Health in home and town / by Bertha Millard Brown.

  • Brown, Bertha Millard, 1870-
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Health in home and town / by Bertha Millard Brown. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    ently no room for the multitude of children. Clothes are seen out drying at all times, and the people are busy at housework or some other employment, such as mak- ing cigars or garments. We do not need to stay very long to see how the people live. Life in a Tenement House. — Being born and bred on the East Side of New York,i I am somewhat in a position to judge the various discomforts that exist in the modern tenements. The greatest evil is the lack of light and air. The air-shaft is so narrow that the. kitchen windows in two houses adjoin each other. In most houses the air-shafts are the only means of light and air for at least two out of every three rooms, and the only means of lighting the staircases. The first thing that awakens one in the morning is the loud voices of the various tenants, intermingled with the odors that arise from the kitchen windows. It is indeed wonderful that you can distinguish any one voice among them all. If we are to give the reason for the people's loud voices, let us first consider how difficult it is for one to make himself understood in this medley and confusion; in this congested House of Babel it becomes habitual for us to raise our voices. After the children are sent to school, the various mothers commence their house-cleaning. Then comes the question. What is to be done with the garbage of the day? Most women solve it by throwing it into the street or the air-shaft. It is much easier than climbing ' The following account is written by a young woman of twenty, a tenement house dweller in New York.