Source: Daniel Walker Howe What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, p. 530

The most putrid urban carbuncle of all was the “Five Points” slum neighborhood of Manhattan, overcrowded with poor people from a variety of origins, native born and immigrant, notorious for its filth, disease, gangs, crime, riots, and vice. Charles Dickens, no stranger to urban wretchedness, expressed horror when he visited the Five Points. “From every corner as you glance about in these dark retreats” he wrote, “some figure crawls as if the judgement hour were near at hand, and every obscure grave were giving up its dead. Where dogs would howl to lie, women and men and boys would slink off to sleep. Forcing dislodged rats to move away in a quest for better lodgings.”

Bonus Reading: Immigrant Stories - Budweiser and Blue Jeans