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MARLBOROUGH EXPRESS 5TH MARCH 1887 P3
A NEW AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE.
The New York Journal says :—There is in New York a moneyed and well organised society which trades in human flesh and blood. The society is composed of the owners of those houses that disgrace the city. The head and front of it is a wretch keeping a place in Chrystie Street, and who boasts of a fortune of 300,000 dollars.
The society has got in its employ a dozen women who make trips regular to Europe. They go to Paris, London, Berlin, Rome, Vienna, Edinburgh and Dublin. They live in “great style.” They go to public parks and squares, win the confidence of young women, and by specious promises induce them to come to New York.
Their favorite dodge is to have the girl recorded on the passenger list as a “lady’s maid.” One woman was known to bring five girls on one trip. When the girls reached this city coaches await them, and they drive off, knowing no one, speaking a strange language, and ignorant of American laws or customs, they are at a loss as to what to do, and usually yield to their fate.
Two weeks ago a handsome, silken roben woman flashing with jewellery, and carrying a fat purse, appeared in Loughrea, County Galway, Ireland. She went to a farmhouse occupied by an honest old farmer. She remained there four days,, and before she left she induced the farmer’s daughter, Katie ——, an innocent girl about 17 years old, to start for this city. She said she knew the girl’s sister, who resided in New York, and that her sister was anxious that Katie should come to America to enjoy her wealth. She also showed her parents a cable dispatch asking that Katie should be sent out.
The unsuspecting girl started off, and embarked at Liverpool on the steamship City of Chigago as cabin passenger. The vessel reached New York on Friday afternoon at 2 o’clock, and they took a coach and went off with two men employed on board the vessel. At 3 o’clock yesterday morning Officer Peter W. ——–, of the Fourteenth precinct, saw the coach at Grand and Elizabeth Streets. Two women and two men alighted. The contrast; between the women struck him. He knew at once that the girl was an immigrant who was not yet a day in the city. He tapped her on the arm and bade her go with him, and he took her to the Mulberry-street Station. She told him the whole story about the way in which she was induced to come to America.
Later on he arrested the woman who brought Katie to this city, and he managed to find Katie’s sister in an unsavoury neighborhood.
