The City That Was

by Stephen Smith

With the failure of this appeal to the owner, I had exhausted, apparently, every legal and moral means of abating a nuisance dangerous to life and detrimental to health.

In this extremity I visited the office of the Evening Post and explained the matter to Mr. William Cullen Bryant, then editor of that newspaper. He was at once interested in the failure of the power of the City Government to Fear of
Publicity remedy such a flagrant evil. In the absence of laws and ordinances, Mr. Bryant proposed to make the case public in all of its details, and for that purpose suggested that the police should cause the arrest of the delinquent owner, and he would send a reporter to make notes of the case. A charge was made against the landlord, and he was required to appear at the Jefferson Market Court. On entering the court he was confronted by the reporter, pad and pencil in hand, who pressed him with questions as to his tenement house.

Greatly alarmed at his situation, the owner inquired as to the purpose of the reporter, and was informed that Mr. Bryant intended to publish the proceedings of the court in the Evening Post, and to expose his maintenance of a fever nest of the worst description. He begged that no further proceedings be taken, and promised the court that he would immediately make all necessary improvements. He promptly vacated the house, and made such a thorough reconstruction of the entire establishment that it became one of the most attractive tenements in that East Side district. For many years that house continued to be entirely free from the ordinary contagious diseases of the tenement houses of the city. It is an interesting fact that the landlord subsequently thanked the writer for having compelled him to improve his tenement house; for he had secured first-class tenants who paid him high rents.

This incident came to the attention of several prominent citizens, physicians, lawyers, and clergymen, who became profoundly impressed with the revelation that there were no laws under which such a glaring violation of the simplest principles of health, and Agitation for
Reform even of common decency, could be at once corrected.

For many years there had been a growing sentiment in favor of a reform of our health regulations, stimulated by the writings of Dr. John H. Griscom, Dr. Joseph M. Smith, Dr. Elisha Harris, and others, and the Academy of Medicine had occasionally passed resolutions favoring adequate health laws; but no results had been secured.

It was now resolved to organize a society devoted expressly to sanitary reform, and the “Sanitary Association” came into existence. For several years this body annually introduced a health bill into the Legislature, but the measure was regularly defeated through the active opposition of the City Inspector, whose office would be abolished if the bill became a law.

In the early sixties the famous “Citizens Association” was organized, with Peter Cooper as President, and a membership of one hundred of the most prominent citizens. This was in the days of the Tweed régime, and at a period when the City Government was The Citizens
Association most completely in his power. The objects of the Association were reform in all branches of the Municipal Government, the promotion of wise legislation, and the defeat of all attempts to subordinate the city to the schemes for control by Tweed and the coterie of politicians who were under his directions.

The friends of sanitary reform decided to attempt to secure proper legislation through the Citizens Association. The application, by a delegation, for the aid of this Association was well received and a plan of procedure adopted. The secretary of the Citizens Association, Mr. Nathaniel Sands, had been a member of the Sanitary Association, and as an enthusiastic sanitarian had been disappointed at its repeated failure to secure legislation. At his suggestion, it was decided to create two committees, one on health and another on law, and through these agencies to have the Citizens Association accomplish its work. The first committee eventually came under my direction, while the second was directed by Dorman B. Eaton, Esq.

In the Committee on Public Health were many of the more prominent medical men of that period, as Dr. Valentine Mott, Dr. Joseph M. Smith, Dr. James R. Wood, Prof. John W. Draper, Dr. Willard Parker, Dr. Isaac E. Taylor. The Committee on Law was equally distinguished for its membership, having on its list the names of William M. Evarts, Charles Tracy, D. B. Silliman.

It was determined, as a preliminary step, to prepare a “Health Bill” and introduce it into the Legislature, which was that of 1864, and thus learn the obstacles to be met; for efforts had repeatedly been made to pass health bills A Health
Bill without success. The bill was drawn along the lines of previous bills, and was altogether inadequate in its provisions to effect the required reforms. The effort, however, developed the fact that the real opposition to health legislation was the City Inspector’s Department. As that department exercised all of the health powers, any proper health bill would abolish it altogether.