The City That Was

by Stephen Smith

The progress of the race is largely affected in each generation by a few pioneers who, with toil and sacrifice, prepare the way for the advance. Of these pioneers some blaze the future course in the unexplored and Unrecognized
Pioneers trackless forest; others remove the obstructions which impede the builders; while a few expert engineers bridge the rivers, tunnel the mountains and lay broad and deep the foundations of the great highway along which humanity passes to a higher civilization. Unfortunately these pioneers are not always known to public fame, and far too often, though benefactors of their race, pass away without a proper recognition of their services.

This apparent neglect is not due to a lack of appreciation of their work by the people, but rather to the fact that their labors are performed in obscurity, and hence are unknown. Far in the wilderness, or deep in the tunnel, or in the mire of the caisson, they toil all unseen by their generation, sacrificing health and often life while searching for the true pathway or laying its foundations. When the bridges are builded, the tunnels completed, and the broad highway is thrown open for travel and traffic, few or none of the passing throng give a moment’s thought to the labors and sacrifices of the builders, or the tribute of a sigh to the memory of those who perished at their work.

Impressed with a sense of public obligation and of a duty to the memory of a citizen with whose labors and sacrifices in the interests of this city I had great opportunities to become familiar, it has been a grateful task to place on record some of the incidents in the life of Hon. Dorman B. Eaton as they came under my personal observation. He was by nature, education, and association a reformer of the civil administration. Born and bred in the rural communities of Vermont, educated at Harvard, a partner of the famous Judge Kent, of this city, and an associate of men of the type of William Curtis Noyes, Charles O’Conor, and others of equal reputation, Mr. Eaton was admirably equipped for the great work to which he devoted so much of his life and energies.

Nor was he a reformer whose methods were simply destructive of what he regarded as wrong or evil in the municipal government; on the contrary, his mind was eminently constructive, A Constructive
Reformer and consequently he sought to remedy defects by substituting the new and best for the old and worst with as little friction and disturbance as possible. Thus he quietly and without observation, as a master builder, laid foundations and reared the massive superstructures of four of the best-organized and most efficient departments of our city government—viz., the Department of Health, the Fire Department, the Department of Docks, the Police Judiciary.

My personal acquaintance with Mr. Eaton began in the year 1864, when we became associated in an effort to secure reforms in the sanitary government of the City of New York. Although prior to this date there had been periods of agitation in favor of a more Character of Previous
Agitation efficient health organization, especially when epidemics, like cholera, visited the city and the utter worthlessness of our health officials became apparent, yet there had been no such organized effort as that of 1864. Previous agitation had, however, been very useful in preparing the way for the final struggle, by creating a popular interest in these reforms and in rendering the public mind both sympathetic and receptive.

In 1855 the Academy of Medicine applied to the Legislature for relief from the evils of an insufficient health organization, and as a result a committee of that body investigated the sanitary condition of the city. It appeared that Incompetent
Health Officers there were four separate departments devoted to the conservation of the public health. First, was the Board of Health, composed of the Aldermen and Mayor. When this body was organized as a Board of Health it had supreme power, both in the abatement of nuisances and the expenditure of money. So much and so justly was this board feared, that Fernando Wood, while Mayor, refused to call it into existence during an epidemic of cholera, declaring that the Board of Health was more to be feared than the pestilence.

Second, was the Commissioners of Health, composed of the Mayor and the Recorder, the City Inspector, the Health Commissioner, the Resident Physician, and the Port Health Officer. This body had no adequate power and was perfectly useless both for good and evil.

Third, was the Resident Physician, whose duties were limited to visiting the sick poor.

Fourth, was the City Inspector, a most formidable official politically, for he had the right to expend annually $1,000,000 without “let or hindrance.” His jurisdiction extended to the cleaning of the street, gathering vital statistics, and preserving the public health by the appointment of health wardens for each ward.

The investigation showed that this department, the only one which actually exercised public health functions, was permeated with corruption, ignorance, and venality. The City Inspector was the lowest type of ward politician, the vital statistics were crude and unreliable, there was no pretense of cleaning the streets, and the health wardens were for the most part keepers of saloons. It was shown in the evidence that no health warden ever dared to visit a house where there was a case of contagious disease. One, who was asked the best method of preventing smallpox, replied: “Burn sulphur in the room.” Another, asked to define the term “hygiene,” said: “It is a mist rising from wet grounds.”