Baxter also seem to have been widows who took over family enterprises. Women who owned their own businesses sometimes earned relatively sizable incomes. Johnston, for example, had saved nearly $300 in her bank account by 1853, equivalent to about $5,000 today. If they chose to remarry, widows were expected to put family first. Eleanor Quinn, an old-clothes dealer on Baxter Street, told a neighborhood policeman that she planned to “get married and give up the business.”48
Because few Five Pointers of either sex ever managed to start a business, very few women of an entrepreneurial bent got the opportunity to run one. A more typical pursuit for these women was to peddle fruit. The “Irish apple woman,” with her pipe in her mouth and a small pile of fruit balanced on a folding table, was an omnipresent sight on the sidewalks of New York in the Civil War era. These peddlers sold whatever fruit was in season, but because apples could be kept without spoiling for many months and made a convenient snack for pedestrians, they were the favorite. Widows often sold apples to support themselves after their spouses died. Catherine Norris of 32 Baxter Street and Catherine McCall of 64 Mulberry both worked as fruit peddlers after their husbands passed away. Some married women peddled fruit if their children were old enough to be left alone. County Limerick native Johanna Baggott of 15 Mulberry Street, for example, became a “fruiterer” when her son Edward turned fourteen and began learning to manufacture walking canes. Working on the streets was not easy, but the flexible hours and independence fruit peddlers enjoyed must have often inspired envy in Five Points’ hundreds of seamstresses and servants.49
“THEY . . . HAVE THEIR OWN LAWS AND CUSTOMS”
American society frowned upon street work by women, especially young women who might attract the attention of male passersby. Children, however, could work on the streets without breaking any sexual taboos. Consequently, hundreds of Five Points children plied “street trades” in order to supplement their families’ incomes, or, in the cases of orphans, to support themselves. One of the best known street trades for girls was selling freshly cooked ears of sweet corn. “‘Here’s your nice Hot Corn, smoking hot, smoking hot, just from the pot!’” cried dozens of girls on the streets of New York when corn was in season. Attorney George Templeton Strong noted in 1854 that he “heard the cry [of the hot-corn girls] rising at every corner” on August and September nights and was often “lulled to sleep by its mournful cadence in the distance.” Young corn vendors were so closely associated with impoverished New York neighborhoods that when Tribune reporter Solon Robinson published a collection of his essays on “life scenes” of poor young New Yorkers, he entitled it Hot Corn.50
The most heartrending tale in Robinson’s book was that of a Five Points hot corn vendor known as “Little Katy.” He described her as “an emaciated little girl about twelve years old, whose dirty shawl was nearly the color of rusty iron, and whose face, hands, and feet, naturally white and delicate, were grimed with dirt until nearly of the same color.” Asked why she stayed out so late selling corn, Katy replied that she was afraid to go home until she had sold it all because her alcoholic mother would beat her if she did not earn a certain sum each day. According to Katy, her mother used the money from her corn sales to buy rum. A few weeks after meeting Robinson in the autumn of 1853, Katy fell ill, supposedly from staying out too late in the chilly autumn air. Her ailment, wrote Robinson, was aggravated by a beating her mother gave her for not earning enough money. Soon after the thrashing, Little Katy died. Contributions to the Five Points House of Industry soared after publication of Robinson’s story, as New Yorkers sought to support its efforts to take such children off the streets and away from abusive parents. Robinson’s book sold 50,000 copies, more “than any since Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” according to Strong.51
Many of the young girls who sold corn in August and September became street sweepers during the winter. These children swept intersections so pedestrians could cross the street without dirtying their boots with mud. Given the filth of the New York streets and the quality of their brooms, a sweeper could do little to remove the muck from a street corner. Nonetheless, the tips they received in the rain and snow—when they did a “brisk business”—could be quite substantial. A street sweeper could earn a dollar a day, and twice that on a very busy and snowy Saturday, scurrying about at crowded intersections offering her services to the well-dressed passersby. But if the weather was good, a street sweeper might return home with twenty-five cents or less. Dozens of Five Points children supplemented their families’ incomes by sweeping intersections in the winter months.52
Young girls were best known for selling corn and sweeping street corners; boys tended to work as bootblacks and newsboys. It was especially easy for Five Pointers to become newsboys because most of the city’s newspapers were produced just south of the neighborhood at the southern end of the Sixth Ward. Newsboys, generally ten to thirteen years old, earned half a cent for every daily paper sold during the 1850s, paying 11/2 cents for each two-cent journal. Some bought their papers directly from the publisher, but most purchased them from wholesalers, men in their late teens or early twenties who had once been newsboys themselves. Unsold
newspapers could not be returned for a refund, so it was vitally important not to buy too many and be stuck with unsold inventory. In order to estimate sales, a newsboy would scan the contents of the paper—if he could not read, he would ask a friend to do it for him—before choosing how many to purchase. He would scream out the headlines at the top of his lungs in order to attract the attention of pedestrians on busy streets such as Broadway. Often he tailored his appeal to each passerby, emphasizing business news for a strolling merchant and cultural reports for a potential female customer. Newsboys typically earned from twenty-five to fifty cents per day, though sixty cents to a dollar was not unheard-of for the best and most energetic salesmen. On a day when the paper featured news of an execution, revolution, or disaster, a newsboy might take home two or three dollars, and on a particularly brisk Sunday, even more. With these substantial sums at stake, newsboys organized to protect their interests. In 1850, New York ministers sought to preserve the dignity of the Sabbath by banning the boys “from crying and selling papers on Sunday.” The newsboys responded with a protest meeting in City Hall Park and successfully fended off the proposed law.53
Like the street sweepers and hot corn girls, most of the city’s newsboys took their earnings home to help support their families. But many newsboys were orphans or runaways who lived on the streets. Owen Kildare was seven years old when, in 1871, his stepfather kicked him out of their Catherine Street home. Kildare went to Park Row (where most of the city’s newspapers had their offices), took up with a gang of newsboys who slept on the streets, and soon began selling newspapers himself. During the summer, these waifs slept in City Hall Park, on courthouse steps, or in coal boxes under building stairwells. In the winter, they huddled over steam grates outside the newspaper pressrooms or in the doorways of unlocked buildings.
Five Points Page 15