The City That Was E-Book

Smith

• Herausgeber: Science & Technology Publishing
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 155

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The City That Was: A Requiem of Old San Francisco by Will Irwin is a vivid, evocative memoir that captures the spirit, character, and unique charm of San Francisco before the devastating earthquake and fire of 1906. Through a series of personal recollections, anecdotes, and keen observations, Irwin paints a portrait of a city teeming with life, diversity, and eccentricity. He delves into the bustling streets, the colorful neighborhoods, and the vibrant social scene, bringing to life the bohemian artists, ambitious entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens who gave San Francisco its distinctive flavor. Irwin’s narrative is both nostalgic and poignant, as he mourns the loss of a city that was not only a place but a living, breathing entity with its own soul. He explores the city’s history, its rapid growth during the Gold Rush, and the unique blend of cultures that shaped its identity. The book is filled with rich descriptions of iconic landmarks, lively saloons, and the fog-shrouded hills that defined the city’s landscape. At its heart, The City That Was is a love letter to a vanished world, a testament to the resilience and spirit of San Francisco’s people, and a meditation on the impermanence of cities and the memories they hold. Irwin’s lyrical prose and deep affection for his subject make this book an essential read for anyone interested in the history of San Francisco, urban life, or the enduring power of memory.

Leseprobe

Transcriber’s Note

Cover created by Transcriber, using an illustration from the original book, and placed in the Public Domain.

THE CITY THAT WAS

PUBLIC SCHOOL ADJOINING SLAUGHTER-PEN, 1865

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 ALLABENNumber Three West Forty-Second Street, New York

Copyright, 1911, by Frank Allaben

To the Memory ofDorman 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.

THE CITY THAT WAS

NOTE BY THE PUBLISHER

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

I A Blind Metropolis and Her Dying Children

II A Great Awakening in England

III The Awakening in America

IV New York, the Unclean

V Victory

VI The Legal Work of Dorman Bridgeman Eaton

VII The Occult Power of Filth

VIII A Closing Word

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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

I

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

II

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

IV

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

V

Victory

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

VI

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

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

IA 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 Healthy or Unhealthy: Which? 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, Two Centuries and a Half Unhealthy 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 A Plague-Stricken Town 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.

With the immigrant, came typhus and typhoid fevers, which resistlessly swept through the tenement houses, decimating the poverty-stricken tenants. At intervals, the great oriental plague, Asiatic cholera, swooped down upon the city with fatal energy and gathered its enormous harvest of dead. Even “Yellow Fever,” the great pestilence of the tropics, made occasional incursions and found a most congenial field for its operations.

Failure to improve the unhealthy conditions of the city, and the tendency to aggravate them by a large increase of the tenement-house population, offensive trades, accumulations of domestic waste, and the filth of streets, stables, and privy Enormous Sacrifice of Life pits, then universal, caused an enormous sacrifice of life, especially among children. This fact is strikingly illustrated by the following comparison of figures taken from the official records.

The standard ratio of deaths to the total living in a community, where the death-rate is normal under proper sanitary conditions, has been fixed by competent authority at about 15 in 1,000 of population. The death-rate in New York, in the five years preceding 1866, averaged 38 in 1,000 population, which is 23 in excess of the normal standard of 15 in the 1,000. In a city with a population of 1,000,000, the estimated population of New York in 1865, a death-rate of 38 in the 1,000 means 23,000 deaths annually from preventable diseases.

Mortality statistics computed on a scale of forty years, the period during which New York has been under an intelligent sanitary government, still more impressively show the former waste of life through municipal neglect of the elementary principles of public hygiene. The lesson which these figures teach should be engraven on the memory of every man, woman, and child. Our authority is the annual report of the Department of Health of the City of New York, for the year 1908, in which appears the following statement.

“A remarkable decrease in the death-rate has taken place within the past forty years, a decrease comparing each decennial rate with the one immediately preceding represented by seven, seven, and eighteen per cent respectively, and comparing that of the first decennium with the individual year under review, a decrease of forty-seven per cent.”

IIA Great Awakening in England

Cholera was approaching the shores of England. The alarm of the people was intense. The enormous devastations of that pestilence on its first and only previous visit to that country, in 1832, were vividly recalled by The Scourge of 1849 the elder people. The only known preventive measures were “flight, fasting, and prayer.” As the pestilence was believed to be a “visitation of God” on account of the sins of the people, the clergy petitioned the Prime Minister to proclaim a day of “fasting and prayer,” with many expressions of sorrow at the prevailing national vices which had finally provoked the wrath of the Almighty. The Prime Minister replied in substance as follows:

“Do works meet for repentance. First make your homes and their surroundings clean and wholesome; then you may with propriety ask Almighty God to bless your efforts at protection against the approaching epidemic.”

This response of the highest official of the Kingdom to the usually humble and devout petition of the clergy, when the people were threatened with an epidemic, was received with profound astonishment by the religious classes, with ridicule by the masses of the people, but with commendation by sanitarians. The popular agitation was great. The clergy protested with solemn asseverations their belief that pestilences were always indications that national sins had become intolerable to the Almighty, and only fastings and prayers could appease His wrath.

The people at large gave no heed either to the clergy’s admonition to fast and pray, or to the Prime Minister’s advice to clean their homes and their surroundings; but, with their usual disregard of the domestic diseases with which they were constantly familiar, gave no thought to approaching danger. But the sanitarians very earnestly urged the people of their respective localities to act upon the advice of the Prime Minister, assuring them that cholera was a disease which prevailed more generally and severely in localities and homes where there was the greatest amount of “filth.”

The epidemic of 1849 came and went with its apparent usual great disturbances of the people. “Flight” and “fasting and prayers” had their natural results, the former being effectual when undertaken in time, and the latter without sensible influence over the mortuary records.

Then the net results of this visitation of cholera were officially determined by the Registrar-General, one fact attracted wide attention and created a profound and lasting impression on the minds of the common people. A town in the interior Can Diseases Be Prevented? of England reported no case of cholera, though the epidemic had prevailed with great virulence in the communities surrounding it.

On inquiry as to the cause of this remarkable feature of a pestilence that hitherto had shown no respect for persons or localities, it was learned that certain citizens of this town were deeply impressed with the reasonableness of the Prime Minister’s suggestions, and had organized and taken action accordingly. Volunteer committees composed of the leading men and women were selected. One was to secure thorough cleaning of the streets and public places; another was to cause an inspection of every residence and its surroundings and secure complete cleanliness; a third was to obtain reports of all cases of sickness and require immediate isolation and treatment when there was the slightest symptom of cholera.

This town had its “fastings and prayers,” but not until its citizens had done works meet for repentance; and then it asked the divine blessing on its efforts to protect itself—and its prayers were abundantly answered.

But there was another phase of this place’s experience not less impressive than its escape from cholera. There was a great diminution of such diseases as diphtheria, typhoid, erysipelas, scarlet fever, measles, and other low forms of sickness, so fatal in the homes of the poor, during the period that the citizens exercised so much care in securing cleanliness.

“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.” A word fitly spoken broke the spell of centuries, and completely revolutionized human history. That word was spoken, not at the suggestion of science, nor by a The Word Fitly Spoken scientist, but, at the dictation of common sense, by a layman who happened to be in authority. It was a plain, simple word, which was understood by the people and which appealed to their common sense.

A new era now dawned upon the domestic life of the English people. Every household learned that cleanliness had not only saved a town from a visitation of cholera, but had reduced the contagious and infectious diseases always present in their homes. The Health Officer of England gave tremendous force to the revelation that had been made by officially characterizing and classifying cholera and the whole brood of domestic scourges as “filth diseases.” This was a most happy term, because it suggested not only the source of these diseases, but the simple and effectual remedy that every householder could apply. It became popular in the sanitary literature of the period, and thus permeated all classes, until the most humble family knew its import and complied with its suggestion.

The next visitation of cholera to England was met by the simple remedy of domestic and civic cleanliness; and so manifestly effectual was this measure that the pestilence lost its former terrors. But the great and lasting gain to the people, which grew out of the original proclamation of the Prime Minister that cleanliness of the home and its surroundings was the best preventive of cholera, was the discovery of the fact that nearly all diseases which afflict the individual family, and in a larger sense the whole community, have their origin in or are intensified by decomposing waste matter, the “filth” of the sanitarian, in and around their homes.

So profoundly impressed with this fact were the laboring classes, and so earnest did they become in their zeal for sanitation, that sanitary measures entered into the political campaign. On one occasion a prominent candidate was so disturbed by the numerous inquiries which the audience made as to his views in relation to current questions of local sanitation, that he cried out in despair, “Sanitas sanitatum, et omnia sanitas!”