Some weeks before this, Johnny had run into an urban missionary on the street who had asked him to attend his Sunday school and had given him a three-cent piece as an incentive. With his father’s permission, Johnny had gone to the school and heard the story of Lazarus and the rich man, which fascinated him. But he was more impressed by the gentleness and refinement of the missionaries and got the first inkling of the notion that would soon take hold of him so powerfully: that through studying the Bible and emulating the gentlemen, he might find a way to escape his miserable poverty.
He soon grew to see attendance at Sunday school as his deserved reward after a week of hard work. On the Sunday of his father’s brandy fit he asked his stepmother—who had, of course, been awakened by the fit—whether he might go to Sunday school, and she told him, “You’re a pretty looking fellow to go to Sunday school, with such clothes!” Permission was denied and none of Johnny’s arguments made a difference.
He contained his fury at that time, but that evening, when Annie was being mocked by some boys on the street as she washed the ashes out of a pail of cinders in order to save everything burnable, and his stepmother asked him why the boys were being so cruel, all of his indignation poured out.
I am sure I don’t know; you ought to know better than I, for you are in the house all the year round, and do nothing but sit at the fire helping father to drink all that we earn! You don’t care where or how we get it, so long as we bring you this money, for which we have to slave from morning till night! You need not hope that it will be always so; for I am going to run away, and shall go where you will not be able to find me! Once every three weeks you carry to an office down town some shirts, made for you mostly by sister Annie; you get the money for them, and call it your earnings, and while you continue to scold us, you never cease to talk of your earnings, even after you have used up in drink all that you can possibly call yours, and then, for the next three weeks, have to depend on our little daily sales for your support and your drink!12
At this point Johnny’s father reared out of bed, shouting, “I have heard every word!” He picked up a stick, slammed it down hard on the table, and declared, “I will teach you how to use your tongue towards her, sir!” He flew at Johnny with the stick, striking, kicking, and punching him, until the boy begged to be murdered so that he would no longer have to endure the pain. Relenting at last, his father threw him into bed and left him alone.
The following morning William, Janie, and Johnny ran away. In the evening Janie went to the station house to sleep, while her brothers spent a couple of nights in a grocery man’s coal box, and yet another on the Fulton ferry, where a kindly deckhand let them sleep in the engine room. But on their fourth night away from home Johnny decided to follow through on a plan he had had in mind for some time.
In all likelihood, Johnny and Willie had passed the Sun building many times on their trips to and from the Fulton ferry, and perhaps had seen the sign announcing the existence of the Newsboys’ Lodging House. Or perhaps Johnny had noticed clusters of ragged, barefoot boys “chaffing” one another on the sidewalk outside or consuming their griddle cakes and coffee in the Nassau Café in the Sun building’s basement. Or maybe it was his Sunday school teacher who told him about this nonpenalizing refuge for homeless boys. In any event, after dark on their fourth night away from home, sometime in late 1854 or early 1855, Johnny and Willie climbed five flights of stairs until they came to a wooden door with a large, frosted-glass panel, through which they could detect the ocher flicker of a solitary gas lamp. “Opening the door,” Johnny wrote:
I walked up to the desk, and inquired of the gentleman who seemed to preside, “Is this the place for boys to sleep who haven’t got a father or mother?” Mr. Tracy (for that was the name of the gentleman whom I addressed), answered, “Yes.” Then I told him that we had neither father nor mother, and asked whether we might sleep there. I think that if he had looked hard at my face he could have seen that I was telling a lie, for I felt my guilty cheeks burn with shame! But he only inquired where we had been sleeping lately, and then gave us the permission which we wanted, on condition of our paying six cents apiece for the privilege, according to the rules of the establishment.
Johnny and Willie seem to have taken instantly to the lodging house and to the people they met there—both the staff and the other boys. They were so happy, in fact, that as Johnny described it, they began to feel uneasy: “There was a constant sense of guilt and shame resting on our minds; we had got a comfortable home, and the kindest of friends, but to acquire these we had made use of a very wrong story, and the more cordial our new friends, the deeper did this arrow of guilt sink into our hearts.”
The morning of the third or fourth day after their admission, Johnny finally summoned up the courage to confess.
I went to Mr. Tracy’s desk; he was writing, but in a moment or two laid down his pen, and looked at me inquiringly; I then said to him at once before my resolution should fade out: “Mr. Tracy, when I came here I told you a lie, and now I am sorry for it; I said that I had not any father or mother, but I have, and they drink so much brandy, and beat us so often that we could not live with them!” I went on to tell him the whole story. Mr. Tracy, instead of getting angry and driving us from the building with a command never to return, as we expected he would, said that he was sorry that we had deceived him, but was very glad we had confessed it; and from that day forward seemed a better friend than ever before.
