Orange County observer. [volume] (Hillsborough, N.C.) 1880-1918, 1885-12-19
BROUGHT IN BY THE TIDE,
4 CHASTITY Harvest Cleaned
from New York Rivers.
Many Human Bodies CAST Up Every
Year-scenes in the Morgue

tIC i1oL uC duo ot lHc pOttcE utii-
Jack Frost puts an end to it in No
vember. In the brief six months how
many an anxious query is answered by
the waters, how many a dreaded secret
revealed. And. alas! how many a one
is buried mfathomed, unsolved, to
which henceforth the cemetery of the
unknown dead only holds the key.
Somewhere between 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
zunrecognized. 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
ly the sum, not the individual, counts.
they are lost, unmourned and un-
sought. OF the anxious army of
searchers who daily troop through the
dead-house, hunting for some sign of
missing friends, no one has a glance
of interest OF recognition for these
outcasts. II happens, indeed, that
some strangers corpse floats ashore
dressed in such rich clothing. with
iewelry and gewgaWs, that public in
terest is strongly excited by the news
paper account, which, in the end,
brings the friends from a distance.
But this is rare. The dock rats, who
reckon the rivers dead as among their
just perquisites, are on the look out for
such "foaters." and empty pockets,
torn or turned inside out, perhaps, tell
too often Of their victims. For every
rich lind that escapes them and is
written up in the newspapers, the
chances of those who come after are
vastly dimished. 1t may, too, be set
down as 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
/ tloaters, without a doubt In either
case the victim is not likely to have
much money. Poverty is, OF all, the
most frightful cause Of suicide. and
the occasional pawn ticket, the brick
/ or fiat iron in the otherwise empty
( pocket, tell the story more plainly than
! any coroner's verdict. OF the drunk
en- wanderer. the thieves who prowl
about the piers at night know how to
! take care. Cases of mistaken identi-
fication bv parents OF children, or by
I 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
lv to the unhallowed surroundings,
which inspire the visitor with irresiot-
ibe disgust New York's morgue is
its meanest disgrace a rlckety, foul
smelling old hut in the Bellevue Hos
pital grounds, down at the foot of East
Twenty sixth street. undermined hy
age and rats, and soaked through and
through with decay and corruption
In long frame shed on the pier, in
which the temperature in July and
August rarely sinks heloW 9o6, the
dead are laid in long row, in rude
pine-boari cotfins on sawhorses, otter
fifty or sixty in the row The hospi
tails as we'll as the rivers and the tene-
ments of the poor send their share
The stencil is fearful. the<lghts wit
messed IN that shed unutterably sick
ening, Work house help is employed
in dragging in the corpses from tht
dead wagon. and in packing them fol
burial, simple matter enough. Ihf
swollen corpse is iammed down IN {
pine box as nearly as nay be its size
the lid spiked down with ten-penn.
nails. name and date OF death put OF
with pencil, il the tenant came from
hospital and was known, the simple
word "unhnown,' i: the streets or th'
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 n our rivers IN tn
course OF the year are women. With
out doubt they are all suicides