Connecticut western news., 1885-09-23
BROUGHT IN BY THE TIDE,
A Ghastly Harvest Cleaned
 from New York Rivers.
Many Human Bodies Cast Up Every
 Year-scenes in the MOrgue.

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 it in No
 vember. In the brief six months how
 many an anxious query is answered by
 the waters, how many dreaded secret
 revealed. And, alasl how many one is buried unfathomed, 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
 unrecognlzed. Who they were and
 how they met their fate is never found
 out. Sucked under in the mad whirl-
 pooLof 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 glance
 of interest or recognition for these
 outeasts. It 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 dock-rats, who
 reckon the rivers dead as among their
 just perquisites, are on the lookout for
 such "aoaters" and empty pockets,
 torn or turned inside out perhaps, tell
 too often of their victims. For every
 rich find" 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 generally safe principle, that
 people with money in their pockets
 rarely get drowned. Suicide, or the
 drunken groping about the piers at
 night account for the great mass of
 f1oaters, 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-
 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 it's meanest disgrace-a rickety, foul, smelling old hut in the Bellevue Hos. pital grounds, down at the foot of East
 Twenty-sixth street, undermined by
 age and rats, and soaked through and through with decay and corruption In long frame shed on the pier, ir which the temperature in July and August rarely sinks below 90a, tht dead are laid in a long row, in rude pine-board coffins on saw-horses, ofter fifty or sixty in the row. Tho hospi
 tals as well as the rivers and the tene
 ments of the poor send their share
 The stench is fearful; the sights wit messed in that shed unutterably sick
 ening. Work-house help is employed 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 it's size
 the lid spiked down with ten-penn, , nails, name and date of death put oI with pencil, if the tenant came iron a hospital and was known, the simpl D word "unknown," if the streets or tn river spewed him out, and the ghastl, , freight is ready for shipment to tn f Potter's Field when the steame , comes on burial days, twice week.
 Less than score, probably. of tn
 whole number of drowned persons n that are found in our rivers in tn a course of the year are women. With f out doubt they are all suicides v Men have hundred chances to wo . mans one of tumbling into the rive V by accident. In the spring and sum a mer comes limited crop of boys @ most of them nude, victims of yer Il nal ambition for a swim at the pie a when no policemen is in sight Occa q sionally dredging-machine brings u : part of body, the mutilated trunk o if a human head, showing that the dee Q has secrets which it does not divulge that there are dead who never ris 2 to the light of day. Others are car = rled out to sea and thrown ashore O Q Staten Island or Bay Ridge, where tn ', tide sets in strongly, or pass beyon !. Sandy Hook to the great ocean, to b ' heard of no more. # .Es