Category Archives: Newspaper Articles

Obituary Notices: Mrs. Elizabeth S. Hurley

17 Sunday Nov 2013

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From the November 19, 1909 edition of the New York Tribune:

MRS. ELIZABETH S. HURLEY, superintendent of the Children’s Aid Society’s Elizabeth Home for Girls, died of heart disease at the home, No. 307 East 12th street, on Monday. She had been in the service of the society for fifty-four years, and in spite of her advanced age—nearly eighty years—was active and efficient until within a week of her death. Mrs. Hurley began her work for the society in the East River Industrial School, in East 40th street, in the shanty district then (1855) known as Dutch Hill. Mrs. Hurley in all the years of her service cared for upward of twenty thousand girls, endeavoring to teach them habits of industry and to turn them from evil courses. She sent out to situations about three hundred annually, trained for various duties, from laundry work and dressmaking to stenography and typewriting. Her influence and training are to be held responsible, the officers of the society say, for the fact that 12,000 women had led useful lives. Mrs. Hurley was a widow, her husband, an army surgeon, having died in service in the Civil War.

Mrs. Hurley is not the Elizabeth for whom the Home for Girls is named; that honor goes to Elizabeth Davenport Wheeler. Miss Wheeler’s family donated the property at 307 12th Street to the Children’s Aid Society, which moved the previous “Girl’s Temporary Home” there from 27 St. Mark’s Place in 1892.

Night School of the Newsboys’ Lodging House

16 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by in Newspaper Articles, The Sun

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Originally published in The Sun on October 13, 1859:

The night school of the Newsboys’ Lodging House will open on Tuesday evening next. All poor boys desirous of improving themselves have an opportunity to attend. Books, papers, slates, &c., are provided without charge. The following statistics afford pleasurable proof of the good it is doing for this class.

Number of destitute boys sheltered by this charity for the quarter ending on the 15th of September, 4,198. Of these, 2,281 had meals. Of truant and lost boys from various parts of the Union, and even from the Canadas, 47 have been restored. A considerable number of boys from this Institution have been sent to homes in the West by the Children’s Aid Society. During the period above mentioned there have been only four cases of illness. Sick boys are not sent to the Hospital, except where the complaint is contagious. They have good medical advice, and are provided with medicines gratuitously.

A spirit of thrift and prospective economy is developing among the newsboys, owing to the establishment of the Bank of the Newsboys Lodging House. In this, within the above period, 52 boys deposited $216.62 of their earnings.

The Bank is opened on the 1st of every month, and the depositors receive from the institution 5 per cent. interest (per month) on their savings. Since the introduction of the Sunday dinners at the Lodging House on the 12th of June last, 869 have been saved from the necessity of working on the Sabbath at the comparatively trifling cost of about $49.00.

The mention of the inclement season will remind the humane reader at the same time, that donations of apparel and bed cloths will be very acceptable at the Lodging House, Sun Building, to which address they may be sent. Presents of stationery and of books for their library and night school will also be gratefully received.

Excerpt from The Pittsburg Dispatch, November 1, 1889

31 Thursday Oct 2013

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From an article entitled “Noisy Halloween”:

At the Newsboys’ Home last evening, Halloween was celebrated in a jolly manner. All the boys who attend the Sunday school, about 60 in number, gathered in the chapel at 8 o’clock. Superintendent Druitt and a few ladies and gentlemen who were present treated the lads to nuts, grapes, apples and sweet cake. There was an abundance for all, and the youngsters gorged themselves to repletion. Several jolly games were played. The greatest fun was found with the apples suspended by strings from the ceiling, which the boys tried to catch with their mouths.

The Home was visited yesterday afternoon by Messrs. Roberts and Sawyer, members of the State Board of Charities. They had not been in the house for two years. They expressed surprise and gratification at the many improvements visible, and highly praised the work which Mr. Druitt has been doing.

You can read the full article, with descriptions of other celebrations around Pittsburg, here: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024546/1889-11-01/ed-1/seq-6/

“The Queer Little Savings Bank of the Newsboys’ Lodging House”

06 Sunday Oct 2013

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From the August 23, 1899 edition of the Oswego Palladium:

Our New York Letter

The Queer Little Savings Bank of the Newsboys’ Lodging House.

It Is Said to Be the Smallest in the World—Something About It’s Depositors and Superintendent Heig, the Pooh-Bah Who Runs It.

NEW YORK, Aug. 22—[Special.]—The Newsboys’ Lodging House at 9 Duane street is one of the most interesting institutions for the stranger here to visit and at the same time one of the most disappointing at this time of year, for, despite the fact that it was founded nearly 40 years ago and has no doubt wrought no end of benefits to the boys making use of its advantages, its inmates just now number a scant fivescore of all the thousands of newsboys in the town.

