Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-11-29
SLUMS OF NEW YORK
Visited at Midnight by Lady Henry
Somerset and Three Friends.
THE POLICE ESCORT THE PARTY.
Chinese Fan Tan and Opium Joints Among
the First on the List.
IMPRESSIONS UPON THE VISITORS

ESPECIAL TELEGRAM TO THE DIsPATcH.l
New YORK, Nov. 28.-Last night Lady
Henry Somerset carried out her previously
expressed intention of visiting the mid
night haunts of poverty and vice in this
city before she crossed the ocean for her
English home. Lady Somerset is the Pres
/ ident of the British Women's Temperance
Association and the landlady of many
thousands of tenants in the poorest and
most wretched quarters of London. Her
name has become famous throughout the
English-speaking world for her efforts in
behalf of ''the submerged tenth" o. her
home city.
She wished to see for herself, she said, in
what respects, ifany, the problem that con-
| fronted humanitarians in the new world
differed from that which she had grappled
in perplexity so often. So last night, after
Lady Somerset had come from a meeting at
Miss Grace Dodge's house, where she had
spoken at a Loyal Legion meeting, she
changed her dress rapidly to one of plain
blue cloth and was ready for the slums.
There were three other members of the
party. the gentle English quakeress, Mrs.
r. Pearsall Smith, Mrs. Isabella Charles
Davis. Corresponding Secretary of the Or
der OF Kings Daughters, and Jacob. A.
Riis.
Police Protection for the Party.
The party started from the Hotel Bruns-
wick at 1890 o'clock. The'way laid first to
Mott street and the Mulberry street bend.
Orders from police headquarters had pre-
pared the way everywhere, and at all points
touched police officers in citizens clothes
were ready for escort.
A grocery store in Mott street first aroused
the interest of the women. They stopped
for . moment to examine its curious stock,
the strange looking sausages and fragrant
tea; voting it nice, if ordered Then
Chinese restaurant was visited, and the
cleanliness of the kitchen and the cookery
admired. In the joss house the party
rested for moment in red upholstered seats
while the attendant priest tried to explain,
in his pigeon English, the uses of the sacred
vessels and things
So far the party had seen the curious and
clean side of Chinatown. But when they
crept down a long flight of stone steps into
the cellar under drugstore, the side that is
not turned to the light was developed.
There half dozen men lay on reed mat
tresses, smoking pipes. twirling the bub-
bling opium drowsily on long pins over the
flame of an oozy lamp, or snoring out their
drunken sleep in all sorts of attitudes on
the hunks. They paid no attention of any
sort to the visitors.
This, explained the police officer, 'tis
not public joint. We do not permit them
to exist, but raid them as quickly as they
come. We raided the last only few days
ago. These are in their own cellar, where
they have a right to be-"
In the Fan-Tan and Opium Joint.
The women shivered and expressed no
desire to see a public joint Thy were
taken next through fan-tan dive, from
which all the gamblers had fled at the ap-
proach of the detective, leaving only the
dealer sitting stolidly on his mat, scarcely
bestowing ecowl on the intruders and
then they climbed stairs without end in the
Pell street dives of Chinese immortality. In
one of the first they came upon, a girl was
face to face with an ugly-faced Mongolian,
smoking over the same lamp that stood be-
tween them. The women looked upon the
scene with sternness and pity mingled in
their faces. The girl needed them no more
than the Chinese in the joint.
The long flight of stairs that led to the
first dormitory of the 10-cent lodging house
at 18 Pell street was surmounted with an
effort to no purpose; before the odor I'D
there the party beat a hasty retreat, after
getting glimpse through the doorway of
the long rows of hunks in which the tramp
sleepers lie.
Once in the street they breathed freely
again. Then they went around to the Null
berry street bend Lady Somerset had been
commenting on the absence of drunken
~ @hnc cSp hAA tA1I &LoH
the police arrested them on sight, but in
the bend there were enough. They were
sitting on the curbstone, few asleep, their
heads covered with their aprons, more
carrying on in the open saloons or bias
pheming on the sidewalk. A vigorous eau
ton from the detective was needed to quiet
the most boisterous.
Down through the long and dark passage
wav leading to Bandits Roost" the party
groped their way and looked upon the
wretchedness of the hidden dens in there.
Most of them were empty.
Down In the Sweaters Domain.
1t was midnight when the sanitary police
man and physician of the health depart
ment service met the party east Of the
Bowery and conducted them to a tenement
barracks at the lower end of Norfolk street.
The women were now in the sweaters"
domain, the part of the city, Lady Somer-
set was informed, where the crowds are
nearly twice as densely packed as ever was
old London, of infamous memory.
Lady Somerset watched with amazement
the policemen hammering on the doors by
candle light and compelling the tenants to
open them. In room after room the women
saw, looking in over the shoulders
of their conductors, crowds of
humanity sleeping on the floor, on
tables and shakedowns, anywhere. Eleven
were in one room; nine in another It was
the same in Hester and in Ludlow streets.
One thing was exceptional-there had been
an effort made to clean up in some places.
The Hebrew Sabbath had commenced. But
the piles of sweaters clothing, used as bed
ding were there, and sights in plenty from
which the women turned with saddened,
pitying faces. For the first time Lady
Somerset's courage gave out. /
As the sum of her impression of the night |
trip, Lady Somerset expressed her con-
viction that in some respects American
methods of dealing with the slum problem |
are vastly ahead of English ways, chiefly in
the vigor of the treatment. But she was
not prepared to say, that with it all, We had |