Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations: The Veil Lifted, and Light Thrown on Crime and its Causes, and Criminals and their Haunts. Facts and Disclosures.Howe, William F.
History
Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations: The Veil Lifted, and Light Thrown on Crime and its Causes, and Criminals and their Haunts. Facts and Disclosures.
Howe, William F.
Crime -- New York (State) -- New York; Criminals -- New York (State) -- New York; New York (N.Y.) -- Social conditions
In the case of the class of young girls under consideration this truth
is peculiarly applicable. In consequence of their associations they hear
and see things whose influence is almost wholly bad and pernicious.
Those disguised advertisements in the newspapers called "Personals" are
of this evil character. To young girls, with minds imperfectly
disciplined, there is a fatal fascination in the mystery of
surreptitious appointments and meetings. Mystery is so suggestive and
romantic, and the young girl who, from piqued curiosity, is tempted to
dally with a "Matrimonial" or a "Personal," is an object of
commiseration. From dallying and reading and wondering, the step is easy
to answer such notices. She believes that she has a chance of getting a
rich and handsome husband, who will take her to Europe, and, in other
respects, make her life a sort of earthly paradise. The men who write
such advertisements know this besetting female weakness and bait their
trap accordingly. And so a young girl, too frequently, walks alone and
unadvised into the meshes of an acquaintanceship which leads to her
ruin. It is perhaps as useless to ask the men who are base enough to
conceive these things to refrain from publishing them, as it is to urge
the mercenary proprietors of certain newspapers to refrain from printing
them in their columns. Yet it must be perfectly clear to all
right-thinking minds, that it is in vain for parents to warn, parsons to
preach, friends to advise, for the good to deplore, and the ignorant to
wonder, at the increasing deterioration of our metropolitan morals,
while these tempting lures to feminine destruction are so alluringly
displayed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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