Book manuscript- (c) 2009 by William Sims Bainbridge

Illness struck again when Will contracted typhoid. Lucy tended him with great devotion, remembering the horrible days she tended her brother George as the same disease gradually killed him. Doctors now thought that microorganisms in contaminated water were the cause of typhoid, but as yet they had no cure. For many days, Will lay in delirium, aware he might soon die. Recovery was terribly slow, and Will fell far behind his Columbia classmates. Ashamed of his father’s apparently willful failure, Will considered renouncing the name Bainbridge, and becoming simply William Seaman.

When finally Will was able to return to his studies, he was so easily exhausted that he could no longer endure the long commute from Brooklyn Heights to Columbia. His family owned the house on Prospect Place, so they could not simply pack up and move over to Manhattan, but Lucy wanted to be near her son. “We prayed for guidance and trusted that the way would appear. The answer came almost at once. A sea-captain, on a two-year leave of absence came to the house one day and said that he was looking for a furnished house in a locality where there were good schools for his children. Our home was offered, but not until we had pointed out its need of repairs, papering and painting, and stated that we did not feel like undertaking this additional expense just then. He asked to be shown over the house, and having inspected it from top to bottom, said: ‘I will take it just as it is.’”⁴⁷³ Will and Lucy rented rooms near Columbia, and formalized the collapse of their home. For Lucy, the family catastrophe was an abominable shame, dragging her into deepest disgrace. She prayed for a miracle.
Analysis
We can never know how good a sociology professor William might have become, if that profession had existed in the 1880s. Intellectual son of an intellectual father, perhaps he should have followed the lead of his classmate, Behrends, and switched to a low tension denoimination where scholars might find a home. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Baptists avoided giving their ministers faith-numbing higher education, and this allowed them to out-compete the Methodists who had built by the start of the decade 11 seminaries, 44 colleges and universities, and 130 women's schools.⁴⁷⁴ William was caught in the paradox that had gripped his father during the Removal Controversy of the 1840s. He was committed to a denomination that needed firey preachers who spoke the language of common people, but he was a scholar who based his self-esteem upon the erudition of his footnotes rather than the emotions he aroused in needy people.

Edwin Lemert has argued that the psychiatric syndrome called paranoia can result from an obsessive quest to defend social status which is based on false principles.⁴⁷⁵ William had adopted a strategy for becoming an attractive exchange partner by cultivating his intellect. Recall that Lucy was chagrined soon after her wedding to discover that her husband shaved the hair back from his forehead to appear more intelligent. This strategy achieved its maximum rewards when William published his three books. When publishers rejected his fourth book, he stuck to the same strategy with even greater dedication, laboring to make it a more intelligent book that could win over some publisher. In Lemert's model of the paranoid process, a person whose social status is threatened makes awkward, ineffectual, and increasingly frenzied attempts to defend the status. He becomes arrogant, haughty, and exploitative of others, and they come to perceive him as untrustworthy and unlikeable. The attempt to become a supremely attractive exchange partner, ironically makes the person an extremely unattractive one. Eventually, he adopts the twin delusions of grandeur and persecution that define paranoia.

Whatever psychiatric diagnosis William's problem deserved, it could also be understood in terms of religious compensators. His great scholarly project was so attractive presicely because it had a supernatural dimension. As John 1:1 explains, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” But many words in the Bible are obscure, so William could serve God by clarifying them. This would make him a valued exchange partner, playing the profoundly important role of intellectual mediator with the deity. Furthermore, his great project was scientific, like his earlier world tour books combining the power of religion and science. In China in 1879, William had convinced John Nevius to turn his long interest in spirit possession into a scientific study. Immediately after William departed, Nevius sent a questionnaire on the subject to all the Protestant missionaries in China.⁴⁷⁶ Given Nevius' great prestige in the missionary community, William could feel he had an ally in believing that science could strengthen religion.

When Lucy and her children expressed doubts about William's all-consuming project, he could argue that it served the Lord, that it employed the best scientific methods, and that success would bring fame and prosperity to his family. In an sense this was the familiar problem in economics that people fail to realize that investing more money in a questionable scheme to recover sunk costs is usually a mistake. But it was more than that, because admitting failure would attack the basis of his psychological identity.

