The Delinquent Child and the Home
Chapter 6: The Child from the Degraded Home: the Problem of Degeneracy
Sophonisba Breckinridge and Edith Abbott
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MORE unfortunate even than the orphan child is the child from the degraded home-the home where there are brutality, drunkenness, immorality, or crime, paralysis and insanity following vice, imbecile and weak-minded children, and the misery of filthy and overcrowded rooms. Under such conditions the body often suffers with the spirit, for the physical inheritance is frequently so poor as to render the power of resistance slight, and the danger of infection from tuberculosis and from the diseases resulting from immorality is great. The children in homes of this class present a most serious problem to the court. The question is not alone how to deal with them when they are found, but how to find them. There is unfortunately no sure method of reaching these children until it is too late for any treatment to prove efficacious. Although conditions may be shockingly bad, so long as both parents are alive. and keep out of the reach of the law and the children go to school with a fair degree of regularity, there may be no occasion for an outside agent to enter the home. When a visiting nurse is unexpectedly called in or an appeal is made to a relief agency, when a truant officer calls, or a policeman or a probation officer has a reason for investigating because the children get into trouble on the streets, revolting but hitherto unknown conditions are revealed. The evidence that many of the court's delinquent children are victims of such degraded surroundings as leave little hope of saving either soul or body may be read in the family paragraphs.
These children come in many instances from homes in which they have been accustomed from their earliest infancy to drunkenness, immorality, obscene and vulgar language, filthy and degraded conditions of living. The data in the family and probation
(106) schedules show, for example, that in the families of 10'7 out of 584 of the boys of 1903-04 there was habitual drunkenness indulged in by one or more members of the family. The number of families in which drunken habits prevailed was evidently much larger than these data indicate, because only in flagrant cases or in those in which the signs of drunkenness were quite obvious could any record of the fact be obtained.
Further testimony on this point is to be found in the family histories of the delinquent girls. Among the 157 girls in the State Training School from Chicago, for whom family schedules were obtained, 31 were the daughters of drunken fathers, to at least had drunken mothers, 27 had fathers who were of vicious habits, 16 had immoral, vicious, or criminal mothers, while la belonged to families in which other members than the parents were vicious or criminal. In at least 21 [1] cases the father had shirked all responsibility and had deserted the family.
There were also among these girls 11 who were known to be illegitimate children or children who had been abandoned, and there were to who had been victims of gross cruelty. Forty-one had been in houses of prostitution or had been promiscuously immoral, one having been "a common street walker" at the age of eleven. Four had sisters who had become immoral and had been committed to such institutions as the Chicago Refuge for Girls or the house of correction, while in seven cases two sisters had been sent to Geneva; nine had brothers who had been in such institutions as the parental school, the John Worthy School, the Bridewell, the state reformatory at Pontiac, or the state penitentiary at Joliet.
The worst cases of all are those of the delinquent girls who come from depraved homes where the mother is a delinquent woman, or from homes still more tragic where the father has himself abused the person of the child. As a result of the interviews with the girls in the State Training School at Geneva, it appeared that in 47 cases the girl alleged that she had been so violated by some member of her family. In 19 cases the father, in 5 the uncle, in 8 the brother or older cousin had wronged the child for whom the community demanded their special protection. In addition
( 107) to these cases discovered at Geneva, the court records show that in at least 78 other cases the girl who was brought in as delinquent had been wronged in this way-in 43 of these cases by her own father. In families of this degraded type it is found, too, not only that the girl is victimized by her father but that she is often led to her undoing by her mother or by the woman who has undertaken to fill a mother's place. It was found, for example, that in 189 cases where the girl was charged with immorality the mother or the woman guardian-an aunt, a grandmother, or an older sister with whom the girl lived-was implicated in the offense if not responsible for it.[2]
There is perhaps no more touching figure in the court room than the lost daughter of a lost mother; the girl who was born out of degradation and reared into degradation. It constitutes, therefore, a pitiable and tragic record that in 18 cases the delinquent girl in the court was the child of a common prostitute, in 23 other cases the sister or aunt or woman guardian with whom the girl lived was a prostitute; in 44 others the girl's mother though not a professional prostitute was known to be immoral; while in 74 additional cases the mother was described as a woman "of questionable morals" or "of doubtful character." If to this record we add the 189 cases already referred to in which the mother or guardian connived at the girl's wrongdoing, we are confronted by a total of 348 cases in which the court records show that the person under whose guidance the girl was growing up was obviously unfit to be entrusted with her care; that the girl brought in as delinquent had been in the custody of a mother or guardian who was known
(108) to have low moral standards even if she was not actually a woman of loose morals.
