New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1903-08-16
EVICTION OF THE .SQUATTER DUMP JEWELLERS.
HOW MEN EMPLOYED IN THINNING GARAGE
SCOWS HAVE BEEN ALLOWyED TO LIVE.
EVICTION OF

Yesterday the day fixed by Commissioner
Woodbury. for the eviction Of the squatters who
had created miserable abodes for themselves under
the dumping platforms of the Department OF Street
Cleaning. and with many and voluble protests,
the mscalled tenants OF the city literally took
up their beds and walked" Some of them had
nothing but beds to carry away, and these were
so filthy in not few instances that those who
claimed them not permitted by the Board of
Health, under whose direction the places were
cleaned out to take them away, but they were sent
to the crematory at the West Forty-seventh-st.
dump to be reduced to harmless ashes.
For many years the italian scow trimmers en-
ployed by the contractors who pay for the privilege
of taking whatever of value they find in the
waste of the city have been allowed to live-at
least. TO exst-in the spaces under the dumping
boards and the inclines leading up to them on
the wharves In some Instances, as at the foot of
East Forty-sixth-st., the wharves are double
deckers. with a floor two or three feet
above high water and another from six
to eight feet higher, level with the street
At these older dumping places the spaces be-
tween decks indescribably filthy and
were occupied by men who sorted garbage by day
and rushed the grOwler gambed fought and
otherwise oIsported themselves unseemingly by
night No women children inhabited these pest
holes It was of little consequence to the men
that, in every shower. filthy water trickled down
through the deck that covered them, or that the
air they breathed was freighted with dust. disease
germs and the sum total of all the vile odors that
together from every quarter of the city at
the garbage and sweeping dumps With old
mattress rescued from the refuse a frying pan
procured in the same way, a broken trunk rescued
from the scow and few tin pans and bottles. a
trimmer was equipped for housekeeping under the
dump. provided, of course. he had the brute
age and physical strength 10 compel recognition
of his claims to space. An old stove of almost
any kind was good enough for the culinary
quTements of the whole colony, and for heating
the common abode in freezing weather. At night
,Vea had If Tho nh
bish and repaired supplied light enough to enable
these wharf rats distinguish diamonds from
spades and find the way their lips when the
beer cal or whiskey bottle was passed, and that
was all the illumination they cared for
The police rarely bothered these swarthy. filth
loving denzens of the dumps In the daytime
they worked and were under at least nominal dis
cjnline At night no policeman the force was
foolish enough TO go down into one of these wharf
subcellars alone. II, sometimes happened, the
setto became the arbiter of petty differences and
an arrest had to be made. it rarely became known
TO the authorities until the next day and the crimi
nal was generally taken at his task. or having
fed. arrested at the house OF some TREND
where he had taken refuge.
The police are not sorry these colonies are
broken up Patrolmen experienced in the local
tiles where they existed say they were breeding
places for all sorts OF vice and crime as well as
for germs of every conceivable disease.
The dump at the foot OF East Forty-sixth-st.
was undoubtedly, at the time the order to vacate
was issued the worst of these pesthoes. More
than dozen men ate. slept and amused them
selves under the landward end of the wharf. Their
shiny bedding was crammed into every nook and
corner of the space between decks not high and
wide enough to utilized in the sorting operations
or so thickIy studded with piling that there was
no room for work At remote period in the
,a.+ ttere was a fire between decks for The Trib-
une reporter found the piIing and the umbers badly
charred At some period after the fire desultory
attempt at embarrassing made, but It was so
long ago that the dirty water which trekled
.t,,,b the upper deck had washed away of
the lime and had changed to a sckly yellow the
little still discernible.
rhs Torty-s.xthsst sewsr runs nearly the wheis