A bit of a look into Victorian New York

Our perceptions of the world present and past are shaped by the biases that are naturally developed through training and experience.  The way moderns perceive the culture of the Victorian age is, therefore, quite naturally different from the way in which a person from that time would perceive it.  Lydia Maria Child wrote this volume of letters from New York in which she commented on pretty much every aspect of society, but the thing that stands out most is her commentary on culture as related to morals.  Whether she is talking about Five Points or the Battery, slavery or temperance reform, women's rights or penitentiaries,  the morals of those issues and circumstances and the morality which they breed is constantly present.  So, let Lydia Maria Child be a guide to the culture of New York, principally, and to that United States of yesterday, in a larger sense.  She herself expresses the belief that society and circumstances make people who they are.  Consider her, then a person created of that time and society and see through her eyes into that era and culture.

It seems that there is in New York a sense of moral obligation to help the unfortunate.  Some of this is seen in things as simple as the keeping of public parks and gardens.  These are to be found in the New York that Child knew and not as common in Boston, to whom Child principally writes.  Child defends these public places: "Let science, literature, music, flowers, all things that tend to cultivate the intellect, or humanize the heart, be open to 'Tom, Dick, and Harry;' and thus, in the process of time, they will become Mr. Thomas, Richard, and Henry.  In all these things, the refined should think of what they can impart, not of what they can receive" (6).   More than general public availability of beauty and science is the positive activity directed toward helping the unfortunate.   Child speaks of the Temperance Society and the city-wide parade they had.  An anecdote in which a minister of the Temperance Society finds a poor drunk on the street and takes him in to give him clothing a find him a job is an example of the focus of this group.  The focus is on lifting up the oppressed.  After all, "society makes its own criminals,"(8) so if we turn society to rescuing those on the lowest rungs of society, we shall better their morals and better society.  Similarly, Child references a Benevolent Society of displaced Highlanders whose aim is to aid their "indigent countrymen." 

One can glimpse a bit of the poverty that is being combated in Child's description of Five Points.  In January, she speaks of naked children running the streets in that place and in various places comments on the filth of the place. Another bit shows a similar picture—a young boy, "about four years old, with a heap of newspapers, 'more big as he could carry,' under his little arm, and another clenched in his small, red fist."  Child projects a likely future involving drunken parents, theft, and arrest.  The law becomes merely an enemy to the unfortunate soul who has known nothing more than poverty and desperation.  On the opposite end of the scale, one can perceive glimpses of the fantastically wealthy in the mention of pleasure yachts and luxury.  Even more distinction can be noted in how well educated Child shows herself to be.  She is very familiar with Greek and Roman mythology, classic literature of the time.  She is very aware of the modern sciences of the day.  She writes in an elegant, if sometimes ponderous style.  It displays an education that the poor could not hope to get.   Perhaps it is appropriate that in this time of enlarged distinction between the upper and lower classes of America, elements of society would turn toward the aid of those in the less fortunate position.

Much of societies' ills, Child blames on society—" society . . . makes its own criminals, and then, at prodigious loss of time, money, and morals, punishes its own work."(8)  A physical comparison is made to a place in New York that used to be a fresh spring.  It was filled in for construction purposes and at that time, had become a stinking den of poverty and water now had to be transported in at great expense.  But there is another aspect of morality and culture that influences negatively—the relative positions of men and women. 

(And that is the first segment of the report).

It is interesting to see this bit of a report..."society... makes its own criminals" This is a dangerous proposition.  We live in a fallen world.  It seems James' explanation for wars and contentions is more to the point.   
You desire, and you do not have. You envy and you kill, and you are unable to obtain. You argue and you fight, and you do not have, because you do not ask.
You ask and you do not receive, because you ask badly, so that you may use it toward your own desires.