Even so, it will be seen that four hundred and seventy-five--nearly half of the Bedford women--had been servants.
In 1908 the Albion House of Refuge, New York, admitted one hundred and sixty-eight girls.

Of these ninety-two were domestics, one was a lady's maid, and nine were nursemaids.
Of one hundred and twenty-seven girls in the Industrial School at Rochester, New York, in 1909, only fifty-one were wage earners.

Of that number twenty-nine had worked in private homes as domestics.

Bedford Reformatory receives mostly city girls; Albion and Rochester are supplied from small cities and country towns.

It appears that domestic service is a dangerous trade in small communities as well as in large ones.
On the face of it, the facts are wonderfully puzzling.