TENEMENT-HOUSES. OVERCROWDING AND UNHEALTHFULNESS AS CAUSES OF CRIME. The domestic circumstances under which most of the offenders and dangerous classes grow up in their infancy and youth are intimately concerned in the causation and pernicious fruit of those disorders of the after-life of the children of such a heritage as that which is entailed upon the families of the ignorant poor in the overcrowded slums of New York and some other cities in this State. The committee of the Legislature that undertook an investigation into causes of the increase of crime in this State, and particularly in the metropolis, in 1875, called upon the Corresponding Secretary of the Prison Association for specific information concerning the preventable sources of crime, and especially those which may be controlled by sanitary measures. His testimony on this subject was as follows; Elisha Harris, M. D., a witness, being duly sworn, testifies : Q. You have been connected with the board of health, I think, for a number of years, have you not? A. Yes, sir. Q. How long have you been connected with that? A. Most of the time since 1866. Q. What is your official position in that board? A. At present it is registrar of vital statistics, and, under a former board, at other times I have been sanitary superintendent. Q. We have understood that you have given the causes of crime in this city very great consideration, and for that reason we have invited you to come before us and give your views on that subject. We understood that you have entered into the matter of the statistics of crime also to a considerable extent. Give us some idea, if you can, of the number of criminals to the population, in this city. I think you have gone into that matter somewhat? A. I don't know the number of criminals, nor the number of persons that would be called habitual criminals in the city population, now in the State. There is no body of criminal statistics, but we have in prisons as good and sufficient evidence of the number of persons actually convicted from year to year, and the prisons of the whole State have felons containing a large representative class from this city. Each of the prisons has a large quota, Sing Sing receiving all that are passed to the State Prisons, and Auburn and Clinton Prisons the other two State Prisons-receiving colonies or drafts monthly or oftener, from Sing Sing. Then the two penitentiaries near us, the one on Blackwell's Island and the one in Kings county, receive a large number of young felons, under the statute, which provides that young criminals under 21, whose sentences are for less than five years, may be committed to the penitentiary; so that the number of prisoners of the rank of felons can be counted up from the State Prisons, and it is found to be increasingly large, and the per centage of criminals to the population increases more rapidly than the normal increase of the population by emigration and birth. We have at present a little short of 4,000 prisoners, all told, of the rank of felons, including these young prisoners who, being young, are allowed to be sent to the penitentiary under sentence for the felonies of which they are guilty. The number sent up from this city, of course, is out of all proportion to those sent from the rural districts, and the records of the courts are the best evidence upon that point. The number of cases that come before the different classes of courts in this city shows an increase of adepts in crime, and the exact statistics do not exist in such form that they can be conveniently quoted; but, nevertheless, they may appear on the records of your committee, and I have put in writing a few points that I could simply lay in your hands; and still I think that the records from the judicial sources would be the most instructive, for those from the prisoners only show what have actually reached the prisons and how they are distributed. And, then, there is another point: The crimes against property in this State are, to a large extent, organized crimes crimes that have required reflection and preparation - and into that class of crime a large number of boys and youths are enticed, and this city and Brooklyn are the greatest centres for that kind of constructive operation in crime. I speak now from the result of actual observation and inquiry, for the last four years, in the prisons of the State and the jails. These centres have become so important that the statistics concerning these classes now are very desirable. They are not attainable under the existing method of making up the records of the police and judicial department. Q. How would you suggest that they should conduct their records in order that these statistics might be attainable. You say they are desirable? A. They are so desirable that it is necessary to begin, I think, with the first conditions of any accuracy in statistics, namely, identification. On seeing prisoners in all the prisons, and visiting them several times over, and visiting all the jails from two to four times during the last four years, myself, I have found that the identification of a criminal is scarcely conceived to be a part of any public duty connected with the proceeding against a criminal, or against crime. To be sure there is a formal identification; the prisoner is allowed to say who he is; but the young criminal learns before his beard is grown, in this city, that he may pass by any number of aliases, and he feels a great security. There is no identification of criminals. Q. It has been suggested here that there should be some law against the taking of aliases? A. The first step towards any thing like accurate statistics would require identification. Our methods of proceeding against offenders of all ranks omit any thing like the necessary steps, and, just what those steps should be, should be very plain to judicial officers and to the public, I think, and when offenders come to be identified, as they are in many cases, one of the greatest powers to be used in repressing crime would be in our hands as a table. Now, the felons the habitual criminals are an unidentified class, to a great extent. Q. How would you suggest such identification and prevent their taking other names? A. The identification should be as absolute regarding the criminal as it is regarding the citizen who is taking a passport, and there is no reason why any criminal should escape identification. There is no impossibility of identifying any criminal in this State. Q. You said that what statistics you had at command had shown a decided increase in the number of criminals, out of proportion to the increase in population, or to the arrival of emigrants or other causes. Are you able to state what you regard as the principal elements of that increase what change there is in our habits or our mode of living that has brought about this increase? A. I do not think that it is any particular change in the habits or modes of living of the people generally. With the increased density of population in the great