The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-09-22
SIMPLE RITES HELD
I FOR MRS.. GILBERT
Converts, Drifters and Mission
Workers Attend Funeral
Services.
DERELICTs PAY TRIBUTE
Gathering Honors Memory Of
Woman Whose Efforts Re-
claimed Many. =

Simple funeral services for Mrs. Brad
ford Lee Gilbert. convert, wife and help
mate in the mission work of Jerry Nc
Auley, notorious half a century ago as a
river pirate, were held yesterday after
noon in the trim stone McAuley Mis-
sion at 816 Water street, which has
sprung up on the site of the dilapidated
shack where the two first started re-
claiming the drifters of the Bowery.
There are still drifters on the Bowery,
as there were back in the 70s, when
neither Jerry McAuley nor his wife
feared to enter the toughest dive In all
the roaring Fourth ward, tenderloin Of
the city. Grouped together in the back
of the little chapel yesterday were a
number OF these derelicts of the present
generation, gaunt, gray men OF every
age, with faces ugly from vice and suf-
fering and clothes mere screening tat
tiers. Huddled together they watched the
brief services for the woman who had
labored for the drifters of another time.
Their eyes, wandering from the purple
covered coffin banked with flowers TO the
men and women on the benches in front
of them. discerned here and there among
the congregation an unusual number Of
white haired old men. There were men
shabbily dressed even though in their
Sunday best, and men. dressed ire
proachably in the mode of the day, but
almost without exception these men even
in their grief bore the expression of those
who had not failed in the world. There
were younger men, too, whose faces bore
that same look.
Old and Young in Gathering.
Most of those the derelicts saw were
converts of the mission, although side by
side with them were many who had never
known the dull misery of the Bowery.
but had helped to lift others from II
There were women, old and young. in the
gathering who had perhaps suffered even
more keenly than their men folk who had
fallen. Silently the drifters behind
watched. Only two men of all those in
the chapel had known the personal help
and guidance of Jerry McAuley or his
wife, for Jerry died in the midst of his
work back In "a, while his wife. after
working eight strenuous years without
him, was compelled after an almost
mortal Illness to leave 1t. During this
illness Bradford Lee Gilbert, stanch aid
to Jerry and designer of the present
mission, married her.
But all OF those who sat SO sorrowfully
on the benches, the men and women who
had come back and the men and women
who had carried on the work Of helping
them come back, realized the influence
upon their lives exerted by the woman
who lay in the coffin. Their deep feel
ing although concealed as much as pos
sible, was as obvious as the sun shining
behind a cloud. The youngesN drifter
celebrating his first year of straight
living seemed to realize that had not this
woman and her husband started the mis-
sion Bowery lodging houses and the back
rooms of saloons would still be his only
haunts. Even the derelicts who had
wandered in that day for the first time,
unkempt, ragged. 'repulsive objects,
seemed to understand.
With John II. Wyburn, superintendent
of the mission, and some thirty years
ago hopeless derelict. directing the
services, the simple ceremonies pro-
ceeded. There were words of apprecia-
ton Of the work done by Mrs. Gilbert
among the unfortunate by r. Fulton
Cutting, treasurer of the mission and for
forty years an active worker; by Mrs.
Emma n. Whlttemore, who, with her
husband, had come out of curiosity to
the mission decades ago, and had re-
manned to help, and by Mrs Jordan L.
Mott, another earnest worker. There
were simple prayers by DIR. James Pal
mer of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian