Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Down Among The Lowly: 1871 In The Fourth Ward

the last page of the doument mention Sweeney's Shambles
an excerpt from rootsweb
One of the main streets in the Fourth Ward was Water Street. The police reported that every building along Water housed either a saloon, dance hall or bordello on one of its floors. It was common for a family to live one floor away from a bordello. For almost a quarter of a century, Water Street was the highest crime area in New York City.
Cherry Street became infamous during the mid-1800s. Cherry was lined with boarding houses that were known as 'crimp houses.' Since the Fourth Ward was on the water, many ships would dock and its crew disembark into the city for the night. Many seamen would rent rooms in these boarding houses for the night. However, though the sign outside said 'boarding house' it was just a ruse. The unsuspecting seaman would pay for his room and retire for the night. Once the seaman was asleep, the denizens of the boarding house would sneak into his room, usually through a hidden panel in the wall, then 'crimp' or rob and murder him. The seaman's body was then dragged downstairs and dumped into the sewer. 'Crimp house' residents usually consist of the
landlord, prostitutes and maybe a bartender or two. Sometimes the people of the boarding house would simply drug the seaman while he enjoyed some liquor on the ground floor of the building. Chloral hydrate was the drug of choice for crimpers, but laudanum and opium were also used.
These drugs could be purchased fairly easily on any street in the Fourth Ward. Opium was not hard to come by as the area was full of opium dens. The crimpers would put such a large dosage of chloral hydrate into the seaman's drink, that it would kill him shortly after consuming it. Crimp houses had a mortality rate of seventeen percent. Many women found work as prostitutes in the numerous bordellos throughout the Fourth Ward. Children were also sold into prostitution -- their customers
being either adults or other children. Unlike Five Points which was largely a business area, the Old Fourth Ward was mostly residential. Tenements littered every block. Arch Block was a famous tenement building that was so large it covered the entire block from Thompson to Sullivan Street between Broome and Grand. While the Old Brewery in Five Points was enough to give people nightmares, it wasn't as bad as Gotham Court, nicknamed Sweeney's Shambles. Sweeney's Shambles held the dishonor of being the worse tenement in New York City history. Not much is known now of the history of the building except that the nickname came from the landlord, Sweeney.
Sweeney's Shambles was a huge imposing tenement complex that stood at 36 and 38 Cherry Street. It consisted of two rows of connected tenement houses, 130 feet in length. It was the home of over 1000 people, mostly Irish. You could only enter Sweeney's Shambles through one of two alleyways that ran around the building. On the East side was Single Alley, a mere 6 feet in width. On the West side was the 9-foot wide Double Alley, also known as Paradise Alley.

No comments: