The Dead End Kids of St. Louis: Homeless Boys and the People Who Tried to Save Them

Notes

Notes 141 INTRoDUCTIoN 1. Jeffrey Turner, “On Boyhood and Public Swimming: Sidney Kingsley’s Dead End and Representations of Underclass Street Kids in American Cultural Production.” 2. Henry W. Thurston, The Dependent Child: A Story of Changing Aims and Methods in the Care of Dependent Children, 12, 42, 92, 270. 3. See Todd DePastino, Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America; Samuel E. Wallace, Skid Row as a Way of Life; Daniel Waugh, Egan’s Rats: The Untold Story of the Prohibition-Era Gang That Ruled St. Louis; Thomas Minehan, Boy and Girl Tramps of America; Mary Skinner and Alice Scott Nutt, “Adolescents Away from Home,” 51; Michael J. Bennett, When Dreams Came True: The GI Bill and the Making of Modern America, 3, 94. 4. A lucid and concise discussion of the question of defining childhood and adolescence may be found in Kingsley Davis, “Adolescence and the Social Structure,” 8–16. 5. The Baker Street Irregulars, the young street boys who help Sherlock Holmes, appear in several of Arthur Conan Doyle’s works, including A Study in Scarlet. See Gary Scharnhorst, Horatio Alger, Jr. 6. Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, 3–5. 7. David Nasaw, Children of the City: At Work and at Play, 187. 8. Kenneth L. Kusmer, Down and Out, On the Road: The Homeless in American History, 6–7; James Neal Primm, Lion of the Valley: St. Louis, Missouri, 1764–1980, 528–29. 9. The academic literature on this topic is not extensive. I have relied on the following works, in addition to others that will be cited later: Douglas E. Abrams, A Very Special Place in Life: The History of Juvenile Justice in Missouri; Timothy J. Gilfoyle, A Pickpocket’s Tale; Marilyn Irvin Holt, The Orphan Trains: Placing Out in America; Edward Olds, Trends in Child Dependency in St. Louis, 1860–1944; and William F. Whyte, Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum. 10. Peggy Thomson Greenwood wrote about these issues with great insight in several articles that were published in the St. Louis Genealogical Society Quarterly in 1991 and 1992. 11. Two good articles on the cholera epidemic have been published in the Missouri Historical Review. See Linda A. Fisher, “A Summer of Terror: Cholera in St. Louis, 1849,” and Patrick E. McLear, “The St. Louis Cholera Epidemic of 1849.” For insight on orphans and orphanages, see Peggy Thomson Greenwood, “Beyond the Orphanage.” 12. J. A. Dacus and James W. Buel, A Tour of St. Louis; or, The Inside Life of a Great City, 407–12. Dacus was a Baptist minister and a reporter for the Missouri Republican. Buel was a prolific author of travel and history books. Their book provides unique observations on the dark side of the city’s life in the 1870s. 13. J. Adams Puffer, The Boy and His Gang, 24, 32; Hubert Rother and Charlotte Rother, Lost Caves of St. Louis: A History of the City’s Forgotten Caves, 94–98. 14. The house of refuge idea originated in eastern cities. For information on the development of these institutions, I have relied upon Robert S. Pickett, House of Refuge: Origins of Juvenile Reform in New York State, 1815–1857; B. K. Pierce, A Half Century with Juvenile Delinquents; or, The New York House of Refuge and Its Times; and other sources. For information on the St. Louis House of Refuge, I have depended upon William Hyde and Howard L. Conard, Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis, 2:1063; Dacus and Buel, Tour of St. Louis, 513–19; and St. Louis House of Refuge, Journal of Commitments, July 25, 1854–January 28, 1899, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis (hereafter cited as Journal of Commitments). 15. J. W. Gormley, History of Father Dunne’s News Boys’ Home and Protectorate, 10–61, 76–83. In 2006 the home became part of Catholic Services for Children and Youth (later called Good Shepherd Children and Family Services). 16. See Wallace, Skid Row. For a study of the evolution of St. Louis, see Eric Sandweiss, St. Louis: The Evolution of an American Urban Landscape. On May 8, 1910, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch printed an in-depth article on the influx of male migrants into the area along Market Street. 17. For information on criminal gang activity in St. Louis’s violent past, see Waugh, Egan’s Rats, and John Auble, A History of St. Louis Gangsters. 18. I highly recommend Minehan, Boy and...