, 1888-01-06
HISTORY OF A CRADLE.
A VISIT TO THE FOUNDING ASYLUM
OF NEW YORK CITY.

Nurses and Nurse Nothcrs-The Colored
Babies-Where the Little Ones Hail
from-Apparent Effects of HercdIty.
Sending Children Out West.
1t is only n cradle, to be sure. A cradle
made of stout brown wicker and p~rettily
draped with white muslin and blue rib
bous. just such a nest for a wee one as
can be found in hundreds of homes in the
broad land, yet it differs from them all.
For eighteen long years this simple cradle
las been the ark by which thousands
upon thousands of innocent little lives
have been saved from the flood of misery
and sin that sweeps over this great city.
Over this cradle ave bent II, 900
Women with bleeding hearts and tortured
gouls, mothers who came to lay in it and
80 enouncc their first born. 1t has been
drenchcd with the tears of the wretched
md rocked with the agonized last EN-
brace that marks the parting of flesh and
blood from its own
If you want to see this cradle go to the
Founding asylum on Sixty-eighth street
and Third avenue. The building is O
very fine one Of cheerful red brick, with
stoncf ucings, and over the main entrance
Is the significant figure of st. Vincent de
Paul, the great apostle of charity, holding
tenderly in his arms n little abandoned
ono.
In the asylum there are about 700 chill
drcn, with their nurses and nurse mothers,
lenving 900 or ! 100 still to b. provided
for. The latter are given out to be wet
nursed by women who have lost their
own children and are glad to add to their
husbands earnings by taking q child
from the sisters. These women, the
wives of respectable w~orkingmen, are
selected with care and nave to be well in
dorsed. They are paid $40 n month and
are under The surveillance not only of a
detective but of a parish visitor, who may
call ut any moment.
The colored babies, who look like big
rubber dolls, with bright bead eyes, are
nursed by colored mothers, and when
they cave the asylum are sent to a colored
order of sisters in Baltimore to be trained
in useful occupations. There is some
thing pathetic in the fact that no one, not
even OF their own race, wants to adopt n
child of negro blood.
The children carry no badge of charity
about them, and they are dressed with
every regard to neatness and comfort. 1t
takes, by the way, twenty-five machines
and rs many workers within the. asylum
walls to turn out the 100, 900 articles of
clothing used every year. Once a month
49, NeNAA Univ - NNAANl AlAl uIlll
reported on at the asylum, n physician be
ing in attendance to prescribe, if neces-
sary, and the medicine promptly made up
in the ~dispensary. The magnitude of the
wet nursing industry for this institution
can be imagined fcom the fact that it costs
the asylum $120, 900 annually.
1t must not be presumed for n ONE
that this vast and constantly recruited
army of abandoned children comes en-
ff,.,1,r frAy, t1,n $1,000 L. NJ
stratum in society furnishes its quota, and
among the mothers who nave denied their
offspring are women whose toilets Mt balls
are described in fashion papers and whose
names are synonyms for the social vir-
tues.
There is not n street or an avenue In
fashionable New York thai is not repre-
scented in the asylum wards filed with
prattling little ones. 1t needs no prac-
ticed eye TO recognize in the small ear,
the well shaped hand and foot and the
clearly cut features the chud of gentle
birth, just as the child of the laborer and
the raw emigrant bears the stamp of its
heritage, in broad back, heavy build,
coarscly cut features and large eXtremi-
ties.
Walter Besant, in his "Children OF
Gideon" wishes us to believe that, If
given the same advantages and surround
ings, it would, when they reached ma
turity, be impossible to distinguish be-
tween the child of the washerwoman and
the child of the gentlewoman. In brief,
that education and the refinement of
wealth would stamp out heredity. If the
physical advantages were equal to begin
with this might be true ultimately, but
before education begins, say In the case of
n child of 3 years, there is no danger of a
woman's eye c~onfounding the two, though
the surroundings be identical.
The evidence of birth is to be found al
n child's natural manner, its instructive
~daintiness, its natural boorishness. The
love of the beautiful and clean in the one,
the Indifference of the other to any but its
animal wants. One child will come of its
wv accord and ask TO nave its hands
washed from an instructive dislike to dirt;
the other will shrink from water and soap,
md n taste for cleanliness has to be drilled
into him, Tho sociologist can find plenty
to study in the nurseries of the asylum.
The little ones are brought up under the
impression that they are at school, and
that some day their papas and mammas
will write for them to come home. In con-
sequence of this the deserted children
never know for n moment that they have
been discarded by their own, but look for
ward with happy confidence to going
home.
Every few months n band of forty or
fifty children is sent west, where COM
petent agents have found places for them
never where there are small children in
the family, nor unless the people are able
md willing to give them n good education.
As n rule the secret of their origin Is well
kept. This is n reminder that in New
York society there are "buds'' whose
debut is promised this winter, but who
unfolded their first leaves in the big
asylum which they may today drive past
with indifference.-Mrs. Robert p. Porter
In New York Press.
TURNS Museum.