In some of the older and poorer tenements, many families live on the same
floor; they are crowded together in the most dreadful manner, and instead
of having plenty of light, air, and water to help make them endurable,
they have little or none of any of these necessary things.

In these houses the want of water is one of the greatest evils. Instead of
giving each tenement a nice sink, and a water-boiler at the back of the
stove, so that people can have hot and cold water all the time, there is
no water put into any of the rooms.

Outside on the landing there is water, and a rough sink, which the tenants
of each floor use in common. They have to go into the hall to fetch every
drop of water they use, and this is the only place they have to empty the
dirty water away.

In some houses the sinks are not on every floor, and in these, the poor
women have to drag their heavy buckets of water up and down the stairs.

The tenements are not heated. Each tenant has to keep his own rooms warm.

Every drop of warm water they need for cooking or washing has first to be
boiled over the stove, and so the poor are forced to use a great deal more
coal than more well-to-do people need.

It is not because they don't pay the landlords enough rent that the poor
have no comforts in their homes. So many families can be packed into one
floor, that landlords find tenement-houses pay them extremely well.

Many of the tenement-houses have been allowed to get so dilapidated, that
the Board of Health has taken the matter in hand, and has been trying to