Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 February 1893 — Health and Squalor. [ARTICLE]

Health and Squalor.

“Appearances are sometimes deceptive and popular impressions erroneous,” said Dr. Tracy, of the Health Department, to me. “Wlmt now?” I asked.

“I had a friend, u physician from Connecticut, call on mo tho other day. On one of his tramps about town, he had strayed down in the Tenth ward, which is bounded by Division, Ilivington and Norfolk streets aud the Bowery. It is the banner tenement house ward of the city. There may lie a dozon houses in which less than three families live, but most of the dwellings are double-decked tenements, holding from twenty to sixty families to the house. Children swurin like beei, and it is probably the most densely populated spot in the United States, perhaps tho globe. My friend thought that the mortuary record must be frightful. i “When I told him it was about thomost healthful district in New York, and with nearly tho lowest death rate of any ward, he would scarcely believe me. Take the Nineteenth ward between. Fortieth and Eighty-sixth stroets, east of Sixth avenue, which is mainly filled with tho homes of the rich and well-to-do, the death rate is 21.82, while in the Tenth it is but 18.78. The death rate in the old* Ninth, or tho ‘village,’ which contains but comuauitively few tenements, is 28.84. Tho First, Fourth and Fourteeenth are the three most unhcalthfnll words in the city, tho rate being 35.02, 30.80 and 36.84 respectively. Id the’ Twelfth ward, which comprises all of. Manhattan Island north of Eighty-sixth) street, and which contains the largest population, having within its borders about 225,000 souls, the rate is 10.28.. “As I said, a casual observer would consider the Tenth ward the moit unbcalthful in the city owing to its crowded tenements and its geographical situation. The Twentv-flrst ward, bounded by Twenty-sixth street, Fortieth street, Sixth avenue and the East River, contains much of tho aristocratic quarter of the town, but the death rate is 26.00. In fact the Tenth ward, with its 00,090 Russian Hebrews and Germans, has’ the lowest death rate of any ward except the Third—a small ward, containing but 1,800 population, and whose death rati it 10.05. [New York Herald.