Note 6 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
Few are aware of the extent of prostitution carried on, on board the Eastern steamboats. Here the libertines of Boston flourish. State rooms are provided and free passages given to all young females who desire to visit their homes and return, or who, being in the country, are going to the city for employment. It is true they are poor. In the lime and basswood districts of Maine, perhaps they never had a dollar in their “born days.” And the people down there are such a simple and uninitiated race, that these daughters of chastity have never had the least knowledge of this steamboat deviltry, or of earning money by the sale of their virtue, until it is whispered to them when it is too late to make escape. It is supposed that not less than five thousand poor girls are entrapped and ruined every year by this licentious game. Under such circumstances, reaching Boston for the first time, it is not surprising that so large a part of them are prevailed upon to enter houses of ill-fame, impressed with the delusive idea that they will soon make a fortune and return. Thus they unconsciously sign their own death-warrants—aye, passports to a doom far less preferable!
The cab nuisance is a most efficient auxiliary to this work of hell. Nearly all of them are in the employ of the keepers of houses of prostitution; they hang around the landings, and get their cue from the knowing ones. Is there a girl who is entirely a stranger, and is seeking for a residence in the city, a cabman is always at hand, in the guise of one who earns an honest livelihood. She steps into his rickety vehicle, and is jotted down at the door of a temple of vice.
These poor creatures, once steeped in infamy, are generally beyond the reach of reformation. They remain in Boston while their beauty and bloom is attractive; but soon, as a matter of course, they contract odious and incurable diseases. Thus afflicted, large numbers of them migrate to New Bedford, Nantucket and Cape Cod, where, after a riotous debauch of a few years with the whalemen, they die. The enormous dividends declared by the New Bedford Branch Railroad Co. are mainly attributable to this class of passengers.
Oh, civilization! thou bringest gold to the rich man’s purse, and art the sweet nursling of murder.