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The Westchester County Almshouse, located at East View, in the town of Mount Pleasant, is, beyond dispute, at the present time one of the best-managed institutions of the kind in the State. This shelter for the county's homeless poor, with its connecting buildings, is pleasantly situated in one of the most attractive of valleys, protected by picturesque hills and surrounded by land views ever pleasing to the eye, contributing to make the lives of the unfortunate wards of the county as bearable and happy as possible. To the observance of the first rule of the institution, cleanliness, is due principally, the general good health of the inmates; sick people found here are those who were sick when introduced, as few well persons are taken ill after arrival.
On April 1, 1828, the County Almshouse was established and opened for business on its present site, the locality then being known as Knapp's Corners. Isaac Coutant was duly installed as its first keeper. Prior to 1828 each town maintained an almshouse and cared for its own poor.
During the year ending April 1, 1896, the Almshouse contained 417 inmates, of whom 321 were men, 78 were women and 18 were babes. During the year ending April 1, 1897, there were 403 inmates, of which number 297 were men, 83 were women and 23 were children under two years of age. During the year ending April 1, 1898, there were 447 inmates, of which number 352 were men, 79 were women and 16 were children under two years of age. During the year just ended the hospital accommodated 105 persons, 70 of whom were men and 35 were women, which number is about ten percent increase over previous year. Under present poor laws each town in the county is entitled to one Overseer of the Poor. An Overseer of the Poor is permitted by law to expend not over $10 not oftener than three times a year in assisting and relieving the immediate wants of a destitute family; if further assistance is necessary for some family, the said Overseer of the Poor shall apply to the County Superintendent of the Poor for authority to render further financial aid, and if said Superintendent finds, on investigation, that the family for whom assistance is asked can be removed to the Almshouse, such removal will have to be accomplished; in case removal is impossible, the Superintendent may grant further financial assistance by issuing over his signature a certificate to the County Treasurer, or by endorsing his approval on an order for money made by Overseer of the Poor. The poor orders issued by Overseers of the Poor are paid by the County Treasurer on presentation of the order, together with a bill, verified by oath, showing goods delivered under said order. The number of orders that can be issued in a town or city is not limited.
The present County Superintendent of the Poor, Henry Esser, when he first assumed charge of the Almshouse, in 1890, inaugurated the custom of providing the inmates with three regular meals a day, displacing the rule of only giving them two meals a day, omitting supper. Instead of every person, men as well as women, washing their own clothing, as formerly, Mr. Esser introduced a system by which the clothing of all the inmates is washed by most improved steam machinery. A three-story concrete building was erected in 1890 for the express purpose of the laundry. Work in the laundry, as well as at road and wall building, farming, carpentering, etc., is done by able-bodied inmates, without other payment than their support. The renovation of the furniture in the house, the erection of a bath-house, stables and other outhouses, done during Mr. Esser's administration, were effected principally by pauper labor, saving much expense to the county. The buildings are heated by the hot water system. The institution has a fire department system of its own. Kerosene oil is now being used for illuminating purposes, but it is expected that electric lights will soon be introduced to lessen expense and the chance of a conflagration and great loss.
No person afflicted with contagious disease is admitted to the hospital. Should a case unexpectedly appear, a place for it will be found in an isolated house on the farm attached to the Almshouse.
The men and women are ever well clad; the clothing and shoes worn are made in the State prisons of the State, excepting the men's shirts and women's skirts, which are made by women inmates of the institution. Men are given tobacco, a quarter of a pound package to every week; women are given something extra each week to equal the consideration given the men. Invalids are specially fed, as necessity requires. Provisions and goods of all kinds purchased for the institution are bought in large quantities at wholesale, and under the present system of bookkeeping at the institution it can readily be seen when and where every article was purchased -- the cost, when received and by whom received. The business management is most excellent.
The expenditure for the maintenance of dependent children outside of the Almshouse has always been a large item in the county budget. As the law will not permit the keeping of a child over two years of age in the Almshouse, arrangement for their care has to be made with institutions outside. Children ranging in age between two and sixteen years, a county charge, are sent to these institutions, viz.: The Westchester Temporary Home for Destitute Children at White Plains, the Catholic Protectory at Westchester, the Home of the Missionary Sisters at Peekskill, the Orphan Home at Albany, and the Home of the Sisters of Divine Compassion at White Plains. At present there are about five hundred such children in these several homes, for the support of which the county pays, as board, $2.11 each per week. These children are committed by Overseers of the Poor, Justices of the Peace and Police Justices, for destitution and different misdemeanors; the Superintendent of the Poor has control over only those who are committed for destitution. The Board of Supervisors during its sessions of 1896-7, on suggestion of Supt. Esser, passed a law providing for the placing of children in private families and thus arranging for their support. Two lady agents are engaged under this law -- one Protestant and one Catholic -- for the purpose of placing children in private homes, and they act under the guidance and supervision of the Superintendent. Homes are selected with great care and after the most thorough investigation. The project has met with great success, and those entrusted with its fulfillment feel greatly encouraged. From April 1, 1897, to April 1, 1898, about one hundred children were provided with desirable homes; these children ranged from 8 to 15 years; five children, between the ages of 2 and 3 years, have found parents by adoption.
