The City That Was

Part 1

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THE CITY THAT WAS

THE CITY THAT WAS

By STEPHEN SMITH, A. M., M. D., LL. D.

COMMISSIONER OF THE METROPOLITAN BOARD OF HEALTH, 1868–1870; COMMISSIONER OF THE BOARD OF HEALTH OF NEW YORK, 1870–1875

PUBLISHED BY FRANK ALLABEN NUMBER THREE WEST FORTY-SECOND STREET, NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY FRANK ALLABEN

To the Memory of Dorman Bridgman Eaton

My thanks are due especially to Mr. Frank Allaben and my son, Mr. Sidney Smith, for their service in carrying this book through the press.

STEPHEN SMITH.

NOTE BY THE PUBLISHER

The story of a great life-saving social revolution, the mightiest in the nineteenth century and one of the most momentous in the history of civilization, is told here for the first time. It is told from the standpoint of the transformation of the City of New York, by a chief actor in the event.

Only by forcing ourselves into a receptive mood can we of the present credit the half of what is set before us concerning The City That Was. The shocked imagination rebels. It seeks relief in assuming that even a trained expert, a contemporaneous witness and investigator of the conditions described, in writing after they have passed away, unconsciously yields to the historian’s temptation to throw the past into dramatic relief by starting exaggerations.

Dr. Smith, however, leaves us no room for doubt. The appalling chapter in which he lays bare the New York of 1864 is a contemporaneous document. It is a physician’s report of a systematic medical inspection of New York in that year, as delivered before a Legislative Committee a few months later by the very physician who had directed the inspection.

Nevertheless, The City That Was is not New York alone. She is but a type. Her condition, with variations, may be multiplied, during the early years of the nineteenth century, by the total of the cities, towns, and villages in the world. In the work of regeneration some of these anticipated her. Others, including all throughout the territory of the United States, were aroused through her agitation and inspired by her example.

As a student of local history, the writer thought himself familiar with the many phases of the growth of New York; but the condition of the City as late as the period of our Civil War, as here depicted, startled him as might a revelation. He believes that no seriously minded man or woman can afford to ignore this volume. We owe it to ourselves and to one another fully to face its lesson.

We shall be shocked; we shall be filled with horror; but accepting the city that now is, great as her faults may be, with a new gratitude, we shall turn with anointed sympathy and understanding to any earnest voice that pleads for the city that should be. And, indeed, other volumes which Dr. Smith himself has in preparation, as suggestive and as interesting as this one, may help us on in this direction.

FRANK ALLABEN

CONTENTS

A BLIND METROPOLIS AND HER DYING CHILDREN

Healthy or Unhealthy: Which?--Two Centuries and a Half Unhealthy--A Plague-Stricken Town--Enormous Sacrifice of Life

A GREAT AWAKENING IN ENGLAND

The Scourge of 1849--A Town That Was Immune--The Word Fitly Spoken

III

THE AWAKENING IN AMERICA

Apathy in the United States--An Incident That Counted--A Fever Nest--The Unknown Owner--Fear of Publicity--Agitation for Reform--The Citizens Association--A Health Bill--Sanitary Inspection of New York--An Anomaly in Law--Introduction of an Epoch-Making Bill

NEW YORK, THE UNCLEAN

Alarm of Medical Men--A Systematic Investigation--A House-to-House Inspection--The Medical Experts--Plan of Inspection--Each Room Examined--Period of the Inspection--Distribution of Population--Tenant-House Packing--Avoidable and Inevitable Disease--Filthy Streets--Street Filth and Disease--Dead Animals--Filthy Courts and Alleys--Cesspool Abominations-- Unbelievable Vileness--Special Nuisances--Cellar Population: Dens of Death--496 Persons Under Ground--A Visit to the Cave-Dwellers--Tenant-House Population--Cat Alley--Rag Pickers Row--Tenant-House Degeneration--The Rioters-- Tenant-House Rot--Tenant-House Cachexy--Prevailing Diseases-- Seeds of Disease Uncontrolled--Where Disease Flourishes-- Smallpox--Smallpox in Tailored Garments--Typhus Fever-- Intestinal Affections--Living at a Sewer’s Mouth--The Normal Death-Rate--Death-Rate of New York--New York, London, and Liverpool Compared--Constant Sickness--Where the Death Pressure Is Greatest--Some Scapegoats: Foreign Immigration--The Floating Population--Can the Causes of Disease Be Removed?-- Improvements During the Inspection--How to Improve the People-- Can Diseases Be Prevented?--Can Populous Towns Be Improved?-- Cleanliness Preserves from Epidemics--Importance of Sanitary Government--The Entire Country Concerned--Smallpox in a Hotel Bedroom--New York Inoculates the Nation--Inefficiency of Health Organizations--Without Sanitary Government--The City Inspector’s Department--Sanitary Inspection--Inspection Must Be Thorough--The Remedy--An Efficient Health Board

Part 2

VICTORY

Effect of the Hearing--Triumph at Last--The Reform National in Its Results

THE LEGAL WORK OF DORMAN BRIDGEMAN EATON

Unrecognized Pioneers--A Constructive Reformer--Character of Previous Agitation--Incompetent Health Officers--Reform Movement Born--The Right Man--A Board with Extraordinary Powers--The Fight for the Bill--A Law Enacted and Sustained-- The Regeneration of New York--Epidemics Checked--Sanitation in Other Cities--Reorganization of the Fire Department--Creation of a Dock Department--Reform of the Police Judiciary--Mental Traits of Dorman B. Eaton

