The San Francisco call., 1896-03-14

calling out, 'The doctor from the City
Hail." and repeating the calls and the
poundings many times, finally brought q
response. The door was opened and the
visitors passed through long passage
way, which ended in the rooms of the
Wong Wah Company, fronting on Stock
ton street. Here half dozen Mongolians
were found, every one of whom disclaimed
all knowledge of the deadroom downstairs
and its living occupant.
In an alleyway almost as foul with rot
ting vegetable matter and much other
refuse, which runs north from Pacific
street, between Stockton and Dupont, is
the All Lick Hospital, or "Quiet Nursing
Place."
1t is certainly very quiet. Knocking on
the first door in the long brick building
brought a response from very voluble
and somewhat rotund heather, who was
overanxious to prove that all was well in
his deadhouses. He said they belonged to
the Man Fook On Company, and reluc-
family opened the three outside doors that
lead to as many dirty, dark and narrow
deadchambers. Here the small chamb bers
are divided off into spaces like stalls in
stable, and in each stall five boards rest on
sawhOrses, making tables or couches; two
of these in each stall-one for the corpse,
one for the pauper that is soon to become
corpse. There they lay and grin at each
other until at first one and then the other
goes off to the City cemetery in a pine box
In one of these deadchambers was a tuber-
culosis patient under the influence of
opium. He must have had cousins of
some means to enjoy the nepenthe. The
other living occupants of these dead
chambers in this "quiet nursing place. lay
motionless and so far as one could see un-
attended.
"He die soon," said the voluble China
man, pointing to one patient. Indeed, it
would be remarkable if he lived another
day in these foul and wretched quarters.
Beside him was door fastened with
great heavy paddock, which could not be
opened for the inspection of the visitors
because the keeper who had the key,
Him glon away" explained the guide.
But inside this padlocked room were the
bones of the rich dead awaiting shipment
to China. In each one Of these three dead
houses is "bonehouse, as it is called,
and the man who had the keys to all of
them could not be found.
Both of these alleys will be condemned
by the Health Board, it is expected. At
least they will be reported as public nui-
sances. They are certainly endangering
to the public health, for the odors that
come from them are laden with the
microbes of all sorts Of diseases.
Halfa dozen other Chinese undertakers
were visited. most of which were found
fairly clean for Chinatown. and one or two
were scrupulously so. But the best of
them are sad affairs, and all of them con-
tain berths for the dying. Sometimes
thin partition divides the hunks of the
quick from the dead-sometimes not.
What gruesome, CHASTITY custom it is,
though, to take a sick man to the under
takers before death has closed his eyes to
the unpleasant scenes Of such places.
In the best and cleanest "Chamber of
Tranquility" in Chinatown-that on Stock
ton, near Pac1ic-the visitors found man
making cotfins in the front room for the
two dying men in the back room. And
the back room and front room communi-
Gates by a large open doorway. 1t is not
an improper thing, in the Mongolian
scheme of ethics, for the dying man-if he
be poor-to lie In his bunk at the dead
house and watch the undertaken nail to-
gether the redwood box that will soon hold
his Iifeless form. 1t was question, often,
whether the coffin will be ready before the
man dies or the man die before the box is
q