5 Disturbing Facts About The Erie Canal
What‘s the deal with low bridges? What’s the REAL reason mules were used instead of horses? And what’s up with those red-light districts? Here’s the stuff they didn’t teach you in grade school.
5. “Low bridge, everybody down!” wasn’t a suggestion, but a dire warning.
Passengers on the Erie Canal often enjoyed sitting on top of the boat to take in the sights and fresh air. But when the captain called out, “Low bridge!” they knew it was time to either hit the deck or get below, fast. Anyone who hesitated risked getting scraped off into the water or crushed between the boat and the bridge. Fatal encounters were not uncommon. Sometimes canal passengers turned the experience into a game, leaping up onto the bridge, darting across to the other side, and hopping back onto the boat as it passed underneath. But experienced Erie Canal travelers always gave low bridges the respect they deserved.
4. When it came to water quality, the Erie Canal was foul.
Humans have always used local waterways as toilets, and the canal was no exception. Locktenders and laborers relieved themselves in it. Ladies or those desiring privacy could avail themselves of privies (outhouses) which conveyed waste discreetly into the canal. On boats, chamber pots and spittoons were emptied overboard. Travelers wrote of spending hot, crowded nights below deck, only to be provided with wash basins filled with fetid canal water in the morning. After closing in 1917, the canal became a dumping ground for junk of all kinds. But that changed in the 1960s when New York State began reclaiming — and cleaning — bits and pieces of the abandoned canal in the name of historic preservation. Today, as part of the New York State Canalway Trail, surviving sections of the Old Erie Canal are the cleanest they’ve been in decades.
3. Mules were preferred over horses because they refused to drink filthy water.
Nineteenth-century travelers in Upstate New York weren’t the only ones repulsed by canal water. Mules wouldn’t drink it, either, although horses would. The hybrid offspring of a male donkey and a female horse, mules not only refused to drink polluted water, they also required less food than horses and oxen, were calm and intelligent, and had great stamina. These qualities made mules the Erie Canal pack animal of choice from Albany to Buffalo, and inspired the enduring American folk song by Thomas S. Allen.
Check out the above photo. Here we see two horses harnessed to a mule on the canal in Lockport, NY. Was the calmer, more reliable mule placed on the inside to steady the high-strung horses? Or did the boat owner just grab the only three pack animals he could find? We’ll never know.
2. Child mule drivers were treated like dirt.
The job of leading the mules along the towpath belonged primarily to young boys, many of whom were under the age of 12. By 1846, an estimated 5,000 children labored on New York State canals, about half of them orphans. The mule drivers were sometimes exploited by boat owners who refused to pay them at the end of the season or abandoned them if they became too sick to work. Forced to fend for themselves over the winter, many boys turned to thievery or banded into criminal gangs to survive. Others intentionally got themselves arrested on vagrancy charges so they could winter in jail instead of the streets. In the mid-19th century, concerned citizens in Syracuse organized a relief effort on behalf of the canal boys which included safe housing during the off-season — the first steps toward juvenile justice reform in the U.S.
1. Canal towns were home to notorious red-light districts.
Erie Canal travelers and laborers could find sex for sale at a variety of prices. Streetwalkers offered their services for as little as $1, or up to $3 for “perversion.” Visitors with money to burn could choose from a variety of “parlor houses” offering liquor, musical entertainment, and cleaner-looking girls in kimonos or evening gowns. Other diversions included saloons, gambling dens and dance halls. Most towns turned a blind eye to commercialized vice as long as it remained segregated alongside the canal, but when venereal disease began exploding into the local population, citizens demanded action. Heightened public vigilance, formalized sex education for both girls and boys, and stepped-up police enforcement of existing liquor and solicitation laws were among the actions proposed to reduce prostitution (asking men to stop buying sex was mentioned almost as an afterthought). When the old Erie was finally eclipsed by the railroad in the early 20th century, canal red-light districts died a natural death.
Sources:
Report of the Moral Survey Committee on the Social Evil in Syracuse, N.Y. 1913
Jonathan L. Anderson. “Orphan Canal Boys.” American Jails, January/February 2001.
Sean Kirst. “A chilling reality of life along the old Erie Canal: In Syracuse, ‘gang problems’ are hardly new.” The Post-Standard, June 24, 2002. https://www.syracuse.com/kirst/2002/06/gang_problems_in_syracuse_chilling_reality_even_along_the_old_erie_canal.html
Interview with Jonathan L. Anderson, Former Historian, Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office, April 24, 2022.
Bottoming Out: Useful and Interesting Notes Collected for Members of the Canal Society of New York State. Vol 1, No 3–4, July 1957.
