Monday, August 10, 2015

Chicago the Dingy City-- Part 5: Smoke, Dust and Stench

Officials realized early on that health was also an issue due to all the smoke pollution.  The Tribune reported in 1880, "Health ... is directly injured by the nuisance."  Twenty years later the Tribune ran a nearly half page article on the health threat.  Its headlines "How Chicago's Men's Lungs Are Blackened By Soot."  An autopsy of one Chicago resident's lungs revealed one so black that to touch it "would blacken the palm almost as black as to put it wet into a pan of soot," said one doctor.

On July 31, 1890, one Tribune reporter wrote: "The smoke nuisance in the region west of Wells and south of Pearson streets is of large proportions and of athletic build.  It has daily encounters with two fellow-giants -- dust and stench -- and not being able to settle the question of superiority, they join forces and make war on mankind."

Postmen in the area looked like coal heavers, and one claimed he bathed four times a day.  "It dies no good," he said, " a trip down as far as Kingsbury Street to deliver a snip of a postal card, and I am black-faced and ire-eyed."

Cough, Cough.  --Cooter

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