Last week I told you something about the work of John Dooly, grandfather of Maine’s renowned Dr. Leonard Mayo. Dooly, founder of New York’s famous Bowery Mission, had many interesting experiences during his first years on the job from the spring of 1872 to the fall of 1884, when the records from which our information comes were ended. But Dooly continued with the mission six more years until 1890.<\/p>\n
In 1873 he was still having trouble with unruly persons: “March 17. A man we had helped broke into our cellar and departed with 300 of our meal tickets and a few cents in change. He had the nerve to conceal himself on the chapel roof that evening after his theft, when Mr. Rose, our janitor, found him and made him prisoner. He was crestfallen when captured, but I do not trust his repentance. He is a bad fellow and I can do nothing for him.”<\/p>\n
“April 3, 1873. The iceman brought to me a man who had been 10 years a chief in the N.Y. Police Department. He had lost his family and friends and all his money because of drink. I also had a call from a detective looking for a man who stole $150 from a family that gave him shelter.”<\/p>\n
We have all heard of Turkish baths, but note this record of Dooly’s: “Indulged in the luxury of a Russian bath. It was truly refreshing.” Is it possible that in the 1870’s a person could get some kind of sauna in New York City?<\/p>\n
YMCA’s in other cities were interested in details of work by the Bowery Mission. The Secretary of the Boston YMCA was one of those investigators. On another occasion Dooly was visited by the notorious crusader, Susan B. Anthony of saloon-smashing fame along with Carrie Nation, and had several calls from the crusading Anthony Comstock. Comstock thought Dooly was too sympathetic with the drunks, but Dooly reminded him that these were just the kind of people to whom Jesus had given most attention.<\/p>\n
Dooly was able to place several men in household kitchen employment because fashionable New York families liked to have male cooks. A woman in Morristown, New Jersey thanked Dooly for sending her a chef who had proved efficient and reliable. She had found it necessary to discharge a number of previous chefs for drunkeness. Fathers and mothers constantly sought Dooly’s help to find runaway sons. He had a call from a man in Columbus, Ohio whose son had run away from home months ago.<\/p>\n
As I have previously indicated, not all of Dooly’s dealings were with the male sex. One day he recorded: “A woman, obviously suffering from drink, called, looking for work. She was immediately followed by a young man who proved to be her son. He said his father had put her out of the house because she was seldom sober, although both husband and son had tried to hide her liquor. She had spent $1,300 of the family savings in the past four months.”<\/p>\n
One of Dooly’s troubles was with strikes. In the summer of 1875 the stevedores on the New York docks went on strike. The agent for the Anchor Steamship Line appealed to Dooly to get him strikebreakers among the unemployed. Dooly recorded: “Though we have plenty of men out of work, few of them will risk their lives defying the strikers. One who risked it was so badly injured that he died in a hospital.”<\/p>\n
Some appeals came from persons who claimed to have had previous contact with the mission. Dooly wrote: “A man called, representing himself as a member of the Roosevelt family, and said we had helped him earlier. He is probably a fraud, but I let him have 25 cents. Times are now so hard that our executive committee decided to reduce the meal charge from 10 to five cents.”<\/p>\n
Dooly planned to set up an industrial farm for the worthy derelicts. It would be sponsored by the YMCA members in rural New York State. Steward, head of the city’s big department stores, agreed to give 1,000 acres of land for the project.<\/p>\n
On a January day Dooly wrote: “Had an appealing case which I examined carefully. It was from a young Dane who claims to be the son of a former governor of Greenland and heir to his father’s estate in Denmark. Well educated, he had vainly sought white-collar employment in New York. The only job he could get was carrying coal from place to place. He had been a drummer boy in the Danish army in the war of 1863.” On another day he recorded: “Trouble with petty thievery among our lodgers. Hope I soon find the guilty one.”<\/p>\n
In the fall of 1876 Dooly began a long, personal acquaintance with the noted evangelist, Dwight L. Moody. Moody invited Dooly to sit on the platform with him in the big tabernacle near the later site of Madison Square Garden. Dooly often preached at the notorious New York prison called the Tombs, located not far from his mission. Men, waiting there for sentence, persistently appealed to Dooly to keep them out of Sing Sing. Dooly soon learned to distinguish a genuine appeal from a spurious one, and he tried to help those he found deserving.<\/p>\n
In 1878, during a longshoremen’s strike, Dooly did better than he had earlier done. He got work for 80 men as strikebreakers. By 1878 Dooly had his industrial farm in operation at Locust Valley, N.Y. A large part of the maintenance cost was paid for several years by Cornelius Vanderbilt and two other prominent New Yorkers. Dooly was able to place in the N.Y. Evening Post a long article about the farm. An item in the New York Herald in 1879 said: The junction of the Bowery and Grove Street is a busy place. Here is the Bowery Branch of the N.Y. YMCA. On the ground floor is an attractive chapel, newly decorated with flags and evergreens of the season. The object of the branch is to provide religious instruction and temporary relief, both meals and lodging, for the poor unfortunates of the Bowery; to find employment for them, give them wholesome entertainment; and perform such other services as may be useful. Rev. John Dooly is the General Secretary in charge. He says: ‘We are not a boarding house or a hospital. We provide temporary relief only to able-bodied men. We try to help them become self-reliant and self-respected. ”<\/p>\n
In the winter of 1880 the horse car drivers went on strike. The mission gave them daily dinners and other relief. Dooly became active in another charity project: The House of Industry, a kind of orphan home for deserted children. He once recorded: “Had a good romp with the children at House of Industry.”<\/p>\n
On another occasion Dooly took 20 of the children to Central Park. But work at the mission never ceased. In 1880 he had a call from a man who was a backslider. A year previous he had signed the pledge at the mission, and Dooly got a job for him in Utica. The man returned to the city, got drunk, lost all his money, and had been two days without food. The man swore on a Bible that he would drink no more but Dooly wrote: “I am skeptical. He has a weak character.”<\/p>\n
Dooly also became pastor of the Carmel Church, which he founded in the Bowery. A ticket pasted in the record book says: “Admit one adult to Entertainment No.1, Young People’s Convention of Carmel Church, 174 Grove Street, Thursday, February 8, 1883 at 7:30 p.m. Illustrated lecture on Bible lands by Rev. F.S.DeHass, member of the American Geographical Society and late Consul at Jerusalem. Doors open at 7. Price 20 cents.” That price shows that, unlike Dooly’s entertainments at the mission, this lecture was open to the public. Few of Dooly’s recipients could afford to pay 20 cents for anything.<\/p>\n
In 1880 Dooly became involved in still another project. He received an invitation to attend the opening exercises of the Florence Nightingale Mission at 29 Blanche Street. There the account of the mission’s plans so appealed to Dooly that he agreed to help.<\/p>\n
In 1883 Dooly made first mention of what was to become a lasting element in New York City’s population – the Italians. He wrote: “Today we opened services for the Italians at Carmel Church. I assisted in Italian communion. Received into the church 8 members – 6 men and 2 women. We hope to make this Italian work very prosperous. Dooly counted outings an appropriate part of Carmel Church activities. He told its people to be at Sea Route Pier No. 85, North River promptly at 9 a.m. on Monday, August 27, 1883 for an excursion to Coney Island. Dooly announced that all children of the church who showed up at the pier before 7:30 a.m. would be taken free. Tickets would be sold to children not of Carmel Church provided they were accompanied by a vouching adult.<\/p>\n
In 1883 Dooly recorded sadly: “I was called to conduct the funeral of John Rose who served devotedly as our janitor when we opened this mission. He was always ready to work for us at any hour of day or night.”<\/p>\n
Another newspaper clipping in 1883 told more about Dooly’s church. It said: “Carmel Church, 174 Grove Street, is the only English speaking Protestant church in New York’s 14th ward. The building now housing the church was for forty years a liquor saloon. It has been repaired and renovated. The first floor is used as an auditorium; the second floor has classrooms for the Sabbath School. Rev. John Dooly, long as the untiring manager of the Bowery Branch of the YMCA, is pastor. Under his direction, the Sunday services, the weekly temperance meetings, the Bible class, and other exercises are flourishing with constantly increasing attendance.”<\/p>\n
Early in 1884 the Bowery Mission encountered trouble. Dooly wrote: “The Mulberry Street boys raided the neighbor house at the corner of Brown and Center Streets, and nearly tore it to pieces. Some damage including broken windows was done to our building. That gang has several times threatened us, and we must have better police protection.” In 1884 Dooly deplored the lack of sufficient churches in the city. He said: “New Hampshire has a church for every 500 inhabitants. New York City has one for every 5,000.”<\/p>\n
That completes our story of John Dooly’s Bowery Mission. On some future broadcast I shall tell you about the hundreds of letters Dooly received from allover the world. Now we must say godbye until next week.<\/p>\n
Year: 1981<\/p>\n\n
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #1258, Broadcast on January 11, 1981<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35323,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10011"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}