door-way, we passed into a room about sixteen feet square and eight feet high. At one end was a stove in which a fire burned feebly, and close by a small kerosene lamp on a table dimly lighted the room. An old hag, who had lost the greater part of her nose, and whose face was half hidden by the huge frill of the cap she wore, sat rocking herself in a rickety chair by the table. The room was more than half in the shadow, and the air was so dense and foul that I could scarcely breathe. By the dim light I could see that a number of filthy straw mattresses were ranged on the floor along the wall. Above these were wooden bunks, like those of a barracks, filled with dirty beds and screened by curtains. The room was capable of accommodating at least twenty persons, and I was told that the hag in the chair, who was the proprietress, was “a good hand at packing her lodgers well together.” It was early, but several of the beds were occupied. The curtains were drawn in some cases, and we could not see the occupants. In one, however, was a child, but little more than a baby, as plump and ruddy, and as fair-skinned and pretty as though it had been the child of a lady of wealth. The little one was sleeping soundly, and, by a common instinct, we gathered about its bed, and watched it in silence.
“It is too pretty a child for such a place,” said one of the party.
I glanced at Detective Finn. His face wore a troubled expression.
“A man becomes hardened to the sights I see,” he said in answer to my glance, “but I can scarcely keep the tears from my eyes when I see a child like this in such a place; for, you see, I know what a life it is growing up to.”
This wretched place Mr. Finn told us was one of the best of all the bed houses. He proved his assertion by conducting us to one out of which we beat a hasty retreat. The night air never seemed so pure to me as it did as I came out of the vile den into the clear starlight. I could scarcely breathe in the fearful hole we had just been in, and yet it was rapidly filling up with people who were to pass the night there. There were men,
women and children, but they were all huddled together in one room. There was no such thing as privacy. Some of the lodgers were simply unfortunate, some were vagrants, and others were criminals.
I do not believe that all the sanitary measures in the world could ever make these places clean or healthy. The atmosphere is always too foul and dense to be breathed by any but lungs accustomed to it. When the cellars are crowded with lodgers, and the heat of the stove adds to the poison, it must be appalling. The poor wretches who seek shelter here are more than half stupefied by it, and pass the night in this condition instead of in a healthful sleep. They pay from ten to twenty-five cents for their lodgings, and if they desire a supper or breakfast, are given a cup of coffee and a piece of bread, or a bowl of soup for a similar sum.
As a matter of course only vagrants and those who have gone down into the depths of poverty come here. They must choose between the cellars and the streets, and the beds offered them here are warmer and softer than the stones of the street.
“Have we seen the worst?” I asked Mr. Finn, as we came out of the last place.
“No,” he replied, “there are worse places yet. But I’ll not take you there.”