Prostitution in the Gilded Age

by Kevin Murphy

  Twenty-nine-year-old Timothy McQueeney and his eighteen-year-old sister-in-law, Ann McGuire, were the first to emigrate. Dublin connected to Liverpool with a small fleet of steam vessels—mostly paddle side-wheelers. The Dublin and Liverpool Steam Packet Co. led this trade, carrying sometimes 100,000 passengers a year. Crossing the Irish Sea proved traumatic for many passengers, as there were no cabins. Beyond that, the animals wedged in below decks gave off an overpowering smell. These overcrowded ferries offered only deck steerage service, so passengers were exposed to the elements and arrived at Liverpool suffering from complete exhaustion.

  At the end of September 1846, Timothy McQueeney and Ann McGuire spent fourteen hours aboard one such Dublin steam ferry, crossing the Irish Sea to Liverpool. From there, they booked passage on the square-rigged packet ship New York for the voyage across the North Atlantic to America. Before the Famine, virtually all of the Irish who emigrated did so through the Cove of Cork—called Queenstown after 1849—or through Liverpool in England. However, the famine forced many Irish to sail from small, little-used ports such as Ballina, Westport, Tralee, Sligo, Kinsale, Killala, Newry, and Waterford. Sadly, these desperate exiles had no choice but to take ships of questionable seaworthiness. It spelled disaster in 1847—Black ‘47—when thousands died trying to get to America in these “coffin ships.”

  The packet ships out of Liverpool offered the safest passage and the cheapest ticket prices of the Famine years, making the harrowing trip across the Irish Sea worth the risk. Since 1838, when the steam packet SS Sirius successfully crossed the Atlantic, it was only a question of time before the wooden sailing ships slipped into obsolescence. In 1840, Samuel Cunard’s steamer Britannia won him a Royal Mail contract, and his company went on to become a legendary maritime success. These early steamships were primitive side-wheelers and averaged only ten knots. However, they could cross the Atlantic in fourteen to seventeen days while sailing vessels needed forty days. From New York to Liverpool, many of these sailing vessels eventually managed a record fifteen days, but the east to west run seemed the real stump puller. In 1846, the Yorkshire finally bested her competitors by sailing into New York Harbor after only sixteen days at sea. Ships set these records with crews that worked the North Atlantic regularly. Wind and weather being such fickle mistresses, another ship might not get so favorable a slant in a lifetime. The packet ships that the McGuires and McQueeneys boarded at Liverpool could average twelve knots in a twenty-four hour period under favorable conditions, and over time, the journey settled into a six-week voyage.[12]

  After suffering a month and a half of bad food and boredom, Timothy McQueeney and Ann McGuire sailed into New York Harbor on November 6, 1846. A small steam ferry brought the port physician out to the vessel to examine the 308 steerage passengers. The doctor didn’t bother the 38 passengers in cabin class, a common practice. Soon thereafter, steam tugs pushed and pulled the New York to Manhattan’s South Street Seaport on the East River. The passengers were at last released to get about their new lives in America. Timothy McQueeney and Ann McGuire caught the train from New York to New Haven and then another north to Hartford. (This may explain why so many McQueeneys settled in New Haven.)[13]

  When he first arrived in Hartford in 1846, Timothy McQueeney set up housekeeping in rented rooms on Pleasant Street. Soon thereafter, he landed a job as a stable worker at the United States Hotel in Statehouse Square. James M. Goodwin—J. P. Morgan’s uncle, and one of the wealthiest men in the city—had purchased the hotel in 1838. The Goodwin family could trace its roots back to the founders of the city. Over the centuries, they earned a reputation as gimlet-eyed businessmen, but also as world-class tightwads. So said, Timothy McQueeney’s wages for tending the hotel’s horses and carriages wasn’t much. He quickly worked himself up to coachman, a job where tips from guests of the hotel helped with his household expenses. Even so, immigrants have always expressed shock at the cost of living in America and Timothy McQueeney’s weekly wage must have been problematic from the get-go.[14]

