ABSTRACT
The population of American cities began to increase after the 1820s, primarily because the Industrial Revolution attracted not only the agricultural workers of America, but also immigration from Europe. Between 1846 and 1851 more than 1,000,000 Irish immigrants came to America as a result of the potato famines, primarily settling in the cities. The Metropolitan Board of Health, which extended over New York, Kings, Westchester and Richmond counties, as well as a few towns in the present Borough of Queens, was established in 1866. The Board’s committee consisted of nine commissioners. It attempted to regulate tenement conditions under the Tenement Housing Law of 1867. The committee found that more than half of the tenements surveyed had poor sanitary conditions that were leading to critical health issues. In 1884, John Collins, a Health Department inspector claimed that poverty and uncleanliness went together, not because he wanted to condemn the poor, but because they did not have the facilities that made it possible to be clean. 1
