How did people die in the almshouse?

For a while I've had a very ambitious plan in mind. It began with the Episcopal cemetery. I've always liked cemeteries because they provide a material link to ordinary people from the past -- the kind of people I can imagine being my friends and neighbors. It seemed like a democratizing gesture to study and preserve cemeteries: a means of bringing attention to our historical counterparts, the farmers, bakers, shoemakers, and housewives of the 18th and 19th century whose stories help to personalize the sweeping course of historical movements.

But there are another class of people who are even more neglected than the "ordinary" (read: middle-class) residents of the Episcopal cemetery. They were buried in mass graves in potter's fields and in the cemeteries of institutions. They may have received a grave marker, or they may have not. If they did receive a grave marker, it may have been made of perishable materials, and it may not have recorded their names. Today many of their graves are unmarked, unknown, even obliterated.

Such erasure is an affront to the cult of individualism that forms the ideological core of capitalist society. According to this ideology, we are all individuals. The irony, of course, is that individuality and homogeneity seem to go hand in hand. According to some Marxist archaeologists, individuality is an illusion that masks the reality: we are all interchangeable. In Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism (1999), Mark P. Leone summarizes the theory of E. P. Thompson:

Thompson argues that the individual is a social creation, and that those people who realize their lives within the notion of individualism are not individuals as they conceive themselves to be, but rather are the interchangeable units of a society that makes its profit from selling the labor of persons who come to be seen as duplicates (200).

Material culture is both the reflection of this reality and the substrate from which it is created. Leone cites ceramics as an example. With the 18th century, tablewares were more and more likely to be individualized, that is, accumulated in numbers that were intended to be proportionate to the number of people being served. Everyone got his or her own plate, cup, saucer, and bowl -- a true innovation in a society that had been accustomed to using communal tablewares. Yet the ceramics also increased in homogeneity at the same time they increased in number. A set of tablewares was one in which all of the pieces were the same. Both ceramics and people were being homogenized.

So how does this connect to the almshouse? The almshouse, much like the prison, was an institution centered on the production of individuals. Consider what Foucault writes in Discipline and Punish (1979):

"... individualization is ‘descending’: as power becomes more anonymous and functional, those on whom it is exercised tend to be more strongly individualized … In a system of discipline, the child is more individualized than the adult, the patient more than the healthy man, the madman and the delinquent more than the normal … when one wishes to individualize the healthy, normal and law-abiding adult, it is always by asking him how much of the child he has in him, what secret madness lies within him, what fundamental crime he has dreamt of committing" (193).

Institutions like the almshouse provided the blueprints for imposing discipline on the rest of society, not through external coercion, but by conditioning people, from an early age, to internalize order and social expectations. 

In my thesis, I hope to explore how the Westchester County Almshouse functioned as an instrument of discipline, not only for the people who lived there, but for all of society. But I have a parallel project in mind, which is to identify all of the people who were buried in the almshouse cemetery, and in doing so make some effort to counteract the forces that have (and continue to) erase "undesirable" people from society. The fact that the middle-class cemetery stands, while the almshouse cemetery is buried under a highway, is not a coincidence. It is practically allegorical. It demonstrates how inequalities of the present are perpetuated in historical memory. Marginalized in life, the residents of the almshouse are also marginalized in death.

Unfortunately, this project is easier said than done. There is no simple document that identifies all of the burials in the almshouse cemetery (that I have found, anyway). Instead, I have been combing through the enormous ledger documenting all of the people who were living in the almshouse as of 1875 or later (1875 is the year that New York State passed a law requiring almshouse to keep such records. Before that year, evidence is scanty) and recording the ones who died while they were there. Between 1875 and 1879, 1,490 people were listed as residents of the almshouse; 220 of them died. That's about 15%. I have also been looking for mortality schedules in the federal census that list the residents who died that year. These are very valuable records, but unfortunately they only capture people who died in the almshouse in the year the census was taken (once every ten years). 

