Eaton, Dorman B. (Dorman Bridgman), 1823-1899; Public health -- New York (State) -- New York; Sanitation -- New York (State) -- New York
The universal testimony of the sanitary inspectors is that in all
portions of the city occupied by the poorer classes, the streets are in
the same filthy condition as that described by the City Inspector, and,
that street filth is one of the most fruitful causes of disease.
[Sidenote: Street Filth and Disease]
Says the Inspector of the Eighth Ward: “Laurens, Wooster, Clark, and
Sullivan are in a most filthy condition, giving off insalubrious
emanations on which depend the many cases of fever, cholera infantum,
dysentery, and pulmonary diseases. I have observed that near where
other streets cross the above-named streets there is a greater
proportionate amount of sickness; and this fact I have shown by special
reports of typhus and typhoid fever in Grand and Broome, and dysentery
in Spring.”
The Inspector of the Sixth Ward says: “Domestic garbage and filth
of every kind is thrown into the streets, covering their surface,
filling the gutters, obstructing the sewer culverts, and sending forth
perennial emanations which must generate pestiferous disease. In winter
the filth and garbage, etc., accumulate in the streets, to the depth
sometimes of two or three feet. The garbage boxes are a perpetual
source of nuisance in the streets, filth and offal being thrown all
around them, pools of filthy water in many instances remaining in the
gutters, and having their source in the garbage boxes.”
The Inspector of the Seventh Ward says: “The whole most easterly
portion of the district, the streets and gutters are very filthy with
mud, ashes, garbage, etc.”
The Inspector of the Thirteenth Ward says: “The streets are generally
in a filthy and unwholesome condition; especially in front of the
tenant-houses, from which the garbage and slops are, to a great
extent, thrown into the streets, where they putrefy, rendering the air
offensive to the smell and deleterious to health. The refuse of the
bedrooms of those sick with typhoid and scarlet fevers and smallpox is
frequently thrown into the streets, there to contaminate the air, and,
no doubt, aid in the spread of those pestilential diseases.”
Says the Inspector of the Ninth Ward: “The effect of dirty streets
upon the public health is too well known, and too often insisted upon,
to need any exposition in this report. The largest number of cases of
cholera infantum, cholera morbus, and kindred disease, is always found
in localities where the streets are dirtiest.”
The Inspector of the Seventeenth Ward writes: “The two following
localities present the appearance of dung-hills rather than the
thoroughfares in a civilized city, viz.: Sixth Street, between Bowery
and Second Avenue, and Eleventh Street, between First and Second
Avenues.”
[Sidenote: Animals Dead]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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