Pelham Hall Shelter for "Erring Girls" Was Established in August 1895
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For more than a decade I have written about one of the grandest charitable endeavors of the late 19th century established and supported by Pelham women. It was known by various names. Most frequently it was known as "Pelham Hall Shelter." It was formed by Mrs. Emily Hall Hazen, the headmistress of Pelham Hall, otherwise known as Mrs. Hazen's School for Girls located in Pelham Manor between Esplanade and Edgewood Avenue at Boston Post Road. For one example, see: Wed., Sep. 06, 2006: Pelham Hall Shelter, a "Refuge for Erring Girls", Founded by Alumnae of Mrs. Hazen's School for Girls in Pelham Manor.
Mrs. Hazen worked with representatives of her many loving alumni in 1895 to create a shelter for "erring girls." The shelter opened in August, 1895. While it might be easy today to imagine such a charity to help only those young women who had strayed with their young beaus, that would be entirely off the mark.
In 1895, Pelham Manor's "Mrs. Hazen" joined forces with then-famed Rebecca Salome Foster ("Mrs. Foster"). Mrs. Foster was a missionary and prison relief worker known as the "Tombs Angel" because she helped women imprisoned at The New York Halls of Justice and House of Detention (otherwise known as "The Tombs"). To learn generally a little more about Rebecca Foster, see "Rebecca Salome Foster" in Wikipedia -- The Free Encyclopedia (visited Sep. 3, 2017).
"MRS. FOSTER."
York Letter, The Daily Chronicle [De Kalb, IL], Apr. 11, 1896, p. 4, cols. 4-5.
NOTE: Click on Image to Enlarge.
"Pelham Hall Shelter (estab. 1895), 31 Webster Ave., New Rochelle, N. Y. A refuge for erring girls between 15 and 25 years old who evince a sincere desire to reform. Founded and supported by the alumnae of Mrs. Hazen's School, Pelham Manor. Capacity for 8 girls, who are taught to do housework, and are instructed in other branches of useful employment. Effort is made to find homes for them in the country and situations best suited to their various needs and ability. Girls are received from N. Y. City. The Home is an effective aid to Mrs. Foster in rescue work at the N. Y. City courts and prisons. Mrs. J. C. Hazen, Pres. and Treas., Pelham Manor, N. Y.; Mrs. S. N. Morse, Matron."
Source: Charity Organization Society of the City of New York, New York Charities Directory. - A Classified and Descriptive Directory to the Philanthropic, Educational and Religious Resources of the City of New York Including the Boroughs of Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Richmond, p. 217 (NY, NY: The Knickerbocker Press 1897).
The shelter was tiny. It sheltered eight to ten young women often plucked from the black-hearted Tombs in New York City where, occasionally, a young woman was wrongly imprisoned or terribly wronged, at least as Rebecca Foster perceived things. According to one account:
"It is not the intention of the Shelter to care for women of bad reputation or those who have lived a constant life of sin and crime, but to help some of the many girls who have grown up in the midst of temptation with no means of learning occupations to take them from it, and are driven by excessive poverty to theft and other wrong doing, as seemingly, the only way to obtain the necessities of life."
Mrs. Hazen, her alumnae, and women of Pelham who supported the shelter worked incessantly to help the young women who cycled through the shelter. They considered time in the Pelham Hall Shelter to be educational. They educated their young charges in "sewing, housework, or whatever they may seem to be best fitted for. They are allowed to follow their own religious tendencies, and the only religious services held regularly in the house are the morning and evening prayers."
"MRS. HAZEN."
York Letter, The Daily Chronicle [De Kalb, IL], Apr. 11, 1896, p. 4, cols. 4-5.
NOTE: Click on Image to Enlarge.
As one might expect, the Pelham Hall Shelter was managed by a board of trustees. Mrs. Thomas P. Field was president in the early years of the organization. Other members at the same time were: Mrs. Alice Drake, Mrs. John A. Foster, Mrs. Martin J. Keogh, wife of Supreme Court Justice Keogh; Miss Marie Harrison of New Rochelle, and (of course) Mrs. John Cunningham Hazen and her daughter, "Miss Hazen," of Pelham Hall.
