Commercialized Prostitution in New York CityKneeland, George J. (George Jackson)
History
Commercialized Prostitution in New York City
Kneeland, George J. (George Jackson)
Prostitution -- New York (State) -- New York
A comparison of these figures with the percentage of Catholics,
Protestants and Jews in the population of New York City would be
interesting. These latter figures are very hard to get at except in the
most general way. The latest authoritative study with which I am familiar
is that made by the United States Census Bureau in 1906. It gives the
church membership as reported by the various denominations as 1,838,482.
On a basis of a regular growth in population from 1900 to 1910, the
population of New York City in 1906 was about 4,235,010. On this basis,
only 43.4 percent of the population have church connections. Only the
heads of Jewish families are reported in this census. They are placed at
30,414. The World Almanac for 1913 is responsible for the statement quoted
from "Christian Work and Evangelist" that there are 905,000 Jews in New
York. This means racially as well as religiously Jewish. This would be
about 19 percent of the entire population. The Census for 1906 gives to
the Catholics 1,413,775, or 33.38 percent of the entire population and to
the various Protestant denominations only 327,690, or 8.8 percent of the
population. This would leave about 38 percent of the population without
direct church connection to be distributed as to original affiliations
between Catholic and Protestants. I should expect that here the
Protestants would outnumber the Catholics.
Bedford's quota of Protestant girls is high, among other reasons because
the House of the Good Shepherd, whose inmates are chiefly Catholics, is
much the largest of the private institutions to which delinquent women are
committed. I should personally believe that if we had the necessary data
we should find that, as in the case of the Jewish women, the Protestants
and Catholics would contribute in about their proportion in the community
at large to the whole group of prostitutes.
_Age_:--Table XIV shows in column 1 the ages of 647 prostitutes on their
commitment to Bedford. In column 2 it shows the age of the girl when she
says she committed her first sexual offense. We have the data only in 300
cases. Of these, 279 are cases still in the institution. The age on
entering prostitution is also only known for the cases in the institution,
as we did not attempt to secure this special data until the beginning of
the present study. It will be noted that about 7 percent of the whole
number committed their first offense before they were fourteen, and that
an additional 9 percent were fourteen at the time. There is, however, only
the difference of a year in the average time in committing the first
offense and in entering a life of prostitution. The graph which
illustrates this was made by using percentages in order to have comparable
curves.
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