Explanation of this apparent discrepancy will tend to make the real nature and aims of the institution clear.

What the Newsboys’ Home Is.

The Newsboys’ Lodging House is not an institution for the housing of all the newsboys in this city nor even for any considerable proportion of them. Its accommodations would be crowded by 200 boys, and that, according to some estimates, would be less than 1 in 50 of the whole number. The real purpose of the institution is to select the homeless and friendless among the boys who sell newspapers, to look after each for awhile and then, in cases it seems warranted by the facts, to lift them quite out of the newspaper selling life and start them afresh, amid new surroundings, where they will have a chance to work out their own salvation unhampered by the crime and squalor and generally depressing conditions into which they were born. That the managers of the house have been unusually successful in this work is well-known by all who have given attention to the matter and may be indicated here by the statement that two at least of its former inmates transplanted through its managers’ efforts have risen to fill gubernatorial chairs, while a very large number have become self supporting, self reliant, highly respected and solid citizens and business men.

One of the things first sought to be impressed upon the boy who becomes a steady lodging at 9 Duane street is the necessity of frugality, the ___ of living within whatever income you happen to possess. To this end a savings bank, sometimes called the smallest in the world, was established at the beginning. This savings bank is run on principles that may be termed antitbetle [sic] to those one which the ordinary pawnshop is conducted. The legal rate of interest on ordinary sums in this state is 6 per cent, but in virtue of the extra risks they are supposed to assume and the small sums they lend the pawnbrokers are allowed to charge much more within the law. Ordinary savings banks pay not more than 3 or 4 per cent per annum, but the little savings bank of the Newsboys’ Lodging House pays 6 per cent a month, or 72 per cent a year. Of course this rate is in reality mostly a gratuity, paid for the sole purpose of encouraging the saving habit, and the maximum deposit allowed is $25. Moreover, as soon as the maximum is reached the rate is decreased to something like a business one.

And, as a matter of fact, few boys are encouraged to reach the maximum, for the management considers it quite as necessary to teach the right use of money as the necessity of saving it. Thus the boy who has got $10 or $12 together and needs clothing is advised to spend part of his savings in shoes or a hat or some other article of apparel. The heaviest deposit in the Newsboys’ Lodging House savings bank at this moment is $14.61, and it stands to the credit of William Gregg, a 17-year-old American lad. The total deposits at this time amount to $101.

Superintendent For 23 Years.

The machinery of this smallest savings bank is simple in the extreme, Randolph Heig, who has been superintendent of the home for 23 years, being president, bookkeeper, paying teller, receiving teller, etc., all rolled into one, a veritable Pooh-Bah in a small way, as a matter of fact.

Mr. Heig, by the way, is devoted to his calling. He is of middle height, wears a full beard and is of pleasant address. He studies his newsboys with the same degree of enthusiasm that a professor of entomology studies his specimens. Within a week after a boy enters the lodging house Mr. Heig has him pretty well analyzed and within a month is pretty certain to have decided upon a special course suited to the boy’s individual needs and capacities. It goes without saying that Mr. Heig possesses the power of making friends with boys to an unusual degree and that his is likely to know the story of each one in the home long before he was been analyzed and his immediate future mapped out.

To him they are encouraged to tell all their boyish troubles, some of which are far more real than fall to the lot of most boys. When they seem restless and apparently in need of amusement, he furnishes it for them. When, as sometimes happens, one of the omnipresent Gerry society agents takes in a lodging house boy in whom he has faith, Mr. Heig appears personally at the society headquarters or before the police justice and gets him out. When a boy is ill he tells his symptoms to “the super,” who hastens to look after him. Occasionally, despite the general “antiscrap” influence of the home, one of its inmates gets into a fight and comes in at night pretty badly banged up. When that happens, it is “the super” who binds up the hurts.

The fact that this is vacation time is one of the most important factors in the low deposits now in the lodging house savings bank and the small population of the home. Most of the lodging house boys take their outings at the Kensico farm, a tract of land 125 in extant owned by the Newsboys’ Lodging House association and fitted up with building and many appliances for the comfort of the boys. Sixty of them are there now enjoying fresh air, living on country fare and generally recuperating themselves. Many of the boys who go to the Kensico farm on vacations got out from its doors as employees of neighboring farmers and never come back to New York, at least until the y have grown to man’s estate and are able to earn their way by other methods than selling newspapers on the streets.

Superintendent Heig has kept track of every one of his boys who has gone out into the world in this way, and many of these are in regular correspondence with him to the present day.

