“The Biddle Alley district, of all sections of the city, holds the record for the tuberculosis death rate. In the year 1906 eight deaths from tuberculosis occurred in families known to the agent of the Federated Charities, and according to the statement made a short time ago by a Health Department official, there is not a house on Biddle Alley in which there has not been at least one case of tuberculosis.” “From morning until midnight the beer can circulates with a regularity that is almost monotonous.” “Another striking characteristic of the occupants of this district is what appears to be in many cases an entirely undeveloped moral sense.” “Gambling is also prevalent and there is reason to believe that the cocaine habit hastens the decay of many of these degenerates.” As to the sanitary conditions, the report states further: “Of the two hundred and fifteen houses in the Biddle Alley district, seventy-one had leaking roofs.” “Dirty, dark, damp and dilapidated are adjectives that fairly describe nearly two-thirds of the four hundred and thirty-eight basements and cellars included in the investigation.” “In several cellars in the Biddle Alley district the surface drainage from the adjoining alley or street was found to be oozing through the foundation walls.” “A basement apartment in the Biddle Alley district had no light or ventilation except that afforded by a window 3½ feet square in area, placed so high in the wall that it was necessary to stand on a chair to take measurements. The walls and ceiling of this dungeon-like apartment were damp and in bad repair. From the physical condition of the occupant it seemed likely he was suffering from tuberculosis in its incipient stage.” One of the most conspicuous features of the houses lining the small streets and alleys in the lower Druid Hill Avenue district were the stacks of washing, tons of which are gathered weekly from the best homes of the city, to be laundered in this neighborhood reeking with filth, infected with tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, and presenting the most unwholesome conditions from which the family wash could possibly be sent home. And yet hundreds of white families are in this way subjecting the members of their households to these great dangers.