The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1885-09-17
BROUGHT In BY THE TIDE.
A CHASTITY Harvest Cleaned
from New York Rivers.
Many Human Bodies Cast Up Every
Ycar-Scenes in the Morgus.

Anew York letter to the Cincinnati
Enquirer, says:-All the year through
dead bodies are found in the rivers.
but in the spring the season opens at
the morgue and at the potter's field.
Jack Frost puts an end to 1t in No
vember. In the brief six months how
many an anxious query is answered by
the waters, how many dreaded secret
revealed. And, alas! how many a one
Is buried unfathomed, unsolved, to
which henceforth the cemetery of the
unknown dead only holds the key.
Somewhere between a hundred and
fifty and two hundred human bodies
are cast up by the rivers every year;
the number varies. In hard times,
when business is bad and work scarce,
the record runs higher than in more
prosperous years. and the excess is
credited to suicide But, bad seasons
or good, quite one-half of the "found
drowned" are buried unclaimed and
unrecognized. Who they were and
how they met their fate is never found
out. Sucked under in the mad whirl
pool Of metropolitan life, in which on
y the sum, not the individual, counts,
hey are lost, unmourned and un-
sought OF the anxious army of
,earchers who daily troop through the
iead-house, hunting for some sign of
missing friends, no one has glance
Of interest or recognition for these
putcasts. 1t happens, indeed, that
some strangers corpse floats ashore
dressed in such rich clothing, with
jewelry and gewgaws, that public in
terest is strongly excited by the news
paper account, which, in the end,
brings the friends from distance.
But this is rare. The docl-rats, who
reckon the rivers dead as among their
Just perquisites, are on the lookout for
such "hoaters." and empty pockets,
torn or turned inside out, perhaps, tell
too often of their victims. For every
rich 'tind" that escapes them and is
written up in the newspapers, the
chances of those who come after are
vastly dimished. it may, too, be set
down as a generally safe principle, that
people with money in their pockets
rarely get drowned. Suicide. or the
drunken cropping about the piers at
night account for the great mass of
/ floaters, without doubt. In either
case the victim is not likely to have
much money. Poverty is, of all, the
most frjghtful cause of suicide, and
the occasional pawn ticket, the brick
or lat-iron in the otherwise empty
pocket, tell the story more plainly than
any coroners verdict. OF the drunk
en- wanderer, the thieves who prowl
about the piers at night know how to
take care. Cases of mistaken identi-
fcation by parents of children, or by
children of father or mother, occur
every week at the morgue. Partly is
this, in all probability, due to the
shocking state Of the corpse, its black.
ened and distorted features, and part.
ly to the unhallowed surroundings
which inspire the visitor with irresist
ible disgust. New York's morgue is
its meanest disgrace-a rickety, foul
smelling old hut in the Bellevue Hos
pital grounds, down at the foot of Eas
Twenty-sixth street, undermined by
age and rats, and soaked through an(
through with decay and corruption
In long frame shed on the pier. ir
which the temperature in July ant
August rarely sinks below 90a, th'
dead are laid in a long row. in rud'
pine board coffins on saw-horses. Otter
fifty or sixty in the row. Tho hospi
tails as well as the rivers and the tene
ments of the poor send their share
The stencil is fearful; the sights wit
messed in that shed unutterably sick
ening. Work-house help is employees
in dragging in the corpses from tn
dead-wagon, and in packing them fo
burial, simple matter enough. Tn
swollen corpse is jammed down in
pine box as nearly as may be its size
the lid spiked down with ten-penn
nails, name and date of death put o.
with a pencil, if the tenant came fror
a hospital and was known. the simpl
word "unknown," il the streets or tn
river spewed him out, and the ghastl
, freight is ready for shipment to tn
Potter's Field when the steame
comes on burial days, twice week.
Less than score. probably. of tn
whole number of drowned person
, that are found in our rivers in til
, course of the year are women. With
out a doubt they are all suicide!
, Men have hundred chances to W.
, mans one of tumbling into the rive
, by accident. In the spring and sun
, mer comes a limited crop of boy
, most of them nude, victims of a vel
nal ambition for swim at the pie
, when no policemen is in sight OccS
D sionally dredging-machine brings u
part of body, the mutilated trunk
T human head. showing that the dee
a has secrets which it does not divulg'
, that there are dead who never ris
, to the light of day. Others are cal
q ried out to sea and thrown ashore o
a Staten Island or Bay Ridge, where tf
tide sets in strongly, or pass beyon
I Sandy Hook to the great ocean. to
heard of no more.