Note that not all of the people who stayed at the almshouse would really qualify as "residents." Some of them stayed less than a week before leaving. Some of them stayed only a day before they died. Some of them lived there for decades and died there. It's very difficult to gauge the quality of care that the almshouse inmates (as they were known) received from death rates alone. Many of the residents would have suffered from ill health for months or years before they arrived at the almshouse. Still, it is safe to say that conditions at the almshouse weren't optimal. Judging by the intake records, residents were forced to work as much as their health allowed; they received only two meals a day (prior to 1890); and there was no dedicated hospital before 1900. While many of the people who died at the almshouse were elderly, it wasn't unusual for young adults and children to die unexpectedly. 

In the document above, from the mortality schedules of the federal census, records 28 deaths in the almshouse in the year ending May 31, 1880. It's difficult to read, but I have been able to gather the following data:

Sex

Number of men: 18 (64.3%)

Number of women: 10 (35.7%)

Race

White: 25 (89.2%)

Black: 3 (10.7%)

Marital Status

Single: 13 (46.4%)

Married: 1 (3.6%)

Widowed: 14 (50%)

Age

Infant (0-2 yrs): 1 (3.6%)

Child/adolescent (3-19 yrs): 0 (0%)

Young adult (20-39 yrs): 2 (7.1%)

Middle adult (40-59 yrs): 9 (32.1%)

Old adult (60+ yrs): 16 (57.1%)

Average age*: 62.1

Average age of men: 59.2

Average age of women: 63.5

*The one infant is not counted.

Youngest age: One month

Oldest age: 88

Birthplace

New York: 13 (46.4%)

Ireland: 10 (35.7%)

Germany: 3 (10.7%)

Switzerland: 1 (3.6%)

France: 1 (3.6%)

Profession* 

Laborer: 17 (62.9%)

Servant: 8 (29.6%)

Keeping house: 2 (7.4%)

*The one infant is not counted.

Cause of Death

Consumption: 6 (21.4%)

Heart disease: 4 (16%)

General debility: 3 (10.7%)

Brain disease: 2 (7.1%)

Cramps: 1 (3.6%)

Epilepsy: 1

Apoplexy: 1

Old age: 1

Septicemia: 1

Gangrene: 1

Bronchitis: 1

Pneumonia: 1

Kidney disease: 1

Illegible: 2

So what can we glean from this data?

First of all, it may come as a surprise that the average age of the adults who died is 62.1, 63.5 for women and 59.2 for men. This seems fairly high, considering that in 1880, the average life expectancy at age 20 was 62.2 years for both men and women. However, it would be wrong to conclude from this that the residents of the almshouse were living about as long as the average man or woman. Rather, the data is likely skewed by the fact that residents of the almshouse were more likely to be elderly than the average population. That the women who died in the almshouse were slightly older than their male counterparts isn't surprising; with an older population, women were less likely to be of reproductive age, and therefore less vulnerable to the potentially fatal complications of pregnancy and childbirth.

The ratio of men to women (64.3:35.7) is similar to that of the total population of the almshouse in 1870 (62.8:37.2), suggesting that at least in this year, men and women in the almshouse died at equal rates.

To make any conclusions on the causes of death, I would have to compare these numbers to those for the average population. But I will say that consumption, heart disease, "general debility," brain disease, epilepsy, and kidney disease all have the potential to be drawn-out, wasting illnesses that would incapacitate the victim for a long period of time prior to death. It is therefore not surprising that these "slow" illnesses would account for such a large portion of the deaths in the almshouse, as opposed to, say, highly virulent and deadly diseases like influenza, cholera, or measles. My theory is that victims of "fast" killers would be more likely to die at home, where they would have been incapacitated for only days or weeks prior to their deaths, while victims of "slow" killers would have been brought to the almshouse when their families realized they didn't have the resources to provide the months or years of care they would need.

