Tag: Alfred Ried

Flossy and the Street Children

Published on by Isabella Alden8 Comments

Isabella Alden never actually said so, but there’s an argument to be made Flossy Shipley Roberts may very well have been her favorite character. Of all the characters Isabella created, Flossy made the most appearances in her novels.

Flossy first appeared in Four Girls at Chautauqua. She was also a key character in The Chautauqua Girls at Home, Ruth Erskine’s Crosses, Four Mothers at Chautauqua, and Echoing and Re-echoing.

Cover of Ester Ried Yet Speaking showing a close-up of a young woman with blonde hair dressed in a high-neck red gown. In the background is a large three-story home set amid trees and gardens.

And while she was only mentioned in Judge Burnham’s Daughters and Ruth Erskine’s Son, Flossy made her final appearance—and played a major role—in Ester Ried Yet Speaking.

Perhaps one reason Flossie was so well-loved—by Isabella and by her readers—was that she was honest and truthful, yet deceptively strong. People constantly underestimated Flossy because she was soft spoken and was willing to please others.

But Flossy also had a strong moral sense of right and wrong. She relied on her Christian faith to give her the strength she needed to always do right rather than what others wanted her to do.

She was also kind hearted, especially when it came to children. Flossy was just as willing to teach a Sunday school class full of ragged orphaned street boys as she was to serve tea on her best china to a wealthy church deacon and his wife.

That was the case in Esther Ried Yet Speaking, when Flossy took on the task of teaching a Sunday-school class of rough street boys. During the first class, Flossy took an interest in one of those boys, Dirk Colson and his sister Mart. In the story, Flossy’s concern for them and the rest of the boys—and the actions she took to help them—reflected Isabella’s own principles.

Black and white photo of a narrow alley between two multi-story brick buildings. In the foreground are trash cans and debris, a water pump and buckets. A group of six boys stand in the center of the photo. Behind them are two women wearing long dresses and aprons from the time period, as well as more children. On the left side of the photo are two young girls, wearing short dresses that appear to be patched.
Boys in Mullens Alley, New York, 1888, by Jacob A. Riis

Isabella was keenly interested in the problem of street children living in large urban areas like New York City. In 1889 she wrote:

There is, in New York City, a meeting known as the “Woman’s Conference.” On the second Friday of every month they meet together to discuss matters of importance and see what they can do to help along the good work which is being done in this world. A few weeks ago they took for their subject the “Street Children’s Sunday,” their object being to see what they can do to help these miserable, neglected, almost forgotten, children to something better than their sorrowful lives have yet known.

The Sun (a New York newspaper) covered that women’s conference and published an account of the meeting, including this paragraph:

At the meeting, which was presided over by Mrs. Lowell of the State Board of Charities, Mrs. Houghton, literary editor of the Evangelist, introduced a subject of the Sunday Life of tenement-house children, a large class of whom do not attend the Sunday schools, and whose Sundays, owing to the drunkenness of their parents, which is more general on that day than any other, and also to the overcrowding of the small rooms in which they live by the presence of the entire family on that day, are full of wretchedness and discomfort. “The children do not laugh enough,” Mrs. Lowell said. “They did not know how to play or to be happy.” This subject has been long of great interest to Mrs. Houghton, and out of this discussion germinated a plan to do something for those little wretched waifs of humanity to brighten their lives, and ultimately to make of them better men and women and more intelligent and worthy citizens.

Isabella strongly believed in the last line of the article: that making the lives of poor boys and girls better will ultimately help them grow to be better men and women.

Black and white photo of three young children sleeping close together in an outdoor alcove of a stone-facade building. The children are barefoot and two are wearing short pants with patches on the knees, as they sleep with their arms around each other.
Children sleeping on Mulberry Street, 1890, by Jacob A. Riis

She also had the example of Jacob Riis, a newspaper reporter who documented living conditions in New York slums. Through his written articles and photographs, he almost single-handedly educated Americans about the necessity of better living conditions for the poor. He advocated for clean drinking water, public parks, and child labor laws, and he was instrumental in implementing these and many other reforms in New York City. Riis and Isabella both attended Chautauqua Institution at the same time, and Riis was close friends with Bishop John Vincent, one of Chautauqua’s co-founders.

