The orphan train

The Orphan Train

Children of the Orphan Train

The janus face of childhood is evident in the reality of the storied "Orphan train" and in the fantasy of the glorious "Polar express."

We know about the Polar express, but few remember the nightmare of the Orphan train. I didn't know about this part of New York's history, and came upon it in the context of an online discussion of Caleb Carr's excellent novel of history, memory and individual courage in the New York of the 1880s: The Alienist. 

The novel, which became a bestseller (and I hear, a deserving one at that) about 20 years ago, is credited with a recreation of 19th century New York with razor-sharp precision and fidelity to the details of the atmosphere of the city back then. 

One of the outstanding horrors of the city in the 19th century was, like it was in London of the same era, the instance of children, abandoned, exploited, neglected, abused, prostituted, unschooled. 

Thus Charles Loring Brace helped start the Children’s Aid Society in New York City in 1853. In addition to doing what it could to bring aid and comfort, food and shelter, clothes and lettering, to as many “underprivileged” children in the city as it could, the Society also did everything it could to do what at the time seemed best for abandoned children in New York: get them out of New York. It was the beginning of the storied Orphan Train, which over the next 75 years relocated a quarter of a million abandoned orphans from the slums of New York to the Midwest.