A subcategory of the sentimental mother-ballads were songs about mothers and their daughters who had "fallen to shame". These were tremendously popular in the music halls along the Bowery in the 19th century.

I quote the following from Luc Sante's book _Low Life_, which I enthusiastically recommend to anyone interested in 19th century Americana, and the seamier side of New York City in particular:

"The kind of song that went over best with the thieves, murderers, extortionists and their assorted muscle was the sentimental ballad. The tune that supposedly launched Izzy Baline's career at Sualter's was Arthur Lamb and Harry von Tilzer's 'The Mansion of Aching Hearts':

She lives in the mansion of aching hearts,
She's one of the restless throng;
The diamonds that glitter around her throat,
They speak both of sorrow and song;
The smile on her face is only a mask
And many's the tear that starts,
For sadder it seems, when of mother she dreams,
In the mansion of aching hearts.

"The repertoire was topheavy with such laments of the strayed remembering their kindly old mothers. There was James Thornton's 'She May Have Seen Better Days':

While strolling along with the city's vast throng,
On a night that was bitterly cold,
I noticed a crowd who were laughing aloud
At something they chanced to behold.
I stopped to see what the object could be,
And there, on a doorstep, lay
A woman in tears from the crowd's angry jeers
And then I heard someone say:
She may have seen better days, when she was in her prime;
She may have seen better days, once upon a time.
Tho' by the wayside she fell, she may yet mend her ways.
Some poor mother is waiting for her who has seen better days.

"And Charles Graham's 'The Picture that is Turned Toward the Wall':

There's a name that's never spoken
And a mother's heart half broken,
There is just another missing from the old home, that's all;
There is still a mem'ry living,
And a father unforgiving,
And a picture that is turn'd toward the wall.

"And William B. Gray's 'She is More to be Pitied than Censured':

At the old concert hall on the Bowery
'Round the table were seated one night
A crowd of young fellows carousing,
With them life seemed cheerful and bright.
At the very next table was seated
A girl who had fallen to shame;
And the young fellows jeered at her weakness,
Till they heard an old woman exclaim:
She is more to be pitied than censured,
She is more to be helped than despised,
She is only a lassie who ventured
On life's stormy path, ill advised.
Do not scorn her with words fierce and bitter,
Do not laugh at her shame and downfall;
For a moment just stop and consider
That a man was the cause of it all.

"And 'Just Tell Them that You Saw Me,' by Paul Dresser, Theodore Dreiser's older brother; the lachrymose 'Just Break the News to Mother,' of Civil War vintage; 'A Violet for Her Mother's Grave'; 'A Bird in a Gilded Cage' about the sorrows of a kept woman; 'Mother was a Lady, or If only Jack were Here'; 'Gold Will Buy Most Anything but a True Girl's Heart'; 'Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl'; 'With All Her Faults I Love Her Still'; 'Just for the Sake of Our Daughter'; 'You Made Me What I am Today - I Hope You're Satisfied'; and the immortal 'Teach Our Baby that I'm Dead.' These songs must have performed some sort of expiatory function; the mind boggles at the spectacle of garrote artists weeping at songs about shame, white slavers sobbing at the tribulations of white slaves, ear-chewers remembering their white-haired mothers."

Cameron.