Five Points

by Tyler Anbinder

  Wary Catholics such as McMaster might claim that “there is not . . . a copper’s difference between the rivals at the Five Points,” yet they embraced two very different approaches to charity. The Missionary Society’s first annual report stated that until its workers could bring about “clear, undoubted conversions, we have no sure footing.” Catholics from the neighborhood were told that the Bible was the “‘one Mediator between God and man’ . . . the only guide to eternal life.” Typical of these proselytizers was a “Mrs. Cameron, a most indefatigable Bible Reader. She visits the people at their houses, makes herself their friend. She reads to them, talks with them, knows them by name. She exercises great watchfulness over them, questions them closely, and urges them with great success to persevere in the way of self-denial and industry.”30

  Pease’s organization, by contrast, was much more radical. “Its object is the physical, social and moral reformation of its members, and likewise of the immediate community in which it is located,” he explained in 1852. “It aims, too, at the suppression of houses of infamy, and of the open lewdness of action, even in the Five Points. . . . Its instrumentalities for securing these objects are a bath-tub, a wardrobe . . . , a workshop, morning and evening devotion, prayer meeting, singing-school, a Bible-class, a Sabbath-school, and a regular Sabbath preaching. Likewise a Temperance meeting on Friday evenings.” The House of Industry clearly did teach that religion ought to play an important role in every American’s life, and its residents too were required to attend religious services. But whereas mission boarders were required to attend mission services, Pease allowed his tenants to go to other churches (or, in theory, synagogues) if they preferred. The “inmates of this Institution,” he pledged in 1853, “shall have the privilege of worshipping God according to the dictates of their own consciences, without being interfered with by any.”31

  It is difficult to appreciate how radical Pease’s approach appeared to most antebellum Americans. Pease had not coined the phrase “House of Industry” and he was not the first to open one. New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley had suggested in the early 1840s that the city start a “House of Industry” to teach job skills and thrift to the indigent. Like Pease, Greeley advocated protecting clients from their own intemperate tendencies by forcing them to reside within the institution. But nothing ever came of Greeley’s proposal. By early 1848, Episcopal minister Stephen H. Tyng and public health pioneer John H. Griscom had opened their own “House of Industry and Home for the Friendless” a few miles north and east of Five Points, but in its early years it functioned primarily as a shelter for homeless girls. Pease’s House of Industry was thus the first to implement Greeley’s ideas on a large scale. Charles Loring Brace, who founded his Children’s Aid Society a few years after the House of Industry was established, recalled that the change from a religious to a material emphasis in charity initially “met with great opposition. To give a poor man bread before a tract, to clean and feed street-children before you attempt to teach them religiously, to open work-shops where prayer-meetings used to be held . . . to talk of cleanliness as the first steps to godliness;—all this seemed then to have a ‘humanitarian’ tendency, and to belong to European ‘socialism’ and ‘infidelity.’” These were in fact the terms resentful Methodists used in condemning Pease and his innovations, calling those who advocated his ideas “rationalists, Socialists, Fourierists, &c.” Enmity between the two institutions would continue for many years.32

  “THE CHILDREN OPEN THE DOOR FOR US”

  The House of Industry and the mission profoundly altered life in Five Points. In the realm of job training, Pease quickly expanded beyond the sewing work that had launched his enterprise. By early 1851, before his split with the mission, Pease had added baking, shoemaking, and corset making to the vocational instruction offered. Basket weaving and hatmaking eventually became part of the curriculum as well. More than five hundred people worked at these trades in the House of Industry in 1854. Pease paid his workers for the products they produced during their training. “Dextrous” sewers, for example, could earn $2 to $2.50 per week—not much, but more than many needlewomen earned, and at least the work was steady. In about 1870, the mission opened its own sewing school. By the end of the seventies, the mission also trained its inmates for domestic service. “Moving harmoniously to the accompaniment of the piano,” noted the mission’s annual report with pride, “they wash and scrub, wait at the door, set the table, wash dishes, make beds, and sweep the floors.” The House of Industry’s extensive vocational training operation helped many Five Pointers find good jobs. In the twelve months ending in March 1857, for example, the House of Industry placed six hundred thirty of its trainees in workshops, factories, and homes all across the city.33

  The “day schools” operated by the two Five Points charitable institutions also changed the lives of countless neighborhood residents. At first, it took quite some time for the teachers and students at the House of Industry school to adjust to each other’s needs. “The room so stank from their filth,” recalled Pease’s financial backers of those first students, “that bathing facilities for each sex had to be established.” Many children were distracted from their studies by hunger, so Pease opened a “soup-room” where the “poorest of the children” could eat. He eventually provided a hot lunch for all the children in the expanded facility’s dining hall. One might wonder why Five Points’ predominantly Catholic and Jewish parents would send their children to Pease’s school when public ones already operated there. Brace found that some children were “so ill-clothed and destitute that they are ashamed to attend” the public schools. Others may have chosen to send their children to a charitable day school because it provided its needy pupils with clothing and food. Still others may have selected Pease’s academy because it kept children later each day, operated year round, and accepted small kids too young to attend the public schools.34

