Glimpses of Christian History Presents Pastwords #131: Medical Mission in New York's Slums by Helen Campbell ©2007

he doctor who comes to the Mission once or twice weekly is a gentle-looking woman, a little beyond middle life, who devotes a large share of her time and professional service to the poor of this wretched locality without the least expectation of reward save the approbation of Him who said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto me."

"If you want to know how some of the poor souls in the alley have to live and die, come with me," she said to me one day. "It is safe enough now, but ten years ago not the bravest would have gone up that alley alone. Even now they sometimes kick a missionary down stairs, or you encounter a drunken pair clinching and rolling at their leisure from top to bottom. But we can go up safely, though I warn you beforehand of the smells. Often, well-seasoned as I am, I have to run out to the hallway and lean over the stairs for a breath of something a shade less nauseous. Come."

Standing at the entrance to the alley, I hesitated and shrank instinctively from further attempt to penetrate the mysteries of these shadows. Over the stones, slimy with indescribable filth, we picked our way through garbage and refuse of every order. Above, a frowsy woman looked out with an oath, followed by more as a neighbor's head emerged from the window below and tossed back a reply which evidently meant the re-opening of old hostilities. The voices had risen to a shriek as we entered the low door at the end of the alley and began the ascent of the stairs, on which something moved, shrinking close to the wall, damp with the exhalations from privy and sewer. It was too dark to see more than that it was a girlish figure waiting silently for us to pass on, but the doctor paused. The girl had turned her face to the wall, and bent still lower as the doctor said,--"In trouble again, Sophy? Why didn't you come to me? You promised."

Then she gave a little cry and rushed through the darkness for the door below. A shuffling step followed her. It was a man who had been lurking in some niche above, and who held to the shaky stair-rail as he descended, looking back for a moment, with an evil glance felt rather than seen. On the next flight-darker, if that were possible, than the last-three or four children were quarreling, with oaths caught from their elders and used with a horrible fluency. One of them caught at the doctor's hand as she passed.

"Mammy's lookin' for you," she said. "She's crazy most, an' I've been watchin' for you."

"Who wouldn't be crazy in such a hole?" another voice answered out of the darkness, and another form appeared from above and felt its way toward us.

"Who, indeed?" the doctor murmured under her breath, but made no pause. Our eyes, which had gradually accustomed themselves to the darkness, could now dimly make out doors here and there, one of which the doctor opened and passed through. A dim light came from windows crusted with dirt. It fell on little save walls in the same dirty condition, and a mattress black with age in one corner on the floor; a tiny cooking-stove, one leg gone and its place supplied by a brick; a table propped against the wall for the same reason; and a single rickety chair. On a shelf were a few dishes, and on the stove an old tomato-can held water. No wild beast's den could offer a more hopeless prospect for a human being, yet on this mattress a human being lay, and turned heavy eyes toward the doctor, who tenderly took the bony hand for a moment, feeling the pulse mechanically.

"He's been at it again," the husky voice whispered."He went off the saucepan and one of the coverlets this morning, an' by this time they're drunk up. It don't make any matter. I'll be done in a day or two now."

The fact was so evident that no comment was possible, nor did the doctor make any. The child who had followed us brought some water in a tin basin, and watched while the paindrawn, pallid face was sponged off. But even alleviation was impossible in such surroundings, and death was too near for any attempt to better things. An old Irishwoman, bent and twisted with rheumatism, hobbled in, and nodded with an attempt at cheerfulness.

"Shure, an' it's a beautiful breakfast she's after atin', an' I makin' it wid me own hands. A bit o' ilegant beef, an' tay strong enough to float an egg. That'll kape her up an' take her through the day, but she's set as ever, she won't go to hospital, an' small blame to her. Ye needn't worry, Doctor dear. Me eye is on her, an' on that murtherin' villain of a Dinnis, that's drunk up every stick o' furniture, an' may it choke him unbeknownst an' stick forever in the evil throat of him. Take a peep at Tim as you go by, Doctor dear, an' all the saints make yer bed for it. It's naught else I've got but a wish, an thim's plenty a hole like this, though there's little in 'em that's fillin."

The voice rambled on as we passed again into the hall and opened the door into another room, a trifle cleaner, but hardly less bare. Tim, a stalwart Irishman, asleep on the bed in one corner, was, so far as one could judge, simply in a drunken stupor, for the smell of stale beer was in the air, its pungency dominating other unsavoriness. In the back room three lads, also asleep, lay across a bed, and on the floor was stretched a woman, her sodden face, with a great bruise over one eye, indicating what kind of orgie had been held there. The doctor closed the door.

At the top of the house we entered a low and narrow room under the eaves; the bed was pushed as far as it would go against the sloping wall; a chair or two, a small table, and a tiny cooking-stove, over which a man bent stirring something in a saucepan, made up the furniture of the room. So deadly and heavy was the smell, as the door opened, that a mighty effort was necessary before I could enter at all.

"She's a grain easier, but only a grain," said the man, coming forward and addressing the doctor. "She's been prayin' to be released, if it's the Lord's will, an' I've come to be willin'. Look at her."

The bandages had been removed, and I saw a painful sight; cancer of the face and head; yet life enough in the poor lips to smile in the doctor's face.

"I'm most through, ain't I?" she whispered. "O, I hope so; I want to go, but I'm willin' to wait."

"Yes, you are almost through," answered the kind voice of the doctor. "You have only a day or two longer."

The man knelt by the bed, shaking with sobs, and the doctor prayed for release, for patience and strength to bear whatever pain must still be borne.

"That does me good," the dying woman whispered. "Come to-morrow an' every day till I'm gone."

With a pressure of the wasted hand we hurried down the stairs.

"I thought you would faint," the doctor said, as we reached the street and the wind blew up the cool from the river. "Stand still a minute. You're trembling."

"Why does not such a case as that go to the hospital?" I asked, when the fresh air had brought back color and voice. "She could at least have decent comfort there."

"We wanted her to, but her husband wouldn't hear to it. He wanted to be near the Mission, and so did she, and she said she'd got to die any way, so that there was no use in going away. They were both converted there, and he's been tender as a woman with her. He's tended her all night, sleeping when he could, after working all day on the dock, and it breaks his heart to think she's going."

The next place, a six-story tenement house, while less shaky than the one we had just left, was equally odorous; and how human beings lived through such pulling upon all the vital forces I could not see. We passed familiar face on two of the landings, and I found that this house had gradually been filled up by "regular" attendants at the Water Street Mission, and though a liquor-saloon still flourished below, the building had lost its former character as one of the most brawling, disorderly houses in the block.

We climbed up to the fourth floor and entered a front room overlooking the street; a room of tolerable size, but intolerable dirt, where four little children sat on the floor eating bread and molasses, while a man sat in the corner smoking. He nodded surlily but said nothing, and I followed the doctor into an inner room; a dark bedroom, where no sunshine could ever reach, and which had the same heavy, oppressive smell I had noticed in the other house,--a fog of human exhalations. Propped up in bed, for easier breathing, was a woman in the last stages of consumption; a deep red spot on each cheek, and her frame the merest skeleton. I returned to the larger room, and tried to talk to the children, but they were absorbed in their bread and molasses, and the man eyed me so suspiciously that I sat silent, looking about. An old mattress was in one corner, evidently the children's bed at night; a few chairs; a closet, whose open door showed some broken crockery and one or two cooking utensils.

"I'll come round tomorrow, Patsy, and straighten up a bit," said a neighbor who had unceremoniously entered. "It's pretty hard on you, trying to do all yourself." The man grunted, and in a moment left the room.

"Come here, you poor, sticky little things," she went on, "and have your faces washed." Turning to me she said, "They can't see out o' their eyes for dirt. Their mother kept round till a month ago, but she can't help herself a stroke now."

The oldest child, only five, but preternaturally old, and with a business-like expression, laughed.

"I washed yesterday," she said; "I borryed a little tub, an' I let Molly rub her own apron. It ain't dry yet. An' tomorry I'm goin' to scrub mother's floor with Mrs. O'Rafferty's brush."

"I'll be here," said the king-hearted neighbor, who had already transformed the two youngest into very lovely looking children, whose dark curls and clear blue eyes were the best type of Celtic beauty. "You ought to wash 'em more, Bridget. You're old enough.""They doesn't like it," said Bridget. "They hollers, an' that plagues mother. I can't make 'em be still for it, savin' sometimes."

The doctor's work was over; the bed freshly made, and the sick woman rendered as comfortable as possible, and after a prayer from this true ministering spirit we went out. Children looked from every door-it seemed to me-by dozens; they swarmed on the stair and in the halls.

"All just as usual," the doctor said, turning to me. "This floor-for you see there are doors on the other side of the hall-has nothing better to offer. In that room opposite you eleven people sleep at night; father, mother, two daughters who work in a bag-factory intermittently, and the rest boarders. My coming here is quite useless save that this dying woman craves it. She refused to go to hospital because she thought she could perhaps keep her husband from drinking himself to death if she stayed on, and she has the prejudice of her class against hospitals. On the two floors below are families, three of which take boarders, each of whom has a certain portion of floor space and that is all. They are of the worst order of tenants. Some of the men work along the docks at odd jobs, laying off for a spree at least once a week, and always more or less full of liquor. Three of the women scrub office floors, and one takes in washing. The girls are in some of the various factories about here; those, at least, who make some show of earning an honest living. But you see for yourself how much chance there is for any life born in a house like this. Take it all in, for it belongs to one of the rich men in New York."

Such scenes may be witnessed in New York every day. There are men and women who lie and die day by day in these wretched tenement-house rooms, sharing in their weaknesses all the family trouble, enduring the hunger and the cold, and waiting, without hope, for a single ray of comfort, until God curtains their staring eyes with the merciful film of death.