“In several cellars in the Biddle Alley district the surface drainage from the adjoining alley or street was found to be oozing through the foundation walls.”
“A basement apartment in the Biddle Alley district had no light or ventilation except that afforded by a window 3½ feet square in area, placed so high in the wall that it was necessary to stand on a chair to take measurements. The walls and ceiling of this dungeon-like apartment were damp and in bad repair. From the physical condition of the occupant it seemed likely he was suffering from tuberculosis in its incipient stage.”
One of the most conspicuous features of the houses lining the small streets and alleys in the lower Druid Hill Avenue district were the stacks of washing, tons of which are gathered weekly from the best homes of the city, to be laundered in this neighborhood reeking with filth, infected with tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, and presenting the most unwholesome conditions from which the family wash could possibly be sent home. And yet hundreds of white families are in this way subjecting the members of their households to these great dangers.
One interesting fact which developed in connection with the investigation of these conditions was the attempt on the part of the keepers of these places to bulldoze and browbeat the committee out of their work. The writer received a warning from the keeper of one of these dives that unless his activities ceased personal injury would be visited upon him. Another man, who kept a business which was patronized by many of these divekeepers, lost all of that business on account of his connection with the Law and Order League. Another man, who kept a store, was forced to give up active work for the League because he could not afford the loss which threatened him if he continued. Others, who were weaker or who could not stand the financial loss which activity in the work of the League entailed upon them, began to hedge and criticise and finally openly assail the League as a movement which was seriously affecting the business interests of the colored people.
It was found that these saloons were meeting places of the idle, loafing element among the colored people, of the crap shooters, of dissolute women, and many of the saloonkeepers did not hesitate to sell liquors to women and children. One of the discoveries in this lower Druid Hill Avenue district was that in the small streets, which were practically alleys, there were three of these saloons—two in one alley, and one at the intersection of two other alleys.
