Document 10: "Admissions Report," Annual Report of 1893, unprocessed collection of YWCA of Greater Baltimore, 128 W. Franklin Street, Annual Reports, 1883-1902.
Introduction
The following document reiterates the desire to provide protection and support for the young women who came to work in Baltimore. YWCA leaders feared that girls were being lured into the city on promise of employment. Upon arriving in the city the hapless young girls were then taken advantage of and left with no means of support or way to return home. The Young Women's Christian Association would then step in to "save" these unfortunate women. Concern for these newcomers prompted the women of the YWCA to seek an agent who would provide a friendly greeting to newcomers.
ADMISSION.
During the past year we have received into our Home 29 permanent boarders, nearly all of whom are under twenty-five, and the most of them under twenty years of age. They are employed during the day in dressmaking and underwear establishments, stand in stores, study at the Normal School and the Maryland Institute, sew in families, are book-keepers and milliners. We have also received 157 transient boarders who have remained with us from two nights to six weeks. Most of these came to the city seeking employment. To these our Home, advice and assistance is a great boon. We have on several occasions received girls who had come from a distance in answer to advertisements offering them steady work and large pay, and who after they had arrived here and had investigated, found they had been decoyed, and not having sufficient money to return home, they would have been left in a dangerous and helpless position, had they not found help and shelter in our Association. We have long felt the need of an agent who could visit the various stations and meet the friendless girls as they enter the city. Several associations in other cities have such an agent, and their labors have saved many lonely girls. Will not some one donate $300 a year to enable us to start this branch of our work.