The cost of maintaining dependent children was reduced in 1890, by Superintendent Esser, from $65,000 to $45,000, by compelling the parents who were financially able, to contribute to the support of their children harbored in the public institutions; in 1892 the cost was further reduced to $35,000. In 1896, when Mr. Esser again assumed office, he kept the expense of the children's support down to $46,261.28, where it cost, under his predecessor in the year before $73,547.84. This year the appropriation for this particular purpose is $52,000.
The county farm, on which the Almshouse stands, contains 110 acres and furnishes a greater part of the needed supplies. The main building, about 200x70, will accommodate 510 inmates; the concrete building, used as a wash-house, is in size 40x60; the tramp-house is a wooden building, 25x80; another frame building, 20x40, is used as a lodging-house. The new hospital building, for the erection of which the Board of Supervisors recently appropriated, is being built, of concrete, three stories high, with basement, 50x80; the excavating, the dressing of stone, the building of foundation walls and much of the laboring work on the proposed building, is being performed by able-bodied inmates of the Almshouse. When completed the building will be provided with all modern hospital improvements. The structure will be located on line with the main building, on the west end, the roadway separating the two buildings.
Present Officials of the County Almshouse
Henry Esser, Superintendent.
Wesley Boyce, Keeper.
W. W. Mills, M. D., House Physician.
N. H. Freeland, M. D., Visiting Physician.
R. B. Coutant, M. D., and H. Beattie Brown, M. D., Consulting Physicians.
Frederick Crisfield, Clerk and Bookkeeper.
Mrs. Wesley Boyce, Matron.
Miss Susie Boyce, Assistant Matron.
Mrs. Louise Flagg, Professional Nurse.
James Potts, Professional Nurse.
Mrs. A. C. Strang, of Yonkers, Agent for placing Protestant children.
Mrs. A. E. Hume, of New Rochelle, Agent for placing Catholic children.
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My Comments
- In the 1890s, the majority of the inmates of the almshouse were men. Why? I'm assuming that women were no less likely to face indigence than were men, especially considering that women's job opportunities, personal liberties, and economic powers were far more restricted. Where were the indigent women? Did they manage to find refuge with friends or family? Did they stay on the streets? Or did they manage to support themselves through wage work (factories, housekeeping, prostitution)?
- I wonder what it was like for a family to be forcibly "removed" to the poorhouse because their town's Overseer of the Poor had exhausted his funds. Considering that children weren't kept at the almshouse, I assume that children were regularly separated from their parents as a result of poverty.
- The practice of employing the poor "without other payment than their support" would probably be considered illegal and unethical today. The only situation in which this practice is acceptable today is in prisons, where inmates work for cents on the hour.
- Men are given tobacco, whereas it would be inappropriate to provide tobacco to women (ladies, even paupers, should not consume tobacco).
- Of course institutions should be generally managed by men, but children, which belong to a woman's domain, are managed by "lady agents." Of course Protestant and Catholic children must be kept separate.
- The pride expressed the writer in relating how the cost of managing dependent children has been reduced seems kind of unseemly, especially since no consideration has been given to addressing the underlying factors that cause poverty.
- This passage is saturated with the prevailing values of public institutions of the day: cleanliness, efficiency, order, discipline, progress, etc. Poverty is taken as a given, something that can be successfully managed given the right organization and technology. Human beings form a part of the machinery that houses and feeds them. The Almshouse is a microcosm of the world with its own supplies, laundry, hospital, etc., which aspires to self-sufficiency and machine-like proficiency.
Tyrant! You shame my brain into waking up and attempting a level of function to which has become unaccustomed. More later, I expect.
ReplyDelete*it* See what I mean?
ReplyDeleteComments on your comments:
ReplyDelete1. It is a mystery, isn't it? From my reading on that period, I gather the job opportunities for women were far more restricted than those for men (mostly teaching, housekeeping and governess work.) That was less true, however, in northern industrial towns in England where large numbers of women were employed on machine work in factories, especially textile mills. (And factory girls had a bit of a reputation!) But then, if women managed to get jobs, would their family still have needed the almshouse? And if they did, because their wages were lower than men's, where did the women live?
2. Horrible. Did the residents of almshouses have visiting rights to their children in the orphanages, I wonder?
3. Seems to me it effectively put the residents in a similar position to slaves. I suppose it might be considered acceptable as long as the work they did was purely for the maintenance of the institution - farm work, laundry and so on - but it would be interesting to know whether the almshouses profited from the residents' labour.
4. In fairness, it might be that there was little tradition of women smoking in those days and so tobacco provision wasn't deemed relevant. I don't know the answer to that. It is heartening, however, to note that women were at least compensated with something equivalent. When I was in the Royal Navy, smokers were given a ration of tobacco as part of their pay, but non-smokers got nothing. (I doubt they are now.)
5. I think we should be careful not to judge the mores of the time too harshly by today's standards. Conditioning is a big factor in the perception of rightness. And I took a kinder view of the Cathololic/Protestant segregation. My first thought was that the relative value systems in the two environments were different (birth control, for example) and that maybe the system was sensitive enough to take that factor into account. I might well be wrong.
