The City That Was

by Stephen Smith

As the City Inspector with his health wardens always appeared at Albany when a health bill was before the Legislature, denying vociferously the alleged unsanitary condition of the city, Mr. Eaton advised that the Association make a careful inspection of the The Fight for
the Bill city with its own inspectors. This inspection was organized by the Council of Hygiene and prosecuted during the summer of 1864 by young physicians, and was the most exhaustive study of the sanitary condition ever made of a city, even by officials. The results were published in a large volume which has been pronounced by authorities at home and abroad as equal to the best official reports of European cities.

The bill was early introduced into the Legislature of 1865. In due time it came before a joint committee of both houses, with Senator Andrew D. White in the chair. The City Inspector, with his health wardens, was present, and a large attendance of members with several prominent citizens of New York. At Mr. Eaton’s request I described the deplorable sanitary condition of the city as revealed by our inspections and explained the medical features of the bill. He followed with a brilliant and exhaustive speech on the nature of sanitary legislation and the value to cities of adequate health laws administered by well-organized boards of health.

At the conclusion of the hearing the members of the committee assured us that if the two houses were in session they would pass the bill at once. But we were doomed to disappointment. The City Inspector secured delays, and meantime employed through his agents the means at his command to defeat the bill. The agitation, however, was continued during the year, chiefly through the New York Times, then under the management of Mr. Raymond, an ardent reformer.

Mr. Eaton advised the Medical Council to interest the physicians of the country, and especially urge them not to nominate men who had voted against the bill in the last Legislature. This plan was carried out, and seventeen former members failed A Law Enacted
and Sustained of renomination to the Assembly. The result of this scheme succeeded admirably, for the new Legislature was to some extent pledged to support the bill when they came to the capitol. The bill promptly passed both houses early in the session of 1866, and in March the Metropolitan Board of Health was organized. Mr. Eaton accepted the position of counsellor to the board, which position he retained several years.

As he had anticipated, a suit against the Board was early commenced to test the constitutionality of the law. He was very apprehensive of the results, and made the most thorough preparation to argue the case. He was successful in the lower courts, and finally won in the Court of Appeals by a majority of one. He always regarded his success in the management of this case as one of the most important events of his life, for on the decision of the highest court depended the fate of health legislation in this country.

No one unfamiliar with the sanitary condition of this city prior to 1864 can form any adequate conception of the enormous benefits conferred, not only upon this metropolis, but upon the entire country, by the labors of Mr. Eaton and his associates in The Regeneration
of New York securing to it the Metropolitan Health Law. During the former period New York was a prey to every form of pestilence known to man. Smallpox, the most preventable of contagious diseases, was epidemic in this city every five years, and created a large death-rate among the children. Scarlet fever and diphtheria spread through the city without the slightest effort on the part of the officials to control them. Cholera visited us once in ten years without any adequate measures of prevention. The mortality was greater than of any other city of a civilized country, it being estimated that 7,000 died yearly from preventable diseases.

The tenement-house population lived under the most unhealthy and degrading conditions, a prey to greedy landlords, and without any possible relief or redress. In one notorious building, which covered an ordinary city lot, were fifty families, with a total population of five hundred persons.

Here every form of domestic pestilence could be found at all seasons of the year. Still more deplorable was the condition of the tenants of cellars. Of these so-called “Troglodytes” there were 5,000 living in rooms the ceilings of which were below the level of the surface of the street.

To the present generation it may appear incredible that there was neither law, ordinance, nor department of the city government capable of giving the slightest relief. This was illustrated in an attempt to break up a fever nest in 1860. The landlord refused to make the slightest repairs, or cleansing, in a tenement house from which upwards of one hundred cases of fever have been removed to the hospital.

The attorney to the Police Department was unable to find any law or ordinance by which he could be compelled to cleanse, repair, or vacate the house. It was only by confronting him in court, to which he had been brought on a fictitious charge, with a reporter, that he was induced to take any steps to improve the tenement.