This scene figures prominently in every document relating to Johnny (it even inspired the title for Anna Hope’s article, “The Boy Who Confessed His Sin”) and thus provides an excellent opportunity to see how CAS record keepers, even in their most private documents, wove in little fictions designed to prove to themselves as much as to others that their difficult work was truly good and effective. In most of the reports of Johnny’s confession, the variations are only minor. Brace implied that Johnny resolved to confess only after hearing “some religious remarks” by Tracy. (Johnny never mentioned such remarks, although that doesn’t mean he didn’t hear them. Tracy was constantly sermonizing to the boys.) The most exaggerated and significant variation occurs in a May 30,1855, entry in a Children’s Aid Society “Record Book,” the only one of the documents relating to Johnny absolutely not intended for public consumption. This passage is from the file of Johnny’s sister, Annie, and represents more than half of the most extended comment made about her:
Ann Eliza Morrow 12 Irish Orphan a sister of little Johnny, who has been staying at the Newsboy’s Lodging house, and in whom Mr. Tracy and many others take such an interest. When he first appeared there, he told Mr. Tracy that he was an orphan, but a short time afterward he said laying his cheek to Mr. Tracy’s, that he had told a lie, and was sorry for it. This ingenuousness, and frankness, endeared him the more.13
“[L]aying his cheek to Mr. Tracy’s”—none of the other accounts of the confession include this detail, which not only makes Johnny seem considerably younger than his likely age of thirteen years but also makes his relationship with Tracy seem much more intimate and filial than it really was.
On their own, little fictions like this may seem insignificant, but when hundreds and thousands of them are considered together, they amount to an enormous fantasy that helped keep CAS workers from recognizing and eliminating the weaknesses of their program.
At six-thirty every morning one of Tracy’s assistants marched through the dormitory of the Newsboys’ Lodging House calling, “Up, boys, up!” and the forty or so residents rolled and clambered out of their bunk beds and headed straight for the washroom. Here, in several long sinks, they scrubbed their faces and hands and sometimes doused their heads. And then, without so much as a crust of bread for breakfast, the boys were sent out onto the streets with their baskets to make their livings as they could. The boys were not allowed back into the lodging house until supper time. After the meal the tables and benches were all turned around to face one side of the room and the dining hall
became a school, although boys who did not want to participate in lessons were free to lounge in the dormitories.
Johnny was one of the newsboy scholars and, according to Brace, “learned to read and write rapidly.”14 He also regularly attended Sunday school at the Five Points Mission, where he was taught by a theological student named Mr. Coffin.
Even before Johnny had consented to be interviewed by Anna Hope, his “story” had earned him money on the streets and a warm place in the hearts of those at the CAS. It was not until Anna Hope’s article was finally published, however, that Johnny’s story began to dramatically improve his life. Whatever its factual accuracy, the article could hardly have been more flattering, portraying Johnny as industrious, frugal, truthful, and calling him “good” and even “beautiful.” He brought the article to Coffin, who was so impressed that he offered Johnny a bed in a corner of his own dormitory room at Union Theological Seminary. Although Johnny made no mention of this fact, Brace reported that Coffin charged Johnny a dollar a week for the room and board (considerably more than the seventy cents Johnny would have spent weekly at the Newsboys’ Lodging House). Brace presented the move as part of Johnny’s desire to be self-supporting and to get an education.
Johnny did not, however, have tremendous luck supporting himself during his stay at the seminary. The impoverished students apparently managed to get many of the items he sold from his own wholesalers, and so he never did more than middling business.15 But his education was a whole other matter. No longer restricted to an hour or two of classes in the evening, he now attended public school every weekday from nine until three and afterward would not only sell his wares on the quadrangle but also discuss with the students what Brace called “abstruse theological questions,” some relating to his own experience. For example: “Which is a greater sin, to lie or to steal?”16
The Newsboys’ Lodging House journal offers several glimpses of Johnny during this period, one of which is particularly interesting because of what it shows both about his intellectual aspirations and about the condescending admiration of its author:
I saw Johnny Morrow today at the Seminary. He looks very delicate, and his cheeks have a transparent appearance which gives him an angelic likeness. His soft gentle voice sounds so sweetly too, that the accents sink into the heart. “Are you getting better Johnny?” “Oh! yes—but I am sick today, and I am going to take a walk while the sun shines— my foot is bad yet, but I am not so lame as I was.” “Why don’t you come see us at the Lodging-House—Mr. Tracy loves to see you.” “I don’t have time or I would—I like to see Mr. Tracy too—had ye a good anniversary”17 “Yes—a very good time of it”—“I have a nice room here, and I can read when I have a mind. I am reading the Pilgrim’s Progress. That is a very good book, and it reads nice. I followed Christian all the way along, and I thought it was very entertaining about the giants and the enchantments—that Milton was a great author wasn’t he?”—“Yes Johnny, but he was not the author of the Pilgrim’s Progress”—“Well I thought he was;—and as the author’s life wasn’t at the beginning of the book I couldn’t correct the mistake—and who was the author?” “Have you never heard of John Bunyan?” “Oh! yes, now I recollect—and it was John Bunyan composed that book—Milton couldn’t do it better—it reads like the bible—wasn’t John Bunyan a tinker?”—“Yes, and wrote his great work under great disadvantages—his own life you will find as deeply interesting as the Pilgrim’s Progress.” “I will get it from one of the students,” said Johnny— “I will walk about the square18 now while the sun shines—what a pity it is one can’t see much green about the fields or trees yet. How I long for the warm sunshine of Spring; but this is a pleasant day, and I feeling like Christian when he was drawing near the happy land, the sun is shining so brightly.”19
There is no question that Johnny Morrow was a remarkably determined, intelligent, and perhaps even good young man. However much the chroniclers of his life—including Johnny himself—may have slanted their portrayals to make him seem the ideal self-reliant and devout street boy, he would never have attracted so much attention had he not possessed real virtues and had he not seemed truly to justify his chroniclers’ fondest hopes. The fantasies that supported the CAS’s work were never wholly spun from the imagination.
Willie, on the other hand, never inspired the admiration and affection of CAS employees that his older brother did. When he was referred to in CAS journals, it was only as “a brother of little lame Johnny.”20 Nothing bad was said of him, but no one at the CAS seemed to find anything to praise either. Willie remained at the Newsboys’ Lodging House after Johnny moved to the seminary, and he seemed to have no other aspirations than to keep himself fed and in pocket money.
One morning, after Johnny had been at the seminary about a month, Willie came by to stock up on books to peddle. Johnny gave him five dollars’ worth. The younger lad went off to try his luck—and had precious little.
At eleven o’clock that night Willie was still out on the street trying to dispose of his stock when, as Johnny described it, he was “pounced” upon by the Metropolitan Police. The police charged Willie with vagrancy, but Johnny believed that they really arrested him as a favor to a man for whom Willie had refused to sell pen-holders. Being only nine or ten years old, he was taken first thing the following morning to the Nursery Department of the House of Refuge on Randall’s Island.
Johnny found out his little brother was missing only when, after not seeing him for two or three weeks, he went to the lodging house to check up on him. No one there had seen Willie for at least as long as Johnny, and no one had a clue as to what might have happened to him. After several days’ search, Johnny finally met a street kid named “Yankee” who had seen Willie being transferred from one station house to another. On this evidence, Johnny took the Third Avenue streetcar uptown and caught the ferry to Randall’s Island where, at last, he was reunited with his younger brother.
Apparently on the advice of Coffin, Johnny decided that it was neither safe nor good for Willie to remain on the streets of New York, and he asked his friends at the Children’s Aid Society to secure Willie’s release and put him on a train west. On October 23,1855, Willie left in the company of Reverend C. C. Townsend and managed to attain, the CAS told Johnny, “a comfortable situation with a barber” in Iowa City.
Shortly after Willie’s departure, Johnny was studying geography in his room at the seminary when he heard a knock at the door. Coffin’s roommate answered, and then told Johnny that his stepmother had come to tell him that his father was dying. Assuming that she was trying to trick him into returning home, Johnny had the roommate send her away. But when she returned the next day with Annie, Johnny believed her story and agreed to return with her, but only if Coffin was allowed to accompany him.
They found Johnny’s father lying desperately ill in the cramped and completely lightless cellar room. Johnny sent Janie out for candles, and when these had been lit, the ill man held out his hand. “Is that Johnny?” he asked. Johnny nodded, but could think of nothing to say. Finally Coffin asked Johnny’s father what he wanted his son to do. “Whatever he thinks best for himself.”
Seeing that the ill man was indeed not long for this world, Coffin performed the duties for which he was being trained. He and Johnny left the cellar room in the late evening, and by three in the morning the old man was dead. He had no funeral and was buried by convicts in Potters Field.
Shortly after their father’s death, Annie came again to Johnny’s room at the seminary. Confessing that their stepmother “did not use her exactly right,” she asked whether he might arrange for her to be sent west. Johnny brought her into the CAS office, where the entry already quoted was made on May 30, 1855, but before she could be placed, her sister Janie was severely beaten by the stepmother and Johnny spirited her out of the house and put her straight onto an orphan train. For reasons that remain unclear, Annie did not go west for nearly a year after her first contact with the CAS.
&nb
sp; In his autobiography Johnny said that Annie “succeeded in finding a place in a good family, where she is now living happily, and with improvement to herself.” But CAS records show that Johnny was, at the very least, vastly oversimplifying his sister’s fate. Although he implies that Annie had simply been sent west, she had in fact first been placed with a Geo. H. Nelden in Newton, New Jersey. The only notation in the CAS “Record Book” regarding this placement is: “Jan 7 1856 Arrived safely gives satisfaction.” The next notation, dated eight months later, says simply: “Has since returned and found a good home in the city.” No explanation was given as to why she left her previous home, and nothing whatsoever was said about her new placement, other than that it was a “good home”—which only makes the next entry more puzzling: “Has been sent West by C. C. Townsend see No 5 Page 412.”
Orphan Trains Page 18
