Orphan Trains

by Stephen O'Connor

  Johnny’s suffering in this scene becomes much more comprehensible and horrific, and the narrative choices of the autobiography much more puzzling, when we consider what he told Anna Hope, the Independent reporter, of his mother’s death: “My real mother would have been alive now, I think, if my father hadn’t drunk so much. When he was drunk he used to quarrel with her, and beat her. When she died she was all black and sore where he had beaten her, and she died.”10 If Johnny was not lying to Hope, then when he stood beside the body of his dead mother, the hand of her murderer was on his shoulder. It is hard to imagine how Johnny or W.B.D.—both of whom otherwise show so little aversion to melodrama—could have chosen to pass up so potent a detail. It is also hard to imagine why they chose to suppress Johnny’s father’s early drunkenness and brutality when it would seem to make the whole future course of Johnny’s hard life so much more credible and sad.

  It is possible that Johnny and his editor thought this early brutality was too much for refined readers to take, especially if those readers were to believe in Johnny’s persistent innocence. And it is certainly true that Victorian readers would not have had much difficulty believing in a man’s fall from perfect virtue. This was, after all, a commonplace of sentimental literature of the time, to say nothing of being an eminently familiar paradigm from scripture. Johnny’s dating of the onset of his father’s drinking to his remarriage, “after remaining some years a widower,” also corresponded to well-worn clichés about evil stepmothers and the sin of infidelity even to a dead spouse.

  The collaborative fictionalization of Johnny’s life and character in these early pages of his autobiography promoted bad child welfare policy, first of all, by reemphasizing the distinction between the “deserving” and the “undeserving” poor. The reader was encouraged to sympathize with Johnny because he maintained perfect middle-class virtue in the midst of all his troubles, and the natural consequence of the reader’s sympathy was to make the poor children who were less well spoken and devout (the vast majority) seem less deserving of sympathy and aid. The whitewashing of Johnny’s character also understated the severity of urban poverty by making it seem that only the constitutionally weak-willed were damaged by it. The real tragedy, and the problem most in need of redress, was the fact that children who might have been happy and productive members of society were made bitter, vengeful, and self-destructive by the dreadful conditions in which they grew up. Johnny’s portrayal also oversimplified the solution to the problems of poor children. All he seemed to need was a bit of education, or an upright foster parent, and he would be well on his way to becoming a respectable member of the bourgeoisie. In reality, solving the problems of the majority of slum children required a much broader effort that supported their communities, birth families, and, when removal was unavoidable, their foster families as well. And finally, Johnny’s autobiography grossly misrepresented the sort of child helped and sent west by the CAS. In various ways all of these misrepresentations—perpetrated by do-gooder adults and their favorite child beneficiaries—would provoke the criticisms and reforms that ultimately ended the orphan train era.

  As much as Johnny’s stepmother fits the classic fairy-tale mold, it is only after she comes on the scene that Johnny’s story begins to feel compellingly authentic and offers us a vision of the harsh experiences that were all too common among CAS children.

  On her first day at the Morrow house, the stepmother gave each child a shilling and seemed sincerely to want to be a good mother to them all. It was not long, however, before she became indifferent to the children, and finally—once she bore a child of her own—positively abusive.

  Her relations with her husband fared little better. He was often away from home at night, “carousing with a few companions, spending in this way much of his hard-earned money.” Soon the stepmother herself became such an inveterate whiskey drinker that she “neglected entirely her household duties, left the table in disorder, the cow un-milked, the children uncared-for, and indeed often entertained carousing friends against father’s will.”

  In a desperate attempt to alleviate this situation, the father sold his house and most of his possessions for 700 guineas and moved his family (except for the two oldest brothers, who remained at Royal Blue Coat Hospital in Dublin) to New York City. He also brought along a serving girl whose passage he paid and who thus was bound to the family until she could work off the cost of her ticket.

  Things did not go well for the Morrows in their new home. What with the father’s drinking and the vicissitudes of the economy, he could not hold a job for more than a few weeks. The stepmother took in sewing but was barely able to cover even her own expenses. By the end of six months the family’s savings were all gone and they were living on the edge of starvation.

  At first Johnny and Annie were sent to a local school, but only until their father noticed a neighbor carrying in a bundle of firewood collected at the docks and decided that there were more productive ways his children could spend their time than in learning to read and write. Annie (no older than six) was set to do sewing with her mother, while Johnny (only seven or eight) hobbled around the docks, gathering up the twigs and chips left behind after piles of firewood were loaded onto steamers.

  Annie’s earnings and the money saved by the acquisition of free fuel did little to improve the family’s situation because it all went into brandy. Every evening the father and stepmother would send one of the children to the distillery for a bottle and then spend the rest of the night drinking. On good days the brandy would lead only to carousing and lewd behavior. But with dreadful frequency the drink would result in a fraying of tempers that culminated in the stepmother or the children being beaten by the enraged father.

