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REPORT
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NITARY  INSPECTION
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LCERTAIN  TENEMENT-HOUSE  DMEICTS
            OF  BOSTON,
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           BY

   DWIGHT PORTER,

•/'-"tut Professor of Civil Engineering in the Mass. Institute
         of Technology.
   BOSTO *':
well and Churchill, 39 Arch Street.
     1889. 
 
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REPORT
A  SANITARY INSPECTION



  CEETAIN TENEMENT-HOUSE DISTEICTS
              OF  BOSTON.
           BY

    DWIGHT  PORTER,
             "i
.4ssistatt£ Professor of Civil Engineering in the Mass. Institute
         of Technology.
^
'£ ?#££#
           BOSTON:

Press of Rockwell and Churchill, 39 Arch Street.

            18 8 9. 

WAR 
*  *?  «fj
EEMAEKS  BY GENEEAL  FEANCIS A. WALKER,
      AT  THE  GENEEAL  CONFERENCE  OF
             CHAEITIES,  DEC. 6,  1888.
  Ladies and Gentlemen, — Somewhat more than a year ago
the association known as the Eighth Ward Conference of the   7^
Associated  Charities reached the conclusion that it  was  desir-
able to  undertake, outside of official agencies, an investigation
into the  sanitary  condition of their portion of our  city.   For
this purpose, an  executive committee was formed,  and means
were collected. The committee in charge consulted Prof. Dwisht
Porter, of the Institute of Technology, regarding the methods
most advantageously to be pursued in such an  investigation ;
and at their request Prof. Porter undertook the charge of the
work, which began in the summer of 1887.  Prof.  Porter was
assisted by certain students of the Institute.
  As the work  progressed,  it seemed  desirable  to  embrace
other districts within the scope of the investigation; and the
result of the summer's work constituted a sanitary reconnois-
sance of the worst streets and  alleys  in the worst districts of
Boston, the city over.
  While the work was in progress, Prof. Porter, so far as time
allowed,  sent to  the officers of the city Board of Health tran-
scripts from the notes of his assistants.  This, however, could
not be  done to a  great extent during  the summer,  but in the
course  of the following winter  all the information obtained by
those eno-aged in  this  service was  placed at the disposal of the 
iv
city officials, who had manifested; from the first, a lively interest
in the  proposed work, and had given cordial assistance to those
undertaking it.
   The present meeting has been called for the presentation of
Prof. Porter's report of the work done by himself and his assist-
ants, and for the free discussion, by this assembly, of the points
of interest involved.
   As it seems desirable that  such  a discussion should be pre-
sided over bjr one who is an authority in regard  to matters of
public hygiene, Dr.  Walcott,  the president of the State Board
of Health, has been  asked, and has kindly consented, to  take
the chair on this occasion.  I shall  only detain the audience by
three remarks : —
   First.   While the work of Prof. Porter and his assistants has
shown that there is much — very much — in the sanitary condition
of Boston which requires to be amended, and which it would be
a shame  and  a crime not to amend, by whatever measures may
be  required for that purpose, we may yet fairly  congratulate
ourselves that  the state of our  city has been  shown, by this
intelligent and searching investigation, to be better than that of
many of the cities of the land.
   Second.  The investigation, the  results of which are to be
laid before you  this  afternoon, appears to me to have an added
interest from the fact that it has been the  work of a voluntary
association, using means collected by private benevolence, and
operating without  authority  of law  and altogether outside the
established official agencies.   In the great debate  which is now
proceeding on both sides of the Atlantic, in  the decision of
which is so largely bound up the future of humanity,— the debate
namely, as to the extent to  which the  powers of Government
shall  be  enlarged to meet the demands of an increasingly com-
plex organization of society,— every successful effort, by individ- 
V
uals voluntarily associated, to  perform some part of that work
which Government has been called upon to undertake, and which
is of such vital consequence to society th.it it must be under-
taken and performed by some  agency, —makes a valuable con-
tribution to the political  knowledge of the times.   The present
occasion seems to me to furnish not the least successful among
the many instances in which the public spirit of our citizens and
the unwearying  efforts and unstinted generosity of individuals
have  availed to do a work for society  to which it was  once
thought  only  the  authority and the resources of Government
would be adequate.
   Third. The  remark with which I  shall close may seem di-
rectly antagonistic in spirit to my last remark ; but I believe it
to be so in form only.  The vulgar proverb tells  of a stitch in
time  which saves nine ; and  the  sacred proverb tells  of that
which scattereth yet increaseth, and of that which withholdeth
more than is meet, and so tendeth to poverty.   I believe that a
true  view of the economy of State action  may  not infrequently
disclose  the occasion  for saving a great deal of interference and
a great deal  of State action, in  subsequent stages, by putting the
firm  hand of government upon the very sources of evil, and ap-
plying the powers of the State to  crush out  social  mischief in
its inception.  I confess that it has for some time  seemed to me
increasingly probable that the social philosophy of the age would
soon come to  recognize  the Housing of the Very Poor as the
point at which the remedial  action of the  Government  may be
applied, not only with the highest effect  upon the happiness
and health of the community, but actually  with large resulting
reductions from the sum of  State  action  and  governmental
authority.
  It would be an act, either of monstrous ignorance  or of mon-
strous impudence on the  part of any man, contemplating the 
vi
changes of public sentiment which have taken place on this sub-
ject within the last fifteen, ten, and  five years, to put his foot
down and say, "thus far and no farther will I go towards enlarg-
ing the functions of the State."  In view of the  great develop-
ments of the immediate past, the most likely thing in regard to
each one of us, by turns, is that, in five, ten, or fifteen years
from now, he will be occupying a position on this subject very
different from that he now  anticipates.   Yet I confess I have
of late  been  coming  rapidly to the conviction  that ere long
there will be a general consent of conservative citizens, in every
enlightened State, to regard as thoroughly  good politics all  in-
terference by law which may be necessary to prevent any por-
tion  of the people from living in  houses which  are unfit  for
human habitation, residence in which is incompatible with  health
or with social or personal decency.
  I expect soon to see the time come when the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts shall declare that no one of its  citizens, under
whatever plea  of poverty, shall have  his  home where  he has
not a sufficient access of fresh air  and of God's sunlight, and
where the conditions as to drainage  and the disposal of  refuse
are not such  as to afford reasonable security for the health of
the individual, and to  protect  society  against  communicable
disease.   I believe that not only will the law of the Common-
wealth say this, which, indeed, is little more than it now says,
but that the public sentiment of the community  Mill have been
so educated on this subject as to support the officers of the law
in whatever rigorous and painful measures may be required  for
the thorough, systematic, and unrelenting enforcement  of the
most advanced sanitary requirements. 
EEPOET  UPON  A  SANITAET  INSPECTION  OF
    CEETAIN  TENEMENT-HOUSE  DISTRICTS
                    OF  BOSTON.
                               Boston, October,  1888.
Messrs. Eltot C. Clarke, Arthur  B.  Ellis, Mrs. J.  S.
      Copley Greene, Miss Margaret Greene, and Miss
      Anne H. Thwing, committee: —
  I have the honor to present herewith the results of certain
investigations made at your request, mainly during August and
September, 1887, the report upon which has been, I regret to
say, unavoidably delayed.   An outline of the work to  be at-
tempted had previously been  prepared by Prof. George F.
Swain, whose plan I endeavored to follow in the main, taking
the liberty, however, to modify it  in  some  respects.  The
object sought to be accomplished was to obtain data regarding
the sanitary condition of the poorer laboring people of this city,
who constitute  the population of the tenement-house districts.
  In the Statute Law of 1885 a tenement house is defined as one
occupied by more  than three families, living independently of
one another, or by more than two families so  living upon any
floor above the  second.   Our work was not confined to houses
of this class ; but of a total of about 900 houses specially reported,
upward of 300  were strictly tenement houses, as above  defined.
The time and means at command did not warrant attempting a
thorough and elaborate sanitary survey of a large section of the 
2
city.   The effort was, therefore, made to visit those houses and
localities presenting the worst conditions, and mere complete-
ness of statistical returns was allowed to occupy a minor place.
  Work of this general character is not entirely new or novel,
but it has usually been carried on under public authority.  Even
as far back as 1840 we find record  of  an inquiry by the Poor-
Law Commissioners of Great Britain into the sanitary condition
of the laboring population in  that country, presenting facts
which cannot  fail  to  be of the greatest interest to every one
whose  attention has  been  called to  the social problems of the
present time.   In various  cities of this country more or less
complete  sanitary surveys, as they are called, have been con-
ducted within the past five or ten years.  A noteworthy instance
of work  of  this  sort, prosecuted by private  enterprise,  is
that  of the  thorough  and  admirable  investigation  which has
been made in  the tenth  ward of  New York, accomplishing
results which  are  familiar  to many people of this city.  It is
only by some  such means  that the  knowledge is to  be gained
upon which may be based suitable plans for improving the con-
dition of a class of people  which, because of ignorance, poverty,
and lack  of desire for improvement, is certain to do  nothino-
important toward helping itself, and which is, at the same time,
a standing menace to the physical and  the social welfare of the
community as a whole.
  The principal feature of the work was intended to be a house-
to-house sanitary inspection.  In accordance with the wishes of
those interested in the  enterprise, I selected, for  this  purpose,
as assistants,  several undergraduate students of  the  civil  en-
gineering department of the Institute  of  Technology.  They
entered upon  their duties at different times, the entire work of
inspection and reinspection receiving directly the equivalent of
perhaps 90 days' time of one man.   Their labors were, in many 
3
respects, extremely disagreeable ; but I am confident that they
were, upon the whole, well and carefully  performed.   Each
inspector was  supplied  with a simple outfit, including blank
forms upon which to make returns.  It "was his duty to observe
the condition of yards and outbuildings,  noting whether clean
and well-kept  or filthy and littered.   He had, further, to ex-
plore the house  itself from cellar to attic,  entering all  rooms
when  practicable,  measuring  the cubic contents  of sleeping-
rooms,  peering under the sinks to  see if they  were trapped,
examining the drainage  system wherever  accessible, making
memoranda of uncleanliness or want  of  repair, and securing
such  information as  might  be useful  regarding tenants, rent
paid, and so forth.  Practically no  hindrance to inspection, on
the part of tenants,   was encountered, although  occasionally
objection was raised by a landlord.
   Inspections were made in portions of six different wards, —
6, 7, 8, 9, 12,  and 13.  The  original  design was to confine the
inquiry to Ward  8, and  that ward received first attention.  It
was later decided to  extend operations, so far  as time would
allow, into the worst portions of other wards, and the North End,
the South Cove  district, and  South Boston were  successively
visited.  Certain streets, or parts of streets, were sufficiently
well known to be put down at once for investigation.   Others
were decided upon on the strength of information  gained from
various individuals, — city  inspectors, persons interested in
charitable  work, and  others.  Further, when any new  section
was to be taken  up, a sort of  reconnoissance was made,  assist-
ants bein«" detailed to walk  through every  street, and decide,
so far as possible by a cursory examination, what  localities or
individual houses merited special inspection.   The 910x houses
  i 251 in Ward 6, 221 in Ward 7, 190 in Ward 8,89 in Ward 9, 50 in Ward  12, 109 in
Ward 13. 
4
upon which reports were  made contained a population of up-
ward of 12,000 persons,  or  nearly one-seventh of the entire
population of  about 89,000 accredited in 1385 to the six wards
visited.  On maps submitted with this report the position  of
every house inspected is shown.
  Nuisances discovered were reported to the city Board of Health,
whose  cooperation was at all times most courteously and freely
extended.  It was endeavored to report the most serious at
once; but, in many cases,  I desired that there should be a  rein-
spection after an interval and  before making complaint.  Op-
portunity was thus given to learn  whether insanitary conditions
were likely to be discovered and remedied from any other
source than our own work, and also to learn whether certain of
them were simply accidental  and temporary, or  habitual and
permanent.  Reinspections were thus made at intervals rang-
ing from a  few days to two  or three months.  In more  than
two-thirds of the houses reexamined the same faulty conditions
at first reported were found still to exist, substantially unim-
proved, even after the  lapse of  months.  In the remainder,
either  repairs  had been made, or the conditions  of filth pre-
viously observed had disappeared.
  Altogether, abstracts were handed to the Board  of Health in
the cases of some 360 houses, the condition of which appeared
unsatisfactory.  I  am unable  to  say definitely to  what extent
these reports have been acted upon.  Some of the evils pointed
out — as, for example, certain cases of overcrowding__were not
so serious  that official action upon them was really expected,
but the facts concerning them were desired, and were therefore
furnished.   I am  informed by the chairman of the Board that
the cases reported  have received attention, and that  the informa-
tion  furnished has  led to numerous decided improvements in the
premises concerned. 
5
      General Conditions of Tenement-house Life.
   It would, indeed, be surprising if any large city were found
 not to contain a deplorable amount  of misery, and not to pre-
 sent conditions and problems of the most serious nature, affect-
 ing both the physical  and the social well-being of it3 citizens.
 Such conditions and problems are not confined exclusively to
 any one class of the population, but they are in none more obvious
 or  more pressing than in that composed of the very poor people
 who fill  the tenement  houses.   Here are to be found persons
 from every quarter of the globe.  Many of them  are  the very
 offscourings  of  the countries  whence  they came,—poverty-
 stricken, ignorant, and even vicious.   With these, sanitary con-
 siderations have no weight, and they seem not to care how they
 live.   Every important city has such people, and Boston shares
 them with the rest;  and yet,  considering  the size and age of
 the city, its position as a seaport and landing-place for immi-
 grants, its trying climate and peculiar topography, it seems to
 me that the sanitary,  and perhaps  the social, conditions  of
 tenement-house  life here are  better than  might  fairly be ex-
 pected.
   The marked impulse toward suburban life must  have done
 much to  relieve the  tendency to  overcrowding  of  the city
 proper.  The introduction of a comprehensive scheme of main
 drainage has helped to offset  the disadvantages of a low, flat,
 and artificially made surface, difficult  to  drain.  The move-
 ments  of population, under which sections of the  city once
 fashionable  have been almost  entirely deserted by well-to-do
 families, have furnished to the poorer people houses much more
 substantially and comfortably built than any constructed design-
edly as cheap tenement houses would have  been.   Further, the
city has for some  fifteen  years been under  the  oversight  of 
6
an efficient Board of Health,  the good results of whose labors
are unquestionable.
  The poorer tenants in this  city live in apartments of two or
three rooms  each, for which they pay a weekly rental at a rate
ranging usually from 50 cents to $1 per room.   The  average
total  rental  paid  per week per family among  nearly 1,000
families for which we obtained returns was  $1.86.l
  The tenement houses proper contain from four to fifteen fami-
lies each, no individual houses (separate street numbers) which
we visited including more  than  about fifteen families, or more
than sixty or seventy inmates.  The  class of tenement houses
which was examined is  about equally in number  composed of
brick and of wooden buildings, about two-thirds of all contain-
ing three principal stories each.   There is a  considerable num-
ber of four-story buildings also, a less number of five-stor}', and
a very small  number of tenement houses of six full stories.  A
small area  at the rear of each house serves for ash and garbage
receptacles,  etc.,  and either in  a small shed or in the cellar or
basement of the house are bins for wood and coal.   Each of the
tenements—except  sometimes those on the highest floor — is
usually provided with a kitchen sink, or else has a hall sink in
common  with another tenement.   Clothes from washings  are
hung upon the roof to dry,  or else  upon lines stretched from
the rear of  the  house.   The  stairways  and halls are very
commonly dark and narrow.  In the poorer houses few carpeted
rooms will be seen,  and the furniture is in general  scanty and
poor.  And yet frequent agreeable surprises will be encountered
in these houses ;  and often where one would least expect it he
will come upon apartments very comfortably furnished. Families
that  are very poor and  cramped  for space usually have to turn

