Today’s Filthy Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
During the suffocating heat wave of August, 1896, most of the residents of Chicago seemed preoccupied by the simple ordeal of surviving the torrid day and suffocating night. If New York’s yellow press indulged its taste for the macabre during the heat wave, the Chicago Daily Tribune matched them for every rotting horse and dead dog. In particular the paper reported the situation among the city’s poor, with one descriptive headline declaring, “WRITHE IN THE GUTTERS — Residents in Tenement Districts suffer from the Heat–Thousands are Driven from Their Homes and Pass the Night in the Streets, Sleeping in Filth — Cobblestones Converted into Pillows — Babies Are Apparently Abandoned by Their Parents and Left to Shift for Themselves.” Chicago was mirroring New York’s misery. “All the horrors of Hades were made real yesterday in the tenement house districts of Chicago,” reported the newspaper.
In Chicago, heat had reduced people to animals, as the Daily Tribune reported people crawling on all fours through the streets. Hundreds slept in the gutters and in alleyways. At the heart of Chicago’s tenement district, the streets “were literally packed with half-dead human beings.” Moaning people covered the sidewalks, “their faces in the dirt and filth,” grateful for the occasional drop of rain that drenched them and eased the stench of the streets. The most pathetic sight, though, was that of a baby, “who could not have been more than a year old [lying] all alone in the gutter among the filth that had been dumped from a nearby fruit wagon.” The baby’s head rested on the curbstone where it slept soundly, oblivious to the misery around it.
By Sunday, after five days of blistering heat, Chicago’s streets had become festering rivers of filth. With no rain to wash away the horse manure and urine, nor the organic refuse of the businesses and residences, the blistering heat made every street noxious and dangerous. Venturing out into the street at night to catch a breath of air meant making one’s way amid animal feces, rotting produce, and discarded meat trimmings from butchers.
Ironically, the large rectangular garbage containers found on every street became sought-after perches for individuals and families to rest safely above the muck. “The garbage boxes were a godsend to those who found the streets too wet and filthy to lie in,” a reporter from the Tribune observed. “Wherever one of the foul-smelling receptacles was, there was sure to be at least one person stretched upon it. Some of the boxes were covered with an old quilt, and babies, stark naked, lay stretched upon them without any one, apparently, having any fear of their falling off.”
Culled from: Hot Time in the Old Town
Garretdom! Annoying Swede Edition!
Nearly a Homicide.
On Sunday last Julius Lang aged 16 years and several other boys were playing ball at Green’s farm, when several Swede boys came along, and one of them said to the players: “You fellows don’t know how to play ball.” This with other remarks so exasperated the temper of Lang that he turned to one of the boys who was playing ball and asked him for his pistol, saying he would shoot some of the Swedes. The boy refused to let Lang have it, but he being much the stoutest, took the weapon by force, and then turning on the Swede boys shot Edward Hogan, lodging about a dozen small bird shot in his breast and stomach, one shot entering just above the abdomen was at first supposed to be dangerous, but nothing serious will occur from the wounds.
Lang was brought before Justice Fleischman on Tuesday, and after a hearing was committed to the County jail in default of $300 bail to appear at the next term of the District Court.
Duluth Minnesotian, September 12, 1874 as featured in Coffee Made Her Insane
More dreadful olde news can be perused at Garretdom!
Andersonville Prisoner Diary Entry Du Jour!
This is the continuation of the 1864 diary of Andersonville prisoner Private George A. Hitchcock (see the archived version for all entries up until now).
Here’s today’s entry:
July 18th. A man was shot near the dead-line by the accidental discharge of a sentry’s musket, and killed. Prisoners who came in to-day report Montgomery, Ala., burnt by a Union raiding party.
Culled from: Andersonville: Giving Up the Ghost