How the Other Half Lives · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis.
Skim names here — open a free preview to see character cards and Character Web beside the page as you read.
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.