  The House of Industry and mission attracted even more students to their Sunday schools than their weekday classes. “The school is very full,” the mission board was told in 1856, so much so that “many sit on the desks.” Yet because of their more overtly religious nature, the Sunday schools came under sharp attack by Five Points Catholic leaders. Soon Catholics started their own neighborhood Sunday school, but when this failed to stem the flow of children into the two Protestant institutions, Catholics (sometimes “several hundreds”) began to congregate in front of the House of Industry on Sunday mornings in September 1853 to encourage Catholic children to attend Catholic religious schools instead. Protestant mobs soon began appearing to defend their institutions. Tensions mounted and tempers flared each Sunday until the Times feared that a “bloody riot” might ensue.35

  The Freeman’s Journal claimed that Protestants in Five Points prevented Catholic teachers “from gathering up the children of Catholics to take them, according to the wish of their parents, to Catholic Sunday Schools. This kind of interference has been going on for some time.” Pease insisted that no children attended the House of Industry Sunday school “in opposition to the will of their parents.” He pointed out that “Catholics as well as Protestants are permitted to teach and preach the great common principles of our common Christianity in this Institution, if they will abstain from their peculiar dogmas.” Pease complained that Catholics had organized “to have our public services wantonly disturbed . . . our visitors stoned and beaten, and one of them . . . threatened with having his brains knocked out, and the regular children of our school driven from our door with horrid oaths and imprecations. If this be controversy then we have had it.”36

  Pease had hoped that publicity would help prevent additional confrontations, but the situation deteriorated even further the following Sunday, October 9. According to a House of Industry Sunday school worker named Stonelake, “a prominent Catholic” confronted a child about to enter the charity, took a newly bound Bible from the youngster’s hands, tore out a page, ignited it, and lit both his cigar and the rest of Bible wi
th it. He then gave the burning Bible to some boys, who threw it into the street and “commenced the work of kicking it about amidst curses, language the most blasphemous, obscene shouts of brutal laughter, and riotous conduct of the worst description.” Stonelake rescued the Bible in the gutter in front of Donnelly’s coal yard and brought it to Pease, “who still has it should anyone doubt the story.” When later that same morning Bartholomew Smith of the St. Andrew’s Roman Catholic Church Sunday school tried to stop a teacher from bringing a Catholic child who lived in the House of Industry into its Sunday school, he was arrested for assault. The Journal claimed that the child was being forced into the House of Industry against his will.37

  Tempers calmed after the Bible burning. Even the Times, which generally supported Pease, called the behavior of both Five Points groups “disgusting” and “disgraceful.” Sunday school attendance at both the House of Industry and the mission dipped for a while as Catholics organized and publicized alternatives. Yet charity continued to attract many Five Pointers to the Protestant institutions’ schools despite the scolding of their priests. When a local priest asked an Italian bootblack to come to his Sunday school, the boy’s response was: “Say, Boss, d’ye give clothes and shoes for goin’ to Sunday School same as at Five Poin’?”38

  Initially, only those who either lodged in the House of Industry and mission or attended their schools were eligible to receive food or clothing from them. But soon the charities began to distribute these items more widely. The severe recession in the winter of 1854–55 seems to have first prompted the change. Pease set up a soup kitchen to meet the urgent demand for sustenance in the neighborhood and in just four months served 39,267 meals. The mission did not distribute food in such quantities, but instead complemented Pease’s efforts by collecting second-hand clothes for the poor. During a twelve-month period ending in early 1856, the mission gave away 17,569 pieces of clothing, 922 pairs of shoes, 355 quilts, 250 caps, and 150 bonnets, as well as 25 tons of coal.39

  The mission characteristically scaled back its charity once hard times had receded, while the House of Industry continued to expand its operations. The Times reported in May 1866 that the House of Industry had served an astounding 422,461 meals during the previous twelve months, an average of 1,157 per day. Eventually, the mission’s largesse matched that of its neighborhood rival, as its workers by 1882 gave away 517,834 “rations” of food and 11,806 pieces of clothing to a total of 5,146 persons.40

  There were limits, however, to the charities’ generosity. A destitute Jewish glazier asked a mission employee for “some clothes to make me look so as people will like me, and give me work.” The employee would not consider the request until after “first interrogating him on whether he believed that Jesus was his savior.” The employee did not record the man’s answer, but he did give him the clothes.41

  In a similar case, a seven-year-old girl came to the mission one day asking for a quilt. According to the mission newspaper, “she was thinly clothed, and was accustomed to suffer from cold and hunger. The following conversation took place: ‘What is your name?’ ‘Mary.’ ‘Where does your mother live?’ ‘She is dead.’ ‘Where do you live?’ ‘With a woman.’ ‘What street and number?’ ‘I have forgot it.’ ‘What is your father’s name?’ ‘John.’ ‘Where do you go to school?’ ‘Nowhere.’ ‘Do you know your letters?’ ‘No.’ Of course we could not give her the quilt.” The missionaries did not send Mary away completely empty-handed. They gave her “a ‘boiling’ of potatoes” and told her they could give her additional assistance if she would attend the mission school. Otherwise, they would do little more to help her.42