It's just a theory, however, and one that will need more testing. For now, I am focused on identifying the rest of the people who died in the almshouse, in the hope that I can then determine whether they were buried on the almshouse grounds. Most likely, the majority were, but a few may have been claimed by their families for burial elsewhere. It would be unfair to condemn families for "abandoning" their relatives to the almshouse. Some people undoubtedly were abandoned and neglected, but others simply had the misfortune to come from very poor families (or to have no family at all). Some of the records explicitly mention that a person's family had run out of money supporting him or her. Others say that the person has family willing to support them but is "too proud" to ask for help. And some records contain the name and addresses of family or friends who promised to bury the person upon his or her death. 

Some families, however, may have been too poor to provide their relative with a burial, and thus the person was buried in the almshouse cemetery. I'll discuss more of the details surrounding the fate of the almshouse cemetery in a later post, but for now, I thought I'd mention the efforts at the Oregon State Hospital that have partly inspired all of this work.

The Oregon State Hospital contains the cremated remains of 3,600 people who died there between 1914 and 1971 and were never claimed by relatives. A few years ago, a state senator visiting the hospital was shocked to see the thousands of urns locked away in the dilapidated crematorium. He led a project to rehouse the remains in a public memorial and to reunite as many of the urns as possible with their families. 

This is the kind of outcome I would like for my project, albeit on a more modest scale (the Oregon State Hospital had the advantage of a high level of public interest, partly generated by its association with the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," which was filmed there). 

Cause of Death

So far, I have documented the causes of death for 24 people buried in the cemetery. Since that isn't very much, and is spaced out over more than a century, I decided to take a look at the mortality schedules for the town to get an idea of what most people were dying of. The mortality schedule above is from 1850. None of the people listed were buried in the cemetery (that I know of), but people buried in the cemetery probably died for the same reasons.

According to this document, 21 people died in the town in the year ending June 1, 1850. The causes of death were:

Dysentery (11)
Consumption (3)
Inflammatory rheumatism (1)
Old age (1)
Inflammation (1)
Paralysis (1)
Congestion of the lungs (1)
Cholera (1)

More than half of these people died of dysentery. All of the people who died of dysentery died in August and September, with the exception of one who died in October. They ranged in age from one month to seventy years old.

The one person who died of old age was a man who was 99 years old.

Child Mortality by Age

As I have already discovered, child mortality was high in the Episcopal Cemetery. Out of 398 people buried in the cemetery, 21% were aged 10 and younger and 26% were aged 20 and younger. Child mortality was highest in the cemetery during the 1850s, when children accounted for 33.8% of burials, but was also high in the 1830s (33.33%) and 1860s (33.33%).

At what age were children most likely to die? It's not surprising that the answer is "infancy." The chart above represents 104 burials of children and adolescents aged 20 or younger. Twenty-six, or 25%, of these burials were of infants under the age of one year. Eighteen burials, or 17%, were of children between one and two years old. After the age of two, mortality declines dramatically. Of all children buried in the cemetery who were younger than 10 years old, 65% were two years old or younger.

Burials Per Year

This chart should give a little context to the other ones. As you can see, burials in the cemetery started off slowly, gained momentum in the 1820s, and really took off in the 1850s and '60s. The 1870s marked the beginning of the cemetery's gradual decline. Notably, the large "competitor" cemetery that would end up housing many of the descendants of people buried in the Episcopal Cemetery was founded in 1872.

Life Expectancy in the 19th Century

Using the new life tables created by J. David Hacker, I put together these charts in order to compare the life expectancy of people in the cemetery with the overall life expectancy of the white population of the United States. I excluded the decades before 1830 because there wasn't enough data available from the cemetery. Here are my results for male life expectancy at birth and female life expectancy at birth.

As you can see, all four sets of lines share the same general trend: a dip in the middle, followed by gradually increasing life expectancy over time. The lines in each chart also have the same relationship to one another. That is to say, in both of these charts, the cemetery has lower life expectancy than the new life tables in the earlier decades but reverses later on, so that the cemetery has higher life expectancy than the new life tables.