Statistics give no adequate idea of the extremely demoralizing conditions found in the so-called homes from which many of these girls come. One delinquent girl, for example, was herself an illegitimate child born in the House of the Good Shepherd, taken by her grandmother to live in a demoralized home, and assaulted there by her father when only five years old. At ten she was brought to court as incorrigible; at eleven, found by an officer in a neglected condition sleeping on an ash box. Two delinquent girls who became common prostitutes were the daughters of a mother who was described in the court records as "a common street walker" and who died in the county hospital; the father, the "black sheep" of a decent family, would not work, never supported his children, and was generally worthless and irresponsible.
In these degraded homes it frequently happens, as in the case just cited, that several children from the same family go wrong. In one family of seven, the six living children were all bad. Three sisters were at one time all wards of the court: one had been twice committed to the Erring Woman's Refuge; one is still at Geneva; the other has improved and is now released on probation. Two of the boys were implicated in a robbery, and one of them was killed in the basement of a house which they were trying to enter; the third has "gone off and joined the navy." In another "delinquent family" of seven children, the mother died from the effects of drink, the father drinks heavily and has so bad a temper that the stepmother wants to divorce him. The stepmother's children are all right, but no one of the five children of the first wife has turned out well. The eldest girl, who has the cocaine habit and lives away from home, is believed to be leading an immoral life; the oldest boy is an ex-convict, the youngest boy has been in the John Worthy School, and the two youngest girls were brought to court as immoral and sent to Geneva when one was eleven and the other thirteen.
Illustrations such as these could be multiplied indefinitely. There is the German family, for instance, in which three brothers were living with a sister who had been wayward and immoral, and whose worthless, idle husband expected the boys to steal
( 109) grain and coal from the track. One boy was an epileptic, one had tuberculosis, and the third was sent to the John Worthy School as delinquent. In another case, a boy-first a dependent, then a delinquent-came from a drunken home where the father and mother had each sworn out a warrant against the other and where his two older sisters lived with their illegitimate children. In the similar case of a family in which two delinquent sisters were brought into court, their mother had probably died from the effects of intemperance, and their father was an habitual drunkard whom their stepmother was trying to divorce. In an Italian family of 14 children, in which the mother had married at fifteen, seven of the children had died and four had become truants and "incorrigible." In a Polish family of eight children in which one boy was sent to a dependent institution and one to the John Worthy School, the mother, who had married at sixteen, was described as a miserable, incompetent, degraded woman without moral standards, at one time living with five children in an old shed in which an uncle kept vegetables, and sending the children out to beg and to pick up refuse from garbage cans.
Attention should likewise be called to the wretched physical conditions surrounding these degraded groups. The alley house, frequently reached through a dark passageway, the outlawed house, the overcrowded apartment, filthy rooms in which animals are kept and rags accumulate-these furnish the setting against which the travesty of family life takes its course. For example, one delinquent boy whose father was a junk-dealer, brutal and drunken, lived in a rear tenement, decayed and unfit for human habitation, which could be reached only through a dark passage filled with water and rubbish. Another "delinquent family" lived in a condemned house in which three children had diphtheria. A girl from a disreputable neighborhood lived in a "home of four rooms, filthy and vermin infested; the family of nine had two beds." The following brief statements taken from a few of the family schedules are typical of the conditions which exist in a number of these homes.
A low-grade home, dirty, with a pig kept in the house; mother drinks constantly; one boy is to the John Worthy School and a sister is in Geneva.