VII

THE OCCULT POWER OF FILTH

Filth Diseases--The Scheme of Sanitation Changed--The Mystery of Infection--How Infection Works--What the Germ Is--The Function of Bacteria--Bacteria for Every Condition--The Deadly Tubercle Bacillus--How Bacteria Affect the Body--The Toxin Secreted-- Bacteria Aim to Destroy the Body--Man’s Defenses--Destroy the Bacteria--The Value of Germicides

VIII

A CLOSING WORD

Cleanliness Next to Godliness--Invisible Agencies in Filth--A Higher Civilization

ILLUSTRATIONS

PUBLIC SCHOOL ADJOINING SLAUGHTER-PEN, 1865 Frontispiece

PLAN OF ROOKERY HOLDING 1000 PERSONS 60

A CROWDED SECTION OF THE CITY 61

A TENANT-HOUSE CUL-DE-SAC NEAR CITY HALL 70

CUL-DE-SAC NEAR SLAUGHTER-HOUSE AND STABLES 71

PLAN OF CELLAR--“WORSE THAN A STYGIAN PIT” 73

SLAUGHTER-PENS IN REAR OF TENANT-HOUSES 77

SIXTH STREET CATTLE MARKET, 1865 78

REGION OF HIDE-CURING, FAT-GATHERING, ETC. 79

REGION OF BONE-BOILING AND SWILL-MILK NUISANCES 80

PLAN OF ROOKERY BETWEEN BROADWAY AND BOWERY 83

PLAN OF CELLAR OCCUPIED BY TWO FAMILIES 85

PLAN SHOWING REAR TENANT-HOUSES NEAR A STABLE 89

RIVINGTON PLACE, 1865 92

GOTHAM COURT, CHERRY STREET, 1865 95

TRANSVERSE SECTIONAL ELEVATION OF GOTHAM COURT 96

“THE GREAT EASTERN” 98

Part 3

A PERPETUAL FEVER-NEST 106

REGION OF SMALLPOX AND TYPHUS FEVER 111

PLAN OF FEVER-NEST, EAST 17TH STREET 114

BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF FEVER-NEST NEAR FIFTH AVENUE 115

PLAN OF MONROE STREET FEVER-NEST 117

A SIXTH WARD FEVER-NEST 126

PLAN OF TYPICAL FEVER-NEST, 1865 130

PLAN OF REAR CUL-DE-SAC 134

FEVER-BREEDING STRUCTURE NEAR CENTRAL PARK 139

STAGNANT WATER, CENTRAL PARK WEST 148

A BLIND METROPOLIS AND HER DYING CHILDREN

A great problem was left for the first civilized inhabitants of New York to determine. Nature had made ample provision for the metropolis of the western hemisphere. But two possibilities were attached to its occupation by man--it could be healthy or unhealthy, at the option of the people.

The conditions which made for health were: two large rivers of pure water, from the mountains and the sea, flushed its shores, carrying the outflow of its waste far away seaward; its soil could be thoroughly drained; its sewerage could be so constructed as to convey to the sea all forms of domestic waste and surface filth; its southern exposure towards the ocean insured sunlight and sea breezes; its inland situation supplied to its atmosphere the life-giving virtues of abundant vegetation; the climate was temperate.

The conditions which made for unhealthiness were: large areas of sodden marsh lands; a rock formation of shale, having a dip of the strata, nearly perpendicular, admitting the flow of surface water to great depths, thus poisoning springs and wells; numerous streams flowing into the rivers; large ponds of stagnant water; fierce summer heat.

From the year 1622 to the year 1866, a period of two hundred and forty-four years, the people elected that the city should be unhealthy. The land was practically undrained; the drinking water was from shallow wells, befouled by street, stable, privy, and other filth; there were no adequate sewers to remove the accumulating waste; the streets were the receptacles of garbage; offensive trades were located among the dwellings; the natural water courses and springs were obstructed in the construction of streets and dwellings, thus causing soakage of large areas of land, and stagnant pools of polluted water.

Later, in these centuries of neglect of sanitary precautions, came the immigrants from every nation of the world, representing for the most part the poorest and most ignorant class of their respective nationalities. This influx of people led to the construction of the tenement house by landowners, whose aim was to build so as to incur the least possible expense and accommodate the greatest possible number. In dark, unventilated, uninhabitable structures these wretched, persecuted people were herded together, in cellars and garrets, as well as in the body of the building, until New York had the largest population to a square acre of any civilized city.

The people had not only chosen to conserve all the natural conditions unfavorable to health, but had steadily added unhygienic factors in their methods of developing the city.

The result was inevitable. New York gradually became the natural home of every variety of contagious disease, and the favorite resort of foreign pestilences. Smallpox, scarlet fever, measles, diphtheria, were domestic pestilences with which the people were so familiar that they regarded them as necessary features of childhood. Malarial fevers, caused by the mosquitoes bred in the marshes, which were perfect culture-beds, were regularly announced in the autumnal months as having appeared with their “usual severity.” The “White Plague,” or consumption, was the common inheritance of the poor and rich alike.

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