Identifier: newyorkbysunligh00mcca_1 (find matches)
Title: New York by sunlight and gaslight : a work descriptive of the great American metropolis ; its high and low life; its splendors and miseries; its virtu
Year: 1882 (1880s)
Authors: McCabe, James D., 1842-1883.
Subjects:
Publisher: New York : Union Publishing House
Contributing Library: Columbia University Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: The Durst Organization

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tereda few common phrases; but there is one word thatall of them understand, and that is, * Beer. Here, asin Bottle Alley, kegs are found in several of therooms, where the contents are dealt out at a cent aglass. It is nearly all sour stuff, given to the men forhelping on the brewers wagons, or sold to them atthe end of the day for a mere trifle. * Is there muchdrunkenness there ? asked the writer of a police-offi-cer. * Oh, yes, sir, he replied; * we can go in there,or in any of these alleys, any night, and get a cart-load of drunken and disorderlies. We dont takethem one by one, but gather them up in a hand-cart,and wheel them off to the station-house. They arenot usually people who live there, but bummers whogo there to drink. For these wretched quarters thepeople who live in them pay from five to six dollars amonth rent out of their earnings, which rarely exceedfifty cents a day. Bottle Alley is another terrible neighborhood. Itis a portion of the old Five Points, and is the abode
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588 NEW YORK. of misery and wretchedness. How it came by itsname no one knows, but it was probably so calledbecause of the trade in old bottles carried on by ajunkman who lives in its rear. The alleyway, aboutfour and a half feet wide, is cut through the fronthouse, and, running back about thirty-five feet, it opensinto a little courtyard that faces the rear building. Itis irregularly paved with cobble-stones, is coveredwith filth, and looks as though it might be a passage-way leading from a stable. Standing at the entrance,and looking in from the street, no one would ever dreamthat the tumble-down building in the rear was theabode of human beings. The cellar is a queer hole. Passing down a flightof stone steps (every one of which is out of jointwith its neighbor) and through a dilapidated doorway,you stand in an apartment ten by fourteen feet, with aceiling so low that you can scarcely stand up with yourhat on. One of these walls is of bare logs, the othersof undressed stone. There a

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