  The two charities generally did not assist children who did not attend school, and gave no food or clothing to adults who did not pledge to give up liquor. Both institutions made temperance efforts a cornerstone of their work. They held outdoor meetings in Paradise Park to attract attention to their movement and visited Five Pointers in their homes to check on their progress. The House of Industry also operated an “Inebriate’s Retreat” where alcoholics could seek shelter and assistance in “the cleansing and cooling process” that might lead to permanent sobriety.43

  Most of the funds the Five Points charities used to finance their work came from private donations. Through press reports, their own monthly newsletters, and benefit concerts, the two groups raised the thousands of dollars necessary to support their myriad operations. Collectively, the publicity worked wonders. Although a resident of Ohio, the teenaged John D. Rockefeller nonetheless gave 12 cents from his $4 a week salary to the Five Points Mission. Children from all over the United States joined the mission’s “shoe club,” making small contributions earmarked for the purchase of footwear for Five Points youngsters.44 The House of Industry, especially, was the darling of the New York press, particularly during Pease’s tenure as its superintendent. “Mr. Pease is certainly in his way one of the ‘remarkable men’ of the City,” maintained the Times at the end of 1852. “He has the rather uncommon union of business talent and reforming talent. . . . There is a certain heartiness and manliness in him also,” which helped him win over “the class with whom he deals.” The House of Industry, the editorial concluded, was “one of the most carefully sustained and benevolent enterprises our City has ever beheld.” Photojournalist Jacob Riis proclaimed almost forty years later that the House of Industry nursery was “one of the most touching sights in the world.” But Riis lauded the mission as well, calling the two institutions “pioneers in this work of moral and physical regeneration.”45

  Some New Yorkers were less pleased with the charities’ work. “I hate these canting scoundrels of the ‘Five Points Mission’ as much as I do the Inquisition,” wrote one correspondent to the Irish-American in 1854, “and I regard their ‘reformation’ of the most abandoned as even worse than the destruction from which they affect to save them.” The paper’s editors agreed, condemning the “bigotry and attacks on the religion of the Roman Catholic” found in the mission’s publications: “We cry shame upon the ladies of the ‘Five Points Mission’ who are not satisfied with the charities of the heart, but must cram down the throats of the relieved religious opinions to which they are averse!”46

  Catholics criticized the Five Points charities, and the mission in particular, because their prejudice toward Catholicism was so palpable. Of a drunkard asking for assistance, a mission worker wrote that “he is a Catholic of course; But ‘doesn’t know the way to the priest’s house now’?” In contrast, when a Protestant mother of three whose husband was usually too drunk to work asked the mission for assistance, the secretary took pity on the “poor woman! She is ‘no five-pointer,’ but seems to have some intelligence.” The mission records constantly boast of the assistance offered to “Protestants and Americans,” as if Catholics, Jews, and immigrants were less deserving.47

  “WE WOULD LIKE A LITTLE GIRL FROM THREE TO FIVE YEARS OLD”

  Catholic leaders became even more hostile toward the Five Points Mission and the House of Industry when the two charities went into the adoption business. Hoping at first merely to expose Five Points children to life in the country, Pease in 1853 had the House of Industry purchase a sixty-four-acre farm sixteen miles north of Manhattan near the Westchester County village of Eastchester. He believed that the “quiet and beautiful country, with its pure air, wholesome food, and invigorating work, would do more toward reforming the vicious . . . than almost anything else.” The farm could accommodate only a few dozen youngsters and adults at a time, yet there were hundreds, even thousands, of Five Pointers who in Pease’s view would have benefited from temporary or permanent residence in the countryside.48

  The charities began to consider adoption for Five Points’ children in part because they were giving up on their parents. “Living in filth, and the extreme of poverty, addicted to drunkenness and its kindred vices, sunk in ignorance and superstition, they seem inaccessible to any good influence,” lamented the House of Industry journal. “A large
majority of these are Catholics, ignorant of the truth as it is in Jesus, and unwilling to listen to the teachings of any ministers but those of their own faith.” Whereas adults had comprised two-thirds of the institution’s “inmates” in 1854–55, by 1864 four-fifths were children.49

  Why the mission and House of Industry began to put so many of these children up for adoption is not clear. We know that as word of the institutions’ work began to spread, Five Pointers and others began to bring abandoned and orphaned children to them. Believing that such children would be better off with a family rather than in an institution, the organizations started to seek adoptive parents for them on an ad hoc basis. Soon after its founding in 1853, the Children’s Aid Society had begun sending the dozens of children left in its charge to homes in the rural West, and this work may have inspired the two Five Points charities. Even without that precedent, most Americans in the antebellum period—even city dwellers—conceived of rural living as spiritually and physically superior to life in a congested urban center. After years of frustration, the charities’ workers became convinced that growing up amidst crime, alcoholism, and prostitution doomed the neighborhood’s children to fall prey to these vices as well. By the eve of the Civil War, finding adoptive homes in the countryside for Five Points children had become the two institutions’ top priority.50