It was very bad.
How bad was it. What was the death rate.
If you want to see it, it’s here. See page 16 of this report to see how New York and Brooklyn (two separate cities then) stack up against other countries. They actually were much better than the “more advanced” Europeans. So in actuality, it would be bad today but for that time, it wasn’t that bad at all. The biggest change since then has been the ability to keep young children healthy. As anyone who has ever walked through an old cemetery knows, those places are full kids who died of childhood diseases that we don’t even think of today.