The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 15, February 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls by Various
page 17 of 35 (48%)
page 17 of 35 (48%)
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make the landlord have them properly drained, and cleaned, and repaired.
It came to the knowledge of this board that there were some rear tenements in Mott Street, which were in a frightful condition. They had been built at the back of some houses fronting on Mott Street--in fact, they had been put in the little spot of ground that had been the yard belonging to the front houses. They came up so close to the front buildings that, by stretching out your arms, you could almost touch the front wall of one house and the back wall of the other. The actual distance apart was a little over seven feet. This would have been bad enough, but worse was to come. After a time, warehouses were built over the surrounding back yards, and at last these poor tenements had brick walls round their sides and backs, to within eight inches of the windows, and all the light they got was given them by the seven-foot court that divided them from the houses in front. Just imagine the darkness and the stuffiness of these rooms. Think how awful they must have been in the summer, with not a breath of air reaching them from any quarter. The tenants were obliged to go up to the roof and sleep there, for the rooms were unbearable. The people who lived on the lower floors paid less rent than those on the top, because when you got up to the top floor there was a faint glimmer of daylight. The tenants were put to the expense of burning lights all day long, because neither sun nor light could reach them. |
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