pestilental

Barzelia had told me all about 'em, she was jest as enthusiastick about what she didn't like as what she did; she said the money got in that way, by housin 'the poor in such horrible pestilental places, seemed jest like makin' a bargain with Death.

Samantha at the World's Fair Marietta Holley 1881

"If you stood there in that black, chokin 'atmosphere, reekin' with all pestilental and moral death, and see the one you loved best a-slippin 'away from you -- borne out of your sight, borne away into the onknown, on them dead waves of poisinous, deathly air -- I guess you wouldn't talk about reducin' the Surplus Population."

Samantha at the World's Fair Marietta Holley 1881