Life in a New York tenement was bad enough, but an 'inmate' of a cellar dwelling was hell. The 19th Century Five Points slum was built on marsh and the Collect Pond, and when the land subsided, the upper classed moved out - and poor immigrants moved in - to what was little more than a fetid swamp. The scene was set for poverty and crime. Such is the genesis of a slum, a foundation that would haunt future inhabitants. And yet even more misery was to be found underground - chambers where New Yorkers lived, danced and gamed, and police dungeons amongst the city's drains, which, Charles Dickens (who visited the slum in 1842) talks of as little more than stagnant sewers – where a man would be half-eaten by rats should he die during the night. You will discover just how disgusting these conditions were for the labouring classes – so bad and dangerous to health, in fact, that they are described as 'receptacles for the dead.' Health reform came, but it took two decades, and, in the meantime, the squalid living conditions of tenants were of little concern to tenement owners.

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Credits: Narration - markmanningmedia.com
CC BY - Immigrant from America, Island of Hope Island of Tears, Immigrant from America by PublicResourceOrg; Smoke Outlet @ The world-famous InterContinental Hotel on Park Lane in London, England, United Kingdom by UggBoyUggGirl Photo World Travel; A politician out canvassing, A cartoon by Grandville, Illustration of a dance hall above a cometary by Wellcome Collection; Nigeria Slum 08 by Videvo.com
CC BY-SA - As the hillside settled, some of the buildings' foundations moved. This building has begun to crack as it settles by Tobyc75; The Five Points quarter in 1850 by Scarafax; The NYC MTA cancels the W train in 2010 by Autopilot; This is a graphic illustrating the types of ground subsidence by Mpetty1

#NewYorkSlums #NewYorkSlumsDocumentary #SlumAmerica #SlumLifeInAmerica #SlumLife #SlumUrban #SlumHomes #SlumHouse #TenementHousing #TenementSlums #TenementConditions