1840- 1910 New York filth

I am fascinated how a society's poor, depraved, and outcast evolve. Not in a fictional sense, but within the context of real names and places. What was it like to recently arrive and to live in Lower East Side tenement housing? What were the favorite illicit working class pastimes during the 1850s? Where did one score dope or a hooker in 1890? It's all here. Unfortunately, Sante just presents the facts and the reader gets little opportunity to know the miscreants of the era other than learning about their most noteworthy failures, misdeeds and peculiarities. Still, if you're the kind of sicko who gets off finding out how many Polish immigrants could be housed in one room, where to go in the Bowery to catch a good bear-baiting match, or how to play faro, this is the book.