Absorbed in his great scholarly obsession, William could not concentrate on anything else, and his habitually harsh criticisms of other people harmonized all too well with his growing assertions of personal grandeur. His family did not rush to hospitalize him despite the clouds that shrouded his spirit, for that would have been the ultimate admission of defeat. In some ways, his obsession was beyond criticism. It was an application of science to religion, a holy mission devoting a great intellect to a noble cause. If William could ever finish his book, the acclaim might sweep him to the heights of honor and prosperity. But success seemed so far away, and in the meantime, the family was sinking toward poverty and disintegration.

Chapter 7:

Helping the Helpless
In abject despair, on January 2, 1891, Lucy knelt to pray. Nearing her forty-ninth birthday, it was hard to see how she could start life anew. From her lonely vigil in Wilmington she cried to the Lord, and at the very depths of her agony, she sensed someone standing over her.

Some time later, a reporter for the New York Times heard her describe this moment to a Christian audience: “‘I was in great perplexity what the Lord wanted me to do. One day I was alone on my knees, and I fancied — strange fancy, you may think — I saw our personal Savior standing before me. ‘Wait,’ he said to me, ‘wait and you shall know what to do.’

“‘At the very moment I was on my knees,’ continued Mrs. Bainbridge, while the room was hushed in silence, ‘Mrs. Brown, Superintendent of the Women’s Branch of the New York City Mission, died suddenly. Next day her place was offered to me!’”⁴⁷⁷

She had no doubts of the reality of this epiphany, as she later told the Mission ladies: “It was not a dream that came to me in a distant city, on the very afternoon of Mrs. Brown’s translation, when, kneeling and alone, pleading for light upon perplexity, the Savior stood for a moment visibly at hand and spoke the needed words of comfort. But such experiences are not for the world, and can only be hinted at for the encouragement of our sisters, who sit with us around the same hearthstone of the household of faith, and to whom we repeat the text.”⁴⁷⁸

The prominent women of the Executive Committee of the Woman’s Branch of the New York City Mission and Tract Society knew Lucy well through the speeches she had given about missionary work, and they were aware of the similar job she had held in Brooklyn.⁴⁷⁹ Like Lucy herself, the Mission Society preferred to believe that her appointment was somehow divinely ordained: “It is always so, that when God calls a Moses away he has a Joshua to fill his place.”⁴⁸⁰ In February, Lucy agreed to take the job, which would pay enough to support the family, beginning on April first.

Mrs. Brown had run the Woman’s Branch for sixteen years, and the Society believed “it would be an impossibility for any one person to take up all the various forms of work and carry them on as she did.”⁴⁸¹ Therefore, Mrs. Brown's assistant, Miss I. F. Hubbard, took responsibility for much of the office work, training the missionary workers, and operating the missionaries’ home. Lucy would have general oversight of the missionaries, editing the women’s half of the monthly magazine, and seeking donations of money and clothing. However, Miss Hubbard would soon vanish from the scene, retiring in May 1892 “for needed rest” and Lucy would be in charge of everything.⁴⁸²

If the Mission Society gained a capable leader, Lucy gained not only an income but a way of dispelling the shame of her husband’s abandonment. Money was sorely needed, and her son was in the very middle of his studies at Columbia. It would be some time before he could earn his living as a doctor. Prior to becoming superintendent of the Woman’s Branch, Lucy had never held a conventional job; she had always been a volunteer worker or assistant to her husband. Now the whole financial weight of the family was on her shoulders.
The Work
The Mission Society had grown out of a number of earlier movements. The Woman’s Branch was originally a part of the New York Religious Tract Society and was founded in 1822, an unhealthy year for New York City. Yellow fever took 240 lives, nothing to compare with the four thousand who died of this disease three years earlier, but a sufficient number to raise the specter of plague. In 1827, the Religious Tract Society and the Young Men’s Tract Society joined to establish The New York City Tract Society, and the Woman’s Branch transferred to this new organization in 1829.⁴⁸³ Within a few years, the group began aiding individuals in distress, as well as distributing exhortatory essays, and by the “Gay Nineties” the emphasis had shifted from tracts to social work.

