The Gilded Age in Saint John - Life for girls was hazardous.

Part 1: Protecting the little girls of the tenements

Until the Sexual Revolution finally liberated Saint John in the 1970s, stories of the sex trade or of deviant behavior were kept private, save for what made it into the paper. Perhaps the city patricians found fulfilment in loftier pursuits - art, music and literature, but truth be told, the wage-earning class had much earthier tastes. In my youth I often heard stories recounting the darker side of life in the North End of Saint John - whispered memories of this or that miscreant. There was inter-generational prostitution, plenty of perverts, assorted Peeping Toms and a few abortionists. Even more lurid stories I heard directly from the Saint John cops who enlivened seminars at U.N.B. in the 1970s. I won't publish such goings on here on the Family Channel, but one day I must get around to doing a book on the Lost Valley. Books are the ideal refuge for the naughtier bits of history that are enjoyed in private.

Old research files remind me that much of the city once seemed populated by a legion of sexually frustrated or maladjusted males. True, North End kids were often killed while at rough play, but for girls life held special dangers. On occasion my own ancestors were drawn into specific incidents. I could sample a year from any decade, but a series of molestations and assaults in 1901 illustrate modes of predatory behavior known to vigilant parents of the tenements. Sexual crime overshot the bounds of what could be set to type by the Newsies, so if you read the old clippings what you notice most was the exaggerated discomfort of some lawyers. Their circumlocutions got more ink than did the sworn testimony. Too bad that.

On June 6, 1901 jurors assembled in County Court saw two cases involving sexual assaults on young St. John girls.** In the first trial a man named William Rourke was charged with criminal assault on a youngster. Seven year old Violet Golding was required to take the stand and describe what had been done to her. The jurors were first cautioned not to prejudge the accused by "other incidents which have happened in the city". As Violet's testimony was compelling and there were corroborating witnesses, Rourke was convicted. [**Paul O'Neil, an old school chum from the Rifle Range, asked why I used "St. John" here. In 1901 the vast majority of Saint John businesses, schools and citizens used the spelling "St. John". The notable exception was THE SAINT JOHN GLOBE, the newspaper which employed my great-grandfather his entire career. As a purist I am often tempted to revert to "St." when quoting period material, but know I risk the objections of readers.]

The second case involved two charges against William Myshrall. (Myshrall was an uncommon name in Saint John in 1901, and the only other Myshrall I collected was an inmate of the Provincial Asylum at the time.) The charges were serious - indecent assault and attempted rape. His young victim was Beulah Bell Brayley and her alleged assault was said to have occurred between 2:30 and 5 PM on Saturday, on May 25th. It was typical in such cases that an outraged parent had heard or seen something suspicious, and put the police onto the alleged criminal. Beulah and a friend, Pearl Blizard positively identified Myshrall and a father, Mr. Blizard, claimed to have seen him skulking about the Brayley residence on Elm Street. (Elm St. bounded the west shoulder of Fort Howe).

Now what interested me were the witnesses called in Myshrall's defence. His council was non other than John B.M. Baxter, a well known city lawyer and Militia officer. According to THE DAILY SUN Baxter called "three little girls" to testify on Myshrall's behalf. Ella Ritchie, Edna Ryder and Lucy Ritchie. The girls "were equally positive that the prisoner spent from 2 to 5 o'clock of the day in question with them on Fort Howe. They were corroborated by a little boy, Herman Komiensky." As it happens the Ritchie girls occupy a branch of our our family tree.

I note that the reporter used "little" twice to describe the defence witnesses. I know that Ella Ritchie was only a month shy of her 15th birthday but Lucy was certainly just 11 years old. I did find it odd that Myshrall's only defence against being with Brayley was that he had actually spent the afternoon with three other girls. He admitted skulking about Elm Street but positively denied peeking in any windows. He did not speak well for himself.