  Back in Dublin, Jane and the children made plans for passage to America. While it hardly seems possible, in the two years that it took the McQueeneys to arrange the finances and details of the trip, life in Dublin deteriorated further. The English had been building workhouses for the poor all over Ireland since 1838, but now the whole Poor Law Union teetered on the verge of collapse. One officer in a South Dublin Union, in tendering his resignation, explained his dilemma, “With the knowledge of the poor house being full . . . feelings are created revolting to a Christian mind. . . . Here I would beg to call your attention to the case of Martin Murray . . . whom I found, with a family of seven, in a starving state. . . . [I] gave them an order for admission, which order, like many others, was returned to me, endorsed ‘no room.’ I gave the family relief . . . and when my book came to be reported on, the rations I had given them would not be sanctioned!”[15]

  To make matters worse, the Poor Laws were reduced. “The commissioners deem it desirable . . . to suspend, on 18 March [1848], all orders under the . . . Irish poor relief extension act, authorizing ‘outdoor relief’ to able-bodied men.”[16]

  As the 1848 February Revolution in France played out, British officials became more and more concerned. After the overthrow of Louis Phillipe, the French Second Republic came to life. Instability reigned until the end of the year, when the French people elected Louis Napoleon who organized the Second French Empire. In Ireland, the 1848 French uprising gave hope to Irishmen like John Mitchel, publisher of The United Irishmen. Mitchel felt that the French experience would be the catalyst for revolution and home rule in Ireland.

  The British were taking no chances. On Tuesday, March 21, 1848, at the Head Office, the police arrested John Mitchel “for the publication of three seditious articles.”[17] (Later convicted on charges of felony-treason, the court exiled him to Bermuda and then Tasmania, Australia.)[18]

  In May, life in Dublin took another bad turn. On Sunday, May 21, the rights of Dubliners to pass peaceably through the streets ended. The police blockaded a popular thoroughfare and a military regiment buttressed the decision. Even professional people, on their way to their homes and offices, were hindered from passing along one of the most crowded thoroughfares of Dublin. The tension was explosive.[19]

  The time had come to leave Ireland. Jane McQueeney took her four daughters and left for America just as the British chose to use the Coercion Act against Dubliners. As The Irish Felon—the successor of The United Irishman—wrote “We are soon . . . to live under the severe law, which . . . transfers . . . rights to the constitutional mercies of police and detectives. From the day named in the proclamation . . . no person whatsoever shall carry or process arms elsewhere than in his own dwelling house. The contraband instruments include guns, pistols or other firearms, or parts of such—likewise any sword, cutlass, pike or bayonet. . . . Any open carrying of such arms to be a misdemeanor and punishable with two years imprisonment. . . .”[20]

  Just as Timothy McQueeney had done, Jane and her four young daughters took a steam ferry across the Irish Sea bound for Liverpool—and ultimately America. Jane McQueeney, aged thirty-two, must have suffered the trials of Job during the passage to America because her daughters were so young. At nine, Mary could conceivably have offered some help with her siblings. Ann, at six, couldn’t do much; Jennie and Bridget, at five and three, respectively, probably had all they could do just to hold back tears and sit still.

  The steamers from Dublin put into the Clarence Dock in Liverpool. Most of the emigrants already had their tickets and, if Jane McQueeney timed it right, she and the children could board the ship early. However, sailing vessels were notoriously bad at maintaining schedules. Oftentimes, passengers were required to put up at a boarding house for a few days—if not weeks. During the day, emigrants spent their time strolling between the Waterloo Dock and the Clarence Dock—and “more especially about Denison, Regent, Carlton, Porter, Stewart, and Great Howard Streets.”[21] Though n
othing could deter those in transit from walking about the city, this could be a dangerous pastime. Before boarding their vessels, emigrants were forced to deal with ship’s brokers, runners, boarding-house keepers, thieves, hustlers, and pickpockets—each trying to separate them from their money. Lastly, they had to pass a medical inspection.