  The family got a brief respite when the father found a job as a carpenter in the village of Yorkville, some five or six miles north of their home at Fortieth Street and Tenth Avenue. Because public transportation was so expensive and slow, the father slept five nights a week at a Yorkville boardinghouse and was only home from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning. The cost of dual lodgings left the family hardly any money to spend on food, but the children at least felt that, with five peaceful nights a week, their lives had definitely improved.

  This job didn’t last, however, nor did the next, and once again the Morrows were on the edge of starvation. Things became so desperate that they sold a fifty-dollar feather bed for a mere six dollars and moved from their already decidedly humble apartment to a single cellar room on Forty-fourth Street, the typical last stop before homelessness during that era, and a standard abode of CAS clientele.

  Johnny described their new home in detail:

  The whole of our family, seven11 in number, were occupying the same room, for this was all that father at this time was able to rent. Its size was about thirty feet by twenty; in one corner there stood a good-sized and plain bedstead, made of hemlock by my father, and it was mounted by a bed stuffed with chaff. This had to accommodate five of us children—Annie, William, Mary Jane, Margaret Ann, and myself. To stow away so many in one bed, it was necessary to arrange it so that three slept at the head and two at the foot, packed together very much like sardines in a box. And though we sometimes had trouble in our crowded night-colony, on account of those at one end getting more than their share of the bed-clothes, at the expense of those at the other, yet, on the whole, we got along peaceably and comfortably. In the opposite corner, across the room, was a five-dollar bedstead, containing a good soft bed, in which my father and step-mother slept, together with my newly born brother, Jonathan.

  In one of the remaining corners, there stood a carpenter’s bench, at which my father had sometimes made little wooden stools, for the use of ladies while they were at church, or while sewing at home; and which I used to sell for from twelve to fifteen cents apiece (being several cents more than they cost), and on some days, when father had been very industrious, and had made twenty-four of them, we had done pretty well in our earnings; but now he had n
eglected this source of support. The rest of the room was taken up by a plain table, three chairs, two benches, and a few other very humble articles of furniture.

  As Johnny indicated in this passage, he had taken up the occupation of street peddler sometime around the age of ten. This new career began one day when he attempted to steal a large board lying on the ground and was caught by the board’s owner and caned on the legs until he bled.

  That night he told his father that he was done with stealing but averted a second beating by suggesting that he could make more than enough money to buy the fuel by selling matches on the street. After hearing the mathematics of the deal, Johnny’s father decided that he liked it and gave him twenty-five cents with which to capitalize the new venture.

  The following morning, his basket on his arm, Johnny walked down to a match factory outlet on Twenty-ninth Street that was run by two Germans. At least fifty match girls and boys—and nearly an equivalent number of adults—bought their wares wholesale from this shop. With his quarter, Johnny bought ninety-seven bunches of matches to sell for a penny each.

  He spent the remainder of the day walking down street after street, knocking at every door he passed and holding up his basket to display his wares to whomever might answer. Most people just shook their heads and slammed the door in his face. Nevertheless, by the end of the day he had sold all of his matches and had been given five cents besides. He bought two cakes for himself on the way home and turned over a whole dollar to his father. The old man was astounded. He heaped Johnny with praise, calling him “My big son!” and “My best and most dutiful son!” He even sent Annie out for brandy that he made into a punch so that he could treat Johnny to a celebratory glass.

  If Johnny thought that his success as a peddler would mark a turning point in his relations with his father and in his family’s finances, he was due for disappointment. At least half of the money he brought in was spent, not on fuel, but on drink. And it was a rare night that he would escape a scolding or a beating for not having brought home more. Most days he got neither breakfast nor supper and ate only if his customers were charitably disposed.

  Shortly after the commencement of Johnny’s new career, word came that his elder brothers, James and Robert, had arrived from Dublin. James, who was seventeen, had gotten a job in a grocery store paying $4 a week, and Robert, fifteen, was working in a brass foundry for $2.50 weekly. As soon as their father heard the news, he went out looking for them in the hope that he could induce them to move in with him and help support the family. Both boys knew their father well enough to resist his pleas and threats, and he returned home furious, declaring that Johnny had to work extra hard to compensate for the income that would not be coming in.

  After about a month Robert lost his job and joined the family in their cramped abode. He and Johnny went into partnership, selling picture books in addition to matches, and bringing home between one and two dollars a day. Although Annie and their stepmother were still stitching shirts for a tradesman downtown, it was only, at least on the stepmother’s part, in the most desultory fashion—and even in the best of circumstances, needlework earned women little more than pocket change. Because their father, it seemed, was now entirely incapable of holding a job, for most of a year Johnny and Robert were virtually the sole support of the family. After a while, William and Jane, who were only seven and five, also began peddling. But then, finally, James rescued the family by moving in and paying for his board. While this extra money eased the Morrows’ hardship, it also allowed the father and stepmother to indulge more heavily in drink, which only made the atmosphere within that one room—now shared by ten—more intolerable.

  One Sunday morning a few months after he had come to live at home, James was sitting by the fire reading a dime novel entitled Claude Duval, the Dashing Highwayman. In what Johnny described as “a sudden streak of morality,” their father leaped out of bed, snatched the book from his son’s hands, and berated him for reading such trash on the Lord’s day. That was the end of it for James, who, calling his father a drunken sot, paid his board in full and left the house, never to return.

