Free Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City by Carla L. Peterson Page B

obnoxious of all were the tanneries that, like Jacob Lorillard’s, were located in the Swamp. A contemporary described the area encompassing Vandewater, Rose, and Jacob Streets as “one vast tan-yard.” The vats of standing water attracted mosquitoes, the mounds of uncured skins emitted “noisome smells,” and the tanning pits risked contaminating water from wells. 29
    The situation of Collect Street, built on what had once been Collect Pond, was particularly appalling. In earlier days many New Yorkers had claimed that “there was no more beautiful spot on the lower island.” But carelessness quickly led to its pollution. One disgusted citizen wrote an open letter to the
New York Journal
in which he complained: “It’s like a fair every day with whites, and blacks, washing their cloths blankets and things too nauseous to mention; all their sudds and filth are emptied into this pond, besides dead dogs, cats, etc. thrown in daily, and no doubt, many buckets [of bodily waste] from that quarter of town.” Some even went so far as to claim that the bodies of murder victims were dumped in it. 30
    The city finally decided to take action and recommended that the Collect be filled in. Yet in 1812, a grand jury still found “much to complain of; besides great quantities of stagnant water it seems to be made the common place of deposit of dead animals & filth of all kinds, where they are left to corrupt the air and endanger the health of the City.” Despite these warnings, the city proceeded to sell off lots in and around the Collect on which buildings soon arose. Many years later, a newspaper commentator assessed the social evil created by this “made ground”:
This will for ever remain of a very porous nature, and the exhalations arising from putrid matter collected in such places, must consequently be a continual annoyance to the inhabitants, and a prolific source of disease. All these things show how extremely improper, nay, how utterly unjustifiable, was the policy which allowed the entire ground to be coveredwith buildings, without the least regard to future consequences, without taking into consideration the health and comfort of a numerous population thus huddled together.
     
    In conclusion, he placed full blame on the “avarice” of a “certain class of people.” 31 It’s little wonder that in the mid-1820s George Lorillard successfully petitioned to have the street renamed Centre Street, hoping to erase the sad history of Collect Pond.
Disease
     
    As the newspaper commentator noted, New York was fertile breeding ground for disease. In addition to the constant presence of tuberculosis and venereal disease, epidemics of yellow fever plagued the city in the decades after the revolutionary war; later years would bring cholera. The worst outbreaks of yellow fever occurred during the summer months of 1795, 1798, 1805, 1819, 1820, and 1822. In 1798, 714 people were reported dead; in 1805 the number declined to 270, and then to 166 in 1822. Those who took sick came down with a fever and suffered from related symptoms such as nausea, clamminess, headache, weak pulse, and a yellowish cast that covered their skin. They often died within the day, sometimes within hours, of the onset of the disease. 32
    Although it seems obvious to us that environment and lack of sanitation were at the root of epidemics like yellow fever, the debate over their causes raged among New York’s doctors, health officials, and citizens. In the colonial period, most New Yorkers saw disease as a form of divine intervention over which they had no control. By the following century, they had come to associate disease with human behavior, moral or immoral, and believed that individuals were responsible for their own personal health. Such attitudes worked against New York’s most vulnerable population, namely the poor, both black and white. They inhabited the lowest lying land, including the newly made ground. They lived crowded together in narrow