"Entered, according to act of congress, in the year 1831, by J. R. McDowall, in the clerk's office of the southern district of New York." INDEX. Article 1. The Abandoned-their moral character. 3. A Vicious Woman. 4. A Vicious Man. 5. Magdalens-their prospects. 6. Magdalen-her character. 7. Marriage. 8. Licentiousness shortens Life-the Jersey Boy. 11. The Collegian-a Magdalen Letter. 66 66 86 14. The Suicide. 66 10. City Vices-the Escape. 12. The Minister's Daughter-a Merchant's Wife. 13. The Imprisoned Lady, and N. York Female Penitentiary. 16. An Alderman's Letter, and Dr. Johnson's Humane Act. 66 17. House of Refuge in New York. 18. Baltimore Magdalen Society. 20. Boston Penitent Female Refuge. 21. London Vices, and Female Penitentiary. 19. Philadelphia Magdalen. 66 66 22. Anti-Magdalen Meeting at Tammany Hall. 23. Reply to a Writer in the Daily Sentinel. 24. An Opposer of the Magdalen Report. 25. Reply to his Letter. 26. Journal of Commerce. 27. Genius of Temperance. 26 28. Episcopal Recorder. 66 29. Christian Advocate. "L 30. Commercial Advertiser. 33. The Life and Appeal of a Georgia Magdalen, by herself; 34. The Magdalen-a Poem. TO THE PUBLIC. THE unprincipled and the profligate make common cause against those who expose their vices. When their vices are exposed, they will assume even the garb of sanctity, and pretend that the exposure is indelicate, and deleterious to morals, and should not have been made, if true. They will sometimes admit the cause in which reformers are engaged to be a good one, and yet express great sorrow for what they call the injudicious procedure of those who possibly may have meant well, but egregiously erred in the measures they adopted to secure their ends. Their enmity to the exposure of their vices is not only deceptive and artful, and covered by a pretended regard for the purity of public morals, but it is also more violent. Its next stage after regret and sorrow for the alleged indiscreet act of the reformers, is to intimidate the reformers, and to divert them from their purpose. To effect this object, they often resort to illegal and ungentlemanly measures. Sneers, scoffs, reproaches, insinuations, sarcasm, private abuse and obscene caricatures, are the weapons they use. Finally, public insults and threats, and mobs banded together, arrogating a power and a right to disfranchise, and to proclaim "traitors to their country," and to "inflict summary vengeance" on the reformers, without the right of trial by jury, become common. An admirable illustration of these remarks is found in the result of the Report made in this city in June, 1831, by the executive committee of the New York Magdalen Society-a society whose professed object was to rescue the guilty from ruin, and to preserve the chaste. But an intelligent community will not, can not long maltreat reformers, or be insensible to an evil that vitally affects their interests. Moreover, such a community will admit that its energies ought to be directed, both to the preservation of the upright, and to the elevation of the depressed: a sentiment conceding the goodness of the Magdalen cause, and the duty of advancing it. Having been brought before the community in connection with this cause, there is no impropriety in my directing its attention to those persons who are the proper subjects of a Magdalen asylum. This, with the divine permission, I shall attempt to do both by sketching and publishing the lives of a few of them, and by inquiring into the existence, causes, extent, effects and remedy of licentiousness, in order that more vigorous exertions may be put forth to preserve the young from ruin, and to raise the fallen from the abodes of misery and strife, to the habitations of mercy and peace. Relying on the merits of this cause, and on the continual blessings of the Most High, it shall be a prominent part of my duty to cleave to the truth, and to that which on the evidence of probability I believe, but cannot prove to be the truth-so marking each, that the reader will easily distinguish between facts and probabilities. With sentiments of respect, and a desire to subserve the cause of virtue, and to promote the welfare of an enlightened and benevolent republic, I remain its humble servant, New York, January, 1832. J. R. MCDOWALL. |