This is one of the best postcards ever published of Fort Howe because it records its function in the simple life of common people. The hill was a spectacular lookout for local kids who scrambled all over it on the weekends. Note the three girls huddled on the grass in the centre of the image. Note also the little girl leaning on the gun at left. They have climbed up from the tenements in the valley, away from the noise and the coal smoke. From the crest of Fort Howe a ferry steam whistle or a sea gull's cry could replace the clattering din of the crowded streets.

Acadia Street (indicated in photo) was directly below Fort Howe. Over the years several boys drowned on the tidal mud flat bounded by Mill Street, Camden, Chapel and Acadia streets. In 1904 the City promised to put in barriers and signs, but never did. Girls from the tenements looked for safe playing areas such as the long, bare table of Fort Howe. Danger was lurking below in the garages, stables or alleys behind Main Street - where many sexual assaults took place.

I have discussed the Ritchie family here once before. Lucy (Ritchie) Brown was a life long Valley resident and I wrote a few lines about the shame she endured after a mixed Protestant- Catholic marriage . Saint Johners today have no idea of how intense the divide once was between Catholics and Protestants. [Mill Street - Down in the Lost Valley (read article)]

What I found intriguing about the Myshrall case was mention of Herman Komiensky. The Komiensky's were not paragons of virtue, but they had to be tough to live in the neighborhood. They were naturalized Jews, just one of dozens of Jewish families clustered about the Ritchie's who in 1901, were living on Acadia Street. These folks were not Jewish gentry by any means. Their successes and failures (including run-ins with the police) mirrored the experience of many other families in the old Lost Valley neighborhoods.
At one time there were more Jewish families on Acadia St. than there were gentiles. The Ritchie's were neighbors with families like the Meyer's, the Jacobson's, the Dallon's and the Bragget's. (Many had adopted Anglicized names.) Some families boarded transient Jews who were not recorded in the published Directory. For years I heard throwaway boasts about some long forgotten connection between the Ritchie's and Louis B. Mayer, but I always discounted it. Well it turned out to be true. Some day I simply must correct some of the baloney that been written about the Mayer family in Saint John. "Louis B." was a fantastic liar and I know from decades of researching past lives that a lie always conceals a fact.

This mill pond, actually a tidal mud flat hemmed in by the CPR trestle, was both front and back yard for hundreds of kids on the Portland foreshore. Acadia Street was the crush of tenements to the right, on water's edge. For little girls seeking sunshine and love, it was a place to wander away from as often as you could. NOTE: the new Irving Oil World Headquarters will rise on this site which was once tidal mud. Saint John harbour is today less than half of what it was when the Loyalist's arrived.

With regard to the Myshrall trial, my suspicion is that there was lying on both sides and I actually don't know if he was convicted. The anxiety of parents of can well be appreciated. Most worked desperately long hours and had no means of communication with their children through the day. All the more reason for poor families to resort to the courts as the best way to keep predatory males from the doorstep.

No doubt plenty of girls were just as curious about sex as were the boys. In addition there was an intense pressure on young people to find their own way out of the rickity, overcrowded tenements. (The Ritchie family were nine souls jammed into one cold water flat on Acadia Street.) Of course my Great Grandmother was only eleven at the time of the incident, but the fact that several years later later she "got herself pregnant" before marriage, attests to the fact that social and religious conventions could not possibly dictate all behavior in the thousands of day-to-day encounters of the working poor in the North End.

In that decade the Saint John County Court still maintained a "Bastardy Docket" but it never saw any of our family. Lucy Ritchie did marry her boyfriend and together they raised their son, who in turn gave her thirteen grandchildren. Both Lucy and Ella became residents of Paradise Row and, in a twist that illustrates the complexity of Valley life, one of Ella's grandson's married one of Lucy's granddaughters. That union required some rather urgent consultation with the parish priest because Lucy's grandchildren were raised as staunch Catholics.

John Steinbeck's lapsed pastor in The Grapes of Wrath said it best: "There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do."