Ep 3.07: Life in the Slums and the First Waves of Catholic Charity

This episode turns to the stark realities of St. Louis’s poorest neighborhoods at the turn of the 20th century. Monsignor and Teresa follow the work of journalist photographer Jacob Riis, invited by the Civic Improvement League to document the city’s tenements. His findings reveal overcrowded two room flats packed with a dozen or more laborers, windowless first floor rooms, backyard alleys filled with refuse, and entire blocks where running water and bathing were luxuries few could access. With nearly 20% of residents foreign born—and many more the children of immigrants—the city’s slums were a dense patchwork of hardship, instability, and itinerant labor shaped by the pressures of industrialization.