The Inspector of the Twentieth Ward says: “During my inspection I reported a number which were filled, and at the same time in such need of repair as to hazard the lives of those who entered them. The proximity of these places to the houses in many cases is a fact to which I would call your attention. One instance of this kind I may state: At a house in Fortieth Street, between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, the privy is situated about 10 feet from the door, and there is another on a line 10 feet from the first, and still another within 10 feet of the last mentioned, making three privies within 30 feet, and two of these belong to houses fronting on Broadway. The offensive odor arising from these places contaminates the air of the houses in the vicinity. This house, in Fortieth Street, is actually unfit to live in. At the time of my inspection the noxious gases from these privies were strongly perceptible in every part of the house.”
The Inspector of the Seventeenth Ward reports: “The privies are in most cases in the rear court-yard. In about two-thirds of the houses the privies are connected with the sewer. Overflowing privies are frequently found. Sometimes they are located in a dark place, which in all cases must be considered an evil. Such is the case in some houses in Rivington, Stanton, Ninth and Eldridge streets. All these places are filthy, and exceedingly offensive and dangerous to the whole neighborhood; in some places the foundation of the privies being rotten and broken, and fæcal matter runs into the cellar, as in No. — ‘Extra Place,’ where diseases and deaths have occurred. The contents of a privy in a court at No. — Fifth Street have, from a similar cause, saturated the yard of premises on the Bowery, where several children died during the summer.”
I will at this point simply allude to special nuisances. New York has within the narrow limits of its present occupied area of about eight square miles, in addition to its one million of people, and all its commercial and manufacturing Special
Nuisances establishments, a vast number of special nuisances, which are, to a greater or less degree, detrimental to its public health. There are nearly 200 slaughter-houses, many of which are in the most densely populated districts. To these places droves of cattle, hogs, and sheep are constantly driven, rendering the streets filthy in the extreme, and from them flow blood and refuse of the most disgusting character.
SLAUGHTER-PENS IN REAR OF TENANT-HOUSES IN THE ELEVENTH WARD, 1865
SIXTH STREET CATTLE MARKET, 1865
REGION OF HIDE-CURING, FAT-GATHERING, FAT AND SOAP BOILING, AND SLAUGHTER-PENS, BEHIND THE BOWERY SHOPPING HOUSES, 1865
