CHAPTER XXXVII.
CHEAP LODGING HOUSES.
The Bowery and eastern section of the city are full of cheap lodging
houses, which form a peculiar feature of city life. "There is a very
large and increasing class of vagrants who live from hand to mouth, and
who, beneath the dignity of the lowest grade of boarding houses, find a
nightly abode in cheap lodgings. These establishments are planned so as
to afford the greatest accommodation in point of numbers with the least
in point of comfort. The halls or rather passages are narrow, and the
rooms are small, dark, dirty and infested with vermin. The bedding
consists of a straw pallet and coarse sheets, and a coverlet of a
quality too poor to be an object of luxury. In some houses no sheets or
coverlet are afforded, but even with the best of these accommodations
the lodger suffers from cold in the winter, while in the summer he is
devoured with bed-bugs. For such accommodations in a room which half a
dozen may share, the lodger pays ten cents, though it is said there is
a lower depth where they sleep on the floor and pay half the above-
mentioned price. The profit of this business may be inferred from the
fact that one hundred and fifty lodgings, and in some cases a much
larger number, are sold by each house, making a net receipt of $15 per
night, to which is to be added the profits of a bar, where the vilest
whiskey is retailed in 'dime nips.
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