REGION OF BONE-BOILING AND SWILL-MILK NUISANCES, 1865
In certain populous sections are fat-boiling, entrails-cleansing, and tripe-curing establishments, which poison the air for squares around with their stifling emanations. To these must be added hundreds of uncleaned stables, immense manure heaps, etc., etc. But I shall not dwell further on these subjects, and the evidence regarding them.
I pass from the consideration of the external to the internal domiciliary conditions. The poorer classes of New York are found living either in cellars or in tenement houses. It is estimated by the City Inspector that 18,000 persons live in cellars. This Cellar Population—
Dens of Death is also about the estimate of the police. The apartments of these people are not the light and airy basement rooms of the better class houses, but their homes are, in the worst sense, cellars. These dark, damp and dreary abodes are seldom penetrated by a ray of sunlight, or enlivened by a breath of fresh air. I will quote several descriptions from these reports. In the Fourth Ward many of these cellars are below tide water. Says the Inspector of that district:
“This submarine region is not only excessively damp, but is liable to sudden inroads from the sea. At high tide the water often wells up through the floors, submerging them to a considerable depth. In very many cases the vaults of privies are situated on the same or a higher level, and their contents frequently ooze through the walls into the occupied apartments beside them. Fully one-fourth of these subterranean domiciles are pervaded by a most offensive odor from this source, and rendered exceedingly unwholesome as human habitations. These are the places in which we most frequently meet with typhoid fever and dysentery during the summer months. I estimate the amount of sickness of all kinds affecting the residents of basements and cellars, compared with that occurring among an equal number of the inhabitants of floors above ground, as being about a ratio of 3 to 2.”
The Inspector of the Fifteenth Ward reports: “In a dark and damp cellar, about 18 feet square and 7 feet high, lived a family of seven persons; within the past year two have died of typhus, two of smallpox, and one has been sent to the hospital with erysipelas. The tops of the windows of this abode are below the level of the surface, and in the court near are several privies and a rear tenant-house. Yet this occurred but a short distance from the very heart of the city.”
TRANSVERSE SECTIONAL VIEW OF ROOKERY BETWEEN BROADWAY AND BOWERY, 1865
In its dark, damp cellar, 18 feet square by 7 high, lived 7 persons
L, Living Room; D, Dormitory
The Inspector of the Ninth Ward writes: “At Nos. —, —, — and — Hammond Street, and also at No. — Washington Street, are inhabited cellars, the ceilings of which are below the level of the street, inaccessible to the rays of the sun, and always damp and dismal. Three of them are flooded at every heavy rain, and require to be baled out. They are let at a somewhat smaller rent than is asked for apartments on an upper floor, and are rented by those to whom poverty leaves no choice. They are rarely vacant.”