  Shortly before this, Robert had apprenticed himself to a machinist. He would begin work early in the morning and did not come home until late at night. At the end of every week he would give his father his entire salary. One week, however, he stopped on his way home to buy a much-needed pair of shoes. When his father saw the shoes and noticed that seven shillings (roughly eighty-eight cents) was missing from the pay envelope, he flew into a rage and kicked Robert out of the house. For a while Robert lived quite happily at a boardinghouse where he paid a weekly rent of $2.50. At the end of the week he went to collect his wages, only to be told by his master that his father had already claimed them—an act that, by law, was the right of a father whose child was not yet of age.

  Without his wages, Robert had no money with which to pay his rent or buy food, and no choice but to move back in with his hated father. In despair he wandered down by the docks, where he happened to see a schooner just casting off. At the last instant Robert jumped on board and asked the captain whether he didn’t want an extra hand. The captain simply told Robert to “fall to”—and thus began a new career on the sea.

  Johnny was very lonely without his older brothers. He would see each of them only one time more during the remainder of his life. But their escape began to give him ideas.

  One day Johnny and Willie’s father sent them out to steal carrots from the docks.” [W]hen we were getting them,” Anna Hope quoted Johnny as saying, “we saw a Dutchman coming after us with two dogs. We threw down the carrots and ran as fast as we could, and got away. That night we didn’t go home.”

  They spent two or three nights away, sleeping in a parked stagecoach, and lived by peddling and begging. Then one day when they were bathing in the Hudson River, they were spotted by their father. Johnny, who could barely run, was caught instantly, but Willie got away. His father promised Johnny that if he could convince Willie to come back, neither of them would be punished. Johnny called out to his brother, and the three returned home, where the promise was immediately broken. “[S] tripping our backs of clothing,” Johnny reported in his book, their father beat them

  with a piece of clothes-line till the blood came trickling down. We promised him that if he would leave off this punishment, we would not run away again, but that if he did not, we would seize the first chance to escape from him. But this declaration only irritated him the more, and increased the weight of the blows. We kept our word. We ran away at the first good chance that we found.

  That chance came a few days later when they were sent to collect money from a woman who had bought some chairs from them on credit. Their father had told them not to come home without the money, and when the woman would not pay up, they took him at his word. They spent the next few nights sleeping on the seats in the gentlemen’s cabin of the Fulton ferry, which made a three-stop run between Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Jersey City and cost them only four cents each to get on. Having accumulated a fair sum through begging and by selling matches, illustrated books, pocket knives, and purses, they decided to see whether they could stay at a boardinghouse run by a Mrs. Moore on Thirty-eighth Street. The landlady was apparently quite astonished to have two such young (or at least small) children asking to board with her (Johnny was about thirteen and Willie was nine), but she agreed, provided they gave her seven dollars in advance—enough to cover three weeks’ residency. As this was nearly all the money they had, they gave it up reluctantly but managed to abide quite contentedly at the house until a Sunday evening, three days after their arrival. They were sitting in the parlor in the middle of their tea when their landlady opened the door and their father rushed into the room. Apparently she had sent for him in secret, seeing a way to turn a tidy profit as well as do what was only right, considering their age. In scant seconds, crusts of bread still in their mouths, the boys found themselves out on the street, being hurried home to another floggi
ng.

  Two or three weeks later Johnny and Willie were once again on the Fulton ferry, heading to Brooklyn where they hoped they might have better luck with their peddling and begging than they had had in Manhattan. During the ride a gentleman took pity on them because they were barefoot and gave Johnny a $2.50 gold piece. Having never seen such a coin in his life, Johnny assumed it was only a brass dime and thanked the gentleman accordingly. It was only later that night, when the coin was rejected by the ticket collector on the Eighth Avenue streetcar, that Johnny began to understand his mistake.

  Their father was utterly delighted when the boys brought the coin home and celebrated by immediately sending round to the distillery for a gallon of brandy. The following morning man and wife were dead drunk in bed and Johnny went out to purchase breakfast with five cents of the other money he had gathered the previous day. While the children were eating, their father woke up and asked where they had gotten the food. On hearing Johnny’s explanation, he said, “It’s a nice thing of you to be spending my money that way!” When Johnny insisted that the money was his own, his father grew so enraged that he had what was called a “brandy fit.”

  In his autobiography Johnny described his father as flying into an astonishingly violent tantrum, during which he not only beat Johnny and the other children but kicked and smashed everything in the room that crossed his path. Johnny didn’t actually employ the term “fit” in his autobiography. The term comes from Anna Hope, in whose rendering of the events—which ostensibly only reproduced Johnny’s words—this “fit” seems something close to epilepsy: “[H]e went around the room like a top, and then he fell on the floor, with his teeth tight shut together. His hands were clenched, and he shook all over, and then he looked up as if he were dead.” Whatever actually happened, the enraged man did finally fall back into his bed and, exhausted and still drunk, was instantly unconscious.