Danish-American journalist and writer on sociology; born on the 3rd of May 1849, at Ribe, Denmark. He acquired a knowledge of the English language by reading English novels, and removed to America in 1870. He was for a time a reporter on the New York Tribune, and later police-reporter in New York for the Associated Press, and as such became acquainted with tenement-life in the poorest and most squalid parts of the City. The results of these observations he published in 1890, under the title How the Other Half Lives, which attracted immediate attention. In 1892 followed Children of the Poor, and in the following year Nisby’s Christmas, a collection of three stories, the title of the first of which gives the name to the book. Although fiction, they were written as sociological studies and with the philanthropical purpose of attracting attention to the miserable conditions under which life is supported in the crowded neighborhoods of the East Side. See also The Battle with the Slum and The Making of an American.
