Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1864-05-24
: THE CITY.
SMITHS ROW.
The WFive Points" of Colum bus Clean
ed Out by Fire-Scenes About the
Shanties-Insight into the
Life of Les Miserables.


About eight o'clock yesterday morning
fire broke out in the collection Of shanties
on Water street in the rear of the Gas Fac
tory, known as Smiths Row "a name as
familiar to the Police Court and City Prison
as household words, and connected with
every species and denomination of petty
offenses and minor crimes. The architectu-
raj arrangement of the "Row" is a novelty
in Itself. There are perhaps fifteen differ
ent shanties, the oldest one having been
built twenty years ago, the others,
seeming to be the progeny OF, lean
crafty on the first. There are shanties
with porches, and shanties withoutporches;
with shutters and without; with windows
and with holes. Fifty chimneys peep out
from fifty different corners, and blacken
with their fifty different smokes the face of
the huts; fifty different smells from fifty
different kinds of filth rise up from the hol-
low in which the Row reposes, to smite the
sense of the intruder and fifty kinds of
oaths in dozen languages, may be heard
The doors hang upon one hinge, the shut
ters lean tipsily against each other; and
each window, filled with old hats or old
clothes, seems about to fall into its neigh
Dor which is similarly ornamented. There
are cellars protected by rotten door-ways,
through which man could tumble into the
midst of family group at any time; and
there are rickety stairways leading no one
knows where, looking as if they had a
spite against mankind and were only wait
ing favorable opportunity to fall upon
and crush somebody. Passing under an
arch freshly painted with dazzling blue,
one will find court with a huge dungheap
in the centre, around which are collected o
new installment of tenements invisible
from the outside; and in this court children,
hogs, dogs, and cows revel in one promis-
cuous fellowship. There are perhaps thirty
families occupying the Row and each family
is supplied with half dozen children, from
the nursing babe to the toddling urchin,
the vicious looking boy and the dirty faced
girl. Over and about all these hangs an air
of indescribable dilapidation, squallidness,
misery, poverty, filth and horror, which to
be appreciated must be seen.
An alarm of fire in such place created
the utmost CONSERVATION, and occasioned q
scene which Hogarth might have painted,
but no one can describe. Each family be-
gan to provide against the devouring ele-
ment by tunbling their household goods in
the street, commencing with the babies.
They were piled in a heap, and while their
half naked mothers were dragging out the
furniture, the little ones sprawled about in
the dirt, confounding confusion by their
cries. The babies cried, the men cursed,
the women screamed and the dogs threw in
q dismal chorus of howls. Stoves were car
ried out and set down upon the toes of by
ISLANDERS; clocks were pitched into the
street and smashed; and women, half stu
pefied with smoke and whisky, were dragged
out by the heels.
When the steam fire engines arrived and
began pouring tremendous streams of wa
ter through the windows, doors and crew.
ces in the burning shanties the confusion
reached its height. The denizens of the
place ran about like mad people, and many
of them received more cold water than they
had been acquainted with for years. One
woman was knocked down stairs by a
stream of water with which she collided.
Another female, toothless, bare headed,
drunk and horrible, rushed frantically
among the crowd talking wildly in glib
berish which no one could understand; and
an old woman, who had lost her wig in the
melee, lit her pipe with spark, and sit
ting down upon heap of furniture, calm
ly surveyed the scene before her.
The engines worked away vigorously and
saved the shell of Smiths Row; but what of
household goods spared by the fire were
damaged by the water with which every
thing around was flooded. The inhabitants
ceased their bowling and began to identity
their goods-including babies-which labor
was not performed without considerable
difficulty and some fights. Before the water
ceased dripping from the caves, the bare
footed women were bailing out their cribs,
preparatory to resuming the even tenor of
that domestic felicity which had been so
unusually disturbed.