When Children Played Beside the Dead in 1905 New York

At first glance, the photo looks almost whimsical—
Children with dirt-smudged faces, laughing and playing in the middle of a city street.
But then your eyes fall to the corner of the image…
A horse. Dead. Swollen. Forgotten.
New York City, 1905.
A time when the streets were alive with chaos — and death.

This haunting, colourised photograph captures more than just a moment in history.
It captures a brutal contrast: innocence colliding with rot, play clashing with putrefaction, the resilience of childhood standing defiant in the face of poverty and decay.

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Why Was There a Dead Horse on the Street?

In 1905, horses were everywhere.
They hauled goods, pulled trolleys, delivered ice, milk, coal — they were the engines of the city.
But when they died — and thousands did each year — they often collapsed right where they stood.

There were no quick removal teams. No emergency services.
Just the stench of death and the slow, bureaucratic response of a city not yet ready for the future.

Some lay there for days.
Children played anyway.

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The Children Who Knew No Different

These children weren’t ignorant.
They were resilient.
To them, the street was a playground, a home, a world.
And death was just another neighbor.

They played beside the carcass — not because they didn’t care, but because they had no choice.
This was life in the tenements.
This was growing up in an America still learning what "progress" meant.

A real picture of the times.
When I was a teenager I mowed 9 country cemeteries. There is places where whole families of children are buried. Typhoid, cholera, giardia, salmonella, swine flu was a few of the causes and was caused in large part because of sanitary conditions. I mowed one where a family of 5 out of 6 were buried, the cause of which was eating bad bananas.

Love the old photos, it shows where we came from and should make us more grateful where are today.

And yet we complain

Children are almost always resilient when born into this world, despite their surroundings and their mental and/or physical abnormalities. It's when they grow older and take a beat down from society they lose some or all of that.

Right? That looks like its in the deflated, after bloated stage. Bloated usually means two legs sticking straight up in the air.

Looked worked to death...

That's true. Yet, I watch a lot of actual crime cases where they blur out actual crime scenes in some cases. Like they want to minimize it.

I imagine that gutter water is none too clean, that those kids have their feet in either.

Probably build resistance or killed them.