“This family had evidently seen better times. The man had an honest face, and talked as if he had once been able to earn a respectable living. The woman had some features that would be called noble if they were worn in connection with costlier apparel. The girl was unmistakably smart, and the only thing to mar their appearance as a family, so far as personal looks were concerned, was the thick-lipped, slovenly boy.”
II. THE CELLARS.
If the people of whom I have written are sufferers, they at least exist upon the surface of the earth. But what shall we say of those who pass their lives in the cellars of the wretched buildings I have described?
A few of these cellars are dry, but all are dirty. Some are occupied as dwelling-places, and some are divided into a sort of store or groggery and living and sleeping rooms. Others still are kept as lodging-houses, where the poorest of the poor find shelter for the night.
In writing of these cellars, I wish it to be understood that I do not refer to the rooms partly above and partly below the level of the side-walk, with some chance of ventilation, and known to the Health Officers as “basements,” but to the cellars pure and simple, all of which are sunk below the level of the street,
and all of which are infinitely wretched. There were in April, 1869, about 12,000 of these cellars known to the Board of Health, and containing from 96,000 to 100,000 persons. With the exception of 211, all of these were such as were utterly forbidden, under the health ordinances of the city, to be used or rented as tenements. The Board of Health have frequently considered the advisability of removing this population, and have been prevented only by the magnitude of the task, and the certainty of rendering this large number of persons homeless for a time at least.
The larger portion of these cellars have but one entrance, and that furnishes the only means of ventilation. They have no outlet to the rear, and frequently the filth of the streets comes washing down the walls into the room within. In the brightest day they are dark and gloomy. The air is always foul. The drains of the houses above pass within a few feet of the floor, and as they are generally in bad condition the filth frequently comes oozing up and poisons the air with its foul odors. In some cases there has been found a direct opening from the drain into the cellar, affording a free passage for all the sewer gas into the room. The Board of Health do all they can to remedy this, but the owners and occupants of the cellars are hard to manage, and throw every obstacle in the way of the execution of the health ordinances.
The rents paid for these wretched abodes are exorbitant. Dr. Harris, the Superintendent of the Board of Health, states that as much as twenty dollars per month is often demanded of the occupants by the owners. Half of that sum would secure a clean and decent room in some of the up-town tenements. The poor creatures, in sheer despair, make no effort to better their condition, and live on here in misery, and often in vice, until death comes to their relief.
Many of the cellars are used as lodging-houses. These are known to the police as “Bed Houses.” In company with Captain Allaire and Detective Finn, the writer once made a tour of inspection through these establishments. One of them shall serve as a specimen. Descending through a rickety