When Lucy joined the staff, the Mission Society focused exclusively on the portion of Manhattan below Fourteenth Street. The first issue of its monthly magazine, published just four years before Lucy became its co-editor, explained that this was the most crowded section of the city but less well provided with churches than the rest of the island. “North of 14th Street there is one Protestant church to every 2500 inhabitants; south of 14th Street one to every 5000. The self-supporting churches have in a large measure followed their constituencies northward. This has left the southern part of the island comparatively destitute of such privileges.”⁴⁸⁴

The Mission Society itself possessed three houses of worship: DeWitt Memorial Church, the Broome Street Tabernacle, and Olivet Memorial Church. DeWitt had been built entirely at the expense of the Society’s president, railroad millionaire Morris K. Jesup, for a cost of about $80,000. The family of William E. Dodge contributed $25,000 toward the construction of the tabernacle. Olivet was built with donations of $27,000 from Ambrose K. Ely and $65,000 from D. H. McAlpin.⁴⁸⁵

The Mission Society was a significant organization, and the Woman’s Branch conducted many activities. Sewing schools began in 1866. In 1875 Olivet started a Helping Hand Auxiliary which furnished sewing for women paid by the hour, and the Society launched Mothers’ Meetings, with the comment, “We believe in them, not as agitators and disturbers of the home relations, but as educators.”⁴⁸⁶ Under Lucy’s direction, the Mothers’ Meetings became a special place where “overworked, disheartened women, whose lives are full of drudgery, are resting as they listen to words of counsel and comfort.” Their children were under the care of a missionary, provided with “plenty of toys, animal crackers, and milk. When tired, there is a tiny hammock or a thick comfortable ready for a nap, and mothers and children go home with new courage and strength.”⁴⁸⁷

The most substantial resource of the Woman’s Branch was its corps of thirty-seven full-time missionaries and nurses, which would swiftly grow to fifty. Its official aim was “to promote the interests of evangelical religion and sound morality by the circulation of tracts, missionary labor, and the establishment of Mothers’ and Children’s Meetings and Helping Hands, or other auxiliaries deemed helpful in the elevation and salvation of women and children.”⁴⁸⁸ Stated more formally, it sought to achieve four goals:

“First, to carry the gospel of Christ to all homes in the lower part of the city, even the most degraded.

“Second, to elevate in their homes the families, by teaching the wives, mothers, and sisters those things that will be for their physical, moral, and spiritual advantage, and prepare them better to fulfill their duties.

“Third, to reach the children, and by planting early seeds of industry, honesty, temperance, and truth, cheat the tares of a harvest and help the children to become good men and women.

“Fourth, to minister to the sick poor, providing things necessary for their recovery in their homes, or removing them to hospitals if necessary.”⁴⁸⁹

Although Morris K. Jesup was the president of the Mission Society, Adolph Frederick Schauffler was in day-to-day charge of the work. Born in 1845 in Pera, a European suburb of Constantinople, Schauffler was the child of two American missionaries. Possessing a keen mind and living in a cosmopolitan community, he grew up knowing English, French, German, Greek and Turkish. He came to the United States in 1863, graduated from Williams College in 1867 and completed Andover Theological Seminary in 1871. He was pastor of the Olivet Church from 1873 until 1887 when he became vice president of the Society.⁴⁹⁰ For the years Lucy worked at the Mission Society, Schauffler was her partner, and they divided the work of editing the monthly magazine. He spoke of her “winsome manner,” saying, “Mrs. Bainbridge is of commanding appearance, a sweet voice and charming countenance.”⁴⁹¹

The Mission Society had its offices in Bible House, on Astor Place in lower Manhattan, just below the intersection of Broadway and Eighth Street, and Lucy’s address was Room 104. The building, erected in 1853, was “a multistoried edifice in European style, surrounding an inner court.”⁴⁹² To get to the Mission Society from where she lived, up near Columbia, Lucy would take a Broadway streetcar to Ninth Street, just a block from Bible House.⁴⁹³

