Our three illustrations upon the first page were sketched upon the spot. They show, first, the entrance to No. 22 Roosevelt street; next, the attic and entrance to Mrs. MacMahan's apartment [not shown here -- ed.]; and, finally, the apartment itself. It will be seen that the window has no glass, but has to be stopped up by boards. In this forlorn and desolate hole several human beings are obliged to live. The room is as devoid of furniture as the walls are of plastering. For the right to stay in this miserable mockery of a shelter the tenant has to pay three dollars a month, and is threatened with an advance of the rent to three dollars and a half! The owner of this property is a rich man, who lives in a splendid brownstone front house, in one of the most expensive quarters in the upper part of the city. The artist has made a sketch of his mansion, which we forbear using for the present, since, perhaps, he is not aware of the wretched condition of this portion of his property, there being a middle man between him and the tenant. From such terrible dens of poverty and squalor can we expect anything but vice and crime? The necessity for much of the expensive legal establishment of this city is caused by the heartless selfishness which forces the poor to live in such holes as this. This house, and its numerous prototypes, cost the taxpayers of the city more, unquestionably, than their owners get from them in rent. When will the taxpayers learn that simple motives of economy, not to speak of decency, should lead them to remove, with a strong hand, all such nests of disease and crime? The public conscience is the only one that can be appealed to; and an appeal to this may be made more forcible by a simultaneous appeal to the public pocket. The greed for private gain overcomes any hope of redress by appeals to the private consciences of the owners of such disgraceful buildings as this.
We are indebted to Captain Thorne, of the Fourth Ward Police, for his kind aid and assistance, in finding and sketching this, one of the plague spots of New York. It is one of the peculiarities of the owners, and frequently of the dwellers in such localities, that they object strenuously and even forcibly to becoming the objects of publicity; and no one who has never tried it can know the difficulty in gathering such information of the abuses in our midst as we show here, and have previously shown, and intend to show again. Without the aid of the police it would often be impossible to gather the information we need, and we must acknowledge the aid they have always afforded us, and the uniform, kindly appreciation of our intentions which we have always met at their hands.