Most of the foundlings come from the East Side, where they are left by young mothers without wedding-ring or other name than their own to bestow upon the baby, returning from the island hospital to face an unpitying world with the evidence of their shame.
How the Other Half Lives together with its sequel Battle with the Slum reveal through Riis’s sensationalist prose and photography the appalling living conditions in the Lower East Side of turn-of-the-century New York City.
