A tenement, for those who don’t know, is a place that the living conditions are horrible, and the people who lived there were poor (well, most of the time anyway). Also, the definition is a house with at least 3 families living in it. A tenement is dark, humid and diseases spread quickly in it. A tenement apartment has 2-3 rooms, though they have very few windows.

One tenants was Bridget, 23 years old. Bridget’s family consists of, 3 girls, and her husband Joseph. the girls names are Mary Kate, 3 years old, Jane, 2 years old, and Agnes, 3 months old.

Bridget used to live in Ireland but left because of the bad year where the potatoes were diseased, and they did not have anything to eat. When she got to America, she first lived at Five Points, a small Irish neighborhood in New York. But then she felt that FivePoints wasn’t safe. She is now one of two Irish families living at 97 Orchard street, Little Germany. She made this choice because she wanted her children to be safer. She is a great mom who is really brave to move to this neighborhood.