Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/493

 A MODEL MUNICIPAL DEPARTMENT 475

DEAR SIR :

Would you kindly attend to this door being open as the Board of Health had closed the door and they have opened it. They have opened it in 636 E. 1 2th St. You have locked it and they opened it. They have a lock on it.

One would suppose that canary birds and pigeons were more or less harmless to the health of a city. Yet one woman writes : DEAR DEPARTMENT:

I don't mind canaries at night when they don't do no singing. But there's been abird next door to me all winter and the darn thing sings my head off and I won't stand it no longer. If you don't remove the bird 111 sue you.

Again a man says :

please come to 15 street to 619 and make the portors put the pigeons off the roof, they are breaking all the roof and chimneys. I am sick and tired, and if you's don't make them stop I do fourther. They are on the roof every day and Oblige me.

Dogs, too, as well as goats, pigeons, and canaries, come in for their fair share of criticism. Some fellow sent in the following:

Men. 20. Board of Health, GENTS

Mr. Charles the next Hotel Keeper to me Has a dog which for the past two months is disturbing our night's sleep by a deadly Howling all night long and there is none of us can stand it. If you will attend to this you will

Oblige,.

Many of these complaints may seem ignorant and laughable. Nevertheless they indicate how many of New York's poor have learned to look to the Department of Health as a sort of cure- all for every ill under the sun. And they also show a growing knowledge of the sanitary laws which is often most encouraging. This is well shown by the following rather remarkable letter which arrived in the morning's mail one day last winter:

Please to have an inspector of health come to the place of residence (i room) ground floor front of 84 years old Mrs. Adi er at about 12-2 p. M. It is sickening to see that room and unless some authoritative person dictates cleanliness and order to that (woman of means) old lady she will die in filth,

(Signed) A silent looker-on.

The sanitary inspectors. In addition to the regular force of sanitary inspectors, many of the fifty sanitary policemen for the