St. Vincent's Industrial School and Orphan Asylum

[dgriffin]

Here's the full obit from the April 17, 1918 evening edition of the Utica Herald Dispatch. Hope you're not on dial up. This jpg file is 1.5 megabytes. Now would be a good time to mention to everyone that if you see something you like in any of the threads I post to on Clipper's forum, please download it to your own PC and don't depend on it always being here. I host these files on my webspace, not on Photobucket, and I have limited space. From time to time, I remove a lot of stuff, and you may see broken links. I try to not eliminate files on the historical threads and the Beyond Bebop thread, but my scalpel is not the finest.

[dgriffin]

Continuing from John O'Grady's "Catholic Charities in America":

St. ]ohn’s Protectory, Buffalo

In Bishop Timon of Buffalo, Dr. Ives had another active
co-worker in developing a protective program for Catholic
boys. In 1861 Bishop Timon began to make plans for the
care of boys who could not be provided for in the diocesan
orphanage. With this purpose in mind he purchased a large
farm at Limestone Hill in the present city of Lackawanna,
where he erected St. John’s Protectory. In 1864 it was
incorporated under the title of "Society for the Protection
of Destitute Roman Catholic Children at the City of Buf-
falo."’ It was placed under the direction of Rev. Thomas
Hines, who was assisted by the Sisters of St. Joseph and who
himself had experience as director of St. Joseph’s Orphan
Asylum for Boys at Limestone Hill.”
When Father Baker assumed charge of the institution in
1882 the name of St. John’s Protectory was changed to Our
Lady of Victory Home. Father Baker upon assuming charge
did more than merely change the name of the institution.
He refashioned its whole program. Before his time St. John ’s
Protectory had many of the aspects of an ordinary penal
institution -- high walls, barred windows and rigid discipline.
Father Baker very quickly liberalized the old methods of dis-
cipline and restraint. Our Lady of Victory Home is now
one of Father Baker ’s Lady of Victory charities. The other
institutions that make up the group are: The Working Boys'
Home, St. Joseph’s Orphan Boys’ Asylum, The Lady of Vic-
tory Infant Home—a maternity hospital and a general
hospital.
The movement for the building of Catholic industrial
schools was especially commended by the Second Plenary
Council of Baltimore in 1856. "We, therefore," urged the
Council, "earnestly exhort the bishops to defend with every
possible care and solicitude the tender lambs of the Christian
{old from the wolves that hang around them. Let them estab-
lish industrial schools everywhere but especially in the great
cities where the number of those in danger is 1arger."" This
naturally gave impetus to the development of protectorates.
Here was further evidence that Catholics were becoming more
and more conscious of the losses that the Church was sus-
taining through failure to make adequate provision for its
neglected children. It must not be assumed, however, that
the task of building these new institutions was an easy one.
Catholics were, for the most part, still poor.

[dgriffin]

Industrial Schools Established in Seventies and Eighties

Among the dioceses that established industrial schools in
the period of 1810-1890 were St. Louis, San Francisco, Phila-
delphia and St. Paul. In 1871 a Catholic protectorate was
established at Glencoe, Missouri, in the archdiocese of St.
Louis. Under the leadership of Rt. Rev. Patrick J. Ryan, later
archbishop of Philadelphia, the protectory was at first successful
, but later languished because of lack of support. The
property was taken over later by the Christian Brothers who
made it their novitiate under the title of La Salle Institute"
About 1875 the city of San Francisco established a youth’s
directory for the purpose of diminishing juvenile delinquency
in the city. At first the agency contented itself to securing
placement for children. Later its facilities were enlarged
so as to enable it to care temporarily for children without
suitable homes.” In 1886 the Mines Drexel purchased 200
acres of land near Bristol in the archdiocese of Philadel-
phia for the purpose of providing a home and school for
Catholic boys who could not be cared for in the ordinary
orphan homes. The boys were to be prepared for the various
trades and also for farming. The protcctory was to be in
charge of the Christian Brothers."° An industrial school for
boys was established in Clontarf, Minnesota, in the archdiocese
of St. Paul about 1880.

