Annotated and Abridged Artifact
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The Management Of Almshouses In New England
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| 1 | The poorhouses of New England are generally called almshouses, and have been since their first establishment, more than two centuries ago; using the old English name which in England is now given to private charitable establishments, while what in New England is called an almshouse is in the mother country termed a workhouse. Like the English "workhouse," our almshouses" were originally parish establishments, the New England town and parish having formerly been the same jurisdiction, although there may now be fifty parishes in a single large town like Boston. It is very seldom, however, that a New England town, or even a city, contains more than one almshouse. The city of Boston, at present, has four; but this is quite exceptional. In New Hampshire, the town almshouses, which were once numerous, have lately been superseded to a great extent by county almshouses, such as are common outside of New England. No other New England State, I believe, has yet adopted the county system; nor does it prevail exclusively in New Hampshire. In Massachusetts there is a single State almshouse, with nearly a thousand inmates, and about 225 city and town almshouses, of all sizes, and containing from a single inmate to 500, as in one or two cities. A fair example of the better class of these town almshouses is one in a rural town, of which the following description has recently been given me by Dr. Nathan Allen, one of the Almshouse Visitors for the Board of Health, Lunacy, and Charity, who inspected it about two months ago: -- | |
| 6 | The State Almshouse of Massachusetts at Tewksbury, which was last year the subject of so much criticism, was at that time in better condition than any large almshouse which I have ever visited, and is now slightly improved. About ten years ago there were serious neglects and some abuses in this almshouse, chiefly in the care of the insane; but these had been corrected for years. The almshouse and insane asylum at Tewksbury are now under medical management. [1 »] This change, which had been long contemplated, secures the better care and greater skill that generally accompany the management of the insane by a resident physician, so that it is now safe to say that the Tewksbury almshouse is in better condition than any such establishment in New England. In consequence of the burning of the Bridgewater State Workhouse in 1883, the Tewksbury almshouse has had a larger population in the year which ended October 1 than ever before, the whole number of different persons residing there for longer or shorter periods during the year having been nearly 3,800. The average number was almost exactly 1,000, the net cost about $93,500, and the average weekly cost, therefore, $1.80. This weekly cost, though larger than in the county almshouses of New Hampshire, is considerably less than the average cost in the 230 city and town almshouses of Massachusetts, which was nearly $2.50 a week during the same year. Some of these small almshouses, and occasionally a large one, show an average cost of $4 or $5 a week, -- generally, in consequence of a small number of inmates in an almshouse calculated for a much larger population. [2 »] Page 3: | |
| 8 | The number of children in the Massachusetts almshouses is less than that of the insane; [3 »] and in half of them at least there are no children at all, except the feeble-minded. [4 »] The Connecticut almshouses have lately been relieved of many children by the establishment of county homes under a new law passed in 1883-84. The secretary of the Connecticut Board of Charities writes me as follows concerning them: -- | |
| 10 | No movement so extensive as this to provide separate homes away from the almshouse for poor children is going on elsewhere in New England; but, in Massachusetts, we have for some years been placing such children in families with very good results. And our cities, which contain nearly half our almshouse population, are forbidden by law to retain children above certain ages in the almshouse. This law is not completely enforced as yet, but takes effect more and more each year. There is, in other respects, a very perceptible improvement in the management of the Massachusetts almshouses since I first began to visit them, twenty years ago. What is now much needed is the union of several towns in the support of a single almshouse, so that the number of inmates may be large enough to warrant the employment of a better class of officers than we now find in many of the smaller almshouses, and an increase of the salary, until the average, instead of less than $400, as now, should be $500 or $600. This amount would secure in Massachusetts the services of very competent men and women, such as are now employed at this rate in our better almshouses. The State laws permit such unions among towns; and these would be better in our State than county almshouses, could such be established. But, with our laws and customs, county almshouses could scarcely exist in Massachusetts. | |
Annotations
1. Charity reformers preferred that medical doctors head public institutions, rather than the local officials who often saw such positions as patronage jobs.
2. This type of financial rhetoric was common in discussions of publicly-funded institutions in the late nineteenth century.
3. During the final decades of the nineteenth century, elite reformers campaigned to remove all children above infancy from poorhouses, generally through legislative mandates barring all able-bodied children above a certain age. Reformers feared that children would be negatively influenced by the climate in the poorhouse and by the presence of insane and supposedly immoral people. In addition, children might come to expect that they too would rely on public aid as adults.
4. Reformers’ interest removing children from almshouses extended only to able-bodied children. Children labeled as feeble-minded, crippled, blind, and deaf remained in poorhouses, unless local officials sent them to a state school for disabled children.
