A SAMPLE OF THE UNUTTERABE ABOMINATIONS BY WHICH THE LITTLE DAUGHTERS OF THE POOR ARE RAPIDLY FAMILIARIED WITH VICE AND DEBAUCHERY.
I.—A Sailor Dance-House on Cherry Street.  II.—Exterior of Saloon 103 Cherry Street.  III.— Kitty Cavenagh.  IV.— Interior of a Dive in Chatham Street.  V. – A Typical Diver.  VI. – Trappers Trapped.[more]

The Children of the Dives.

A Graphic Sketch of the Life and Place From Which Kitty Cavanagh Was Rescued.

The Cherry street dance-house from which little Kitty Cavanagh was rescued was in full blast, and a group of young women with decorated faces and bandolined bangs lolled around its doors when a Police Gazette reporter visited it. Blue-shirted and bronzed sailors went in and out and the sound of alleged music came from behind the swinging screens at the entrance. There were about a dozen rough men sitting on benches and five girls, arrayed in tawdry finery, were standing up wish their partners in the middle of the floor. A fat woman, with a hooked nose and square jaws, motioned to a fiddler and pianist and they began to play a waltz. The five girls laid their heads on their partners’ shoulders and skated around the floor in a clumsy fashion for a little while. Then they all went to the bar and took a drink. A dispute arose between a girl in a polka-dot wrapper and a girl in short red skirts. The girl in red had a glass of beer thrown in her face. Her partner offered to “Take it up’ with the partner of the other girl, but the offended female contented herself by pulling a handful of sore hair out of her rival’s head. The air was filled with a torrent of billingsgate, and the woman with a hook-nose threw a beer-glass at the girl in red and declared that she was no lady. Then the dance was resumed

Not more than ten feet from the den was a group of children, who sat on the curbstone and listened to the various and startling sounds which floated out from the bar-room. One of them was a handsome girl of about thirteen years.

The reporter strolled around the corner into Water street and entered a little saloon form which came loud and unhappy scratching of catgut and discordant twanging of a harp. It was a square room with a waxed floor and low ceiling. A fiddler and a harper sat with their backs against the curtained window, and at the other end of the place was a bar, behind which was a bright-eyed woman who kept fighting flies off form a permanently located piece of chees.

Eight girls were executing a sort of war dance with a number of sailors. They were attired in skirts that could have been lengthened without doing violence to the prevailing fashions, and they were tin coronets upon their brows. Each one had two strings of colored beads about her neck and enormous grass bracelets around her wrists. One of the girls was young and good looking. She did not seem to enjoy her position and was evidently not use to such scenes. All the other were haggard wrecks of female humanity. At each pause in the dance the bar was patronized.

While the reporter was wondering how great an influence such a place exerted upon the children of the poor who swarmed about the neighborhood the door opened an a little girl entered. She was about twelve year old, and she was tall enough to lift the big white pitcher she carried up to the bar counter. While the woman behind the bar was filling the pitcher with beer, the child’s eyes wandered about the room and the young women leered at her. She seem to be attracted by the light and noise and excitement, for as she left the den she paused for a moment and looked back with a half-pleased look upon her innocent face.

Reprinted from The National Police Gazette, October 4, 1884.