undred years. It seemed very
English to me then; but when we afterward came to tackle our rear
tenements, and in the first batch there was a row which I knew to have
been picked out by the sanitary inspector twenty-five years before as
fit only to be destroyed, I recognized that we were kin, after all.

That was Gotham Court. It was first on the list, and the Mott Street
Barracks came next, when, as executive officer of the Good Government
Clubs, I helped the Board of Health put the law to the test the
following year. Roosevelt was Police President and Health Commissioner;
nobody was afraid of the landlord. The Health Department kept a list of
66 old houses, with a population of 5460 tenants, in which there had
been 1313 deaths in a little over five years (1889-94). From among them
we picked our lot, and the department drove the tenants out. The owners
went to law, one and all; but, to their surprise and dismay, the courts
held with the health officers. The moral effect was instant and
overwhelming. Rather than keep up the fight, with no rent coming in, the
landlords surrendered at discretion. In consideration of this,
compensation was allowed them at the rate of about a thousand dollars a
house, although they were really entitled only to the value of the old
bricks. The buildings all came under the head of "wholly unfit." Gotham
Court, with its sixteen buildings, in which, many years before, a health
inspector counted 146 cases of sickness, including "all kinds of
infectious disease," was bought for $19,750, and Mullen's Court,
adjoining, for $7251. To show the character of all, let two serve; in
each case it is the official record, upon which seizure was made, that
is quoted:

No. 98 Catherine Street: "The floor in the apartments and the wooden
steps leading to the second-floor apartment are broken, loose, saturated
with filth. The roof and eaves gutters leak, rendering the apartments
wet. The two apartments on the first floor consist of one room each, in
which the tenants are compelled to cook, eat, and sleep. The back walls
are defective, the house wet and damp, and unfit for human habitation.
It robs the surrounding houses of light."

"The sunlight never enters" was the constant refrain.

No. 17 Sullivan Street: "Occupied by the lowest whites and negroes,
living together. The houses are decayed from cellar to garret, and
filthy beyond description,--the filthiest, in fact, we have ever seen.
The beams, the floor