From an 1895 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Members of the Fifteenth ward citizens’ association for the abolishment of Newtown Creek nuisances are complaining that stenches from the creek at night have increased steadily since April 17, and that the air was so filled with foul smelling vapor at 4 o’clock yesterday morning that sleep was out of the question for people living in the Fifteenth and Eighteenth wards. The members of the citizens’ association insist that fat rendering and bone boiling establishments and fertilizer manufactories on the shores of the creek empty foul smelling material stored during the day into the creek at night, and they believe that if the proprietors of stench emitting factories who are indicted are not speedily brought to trial the nuisances will soon become as intolerable as ever.”