Radio Script #1257

Little Talks on Common Things
January 4, 1981

Through the courtesy of Dr. Leonard Mayo I have seen some very interesting records of human services a century ago. Dr. Mayo is one of Colby’s most distinguished graduates, with a career of international renown in the field of human services, especially for children. He has served on three national or international commissions under three U. S. presidents. He recently served as founder and first chairman of Colby’s Department of Human Development.

Leonard Mayo’s father was also a social worker, the founder of Opportunity Farm for Boys at New Gloucester, Maine. But Leonard also had the same inheritance on his mother’s side. Her father, Leonard Mayo’s grandfather, was John Dooly, founder of the renowned Bowery Mission in New York City, an organization that had long rendered unique service to the down-and-out outcasts, the so-called street bums of New York.

The Dooly records which Dr. Mayo recently loaned me cover the years 1872 to 1884. A number of the bound volumes contain Mr. Dooly’s daily record of his work at the mission. In them are very few references to personal or family life. They merely record what he did in the mission and its allied activities. Even more interesting are three large volumes that contain letters written to Mr. Dooly from allover the world.

The Bowery Mission was actually a branch of the New York City YMCA, and it was for the YMCA board that Dooly actually worked. Not content with running the mission for more than ten years, he also established in the Bowery a nondenominational church called the Carmel Church.

John Dooly was an Irishman only one generation removed from the Old Sod, and that fact made him especially acceptable to the many Irish of New York City in the 1870’s. He had prepared for the ministry entirely by his own financial efforts, and because of his own hardship he was drawn to a life work of sympathy for the poor and unfortunate. An ardent opponent of intoxicating beverages, he was eager to help any person who had been brought to degradation by addiction to liquor, and he found liquor to be the outstanding reason for most of the Bowery bums being where they were.

To one who reads these accounts, especially the letters, a century afterward, one fact is strikingly amazing the high degree of literacy of those Bowery bums. The letters they wrote to Dooly are not only grammatically correct, but well expressed with words one would expect no gutter snipe to use.

It was the spring of 1872 when John Dooly agreed to head the New York YMCA experiment that became the Bowery Mission. His first entry in that record was in these words: “May 23, 1872. Made an inspection of the mission buildings. Found them well fitted for the purpose. May God bless this effort to save souls from evil and sin.”

Three days later he gave a talk at the Five Points Home of Industry, a children’s home where after his father’s death he had spent the years between the ages of 9 and 14. Previous to taking over the mission, Dooly had been a pastor in Ohio. On May 28 his household goods arrived from Ohio, and on the same day he had a long interview with one of the New York YMCA’s most prominent directors, the merchant Morris K. Jessup. In fact Dooly’s work was to bring him into contact with many of New York’s leading men. Very often he sought advice and aid from William Vanderbilt, and he had frequent cause to consult with a succession of New York mayors at the time when the notorious Boss Tweed controlled the city.

One of the features of the mission was a reading room, where the daily paper, magazines and a few books were available. The record of June 2, 1872 says: “Opened reading room in the public part of the house (his family lived in the private part). Had several calls for relief from men out of employment. During the day more than 20 men came to the reading room.”

The major attraction of the mission was that it gave hungry men a chance for a meal. The record of June 14 tells us: “Opened the dining room at noon today. Our prices are too low, and we must make a somewhat higher charge.” “June 17. Very busy, trying to bring the kitchen arrangements into better order. Hired a girl at $6 a month to help the cook. Heard many complaints about the coffee.”

The record’s first reference to alcohol was made on June 24: “Talked with a young man from a Christian family in Delaware, who was down and out because of drink.” The alcohol problem hit Dooly’s own staff before the mission was two months old: “July 18. Decided to dismiss both the kitchen women for repeated drinking, but failed to get replacements. So I dismissed Eliza, but kept Mary. I paid Eliza and sent her away. Then I spent the rest of four days seeking help and at last found a replacement for Eliza.”

The mission extended its help to women as well as men: “June 26. Help was asked for Mrs. Isabella Lloyd. She was about to be turned out of her flat and put on the street for non-payment of rent. I found her husband just recovering from a drunken debauch. I had no money to help her, but did put in a word for her at City Hall.”

The record of August 2 contains the first word of Dooly’s fellow Irish: “A young man from Dublin, to whom we gave lunch, expressed to me great elation because he soon expects his father to send him a heavy remittance from Ireland. I think the amount he expects is just too big to believe. Another young Irishman, graduate of Trinity College in Dublin, asked me for bread. He has been promised work on the New York Herald, but does not know when he will begin.”

Notations like those show that many of the people who sought help at the mission were well educated and came from families well above the lower class on the other side of the Atlantic. Here is another case: “August 26. I am trying to help a young man break away from drink. He had a good job at $2,000 a year in England, but in New York has been brought to begging by drunkeness. He is determined to lead a new life.”