  1 Under $1 per week, 36 families; $1 and upward to $2,  533 families* $2 and
ward to $3, 326 families; $3 and upward to $4, 83 families; $4 and upward 15 famT 
7
every  room to account for sleeping, even the kitchen ;  lounge
beds are sometimes used, but often beds are made directly upon
the floor.
   Many of the houses date back  a century or  more, and are
rich in historical  associations.   Peculiarities  of construction
reveal their  distant origin,  and almost obliterated  marks  of
architectural ornamentation show that they were  once more pre-
tentious dwellings.  The North End was once the most elegant
portion of the city, but is said to have  declined soon after the
Revolution.  Twenty-five years or so ago the West End was a
fashionable quarter, but that in turn has  been mainly abandoned
to a poorer population, and Ward  8 is now the most densely
inhabited ward in  Boston.
   It is interesting to notice how different nationalities have be-
come concentrated in particular localities.  Thus the Negroes
are found mainly on  the west slope  of Beacon Hill,  in  the
vicinity of Cambridge street.   Nashua, Billerica, and Lowell
streets  are   occupied largely  by Irish;  Salem and adjacent
streets  by Jews ; while in Salutation street and vicinity  will be
found settlements of Portuguese, and on Salutation and Endicott
streets, and in various other parts of'the North End, are colonies
almost exclusively of Italians.
   Statute laws passed in 1871  with reference to tenement and
lodging houses, supplemented by others passed in 1885, contain
important provisions regarding  the construction, ventilation,
b>htino\ drainage, cleanliness, and overcrowding of such houses.
While  it was not  sought in our work to apply these  laws mi-
nutely to the houses we examined, the data obtained by inspec-
tion will, I trust, serve to show in a general  way whether some
of the principal results contemplated by the laws are,  or are not,
being realized. 
8
                      Overcrowding.
  One of the most  serious evils encountered among the poorer
population of a large city is overcrowding, or the occupancy by
several families or persons of a space suited to a less number
only.  The marked modern tendency toward a concentration of
life at large centres, the apparent inability or disinclination of
the poorest  and lowest classes, especially, to free  themselves
from the  fetters of  city life, the  poverty which is inseparable
from the  shiftlessness, vice, and  misfortunes of  these people
and which is constantly made more general and intense by the
influx of a degraded class of foreigners and the consequent low-
ering of wages, all act to produce a steadily increasing density
of population.
  By overcrowding, the spread of  the various  infectious  dis-
eases is vastly facilitated.   The foul  air of thickly  inhabited
dwellings  assists also, more than any  other cause, perhaps, in
the development of consumption, that  destroyer  which stands
at the head of all diseases in this city.   Nor are the evil effects
of overcrowding confined merely to the development and spread
of disease of the body ; for immorality and other vices quickly
spring from the withdrawal of those barriers of reasonable privacy
which are essential to decent society, but which are impossible
where many people  are crowded into small  space.  The British
report, to  which I have already alluded, contains pictures of the
degradation and depravity  toward which undue crowding  cer-
tainly tends, that cannot be considered without a deep impres-
sion being made upon the mind.  Very  commonly  laro-e families
were found  sleeping in a  single damp, filthy,  and  wretched
room of small size, and as many as  possible in a sinp-]e bed •
frequently three or four families " occupying the same  bedroom
and young men and young women promiscuously sleeping in 
9
the same apartment."  Within a few  years  similar conditions
have been brought to public notice in New York city, conditions
which  are  bound to be realized  sooner or later in every large
city in which the tendency to overcrowding is  permitted to go
on unchecked.
  In  our inspections in this city we  discovered  scarcely any
enormities  such as  appeared in the  investigations  to  which
I have just referred, and yet abundant data were obtained as to
the existence of extensive and serious overcrowding.  This  is
common enough in all the tenement-house districts of the city,
and examples  may be found among all nationalities of people,
but it appears far the most common and aggravated among the
Italians and Polish Jews.  It is largely the result of poverty,
which  does not permit tenants to pay  for many or large  rooms.
Frequently it  happens  that  women  are  left  widows with
families  of young children, who must economize in every pos-
sible way,  and to whom no readier means of doing this offers
than the taking up  with a small rent, even though it involve
the sleeping of the entire family in one or two  little rooms.  In
very  many cases,  however, and  this especially* among the
Italians and Poles, overcrowding appears to be  a matter of habit
and choice.  So far as I can learn, however, it is confined to
the occupancy by  single families of apartments  too small for
them,  and  is  not  shown in  the herding  together of several
families in  common apartments.
  Overcrowding may best be gauged  by considering the num-
ber of occupants and the size of sleeping-rooms, since in those
the family is most fully represented for the longest time, and there
the evil consequences of breathing impure air will most be felt. It
is a difficult matter, however, to fix any exact and general stand-
ard by which  overcrowding  may be properly measured.  The
danger of a particular case can justly be estimated only by con- 
10
sidering all the circumstances of size and ventilation of rooms,
number and condition of health of occupants, and so on.   For
the purposes of a general inquiry, however, we may assume a
certain amount of space as proper for each occupant, and apply
this as a test to the conditions actually found to exist.  In order
that  the air of a sleeping-room may be kept reasonably pure
and suitable for breathing, it is known that the room should be
large enough to furnish each  inmate at  least 500 or 600 cubic
feet of  air space, and that, further,  it must, even with this al-
lowance, be thoroughly ventilated, so that  the air may be  fre-
quently changed.   An idea of the space thus  required may be
retained by recollecting that  a room eight feet  high (the or-
dinary minimum height) and just large enough to admit two  full-
sized beds, would contain  about 500  cubic feet.
  The standard mentioned is a low  one for the maintenance of
pure air,  and in so far as it fails to be realized will the health
of the offender suffer.  The consequences of the habitual breath-
ing of impure air are so gradually developed, however, and  may
be so disguised by other causes of ill health, that they are certain
not to be  properly appreciated, especially by ignorant persons.
It is  probable, moreover,  that there may be, in particular cases,
a very considerable  departure from the standard  mentioned
without any harm  resulting that should  warrant public inter-
ference.   Nevertheless,  when we find an important proportion
of the inmates of the tenement houses crowded  into sleeping-
spaces not one-quarter  the size that should  be  had, and  that
most persons would insist upon merely for comfort, it is evident
that a question has been encountered that demands more than a
passing thought.
  As examples of  overcrowding, I will mention  a few cases
reported by  inspectors : At No. — Friend street  is  a three-
story wooden house, with a fruit store in  front on the first flot r 
11
but otherwise given up to tenements, which are reached through
two  entrances from a  side alley.    The entire  building was
occupied by sixteen families, which,  including a few lodgers,
comprised sixty-six persons, nearly all Italians.   The rooms all
have one or two windows, but are of small size, and about one-
half of all the occupants slept in rooms affording them less than
250  cubic feet  each of air space.  In two dingy rooms on the
first floor was a family of two adults and three children, two of
the  latter  sleeping  in  a little side room, and the rest  of the
family ocupying the remaining  room, or kitchen, a bunk in one
corner and  a mattress  laid upon boxes and boards serving at
night.   On the third floor a  family of  two adults  and  five
children all slept  in a single  dirty, ill-smelling room of 630
cubic feet contents, with one window of 2£ x 4£ feet.
   AtNo. — Endicott street, the two upper floors of a dilapi-
dated  three-story  wooden  house  were  occupied  by  seven
families of  Italians, numbering thirty-seven persons, of whom
not  more than half a dozen had even as much as half the air
space in sleeping-rooms that has been  stated to be requisite.
Two children slept in a dark inner room, just wide enough for a
bed, having a door into one room and a small window, 16 x 24
inches in size,  opening near  the ceiling into another  room.
Three  adults and two children slept in a room a little  larger
than would be  suitable for one person, dirty and foul-smelling,
and the walls  alive with bugs.   In another room  of about the
same size were two lodgers and two children.
   At N0. — North street is a four-story brick building, the
first floor front having a bar-room, and the rest of the building
o-iven up to Italian tenants, of whom there were nine families,
comprising  about forty persons.  A part  of the sleeping-rooms
here are of very good size, but nearly all are overcrowded, the
place  appearing  to be  a  rendezvous  for  numerous  Italian 
12
lodgers, who stay here when not working in the country.   The
kitchens and the bedrooms proper are about equally employed
for sleeping purposes, and many of them contain at times half a
dozen occupants each.
   These are but a few examples, out of many similar ones which
might be cited, of overcrowded houses.  The general result  of
our  inquiries, so  far as  statistics  of sleeping-rooms  are  con-
cerned, are presented in the accompanying table.

           STATISTICS OF OVERCROWDED  SLEEPING-ROOMS.
                       Tenement Houses Proper.
    Number of houses included in these figures, 203.
    Population of these houses, upward of 4,500.
Classification of rooms according to air space per occupant.	Total number of overcrowded rooms reported.	Total number of occupants of rooms.	Total air space of rooms.	Average number of occupants per room.	Average air space per room.	Average air space per occupant.
Cubic Feet. under 200 200-299 300-399 400-499 500-599	194 254 170 151 65	703 778 415 345 114	Cubic Feet. 104,355 181,460 135,060 147,560 59,560	3.6 3.1 2.4 2.3 1.7	Cubic Feet. 538 714 794 977 916	Cubic Feet 148 233 325 428 522
        All /Touses on which Reports were made as to Overcrowding.
Number of houses included in these figures, 432.
Population of these houses, upward of 7,000.
Classification of rooms according to air space per occupant.	Total number of overcrowded rooms reported.	Total number of occupants of rooms.	Total air space of rooms.	Average number of occupants per room.	Average air space per room.	Average air space per occupant.
Cubic Feet. under 200 200-299 300-399 400-499 500-599	327 490 323 231 119	1,180 1,400 768 510 206	Cubic Feet. 175,390 329,870 252,860 217,670 107,010	3.6 2.9 2.4 2.2 1.7	Cubic Feet. 536 673 783 942 899	Cubic Feet. 149 236 329 427 519
 
INTERIOR  VIEW  AT  NO.  --   SALUTATION  STREET.
From a flash-light photograph by Mr. Frank A. Ames.-
■ House occupied by Italians.
aoH  nlao as « l-itrben
The bed-room shown measures 13 X 1" feet, 
 
13
  It is to be remembered that the statistics here presented are
not complete;  that is  to say, not all the rooms in the houses
visited were reported,  but  only those which were  accessible at
the time, and which  appeared to be unduly crowded.   Never-
theless, certain  important facts are brought to light.  It will be
observed, for example,  that in about  200  selected tenement
houses, representing a  population of upward of  4,500 persons,
about  one-half that  number were  found sleeping in rooms af-
fording them an average of less  than  500 cubic feet of space
each, and more than 700 persons averaged less than 200 cubic
feet each.   An inspection of the tables will also discover the
twofold manner in which the intensity of overcrowding is  dis-
played, not only in the occupancy of small  rooms, but  also,
coincident with a decrease in the size  of the room, an  increase
in the number of its occupants ; thus, the most densely over-
crowded class,  in the above tables, will be noticed as occupying
rooms not much more than half as large as those occupied by the
least overcrowded class,  and yet it averages twice as many  per-
sons to the room.
   The wards which we visited in our inspections doubtless com-
prise the most thickly settled portions  of the city of Boston,
and it may be  interesting  to  notice for a moment the figures
which indicate  the actual density of population.  If we divide
the  population of the  city in  1885 by the number of acres of
surface within  its limits, we find  the  average settlement  thus
obtained to  be about 17  persons  to the acre.  This result is
evidently made  very  small,  though,  from  including within
the area of the city much available land not yet built upon,
together with extensive areas devoted to park, railroad, wharf,
manufacturing, and  business  purposes,  which, practically, are
not available for dwellings.   If now we consider the various
wards separately, leaving out  certain  tracts of  railroad and 
14
wharf property, we find a population, per acre, in the various
wards of Boston proper, ranging from about 43 in T\ ard 11 to
230 and over in Ward 8.  In Wards  6 and 7 the average set-
tlement is about 140 persons per acre.  Comparing these figures
with those for other cities, we find in Chicago the most densely
settled ward averaging 86 persons to the acre.   In New  York
city, Ward 10, to which I have before referred,  not so  large
by a dozen acres as Ward 6 in Boston, has three times as great
a population, averaging in 1880 somewhat over  430 persons
to the acre.
  What this means may be  better understood  from  the  state-
ment, which is approximately true, that in the tenth ward of
New York the  average density of  settlement for the  entire
ward is as great as is found in the most thickly settled district
of the North End in Boston.
  Further, it may be interesting to state that there are in New
York at  least eight wards, out  of the twenty-four, in each of
which  the  average density of population exceeds the highest
average that can fairly be calculated  for any ward in this city.
The eight wards alluded to comprised, in 1880,  a population of
380,000  persons,  and  constitute in themselves a city  some-
what larger than the entire city of Boston.
  Any one ward, however, is extensive enough to cover con-
siderable extremes of settlement, and contains more or less sur-
face devoted to other purposes than residence ; and it is only by
taking smaller areas, such as assessment blocks, that we  finally
gain a satisfactory notion of the real density of population in
particular parts of the city.   It now becomes an easy matter in
either of Wards 6, 7, 8, or 12 to pick out assessment blocks of
from a quarter of an acre to an acre and a half in which,  if we
exclude street surfaces in calculations, the  settlement is  found
to average  600,  700, and  even  more  than that number of per- 
15
sons per acre.   Such figures will  be reached in the vicinity of
the northern depots, and again near Haymarket  square, near
the North ferry, and near the Old Colony depot.
  The same density of population found even now in the six acres
near Haymarket square bounded by the centre lines of Charles-
town, Cooper, Salem, and Cross streets, would fill  the Common
with nearly 20,000 inhabitants; and if it could  be extended
over the whole  area of Boston would  furnish a population of
8,000,000 people. 
DENSITY  OF  POPULATION.
City and District.
Entire City of Boston  .  .
Entire City of Chicago   .

Entire City of New York
         Certain Wards.

Boston, Ward 6.......
        Ward 7.......
   "    Ward 8.......
   "    Ward 9 .  .  .....
   "    Ward 10.......
   "    Ward 11.......
   "    Ward 12   ......
        Ward 13 (So. Boston)
   "    Ward 16.......
        Ward 17.......
   "    Ward 18.......

Chicago, Ward 17......

New York, Ward 10.....


    Certain Assessment Blocks.
Boston, Wrard 6.
        Ward 7.
   "    Ward 8.
   "    Ward 12
   '*    Ward 11.
Block 67  .
Block 26  .
Block 168 .
 Block 457
 Block 8  .
Ward 18.  Block 22
23,085
22,498
24,893
122.8
 87.4
 51.7
 87.7
135.0
419.2
169.0
221.1
 93.0
142.0
171.0

384.0
0.867
0.620
1.692
0.312
2.817

2.211
390,393
664,634
1,189,677
17,256
12,038
11,986
11,239
 9,746
17,863
13,845
22,547
16,459
14,747
14,140

32,980

47,553
  574
  443
1,130
  214
391
16.9
29.5
47.8
140.5
137.7
231.8
128.1
 72.2
 42.6
 81.9
102.0
177.0
103.8
 82.7
 86.0

432.0
662.
715.
105.0

177.0
Remarks.
 Population by census of 1885.
 Population as estimated for 1885.  See report of Department of Health, 1885.
[Figures taken from The City Record.  Population for 1880.   There are  eight  wards
I   out of the twenty-four in New York city, in each of  which the average  density of
   population exceeds 230 persons to the acre.   The  total population of these eighf
I   wards in 1880 was 380,470.
Population by census of 1885.   Ward areas are as determined by Mr. W. F. Learned
  of the City Engineer's Department; the figures given are the net results after deduct-
  ing certain tracts devoted to wharf,  railroad, and park purposes, and practically un-
  available for dwellings.  If the entire areas included within the legal ward boundaries
  were employed in the calculations, the figures for average population per acre would
  be correspondingly decreased.
 According to the report of the Department of Health for 1885, this  ward had at that
   time the greatest average density of population of all the city wards.
 Population by census of 1880.  Large, crowded tenements.  Jewish quarter; very poor
|   people, of nlthy habits; the most densely populated ward in New York city.
f Block bounded by property lines of IInnover,"Commercial, and Battery streets.
 Block bounded by property lines of Morton, Salem, Cross, and Endicott streets.
I Block bounded by property lines of Nashua, Causeway, Billerica, and Minot sts.
1 Block bounded by property lines of Cove street, Furnace street, and Cove place.
 Block  bounded by  property  lines of Beacon, Clarendon,  Marlborough, and
   Dartmouth streets.
 Block bounded by property lines of Tremont,  West Brookline, and Pembroke
L  streets and Warren avenue.