( 110)
Very untidy home with rags and clothing all about; family has always lived in crowded neighborhood where there are many cheap amusement places.
Home conditions are very unsatisfactory; house is infested with vermin; foster father insane.
Russian Jewish family of seven children lives over a stable where a horse is kept and where the odors and filth are disgraceful; father died of tuberculosis, mother is in delicate health, one child has tubercular tongue, and another is suffering from goitre and is mentally deficient.
Girl's father is in penitentiary; mother, who has a very bad reputation, keeps a low-grade rooming house in a questionable neighborhood; mother is very cruel to children and brought one little girl to court at age of nine as incorrigible and immoral.
Family of six children often a public charge; home never comfortable-at one time family lived in a house so dilapidated that they paid no rent for it; mother died of tuberculosis; father is in old soldiers' home and some of the children are in a soldiers' orphan asylum.
Mother insane at Dunning; father, an incompetent worker, and often drunk, lived with three children in rear cellar apartment, all sleeping in one bed and a drunken man lodger in the same room on a couch; one girl later committed suicide, one became immoral and was sent to Geneva, and the brother is in a dependent institution.
Girl, one of five children; family lived in dirt and squalor, in a rear basement with pigs, goats, ducks, etc.; home conditions very degraded; father is a rag picker and a confirmed drunkard, who always ate his meals by himself out in a shed.
Nothing is known of this girl's father; her mother was a fortune teller, a very immoral woman who had disreputable men in the house day and night and was always intoxicated; lived in a three-room house; one bed for several people; house was always filthy.
Of interest and importance in connection with the fact of degradation in the home is the possible relation between delinquency and dependency. In an earlier chapter,[3] it was shown that in the cases of go girls and 90 boys the offenses with which they were charged were merely an evidence of dependency. That is,
(111) although the court found it necessary to send them to delinquent institutions, the charge was "lack of care" or "immorality of mother" or "drunkenness of parents," or some similar charge which rather indicated shortcomings of the home and the parents than any wrongdoing on the part of the children. In a considerable number of cases, however, the child who is brought to court on a straight delinquent charge may have been in court before as a dependent. Table 21 shows that 201 boys and 169 girls who were first dependent wards of the court later became delinquent.[4]
| Age | Number | Per Cent | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boys | Girls | Boys | Girls | |
| Under 10 years | 40 | 24 | 19.9 | 14.2 |
| 10 years and under 14 | 130 | 89 | 64.7 | 52.7 |
| Over 14 | 31 | 56 | 15.4 | 33.1 |
| Total | 201 | 169 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
An example of cases of this sort is found in the story of two delinquent boys who belonged to a family of seven children. The mother at one time was paralyzed as a result of excessive drinking, and the father, a laborer in the stockyards, not only drank to excess but was so brutal that the family were all afraid of him. The eldest child was an imbecile and paralytic from birth. When all the other six children were still under fourteen, they were brought to court as dependent because of the "drunkenness of both parents and the demoralized condition of the home." They were released under probation but were brought in again six months later and paroled to an aunt. Four months later two of the boys were caught selling transfers, were brought into court
(112) again as delinquents, and put under the care of a regular probation officer. This officer from the beginning looked upon the boys as dependent rather than delinquent and worked to remove the demoralizing influences in the home. She watched the father and compelled the saloons to stop selling liquor to the mother. The father has become a fairly steady worker, and the two boys are both working and are the "main support" of the mother and younger children.
Many illustrations might also be selected from the records of the dependent-delinquent girls to show how often delinquency is closely related to dependency and how frequently the delinquent child is a child from a degraded home. It should also be noted that the great majority of these children were under fourteen years of age when they were brought to court for the first time, and that the lack of care and protection in the home during these early years was undoubtedly in many cases directly responsible for the child's later delinquency. If to these totals in Table 21 we add the 90 boys and go girls who were brought in as delinquent on what have been called dependent charges, we have 291 boys and 259 girls whose delinquency is in some measure connected with the fact of dependency. The few illustrative cases which follow may help to make this clear.[5]
Nora, a motherless girl of fourteen, whose father is a drunkard and abuses his children, sending them to the saloon for liquor as late as twelve and one o'clock at night, besides using vile language to them, was brought into court as dependent, paroled to an officer, and later returned as incorrigible.
