Part 63 (2/2)
Turning now from considering the operation of repressive laws, we notice the importance of sanitary and quarantine regulations. One of the first cares of a good government is to preserve and promote the public health.
An ill.u.s.tration of this position occurred in the summer of 1856, when fears were entertained that the city would be visited by a frightful epidemic fever. The public voice declared through the newspapers that the most rigorous and careful sanitary measures were needed, and the cleaning of streets, the removal of nuisances, the purification of tenant-houses, and many other measures of the same kind, were loudly called for, and adopted as far as possible, while the quarantine regulations of the harbor were strictly enforced. In view of this danger, so dreadful and apparently so imminent, the united voice of public opinion sanctioned the very course advocated here; namely, the adoption of remedial, or, more properly speaking, preventive measures. Venereal poison is as destructive, although not so suddenly fatal, as yellow fever, and every motive of philanthropy and economy urges the necessity of effective means for its counteraction.
Since remedial or preventive measures have been adopted in Paris the number of cases of disease and the virulence of its form have materially abated. This fact is a.s.serted not merely on our own personal knowledge, but also from the corroborative testimony of physicians who have had recent opportunities of investigating the subject in that capital. The diminution can be easily explained by a comparison of the laws and regulations applicable to prost.i.tution. We in New York, by our stringent prohibition, drive the vice into seclusion, and deprive ourselves of the means of watching either its progress or results; while our French contemporaries insist that it shall be at all times open to the _surveillance_ of properly appointed persons.
The extent of syphilitic infection in New York has been portrayed in the preceding chapter, but the danger of contamination must not be viewed as a merely local question. From its commercial importance, its mercantile marine, its centralization of rail-roads and ca.n.a.ls, and its facilities for river navigation, this city is now the great point of arrival and departure of travelers and emigrants from and to all parts of the Union.
Foreigners reach here in large numbers every day, intending to travel to other states. If they remain in the city a few days only, they are exposed to its temptations, and may contract disease which, by their agency, will be perpetuated in the district they have selected as their future home. Returned adventurers from the Pacific sh.o.r.es come here to find the readiest transit to their several destinations. They are exposed to the same temptations, with a probability of the same result. Merchants and store-keepers visit this commercial emporium to obtain supplies of goods, and they are exposed to the same fascinations and the same contingencies. The sailors in port are similarly liable. In short, it is scarcely possible to imagine the extent over which the syphilitic poison originating in the proud and wealthy city of New York may be spread, nor would it be an error to describe the Empire City as a hot-bed where, from the nature of its laws on prost.i.tution, syphilis may be cultivated and disseminated.
Possessed, then, of indubitable proofs of the existence of syphilis, and the knowledge that its range is more widely extended every day, gathering additional malignity in its progress, the next point is to inquire what measures have been adopted to check its ravages. These have hitherto been found totally inadequate, because based upon an erroneous theory, namely, the idea of suppression. The princ.i.p.al public or free hospital where the venereal disease is _confessedly_ treated is the Penitentiary Hospital on Blackwell's Island, now known as the Island Hospital. To obtain the benefit of medical treatment therein, it is necessary that the patient should have been sentenced from the Court of Sessions to the Penitentiary for the commission of some crime; or committed to the Work-house by a police justice for vagrancy, drunkenness, or disorderly conduct. From this fact it will be seen that there is, strictly speaking, no ”free” hospital for such diseases, as the only one intended for their treatment will or can receive none but those sentenced for an infraction of the laws.
Still the necessity for professional a.s.sistance compels many, both males and females, to submit to the degradation of a police commitment.
Unfortunate women, or laboring men, find that they are suffering from infection. Possibly they have no money, or probably they have exhausted their funds in payments to charlatans, and so resort for aid and advice to some one of the public dispensaries. Unless the case is a slight one, the medical officers there advise them to resort to hospital treatment, to procure which the poor sufferers are furnished with a certificate of their state, and directed to apply to a police justice. They follow this advice, and in nine cases out of ten the magistrate's only remark is, ”Do you want me to send you to the Hospital?” The answer, of course, is in the affirmative, and he forthwith signs a printed commitment to the Penitentiary or Work-house for a time named therein, and ranging from one to six months at the discretion of the magistrate. The following is a copy of one of these doc.u.ments:
”_City and County of New York, ss._
”_By_ ------ ------, ESQUIRE, one of the Police Justices in and for the City and County of New York.
”To the Constables and Policemen of the said City, and every of them, and to the Warden of the Penitentiary of the City and County of New York:
”THESE ARE IN THE NAME OF THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, to command you, the said Constables and Policemen, to convey to the said PENITENTIARY the body of ------ ------, who stands charged before me with being a VAGRANT, viz., being without the means of supporting ----self, and having contracted an INFECTIOUS DISEASE IN THE PRACTICE OF DEBAUCHERY, viz., the venereal disease, requiring charitable aid to restore ---- to health, whereof --he is convicted of record on confession, the record of which conviction has been made and filed in the office of the Clerk of the Court of Sessions of the City and County aforesaid, and it appearing to me that the said ------ ------ is an improper person to be sent to the Alms-house, you, the said Warden, are hereby commanded to receive into your custody, in the said PENITENTIARY, the body of the said ------ ------, and ----safely keep for the s.p.a.ce of ------ month--, or until --he shall be thence delivered by due course of law.
