The Inspector of the Seventeenth Ward reports: “The privies are in most cases in the rear court-yard. In about two-thirds of the houses the privies are connected with the sewer. Overflowing privies are frequently found. Sometimes they are located in a dark place, which in all cases must be considered an evil. Such is the case in some houses in Rivington, Stanton, Ninth and Eldridge streets. All these places are filthy, and exceedingly offensive and dangerous to the whole neighborhood; in some places the foundation of the privies being rotten and broken, and fæcal matter runs into the cellar, as in No. -- ‘Extra Place,’ where diseases and deaths have occurred. The contents of a privy in a court at No. -- Fifth Street have, from a similar cause, saturated the yard of premises on the Bowery, where several children died during the summer.” [Sidenote: Special Nuisances] I will at this point simply allude to special nuisances. New York has within the narrow limits of its present occupied area of about eight square miles, in addition to its one million of people, and all its commercial and manufacturing establishments, a vast number of special nuisances, which are, to a greater or less degree, detrimental to its public health. There are nearly 200 slaughter-houses, many of which are in the most densely populated districts. To these places droves of cattle, hogs, and sheep are constantly driven, rendering the streets filthy in the extreme, and from them flow blood and refuse of the most disgusting character. [Illustration: SLAUGHTER-PENS IN REAR OF TENANT-HOUSES IN THE ELEVENTH WARD, 1865] [Illustration: SIXTH STREET CATTLE MARKET, 1865] [Illustration: REGION OF HIDE-CURING, FAT-GATHERING, FAT AND SOAP BOILING, AND SLAUGHTER-PENS, BEHIND THE BOWERY SHOPPING HOUSES, 1865] [Illustration: REGION OF BONE-BOILING AND SWILL-MILK NUISANCES, 1865] In certain populous sections are fat-boiling, entrails-cleansing, and tripe-curing establishments, which poison the air for squares around with their stifling emanations. To these must be added hundreds of uncleaned stables, immense manure heaps, etc., etc. But I shall not dwell further on these subjects, and the evidence regarding them. [Sidenote: Cellar Population--Dens of Death] I pass from the consideration of the external to the internal domiciliary conditions. The poorer classes of New York are found living either in cellars or in tenement houses. It is estimated by the City Inspector that 18,000 persons live in cellars. This is also about the estimate of the police. The apartments of these people are not the light and airy basement rooms of the better class houses, but their homes are, in the worst sense, cellars. These dark, damp and dreary abodes are seldom penetrated by a ray of sunlight, or enlivened by a breath of fresh air. I will quote several descriptions from these reports. In the Fourth Ward many of these cellars are below tide water. Says the Inspector of that district: