Note 10 — Chapter II

“Every room in these rotten, damp, fetid houses is occupied by one, and often by two families. A sanitary inspector reports that he found in a cellar a man, his wife, three children, and four hogs. In another room a missionary found a man sick with small-pox, his wife just recovering from child-birth, and the children half naked and covered with dirt. Here seven persons live in a cellar-kitchen, and a dead child lies between the living. In another room a poor widow was living with three children, and one child who had already been dead thirteen days. Her husband, a cab-driver, had committed suicide a short time before.—Here lives a widow and her six children, including a daughter of 29, another of 21, and a son of 27. Another room contains father, mother, and six children, of whom two are sick with scarlet fever. In another live, eat, and sleep nine brothers and sisters from 29 years old down. Here is a mother who sends her children out on the street from early evening till late after midnight, because she rents her room during this time for immoral purposes. Afterwards the poor worms may creep back to their dwelling if they have not found some scanty shelter elsewhere. Where there is a bed it consists of nothing but a heap of dirty rags, refuse, or straw, but mostly there is not even this, and the miserable beings lie upon the dirty floor. The renter of this room is a widow, who takes the only bed herself and sublets the floor to a married couple for two shillings sixpence a week.”10