Dexter Marshall.

“Miss Horace Greeley Perry,” The Sun, 28 July 1898

28 Wednesday Aug 2013

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Miss Horace Greeley Perry.

A Bright Newspaper Woman Who Began Her Career Selling Papers.

Minneapolis dispatch in The Portland Oregonian.

“I have been a newspaper ‘man’ all my life,” said Miss Horace Greeley Perry to the writer recently, “and my connection with the press of the country dates from my christening. My father was a warm admirer of Horace Greeley, and he insisted upon my bearing the name of the greatest American editor. I supposed I am the only girl in the world who is named for the late Editor of The New-York Tribune.”

Miss Horace Greeley Perry is young and pretty, and the proprietor and editor of “The St. James Journal,” of St. Peter, Minn. She is the only woman in the state who edits a paper and she is also the youngest member of her profession in Minnesota.

Miss Perry is a bright sample of what young womanhood can do in business, and her career as editor and publisher has been marked by wonderful success. Editorial blood flows in her veins, as for some generations back her ancestors have been newspaper men. She says that she has risen from the ranks, having started as a newsgirl selling papers on the street. At twelve years of age she began setting type, later doing job work, until, in 1891, she took charge of the paper she now owns.

Although in appearance a mere schoolgirl, she is quite worthy of all the honors her Christian name implies.

Under her able administration “The Journal” secured the county printing contract after a contemporary’s monopoly for twenty-one years. Politically this gifted young woman is a Democrat.

Miss Perry at present is in a hospital, having lately undergone an operation for appendicitis. One of her friends, chatting of her successful career, said: “Twice within its history has St. Peter come near having greatness thrust upon it. Years ago the town was accepted as a capital site by the State, but after the bills passed both houses some wicked man stole the required documents, and St. Peter lots the capital.”
Miss Perry is intensely interested in prison reform work, and is a member of the State Prisoners’ Association. She visits the prisons, and is a friend of the Youngers, the famous outlaws, regularly paying them a visit every month.

Cole C. Younger edits “The Prison Mirror,” and in a late number he paid the following tribute to his friend: “The State Editorial Association may well feel proud of its noble little daughter, who has so bravely assumed the responsibilities of a newspaper career, and who, we fain believe, is destined to inscribe in letters of gold upon our country’s history the honored name of Horace Greeley Perry.”

Originally published in The Sun on July 28, 1898.

Newspaper Article: “Arboreal Boys”

24 Saturday Aug 2013

Posted by in NY Times

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Something I think worth mentioning: the acknowledgement that there were newsgirls in the city, in numbers enough to make a distinction between them and newsboys.

Arboreal Boys.

On either side of the City a vast forest of iron posts connected by interlacing iron branches is rapidly springing up. By the philosophers and by the general public this spectacle is viewed with very different emotions. The latter sees in the iron forest merely the promise and potency of rapid transit. To the broker, the merchant, or the lawyer it is an elevated railway and nothing more. The philosopher, on the contrary, knows that these miles of aerial iron will have a profound and lasting influence upon humanity, and that rapid transit will be but a mere incident of their mission. They are the framework upon which the theory of Mr. DARWIN will visibly grow and flourish until it bears its ripened fruit. The railway companies have in this instance builded better than they knew. Their minds are occupied with thoughts of passengers, freight, and profits, but they are nevertheless unconsciously erecting what will prove to be a monument in honor of the inventor of the Darwin theory.

In order to get a good start let us in imagination go back to the day when the newly-developed monkeys were quadrupedal and lived on the surface of the ground. How did they become arboreal? The answer is not difficult to find. Attacked by beasts of prey, they sought safety by climbing trees. The larger animals, the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the pre-historic horse, could climb with difficulty, and to this day it is said that if a hunter is pursued by an infuriated elephant and seeks safety in a tree, the trunk of which is too small to be tightly clasped by the animals’ arms and legs, it is very improbable that it will succeed in climbing to the upper branches and seizing its victim. The monkeys soon found that by selecting thing trees with good judgment, they could sit in perfect safety and watch the futile efforts of the larger beasts to climb up to them, while the amusement afforded by seeing a heavy rhinoceros or camel slide suddenly down the trunk of a tree up which he had laboriously climbed ten or fifteen feet, developed the sense of humor which distinguishes the monkeys. Continued practice in climbing gradually converted their feet into hands. In time, their tails, which were originally either purely ornamental like the tail of the pig, or a means of expressing the finer emotions, as is the tail of the cat, became prehensile. The monkeys being thus fitted for perpetual climbing, finally became arboreal, nature, in accordance with the law of development, having provided them with the peculiarities essential to arboreal life.