From a reading of the contemporary literature of Catholic
child-care it is very evident that those who were interested
or engaged in the work did not draw clear lines of demarca-
tion between the different types of children. Such literature
as there is on Catholic child-care during this period pictures
thousands of homeless, abandoned, destitute children roaming
the streets and being grabbed up by Protestant agencies and
sent to good Protestant homes in the middle west. The
industrial schools represented a heroic effort to do something
for these children. As was to be expected, the industrial
school did not classify its charges. Its basic thought was
to save them to the faith.

[dgriffin]

Institutions Complementing the Industrial Schools

Side by side with the industrial schools, there was another
group of institutions providing temporary care for homeless
boys. In these the boy was to be retained until a perma-
nent foster home could he found for him. A good illus-
tration of this type of home is the Mission of the Immaculate
Virgin, now located on Staten Island. It had its beginnings
in St. Vincent's Newsboys’ Lodging Home opened by the
St. Vincent de Paul Society on Warren Street, New York City,
in 1870. While still a layman the Rev. John C. Drumgoole had
become acquainted with the work of the St. Vincent de Paul
Society. After ordination he asked Archbishop McCloskey
of New York to permit him to dedicate his life to the care
of homeless and destitute boys. In 1873 he took over St.
Vincent’s Newsboys’ Lodging Home from the St. Vincent de
Paul Society. Within a period of four years the demand
on this institution became so great that Father Drumgoole
was obliged to acquire a larger house on Lafayette Place.

Father Drumgoole was not long satisfied with the develop-
ment of a working boys’ home. He visioned a village com-
munity in which a large number of children of both sexes
could be brought together under the care of sisters. As a
part. of his program he acquired a farm on Staten Island
where he gradually developed his village community. As a
means of supporting the project, he organized St. Joseph 's
Union, which very quickly drew a large membership from the
entire country.”

In a letter addressed to Cardinal McCloskey in April, 1884,
Father Drumgoole tells about the opening of the new build-
ings on Staten Island the previous Thanksgiving Day. On
this occasion 700 children visited Mt. Loretto. In the eve-
ning 400 larger boys returned to the house on Lafayette
Place, leaving 300 in the new institution. Father Drum-
goole stated that plans were under way for the care of home-
less boys on Staten Island in accordance with the original
purpose of his foundation. At the mission in Lafayette
Place fifty people daily received free meals. Relief was also
given to families in their homes.

The example set by the St. Vincent ds Paul Society and
Father Drumgoole in New York inspired Catholics in a
number of other cities. In 1871 Rev. Maurice Hickey estab-
lished St. Vineent’s Home for Newsboys in Brooklyn. The
home, however, did not confine its efforts to newsboys. It
received any boy who was in want. While it was intended
primarily for working boys, it also received a number of
boys under working age. It was Father Hickey ’a plan to
provide permanent foster homes for homeless boys as soon
as possible.

A lodging house for Catholic boys, known as St. Vincent 'a
Home, was established in Newark in 1882. The establish-
ment of the Newark institution was due to the activities of
the "Boys’ Lodging House and Chlldren's Aid Society" in
winning Catholic boys away from the Church." ‘° Fully one-
half of the boys cared for by this agency were children of
Irish Catholics. All the children were compelled to attend
Protestant services. In 1883 a Catholic working boys' home
was opened in Boston."

John O'Grady, "Catholic Charities In America," 1971

[dgriffin]

Got to thinking as I was posting the above.

As I trudged up Sunset Ave with a canvas bag now empty of the last edition of The Observer Dispatch, I never realized I was marching along in the tradition of orphan boys 100 years before who eked out a living selling newspapers. I was not an orphan, but the Rev. Mrs. Gasek ... her husband the pastor of Utica’s Grace Church ... may have thought so when I came to her door collecting for a week of papers on a wintry evening in 1955. When the storm was over, it would turn out to be one of the city’s worst blizzards of the decade. Over 5 feet of snow fell. Hey, what was a little bit of snow to me! I was an eleven year old son of Utica, born in a blizzard so I was told.

