Street-cleaning and the disposal of a city's wastes : methods and results and the effect upon public health, public morals and municipal prosperity / by George E. Waring.

  • Waring, George E., Jr. (George Edwin), 1833-1898.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Street-cleaning and the disposal of a city's wastes : methods and results and the effect upon public health, public morals and municipal prosperity / by George E. Waring. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/258 (page 7)
    The necessary result of such a state of affairs appeared very fully in the illustrated description of the condition of the streets, and of the degree of their encumbrance and their neglect, made by a committee of the City Club, with a view to securing the removal of Commissioner Brennan for neglect of duty. A large number of photographs were taken, showing the condition of the streets in March, 1893, and affidavits were published, describing the manner in which the work of street-cleaning was done and neglected. Two of these are reproduced here, in contrast with pho- tographs of the identical spots taken the end of May, 1895. Such illustrative contrasts might be duplicated for the entire collection of the City Club, for every block in New York is now as clean as those shown here. The condi- tion of the streets as photographed in 1893 was further set forth in the accompanying affidavits, which testify to the inefficiency of the department at that time. These affidavits are very voluminous, and they relate to some hundreds of different points. The photographs were taken at a time when the snow and ice had not entirely melted, and due allowance is to be made for this. The following are some of the descriptions set forth in the affidavits: Opposite No. 379 [East Fourth Street] there was about a ton of ashes, garbage, old cloth, tin cans, and five old barrels. ... In front of Nos. 344 and 346 there were seven barrels, refuse overflowing all over the sidewalks. . . . The general condition of this street was bad. I have enumerated the most filthy places; but all along the street it has the appearance of being the dumping- ground of the whole ward.