a 
17
  The figures  which have  been presented are interesting, I
think, for comparison with  each other, but would  mean  still
more if they could be compared with a limit of allowable den-
sity  of population ; in other words, if we could learn whether
they indicate a thicker settlement  than it is practicable to ac-
commodate.  Any such  limit must be roughly and arbitrarily
set, but it seems  to me that a reasonably low  one is furnished
by certain houses  of the  Boston Cooperative Building Com-
pany.  Their property on Thacher and Endicott streets covers
an area of between 6,000 and 7,000 square feet, which is built
upon as closely as is wise.   The buildings are as high as is de-
sirable for tenement  houses, the space within  is economically
used,  and yet  few, I presume, would take exception to  the
arrangements for the health and comfort of tenants.   We mijjht
fairly assume, therefore, that the condition here found  will  give
us a reasonable  maximum  limit  for density of population,
although the area involved is  rather small  for obtaining an
average for comparison.   The  settlement  on  this   property
is at  the  rate of some 1,200 persons per acre.  It would  ap-
pear theoretically possible, therefore,  with suitable buildings
and  oversight,  to  provide comfortably for even a  greater pop-
ulation than is  now found in the most  crowded parts of the city.
  Although the laws are  not the only means for dealing with
the question of overcrowding, they are perhaps the most direct
means ; and it may be well  at this point to notice such provisions
as they contain  affecting this  problem. The laws and ordinances
now  in force in this city provide that the Board of Health  may
remove the  inmates of any tenement house  or building in
which the number of occupants is 50 great as to be the cause of
nuisance and sickness, and the source of filth.  The Statute Law
of 1885 gives the Board power further to make such regulations,
in addition to those definitely stated in the law, concerning the 
18
ventilation and overcrowding of tenement and lodging houses
and buildings  where persons are employed,  as  it may  deem
necessary; subject, however, to the laws relating to building in
the city of Boston.
  The New York law of 1887  provides  that, " Whenever it
shall be certified to the Board of Health by the sanitary superin-
tendent that any tenement house,  or room therein, is so over-
crowded that there shall be afforded less than 600 cubic feet of
air to  each occupant of such building or room, the said Board
may, if it deem the same to be wise or necessary, issue an order
requiring the number of occupants of such building or  room to
be reduced, so  that the  inmates  thereof shall not exceed one
person to each 600 cubic feet  of air space in such building or
room."
  In either city the matter is really left to the judgment of the
Board of Health, although there may be a  certain advantage
in the wording of the  New York law, which calls attention to
a definite standard of air space, which it  is well that landlords
on the one hand, and those seeking to improve the conditions
of the tenement houses  on the other,  should  have clearly
before them,  and toward which it is to be  assumed that the
Board of Health  will,  so  far as practicable,  direct its efforts.
An attempt, however,  at the present time, to enforce generally
any arbitrary standard  of air space for existing tenement houses
— except, perhaps, an absurdly low one, far beneath proper sani-
tary requirements—would, I think,  be entirely impracticable.
To insist, for example, that all tenement-house sleeping-rooms
should average as much as 200 cubic feet, or even 150 cubic feet
to the occupant,  would require poor people by the hundred and
thousand  to  be  ousted  from  their   homes.    Existing  over-
crowding can be  lessened only gradually, and it appears to me
that this can best be done by allowing the Board of Health  wide 
19
discretionary power, by the  co-operation and  watchfulness  of
private citizens and organizations in pointing out  cases  for
action and  seeing that the powers invested  in  the  authorities
are utilized, and by publicity on the part of the Board of Health
of the results attained.
  The work is a  difficult  one, without doubt.   It requires
money and assistants  and  the exercise of  much good judg-
ment. The tenement-house population is a shifting one, the
conditions in  any one house are constantly changing, and the
persons removed from one apartment are very likely to migrate
to some  other which  is no better suited to  their occupancy,
until  again discovered and routed out. Nevertheless,  the evils of
overcrowded tenement  houses  are so serious, that to my mind
it seems certain that whatever is practicable should  be under-
taken to  relieve the trouble ; and certainly there are plenty of
houses toward which the Board of Health could  at once  with
advantage direct its efforts.
  I would suggest, moreover, as likely to be an aid  in dealing
with  certain cases, that the Board of Health should be given
authority  to serve  notices,  at  its discretion, upon the owners
or lessees of  tenement and lodging houses, these notices  to
be of the nature of permits, assigning a limit  to the number
of occupants allowable in each apartment or  house considered,
a single violation of the terms of the notice to be followed  by a
warnino", and a subsequent violation to be treated as a criminal
offence.  The mere removal of an excessive number of families
from  a house might  otherwise be followed  by an  immediate
refilling,  until the next inspection.
  The matter of ventilation is  of course very  intimately con-
nected with overcrowding, since  if even small  sleeping-rooms
were at all times sufficiently well ventilated, much  of the harm
coming from the degree  of overcrowding found  in this  city 
20
would be obviated.  Sufficiently good ventilation for the number
of occupants often found, however, I judge to be impracticable.
There is, to be sure, a constant, unperceived interchange of air
between the inside and outside of a  house, especially in build-
ings not more  tightly  constructed than many of the tenement
houses ; and most of the sleeping-rooms in these houses are pro-
vided with one  or  more windows, which in warm weather are
usually  kept  open  for comfort and then  give very good air.
In cold weather, however, windows are  kept closed, and the
effects of defective ventilation become  plainly marked.
  The advantages of pure air are not commonly considered  by
tenants, and even if they were, poverty  and consequent en-
forced economy in the use of fuel would  lead many to prevent
in every  possible  way  the  loss, of  heat; and  doubtless an
attempt properly to  ventilate rooms by opening windows would
often result in greater immediate peril from cold draughts than
is suffered from bad air.  I can see  no better mode of dealing
with this question, however, than to  require, so far as possible,
a proper size for inhabited rooms, and one or more windows in
these opening to the outer air, and so arranged as to be conven-
iently opened from either top or bottom.   If tenants are pro-
vided with suitable  rooms  and windows, and then neglect to
supply themselves with  fresh air, they must suffer the conse-
quences.
  The  law requires that every tenement house " shall have in
the roof, at the top of the hall, an adequate and proper venti
lator,  of  a form approved by  the  inspector  of buildings."
This requirement is, I  think, quite commonly  observed  and
appears to be a very sensible and efficient one.
  The  pressure  of overcrowding is  shown  not  only in the
excessive occupancy of rooms properly suited to habitation and
to sleeping, but in the  employment  of small inner rooms and 
21
cellars and basements, unless the evil is reached by law.  In
New  York and Boston  somewhat elaborate  provisions have
been made in laws regarding these matters, and it may be well
to refer to them here.
   The law in force in this city prescribes that sleeping-rooms
not having direct communication with the outer air  shall be
ventilated by  means of  two  small  ventilating  windows or
transoms  communicating,  according  to  circumstances, with
halls or with external rooms that do have windows to the outer
air.   Possibly, with the ventilators and doors  open, and under
favorable  conditions  of  ventilation  in  connecting  rooms,  a
moderate  interchange of air  with these  inner rooms might be
effected.  But  in the cases we noticed there was  often but one
ventilating window, and that  closed; and the  only  reliance
was really upon the door, which, I  presume, is usually  left
open.   The rooms  were, as a matter of course,  close  and ill-
smelling.   Moreover, they were  almost invariably small and
overcrowded, generally containing less than six hundred cubic
feet,  often presenting the appearance of having been cut off
from  other rooms so that a few more  persons  might be packed
into overcrowded houses, and containing anywhere from one to
six occupants each.  They were naturally very dark, and, being
occupied by the lowest class  of tenants,  could not be expected
to be kept cleanly and sweet, and were, as a  rule, among the
worst rooms encountered.
   About 60 of these inner rooms, with, say, 150 occupants,
were specially reported by m}' assistants.   Even if the number
wTere  considerably  greater, it would  yet constitute so small a
percentage of the total number  of  rooms occupied,  and  the
rooms are such an  unmitigated nuisance, that I think the pro-
hibition of their use for sleeping purposes, as at present ar-
ranged, is entirely warrantable in tenement  houses of a low 
22
grade.  If these houses  cannot be so adapted to the use  of
tenants as to afford reasonable sanitary provisions  of light, air,
and so on, then they had better not be allowed employment  in
such capacity at all.
  Efficient means should also be taken to prevent  the introduc-
tion  of rooms such as I have described into new tenement and
lodging houses.  At first thought it  may seem that to forbid
the use of rooms  not having direct  communication  with the
outer air must limit occupancy to front and  rear  rooms  in
a large  class of houses situated midway in  blocks,  and that
it must thus in the case of houses built upon deep lots entirely
prevent the  economical use of the building space.   Such
prohibition, would, it is true, tend to prevent a niggardly use
of the space; but experience elsewhere has proved that it need
not interfere  at all  with a  suitable development  of the  prop-
erty; while, at the same time, it acts to bring about surprising
improvements in the structural design of the  tenement houses,
which may easily be  so  constructed, with large light-shafts, as
to afford light and air to every room.
  Thus in New York city there has been a constant advance in
tenement-house designs, induced  by a  steady raising of the
standard of requirements on the part of the  Board of Health,
until there has come  to be about as much contrast between the
best recent designs and the  designs common ten or fifteen years
ago,  as there is between light and darkness.   The present New
York law empowers the Board of Health to prohibit  at  its
discretion the erection of new tenement houses, or the conver-
sion to such use of old buildings, covering more than sixty-five
per cent, of their lots.   In  view of the  success which appears
to attend  the measures  adopted for that city,  I  am of  t.h
opinion that limitations and requirements of similar  character
might well be  introduced  here. 
23
  Through the kindness of Mr. James C. Bayles, President of
the  Health  Department  of New York  city, I  am enabled to
present a number of  diagrams  illustrating  the  advances in
tenement-house construction to which I have referred, and of
especial interest as showing  what  may  be accomplished under
the  unfavorable condition  of narrow and deep city lots.   In
this connection I also take the liberty of quoting at length from
a recent report by Mr. Bayles, on " The  Tenement-House Prob-
lem in  New York : " —

   With a view of illustrating the gradual improvement in the methods of
construction with reference to light and air, illustrations are given showing,
from the earliest years  to the present time, the  gradual but efficient and
practical methods by which the largest amount  of light and  air space is
secured for the greatest number  of rooms that may be possible upon the
limited  ground  area of a  single city lot.
   Results such as are now insisted upon by the  Health Department were
not deemed possible even a few years ago.  No plan of a tenement house,
apartment house, or flat is now approved by the Board unless every inner
room has a proportionate amount of light and air directly communicable
with the exterior air.   The final outcome now is, that every builder and
architect must seek, not only how to secure the best paying investment,
but also the best sanitary and hygienic arrangement of the rooms, drainage,
and plumbing of every tenement house he proposes to build.  This result
has necessarily been obtained by progressive stages. The opposition had
to be gradually overcome, and the public to be educated upon these impor-
tant subjects, and the competition of securing tenants by the improvements
introduced in new buildings made an effectual aid in the enforcement of all
the necessary rules for light and ventilation, as well as for other  sanitary
requirements connected with such houses.  From the first approval  by the
Board in 1879 of light shafts aggregating in area not more than thirty-two
square feet for each four or five story house, there has  been  a steady
progress, until  an aggregate area of  265 square  feet is  now  required.
II may  be  here mentioned incidentally that since  1886 there have been
verv few plans for large apartment houses submitted to the Board, it having
become  apparent, probably, that houses  of this class were not profitable
financially. 
24
   During  these  progressive  changes in the  construction of tenement
houses, almost innumerable varieties  of plans were evolved by the inge-
nuity of architects and builders, and  the former have been stimulated to
the study of new methods and plans as each progressive requirement has
been  insisted upon by the  Board.
   In the public discussions of 1879, which resulted in the enactment of the
tenement-house laws of that year, the  question arose as to what constituted
a satisfactory plan for a tenement house, due regard  being given to the
necessities of four families on each floor, and the size and value of lots.  A
public-spirited citizen offered a large sum of  money as a prize for the  best
tenement-house plan, and several hundred of these plans were offered.
   The great improvement in the construction for  light and ventilation of
tenement houses now being enforced, shows well by comparison with these
prize plans.  Indeed, the present typical plan is superior in many respects
to the one to which the prize was awarded in 1879.
  In many instances, in the earlier attempts, the locations selected for water-
closets on the different floors proved very objectionable, being sometimes
immediately adjacent to the kitchens or bedrooms, and without ventilating
shaft, resulting — by  neglect  and misuse — in becoming offensive and un-
bearable nuisances, contaminating the atmosphere of dwelling apartments;
and when placed in the ends of the  halls between the  adjoining kitchen
rooms, with imperfect  plumbing and  inadequate  flushing arrangements,
permitting the regurgitation  of their offensive  contents into the kitchen
sinks.   The very great improvement in this respect is seen in the methods
of construction and location as now insisted upon by the Board of Health.
By these changes these sources of danger to health are now removed to the
farthest limit  from dwelling and sleeping  rooms,  and  so  constructed,
plumbed, and flushed as to secure the most perfect utilization of the "water-
carriage system " for the rapid removal of the contents, and at the same
time so furnished with means for ventilation  as  to prevent offensive odors
from contaminating the respirable atmosphere of the rooms or halls.
   In March of the present year (1887), the lighting and ventilation of tene-
ment houses was made a subject of careful consideration by the Board of
Health, resulting in the adoption of the following resolution :__
   Resolved, That the Regulations of the Board in relation to Light and Ven-
tilation of New Tenement Houses be and are hereby amended as follows :__
   No plan for light and  ventilation of a tenement house with apartments
on five or more floors, and having more than  twelve rooms on a floor to be
erected on an ordinary city lot, except a corner lot, will be approved by this 
           NEW YORK  CITY.
'yi'k'al  Tenement Hoisi;  priok to  1*7'.).
    (Inner rooms neither lighted nor ventilated.)
(1) 
 
        First Floor.                          Upper Floor.
                     NEW YORK  CITY.

'u:<t Prize  Plan of  the Tenement-House Design  Competition
                          of 1879.
(2) 
 
u
SITTING ROOf
                       NEW YORK CITY.
Group of the Earliest Plans approved by the Board of Health
                     under the law of 1879.
        (Small light and ventilation shafts for rooms farthest from outer air.)
                                (3) 
 
L-biLl sh	"j i
in	JUJUJ:"":
"L,U
 NEW YORK CITY.

