Character guide

Unknown

major

Also known as myself, your

He moves through Ludlow Street rooms where whole families sew knee-pants from daybreak to nine, tallying wages, rent, and the cost of bread with an accountant's patience. His authority is intimate rather than official: he speaks a worker's own tongue to set her fears at rest, then records what she says without flinching. That double role—outsider with entry, witness with a ledger—makes him the book's conscience and its method, turning observation into evidence the reader cannot dismiss.

The Boy

supporting

Also known as himself, The boy, your

At the Duane Street lodging-house, the outcast boy pays six cents for a bed and six for breakfast, borrowing against future earnings when trade goes badly and repaying almost without fail. The rules are blunt—no swearing, no tobacco, no home to return to—but the philosophy behind them is subtler: self-help, not charity, is the lever that raises him. His small economy of trust and repayment is where the book tests whether dignity can survive poverty.

Miss Ellen Collins

supporting

Also known as Miss Collins, herself

She sits beside the dying lace embroiderer and her crippled sister, two of five Irish sisters who came forty years ago and watched wages and eyesight fail together. Around her, the Charity Organization Society's statistics take human shape: hundreds of thousands of families registered, one in ten dead buried in the Potter's Field. Her presence forces the reader past sentiment into the harder question of which poverty deserves relief and which merely needs work.

David Smith

minor

Also known as Smith

A named individual, possibly a tenant or worker in the tenements.

Chief Inspector Byrnes

supporting

Also known as Inspector Byrnes

He belongs to the world of shortened beats and doubled patrols, where a German's garden does the work of a dozen police clubs and a park can quiet a nest of agitators. His authority measures the tenement's pressure from outside—June's first hot nights bring reports of sleepers rolling from roofs and windowsills. He matters because he shows reform arriving as force, and because his statistics of death sit uneasily beside the narrator's quieter testimony.

Edward Mulhearn

minor

Also known as Edward

A named individual, possibly a police officer or local figure.

Joss

minor

Also known as himself

A character, possibly a tenant or worker, with limited narrative presence.

The Italian

supporting

Also known as the Italian, himself

He shares the crowded back alleys with the Russian and Polish Jew, two races hopelessly different yet alike in the tenements they reproduce wherever they settle. The narrator grants him color, heat, and a stubborn grip on life, but judges him harshly against the Teuton who makes a home of his tenement and leaves it the moment he can. His presence anchors the book's ethnic taxonomy—and its uncomfortable assumptions about who deserves to rise.

A Gentle and Refined Woman

supporting

Also known as a gentle and refined woman who left in direst poverty to earn her own living alone among strangers, herself

She stands among the registered poor whose stories the narrator gathers—the aged, the crippled, the proud who will not beg. Her plight sharpens the book's central distinction between those who need a lift and those who need only work, and it exposes how quickly respectability dissolves when wages fall and hands stiffen. She matters because she makes the statistics personal, and because her silence about her fall is itself a kind of testimony.

The Doctor

minor

Also known as the doctor, The doctor

A medical professional who appears in scenes of illness or reform.

A Woman Doctor

minor

Also known as herself, a woman doctor

A female physician working among the poor in the tenements.

The Stranger

minor

Also known as himself, the stranger

An unknown person who appears briefly in the narrative.

The Young Stranger

minor

Also known as the young stranger

A young unknown person, possibly a newcomer to the city.

Jesus Christ

minor

Also known as Christ, Jesus

Religious figure referenced in moral or reform contexts.

Jews

supporting

Also known as the Jews, the Polish Jews, many Russian Jews, themselves

In Riis's racial map of the Lower East Side, the Jews are the gray tide overrunning Jewtown and the sweater shops, disputing every back alley with the Italians. He grants them thrift and rabbinical discipline, yet faults them for dragging their old-world squalor along instead of shedding it at the dock. Their crowding sets the terms of the tenement problem his early chapters keep circling back to.

Mary Ann

minor

Also known as Ann, Old Ann

An older female character, possibly a tenant or street figure.

Mr. A. T. White

minor

Also known as White, Mr. White

A reformer or philanthropist involved in tenement improvement.

Mrs. Astor

minor

A wealthy socialite mentioned in contrast to tenement life.

The Czech

minor

A representative Czech immigrant, likely a cigar maker.

James Russell Lowell

minor

Also known as Jimmy, Probably Jimmy

A poet or literary figure referenced in the introduction.

Alderman Mullins

minor

Also known as Mullins

A local politician or alderman mentioned in the text.

The Chinese

supporting

Also known as their, themselves

Riis walks the dens with a police captain and finds the girls indifferent, neat, and past saving, calling the officer by name as he sends them up. The Chinaman he paints is cat-clean and cat-cruel, ruling first with a gloved hand and later with a broom-handle in a Mott Street cellar. Chinatown's laundry outposts make it the early arc's most insidious threat to the city's daughters.

The Bohemian

minor

Also known as the Bohemian

A representative Bohemian immigrant, often a cigar maker.

John Chinaman

minor

Also known as The Chinaman, John

A stereotypical Chinese character in Chinatown scenes.

Paul

minor

Also known as St. Paul

Biblical figure referenced in moral or religious context.

Isaac Iacob

minor

Also known as himself

A named individual, possibly a Jewish immigrant or tenant.

McGloin

minor

A named individual, possibly a police officer or local figure.