The work of the important charity shelter was supported by the "entrance fee and annual dues of the school society" for which it was named and also by the proceeds of entertainments, subscriptions and contributions of clothing, and money from friends.
"MRS. FIELD."
York Letter, The Daily Chronicle [De Kalb, IL], Apr. 11, 1896, p. 4, cols. 4-5.
NOTE: Click on Image to Enlarge.
The lengthy article transcribed below records much about the history of Pelham Hall Shelter and the nature of the young women whom the charity helped at the time. It is important and fascinating reading for anyone interested in the history of philanthropy in our little Town of Pelham.
* * * * *
"GOOD IS THEIR AIM.
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NEW YORK WOMEN WITH PRACTICAL CHRISTIAN METHODS.
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'The Angel of the Tombs,' as Mrs. Foster Is Known -- How She Assists Poor Girls -- Many a Pathway Is Brightened.
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New York Letter.
THE charity and rescue work carried on by Mrs. Foster, who is called the 'Tombs Angel,' is of a practical sort. There is no singing of hymns, reading of tracts, or preaching to the unfortunates with whom she deals, but, in her own language ,she simply aims to do what one woman would do for another who was in trouble. It must not be imagined that Mrs. Foster is not a religious woman, but she does not believe in forcing religion upon the unfortunate women to whom she offers her aid. Mrs. Foster was formerly a paid missionary of the Presbyterian City Mission society, but she found herself in a position where she could afford to give up the salary, and now what she does for the unfortunates that drift into the criminal courts is without desire of remuneration. She has received several offers to act as the paid representative of missions in other cities who are anxious to take up the rescue work as practiced by her in the Tombs, but she has declined them because she loves New York, her native city.
She deals with the women who find themselves in trouble through having, in a moment of desperation or temptation, committed some crime which puts them behind the prison bars, and she works among them without regard to race, color, creed or nationality. For instance, the other day she took up the case of a woman who had been locked up in the Tombs charged with abandoning her baby. The woman was awaiting the action of the grand jury on the complaint on which she was awaiting the action of the grand jury on the complaint on which she was held in the police court. Mrs. Foster in her daily rounds of the prison, talked with the woman and learned that it was through absolute ignorance of how to provide food and shelter for herself and the baby that the woman was tempted in a moment of despair to leave it on the doorstep of a dwelling in the hope that it would be taken care of by the persons who found it. Mrs. Foster learned from the woman that she had spent nine days in the Harlem hospital. She had struggled along as best she could to earn her own living, until finally she was taken ill and had to go to the hospital she had no relatives or friends in the city, and had to walk the streets day and night with her baby. She finally became so exhausted that she thought if she kept the baby with her any longer it would die, and she abandoned it, not because she wanted to desert it, but simply because she had no means of providing for it. She was anxious to have the baby with her, but was unwilling to sacrifice its life. Mrs. Foster, after hearing her story, appeared before the grand jury. She told members of that body the circumstances of the case, and the grand jury dismissed the complaint on Mrs. Foster's assurance that she would see the mother and baby taken care of. Mrs. Foster sent the woman to a place where she can earn a living by taking care of another baby, and after a year's service she will be at liberty to go away and leave her own baby, paying a nominal sum for its support. This was rather an exceptional case for Mrs. foster to take charge of [sic].
Her ideal work is rescuing young women who fall into the hands of the police for the first time. She prefers to take the cases of girls who are left without natural protectors and need a woman's care. The reason the judges and others in authority in the criminal courts are willing to condone petty offenses, or even those that might be regarded as of a graver nature, on Mrs. Foster's plea, is that they are certain that she can do what no amount of imprisonment or other punishment could accomplish.
Mrs. Foster is enabled to provide a home and the means of making good women out of wayward girls through an organization known as the Pelham Hall league. The league has a quiet little country home at New Rochelle that is known as the Pelham Hall Shelter for Homeless Girls. It is supported entirely by the pupils and alumni of Mrs. J. C. Hazen's school at Pelham Manor. The home was opened last August. Since the league took up the work Mrs. Foster has saved many young women from prison and started them on the road to earn their own living and look out for others dependent upon them.
The cases which she takes up are something like the following: A young woman who was living out with a family and supposed to be receiving $6 a month was arrested charged with stealing a dress belonging to her mistress. She was locked up in the Tombs and Mrs. Foster, upon investigating the case, learned that the mistress owed her a month's wages, and the dress which she was accused of stealing was an old skirt which she had taken and altered to fit herself. Mrs. Foster advised her to plead guilty, saying that she did not want her to add the crime of perjury to her other fault, and got the judge to suspend sentence. She took the girl to her home, where she was taught how to do good housework, and then got her a situation.
Another girl whose case she took up was a cook who became addicted to drink. She could not control herself, and twice got into the hands of the police. Mrs. Foster took her to the Pelham home, and under the refining influence of the women there, the girl soon lost her appetite for alcoholic stimulant. She became so that she was able to resist temptation, and is now serving in a private family in the city. Another case which Mrs. Foster had some months ago was that of a girl who was a servant in a family up town on the West side. She became jealous because the other servants were better dressed than she, and as most of her wages went to support her aged father, she had little left to vie with them in the matter of clothes. In a moment of weakness she stole a watch belonging to her mistress and kept it for several days. Then her conscience reproved her, and she acknowledged having stolen the watch when her mistress asked her about it, and brought it back at once. She was arrested, nevertheless. Mrs. Fowler investigated her past career and found that she was a good girl, and that it was simply a desire to dress well that induced her to take the watch. She took charge of her, and ever since the girl has been an honest and excellent servant in a situation which Mrs. Foster got for her.
A case in which Mrs. Foster did excellent work was that of Nellie Hathaway, a woman who was arrested in a Bayard street dive charged with being an accessory to murder. Mrs. Foster secured her release and has made a decent woman of her. There is one class of cases which Mrs. Foster never has anything to do with, those of immoral women. She has been known, however, to help such women along while in prison.
In the home at New Rochelle the inmates are allowed to come and go at will. They receive good food and good clothes, and are educated during their stay in sewing, housework, or whatever they may seem to be best fitted for. They are allowed to follow their own religious tendencies, and the only religious services held regularly in the house are the morning and evening prayers. The home looks like a private residence. The work is conducted on a rather limited scale at present, but eight or ten girls are being taken care of constantly. The main object is simply to afford a quiet, healthful shelter. The work is managed by a board of directors of which Mrs. Thomas P. Field is president. The other members are: Mrs. Alice Drake, Mrs. John A. Foster, Mrs. Martin J. Keogh, wife of Supreme [Court] Justice Keogh; Miss Marie Harrison of New Rochelle, and Mrs. J. C. Hazen and Miss Hazen of Pelham Hall. The work is supported just now by the entrance fee and annual dues of the school society for which it is named, by the proceeds of entertainments, subscriptions and contributions of clothing, and money from friends. Mrs. Hazen, in speaking of the work, said:
'It is not the intention of the Shelter to care for women of bad reputation or those who have lived a constant life of sin and crime, but to help some of the many girls who have grown up in the midst of temptation with no means of learning occupations to take them from it, and are driven by excessive poverty to theft and other wrong doing, as seemingly, the only way to obtain the necessities of life.'
Mrs. Fowler is the widow of the late Gen. John A. Foster, who won distinction in the civil war and was a conspicuous New York lawyer. Mrs. Foster is the only woman who enters the criminal courts and intercedes with the judges for prisoners with any degree of success."
Source: GOOD IS THEIR AIM -- NEW YORK WOMEN WITH PRACTICAL CHRISTIAN METHODS -- "The Angel of the Tombs," as Mrs. Foster Is Known -- How She Assists Poor Girls -- Many a Pathway Is Brightened -- New York Letter, The Daily Chronicle [De Kalb, IL], Apr. 11, 1896, p. 4, cols. 4-5.
Labels: 1895, Charity, Emily Hall Hazen, Mrs. Hazen's School for Girls, Mrs. John Cunningham Hazen, Pelham Hall, Pelham Hall Shelter, Philanthropy
posted by Blake A. Bell @ 4:10 AM
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