Nelson A. Pryor: Guest Columnist
Few persons except those who study criminal science consider how much each petty criminal costs the community. The January 18, 1875, New York Times, p. 4, in an article entitled: “The Cost of ‘A Mother of Criminals’” references a pauper child Margaret.
The genealogical tree of this pauper child, Margaret, is a remarkable story, one of misery and crime.
The story of Margaret started eighty-five years ago, (about 1790) and was only recognized and written up in 1875. She grew up on the lanes and roads, of New York State, sometimes fed by the kind-hearted, sometimes sheltered by a wicked gang of older vagabonds, the Fagins, of that day.
She fell, of course, as by a law of nature, into criminal courses; and this adopted career, it should be remembered, as an outcast, and a progeny, more or less vigorous, of similar characters. The unhappy Margaret had two sisters like unto her, who were equally neglected. The descendants, mainly from Margaret, however, now number six hundred and twenty three criminals, paupers, and prostitutes. “We do not hear of any virtuous members of the line, but there may be such, unknown to those engaged in investigating this extraordinary genealogy, or, who have not been mentioned.”
The children, as they grew up, drifted naturally back to the poor-house, or other situations, and then adopted crime or vagrancy for a living. Some of the bolder took to more violent crimes; others were petty thieves; others tramps; others prostitutes, and again as the line extended, and criminal qualities were intensified, many became drunkards, lunatics, and idiots.
Now an interesting inquiry would be, what Margaret and her line have cost this country. The Times reports that of one generation, in which, out of seventeen grandchildren, nine served an aggregate term of fifty years in the State prison for high crimes. The average annual cost of these prisoners was probably two hundred dollars (1875). This would make a single generation cost the public ten thousand dollars in prison expenses (1875). But all these convicts destroyed or appropriated, besides, a considerable amount of property. Then, their brothers and sisters were constantly in the almshouse or the county jail. It is but an estimate, the Times says, yet twenty thousand dollars (1875) would seem a small estimate for the expense of that one family to the county. But, besides these seventeen, we are to consider how much the other six hundred have cost, or are costing, the taxpayers.
The descendants of that pauper girl, Margaret, have probably cost New York one hundred thousand dollars (1875), and that would hardly be an exaggeration. And, beyond that, what annoyance have they inflicted on the whole neighborhood; what loss of property; and further, the criminal temptation they have caused to the children of the virtuous?
Margaret, it seems, ran a nursery of crime and a seminary for vagabondism. Would that this could have been a family for good! Those families exist, both for good and evil. Which is yours? Just food for thought!