She began her first essay for the magazine with a tribute to Mrs. Brown, “the sainted woman who, though dead, is yet living in the helpers and the helped all over our city... The new Superintendent comes to her duty, trusting in the same promises, leaning upon the same everlasting arm, and guided, we believe, by that same Master who was to Mrs. Brown, through all her life service in this cause, wisdom and strength. ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day and forever.’”⁴⁹⁴

Within two months, Lucy was struggling to maintain morale among the workers and supporters of the Woman’s Branch, to whom the labors sometimes seemed endless. She wrote, “In such work as ours we cannot expect to see the results of our labor as in many other forms of Christian service. To us is given the duty of seed sowing, and largely among the stones and rocks of intemperance and godlessness, and amidst the briars and thorns of poverty and misery. The dews fall, the winds blow, the sun shines, and the seed of truth germinates in the heart, and appears in the outward life. We can only gather out the stones, and break away some of the briars and tend the frail little plants of divine life for a time, then, more often, just as they blossom into beauty, they are transplanted into better soil in some church garden of upper New York or Brooklyn.”

Much of Lucy's effort was devoted to fund raising, and she begged for money in the pages of the monthly.⁴⁹⁵ Lucy responded to her own pleas by donating some partly worn clothing, and by drawing on her Brooklyn connections for help. Lucy’s friend, Dr. Eliza M. Mosher, inaugurated a series of lectures at the Christian Worker’s Home, speaking on “General Structure of the Human Body.” Because of the delicate nature of the topic, she restricted her audience to women, and in five further lectures she discoursed on the hygiene of the digestive organs, the circulatory apparatus, the respiratory system, and the nervous system, ending with a sober lecture on “Personal Limits from the Hygienic Standpoint.”⁴⁹⁶

For her first Christmas essay, Lucy wrote an alphabet of suffering and need. Mrs. A, for example, was one of the “deserving poor,” having a sick husband and five children under eleven to support. When the missionaries first met her, four years ago, Mrs. A kept a very filthy home, but now it is neat and clean, and the readers of the Monthly were urged to help her through contributions to the Christmas Fund. Mrs. D, an asthmatic widow, earns but twenty cents a day sewing vests to support her two children. Mrs. F is pregnant and her husband has been incarcerated in Sing Sing penitentiary. Feeble Mrs. J watches her tubercular husband sinking into slow consumption, while their five children grow hungry. And “X Y Z must stand for the scores of boys needing mittens and shoes, and the Sunday-school scholars, who will long for just an orange or a bag of candy, or the hundreds of sick and weak old people, who are again like little children, in their delight over a kindness though ever so small.”⁴⁹⁷

The children of impoverished family found bits of evergreen branch at the depot where the Christmas trees were unloaded, and their father hauled home packing boxes to construct a doll house. Some sandpaper, a shoemaker’s hammer, and a meat saw added windows, a door, and a chimney. The “Dorcas room” of the Woman’s Branch, where used clothing was stored, contributed a tin kitchen, a table, and set set of tiny dishes.⁴⁹⁸ Dorcas, a disciple of Jesus reknowned for her good works and almsdeeds, died of illness and left the clothing she had made for the other disciples.⁴⁹⁹

Among the challenges of Lucy’s first year as superintendent was preparation of the annual report of the Woman’s Branch, a combination statistical summary and promotional essay. The first pages listed all the ladies, beginning with the two directresses, treasurer, secretary, and the four other ladies who served on the executive committee. Active members represented thirteen contributing churches, and there were swarms of honorary managers, members of the nursery committee, and associate members. Then Lucy listed herself as superintendent, followed by forty-five missionaries, nurses and students, plus the recently-hired office secretary who doubled as a missionary to the Chinese.