The Gaseks were the last customer on my route, and they lived in a comfortable house on the corner of Sunset Ave. and Newell Street, just three blocks from my home. As the wind rattled the window panes and snow built up on their front porch, climbing its way to the window bottoms, the pastor’s wife opened her front door and beheld young Dave, swaddled in six layers of clothing (none matching) and probably missing one glove, as was often the case in those days. "Forty cents, please," squeaked out from my midget apparition while the snow swirled past me and blasted the poor woman, poised there resembling a windblown Donna Reed.
The Reverend was just arriving home, having had a harrowing drive up Genesee Street from his church.
I would not accept her offer to step inside. After all, they were as Protestant as one (or two) could get, he being the minister of the downtown church. She insisted her husband take me home in his car. He looked a bit rattled but indicated he was game. I declined that offer also, not wanting to be dropped off in front of my home by a non-Catholic clergyman, even in the middle of a howling storm of biblical proportions. I tried to withdraw from the porch, back into the eye of the storm. Mrs. Gasek refused to let go of my arm, her feet firmly planted on the threshold as she stood freezing in her doorway. I could see the snow building up on her black woolen dress. The Reverend Mr. Gasek, perhaps hearing a whisper from the Holy Spirit, was suddenly inspired. Asking my phone number, he called my mother and asked her permission. She was embarrassed, but assented, and I rode home in a wonderfully warm and commodious black Buick. I was so comfortable when we arrived in front of my house, I was ready to turn Protestant and forsake the faith of my fathers.

The only mention of the episode that evening was from my father. "That was very nice of the Gaseks,” he said. “But the next time it snows so hard, come right home." Yeah, sure, OK Dad.

I suppose it's unnecessary to say the Gaseks were terrifically nice people.
But I remained Catholic a few more years.

[dgriffin]

I've enlarged the above reply into an essay on my website. It should be up by tomorrow morning. I called it "Good News."

www.windsweptpress.com/esssays.htm

[dgriffin]

More from John O'Grady's "Catholic Charities in America":

Catholic Industrial School Movement Lauguishes After 1885

After 1885 the movement for the organization of Catholic
industrial schools and working boys’ homes began to languish.
This was probably due in part to the difficulties that had
arisen in maintaining the existing institutions. It was also
due in part to the difficulty of finding the necessary personnel.
Catholic leaders were beginning to understand more clearly
that the institution was only a partial solution of the prob-
lem. They began to realize more and more that institutions
alone could not save Catholic children, hut that the children
had to be reached primarily through their homes and through
the parochial schools.
The Church had barely learned to deal with the older
immigration, when it was called upon to deal with the tide
of the new immigration. Hundreds of thousands of immi-
grants from the Catholic countries of southern and eastern
Europe were poured into this country every year. A large
part of the energy and resources of the Church were con-
sumed in providing religious instruction and worship for
these new immigrants.

Catholic Industrial Schools After 1900

Since 1900 a number of new industrial schools have been
established. In 1909 the State Council, Knights of Columbus
of Indiana, opened an industrial school for boys in Indianap-
olis. In 1917 Father Flanagan began s home for boys under
his name in Omaha. In 1916 Bishop Hoban of Scranton
established St. Michael 's Industrial School at Hoban Heights,
Pennsylvania. In 1920 the St. Vincent de Paul Society
founded an industrial school for boys in Milwaukee. In 1921
Father Wynhoven opened his new institution, Hope Haven, at
1[arrero, Louisiana. The institutions at Indianapolis and
Milwaukee were intended primarily for delinquent boys. Hope
Haven is s vocational school for boys who have graduated
from the orphanage; in New Orleans. It is planned eventually
to expand the institution so as to care for all the children
requiring special attention in the srchdiocese of New Orleans.
St. Michael ’s Industrial School at Hoban Heights, Pennsyl-
vania, is for problem boys. It does not accept boys who have
been seriously delinquent. The institutions that have been
established since 1900 have grown out of peculiar local situa-
tions. They do not represent a national movement like the
protectories of the earlier period. In fact, there is no longer
the old interest in protectories that was manifested forty or
fifty years ago.

