[McDowall, John R.]:

$2,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

MAGDALEN FACTS. No. 1. NEW YORK, JANUARY, 1832 [all published]. An important, early American work on the negative effects of prostitution centering on the "fallen women" of the Female Penitentiary of the County and City of New York at Bellevue. The author, John R. McDowall, established the first and very short-lived Magdalen Society in New York in 1830, modeled after the Magdalen Society of Philadelphia which was founded thirty years earlier. McDowall was a Princeton-educated theologian and crusader against the ills of prostitution, and set up at Five Points in New York City in 1830 to assist the American Tract Society with educating the "unfortunate females" of Bellevue and New York City in "Sabbath Schools."The text presents facts relative to the success of his venture, and is divided into thirty-four "Articles" or chapters. The titles of these chapters include "The Abandoned - their moral character," "A Vicious Woman," "Magdalens - their prospects," "The Suicide," and "House of Refuge in New York," among others. McDowall also includes passages on the various Magdalen Society branches and similar organizations in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, London, and "The Life and Appeal of a Georgia Magdalen, by herself." About half of the articles are intentionally sad or brutal stories about the dangers and consequences of reckless sexual behavior, designed both to discourage promiscuity and scare young women straight. In one chapter, titled "Two Females," two young women are forc

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