Hansford: Mental Defectives in County H., Indiana 127 
boarding. Some of these could have been fairly decent places 
in which to live when new but as the renters have moved in 
and out, they have become unfit for human habitation. One 
of the worst of these is to be found on S street where Luke 
McHaley and his family lived at the beginning of the survey. 
The house is a little red frame located in one of the worst 
districts in town. The porch roof has fallen in and the floor 
is minus a large number of the boards. The 2 rooms on 
the north are those occupied by Luke, Frank, and Louis 
McHaley and Nellie Freeman. These are very dark, due to 
the fact that all the window panes have been broken out and 
have been replaced by wood and tin. The plaster has fallen 
from the wall and ceiling, leaving only a few splotches to show 
that at some time there has been some there. The whole of 
the inside has during the years become a dull, dirty, ding}^ 
grey color. On close examination, hundreds of fly specks ap- 
pear, and myriads of tiny bugs of a very objectionable kind 
can be seen wending their way up and down the walls. The 
south half of the house is occupied by 2 colored families. The 
family in the front room consists of a man and his prostitute 
wife. This room is the scene of quarrels and flghts every 
night. The back room is rented by another colored family 
who until the time of prohibition in Indiana kept a '‘blind 
tiger”. 
On another street are to be found rows of box houses 
which are rented at from $5 to $8. These consist for the 
most part of 3 rooms, a part of which number cannot be used 
in wet weather. It is impossible to get the landlord to make 
repairs, and the property goes from bad to worse each year 
with no accompanying decrease in the rent. 
Another bad example of the box house is the shack shown 
in the illustration which is usually occupied by some member 
of the Jones-Smith group. This house has at some time con- 
sisted of 2 whole rooms but now has only 1 with a "lean-to” 
at the end. In it lives Goldie Smith Jones with her daugh- 
ters Daisy and Nellie, her son Otto, her mother Margaret, and 
Mabel, the eleven-year-old child of Russel Smith. Oscar Smith 
also spends a part of his time in the house. Goldie and her 
daughters are notorious prostitutes, Margaret is paralyzed, 
and Otto is a paralytic imbecile who seldom moves out of the 
house. Yet they all live in that 1 tiny room thru the winter 
as they are unable to use the shed except in mild weather. 
