# Miss Ellen Collins — How the Other Half Lives character guide

> Miss Ellen Collins in How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Miss Collins, herself

**First appearance:** 0028-xxiv-what-has-been-done

## Snapshot

A charitable visitor whose rounds among the tenements expose the thin line between honest labor and the poorhouse for the city's aging and infirm.

## Who they are

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.

## In the story

### [Waifs of the City’s Slums](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/how_the_other_half_lives_se/chapters/xvi-waifs-of-the-city-s-slums)

Not explicitly mentioned in this chapter.

### [XXV: How the Case Stands](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/how_the_other_half_lives_se/chapters/xxv-how-the-case-stands)

Her Water Street houses are cited as a successful example of tenement reform, yielding 5.5% return while improving tenant life.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/how_the_other_half_lives_se/characters/miss_ellen_collins
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/how_the_other_half_lives_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/how_the_other_half_lives_se/characters