Except for some “gripped” by influenza, their health had been good during the previous year. Their life was difficult, because “Seven days in the week they listen to tales of woe, and come into contact with suffering and poverty.” Their sober monotony had been lifted slightly by a summer outing and a winter evening of entertainment. Four had left to join foreign missions, three in India and one in China. The eight trained nurses of the Branch had struggled to improve the health of many women and children: “An aged paralytic comforted; a suffering woman taken to a hospital for needed treatment; a sick girl in a cellar home ministered to; a baby in an attic washed and clothed; a dying mother and her sobbing children played with. Who can tell the story of such daily toil in our tenements?”⁵⁰⁰

The most discouraging work was preaching to the convict women forced to do menial work at Bellevue Hospital, but especially rewarding were the three day nurseries. Nearly a hundred children were cared for while their mothers labored and their fathers languished in prisons or lounged in saloons. Others were cared for at the Children’s Home, and Lucy offered one case to illustrate their plight. “A short time ago, a respectable man came to our office, telling with tears the sad story of a drunken wife, and a worse than motherless girl eight years of age. In a few days he brought the child to us — a picture of neglect in body and clothes. Made clean and comfortable, and hugging a new dolly to her breast, the child went happily to the Children’s Home in Montclair, and is there doing credit to the kind care bestowed upon her.”⁵⁰¹

Other projects of the year included the aid to “aged pilgrims,” Mothers’ Unions that teach mothers to “train their children for God,” sewing schools, and the Fresh Air project that sent one hundred and thirty-five “misfit” tenement children for two-week visits to the country. All counted, the missionaries made 32,925 visits, and the nurses, 7,417. The Woman’s Branch distributed 37,106 tracts plus 444 Bibles, brought 251 children into Sunday school plus 111 adults into Bible classes, conducted 1,112 meetings, and gave away 2,844 garments. In addition, the Woman’s Branch maintained its home for student missionaries.

At the annual meeting of the Mission Society, at the Broadway Tabernacle, Lucy gathered pledges that brought her Branch a thousand dollars.⁵⁰² Money came in small denominations, as well, like the dollar sent by a little girl who saved up her candy money for a month or the dollar-fifty donated by a poor woman who herself had received alms just two months before. A lady invalided for eleven years, living in a county home, sent “pressed geranium leaves full of perfume, and a few stamps and a silver ten-cent piece carefully wrapped, and safely received, in the letter full of cheer.” This gift went to one of the many cripples in lower New York.⁵⁰³ Mrs. Saterthwaite donated eighteen glasses of jelly, while Mrs. Rapello gave a barrel of potatoes. Devlin and Company gave one hundred Christmas books, while an anonymous donor gave thirty-six boxes of candy. Mrs. Betts outdid herself with two turkeys, forty-eight cornucopias, fifteen dolls, and thirty-three bags of marbles. At various times Lucy herself found some old articles to donate, such as a number of bonnets. During a cholera scare, she gave a bottle of cholera drops, and on other occasions she brought a trunk, a basket, a bed, toys, and partly-worn clothing.
Attempting to Convert the Immigrants
Supported neither by Baptist nor Episcopalian organizations, the Mission Society rested on a set of upper-class Presbyterian and Reformed churches.⁵⁰⁴ Although non-sectarian, it was clearly Protestant, and while drawing neither from high-church nor sectarian strata, it had an Evangelical tinge. In addition to calling the Jews and the godless to Christ, it sought to convert Catholics to Protestantism. Among Lucy’s most able workers was Lydia L. Tealdo, born within sight of the Cathedral in Milan, Italy, but daughter of a Protestant minister. After her parents died, she was inspired by the example of a schoolmate who married a minister and had gone to America where she worked for the evangelization of Italy. In October 1888, Lydia entered the small school the Woman’s Branch had established to train missionaries.

When Lydia began her work with the Italians of New York, there were forty-five thousand of them: “The moral and physical needs of her field were heart-rending, the spiritual darkness appalling. To cure a child sick with pneumonia, a pigeon, just killed, would be cut in two and placed on the chest; dusty cobwebs were put on cuts and sores; pieces of raw meat on inflamed eyes; pictures of saints on painful spots of the body, bands of red ribbon were bound around swaddling clothes to ward off the evil eye.”⁵⁰⁵