  Most emigration vessels departed from the Waterloo dock and it presented a scene from a lunatic asylum—

  Men, women and children were scrambling up the sides of the ship. One could see hundreds of people confused, screaming. Luggage and boxes were flung aboard, followed by the passengers. When they or their luggage missed the ship and fell into the water, a man in a rowboat rescued them and got a reward. But sadly, there wasn’t always someone there to rescue the clumsy passengers and, consequently, some drowned. Those who did not manage to get onboard at the dock-gate had no choice but to hire a rowing boat to catch up to the ship on the River Mersey. . . . Boarding a ship wasn’t easy, even for the cabin passengers.[22]

  Jane McQueeney and her four daughters traveled on the Richard Alsop, a three-masted square-rigger built in 1847 by J. C. Given at Bath, Maine for Grinnell & Co. of New York. The Richard Alsop measured 157 feet and featured thick, oak planking, but still fell into a class of ships that were considered slightly built.

  A clerk at the quayside offices of the ship’s owners composed the Richard Alsop’s passenger list—the only lasting item from the whole voyage. Throughout the many decades of the Irish emigration, most female passengers gave their occupations as domestic, dressmaker, servant, or milliner. When asked, Jane McQueeney said “coachman.” Since the Irish subsistence farmers and cottiers never could afford horses or coaches, this “coachman” entry raises eyebrows. The McGuires and McQueeneys lived near each other and had more children than they could afford.[23] Jane’s husband, Timothy, worked as a “hostler” and “coachman”—as did others in the McGuire and McQueeney families. Still, one might wonder why Jane McQueeney knew more about horses and coaches than the average woman; or was she just trying to elevate her status among the millions of female Irish emigrants?

  The answer is not recorded anywhere, but the “coachman” entry points out another character trait in these two families. True, they were poor and couldn’t read or write, but they had an enormous amount of fight in them. Call it stubbornness, pugnacity or belligerence—whatever fits the bill. As we shall see, the McGuires and McQueeneys had a natural scrappiness in their blood that remains difficult to quantify.

  On July 28, 1848, tugs towed the Richard Alsop from the Waterloo Dock, with the McQueeneys probably on deck and the children’s eyes bugging out. After a short trip down the River Mersey, the crew set the sails and navigated for New York. Conditions, even on a new ship like the Richard Alsop, were appalling. There wasn’t enough space, and the passengers almost completely ignored the simplest hygiene. The food couldn’t have been worse. Meals were “a concoction of barley, rye, and peas, which became saturated with moisture onboard ship.”[24]

  Berths were wooden bunks built into the ship’s timbers. Passengers had to bring their own bedding; comfort and decency were at a minimum. Vessels were “compelled to carry livestock. Cows and calves, sheep, goats, pigs and hens were carried in the larger vessels and the noises and smells of the animals did nothing to improve conditions.”[25] Passengers remained on the deck as much as possible to escape the cramped space and the wretched smell. In bad weather, they had no choice but to remain in steerage all day.

  Jane McQueeney and the other passengers on the Richard Alsop sailed into New York Harbor on Friday, September 8, 1848. It is unlikely that Timothy McQueeney met his family in New York. He would have had no way of knowing of the ship’s arrival and couldn’t lose a day’s pay—plus travel money—in the effort.

  After the harbor physician examined the passengers, tugs jostled the Richard Alsop to South Street Seaport and the McQueeneys were off to the train depot. A few hours later, they pulled into Hartford’s Union Station.

  Jane and Timothy McQueeney were obsessed with the education of their daughters. As illiterates, they knew discrimination firsthand from their time in Ireland and expected no better in America. They were determined to do better for their four girls. Toward that end, Timothy McQueeney left Pleasant Street and rented a place at 12 Market Street. The new rooms were in the heart of the city and only one door away from the Centre Schoolhouse—the best primary school in the city.

  In late 1848, when the McQueeney family reassembled in Hartford, the city had eleven school districts and a total of twenty-five schools. Far and away, the Centre School—at 16-18 Market Street—had the best reputation of all the common schools. The two-story stone building with a brick front had been in use since 1816 and featured separate playgrounds for boys and girls on the north and south sides of the building. However, the schoolhouse’s “situation was unfortunate, being a few rods south of City Hall, in a narrow street, and surrounded by buildings unfavorable to the beauty and cleanliness of the grounds.”[26] Sad to say, only a part of the school enjoyed any shade, and that came from the large blacksmith shop to the south.