”Given under my hand and seal, this ---- day of ------, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty----.
”------ ------, Police Justice.”
This is technically called a commitment ”on confession,” and its effects are precisely the same as they would be if the individual had been convicted of any tangible act of vagrancy. He is in law and in fact a prisoner for the s.p.a.ce of time named in the commitment; he must wear the prison garb, and submit to the prison discipline, until the expiration of his sentence. It is well known to the justices that a penal commitment like the above will immediately secure the sufferer the medical attention his case requires, but they have no power to send any one direct to the Hospital.
And here an inquiry will naturally suggest itself, What does, or what should a magistrate know about committing a sick person, and how can he decide the time such invalid shall remain under treatment? A self-evident conclusion will be that the whole process is an absurd one at the best, and its requirements a hards.h.i.+p on magistrates already overburdened with legitimate duties.
The reader's attention is requested to the pecuniary effects of this plan.
To ill.u.s.trate: Suppose the case of a man committed for six months. He is suffering from some form of venereal disease, and in this state is received at the Penitentiary or Work-house, where his clothes are taken from him, the inst.i.tution costume supplied, and the particulars of his name, age, nativity, occupation, etc., are registered with an abstract of the commitment by virtue of which he is detained. He is then subjected to medical examination and transferred to the Hospital. In this inst.i.tution he remains until cured, if that end is attained before the expiration of his sentence, and is then re-transferred to the Penitentiary or Work-house. The average time required for the successful treatment of the disease named, in the Blackwell's Island Hospital, will not probably exceed _two_ months, and often a much shorter period is sufficient. But the man has been committed for _six_ months, and for the unexpired _four_ months of his incarceration he has to be fed, clothed, and lodged at the expense of the Alms-house Department. The labor he can perform will never amount in value to the actual cost of his support, so that he is maintained four months _in accordance with law_ at a positive cost to the tax-payers of the city, because they have already supported him for two months in the Hospital. In the aggregate of cases during a year these costs amount to a very large sum. Need any farther argument be adduced to show the palpable absurdity of the system?
A few words upon the moral effect of this local system upon prost.i.tution in New York, premising that being a prost.i.tute is acknowledged by all as a degradation; while a vagrancy commitment to the Work-house or Penitentiary is a positive disgrace. The system is a portion of the crus.h.i.+ng-out plan already mentioned, and it says, in effect, ”We (the people of New York City) will give you an opportunity to be cured of your loathsome and destructive malady, but only upon the condition that you become the inmate of a penal inst.i.tution. We know that you can not be cured unless you accept our terms, and we will make those terms as hard and repulsive to human nature as ingenuity can devise.” It has been a medical axiom that no two poisons can exist in the system at one and the same time; but the citizens of New York have been experimenting for some years to ascertain whether two moral poisons can not be coexistent in the same person, by adding farther and unnecessary disgrace to the vice of prost.i.tution--thus widening the gulf between the sinner and her possible return to virtue.
The impolicy of making syphilis a reason for imprisonment, except so far as curative measures actually require it, must be apparent to all, were it merely from the fact that it deters many who are suffering from embracing the opportunity of cure until they are absolutely compelled to do so. How excessively wrong is this principle in a hygienic point of view must be evident; a directly contrary course, making the hospital attractive instead of repulsive, would be the true policy, and would be the most economical in its results. Nor is it justice to the medical departments of our public inst.i.tutions to clog their labors with a proviso which prevents their aid being sought until the last extremity, when it can only exert a palliative and not a curative agency. If syphilis could be reached in its primary stages, their task would be much less difficult and their services much more effectual; whereas little or nothing can be accomplished when official regulations keep away the patients until the disease becomes const.i.tutional, and the mischief is done. As in morals, so is it in medicine. Any evil, to be treated with success, must be encountered in its first stage, and if our regulations preclude this opportunity, but slight hopes can be entertained of any good results. Under a more liberal system, the physician and the philanthropist could combine their efforts. The former would not have to encounter disease inveterately fixed on a broken-down const.i.tution; the latter would not find his benevolent designs frustrated by a lengthened career of depravity now become habitual.
The effect of the provision which offers medical aid to prisoners only is, that every woman of the town will try all possible means to dispense with the treatment. It is only when she has actually fallen to the lowest deep of her cla.s.s, when one step more will plunge her into a bottomless abyss of helpless and hopeless woe, that she will voluntarily accept the proffered aid. She will endure torture from her maladies, or rely upon the a.s.sistance of empirics, and submit to all their extortions, rather than become a prisoner. But when every resource is exhausted, and her physical torments plainly tell her that she must obtain medical relief or die, then she submits. Once in the hospital, she is relieved, after a period of protracted sickness, and leaves it to return to her old haunts, because she can go nowhere else, the law having affixed the additional disgrace of imprisonment upon her former bad character. Sociality is a characteristic of human nature, and if these women can not gain admission to any company but that of the vicious and abandoned, they prefer that to solitude.
