East Side Relief Work Committee
Over the winter of 1894 and early 1895, the East Side Relief Work Committee began a formidable project. They hired unemployed laborers to whitewash the cellars, living spaces, air shafts, alleys, and cellars of select tenements. But the conditions they found were far too foul.
The Committee and its volunteers categorized what they found, which included, “150 barrels of ashes, 100 barrels of rags, 54 of bones, 47 of leather, shoes, etc., 44 barrels of wet straw, 41 of excelsior, 29 barrels of old iron, 18 of broken glass and 19 of old tin.” They removed dead and decomposed dogs, cats, rats. They found food, but nothing edible; a can of milk that had been forgotten in the cellar for more than a year, along with rotten sauerkraut, putrefied meat. Some of the Committee workers refused to work on the cellar after this trash trove.
