Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Published Writings
  3. Periodicals
  4. Journalism
  5. per.01057

The Stagnant Ponds of the 16th and 18th Wards

About This Item

  • Title: The Stagnant Ponds of the 16th and 18th Wards
  • Date: 23 August 1859
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.01057
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 23 August 1859: 3. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Kaylen Michaelis Cassandra Jannel Simms Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "The Stagnant Ponds of the 16th and 18th Wards." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 17 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.01057.xml (TEI)
image 1image 2image 3image 4cropped image 1

THE STAGNANT PONDS OF THE 16TH AND 18TH WARDS.—

We have heard frequent complaints of the sunken lots filled with stagnant water, in the 16th and 18th wards, and think that our Board of Health would do well to give the matter their attention. The property owners and residents of Moore and Varet streets, and Bushwick Avenue, have addressed a petition to the Board praying for relief. They certainly need it, as we can testify from personal observation. These water lots are now filled with stagnant, putrid water, the smell from which at the most favorable seasons of the year, is very offensive. And as they are made the receptacles of dead animals, offal and garbage of all descriptions, their horrible condition in this sweltering August weather may be imagined. A few weeks ago one of these ponds on Varet street actually poisoned 12 head of ducks and geese in one morning, and their rotten carcases were left by the wayside to taint the air, until the flies and ants had thoroughly dissected them. It was the duty of the policeman on that beat to notify the offal contractor to remove them, but there they lay untouched for several weeks, till the insects had done the work of the public drones. And so it is all the while. You can scarcely find a pond in which the carcases of puppies, goats, poultry, or pigs are not rotting and festering in the sun, tainting the pure air, and poisoning the life of citizens. And, strange as it may seem, there are in sevel instances privies built right over these ponds, their contents flowing into the foul waters, and rendering them, if possible, ten times more fetid. Many of these sunken lots belong to non residents, who are holding on to them for purely speculative purposes. But how they hope to induce decent people to settle in pestilential neighborhoods, we can not conceive. These ponds are public nuisances, that ought to be abated by being filled up. And if the owners themselves do not choose to do it, let it be done as an act of public necessity, at the expense of the property thus improved. The nuisances have been endured quite long enough. Will he Board now take the proper steps to remove them?

Back to top