Bessie Spence Robertson in 1914, Boston (see Spence Pedigree chart)When I sent my children on a plane to see their grandmother, there were 3 of them, age 9 to 16, and they had a familiar adult picking them up on each end, yet I had some friends who wouldn't dream of sending their children anywhere without them. And when my 16-year-old lost his bus ticket and had to spend the night in LaGuardia New York City Airport, I was on the phone with an agent booking him a new flight.
Bessie and Mary, Boston, about 1915
100 years ago, with no cell phones or planes, few telephones in houses, at what age would you send a girl to a foreign country a day's train ride away? To live with strangers? 16? What if there was a known sex trafficking ring operating in the area? 25? I annoyed my daughter with frequent travel admonitions when she was criss-crossing Virginia during the time that a murderer was kidnapping college students.
My grandmother Bessie Spence Robertson always said she left home when she was 16. She told me that she went to Maine by train with her cousin to be maids in family houses. They had to, she said, because a mine strike that lasted over a year left their families without enough money to feed everyone. But Bessie's naturalization papers indicated that she left home the week after she turned 14. I assumed her cousin was quite a few years older. Come to find out, Kate Spence Turnbull, the daughter of Uncle Sam and Aunt Mary Ann, was 13. Their fathers were brothers and they lived across the street from each other.
Of course, lots of girls were maids. It was a standard occupation and an excellent way to learn housekeeping skills. Is there definitely something to be said, do you think, for sending teenagers to prepare for adulthood in someone else's house? Bessie's mother, Grannie Phoebe, was a maid in the house of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Ripley. They had such affection for her that she was married at their home. But that was in Mt. Pleasant, quite close to home. And in 1901, a girl named Annie Rushton was a domestic servant for Grannie Phoebe and Grampa Bill Spence. I haven't figured out who she is, but she must be some relative.
All my grandfather's sisters were maids in Boston before they married, traveling by ship from Yarmouth. But they were much older, between 18 and 28, and they usually traveled together.
These conversations with Nana usually started while baking meringues in the oven on a paper bag. She kept promising to make me a baked Alaska she had learned while working for the Cargills or another family, but we never quite got to that delectable-sounding dessert. I think she learned a lot of fancy cooking and baking from what would have been an upper-class household in a fancy era. She would explain that she learned her culinary skills when she was a cook, but a little while later confess that she was actually a maid. I was never to tell anyone that, however. She was ashamed of that.
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/baked-alaska-recipe-2125603
This old-fashioned dessert, which originated at New York City's Delmonico's restaurant to commemorate the purchase of Alaska in 1867, has become popular again, and why not? An ice-cream cake covered with an igloo of meringue emerging from an oven is a real showstopper.
Martha Stewart Living, December/January 1996
Bessie's first family was the Cargills in Gorham, Maine. They grew such a bond that they corresponded for decades to come, well after Mr. and Mrs. Cargill had died. It must have been with one of the children.
I think this picture is of Bessie with Dorothy Cargill. Dorothy was 2 when Bessie arrived, and they look about 2 or 3 and 14 or 15. The fact that the Cargills had a portrait photographed of their daughter with the maid speaks to their relationship. Bessie returned to Springhill in May 1909 "when the twins were born" to help her mother. Sadly, Dorothy died at age 11 of pneumonia.
Then the conversations would turn to the secret code. In 1910, Bessie returned to Gorham. (Sometime between 1912 and 1914, she moved to Boston, where she worked for several different families before she married in 1916.) So by this time she was 16, but the White Slave Trade was going on.
"I had to write a letter home every Sunday. I had to write a cross in the 0 of 1910 if I was all right. The next year, I had to write a line across the second 1 in 1911, making a cross, if I was all right."
"What did you do in 1912?" I asked.
"Oh, by then the White Slave Trade was over."
Naturally I asked what that was, but just as naturally, I got no answer.
The White Slave Trade was what we call sex trafficking today. Imagine this - your 16-year-old daughter goes to a foreign country, a day's train ride away, where you don't know anyone. The fastest communication is by telegraph or telephone, but that would involve a trip to an office in town. She is working as a maid in a household with people you don't know. Is she being treated well or being sexually abused? If she is abused, how would she escape or let you know? Her abuser would not have let her leave the house or call for help. Regular letter-writing would be expected, but the abuser would still have control over what she wrote.
There enters the code. The only way to know that she is all right, that her letters saying that are genuine, is to include a code that lets you know she is okay.
In looking through Boston newspapers of 1908 - 1913, the only references I found to the White Slave Trade concerned politicians railing against it. President Taft touted reducing it as one of his major accomplishments, and other locales either bragged about eliminating it or accused their governments of being complicit. Reports mentioned tens of thousands of immigrant girls tricked into the trade, many brought in through Canada. But I only found one man convicted of practicing the trade, and he was sentenced to 8 months.
Today, historians believe that the White Slave Trade was a scare in a time of great social change, hyped by fictional stories reported as fact. The Mann Act of 1910 made it a crime to transport females across state lines for immoral purposes, but no large-scale state-line-crossing gangs were found. It was passed because activists of the Progressive Era wanted to reduce prostitution and other vices and promote women's rights like better pay. Huge increases in immigration plus new technologies like typewriters and telephones led to a massive change in the work force. Young women left their homes for city jobs as clerks and telephone operators. Courting a young woman on her front porch turned into dating without chaperones.
In Boston, however, there were several cases of kidnapping/prostitution that made White Slave Traffic real in the summer of 1910. In a sting operation wherein Freda and Max Peretz were arrested, Max was convicted of enticing a female detective to travel with them into prostitution in Panama, and Freda was deported for her role. In another, 3 men were arrested for enticing 2 women to go from Boston to Brockton, Mass, with promises of employment, then holding them captive and sexually abusing them for 10 days until one escaped.
Bessie's move to the States changed our whole family's destiny. She remained in Boston and married Joe Robertson, another Nova Scotian immigrant she met on a blind date in the new-fashioned way of courting. Her cousin Kate returned to Springhill; sister Eva traveled to Gorham Maine to be with Bessie in October 1912, but returned to Springhill. Later, Bessie and Joe provided a home to loads of immigrating relatives: Helena Spence Lynster, Connie Spence Thompson, Anna and Bill Webb, Wilfred and Eva Spence Rushton, Basil, Leona and Gloria Spence, and Donald Spence. Helena, Connie, and Eva, in turn, welcomed nieces Anna Jean, Nellie, Lila, and Margaret Spence.
In reverse, Bessie met Mary Spence of Bo'ness, Scotland, in Massachusetts. I like to think that they met on a line somewhere in alphabetical order, or a mutual acquaintance assumed they were sisters since they had the same last name, and they decided to be friends. Bessie introduced Mary to her brother Harmon in Springhill. That led to the immigration of Mary's entire family to Canada.
Bessie and Mary, Boston, about 1915 https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/united-states-and-canada/us-history/white-slave-traffic-act
https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/history-of-the-telephone-from-1910-1920-dcf3074f-9283-4856-a0d0-a6ed14b7f33b
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/congress-passes-mann-act
https://www.newspapers.com/image/430883444/?terms=Vanville&match=1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/430842855/?terms=Peretz&match=1
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