  Though there were 1,890 children in all twenty-five of the city’s public grade schools, 808 students registered at the Centre School and another 118 registered at the two colored schools of the First School District. In other words, close to 50 percent of all the children in Hartford attended school in the First District and 43 percent were registered in the Centre School. However, because so many children were needed on the family farm, the highest average attendance at the Centre School annually was 633 pupils. The school term lasted twelve weeks, with four weeks of vacation scattered throughout the year. As farm work slowed in the wintertime, school attendance skyrocketed.

  The Centre School was divided into four sectors, with the youngest pupils in the 4th Department and the oldest students in the 1st Department. The children ranged in age from four to sixteen and they were assigned to classes according to their ability, not their age. Therefore, in 1848, when Jennie McQueeney started school at five, she would have been grouped in the basement classroom with children from ages four through seven. (The average daily attendance in the 4th Department was only thirty children.) Perhaps when Jennie got into the 3rd Department, she would have been in a classroom on the first floor with other students, aged five through nine. Later, she would rise to the 2nd Department—in a classroom on the first or second floor—with pupils aged eight to twelve. When Jennie McQueeney reached the 1st Department, she would have been seated in a 37’ by 60’ classroom on the top floor of the building, with her classmates spaced between the ages of twelve and sixteen. (In the upper grades, average daily attendance was 130.)

  In any New England town of only 13,555 souls, the school system would have been highly centralized, as the Centre School shows. As such, many future physicians, lawyers, judges, mayors, governors, and U.S. senators—some extraordinarily wealthy, some only moderately wealthy—were in the Centre School when Jennie McQueeney and her sisters attended. Just as an example, County Court Judge Samuel Huntington’s son, Sam, was in class with Jennie McQueeney. So were Mary and Davis Ellsworth, children of the wealthy farmer and businessman John Ellsworth. Horse breeder and businessman, Henry Beckwith—worth over a million dollars in 1850—had a daughter, Charlotte, who was in Jennie’s class. Arthur Allyn, son of future Hartford Mayor Timothy Allyn, was in Jennie’s class. U. S. Congressman James Dixon’s children, Clementine and James, were also in this class. While Jennie learned her abc’s in the basement, James and Frankie Goodwin, sons of the largest taxpayer in the city, James M Goodwin, were in the 1st Department on the top floor, finishing their primary educations. Future mayor of Hartford, governor of Connecticut, and U. S. senator, Morgan Bulkeley, sat in the same class. Rounding out this group was future lieutenant governor of Connecticut, Billy Bulkeley.

  Not to carry this too far, but the children of the most prominent men in the city—physicians, dentists, bank presidents, insurance compa
ny chiefs, brokers, merchants, and commodities dealers—filled many of the seats at the Centre School. The education at the Centre school was so superior to the other grade schools that families like the Goodwins and Bulkeleys postponed moves to the more desirable western side of the city until after their children had finished up their studies at the Centre Schoolhouse. In the fullness of time, Judge Bulkeley moved from Church Street to Washington Street and the Goodwins moved from Asylum Street to Woodland Street. Lest the message get lost, this shows the educational strategy of only two of Hartford’s wealthiest families. Others, of course, followed suit.

  Students studied reading, writing, grammar, spelling, composition, arithmetic, geography, history, philosophy, and the statutes of Connecticut. At the end of the common school report, the School Visitors included this note: “We cannot refrain from congratulating the Centre District upon the possession of this excellent school. . . . In all the elements of usefulness, the institution, which is the subject of this report, cannot well be surpassed.”[27]

  Jane and Timothy McQueeney had to have their children in this school, so they rented rooms just south of the blacksmith shop near the school property. In isolation, this decision appeared sound, but the 1850s were a time of explosive growth and great changes in all the cities of the eastern United States—particularly port cities. Since its beginnings, Hartford depended on sailing vessels to bring in rum, molasses, and other goods from foreign ports. Meanwhile, the city exported produce, cattle, lumber, and finished goods. The constant traffic in schooners, barks, and brigantines meant unending exposure to sailors from all over the world. This translated into cheap flag taverns, fleabag flophouses, and houses of ill fame on the waterfront.