cities of the State, crime has increased according to its own laws, the opportunities for crime having increased, and the influx of persons who live by crime who reach us from all parts of the world. It being the richest State in the Union, and having the greatest facilities for crime against property, the criminals from other countries and other States make it their residence to a degree which has not always been true, probably. That probably would be found to be the case from an examination of the prisoners as they are any day. Now, the records of all the prisoners in the State are familiar to the persons with whom I am associated in one of the associations in this city, or this State, for the care of prisonersthe Prison Association - and these records show that the proportion of foreign-born criminals is not only in excess, but the crimes against property are connected with that class of prisoners that seem to have floated into this State as criminals, that is, the cracksmen and burglars. Then come in the boys, the youth, those who are born among us mostly, that is, from among us, more than from the rural districts. When they are traced back to their homes, they are found not to have sprung up from the well educated and well housed, as many people seem to suppose may be true, without investigating the subject; but the region south of Fourteenth street, for example, and the tenement-house districts, the dirtiest dens of the city, have actually been the birth-places and the nurseries of a very large proportion of these criminals that we now find in the penitentiaries and the State Prisons. When we get these boys under investigation, these younger criminals, this is the result, as the special inspector of the Prison Association said to me last week, concerning the investigations he had just been completing at Auburn, and is now pursuing at Sing Sing. The younger criminals seem to come almost exclusively from the worst tenement-house districts, that is, when traced back, to the very places where they had their homes in the city here. He says that without any theory. His records, taking name by name, prove that his calculation is based on actual confidential statements of the prisoner concerning his early life. There is nothing strange about that, but it is very important when we consider that the manner in which our poor people are housed in the most dense portions of the population, is perilous to the community in respect to the crimes that are almost sure to spring up where people live in that manner. The police records in this city already bear testimony to the usefulness of great improvements in particularly bad quarters. You know very well how it has been in the Sixth ward, and especially in the densest portions of the Sixth ward. The region of Little Water street and Cow Bay, and Five Points, generally, are no longer the conspicuous centers of the criminal class; and even in the Fourth ward, since the streets have been widened and new streets extended through, and the tenement buildings brought to a considerable degree of improvement - very great improvement indeed in the worst portions, like Gotham Court on Cherry street, Fish alley on Oak, and Madison and Monroe streets, and various quarters that could be mentioned in these wards - the improvements in the dwellings of the poor- the same class live there still have been followed by a great decrease in the number of arrests and the number of crimes. - Q. Do you think any legislation is desirable which should prescribe the number of inmates that any house should contain, of given size? A. Well, the experience of other cities, where such laws have been applied, shows that, by limiting the amount of occupation on a given area square feet or square yards and limiting the condensation of the population in the domicile, great reforms can be wrought out. Now, those are the reforms which have made such changes in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Paris. In Glasgow, the amount expended - which I put in a memorandum for your use - to simply cleanse and reform certain classes of the population, some 30,000 people, more or less, that occupied the old tenement rookeries, has been very great, and the city took the burden upon itself. It now is relieved of that burden by a sinking fund that is growing up out of the result of improvement, though they have expended in all many millions of dollars. It amounts to over $7,000,000 in our currency that they have expended, and now they have ceased expenditure, having carried on this work of improvement for seven years. The result is, that the decrease of crime is apparent to such an extent that it can be quoted by the police authorities and the courts, and I will just give you a brief statement to show what the result is from simply changing the condition of the domicile, the morals and the religion and the number of families; the number of individuals in families has not been changed, the people having the same essential qualities, except that they have light and air and better domiciles. They have not been driven out of the city. Now, in the city of Glasgow, the result is really astonishing, as given by the Lord Provost. Q. That is a city of some four or five hundred thousand people, is it A. Glasgow has within a thousand or two the same population as a whole that the city of New York has south of Fourteenth street. It has a little short of 500,000. Q. So that is a fair test of the operation of this law in a city of that magnitude? A. Yes, sir. The result in 1873 is as follows. (This is from the report of Sir James Watson, the Lord Provost.) In 1867, which was the year in which the law was first published (it was not applied yet), and when they began to purchase properties, and actually to inform people that they must seek shelter elsewhere, though it became necessary for these trustees of this duty to provide shelter, as they did at an expense of $50,000, and all of which has since been reimbursed by the sinking fund the total number of crimes, all told, was 10,899. Total crimes reported in 1873, 7,869. Total thefts by prostitutes in brothels, which was the special kind of crime worth observing, these improvements having swept them away, was 1,192 in 1867, and in 1868 it was 1,246, as though the same people were more desperate; but in 1873 it went down to 264, against 1,246. This is quoted by the city authorities of Glasgow as being the result of the improvements, and Captain McCall, of the Glasgow police, says that the city has been cleansed of its foulest dens of crime and profligacy. Mr. Morrison, a resident, says: "It is difficult to believe that districts through which you may now walk with perfect safety and confidence, were formerly the scene of many murders, robberies and assaults every day and hour." In this city we have got to deal with certain sources of shelter to crime, as well as the sources of crime, which are incident to the excessive condensation of the poor people and the ignorant classes and the vicious |