From the outside, the almshouse was a series of sagging, decrepit, gray blocks surrounded by mud, filth, and excrement. Despite its location on an island, the air was stagnant and thick, unhealthful and miasmic. Inside was worse. The halls reeked of every manner of bodily function, and the few little ones with energy enough to spy on me around doorframes were so malnourished as to be frightening in their appearance.
“Pardon me,” I said to the clerk sitting with boots propped upon the desk and a hat resting over his eyes.
Lazily, he moved the hat, and his dark gaze cut up to the basket of victuals I carried. A sneer settled upon his bearded face. “God save me from do-gooders,” he murmured.
I paid him no mind. “I’m here to see Widow Donohue.” He made no move to render assistance, but I was not easily put off. “Would you be so kind as to let her know that Mrs. General Hamilton is here to see her?”
Suddenly, the man righted his chair and stood. “Mrs. . . . General Hamilton.” He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Right away. And please use the administrator’s office. He’s out just now.”
“Thank you, good sir.” I smiled, for it was easier to forgive the man’s rudeness when his respect for my husband was so apparent.
The Hamilton name still held power in New York, and I wasn’t afraid to use it in the service of protecting children—mine and those of the city Alexander helped build.
“Mrs. Hamilton?” came a woman’s voice from the doorway, a babe on her hip, and a wisp of a girl clinging to her dirty, threadbare skirts. For a moment, I saw not the orphaned girls but my own Little Phil and Lysbet, who were not much older, and I yearned to set them all at ease.
“Thank you for meeting with me. Please sit.” Smiling, I opened my basket and laid out a few pastries I’d baked. Hunger etched the faces of the precious little girls. I gave them a nod and watched in satisfaction as they ate their fill.
“Now, Mrs. Donohue, if we might begin our interview . . . may I ask how old you are?”
“Twenty,” she answered.
Twenty. Just Ana’s age. Ana could have been married. Ana could have had children of her own . . .
It didn’t take long to determine that Mrs. Donahue met the society’s criteria. She had a home, such as it was. She was mother of children under the age of ten. She had no income, didn’t beg or sell liquor, and appeared to be of good moral character.
The assistance we could offer would help in her daily struggle for survival, exposed to the contaminating influence of the impious, immoral, indolent, and criminal. And she was grateful. But still, she asked, “What—what will happen to my children, Mrs. Hamilton, if I should die?”
I had no good answer. Our charity was founded to benefit widows. Nothing in our charter allowed for us to help orphans. And it seemed to me quite an oversight.
Upon taking my leave of the almshouse, I glanced at the clerk’s open ledger, listing children that had been admitted to this place—and copied it into my notebook.
Brigit Fogarty, age 2 weeks, died of congestion of the brain
Catherine Connor, age 6 months, died of marasmus
Albert Smith, age 3 weeks, died of diarrhea
Charles May, age 6 weeks, died of syphilis
On and on it went.
Children dead of overcrowding and disease and sheer misery.
Were my own children so different from these little lost souls? What should happen to them if I should fall ill and die? Though Angelica promised she’d always care for my children as if they were her own, and I believed her, I feared for my little ones to be left alone in this world to fend for themselves as their father had been forced to do.
No child should have to suffer what he did. Certainly not his own children. Left to the influence of unscrupulous persons. Left with scars and taint, and viewing themselves as having to claw up from a pit of mud. No one—not my children or anyone’s children—ought to suffer this, not in a country like ours with so many resources. In a civilized world, there should be some . . . some system to prevent it.
And though I’d never had my husband’s genius for organizing military, financial, and political matters, I had ambitions for my own civic creations. Which was why, at the society’s annual meeting the following spring, I insisted, “We must do more.”
I’d come to value my friendship with the serious-minded and zealously devout Mrs. Bethune. So I was delighted when she agreed. “What these children need is shelter, a refuge, an asylum of their own.”
“I’ve long believed it,” Widow Graham said, wearing a plain black frock and white cap upon her thinning gray hair. “A place where they can receive religious instruction, moral example, and be trained up to be useful and productive.”