[dgriffin]

The datedness of the following caused me to go back and check the reference of the book I've been quoting. I have the author correct (Monsignor John O'Grady,) the title somewhat correct and the date all wrong! It was written in 1930 and the book's title is "Catholic Charities In The United States," printed by Ransdell Press, New York. I think the work has appeared alone, as well as a section in larger books, which may have been the reason for my confusion.

So, this excerpt and then one final paragraph of summation by O'Grady.


Problem of Personnel

During the past few years the problem of personnel for
Catholic institutions for older boys has become acute. There
is a question as to whether or not we can depend on the sisters
to take care of older boys. The various hrotherhoods who
did such splendid pioneer work in developing Catholic indus-
trial schools, are diverting their attention to the educational
field. We have, therefore, been finding it difficult to supply
the proper personnel for some of our welfare institutions. It
is quite apparent that the various dioceses can not look to the
hrotherhoods to take charge of their children’s institutions.
So far as the ordinary institution for dependent children is
concerned, the problem is not so serious. The sisterhoods have
been willing to take over the institutions of this type which
the brothers were compelled to leave. The new demands on
the brotherhoods have, however, made the problem of operat-
ing Catholic homes for older boys exceedingly acute, as a lay
personnel is going to be quite expensive.
The problem of personnel has given rise to the question as
to whether or not the various dioceses should proceed further
with the development of industrial schools. In fact, there
has been a serious question as to whether the existing insti-
tutions should be continued. An increasing number of per-
sons believe that it is not practicable for the Church in the
ordinary American diocese to provide an institutional pro-
gram for the care of delinquent children. They believe that
as a matter of practical policy the Church must surrender this
to the state.
The question has been raised by many students of juvenile
delinquency as to whether or not the resources of the Church
would not be more effective in developing a preventive pro-
gram for juvenile delinquency rather than in developing an
institutional program for delinquents. From everyday ex-
perience one finds that the children who come before the
juvenile courts have had no religious training. Would it not
be better to see that such children have religious training
rather than try to care for them after their delinquency!

[fiona]

Dave; great work, but let's get down to the bones of this thing: As we all know ,it all goes back to the Catholic Churches absolute ban on birth control. In Irish families the best thing that could happen is for the son to become a priest, but not for the daughter to become a nun. If the daughter went into the sisterhood then the generations were cut off, but if the son became a priest, that was the highest honor. I have never understood that. The church, by sanctioning large (13 or more was not uncommon) families created the problem of abandonded children. And these children were everywhere, swarming, living on the streets, orphaned, begging. What did the Church expect? In my mind all the church wanted to do was increase the priesthood, by encouraging Catholic families, particularaly the Irish, to have more and more children. To call these children delinquint was the greater sin. They weren't born that way, but many many thousands had no options. I think going into a" good Protestant home" was probebly the lesser of two evils. I often think about the story you wrote about the boys who ran away from St. Vincent's in Utica in the middle of winter and froze to death. These " huge industrial schools" were just the 19th century version of debtors prisons and workhouses for children. The Church created the problem and then tried to solve it by blaming the children through labaling them as "vagrant delinquints whose souls were in need of saving." and what could a child do, then, who aged out at 16 and was throughly "institutionalized"? Could they function in society? What did the girls do- go uptown and " do for the quality"? Get married an dproduce more little Catholics? And how about the boys? Did they go into the mills? Or down into the coal mines? By rounding up these children the church kept a steady supply of low income, low leval workers to feed the 19th century industrial machine. I don't think there were very many young Horatio Algers coming out of these work houses and farms.