Group of Plans with all
 Interior Rooms connected
 with Enlarged Studded
" Shafts for  Light  and
 Ventilation.
WATER CLOSETS
~TT
SITTING

ROOM
SITTING

ROOM
t K,TCHEN ,  1 ,
KITPHPN ■  ■
V
(*) 
 
                      NEW  YORK CITY.
Present Type  of Tenement  for Four Families on  each Floor,
                 in Lots 25  feet by  100  feet.
(Open courts instead of studded light shafts.)
(6) 
 
25
Board, where more than sixty-five per centum of the lot is  to be  covered,
unless the courts to light and ventilate the interior rooms thereof shall have
an area of at least two hundred and sixty-five square feet, and where there
are to be twelve rooms on a floor, the area of such courts must not be less
than two hundred and fifteen square feet.
   Resolved, That this amendment shall take effect  April 11, 1887.
   This present plan marks the most desired and greatest improvement in ten-
ement-house construction which has grown out of sanitary legislation and the
efforts of the Board of Health since 1879. Instead of dark, unventilated rooms
and halls, peculiar to tenement houses of that date, the rooms in the houses
now being built are well lighted and ventilated by courts as large in area as
can possibly be required, without reducing the  size of the rooms to an im-
practicable degree.   In place of the old privy-vault in the yard, the  use of
which in cold weather was often impossible to the debilitated or sick, every
two families are  provided with a water-closet  on  each floor, with suitable
arrangements  for flushing, and the compartments are  well  lighted and
ventilated.  The cellars, formerly noisome, unventilated, unlighted, unpaved,
and damp, are now provided with windows to  the outer air, and the floors
are concreted  throughout.  The old hydrant in the yard,  with its uncon-
nected cesspool for  receiving house-slops and liquid waste for the whole
household,  is now abolished, and water is  supplied in each apartment,  and
in  connection  with  suitable kitchen-sinks and washtubs;  and instead of
the defective earthen drains with leaking joints,  saturating the adjacent
around, and open joints in waste and soil pipes,— where they were provided
in the older houses, — and untrapped and unventilated waste-pipes, placing
the living-rooms in direct communication with the public sewers, the plumb-
ing system is now up to the highest  standard of modern times in every de-
tail, and superior in all essentials to the plumbing and drainage to be found
in even the best private houses,  except those of the most recent date.
   These great improvements in the hygienic  and sanitary arrangements of
the tenement houses as now built, must necessarily reduce the death and
sickness rates of such houses.  The extent to which this is true can well be
estimated from the fact that in each  of  the recent years these changes  and
improvements have been provided in new tenement houses  for upwards of
G0,000 persons.                            #

   The  statute law defines a " cellar "  as  a  " basement or lower
story of  any building  of which one-half or more of the height 
2G
from the floor  to the ceiling is below the level  of the  street
adjoining."  The occupancy as a dwelling of any cellar, without
permit from the Board of Health, is illegal, unless there is com-
pliance with certain provisions  of  the law relating to height,
ventilation,  drainage, and so  on.   Moreover, the  Board of
Health is given authority to make such other regulations as to
cellars as it deems necessary, subject to the Boston building
laws.   Very few cellars, as above denned, were found occupied ;
and on the other hand there was frequent evidence of cellars
which had once been occupied having been abandoned.   There
remain, however, some  cellars  and numerous basements, usu-
ally  about  on  the border line of  cellars  as denned by the
statutes, which are occupied  not only during the day, but also
for sleeping at night.
   The objections to the occupancy of cellars — and I will include
these objections  also with reference  to  basements — arise,  I
suppose, from the likelihood  of their being dark, ill ventilated,
and damp, as well as  unwholesome from  the ground air which
enters them. Basement rooms can usually be fairly well lighted
and ventilated, but I doubt  if they can be  kept suitably dry,
especially in made land,  without  a good  cemented bottom.
Any cellar in such locality with simply the  natural  earth  bot-
tom will be damp.   The  covering it with a floor renders the
dampness less  perceptible, but its existence will be  shown  in
the decay of planks and in the moulding of oil-cloths and other
articles.  It is to be  borne in  mind  that nearly all the region
occupied by the buildings  which we are considerino-  is  "made
land,"  the  cellar bottoms of the houses  beino- elevated but
slightly, and  sometimes  not at all, above  the level  of hi«-h-
water.  It  is reasonable  to suppose, therefore, that without
special precaution  there  will be undue  dampness  in such
cases.   This would  be most noticeable  in winter, and mio-ht 
27
doubtless be shown  experimentally, by suitable tests.  In  a
summer day I attempted to test the humidity  with hygrome-
ters in a  number  of Stillman-street houses ; but although there
was a considerable difference in humidity between the basement
and second stories, I did not consider the results obtained very
uniform or satisfactory.  In the houses we inspected, not more
than thirty or forty basement rooms were  specially  reported as
occupied for sleeping, though the number  occupied  as kitchens
would be considerably greater.
  It  would be a desirable and perhaps  warrantable thing to
require that the  basements or cellars of  all tenement houses
should be made water-tight by cement, concrete, or  asphalt, —
the expense of cementing being perhaps not more than would be
offset by one or two months' rents from the house, while the con-
struction is a permanent one, of real value to the building; but
with even more  propriety, I think, it might  be required that
this should be done in  buildings, the cellars or basements of
which can be  occupied as  dwellings, or especially as sleeping-
rooms.   The use of  the basements or cellars of tenement  and
lodo-ino- houses for sleeping purposes might indeed with advan-
tage, it seems  to me,  be  prohibited.  The benefits would be
undoubted; and the  number  of houses affected would be so
small that the plan cannot be regarded as at all impracticable.

                    Garbage  Removal.
  It is required by law that tenement houses shall be kept clean
and  free from accumulations of dirt, filth, garbage, and other
objectionable matter, whether within the house  or in the yard
or alley connected with it.   Such  material must not be  thrown
into the street, but must be stored in suitable receptacles, from
which it will be collected by the city scavengers.   Garbage  is 
28
thus removed at least twice a week in the winter months and
three times a week in summer.
   As regards the removal of £arba2:e, so far as could be judged
the work of the city scavengers is  faithfully performed, and
such defects as  were observed  arose  from the dirty habits of
tenants, many of whom do  not  hesitate  to  throw garbage, or,
indeed, filth of  any description, at random  over yards, alleys,
and shed roofs.   As a rule, there is in the rear  of each  tene-
ment house a small yard or area, which is planked over, and is
reached  from the street either by an  alley between adjacent
houses, or  by  a   covered passage-way under the building.   A
considerable part of the yard is taken up by a shed for the stor-
age of wood and coal and the setting of garbage barrels,  leaving
a clear space  which varies in size,  but  which  in the  thickly
settled  parts of  the city often does not  exceed one hundred
or two hundred  square feet.  Nearly always the passageways,
yards,  and  fuel  sheds  were found  in a reasonably neat  con-
dition, but in  some  forty or fifty  cases,  constituting not  more
than five per cent, of those examined, the premises were badly
littered with garbage, and sometimes with much worse filth.
  In a few cases, the worst examples of  which are probably at
the corners of Salutation and Hanover streets, houses have been
built completely covering  their  lots, so that there is no yard
room whatever,  and  garbage has to be stored within the house
itself, a very offensive and  objectionable thing.   In each of the
cases to which I have special reference  above, the o-arbao-e is
thus stored in barrels in a closet on the  first floor  of a house
occupied by a dozen or more  families.   In  one  of these cases
the inspector reported the garbage closet in a  very foul  con-
dition, and the stench from it strongly perceptible to the very
top of the  house, which is  of five stories.
   The yards and alleys are so readily accessible from the street 
29
and often are so open to general observation, that it is  prac-
ticable for the inspectors of the Board of Health to exercise a
tolerably close supervision  over  them, and this  appears to be
done.  In a certain proportion of offending cases,  the habit of
cleanliness can  be  enforced by sharp oversight and repeated
admonishings from the inspector; and so far as it  can be suc-
cessfully used  this method  is undoubtedly far  the best.  In
other cases,  however, nothing will  suffice  but  recourse to the
law, which seems clear and  is accompanied by a heavy penalty.
It is unquestionable that  a considerable number of  the forty or
fifty bad cases reported are  habitually bad; and although  upon
the  appearance of  a  city inspector  there is at least the sem-
blance of a prompt compliance with his directions about cleaning
the premises, I am of opinion that the work is, in such places as
the above, short-lived, and that more effective measures should
be employed.  Similar remarks might be  made regarding the
streets.  So  far as they  were incidentally observed, they were
not often noticed to be littered or fouled with  garbage thrown
from private  premises.   Certain narrow  streets, however, such
as Stillman and  Morton,  were found very much littered in this
way ; and I  have been informed that often a city  gang would
have scarcely finished its work in these streets before the latter
would again  be fouled by the garbage thrown from the various
houses.  In  general,  though, the streets appeared  to be  in as
o-ood  condition  as  could be expected, considering defects of
construction ; and  the questions connected with  them  have,
perhaps,  already been  sufficiently  discussed  in  the public
press.
           Uncleanliness within  the Houses.

  As regards the condition  of the interior of the houses them-
selves, it is not  to be  supposed that the law to which reference 
30
was made  a short  time  since contemplates a very scrupulous
degree of cleanliness, but only such as may fairly be regarded
as essential to decency and  health.  Just what requirements
are thus involved cannot  be very nicely stated.  Dirt is dirt, to
be sure, and it is not  difficult to judge when a tenement or a
room is in a poor condition  as concerns cleanliness ; but it is
often not so easy to decide whether that condition is sufficiently
poor to warrant official interference.
  Many a  person accustomed only to the thorough cleanliness
of a well-ordered  home would unhesitatingly condemn the con-
ditions encountered in nearly all the cheaper tenement houses,
and  would set up a standard which is at present entirely im-
practicable.   A person is liable to receive false  impressions,
too, in his examinations.   He enters a room the  wralls and ceil-
ing of which are begrimed, as though from years of neglect; but
they may have been whitened within a week, and their discolor-
ation be  due to the smoke from burning  the  hoops of suo-ar
casks, and various other rubbish, which many of the people pick
up  along the docks  and elsewhere.  A  terrible smell per-
vades the room,  but it may arise  simply from  the  cooking;
some of the dishes prepared by the Poles, particularly, giving out
most obnoxious odors.   The room is untidy, and the bare floor
littered with scraps of food  and articles of clothing; but the
presence  of several young children while  the  mother is busy
with washing or other work is accountable for this, and later in
the day the floor may be found well scrubbed or swept, and the
room set to  rights.  Now there are many such cases, in which
a person will be greatly repelled  by what he perceives  but in
which the influence upon health of the conditions noted is prob-
ably very small.   When,  however, permanent accumulations
of rags are found littering a room, or dirt from the floor is found
swept into  piles in corners  or behind doors, or garbage store  1 
31
away in closets or under sinks, or the paper foul and rotten on
the  walls, a state of things has been  discovered which will
justify interference.
   From the fact that the interior of a house is not conveniently
open to observation, and that  considerable time is required for
making a tour  of  many  tenements, the inhabitants of which are
constantly shifting from place to  place, it is plain that by no
practicable system of house-to-house inspection could much be
accomplished in the way  of maintaining a general high standard
of  cleanliness.  It  would  be  practicable, however, to take
account of those places deserving special oversight, and to pre-
vent the long-continued  dwelling of a family in a state of filth.
   The rating of a house as regards its cleanliness is an arbitrary
matter, and exact figures would be of no  great value ;  it may be
well enough, though, to  say that of the  houses reported upon,
an  average  of about one in seven were characterized in this
particular as " poor  ; " of the remainder about two-fifths were
classed  as " good," and the rest as "fair."
  For various  reasons the  cellar is closely connected with the
general sanitary condition of a house, and in the worst tenement
houses the dirty and negligent  habits of the inmates are very
apt to be displayed in the cellar, which therefore especially de-
serves inspection.   In some twenty-five  or thirty  of the houses
examined, the  cellars were found badly  littered with garbage,
occasionally by a dead animal,  and in at least half the number
by human excrement.

               AVater-Closets and Privies.
  The condition of water-closets and  privies, as observed  dur-
ing this examination, was, in a  considerable proportion of cases,
extremely objectionable. The problem of the removal of house
wastes has its  greatest  importance in connection with the dis- 
32
posal of the dejections from the human body, which afford the
most dangerous possible medium  for the spread of numerous
infectious diseases,  and  which,  aside  from  that, may easily
become a disgusting and unbearable offence.  It is a cardinal
             ©    ©
sanitary principle that animal and vegetable matter of any kind
in a state favoring decomposition  should be promptly removed
from the vicinity  of  dwellings, certainly within a  day or two,
and  as  much sooner as is possible.  It is  only in compara-
tively recent years,  however, that the general introduction  of
running water within the houses, supplemented by a system  of
sewers constituting the so-called wrater-carriage method of sew-
                 ©                        ©
age removal, has rendered a prompt conveyance from the prem-
ises of urine and  faeces really practicable ; and even now it is
only  gradually and  imperfectly that a  proper  standard  is
approached.  The general custom in the past, and the one even
now in use in considerable portions of this and all the other large
cities, has been to store fecal matter in privy-vaults or cesspools.
  Dr. O. C. DeWolf,  Commissioner of  Health of Chicago, in
his report of May, 1887, estimates that fully one-third the entire
population of that city is yet dependent upon privy-vaults.
  In Boston several  different constructions of vault  are to  be
found.  The oldest and simplest type has the sides and bottom
faced with planks, and has no  outlet save through  the  top.
Wooden vaults are  now  illegal, however, under all  circum-
stances,  and have generally been replaced by other construc-
tions,  although more or  less  of them  appear  to be still in
existence.   By a city ordinance  of 1872 it was required  that
henceforth privy-vaults  should  be  constructed  of brick and
cement.   The brick  vaults appear to have been usually built
tight, or, if connected by a drain with the street sewer, to have
become in time practically tight through  the stoppage of the
imperfectly flushed outlets. 
33
   These different forms have thus effected a storage, ranging in
duration from a  few months  to  perhaps two or three years,
according to circumstances, of fecal  matters  supplied, some-
times, by fifty or one hundred people  to a single vault.  The
evil  results inseparable from  such a  practice, aside from the
mere offence occasioned in the way of bad odors, have led to a
demand for the abandonment  of the use of privies and cess-
pools ; and by a State act  of 1885 they were directed to be
supplanted, at the discretion of the city Board of Health, by
water-closets, upon  all  streets having sewers.  In accordance
with this act the abolishment  of privies has been steadily car-
ried on, and in the  two and one-half years since the passage of
the  act down  to the close  of 1887,  about 3,400 privies had
been removed.   This work  seems to have been most vigorously
prosecuted  in Wards 8  (West End)  and  13 (South Boston),
in each of which there have  been more  removals than in  the two
North End Wards 6 and 7 together.
   The practice of the Board of Health has  been, I believe, to
abolish privy-vaults whenever well-founded complaint has been
received, either through the inspectors of  the Board  or from
other sources, that a vault was offensive.   In spite of the large
number of vaults already done away with, of the nine hundred
houses inspected  under my  direction fully a quarter were still
dependent upon this dangerous system.
   Although  the  policy has  been pursued  of doing  away with
privy-vaults, the  Board of Health has  thought best to allow, in
certain cases, as in connection with largo tenement houses  of a
low o-rade, the  use of an improved construction known as a
flush-vault.   It is a cemented brick vault, with an outlet at the