Grace, a thirteen-year-old child whose father is dead, whose mother is immoral, and whose stepfather has the cocaine habit, was brought into court first as a dependent, returned later as immoral, and committed to Geneva.
Lulu, a thirteen-year-old girl whose father is insane and whose mother uses cocaine and is "an immoral woman of the streets," was brought in as dependent, returned later as delinquent.
( 113)
Margaret, the ten-year-old daughter of a drunken father, was one of a family of eight children, supported by the mother's work as a laundress. An older sister was committed to Geneva for immorality and Margaret was brought in first as a dependent and later as an incorrigible.
Cora, a little Galician, was the child of drunken parents, the father an unskilled laborer, and the mother a rag picker; the child was kept out of school to mind her little four-year-old brother and do the housework while both her parents and her nineteen-year-old brother were away ostensibly at work. The home was frequented by drunken men and women. Cora was often on the streets at eleven o'clock at night, and was found sleeping under the sidewalk. She was first brought into court as a dependent and paroled to a married sister who was not able to keep her, and who returned her to court as delinquent.
The fact that among the 2770 delinquent girls who were in court during its first decade 259 were called dependent, either expressly or by implication, when they were first brought in, is of very great significance. Such cases as have been quoted make clear the necessity for committing many dependent girls to institutions designed for delinquent girls. They also make clear the reason why a larger proportion of dependents are found among the delinquent girls than among the delinquent boys; for such low conditions almost inevitably promote immorality, the consequences of which make the commitment of the girl essential as a means of protection.
In conclusion, it may be pointed out that from the point of view of treatment the conditions from which these children come are quite different from the conditions surrounding the groups which have been discussed before. It has been shown that there are many instances where the lack of familiarity with city conditions on the part of the child or the parents may be regarded as a cause of delinquency, and that there are other instances in which the fact of misfortune explains with reasonable certainty, not only why the child is not good, but why she or he does the specific wrong thing resulting in the appearance in court. Very often, however, the connection is much more obvious, and, while the facts given as to the home cannot be regarded as immediately responsible for any act, they may be looked upon distinctly as obstacles to the
(114) child's well-being, making delinquency almost inevitable. In families of this degraded type, not one child but an entire family of children may go to ruin, and the connection between such degraded surroundings as have been described and the wrongdoing of the boy or girl can be seen to be much more obvious and immediate than in the case of the unfortunate child whose home, while uncongenial, unpleasant, or so very poor or crowded as to be even unfavorable, is still fairly wholesome.
With reference to the treatment of such children, it should be said that such cases present the greatest difficulty which the court has to meet and perhaps at the same time its greatest opportunity. Many times the evil conditions are not disclosed until all hope of regeneration is past. The time for probation is long gone by and it is even too late for the industrial or reform school to be effective. If, however, the conditions which need reform are discovered while there is yet possibility of treatment, the opportunity of the court is unparalleled. Its action should be as swift and sure as it is intelligent and far-seeing, since there is no time to lose when the disintegrating and destroying forces of degradation are at work, and the child must often be promptly removed and given a new chance under more favorable conditions.[6] Such a policy doubtless requires great courage, analogous to that exhibited by the surgeon who performs a major operation. It also requires the acceptance and application of the principle that by neglect of parental duties, parental right may be forfeited. But the removal of the child may sometimes be only temporary, with the understanding that as soon as the conditions in the home have been made decent, and the parents have shown themselves able to live decently, the child is to be returned to them, and the probation officer may be not only the discoverer of conditions which need reform, but the agent under whose guidance the family may be reconstituted. In many cases undoubtedly the whole family group can in this way be saved through the child; and, by enforcing the maintenance of a new standard of decency as the only condition on which the parents may retain or recover the boy or girl, a home may be made possible for the whole family group.