Three days later Dooly returned to the case of the man who expected a big remittance from his father: “The fellow from Ireland turns out to be a liar of the worst kind. I tried hard but in vain to lift him from his low estate. O, drink, how foul thy marks!”

On September 6 Dooly put in fuel for the winter. 6 tons of Red Ash coal at $6 a ton, and 14 tons of White Ash coal at $5.50 a ton. Appeals for employment were so constant and so pressing that Dooly ran a kind of free employment agency. Here is one instance: “Had a call from a young man who was barely prevented from suicide a few days ago. He and his sister were turned out by their mother when the girl was only 15 and the boy 12. The girl became a prostitute, and the boy was sent to a London industrial school. We got him a job in a restaurant. His call was followed by that of a man, still drunk and down and out who a year ago had been a sheriff in Georgia.”

On December 20, 1872 Dooly attended the funeral of Horace Greeley. He came back from the funeral to deal with a case of a young man who had embezzled $22 from his employer. Then the culprit’s father came to plead for his son. Dooly talked with the judge who agreed to send the young man to the care of the Board of Charities and Correction rather than to prison.

On December 25 Dooly recorded: “This is Christmas Day, but apparently not a merry one for a large number of homeless persons who flooded our rooms all day. I counted 103 in the rooms at one time.”

Of course the foundation of the Bowery Mission, as was the basis of all YMCA work in the 1870’s, was the Christian religion. During the six working days of the week Dooly held a meeting every noon. On Monday evenings he held a weekly ten person meeting, where the object was to get the drunks to sign a pledge of abstinence. On Friday evening there was a meeting for young men. A religious service was held every Sunday afternoon and another in the evening.

Also many of Dooly’s private interviews with the derelicts were spent in attempts to turn them to a new life through Christian repentance. According to Dooly’s record for the month of January, 1873, attendance at the meetings was astounding. In that one month, 2,726 bums had attended the noon-day meetings. The temperance meetings – five of them in that month – had an attendance of 1,612. The young men’s meetings saw 869, the Sunday afternoon sessions 811, and the Sunday evenings 1,048.

Meetings conducted at the mission were not all religious. Various entertainments, mostly musical, were presented. Attendance at those functions in that month of January had been 673. Dooly proudly recorded that the same month
had seen 614 men sign the temperance pledge.

At the beginning of the mission’s second year in 1873, it is interesting to note what the mission was paying its help. We have no clues as to Dooly’s own salary, but we can be sure it was small. The janitor, who had to take care of the big building, do all the cleaning, and tend the furnace, got $25 a month. The cook in charge of the kitchen got $15 and her noon meal, while her helper got $10 a month. A man was employed on request to play the pedal organ that a
patron had donated. He got $6 a month.

One room in the building was called the chapel and one of the financial items for 1873 was $1.50 for a call bell for the chapel. That fuel had to be carried to stoves is shown by another cost item – 2 coal baskets, $2.50.

Unemployment was indeed a pressing problem. On January 13, 1873 Dooly wrote: “Daily we have numerous calls for employment which is hard to find. There was serious trouble uptown yesterday at the workers’ parade. If we can get a job for one out of ten who apply, we think we do well. The times are indeed hard.”

That not all New Yorkers approved of the mission is shown by this item: “January 16, 1873. Had a call from a neatly dressed man, whom I knew as a liquor dealer. He said we were doing more harm than good to feed these bums. We told him that his whisky was the chief cause of their being bums. The dealer had called before when I was out, and he had been expelled for being drunk and disorderly.”

Here is another indication that not all calls for help came to the mission from men: “February 18, 1873. A Jewess called in great distress. She had pawned her bed. She and her two children were living in a room with no stove or heat of any kind. In two months she expects another child. We gave her some food and brought her plight to the attention of her Jewish neighbors. They promised to get her relief.”

In January, 1874 the Dooly records contain their first reference to New York Germans. Today most people know that the 1870’s were seeing the rise of the Irish in New York, but it is not so well known that, before the Irish came, the city had a large German population. Here is Dooly’s record for January 11, 1874: “Today we began a weekly meeting in the German language. We also started a Bible class in German, which was well attended. Testimony at the meeting was given by a German from Heidelberg whom we had helped give up drink and he now has a good job.”

Of course Dooly had problems, not only with men who appeared at the mission under the influence of liquor, but sometimes with group misbehavior. Here are a few instances: “Meeting disturbed by a man whom a policeman arrested and who was sentenced to three months.” “Ousted ten disorderly men from the building. They seemed to have been spitting on the floor. The men who come here must understand that we do not run a Tammany club room.”

Next week we shall have more about this interesting work of Dr. Leonard Mayo’s grandfather, especially the amazing letters he received. But for now we must say goodbye until next week.

Year:1981