  Vaults abolished in certain wards, 1885-87 : —
Ward 6   •    •   .  81 I Ward 8    .  .   .  334 I Ward 12   .        114
Ward 7   .    .   .112  Ward 9    .  .     158 | Ward 13           132 
34
bottom,  connecting by means of a  tile drain with  the  street
sewer.   A short iron pipe, with a flange  at  the  bottom, a half
turn at the top, and a handle reaching up nearly to the floor of
the privy apartment, serves  at  once as  a removable plug to
close the orifice at the bottom of the vault, and as an overflow
after the vault becomes filled to a certain level.  These flush-
vaults receive a  supply of  water variously from sinks,  from
roofs, and in some cases from special service-pipes.   By raising
the plug the contents of the vault are permitted  to run rapidly
out to the street sewer.
  These vaults have an advantage over the old ones which they
displace, only in so  far as they offer opportunity for frequent
and  thorough flushing, and it is evident that their value must,
therefore, be dependent upon the fidelity  with which that is
done.  It is  assumed that  they will be  flushed every two or
three days, but  in many  cases  they are  not flushed with any
such frequency, and some  were observed which had not been
emptied  for  a very long time, and  which were in  as unsatis-
factory   a  condition  as   any  ordinary  privy-vault.    The
complaint was made  regarding some which are  mainly depend-
ent on rain-water for a flushing  supply, that they are liable to
be deprived of this for a  long time in summer  droughts, and
that when the rain does come it  stirs up the  contents of the
vault so  that a  doubly offensive smell is given off.  Yet, in
spite of its defects, this construction probably offers, in certain
cases, the best solution of a difficult  problem.
  Although  privy vaults  and cesspools   are objectionable  it
must not be assumed that, when  they have been replaced by
water-closets, the question of the removal  of the  most dangerous
                                                     ©
form of house sewage has  been  satisfactorily settled.  Water-
closets are a good contrivance when kept  clean and inoffensive •
in other words,  when  properly flushed and  decently used 
35
But both of these essential conditions are dependent upon the
habits of the people who use the closets, and among the popu-
lation with Avhich we have to deal there are many whose habits
are of the most careless and filthy nature.
  It is plainly important then, that, as regards construction, the
closet used in tenement houses should be of  the simplest pos-
sible form,  with a smooth and durable inner surface, and  a
thoroughly efficient flush.   There is nothing in such require-
ments involving  unreasonable expense, but it  is almost unneces-
sary to say  that we  do not  find them generally met in the
houses we inspect.  Many of the closets have  bowls of iron
coated with  enamel, or at  least the iron was once so  coated;
but the enamel  has generally scaled off, and the  iron  surface
remains in such a rough, corroded,  and foul condition that
really thorough  cleansing  is impossible.
  Even if cleansing were possible, the  arrangement for flush-
ing is  usually inadequate.   Of some  350 water-closets whose
mode of flushing was  especially reported, about 60 per cent.
were  flushed by direct connection with  service-pipe.   In most
such cases the force of the flushing stream is small and poorly
directed.  Furthermore, there is  a  possible  danger, not  com-
monly  considered, of an occasional  contamination of the water
in the service-pipes if  the  flush-valve happens to be left open
at a  time when the supply of water is for any  reason  tem-
porarily shut off.
  A dozen water-closets were reported, half of them in  tene-
ment houses  as  legally  defined,  whose only contrivance for
flushino- consisted of  untrapped  waste-pipes from sinks,  and
half a  dozen more which were flushed only  by trapped waste-
pipes.   All  these closets were  naturally  found very  foul,
and it is hard to conceive  of any more  miserable  arrangement
than that mentioned, the only excuses  for which  are that some 
36
expense is saved in construction, and that the annual water-rate
for a closet supply is  avoided.  Thirty closets were  returned
as out of order, a few on account of the outlet  having become
clogged, but most because some part of the flushing apparatus
had been broken.
  A much more glaring evil, however,  and one  of  probably
much more consequence than most of the defects that have been
mentioned, is  found in the filthy condition of the seats and
apartments of  many of the privies and water-closets.   Of
about six hundred water-closets that were reported upon, nearly
one hundred were declared to be in  a filthy condition  ; and by
this was meant, not  simply that the closet  bowls  were  dirty,
but that the seat and apartment wTere so fouled  that they could
not be decently used.    Some of these places were in a most
abominable state.   No  cleanly person  could be induced to go
near them.  Indeed, the tenants themselves do not go nearer
than absolutely necessary.  Faeces and urine are temporarily
stored in the  living-rooms in vessels and buckets,  and at con-
venient opportunity these are taken to be emptied.   The door
of the water-closet apartment having been opened,  the contents
of the bucket are given a throw toward the bowl, which thus
serves simply  as  a slop-hopper,  while  the  whole   place  is
befouled in the  most disgusting way.
  The fault lies directly, of course, with the people who have the
use of the closet or privy.  Not ail of these are equally to be
blamed, though, for sometimes the  filthiness of a sino-le family
offsets the cleanly habits of all the rest of the house.  Often it is
the case that water-closet or privy apartments in tenement houses
are not properly protected by lock and key, but are  accessible  to
the drunken loafers from  neighboring saloons and the streets
An indirect cause also for the conditions that have been mentioned
lies in the improper location of many of the water-closets, which 
37
are in dark corners or inner closets  in  cellar or  basement,
where nothing can be seen except by artificial light,  and where
also no suitable means of ventilation exist.   Light  is absolutely
essential to cleanliness in  such places, and should be secured in
every possible case.
  Frequently it will be found that tenement houses are not pro-
vided with a suitable number of water-closets or privies for  the
convenience of their  many occupants.  The proper number to
be required is  a matter of judgment, but the minimum limit has
frequently been placed at about one for every twenty  persons.
The present  New York law  regarding tenement  and lodging
houses requires them to  be provided with as many  water-
closets as the Board of Health shall specify; but the number
is,  in  any case,  to  be not  less than one  for every  fifteen
occupants in lodging houses  and not  less than one for every
two families in dwelling houses.  The  Statute Law of 1871
required  that in  Boston  the  number of closets should be  not
less than one  for every  twenty  occupants of a tenement or
lodo-ino- house.   The law  of 1885 places  the decision  of  the
   ©  ©                           L
proper and requisite number of closets with the Board of Health,
but now makes the curious exception that  the board  shall  not
require more  than one for every twenty persons.   This  ap-
pears to be ^ranting a pretty wide discretion outside of the limits
within which it is needed.
  In  an  Italian  tenement  house at  No. — Friend  street, a
filthy little room with no ventilation or lighting worthy the name,
the seats and apartment  in a vile  state, was found  to provide
two water-closet bowls for between sixty and seventy occupants
of the house.
  At N0.__Anderson street is  a little court.  Here a single
water-closet in a small shed, the bowl full and in an abominable
condition, was the only accommodation in this line for eight or 
38
ten families  of colored people, besides the hands in a stable and
a couple of little shops.
  It is  to  be observed that the law doing  away with privies
allows their continuance upon streets not having sewers.   There
are many  little courts, alleys, and so-called avenues which ap-
pear to  come under this exception,  made presumably  for the
purpose of sparing the expense of long branch sewers or drains.
As a rule, I think the removal of privies from these localities is
more  essential than  from almost any other situation, and it is
unfortunate  that excuse  should  be found for excepting them.
The houses will certainly have to  be  drained at some time, and
it would appear as though but moderate expense would be in-
volved in conveying  away water-closet drainage in small drains
placed at  shallow depth  and running  to the nearest  public
sewer.

                Drainage  of the  Houses.

  A great part of the drainage system of most houses is so in-
accessible  that it is  difficult to  learn much regarding  its con-
struction.   Soil  and waste  pipes are  concealed in  walls, and
drains are often out of sight under cellar-bottoms, and in order
to reach them liberties  must  be  taken which would hardly be
warranted in a private  inspection.  A  lack  of tightness, even
when joints are  concealed, may  often  be discovered by testino-
with peppermint, and this test was frequently, but not rco-ularly,
applied.
  It is  evident  that, under the  requirements  of the Board of
Health and the Inspector of Buildings, the drainage of the tene-
ment houses has much improved from  the condition that must
have existed perhaps no more than ten years ago.   The  number
of well-constructed iron  drains is much larger than would be 
39
supposed,  and occasionally we find  tenement houses with an
admirable system of pipes and fixtures throughout.   In portions
of the 8th ward, on Nashua street, for example, where within a
couple of years many privies have been abolished, I frequently
found the latter replaced by water-closets of good type, thor-
oughly flushed and ventilated, and in every way satisfactory.
In spite of all that has been done, however, a surprising number
of defects of great variety are encountered.  These are such as
might naturally be supposed to exist in the absence of complete
and systematic inspection, and are variously due to the survival
of antiquated and inferior work, which has fallen out of repair,
and the design of which is not in accordance with present  stand-
ards ; to cheap  and poor construction of more recent date ; and
to the negligence  and  ignorance  of tenants and  landlords.
          © ©           ©
Occasionally a drain-trap was found  with the clean-out cap re-
moved and lost, so that sewer air had free access to the house ;
or an old pipe, with sewer connection, cut off, but left  open;
sink-drainage  carried through  cellars in  open and  sometimes
dilapidated  and leaky wooden  troughs ; old wooden box-drains
running just under the cellar-bottom,  sometimes clogged, again
free, but uncovered and rotted away  so that the current  within
was open to view ; pipes imperfectly joined, or with soft and
destructible material, or even with one pipe merely thrust into
the  open  end of the other.  All these and other defects were
repeatedly observed.
  The drainage system of the poorer tenement  houses  is not
elaborate.   A vertical  main pipe, starting at the  upper fix-
ture, receives  the branches from the sinks and water closet or
closets, and, on reaching the cellar, runs nearly horizontally as
the  house drain, passing on to  the street sewer.  Scarcely one
in five hundred of these houses contains a bath-tub or wash-
bowl, or  any other variety of  fixtures than those  mentioned. 
40
 Some, indeed, contain no running water, and no  plumbing-fix-
 tures of any description ;  but they are quite exceptional.
   One evil which is very common, and which  seems to me a
 serious one, is the omission to supply the waste-pipes of sinks
 with  traps.  Of  more than 2,000 sinks which  were examined
 by my inspectors, 60 per cent, were  found to be  not individ-
 ually trapped.  Of these, only 1,000 were in tenement houses as
 defined by law, and yet precisely the  same percentage  of  this
 number proved to be without traps.   It was frequently  noticed
 that although, upon  examining  sinks, no  traps  were to be
 seen, yet  the  tenants  claimed  that their sinks were  trapped,
 and that they  had been so informed  by  city  inspectors.   In
 such cases it would be discovered that there was  a trap upon
 the main  drain, often  directly at the  foot of the vertical main
 waste-pipe,  that  being the only trap upon the entire  waste-
 pipe  sj'stem.   Such  an arrangement does,  it is true, serve
 to disconnect the  house  pipes from the public sewer;  but
 it  does not serve  to disconnect the  different floors  and tene-
ments from  each  other.  If nothing but clean  water were
poured down the  sink waste-pipes,  the  plan  might  answer
 well enough.  But, unfortunately, that is not the  case.   Even
with decent use of a sink a great deal of animal and vegetable
 matter is  carried   along in the waste  water, which  coats  and
fouls  the  pipes.  But, far worse than this, the  sinks are liable
 to be  used, and frequently are used, by a low class of tenants,
 as a  means of getting rid of chamber-slops.   The practice
happened  in  two  or three instances to be actually  observed by
 my assistants, was  acknowledged  in others, and  in  numerous
 others was the subject of bitter complaint  from tenants.   All
 the sinks  in a house, and especially those  below the offendino-
 tenants, are  liable thus to be rendered  offensive  at  times.
 Repeatedly I have happened to  be  in kitchens  when waste 
41
water, doubtless chamber-slops, was sent down the main waste-
pipe from  some sink above, and  the odor  that was forced out
into the room was  unmistakable in  character,  and was  most
sickening.   I noticed frequently that tenants had placed wet
cloths, pans, saucers, or other rude contrivances over the  sink-
strainers in an attempt to keep back the vile stench.
  I do not find any law or ordinance directly bearing upon this
matter of traps upon sinks, except that in a section of the City
Ordinances for the Regulation of Plumbing,  such traps are re-
quired for work  performed after March, 1883.   I am aware,
however, that the Board of Health assumes to require the  plac-
ing of traps upon such sinks as are complained of and decided
to be offensive.  An excuse has been given for the construction
that has been described, that,  in many cases,  it is better not to
have  traps for the sinks, inasmuch as tenants  sometimes sift
ashes into  the latter, and the traps become clogged ; but I do
not feel  that very much weight  should be given  to that con-
sideration.  It seems to  me  very unsafe to allow  an  open
connection through  waste-pipes  between  different tenements,
and desirable indeed that every waste-pipe should have a trap
closely beneath  its fixture.  I am  confident that the  practice
of allowing a single trap on a main pipe to  answer for the whole
system of the house cannot be successfully  defended, and ought
to be abolished.
  Further, if the practice is permitted, then the  most wretched
plumbing-work may consistently be allowed for all the drainage
system above the main trap.   If there is to be a free outlet for
foul air throuo-h every sink, of what consequence is it whether
the  pipes are made tight anywhere, beyond what  is necessary
to prevent  the leakage  of  water?  In between  forty and fifty
cases we found the sink waste-pipes simply stuck in to the open
end or branch of the larger main  pipe, without any pretence of 
42
a tight connection.   In fact, it was amusing to notice  that  in
several  cases  sink-wastes had been provided with good traps,
and then, beyond these, was the open connection, rendering the
trap itself entirely valueless.
  The specified requirements of the law of 1871, regarding the
cleanliness of tenement and lodging houses, together with the
general  powers belonging to the Board  of Health, apparently
furnish sufficient authority for coping with some of the  grosser
evils noticed in connection  with the drainage system of tene-
ment and lodging  houses, such as a filthy condition of fixtures,
or defects of drainage of such importance as to give rise to un-
doubted nuisances.   But, in order that the whole problem may
be satisfactorily dealt with, I am of opinion that the Board  of
Health should have power concerning the entire house drainage
system  proper, and the connecting fixtures, to establish such
detailed regulations, and to  exercise such  discretion as it may
deem wise, whether it be as  to material, or  arrangement, or con-
struction, or any other particular.  A successful grappling with
this question demands attention to details  which it is useless to
attempt to comprise in specific laws of universal  application,
but which should be left to the judgment of proper and compe-
tent authorities.

            Abstracts of  Inspectors' Reports.
  The following  brief abstracts from inspectors' reports will
serve to illustrate  some of the various  conditions which were
encountered in our examinations : —

   Ward 6.   No. — North  street.   Nine families, mainly Ita-
lians, with numerous lodgers.  Altogether, some sixty persons,
for whom there is but a single water-closet; this is in the cellar
inconvenient for the tenants, but accessible to street  loafers 
43
 and was found out of repair and very filthy.   Hallway and cellar
 stairs also filthy.   Nearly all sleeping-rooms in the house badly
 overcrowded.
    Ward 6.   No. — Salutation street.   Broken drain in cellar,
' and pool of sewage, which was stated to have been standing as
 found for two months, causing smell which was  noticeable to
 the top of the house.
    Ward 6.   No.  — Salutation street.  Cellar  very  damp;
 planking rotten and  mildewed.  AVater-closet in  cellar filthy,
 and so offensive that tenants on floor above could not use cham-
 ber which was directly over the closet, but the whole family of
 six persons slept in their only remaining chamber.   Sinks on
 four floors, none of them trapped, and those on the three lower
 floors frequently rendered offensive by the pouring of foul slops
 into the upper sink.
    Ward 6.   No. — North street.   Cellar used by Italians for
 storao-e  of  fruit, fish, cheese,  etc.   In  this  cellar a  hole  had
 been rouo-hly broken into the iron drain, so that into this hole,
 which o-ave free exit for drain air  into the  cellar,  might be
 thrust the end of  a drip-pipe  from  the  bar  of a neighboring
 saloon.
    Ward 6.   No. — Commercial street.  Rear cellar, dark and
 unventilated, flooded with sewage, which had overflowed at a bad
 break in the drain.   The drain,  which was of earthenware,  was
 leaky at  other points also.  Tenants had noticed stench from
 cellar and  condition was judged to have been for months as
 described.
    Ward 7.   No. — South Margin  street.   Three tenements.
 Family of three adults and five  children sleeping in one room.
 House in poor repair from top to bottom ; ceilings  discolored,
 plaster falling, windows broken, stairs  rickety, and so on.
    Ward 7.   No. — Endicott street.  House occupied by nine 
44
families.  Nearly all the  sleeping-rooms overcrowded ; in one
tenement  six  persons  sleeping on  the  kitchen  floor.   Sinks
trapped, but the plumbing-work  poor and leaky, and some  of
the sinks very foul and offensive to the smell.   Halls dark and
unventilated.  Cellar damp from  leakage of water through
walls and from  defective drainage-pipes.  As many  as ten
drunken men at a time said to have been seen  asleep in this
cellar; one corner of the cellar covered with fecal matter.  Said
to have been much sickness in the house.
   Ward 8.   No. — Porcelain place.  Said to have  been three
cases of diphtheria and two of scarlet fever in the house within
a year.  Drainage  defective.  Brick  cesspool-trap  in cellar,
with some of the bricks  fallen out so that the sewage could be
plainly seen and smelled.
   Ward 8.  No. — Nashua street.   Flush vault  (poorly cared
for)  built directly against ell, and directly under and within a
few feet of  sleeping-room windows.  Plumbing-work in house
very poor, and sinks not trapped.
   Ward 8.  No. — Cushman avenue.   Water-closet bowl in
cellar broken away from  trap, and in consequence matter dis-
charged mainly upon the cellar-bottom, which was very filthy.
   Ward 9.  No. — Bridge court.   Occupied by Italians.  On
second floor, a man, wife, her three brothers and  three children
occupy three rooms.  A man, wife, and two children have two
rooms.  On the third  floor  a family comprising three  men
a woman,  and two children has  a kitchen  and two bedrooms.
In the attic a man,  wife,  and baby occupy two rooms.
   Ward 12.  Quiet alley.   Four houses inspected, in which a
considerable proportion of the inmates were found drunk   Two
privy apartments served for some  eighteen families, and were in
the vilest possible condition ; the  vault of one was full and over-
flowing on to the  floor.   Most  of the  sleeping-rooms small 
JR&CLr Cellar , JVo.—ComrfheroicLL  St.
I, org spools of staTudzng water. 
 
>
s?
5999 
 
ARRANGEMENT OF ROOMS IN A FolK-SlOKV WOODEN TeNEMENT-HoUSE ON
      Federal-street Place (Quiet  Alley),  Boston.  Arranged
                  for Five Families on a Floor. 
 
45
overcrowded, and without windows to the outer air.   Plumbing
of the poorest description, and sinks  not  trapped; some of
the sink outlets had become stopped up,  and waste water was
thrown out of windows on to a shed roof, which was also littered
with garbage.
   Ward 12.   No. — Cove  street.   Six families.  First-floor
rooms very dirty.   Sleeping-room of 5 X  6  x  8 feet, nearly
filled by the  bed,  and with no ventilation except by the door,
used by lodgers.   This and another room of the same description
opened in common into the kitchen.   Eight  persons sleeping in
three small connecting  rooms on the  fourth floor, the three
rooms together equivalent to one fair-sized room.
   Ward 13.  No. —Bolton street.  Six families. Only one sleep-
ing-room afforded its occupants more than  two hundred cubic
feet of space to a person.   Four sinks in the house, none of them
trapped.  Vertical main  waste-pipe of iron,  with trap at its foot
in the cellar, but  clean-out cap gone from the trap ; sewer end
of trap thrust  into open length  of  pipe, and this in turn  into
wooden  drain  so  rotted  away that  sewage  within  was  plainly
exposed to view.   Same conditions  found  in the cellar of the
adjoining house.   Cellar fouled with excreta.
   Ward 13.   No. — C  street.   Rain-leader  broken in cellar,
and latter flooded after storms. Sink trapped, but trap rendered
of no value by having sewer end merely thrust into open branch
of main waste-pipe.
   Ward 13.    No. — Colony street. Two  persons sleeping in
small room in cellar, dark and practically unventilated.

                   Statistics of Disease.
   In connection with  an attempt  to improve, through the pre-
liminary means of an investigation, the  sanitary condition of the
tenement-house districts,  it  is certainly well to look into the 
46
real  facts of the case as to the prevalence of certain diseases.
Unfortunately, so far as published statistics are concerned, we
cannot identify the tenement-house districts,  but must in the
main draw our own inferences from data presented for the city
as a whole.  It would be of great advantage on many accounts
if here,  as  in  London,  England, the city were divided in the
matter of statistics into certain suitably outlined sanitary dis-
tricts of like distinguishing  features.
                  ©      ©
   The zymotic diseases  are  the ones commonly spoken  of as
preventable ; and those chiefly prevailing in Boston of late years
have  been the group of diarrhceal diseases of  which cholera
infantum is the most prominent, diphtheria and croup, typhoid
fever, and scarlet fever.   These together have been accountable
in the past ten years for  four-fifths of all the deaths due to
zymotic diseases.1
   It is to be remembered that the statistics of disease commonly
published deal  with deaths only, and give no information  as to
the cases of sickness  not fatal, although these greatly outnum-
ber the former, and should be taken into account in  forming an
opinion upon the prevalence of disease.   For the three common
diseases, diphtheria,  scarlet fever, and typhoid fever, we have,
however, data  for the city  of Boston which show  for the five
years, 1883-87, a total of 3,505 deaths, while the reported  cases
numbered 18,780, or more  than five times as many.   That the
cases of  sickness  which are not  often publicly reported, and
which involve an immense loss  of labor, great direct expense,

   »  10 years, 1878-87: —
   Total deaths, all causes..........89 397
   Total deaths, zymotics..........21 280 •
   Diarrhceal diseases  ..........   8 452
   Diphtheria and croup..........5 §52
   Typhoid fever............1)696
   Scarlet fever............1212 
                             47

and untold misery, so largely outnumber the deaths, is a  fact
important to consider if we are to appreciate the evil of allow-
ing preventable diseases to go unchecked.
  The zymotic diseases  are termed preventable  because so
largely dependent upon conditions within control.   Consump-
tion is not classed  as  preventable, and  yet  we must not  lose
sight of the fact that this disease, which  in the past five years,
for example, has carried off in this city very nearly three-quar-
ters as many persons as all the  zymotic diseases  together, is
largely promoted by dampness and by foul air, — the latter so
characteristic  of densely crowded tenement houses, —and  has
even been found, in certain  famous experiments, to be infec-
tious,  and hence  capable  of transmission from one person to
another, just  as diphtheria and scarlet fever may  be  thus
transmitted ; in other words, that it is, to a greater or less ex-
tent, a preventable  disease.
   A short  examination of published returns shows what is,  I
think, understood by most persons, — that it is very young chil-
dren who  suffer most from the preventable diseases.  Looking
at the  figures for the past  three years only, we  find that of the
total mortality from such diseases, very nearly two-thirds was of
children under five  years of age -,1 and yet children of that age
constitute  scarcely one-tenth of the total population of Boston.
Sundry causes.
   2,265
   2,107
   2,334
   6,706

   7,739
   7,624
   8,080
   23,443
	1 Mortality in	Boston, 1885-
Under 5 years. 1885	Total deaths. 3,466	Zymotics 1,201
1886	3,186	1,079
1887	3,662 10,314	1,328 3,608
All ages. 1885	9,618	1,879
1886 1887	9,268 10,073	1,644 1,993
	28.959	5,516
 
48
  A study of the Board-of-Health returns for the past seventeen
years shows the total death-rate of the city — that is to say, the
annual number of deaths, from all causes, per thousand of pop-
ulation— to have ranged as high as above 30, and as low as be-
tween 20 and  21 ; and yet, on  the whole, no material, perma-
nent change is apparent, for either better or worse ; and the
rate clings to  figures comparing unfavorably with  those for
numerous of the largest American cities.
  If now we look  to see what  proportion  of the total deaths
has been due to zymotic diseases, we shall  find that in a series
of years  it has ranged as high as about 35 per cent., and as low
as somewhat under 18 per cent.   It is more important to know
that the  higher rate was reached far back in  1872,  and  that
since that time there has been an  irregular, but on the whole a
marked and well-maintained,  decline.   It  is still further inter-
esting to  notice that while for  the  seven years, 1877-83, this
decline in the zymotic rate appeared to have come substantially
to a standstill, yet in 1884, which was the first year in the use
of the Improved  Sewerage System, the  decline began afresh,
and  in the three years, 1884-86, there was a uniform and re-
markable decline from 26.2 to 17.7 per cent, in the proportion
of deaths from zymotic diseases.


         Conditions Essential to Improvement.
  It is evident, then, that there has been made in this city a
very encouraging advance in  the prevention of a  certain  class
of diseases ; and  this advance may fairly be ascribed to the im-
proved sanitary conditions which have been established mainly
through public action.   There is  no good reason why the ad-
vance which has been noted should not be pushed much farther
yet.   It is  not to  be expected, however, that an improvement 
 
 
-•    —     rO    10    rO     r\J     ro
00    <0     O    "           ^     •£
CM
O
 
 
49
of this sort is to go forward  constant!}' with great speed or
without occasional set-backs.   Injurious methods of tenement-
house life, and defective systems for  disposing of the danger-
ous wastes of a great city, which have existed for many years,
cannot be overturned in a day.  Certain things  seem essential
to our proper  protection  against the preventable  or filth  dis-
eases.   We must have the strict enforcement of reasonable san-
itary precautions within and about the houses.  "We  must have
a well-designed, well-constructed, and well-maintained system
of branch and main  sewers, reenforced  by an efficient system
for the collection and removal of solid filth, garbage, and wastes
from the streets and private premises, —these two systems to-
gether serving to cleanse the city of foul waste  matter.  And,
finally, there  must  be  a  suitable disposal of the wastes  col-
lected.
   At the present time all  these conditions are fulfilled in  part.
The houses and premises  of the citizens are  expected to  meet
certain requirements, and are  subject to supervision to  some
extent; but, as I have attempted to show elsewhere, this super-
vision  is not sufficiently systematic or  complete.   We have  a
new and valuable system of main sewers for  a part of the city,
and connected with them  a large proportion of good  branch
sewers; and yet there are very many  branch  sewers,  especially
in the tenement-house part of the city, which are unfit for their
purpose.  For the removal of solid filth collected above ground
a system is employed which, while not perfect, ranks very high
as compared with  the  methods in  use in  most  large cities.
And finally, by the introduction of the Improved Sewerage Sys-
tem  the dangerous method  of finally disposing of the sewage
of the  city formerly  in use has been supplanted  by one that  is
convenient and safe.
   Each of the agencies which has been mentioned for maintain- 
50
ing a good sanitary condition within the city is important, but
it  seems  to me that at the present time none offers greater
opportunity for advance than a close attention to the immediate
surroundings and the interior of the houses themselves.  There
are few streets that are so likely to become dangerously littered
or  saturated with  filth as are many of the  yards and  alleys,
unless  these are looked after sharply ; and although a sewer may
become foul, yet  it is  mainly through faults lying within the
house,  in its drainage system, that the foul sewer air comes
into dangerous proximity to human beings.  Moreover, even if
everything be right with streets, sewers, yards, and alleys, there
are many objectionable and unsafe conditions which  may  exist
for a long time within a house, unless some one be held respon-
sible for their discovery and remedy.
   The  pipes of the house-drainage system become coated, and
often give rise to just as foul emanations as come from a sewer ;
and when, as in many tenement houses, there is unbroken  com-
munication, through  the  waste-pipes, between  different  tene-
ments, there is an  opportunity for the interchange of infection
similar to that afforded by unbroken connection  between house
and sewer.
   Then, too, through the surprising negligence and callousness
of certain grades of tenants, what most people would consider
intolerable nuisances  are  permitted  to exist indefinitely.  As
examples of these,  my inspectors reported : a dead cat found on a
front-stair landing, appearing to have  been there a long time  ;
a dead cat in a cellar, the carcass having nearly rotted away; a
bushel  of decayed tomatoes in a cellar; a pail of garbage far
gone*in decay, found under a sink ; apparently the same pail of
garbage  there nearly three  months afterwards, the pail drop-
ping to pieces.   It is true that under any  practicable system of
house inspection more or less such instances as these would be 
51
encountered ; nevertheless, I am confident that the total number
of defects, especially those of a somewhat permanent character,
would be greatly reduced.
  In his report for 1885, the Commissioner  of Health of Chi-
cago, in which city a comprehensive system  of tenement-house
and factory inspection is in operation,  says, "The character and
importance of this work as the basis for a sound and permanent
sanitary advance, and its performance, imperfect as it still  is,
has been so  largely instrumental in  steadily  decreasing  our
death-rate, . .  . that I propose to review  at  length  the facts
presented by the Registrar of Vital Statistics, and to point out
the results which I believe may be justly attributed to this
intimate sanitary supervision of  the homes and places of labor
of our citizens."
  In  New York city the  law  in force at the  present time re-
quires that the Board of Health shall cause a careful inspection
to be made of every tenement and lodging house at least twice
in each  year; and in case of an order  having been issued, there
is to  be a reinspection within six weeks after the receipt of
information that the order has been obeyed.   It may fairly be
inferred from the result of our  labors, and I  have  endeavored
to make it so appear in this report, that regular public inspec-
tion of at least the lower grade of tenement and lodging houses
in this  city also is desirable, and is, indeed, essential to much
further  improvement in the sanitary condition  here.


             Work of the Board of Health.

  This  labor would naturally fall  to the Board of Health to
perform;  and it may be well  at this point to consider  briefly
the work of that body.   The Board consists of three members,
appointed by the Mayor, and charged by law  with the general 
52
 oversight of the public health,  and with the enforcement of
 various statutes and ordinances  designed  for its preservation.
 To it come from citizens great numbers of complaints of defec-
 tive sanitary conditions in the premises in which they live, or
 in the premises of their neighbors.   To all these  complaints —
 many of them  trivial, and some malicious —attention must be
 given.  For that purpose, and for carrying on the general work
 of the  department,  a force  of inspectors— fifteen, I believe,
 in number — is employed.   These are men of middle age; and
 as this department  of city  enterprise appears to  be  largely
 an exception to the usual  interference of politics in city work,
 the inspectors  have had  opportunity by  long  experience to
 become thoroughly  familiar with their duties, and with  the
 sections of the  city in which they labor.  Not  only are many
 formal written  complaints, such as I  have  alluded to, received
 every day, but many others  are  made verbally to  the  inspec-
 tors as they patrol their districts ; and, still further, these men
 are expected to employ their time in following up cases already
 on hand,  and  in maintaining a  general supervision of their
 districts.  The value of the labors  thus performed  cannot be
 doubted, and should be highly estimated.  I was struck at once
 and throughout our own work with the general  confidence and
 respect manifested by the people toward the Board-of-Health
 inspectors,—feelings which  could have been aroused only bv
just  and  reasonable  treatment.   Incidentally,  a  o-reat  deal
 of house inspection is done by these  men in the  regular course
 of their work,  and from  time to time  inspections of certain
 blocks or  limited districts are, for special purposes, ordered by
 the Board.
  It appears to be impracticable, however,  for the present force
 of inspectors, in addition to their other duties, to attempt any
 systematic and thorough work of  this character  on  a  laro-e 
53
scale.  As a rule, each inspector has in his charge two wards.
Thus, one man has Wards 6 and 7, another, 8 and 9, and so on;
and  while  one inspector  is away on his annual vacation, his
neighbor may  have all four wards in hand.  The  inspector for
Wards 6 and  7 has under his  care a population  of 30,000 or
more of the most difficult people of the city to  manage; the
inspector for  Wards  8  and 9 has, say, 25,000; and at  times
either one may have on  his hands the demands of a population
of over 50,000 persons.  It is not to be expected that with so
small a force proper care can be taken of the sanitary  condition
of such a  population, living in the oldest and poorest houses,
in the most crowded and worst-drained parts of the city.  I am
strongly of the belief,  therefore, that  the inspecting force  of
the  Board of Health should be  augmented  for the  express
purpose of making semi-annual inspections of all tenement and
lodo-ino- houses.   This would involve a somewhat  increased
appropriation  ; but I  can think of no way in which a moderate
expenditure of money is  likely to  result in  more general  or
genuine practical benefit to the community.
   It will be readily understood that the  position occupied by
the Board of Health is a difficult one.  It is exposed upon the
one hand to the  friendly but sometimes  impatient criticism of
those anxious  to see  improvements effected, the practical diffi-
culties of which are not realized ; and on the other hand  to the
bitter opposition of those who conceive their financial interests
or personal rights to  be  invaded by its acts.  The Board is,
undoubtedly,  sensitive  to public opinion.  It may and should
occupy ground somewhat in the lead of that powerful force, but
it cannot successfully work  very far  in  advance.  Not only,
then, does it  need men and  money sufficient  for its purposes,
but  it requires fully as much  the cooperation and the  moral
support of the citizens; and, further, the laws, which are the 
54
embodiment of enlightened public sentiment,  should  be such
as to permit of reasonably prompt, effective, and thorough
work.

      The  Tenement-House Problem in New York.
  The laws  at  present  in force  here are very valuable,  and
together  with the common  law, as interpreted by  the  courts,
furnish the  Board of Health with wide power.  To  some of the
statute laws I have, in the course  of this report, made reference,
and suggestions have also been advanced of certain other pro-
      CO                                              A
visions that might be made to advantage.  Changes or additions
of details can best be proposed by the Board itself, which, from
experience, is in a position to see their  need.  More  general
provisions,   and those involving  important  principles,  may
properly  be proposed and discussed by others.  The laws hold-
ing in New York and Boston relative to tenement and  lodging
houses are in numerous respects  similar, and in some are iden-
tical, even in wording.  The more serious  aspects of tenement-
house life  in New York, however, the wider experience of a
larger city, and the active  private interest that has been there
aroused,  have  led to  more comprehensive alterations  in, and
additions to, the laws of the former city than have been made to
those of  Boston.
  Public efforts in  New York toward  tenement-house reform
date back some thirty years, to the time of the first legislative
inquiry into the question.   The  public sentiment which thus
found  expression asserted itself in a more emphatic and  suc-
cessful manner a few years  later, in the report of  a council of
the Citizens' Association.  In 1867, a tenement-house  law was
passed, which  for twenty years  served as the basis for public
efforts toward the improvement  of tenement-house life.   As
might be supposed, this law met at first with severe opposition 
DO
in enforcement, was but imperfectly executed, and was inher-
ently weak in numerous points.   That it was, however, a step
in the  right  direction, and in accord with the current of ad-
vanced  public opinion,  was  fully  indicated by  the greatly
enlarged and even radical powers granted to the Health Depart-
ment by the " Tenement-House Act " of 1887.  This act followed
an investigation by a special  legislative commission appointed
in 1884 ; nevertheless, its passage appears to have been brought
about mainly through the persistent and enthusiastic efforts of
private individuals and associations that had a genuine interest
in this important reform.  That the labors of these thirty years
in New  York city have borne splendid fruit in the development
of more  healthful conditions of tenement-house life  can easily
be believed.   The improvement  is shown convincingly by the
statistics of a steadily falling death-rate among young children,
and might, indeed, be confidently assumed  merely from a con-
sideration of the vast  progress  which  public supervision has
brought  about  in  the structural design of the tenement houses.
The  history  of  all these efforts  in  New York  has  been very
clearly and concisely presented by the President of the Board
of Health of  that city,  in his report of last December, upon the
" Tenement-House Problem."
  Some  of the  provisions  of  the New York laws are perhaps
uncalled for  here ; regarding the principles involved in others,
there may be  difference of opinion.  Others,  again, I think,
commend themselves for adoption in this  city.   Some of the
more important provisions of those  laws which do not, so far
as I can judge, exist in our own laws, are as follows : —
  (\ \   Upon requisition of the Board of Health, at least fifteen
officers and men to be detailed by the Board of Police specially
for enforcement of laws relating to tenement and lodging houses.
  (9.)   A commission, consisting of the  Mayor, one  delegate 
5G
from the Department of Health, one from the Department of
Public Works, one  from the Department of Street-Cleaning,
and  one from  the  Bureau of Inspection of  Buildings,  to
meet annually and prepare such recommendations as they deem
for the public good, of improvements in the laws affecting tene-
ment and lodging houses, these recommendations  to  be pre-
sented to the  Governor, Senate, and Assembly ; also  recom-
mendations to the Board of Health of  changes in the execution
of these laws.
   (3.)  Appointment of a statistician  to prepare the statistics
of the city Board for its use, and for  transmission to the State
Board of Health.
   (4.)  Authorization  to appoint ten  medical  sanitary  in-
spectors.
   (5.)  Establishment of a Tenement-House Fund, to be used
solely for the  enforcement  of orders  of the Board of Health in
relation to tenement houses.   All expenditures from the fund
to be collected from the property upon which made, or from the
owners, tenants, or occupiers of the property.
   (6.)  At least one water-closet required  for every fifteen oc-
cupants of tenement and  lodging houses.   All  plumbing and
drainage work and plumbing fixtures to conform to  the require-
ments  of the Board of Health.  The  placing of filth, urine, or
fecal matter in any other place in a tenement house than that pro-
vided for it, or storing it in an apartment so long as to create a
nuisance, declared a  misdemeanor on  the part of the person so
offending.  No privy-vault or cesspool to be allowed in connec-
tion with a tenement house, except when unavoidable, and then
by permit from the Board of Health only, to whose requirements
as to location and  construction  it must  also conform.  No
privy-vault to remain  connected with a tenement house after
Jan. 1, 1887, except in cases specially named in the law. 
57
   (7.)  Every owner and every person having control  of  a
 tenement or lodging house  required to file in the Department
 of Health his name and address, a description of the property
 by street number or  otherwise, the number of apartments, the
 number of rooms in each apartment, the number of persons oc-
 cupying  each apartment, and the trades or occupations carried
 on  therein.   He must also immediately file notice of change in
 any of these matters.
  Posting conspicuously  upon  a tenement house a copy of an
 order  or notice, declared to  be sufficient service, although  a
 copy is also to be mailed when the owner or agent has registered
 as provided.
   (8.)  Semi-annual inspections of every tenement and lodging
 house  to be caused  to be made by the Board of Health, and re-
 inspections within six weeks after the receipt of information of
 the obeying of an order.
   (9.)  No building to be built for or converted to the purposes
 of a tenement or lodging house, and no  existing tenement or
 lodging house to be enlarged, or its lot diminished, so that it shall
 occupy more than  65 per cent, of the lot, excepting corner lots
 and cases for which the Board of Health grants special permits.
  (10.)   Cellar floors of all tenement houses to be cemented
 and made water-tight before Jan. 1, 1887.
  (11.)   The Board of Health authorized, when it shall appear
 wise or necessary, to reduce the number of occupants in over-
 crowded  houses or rooms until the inmates shall not exceed one
 to every  six hundred  cubic feet of air space in such houses or
 rooms.
  In a tenement house containing more than eight families, and
in which the  owner does  not reside, the  Board of Health may
require a resident janitor  or other  responsible person to have
charge of the house. 
58
   (12.)   A tenement house, within the meaning of the law,
 defined to be one occupied by three or more families.
   The last-mentioned clause is deserving of special notice.  In
 this city, it  will be remembered, the tenement-house laws apply
 only  to buildings  occupied by more than three families, or by
 more  than two families upon any floor above the second   In
 New  York, however, the  law reaches houses containing only
 three  families, —avast extension.  In Chicago, as nearly as I can
judge, the tenement-house law applies to all rented buildings.
   The reasons  which have led to the limitations here  in force
 are, I presume,  a desire not to harass people by unnecessary reg-
ulations, and a  belief that the principal evils of tenement-house
 life would be reached in houses of four or more families.  In
this city there are so many small wooden houses, built lono- a^o,
now in use by tenants, that the proportion of tenants occupying
houses of not more than three families is probably greater than
in some other cities of more recent development.   It appeared
in our examinations that all the defects of overcrowding, drainage,
and so on, that exist in the larger houses, are to be found with
about equal  frequency in those  lying outside the limits of the
tenement-house law; and although the evils and danger spring-
ing from these insanitary conditions are undoubtedly intensified
in the larger houses,  I see no good reason why the provisions of
the tenement-house law should not in time be extended so as to
insure to a much larger proportion of tenants  the protection
from landlords that is now sought to be afforded to some.
  A single example may illustrate the desirability of this.  At
No.---------place, in the North End, we  found  a  little
wooden house, not larger in plan than a fair-sized room, meas-
uring  but 14x17  feet, occupied by a single family of seven
persons.   The  house was in a disgraceful condition.  The roof
was leaky, and  the cellar in a disgusting state as the result of a 
59
 defective drain and the use of the cellar in place of the water-
 closet, which had been broken to pieces by previous tenants,
 who had kept a sailors' lodging house.  The agent had prom-
 ised this family that when they moved in everything should be
 made right,  but after they had become settled it was, "If you
 don't like it, go ! "
   Desiring to know whether or not the features peculiar to the
 New  York laws, as  above  outlined, have proved of practical
 value to the authorities  charged with their execution, I ad-
 dressed  a  letter, a short  time since, to Mr. James  C. Bayles,
 President  and Commissioner of the Health Department of the
 city of  New York,  making  specific  inquiries  regarding the
 various  provisions  to which I have referred.   The  courteous
 answer  of Mr. Bayles to these inquiries  furnishes a fund of
 most valuable information relative to the  practical working of
 those laws, and I quote verbatim his replies, which have the
 same numerical designations as the queries addressed to him.
   1.  "The  law  relative to the detailing of police-officers to
 serve as a sanitary company under command of the  President
 of the Board of Health, was so amended in April, 1887,  as to
 increase the detail from fifteen to forty-five officers of the police
 force to undertake the enforcement of the tenement and lodging
 house laws.  The sanitary company now consists of a sergeant,
 roundsman, and forty-three patrolmen.  One of the patrolmen
 is detailed to the service of the Chief Inspector of the Division
 of Food Inspection,  to assist in milk raids and  other enter-
 prises of like character.  The other forty-two  are  constantly
 eno-ao-ed in work pertaining to the enforcement of the tenement
 and lodging  house  laws.  The system works very well.   In a
 manuscript report from the Chief Sanitary Inspector, who has
 immediate command of the lay inspectors and sanitary company
of police, I find the following : lam every year more strongly 
60
impressed with the value of the service of the  sanitary police,
and become firmer in my conviction that they are an indispen-
sable auxiliary to the organization of the Health Department.  I
confidently predict  that when the next annual  report  is sub-
mitted,  it  will satisfactorily demonstrate  that  citizens' com-
plaints are promptly attended to, that nuisances are discovered
and abated without unnecessary delay, and that the laws  and
provisions of the Sanitary Code are more strictly observed  and
better results secured by  the present organization of utilizing
the services of the  lay inspectors and sanitary police than here-
tofore attained.'  With this opinion  I, in a great degree, con-
cur."
  2.  "The  Commission,  consisting  of the Mayor  and  one
representative each from the Health Department, Department
of Public  Works, Department  of  Street-Cleaning, and  the
Bureau  of Inspection  of Buildings,  might  be a very useful
body, but from its composition it is not likely to become so.
I am the only member of that Commission  having any knowl-
edge of the  tenement-house problem, or  any  official  concern
with the execution of  the laws thereto relating.  It was  evi-
dent to me, therefore, that if the Commission  at its first and,
thus far, only meeting  did anything  of value, it devolved upon
me to  take the initiative.   I therefore prepared for this Com-
mission a very elaborate  report, setting  forth  the  history of
tenement-house legislation in New York  for a  series of years,
and the work of the Board in enforcing the laws relatino- to
tenement and lodging houses.   This report was adopted by the
Commission as its  report, and was transmitted to Albany for
the information of the  Legislature.   It was subsequently
printed by order of the Legislature.
  "It will be necessary,  in compliance with the terms of the
law, that another meeting of this Commission shall be held some- 
61
time after the fifteenth day of November.  For that meeting I
shall prepare certain specific recommendations for the  Legisla-
ture in the shape of drafts of bills adding to or amending the
existing laws in certain minor details.   I mention these facts
merely to show that unless some member of such a commission
takes an active, personal, and intelligent interest  in the  tene-
ment-house question, its deliberations are not  likely to develop
anything of value.
  3.  "The  Tenement-House Commission has not appointed a
statistician, and in view of the completeness of the information
furnished  by the Health Department,  will  probably  find  no
need to do so.
  4. "The provision of law to which you allude in this inquiry
has been  amended to read, that the Board  of  Health  * may
appoint and commission such number of sanitary inspectors as
the Board may deem  needful, not  exceeding forty. .  . . But
twenty of such inspectors shall be physicians of skill and practi-
cal  professional experience in said city.'  In the  use  of the
medical inspectors we  depart from the intent of the law under
a general discretion given us to assign all officers of the  Board
to such service as may seem to us  best.   At the  present time
no medical inspectors are serving as sanitary inspectors.   They
have all been  assigned  to duty in the Division of Contagious
Diseases,  and all the work  of sanitary inspection  is now done
by  the lay inspectors and  the police.   We  do  not find that
physicians make good sanitary inspectors.  The work devolv-
ing upon them  is  largely  of a kind for which their education
o-ives them no especial qualifications ; and as  they  are likely to
regard it  as * unprofessional,' they do  it reluctantly and in a
perfunctory way.   It is our experience  that a physician should
never be  employed in  any work  not  strictly in  keeping with
his  own  sense of professional  dignity.   I would  strongly 
62
recommend that in any legislation which may be considered in
Massachusetts, the Board of Health be left to exercise its own
discretion  as  to the proportion of physicians  and  laymen on
its staff.
  5.  " The provisions of the law relative to the establishment
of a tenement-house fund were never operative.  The Board of
Estimate and  Apportionment  declined  to set  aside a sum of
money for this purpose, and  we have never had  it.  Fortu-
nately,  it  has  become unnecessary.   Under the operations of
the law relative to vacation, enacted  March  25,  1887, it is no
longer necessary for the Board to do work and file a lien against
unknown or absent owners to cover the cost of the same.   We
are  now able to require the owner to do it, and  this  is much
better and simpler  than the way originally provided by law.
  6.  "The provisions of the law covered by this inquiry are, to
a great extent, arbitrary and improper.   Matters of this  kind
should be  left largely  to the  discretion of  the  local health
authorities.  All  mandatory  requirements  are  apt to work
injustice in special cases.  I should urgently recommend in all
legislation  having this or similar objects in view, that  local
Boards  of  Health be empowered in their discretion to require
the owner to make such and such improvements, and that in no
case this discretion be  taken  away from them.   Privy-vaults
and cesspools have been abolished  to  such an extent that very
few remain within  the city limits.   Whenever found, they are
vigorously  moved against, and  no  consideration  can be pre-
sented to the  Board which will induce  it  to  rescind such an
order.   Sometimes, where no  harm will result, extensions of
time are granted, as in the case of property to be improved at a
fixed date by the substitution of a different buildino- for the one
that is now upon it; but if  this date is  remote, the order abol-
ishing vaults and cesspools is immediately  and peremptorily 
63
enforced.   With the single exception as to the arbitrary fixing
of the number of water-closets required for  tenement houses,
this portion of the law is admirable, and is enforced by this
department.
  7.  "The requirement imposed upon owners of tenement and
lodging houses to register their names  and addresses with the
Health Department has never worked very well, for the reason
that no  penalties for  non-compliance were  provided, and the
Board could  not  enforce  this order against unwilling owners.
The registration in the case of lodging-house  keepers is com-
plete, for the reason that they are required to take out permits,
and cannot get such  permits without making their names and
addresses a matter of record.   The object of the  law  requiring
the registration of the owners of tenement houses was  to enable
us to find  persons responsible for nuisances,  upon  whom  to
serve orders ;  but the power to vacate for non-compliance with
orders obviates the necessity  for  such  record.  When a house
gets in such  a condition that repairs  are necessary, and the
owner either  cannot be found or fails  to comply with orders,
the Board issues a vacation order, and  immediately the owner
comes to the  front with his hat in his hand to ask the pleasure
of the Board. A vacation order never fails to find the person
responsible for the condition of the premises.  At the present
time,  therefore, we  are not attempting to keep up any fuller
directory of tenement-house owners than can be had by a volun-
tary registration.   The  posting  of an  order in a conspicuous
place  within  or  upon  a tenement house is a sufficient service,
even though we are unable to reach the owner by  mail.
  8   "Under the present law, there is a semi-annual inspection
of every tenement house  in the city twice in each year.  It is
but fair to state, however, that our compliance with this law is
not perfunctory.   There are a large number of tenement houses 
64
known to be in  bad condition  which are inspected as often as
once a week, another larger  class inspected twice each month,
and  a  still larger  class inspected once  each month.  We have
an accurate  and constantly revised census of tenement houses
which  is the result of this semi-annual inspection.
  " Reinspeetions  after orders  are issued are never delayed as
long as the  law permits; viz., six weeks.  They  are  usually
made within  ten days.   We hold our  inspectors to very close
responsibility in this matter  of reinspection,  and they are not
allowed to neglect it and hold the papers indefinitely.
  9. " The provisions of the  statute  covered by this inquiry are
enforced  in  every case.
  10.  " In the  exercise of their discretion the Commissioners
believe  that proof of leakage should  be  furnished before  an
order to make a cellar water-tight should be enforced.   When-
ever a wet cellar is found, this  proof is obtained,  and the order
to make the floor water-tight is enforced.
  11. "The  heavy inflow of  Italian  immigration into  New
York has necessitated more  stringent measures  looking to the
enforcement  of  the law relative to overcrowding.   As the re-
sult of night inspections, the Board of Health issues every week
a large number of orders reducing  the population  of tenement
houses.  In the case of families, we are usually lenient in enforc-
ing an  order relative to the cubic air space per  occupant;  but
when overcrowding results, as  is  usually the case, from the
taking  of lodgers, such orders  are  enforced  without  con-
sideration.  This law works very well,  and has tended to  pre-
vent the huddling together of large numbers of persons in rooms
too small to give proper breathing-space.
  " The Board of Health requires a janitor  to be in charge of
large tenements whenever  their  condition or the character of
the occupants is such as to  render it  necessary. 
65
   12.  " The definition of a tenement house as one occupied by
three or more families is probably as good as any wTe can get.
It,  of course,  includes all  the large apartment houses ; and in
relation to these dwellings, many of which  are very  elegant,
the  provisions of  the  tenement-house law  are',   of course,
impracticable  of enforcement.  For example, — to require the
semi-annual whitewashing of the elegant frescoed ceilings and
expensively papered walls of  such  apartment houses as the
Hawthorne, Ariston,  Lisbon, and similar  structures,  in which
apartments rent for from two to six thousand dollars per year,
would be grotesque.   The  Board holds its powers,  as regards
these buildings, in the  sense  of reserved power, and is able
whenever necessity exists to enforce the tenement-house law
against them.
  "This covers all your specific inquiries, which are so compre-
hensive  as to render almost unnecessary any information relative
to tenement and  lodging houses additional to that which is so
fully set forth in my report to the Mayor.  From  this you will
see what an immense improvement has been effected in the con-
struction of tenement houses under the operations of the several
laws defining our powers relative thereto.
  "In addition to this, I have pleasure in sending you  a copy of
our code of plumbing regulations which are enforced  in the case
of all new buildings ; and it gives me pleasure to say that the
work which is now done in tenement houses is  better than
that found in the best class of private dwellings in  the city.
  "I also send you a copy of the City Record, giving a detailed
report of the  operations  of the  department for the quarter
endin"- June 30.   From this you will see the amount of work
done  by the Sanitary Police."1
                 i Quarter ending June 30, 1888.
  The following is a summary of the work performed by the Sanitary Police: — 
66
               Responsibility of  Landlords.
  It is, of course, understood that the people with whom we
have to deal, in  this work, are not  altogether an innocent, in-
offensive, and easily imposed upon class, but that many of them
are about as rough and undesirable tenants as can be imagined.
I have heard of a house-owner not daring to plank  his cellar-
bottom, for fear the tenants would pull up the planks and  use
them for fire-wood.  Nevertheless, so long as landlords choose
to receive these people into their houses, they should themselves
be held strictly responsible for the decent and  healthful condi-
tion  of  the premises.   Generally speaking, in those  tene-
ment houses  in which the  landlord himself  resides  and  looks
after  affairs, the   conditions  found  are  far  better  than  in
houses managed by agents not regularly present, or the  land-
lords of which live in other parts  of the  city or out of town.
There  are  several men who are large owners  of  tenement-
house property in the West End and North End, whose houses
are sure to be found overcrowded with the lowest classes of our
population, and to be in just as defective condition as it is possi-
ble for them to be without absolutely defying the laws and the
Board  of Health.   It  is  safe to say that these men, and  many

    Number of inspections made........35,382
       "   " complaints made........3,515
  The number of orders  received, inspected, and reported upon was 12,094, of which
number there have been returned to the Sanitary Superintendent, —
    Orders complied with.........3,691
       "  not complied with........5,272
    Orders reinspected and found complied with or progressing and
      referred to Sanitary Inspectors for reinspection and report    .    2,880
    Held for reinspection.........     251
    Number of scavenger permits collected  and forwarded  to the
      Sanitary Superintendent   ........     729
    Number of lodging houses inspected......     458
       "   " tenement houses inspected......15,165
       "   " families in tenement houses inspected ....  106,961
       "   " water-closets ordered in lieu of privy-vaults .   .    .     222 
67
others like  them, care absolutely nothing for the welfare of
their tenants.  They conduct tenement houses solely as invest-
ments from which they propose to squeeze every cent of profit
that can be legally obtained.
  Just what net  return is  yielded by tenement-house property
it is evidently impossible  to learn in an inquiry of this kind ;
but a  partial inference  may perhaps  be drawn  from the gross
rentals, concerning  which our  reports permit  of making, for
some  houses, a rough approximation.  This has been done  in a
considerable number of cases by taking the total of rents paid
by tenants in a house, and estimating the value  of the property
at a certain percentage above the  assessors' figures.  Calcula-
tions thus made for some  forty tenement  houses proper, show
gross  returns ranging mainly between 10 and 20 per cent.   In
about an equal number of houses of less than four families, the
range was considerably higher, rising in several instances to
above 20, and even above  30, per cent.   In  several of these
cases  the annual rental exceeds the assessed value of the build-
ings.
  It would probably be fair to rate the returns from the lowest
class of wooden tenement-houses proper in this city at from 15
to 20  per cent, gross; from first-class brick tenement  houses,
at from  10 to 12  per cent, gross ;  while first-class business
property yields  from 6 to 8 per cent, gross, and 4} or 5 per
cent.  net.  Even at the high  rate mentioned for  low-grade
houses, it is probable that they often fail to net their  owners
much over 6  per cent., on account of abuse of the property,
repairs, and bad debts.  Still there are many other cases in
which it is fair to suppose that the repairs, grudgingly made, can-
not seriously reduce the gross income obtained from the property.
The occupants of the lowest class of houses are  constantly shift-
in o-; but they are usually  required to pay their rent in advance, 
68
 so  that there is no  loss on that account.   It seems to me there
 should  be no hesitation in requiring from these owners, as a
 class, improvements which can plainly be shown to be requisite
 to  a fair  sanitary condition,  and which must  really benefit
 the property.


    Open  Squares  for the  Tenement-House  Districts.
  In addition  to  the  more direct sanitary work  to  be under-
 taken through the medium of the Board of Health and the laws,
 valuable steps may also be taken toward counteracting the evils
 of crowded city life by establishing  breathing-places here and
 there in the form of open squares.  The city has already under
 way splendid schemes for parks, which will beautify its surface
 and be of great benefit to the  people.   These should be supple-
 mented, it seems to me, by the clearing away of an occasional
 opening in the crowded tenement-house districts.   These open-
 ings may be of small size, but should be close at  hand to the
 poor people, to whom they would serve as a place of resort for
 women and children during the day,  tempting them away from
 many wretched and unhealthy homes.
  Two or  three such squares  might well  be established in the
 North End,  and I am confident they would constitute a wise
 and sound investment  for the city. If, owing to  movements  of
population and encroachments  of business, the necessity for
them should cease in particular localities,  the land could  then
 if it were  thought desirable, be sold.  They should be located
 in  the  immediate vicinity of the most  densely populated dis-
tricts, and preferably in their  midst, as their construction miofit
then have  additional  value by requiring some  of the worst
houses  to be demolished.
  I am informed that a law has been passed authorizing the 
69
establishment in New York city of small parks of precisely the
character which I have described.  In accordance with that law,
it has been decided to take a whole block, in what is known as
"Mulberry Bend," bounded by Mulberry, Park, Bayard, and
Baxter streets, situated among the worst slums  in the city.
This block will furnish a park measuring 200 X 600  feet,  in
the construction of which there will  be obliterated some of the
most crowded  and degraded tenement houses to  be found in
New York.
  As to  the value of such improvements, I  cannot do better
than to quote  from  a paper by Mr. Charles  H. Latrobe, en-
gineer in charge of the parks of Baltimore, upon the "Influence
of Parks and  Open  Squares upon  the  Health of Cities and
Towns :" —
  " As General Superintendent and  Engineer of the Public
Parks, I can truthfully say from  actual observation, that they
yield the only relief to home-worn women and children and shop-
worn men, when the  working-day is done. From 5 P.M. until
10 P.M. they are  thronged during the  summer months.   On
the open lawns are tennis courts, base-ball grounds, and lacrosse
fields for the young; under the trees are mothers and children.
Coteries  of old men assemble  year after year on the same
benches under the same trees.   It is difficult to close the public
squares at night when the time comes, the people cling to them
so tenaciously.   Their appreciation of them, I think, is manifest
in the fact that although often  situated in the roughest parts of
the city, they are so little  injured by thoughtless or malicious
people.   Indeed, in  some places the neighbors donate flower-
beds to beautify them, and  take the  greatest  interest  in their
condition."
  Mr. Latrobe further says :   " One error, I think, is likely to
be made in the matter of parks ; viz., that too much money may 
70
be spent in the suburban region and too little in the hearts of
our cities.   My opinion is that after the establishment of one or
two large suburban parks for holiday resort and all-day picnics,
all available resources should be expended in breaking into the
densely crowded centres of population, by the establishment of
attractive squares easily accessible to the worn  parents  and
sickly children of the  surrounding districts ; indeed, the subur-
ban  parks might wait on the urban squares, as  these latter
would cultivate a longing for the larger liberty of the parks."


               Other Public Improvements.
  As is well known, the North End is intersected in all direc-
tions by narrow streets,  so called, many of them, such as Salu-
tation, Tileston, Stillman, and Morton, for example, measuring
but about six feet between curbs, nor more than from ten to fifteen
feet between opposite building-fronts.   From such streets  sun-
light  is often almost completely excluded.  The space for light
and air for the houses afforded by those streets is scarcely  one-
half what the law now demands for the opening between  front
and rear houses built upon a single lot.  And  beside these
passage-ways dignified by the name of streets,  there are number-
less side alleys in which similar conditions prevail, only sun and
air must needs struggle still harder in order to gain admittance.
It cannot  be expected that the city is to be made  over anew,
even in the interests  of sanitary reform; but  the widening of
narrow  streets, even  if based upon no  other plea  than that of
the demands  of business or of travel, should be hailed  with
satisfaction as also giving more air and light to the houses, and
probably necessitating the destruction of some that could  well be
spared.
  The tearing down of old  tenement houses is likely not to be 
                 CANNY  PLACE,  NORTH  END.
From a photograph taken at noon on a bright day.—Blocks  of tenement  houses fronting froi
                         either side upon an alley 7 feet wide. 
 
71
 undertaken except to satisfy the demands of business, or the
 purposes  of public improvements, or requirements  of repairs
 too severe to warrant keeping up the old property.  It is rather
 difficult to draw the line at which a house should be condemned
 to destruction under ordinary circumstances on sanitary grounds,
 inasmuch  as  any  building  can  with  sufficient expenditure of
 money be put into comfortable  condition.   A building that is
 plainly  unsafe as  regards construction, or required improve-
 ments of which are refused, will be forbidden occupancy by the
 Department for the Inspection  of Buildings or by the Board of
 Health, as the case may be.  It would evidently be unjust for the
 Board of Health to insist upon unusual and excessive improve-
 ments simply in order to root out a particular building; yet few
 could object  to a sufficiently high standard  of requirements
 under the laws, and  a sufficiently strict  enforcement of those
 requirements, to result in the voluntary destruction of some of
 the rookeries which now remain in the city.   Thus, few, I think,
 would regret the razing to the  ground of the buildings to be
 found in  "Tuckers  Yard,"  off Joy street, and in some other
 places that might be  mentioned.
   The Superintendent of Sewers, in his annual report for 1887,
 has  called  attention plainly to  the  generally bad and often
 dangerous condition  of the sewers in the very section in which
 our work has  been  conducted.   So  long as those districts are
 compelled to  rely  upon antiquated wooden sewers, entirely un-
 suited both in design and in grouping to present purposes, their
condition as regards healthfulness must be unsatisfactory.

               Improved  Tenement  Houses.
   While public measures for the improvement of the  sanitary
condition of the laboring  classes are  indispensable, the extent 
72
to which they are  conceived and enforced will be governed by
the state  of opinion and  interest  among that  portion  of the
people having influence in such matters.  The mere passing of
laws and  granting of money will  not  accomplish everything;
and  nothing can be more valuable  in aiding  to public  suc-
cess  than the cooperation of  private  effort.   To the honor
of the  city it may be said  that  such  efforts have been, and are
now  being, freely  put forth  here.   The work of supplying
improved tenement houses for the poorer classes opens a  wide
and interesting field to consideration, and can only be touched
upon in this  report.  The operations  of the Boston Coopera-
tive Building Company, which has a  paid capital stock of  over
$200,000, and  conducts  thirty-nine  houses,  accommodating
some two hundred families,  afford a  conspicuous example of
work of this kind upon a large scale.  The Improved Dwellings'
Association, with a paid capital of $100,000, manages another
noteworthy enterprise of like character.  There  are numerous
similar undertakings  conducted upon  a  more modest scale by
individuals, which  I will not mention  in detail, but which are
of the greatest value in elevating the  condition of the tenement-
house population of the city.  These undertakings  are managed,
so far as I am  aware, as business enterprises, it being expected
to charge about the  market  rate for rents, but to keep the
houses in as good repair as the receipts  will warrant, con-
sistently with  a  moderate  net  income.  Such  enterprises are
not only a direct blessing to the tenants who are  accommodated,
but they are valuable object-lessons to  show what may be  done
by fair and considerate treatment  in maintaining discipline
among tenants, and in reclaiming to a decent sanitary condition
some of the worst  parts of the  city.
  For the general advancement by private action of the sanitary
conditions into which it has been my  duty to inquire, I can see 
73
no  more sensible  or  probably efficient method than the con-
sideration of the questions involved by permanent committees ;
for example, one for each ward, which  shall have a constant
oversight  upon their districts, and  shall undertake to  direct
attention and effort to particular houses or localities, and to
agitate and press for the improvement  of those until successful.


            Conclusions  and Recommendations.
  It has been sought  in this report to present fairly the  condi-
tions which were encountered  in our  examinations, as well as
to state certain conclusions and recommendations which have
naturally followed.  It has, doubtless, been  noticed that these
recommendations have  been  in the direction of an increase in
the scope of effort, and a consistent enlargement of the powers
and resources of  the Board  of  Health.  The  safety of the
principle of investing wide powers in a small body of men for
the purpose of protecting the public health has been abundantly
proved, here  and  elsewhere, by years of experience;  and the
question which, it  seems to  me, should now be considered  is
that of strengthening and extending  a  line of work which is
directly connected with the health,  and, therefore,  with the
happiness and prosperity, of the entire community.
  The aim has been, not so much  to formulate  these recom-
mendations in precise  detail, as  to  indicate certain principles
which it seems important to establish in  the  public supervision
of tenement and lodging houses of low grade.  As  to how far
these principles should be established directly by laws and ordi-
nances, or by regulations and discretionary action of the Board
of Health, it has not been attempted nicely to decide.   It is evi-
dently to be desired that the laws should, on the one hand, state
as clearly and definitely as practicable  the requirements in sani- 
74
tary matters, which must be observed by citizens ; and that they
should, on the other hand, define similarly the duties and powers
of the Board of Health, which must rely mainly upon these laws
in its efforts.   The public superintendence which it is thus sought
to exercise, must, however, in order to be  effectual, be  so
largely a matter of detail, and properly depending upon expe-
rience  and  judgment, that an attempt to incorporate into the
laws fixed regulations for all minor points would prove unsatis-
factory in results.  It appears to me, therefore, that in applying
the principles of the laws there should be left  to the Board of
Health much range for the exercise of discretion ; while, at the
same time,  in  any particular case that may arise, there should
be no doubt as to what  the responsibility and  authority of the
Board  are in the premises.
  The  principal  suggestions which  have  been made in this
paper may now be summarized as follows, in the order in which
they have appeared : —
  Issuance, at  the  discretion of the Board of Health, of permits
to owners or  lessees of tenement and lodging houses, limitino-
the number of occupants, as an assistance in checking over-
crowding.
  Doing away to the fullest practicable extent with the employ-
ment of inner rooms, not communicating directly  with the outer
air, in existing tenement and lodging houses, and the  adoption
of efficient measures to prevent their introduction into new con-
struction.   Restrictions  for the future regarding the proportion
of a lot to be covered by a tenement or lodging house.
  If cellars and  basements are to be allowed to be occupied
regularly as dwellings, then they should be  required  to  be
made water-tight;  but it is advised that the occupancy of cellars
and basements for sleeping purposes  should be prohibited.
  More rigorous enforcement of the law against uncleanliness. 
75
   Provision for the removal  of privy-vaults  from alleys  and
courts excepted in the present law on  account of not having
sewers.
   Sink waste-pipes  to be required to be individually trapped.
   The establishing of such detailed regulations  as may seem
wise concerning house drainage and plumbing  fixtures, and the
general supervision  of, and discretionary action regarding, the
same to be undertaken by the  Board of Health.
   Inspecting force of the  Board of Health to be increased for
the purpose of semi-annual inspection of  tenement and lodging
houses.
   Widening  of the  scope of the tenement-house law, so as to
embrace houses of a smaller number of families than is specified
in the present law.
   Establishment of  open squares in the midst of the tenement-
house districts.
   Widening of narrow streets  where practicable.
   Such severity in the laws and their enforcement as shall  tend
to do away with some of the most objectionable houses now in
use.
   Improvement of the sewerage in certain streets where it is
now known to be bad.
   These recommendations  are not  pretended to  be all that
might be made to advantage, but are rather those the necessity
of which was forced upon attention as the result of our examina-
tions.   Still other measures which have commended themselves
in the  experience of New York, or possibly  other cities, may
prove themselves also worthy of adoption here.  Again, it is not
assumed that  the results of this examination offer a key to the
complete solution  of the tenement-house problem as a whole.
There are  other  sides to this problem besides  that approached
in a sanitary survey, and the latter alone has been dealt with 
76
here.   It may seem that the various conclusions drawn and
recommendations made  are  broader than were warranted  by
partial and somewhat hasty inspections of limited districts ; yet
I am of the opinion  that very similar  results would  have been
reached by  me in  any  investigation, however extensive and
elaborate.
  In concluding, I desire to acknowledge the very valuable aid  '
which I  have  received from Miss Margaret  Greene and Mr.
Arthur B. Ellis, members of the committee ; and to record my
appreciation of the services of my assistants, Frank A. Sinvthe,
George C. Whipple, Frank  I.  Capen, Samuel H. Mildram,
William S. Johnson, and Alfred W. French.
                     Very respectfully,
                                    DWIGHT PORTER. 
 
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