New York City's bootblacks at the time Alger wrote "Ragged Dick" were boys, usually between the ages of ten and sixteen, "with any number of bad habits, and little or no principle". They gambled, smoked cigar butts retrieved from the gutter, patronized Bowery theaters and concert halls, slept on the streets or in shelters supported by the charitable, and were "more proficient in profanity than the Water Street roughs". Alger told the "Ladies Home Journal" in 1890, "I had conversations with many street boys while writing 'Ragged Dick' ... and derived from many of them sketches of character and incidents".