Great work, Dave.

[dgriffin]

Good points, Fiona. You might want to read my story, "Aul'Wan Sue," at:
www.windsweptpress.com/sue.pdf

It's the story of a young Utica woman whose early life in the first quarter of the 20th century was spent in East Utica, at the opposite end of the world from Genesee Hill. It's not factual history, but a mostly true account of actual events in the life of my family.

Re Monsignor O'Grady's book, I'm sure the furthest thing from his mind was the culpability of the Church in providing the fodder for the Newsboy Homes and Industrial Schools. How could the Church be responsible for vagrant children when it was God Himself who ordered the faithful to go forward and multiply? Or something like that.

Large families killed Ireland, in a sense. Even before the British invaded the Old Sod, having to divide the land up among all the sons (forget the daughters!) made for shrinking farms and family incomes. In an effort to limit family size, men married late. Women didn't live very long in such a primitive rural society, so the old men married young women, but girls were made old women pretty quick. I won't argue it, but something rings a bell in the back of my mind about the Irish always having a a tradition of large families, even before they were converted to Christianity. More help with the harvest, possibly.

In America, the practice continued, but not with all the Irish. In my family, there is a direct correlation going back to the 1824, at least, between family size and socio-economics. Even among brothers. The ones who could easily afford many had few, and those who were poor had many. Makes about as much sense as what we see at the bottom of the economic ladder today.

[fiona]

Dave; I was so taken away by your story I completly lost track of time and space and I was there! I will comment more very soon.

[dgriffin]

A Preventive Program for Juvenile Delinquency

In order to prevent juvenile delinquency one must reach its
sources which are generally found in the home life. The
juvenile delinquent usually has no religious training, as he
ordinarily comes from a home without religious standards.
For the children who can not he reached by a preventive
program it would seem that in most dioceses, as a matter of
practical policy, one must look to the public institutions.
These institutions, it must be noted, have changed their
attitude entirely towards religious training since the days
when the first protectories were established. They now seek
Catholic cooperation. They welcome any program of religions
training, and we have only ourselves to blame it delinquent
and semi-delinquent Catholic children in public institutions
do not receive some measure of religious training.
Homes for working boys no longer fill thc same need as
forty years ago. The newsboy and the bootblack are either in
their own homes or in school. Very few homes for working
boys have, therefore, been established in recent years. The
only two of recent origin are Father Duune’s Newsboys’
Home in St. Louis and St. Anthony’s Home for Boys in
Cleveland. Father Dunne’s Home was originally intended for
newsboys, but has really become an ordinary institution for
dependent children. St. Anthony’s Home cares for boys who
have been discharged from the diocesan orphanage until such
time as they are able to adjust themselves. It provides a
center to which the boys can return when they are out of work
or when various difficulties arise. In this way the home serves
a useful purpose. Many of the older working boys' homes
have followed the same drift as Father Dunne’s Newsboys'
Home.

Monsignor John O'Grady, "Catholic Charities In The United States," Ransdell, New York, 1930.


end no more

[dgriffin]

I thought it interesting to trace a charities "project," from initial supposition to final conclusion. It shows how an organization saw a problem (to their eyes), mounted a solution and concluded that their ideas didn't work. Of course, the world was also changing in the meanwhile. This, and the known abuse problems in such homes, doesn't take away totally from the lives saved and careers launched by the Brothers as they cared for their wards.

You would think some of us would have met or heard about men who were graduates of St. Vincent's Industrial School on lower Conkling and Rutger Streets, and were living in Utica in the 50's or even '60's. But I never did.

[dgriffin]

Click twice using Firefox. Not sure how to do it with other browsers, but there's a way to double enlarge it. It's then quite readable (except the sidebar on the right.)


www.windsweptpress.com/images/lifes other.jpg[/img]

[fiona]

This artical is very Victorian and guaranteed to draw years from a rock. What boy does not, in the end, even though he's been beaten, starved and put away for years in an orphan asylum, love his mother?