6. I felt just the same way.
7. Standard Puritan values, maybe? I wonder whether this is so much worse an attitude than that which is currently prevailing in Britain, where a section of society has been gradually forced into relative poverty and consequent welfare dependency, and then held up as the cause of their own misfortune. They're now being subjected to debilitating welfare cuts in the name of 'essential austerity measures,' while the wealthy continue to receive favours from both the government and the system in general. (That last point has nothing to do with the nature of your post, of course. It just makes me angry so it slipped out. Sorry.)
My brain says 'goodnight.'
1. Good questions! Westchester County was, at this point, kind of a mixed agricultural/industrial area. In certain places there would have been plenty of factory jobs to be had. I suppose it depends partly on the familial situation of the women in question. Perhaps the female counterparts of the men in the almshouse were single women who supported themselves alone. Or perhaps they were unmarried and living with their parents, supporting siblings. Perhaps it was more socially acceptable for women to remain in the natal home before marriage while men were forced out on their own.
ReplyDelete2. I have no idea, but somehow I suspect not. There seems to have been an attitude (based on some of the almshouse records that I've come across) that poor children came from "bad" families (often described as "intemperate") and that living in "good" (read: middle class, church-going) families would exert a positive influence. Exposure to bad values in the form of the biological parents probably would not have been considered ideal.
3. Good point. Given how concerned the author of this piece seemed to be with the bottom line, it's possible that the residents did furnish a profit for the institution through their labor. I believe this was the case in the New York City Almshouse anyway. I'm going to have a look at more almshouse records soon and may be able to answer this question.
4. Yes, it is nice that the women got something. This part reminded me of some contemporary rules for nurses and rules for teachers that I've read in the archives, basically saying that any nurse or teacher who used tobacco was considered trash and would be fired.
5. You could be right, I may be judging a little too harshly. It is nice to see some sensitivity given to the backgrounds of the children, and respecting what their families would have wanted for them.
6. Yep.
ReplyDelete7. Not sure I'd describe it as Puritan ... the Puritans, after all, supported their poor on an individual basis with alms, believed the wealthy had a duty to help those less fortunate, and had a respect for elders (as many of the residents of the almshouse were elderly) that modern society doesn't match. It's a more recent development than that I think, definitely related to the Protestant work ethic, but also with the growth of the prison as the template for all social institutions, the modernist faith in reform and progress, and the belief that government intervention can produce the ideal citizen. At the risk of sounding like an elitist academic, have you read Foucault? He writes a lot about institutions as sources of discipline, which seek not only to control people through external means but through internalized conditioning.
I'm also reminded, especially with your mentioning of "austerity measures," of Bourdieu and the concept of misrecognition. If I were capable of explaining it correctly (which I'm not sure I am) I'd say that misrecognition refers to the kind of collective delusion that makes people incapable of discerning the real factors underlying inequality, instead attributing it to personal failings on the part of the disadvantaged. There's a great book by Paul Willis called "Learning to Labor" which is an ethnographic study of working class boys in Britain in the 1970s. Basically it describes how these boys are able to discern the mechanisms that keep them in their place, but how their own internalized prejudices (most notably misogyny, both against women and men who do non-manual labor) prevent those insights from growing into anything substantial that might challenge the status quo. If this sounds like Willis is blaming the boys for their own failures, I'm not representing it accurately. It's more like: in addition to the many external mechanisms that keep the classes in their place, every individual contains internal mechanisms that help to maintain his/her place within the class system, which are specific to the class to which he/she belongs.
The US has had a similar "War on Poverty" campaign for a while now, which in practice translates to a war on the poor. As you can see I am also prone to rambling when it comes to things like this.
7. You're right. What I really meant was the Protestant work ethic.
ReplyDeleteWith regard to the second paragraph, it seems to me there's a problem here:
The vast majority of people never read the books and theories to which you refer. If they did, many of them probably wouldn't understand them. Those who would understand them would still be reluctant to embrace fundamental changes to the status quo because it's risky and therefore uncomfortable. Radical change requires political will, and there is none because the trick in a democracy is to appear to be the most comfortable option to the greatest number of people. This could bring me to the way in which emphasis on material values, and the concomitant encouragement of commercial pressure, is used to keep the middle ground safely anaesthetised and unwilling to see the bigger picture. That's a big and uncertain argument, but I'm sure there's some truth in it. And it's relevant to the current situation in Britain with regard to the impending Labour Party leadership election. One of the four candidates is a notable left winger who wants to change direction and make the country more egalitarian, but opinion is generally hostile. It holds that he would simply make the party unelectable.
I often muse that it took a world war to produce both political and social will for fundamental change. After WWII there was a major shift towards the Labour Party, and the result was the creation of the Welfare State, which included the NHS, free university tuition, and so on. But it requires a tax-and-spend economy, and that doesn't accord with the increasingly free market line down which Mrs Thatcher steered us. Britain has become much more conservative under the influence of Thatcher, Blair and the current Tory administration, and that's why I think we're going backwards.