Identifier: nightsideofnewyo00bear (find matches)
Title: The Night side of New York. A picture of the great metropolis after nightfall
Year: 1866 (1860s)
Authors: Beard, Frank, 1842-1905, illus
Subjects: New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs 19th century
Publisher: New York, J.C. Haney & co.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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ritten about itthen and there, I would have said extremely filthy ; but there wasworse to come. We go up the narrow, worn-out, winding stairs. We enter—no,the writer did not, for he would have vomited had he done so—theroundsman entered, and we looked into three of the upper cham-bers. In one, under the eaves almost, small and low and slur1 ting,a negro woman had three or four boarders ; she paid a doliar a weekfor rent. Next door there were five or six women huddled near astove. Who is that man lying beside a woman under a heap of ragsnear by them ? They are all prostitutes here, said the roundsman.All five?11 All in this building And men corae here ? Oh, yes ; they have no sense of decency.One of these women was so frightfully diseased that the foul odorsof her body was distinguishable above the other fetid odors of theroom and its inmates, and the fumes of the coal gas; for in all thesecaverns there are no fire-places.A man had died of fever in the attic room opposite only thai
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98 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. morning, and his widow and her children and lodgers were still liv-ing there, as filthy aad crowded together as ever. We have to carry corpses from these places sometimes, saidthe roundsman, and they are crawling ! Are all these women—all of them—of bad character ? Every one, said the roundsman. We descended. Over there, observed the roundsman, as he pointed to a placenear by, over there is where the nigger killed the whitf man some time since. They called it S Alley. Would you like to go over ? We picked our way over the half-frozen slush, and came to a sta-ble-door, or what appeared such, for there was a heap of stable re-fuse near it. The roundsman rapped ; by-and-by an old negro manappeared, with but one article of clothing on his body—a short,thick old man, who made his living by begging. A low, filthy room,miserably furnished, but with more in it than the rooms up JacobsLadder. On the floor lay a young man and a woman, on a filthy matfcrass.They

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