The orphan trains operated between 18, relocating about 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, or homeless children. The Orphan Train Movement was a supervised welfare program that transported orphaned and homeless children from crowded Eastern cities of the United States to foster homes located largely in rural areas of the Midwest. They were often referred to as “street urchins”. Such was the severity of child poverty in 1854 that the number of homeless children in New York City was estimated as high as 34,000. Orphans or runaways found themselves drifting into this destitute area, as well as the old sheds of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Streets. Misery Row was considered to be a main breeding ground of crime and poverty, and an inevitable “fever nest” where disease spread easily. According to an essay written by Brace in 1872, one crime-and-poverty-ridden area around Tenth Avenue was referred to as “Misery Row”. but many were orphaned when their parents died in epidemics of typhoid, yellow fever or the flu. Many of these unwanted kids had been in trouble with the law. In the mid-1800s many children in New York City lived in poverty with parents who abused alcohol, engaged in criminal activity, and were otherwise unfit parents. This resulted in children being placed in orphanages and some eventually becoming Orphan Train riders. In 1849, New York’s chief of police decided to bring attention to the street children as the city simply did not have the infrastructure and services to deal with thousands of homeless children. Many children ended up on the street with no home. Many of the immigrants coming to New York in the mid to late 1800s were poor and could not adequately care for their families. The goal of the movement was to get homeless and destitute children off the streets of New York and resettle them with families in the rural Midwest. Between 18, nearly a quarter of a million orphaned children were resettled under what came to be known as the Orphan Train Movement.
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