| Rabble | A tumultuous, worthless mob | ||
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| Raiment: | Clothing | ||
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| Rankle: | Fester, rot, be a source of infection or irritation. | ||
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| Refluent: | Receding. | ||
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| Salubrity | Healthfulness | ||
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| Saponaceous | Soapy | ||
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| Scarlatina: | Scarlet fever. The symptoms of this contagious children's disease include skin eruptions and high fevers. | ||
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| Sepulture: | Burial. | ||
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| Shoddy factory: | A factory producing a poor-quality cloth formed of ground-up rags held together by glue. | ||
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| Slops: | Human urine and feces. | ||
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| Slunk veal: | Flesh from the fetus of a calf, found during the slaughter of its mother. It was not supposed to be sold for human consumption | ||
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| Staging of plank: | A walkway of boards raised off the ground. | ||
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| Station house: |
Police station -- The Fourth Precinct Station House was located at 9 Oak Street, just around the corner from the rioting. Click to read more about the station house. |
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| Strumous: | Afflicted with skin infections, especially pustules | ||
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| Succumb: | Fall victim to | ||
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| Superficies: | Surface area | ||
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| Tannery: | A factory where animal hides are processed into leather. They smelled bad. | ||
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| Large containers in which the hides sat in a foul-smelling liquid |  |
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| Tenant-houses: | Tenements, apartment buildings | ||
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| Thrown into thoroughfares: | Converted land into use as street space instead of for housing. The map at right (from 1846) shows the fourth ward before the street extensions. Click on the map to see a comparison with the street layout after the changes. |  |
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| Tocsin: | An alarm sounded on a bell; a warning | ||
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| Twelvemonth: | A year. | ||
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| Tunic of the Centaur: | A classical reference. The centaur was a mythical creature, half man and half horse. After killing a centaur, Hercules was said to have been driven to madness and suicide by putting on the centaur's garment, which had been poisoned with its blood. | ||
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| Typhoid: | A disease now known to be carried by bacteria in contaminated food or water. Its symptoms include high fever, coughing, and rashes. Click here to read more | ||
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| Typhus: | A disease (now known to be carried by fleas or lice), typically in crowded and dirty environments. Its symptoms include sever headaches, fevers, rashes and deliriums. Click here to read more | ||
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| Untenantable: | Uninhabitable. | ||
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| Variola: | Smallpox, a highly infectious and often deadly disease like a really bad case of chicken pox. Click here to read more | ||
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| Variolous: | Like smallpox and similar diseases | ||
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| Vassalage: | A position of complete servitude; the term refers to the status of medieval serfs | ||
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| Verdant-looking: | Seeming "green" -- in other words, inexperienced and gullible | ||
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| Vestments: | Articles of clothing | ||
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| Viands: | Foods | ||
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| Vitiated: | Made impure or corrupt | ||
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| Viz.: | That is, namely | ||
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| Wanting: | Missing, lacking. | ||
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| Ward: | A political division of the city, originally for purposes of representation on the city council. By the 1860s, New York's city council members represented smaller "districts" rather than wards, but the boundaries of the wards continued to be used for administering the schools and conducting censuses. [Click on the image at right to see the ward map] |  |
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| Weather boards: | The wooden siding on the exterior walls, also called clapboards | ||
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| White-washing: | A mixture of lime (calcium oxide) and water used to paint walls. It covered over dirt and was thought to make the painted area more healthy. | ||
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| Zymoses | Infections | ||
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| Zymotic | Infectious | . | |
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