one of the most wretched rookeries in the city was
cleared out and cleansed by order of the Board of Health. This was known
as "Sweeney's," and stood in Gotham Court. The immediate cause of its
overhauling was the discovery of its actual condition made by Detective
Finn and Mr. Edward Crapsey of the New York _Times_, during a visit to
it. Mr. Crapsey gives the following interesting account of his visit:

"As we stopped in Cherry street at the entrance to Gotham Court, and
Detective Finn dug a tunnel of light with his bullseye lantern into the
foulness and blackness of that smirch on civilization, a score or more of
boys who had been congregated at the edge of the court suddenly plunged
back into the obscurity, and we heard the splash of their feet in the
foul collections of the pavements.

"'This bullseye is an old acquaintance here,' said the detective, 'and as
its coming most always means "somebody wanted," you see how they hide.
Though why they should object to go to jail is more than I know; I'd
rather stay in the worst dungeon in town than here. Come this way and
I'll show you why.'

"Carefully keeping in the little track of light cut into the darkness by
the lantern, I followed the speaker, who turned into the first door on
the right, and I found myself in an entry about four feet by six, with
steep, rough, rickety stairs leading upward in the foreground, and their
counterparts at the rear giving access to as successful a manufactory of
disease and death as any city on earth can show. Coming to the first of
these stairs, I was peremptorily halted by the foul stenches rising from
below; but Finn, who had reached the bottom, threw back the relentless
light upon the descending way and urged me on. Every step oozed with
moisture and was covered sole deep with unmentionable filth; but I
ventured on, and reaching my conductor, stood in a vault some twelve feet
wide and two hundred long, which extended under the whole of West Gotham
Court. The walls of rough stone dripped with slimy exudations, while the
pavements yielded to the slightest pressure of the feet a suffocating
odor compounded of bilge-water and sulphuretted hydrogen. Upon one side
of this elongated cave of horrors were ranged a hundred closets, every
one of which reeked with this filth, mixed with that slimy moisture which
was everywhere as a proof that the waters of the neighboring East River
penetrated, and lingered here to foul instead of purify