Black and white photo of a middle-aged man seated in a chair. He has short, light-colored hair and a mustache, an wears wire-rimmed glasses. He wears a tie and three-piece suit. The chain of a pocket watch is visible on his vest.
Jacob A. Riis in 1904 (from Library of Congress)

Isabella may very well have been thinking of Riis when she wrote about Flossy’s efforts to reach and influence the street boys in her Sunday-school class.

Black and white photo of a row of three two-story attached houses in dilapidated condition, with broken windows and clothes-lines strung from one building to another. The roof of the center home sags dangerously. In the background, a multi-story building hows broken windows and objects cluttering the metal fire escape.
Dwellings of Death by Jacob A. Riis

In one scene, Flossy gets lost in the slums while trying to visit Dirk, and a street boy named Nimble Dick helps her find Dirk’s house.

Mrs. Roberts uttered an exclamation. The house was one of the most forlorn in the row, seeming, if the miserable state of the buildings would admit of comparison, to be more out of repair than the others. It came home to her just then, with a sudden, desolating force, that human beings such as she was trying to reach, and such as she hoped would live in heaven forever, called such earthly habitations as these homes. What possible idea could they ever get of heaven by calling it “home”?

“Do they have the whole of the house?”

She asked the question timidly, for the building looked very large, but she was utterly unused to city tenement life.

“The whole of that house?” Dick fairly shouted the sentence, and bent himself double with laughter. “Well, I should say not, mum! As near as I can calculate, about thirty-five different families have that pleasure. The whole of the house! Oh, my! What a greeny!” And he laughed again.

Mrs. Roberts exerted herself to laugh with him, albeit she was horror-stricken. Thirty-five families in one house! How could they be other than awful in their ways of living?

“I know almost nothing about great cities,” she said. “My home was in a much smaller one.”

This was the truth, but not the whole truth. Instinct kept this veritable lady, in the truest sense of the word, from explaining that she knew nothing about the abject poor, when she was speaking to one of their number.

But Flossy quickly set about learning all she could about Dirk, his sister, and their neighbors because she felt a distinct calling to help them. When she returned a second time to Dirk’s tenement building—this time accompanied by her husband—other residents of the tenement warned her to stay away from Dirk.

It was strange, she could not herself account for it; but with every added word of misery that set poor Dirk Colson lower and lower in the scale of humanity, there seemed to come into this woman’s heart, and shine in her face, an assurance that he was to be a “chosen vessel unto God.”

Black and white photo showing a small open area surrounded by four brick buildings. A shaft of light from above illuminates several clothes lines where clothing and blankets have been hung out to dry. On an upper balcony a man stands with children behind him. A woman wearing an apron stands on the stairs leading from the balcony to the count. On the ground an apron-clad woman stands in the doorway with four children of different ages nearby. In another doorway stands a woman with three little girls seated beside her. In the foreground is a two-wheeled pushcart, buckets, a water pump, a and debris.
A Tenement Yard by Jacob A. Riis

To Flossy, helping Dirk and the rest of “her boys” was essential. And when someone tried to change her mind by asking what good Flossy could possibly do for such creatures, she replied:

“Don’t you think that Jesus Christ died to save them? And don’t you think he wants them saved? And will he not be pleased with even my little bits of efforts if he knows that my sincere desire is to save these souls for his glory?”

Her “little bits of efforts” may seem small at first, but Flossy soon begins to see results with “her boys.”

You can read all about the plan Flossy came up with, and how the boys responded, in Isabella’s novel, Ester Ried Yet Speaking.

You can read Isabella’s novel Ester Ried Yet Speaking for only 99 cents! Choose your favorite e-book retailer. (Your purchase from The Pansy Shop helps support this blog.)

Christmas Shopping with Isabella

Published on by Isabella Alden7 Comments

Julia Ried (in Isabella’s novel of the same name) had ten dollars with which to purchase Christmas gifts for her family and friends.

She knew exactly what she wanted to give her mother, sister Sadie and brother Alfred for Christmas; and since this would be her first Christmas away from home, she even thought out how she would ship the gifts to her family:

I had packed them in imagination in a neat little box, and written the accompanying letter scores of times.

In our modern world, ten dollars doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but in 1873, when Julia Ried was published, those ten dollars went much further than they do today.

For example, Julia could purchase a set of six handkerchiefs to give to Sadie at a cost of only thirty cents:

And since a lady could never have enough handkerchiefs, Julia might instead have opted to give Sadie a dozen of them (with fancy colored borders) at a cost of just 48 cents:

Or, Julia might have purchased for Sadie a knitted cap and scarf set, since such sets were just as popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s as they are now.

For Alfred, Julia might have purchased a new shirt to wear to his job as a store clerk (or even two shirts at these prices):

This full-page newspaper ad from 1912 illustrates other affordable gifts Julia might have chosen for Alfred, from a sturdy pair of gloves to a warm sweater to a new cap (click on the image to see a larger version):

When it came to selecting a gift for her mother, Julia knew no ordinary gift would do. She wrote:

Dear mother, she seemed to think that her first and greatest duty in life was to toil for and spare her children. Patient, faithful, tender mother! Tonight, as I recall her sweet, pale, tired face, I can think of no frown of impatience or anger that ever marred its sweetness. I can think of nothing left undone, that she could do, to smooth the path in which her children trod.

Clearly a special gift was in order for Mrs. Ried. A very pretty sewing box, covered in a sturdy but lovely patterned fabric (called “cretonne”) might have been the perfect gift:

Or she might have chosen for her mother a lovely ladies’ hat pin to add some sparkle to her life:

All of these would have been thoughtful gifts for Julia to send home to her family; but …

If you have read the book, you know that that Julia succumbed to an entirely different temptation when it came to spending her ten dollars—a temptation that left her with no money to buy gifts she wanted to give her family!

As the characters in Isabella’s novels so often did, Julia Ried had to learn many lessons about the dangers of peer pressure and placing trust in the wrong person—lessons that are just as relevant today as they were in 1873.

What do you think of the Christmas gifts in these ads from the late 1800s/early 1900s?

Which gifts would you purchase to give loved ones?

A Quick Bite to Eat

Published on by Isabella Alden2 Comments

In her novels, Isabella wrote about all kinds of people: from heroic physicians to ladies of wealth and leisure; from mischievous boys to angelic little girls.

But of all the character types who appeared in her novels, the working class clerk was the most common.

Clerks in a grocery store stand by, ready to serve customers.

Alfred Ried (in Ester Ried Yet Speaking) worked long hours for little pay in a busy downtown shop.

Robert Parks and Hester Mason did the same in Workers Together; an Endless Chain.

Clerks pose outside their hardware shop (about 1915).

Isabella seemed to have quite a bit of sympathy for these overworked, underpaid young people. Around the turn of the Twentieth Century the average man earned about $11.00 per week; but young men, like Alfred and Robert, who were just starting out in their careers, earned considerably less.

Because she was female, poor Hester would have earned only half (sometimes less) of what her male counterparts earned.

Shop clerks wait on customers in a department store (around 1910).

After they paid rent for their lodgings, they had little left to live on.

During the work day, when it came time for their mid-day meal break, they had to return to their lodging house for their meal, which was often included in the cost of their rent.

But if their rented rooms weren’t close to the shop where they worked, they had to find a nearby place to eat with menu items they could afford.

Luckily, some small restaurants in large cities catered to working people in that very situation.

Workers prepare to serve diners at The Farmington Lunch Room in 1908.

Haim’s Quick Lunch Restaurant in New York City was one such place. Every dish on their menu was designed to be served quickly, so working clerks like Robert, Hester, and Alfred could have a simple meal and get back to work.

Trade card for the Riverside Tea Room in New York.

So what kind of dishes did Haim’s serve? Here’s their 1906 lunch menu:

Their heartiest dishes were the most expensive. For about ten cents Alfred could have two eggs cooked to order. And Robert might have a bowl of milk toast or a sandwich.

Since Hester had to make her pitiful wages go farther than Robert or Alfred, she might have ordered one of the less expensive items on the menu, like griddle cakes.

A crowded ladies’ lunch room at A. T. Stewart’s in New York City (about 1875).

Or she might have ordered a bowl of Force, Malta Vita, or Power, which were very much like cold cereal we eat today.

Excerpt from a 1902 Malta Vita newspaper ad.

What do you think of Haim’s menu choices?

If you were a shop clerk and had only 15 or 30 minutes to grab a quick bite of lunch, which Haim’s menu item do you think you would order?

If you’d like to learn more about any of Isabella’s novels mentioned in this post, click on the covers below: