"Five Cents a Spot"Jacob Riis, 1888/9
[From Jacob Riis: Shedding Light On NYC's 'Other Half', by Robert Siegel, NPR]
This is something like what I had in mind when describing tenement conditions that would make me truly fearful of swine flu or a repeat of the 14th-century Black Death.
... though the conditions pictured predate by 30 years the 1918 influenza pandemic, I'm betting many urban dwellers found themselves in 1918 in comparable squalor.
[Thanks to an old Army bud for directing me to the NPR article.]
Department of the Things One Learns From Books:
ReplyDeleteIn 1900, the biggest, most egregious slum lord in New York was the Episcopal Diocese.
Siad fact gleened from a novel by Caleb Carr called "the Alienist." HIGHLY recommend it...