Next to the monkey, the small-boy is, more than any other animal, addicted to climbing. Many small-boys regard the universe simply as a vast gymnasium furnished with opportunities for climbing which they never fail to improve. The elevated railways will open a perfect paradise for climbing to the myriad small-boys of our streets. The posts are provided either with lattice-work or with large projecting bolts, so that they can be readily ascended. At their summits the boys will find open iron galleries underneath the railway tracks, which can be traversed for miles by any boy who is reasonably agile and careful of his footing. A temptation like this cannot be resisted, and from the day of the completion of the elevated railroads they will swarm with small-boys.

It will be the merest folly to attempt to clear these interminable structures of the boys who will infest them. From the safe height of the elevated road-bed the small-boy can defy alike the terrene Policemen and the aerial railway watchmen. The latter can be placed only at long distances from one another, and will be of no use except at the precise points where they many be placed. As for the Policeman, nature has so constructed him that he climbs with the utmost difficulty, and long before he can toil up a railway post to seize the boy by whose “chaff” he may have been maddened, his intended victim will be half a mile away. Of course, boys will occasionally be cut to pieces by locomotives, or will accidentally fall to the pavement, but the vast majority of the street boys of the City will roam over the iron beams and girders at their own sweet will.

Now, mark the inevitable effect. These boys will in time become arboreal. The history of their development will closely parallel that of the monkeys. Their hands will grow stronger, and their feet, through constantly clutching iron bars, will gradually become so many additional pairs of hands. They will become infinitely more agile than they are at present, and will skip from beam to post with rapidity equal to that of the ablest monkeys. Whether they will develop tails or not is doubtful. Unlike the monkeys, they have no foundation on which to start a prehensile tail, and i t will probably take many years—perhaps centuries—before the elevated railways become peopled with tailed boys. Meanwhile, there is not question that the arboreal boys will imitate most of the tricks to which monkeys are addicted, and we shall ultimately regard the spectacle of small-boys hanging by their heels, or forming living chains wherewith to festoon the naked beams, as a natural and common-place one.

The probability that the wild newsgirl, who, although but recently acclimated among us, is already recognized as a species distinct from the common puella domestica [domestic girl], will share the arboreal habits of the street-boy, opens a vista of possibilities down which the Darwinian vision need not at present seek to perpetrate. It is enough to know that the elevated railroads will slowly but surely lead to the development of a race of arboreal and quadrumanous boys, thus at once illustrating and demonstrating the grand Darwinian theory.

Originally published in the New York Times on March 16, 1878.

Site Update: Newspaper Articles

16 Friday Aug 2013

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Newspaper articles from four newspapers—The New York Times, The Sun, The New York Daily Tribune, and The World—are now online!

The main page at Newspaper Articles lists all of the newspaper articles for each day of the strike, sorted by newspaper. If you prefer to view only the articles from one newspaper, simply go to that paper’s index.

More articles from other newspapers are in the works. Stay tuned!

Kid Blink’s “Ode to the strikers”

27 Saturday Jul 2013

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HAIL TO DE STRIKE!
Der wus a row in Frankfurt-st.,
And de fight it wusn’t slow,
Between de Newsboys’ Union
An’ some fellers wat’s got do’.
It started in de mornin’
And it quitted late at night,
And wen we got troo doin’ tings,
Dem scabs dey was a site.

Fer it was strike! strike! strike! yes,
Strike ‘em on de head!
Oh, smash ‘m in der smellers,
Stick togedder, fellers,
In Frankfurt-st. near to de park.

Der wus a row in Frankfurt-st.,
De newsies dey went out;
Dey called de coppers on us
An’ we met ‘em wid a shout.
De scabbies hid behin’ ‘em,
But it didn’t do no good;
Fer we wuz out to do ‘em,
An’ we did ‘em w’en we could .

Fer it was strike! strike! strike! yes,
Strike ‘em on de head!
“Kid” Blink begun de holler,
An’ de rest wus quick to foller,
In Frankfurt-st. near to de park.

Der wus a row in Frankfurt-st.,
An’ wot we did was much;
Wid Monix an’ de Corp’rul
Assisted by Scabbuch
We tore der papers an’ blacked der eyes.
Der wus an awful whoop–
An’ w’en ’twas near a finish,
Dem scabs was in de soup.

Fer it was strike! strike! strike! yes,
Strike ‘em on de head!
De coppers dey was much too slow
And de yellers dey is got to go;
In Frankfurt-st. near to de park.

Originally published in the New York Tribune on July 27, 1899.