Returned once more to her former a.s.sociates, the time soon comes when farther medical a.s.sistance is needed, and thus she alternates for a few months or years between prison, hospital, and brothel, till death puts an end to her sufferings, and a nameless grave in Potters' Field receives the remains of one whom charitable measures, properly applied, might possibly have made a useful member of society.
The sense of shame which follows a single deviation from the paths of virtue drives many women to prost.i.tution. Why add to the existing sense of shame another infamy when she unfortunately contracts disease? Can we consistently blame her if she becomes callous, when every legal provision directly tends to indurate her sensibilities? The misconduct of parents toward children has been shown as one of the causes of prost.i.tution. The father or mother drives from the paternal roof the child who has committed but a single error. Then, under the pressure of hunger, she inevitably sins more deeply, becomes diseased, applies to the public for relief, and is sentenced to imprisonment! The first mistake, that of the parents, makes her vicious: the second mistake, incarceration, confirms her in vice. We denounce such ill-treatment in the parents, while practically we ourselves, as the natural guardians of all who need a.s.sistance, are doing precisely the same thing. Where, then, is our consistency? If it is right for us, a body corporate, to practice such cruel oppression, is it not equally justifiable for each member of the body to act in the same manner in his individual capacity? Of course, what is right for the mult.i.tude must be right for the individual, and our own conduct convicts us of inconsistency. We have no warrant to condemn parents for single acts which we perform collectively; or, if we are right in censuring them, we are wrong in performing the same acts ourselves: if they are reprehensible, we also are culpable.
This system, with all its absurdity, its prejudicial effect on public health, and its obvious tendency to immorality, is not adequate to stay the destroying scourge; on the contrary, it is likely to extend its ravages. If a prost.i.tute, arrested and committed to Blackwell's Island for drunkenness or any disorderly conduct, is found to be diseased, or if she commits herself knowing that she is infected, she is immediately placed under medical charge. She will probably remain contentedly in the hospital until the worst symptoms of the disease are subdued: by this time the discipline of the inst.i.tution has become irksome to her. She communicates with the brothel-keeper with whom she formerly boarded, or with some ”lover” or acquaintance, who sues out a writ of _certiorari_ or _habeas corpus_, which instantly effects her discharge. She now returns to her former haunts, half-cured, again to aid in disseminating disease, farther to undermine her own const.i.tution, and to infect men who will in turn become a charge upon the tax-payers, or by their agency cause others to become thus liable. The instance of wholesale release mentioned in the previous chapter will recur to the mind of the reader.
The experience of almost every day confirms these statements. It is well known that there are those who hang around the various police courts expressly to attend to such business, and who make a large income from this source, exclusive of other matters pertaining to prost.i.tution in which they occasionally exert their abilities. The vagrancy commitments by which women are ”sent up” are generally insufficient, and there is no legal power to detain them, and force them to submit to the treatment they so much require. It has been a.s.serted by legal men of high standing that nearly the whole of the commitments issued by police justices are defective, and that there exists in law no impediment to the immediate discharge of every prost.i.tute now on Blackwell's Island. The public can readily perceive the necessary inefficiency of these inst.i.tutions so far as the prevention of venereal disease is concerned.
The facility with which prost.i.tutes committed to Blackwell's Island can obtain their discharge may be attributed to want of care in making out the commitments. A recent statute (1854) prescribes the form in which these should be made, requiring the recital of admitted or substantiated facts, and the filing of a copy of the original in the office of the clerk of the Court of Sessions. These requirements are not observed, and the reason a.s.signed by magistrates is, that their own time, and the time of their clerks, is so fully occupied by the press of business before them that they can not proceed as minutely as the act directs. This confirms the view already expressed of the impolicy and impropriety of placing such onerous and extra-judicial duties upon the justices. But as they would be liable to be sued for false imprisonment if they committed under this act without observing all its requirements, they issue their commitments in the old form required by the Revised Statutes, and are sheltered thereby from ulterior consequences. These commitments direct the persons to be confined in the Penitentiary, but the local arrangements of Blackwell's Island require them to be sent to the Work-house, and unless this transfer is actually made in each case by the Governors of the Alms-house--for they can not deputize their power--it is a _waiver_ of the right of custody, and consequently ent.i.tles the prisoner so transferred to a discharge. It has been claimed that the Work-house is a part of the Penitentiary, but this point has been overruled, because the statute establis.h.i.+ng the Work-house plainly shows a contrary intent.
A prisoner is ent.i.tled to a discharge on another ground, namely, because the commitment has not been filed as directed; or, on another ground, that the commitment does not recite the evidence by which the fact of vagrancy was proved. A final ground of discharge, which is never pressed till all the minor technicalities have failed, is that the whole proceeding is illegal because the statute of 1854 has not been complied with.
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