THE STANDARD GUIDE. 
Tabacos, the concern which farmed the Spanish royal monopoly of cigar 
manufacture, purchased ioo slaves for the express purpose of devoting 
the profit of their labor as cigarmakers to the support of the institution. 
The San Lazaro Hospital for lepers, facing the Gulf on San Lazaro and 
Oquendo streets, is one of the two leper hospitals in Cuba, the other one, 
also bearing the name of San Lazaro, being in Santa Clara. Ihere were 
in the year 1902 between 500 and 600 lepers in Cuba; the disease is not 
of a contagious type, and those afflicted with it are decreasing in number. 
The Havana San Lazaro was founded away back in 1681, through the 
donation of a Mexican priest 
On Compostela street, between Fundicion and O’Farrel streets, is the 
Casa de Recogidas, the women’s prison, which is associated with the 
Evangelina Cisneros incident of the Weyler regime. Miss Cisneros 
was the daughter of the Marquis de Santa Lucia, second president of the 
Cuban Republic. Her father had been in prison for many years. Learn¬ 
ing that his health was breaking down, Miss Cisneros vainly be¬ 
sought the governor of the prison to secure his release. She was 
repulsed, and afterwards, on a charge of carrying letters to the rebels, 
was arrested and thrown into this prison. She contrived to communi¬ 
cate her case to Mrs. Fitzhugh Lee, wife of the American Consul, who 
made known her story in the United States. Carl Decker, a reporter 
of the New York Journal, was commissioned by Mr. W. R. Hearst to 
undertake her rescue, and came to Havana for that purpose. Miss 
Cisneros drugged her keeper and companions with candy, and made her 
escape through an upper window and over the roofs to the street, where 
she was received by Mr. Decker, who smuggled her aboard an American 
ship and took her to New York. 
The Vivac on Zulueta street, near Colon market, contains the 
municipal prison and one of the correctional court rooms. 
*The population of Havana by the census of 1899 was 235,981. Thales, 
123,358; females, 112,723. The race divisions were: Native whites, 115,432; 
foreign whites, 52,901; negroes, 28,750; mixed, 36,004; Chinese, 2,794. The 
report of the United States Board of Health in 1879 showed that three- 
fourths of the people in Havana lived in the most densely populated 
localities in the world. The typical tenement house is a one-story oblong, 
with a court in the center and rooms opening upon it from two sides ; 
here families of five to ten people living in one or two small, dark rooms 
are not at all uncommon. The city is not only overcrowded in the houses, 
but there is an overcrowding of the houses themselves; the city covers a 
smaller area than any other city of its population in Europe or America. 
John Chinaman is ubiquitous in Havana. The census of 1899 shows 
a Chinese population of 2,751, and here, as elsewhere, they are indus¬ 
trious members of the community. Chinamen are seen carrying bur¬ 
dens swung from balanced shoulder poles, after the manner of their native 
According to the census of 1907 the population was 302,626. 
