July 17, 1881 – The Chicago Daily Tribune prints the report of William H. Genung, the chief
tenement house inspector, who provides figures on the work of his department
during the preceding week. The report
gives some idea of the size of the problem with which the city is faced as 180
houses are inspected, containing 2,086 rooms, inhabited by 559 families,
consisting of 2,550 people. Small pox
will claim the lives of 1,181 people in the last months of this year, and the
city is hard at work to eliminate the conditions that foster the disease. In the Second Ward that today encompasses the
east side of the Loop, part of the Gold Coast, and Streeterville, tenement
houses such as the one Genung’s department inspected were places in which
people lived in cramped circumstances in deplorable sanitary conditions.
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