What destruction and politics didn't drive out, filth did. Nicholas Cresswell, an Englishman visiting New York, recorded his disgust with the state of the city following the winter thaw in the spring of 1777. He complained about the sheer number of people crowded into the city's confines, "almost like herrings in a barrel, most of them very dirty and not a small number sick of some disease, the Itch, Pox, Fever, or Flux." He further opined, "If any author had an inclination to write a treatise upon stinks and ill smells, he never could meet with more subject matter than in New York."
(from George Washington's Secret Six, by Brian Kilmeade)
1 comment:
I don't know what "the itch" is... but it sounds awful!
A
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