Now compare this with male and female life expectancy at the age of 20. Again, the same general trend is visible: a dip in the middle of the century, with steadily increasing life expectancy from the 1870s on. The cemetery also shows lower life expectancy than the new life tables at the beginning, but overtakes the new life tables towards the end. Notably, it is much later in the century that the cemetery begins to show greater life expectancy - in the 1870s for men and not until the 1890s for women, whereas in the tables for life expectancy at birth, the trend had already reversed by 1870.

Also notable is the fact that the 1860s seem to have been a bad time for everyone, but especially men and especially men buried in the cemetery.

 
It would seem that for much of the nineteenth century, people at the cemetery died younger than average. Then, in the 1870s, as general life expectancy increased, the life expectancy of people in the cemetery increased even more, overtaking the national average. For both the cemetery and the national population, 1870 seems to have been a turning point, after which longevity greatly increased, and continued to increase.

I don't know how to explain why the people in the cemetery seem to have shorter lifespans than average. Was this an accurate reflection of the longevity of the congregation, or of the local population? Are the numbers skewed by the relatively small sample size, or by my methods of data collection? How might they compare to other cemeteries in the area?

Much more research is needed!

Source
Hacker, J. David. "Decennial Life Tables for the White Population of the United States, 1790-1900." Historical Methods Vol. 43, No. 2 (April 2010): 45-79. 

Mortality at the Episcopal Cemetery

After reading the article "Applying Archaeological Techniques to Conserve a Historical Cemetery in Ripley, Maine" in the Maine Archaeological Society Bulletin (thanks, Laurie!) I wanted to make my own chart to show the ages at which people in the cemetery died and track them across time. The chart above is based on the 1909 transcription and my own research drawn from the stones themselves, obituaries, censuses, etc. The chart represents 398 individuals. Twenty two individuals were excluded from the chart due to the fact that their age at death could not be determined. Also, my data for the 20th century is not as complete, so the latest burial included in the chart is from 1906.

I should note that infants for whom no age was given (some graves simply say "Infant") were automatically given the age of 0.5 years, as were any infants who were less than one year old, for the sake of the chart.

Looking at the chart, it's difficult to distinguish any sort of pattern, aside from perhaps a general drift towards greater longevity over time. It's easy to see that more people were buried in the cemetery after 1820 than before, but the age at which they died at any time seems almost random, with one exception. There is a huge cluster of child deaths in the mid-19th century, particularly between the years 1845 and 1870.

The next thing I wanted to do was to break down age at death by gender. The following charts represent 199 male burials and 198 female burials. One infant was excluded because his/her gender could not be determined. One person who was identified by initials only (C. H. Purdy) was assumed to be male.

Again, it's somewhat hard to make out a pattern. I expected that more women than men would die in their 20s and 30s due to complications of childbirth and pregnancy, but that doesn't seem to be the case. There does seem to be a small cluster of deaths of men in their 20s around the year 1860, perhaps reflecting Civil War fatalities.

Life Expectancy at the Cemetery
The most important thing to remember about average life expectancy is that it can be misleading - more so in the past than it is today. Because children died so frequently, life expectancy at birth was low throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. However, as soon as an individual made it out of childhood, his or her life expectancy increased significantly. This pattern is reflected in the average life expectancy of people buried in the cemetery.

To begin with, average life expectancy at birth for all 398 individuals included in this study was 42 years. For the 199 males, it was 40.8 years, and for the 198 females, it was 43.5 years.

Once a person reached the age of 10, average life expectancy was 53 years (54 for women and 51 for men). Once a person reached the age of 30, average life expectancy was 61 years (62 for women and 60 for men). Once a person reached the age of 60, average life expectancy was 74 (74.5 for women and 73.6 for men).

Of 398 burials, 21% were children below the age of ten, and 30% were adults over the age of 65.

Life Expectancy Over Time
By calculating and plotting average life expectancy at birth for each decade, it's easier to see the trends in mortality at the cemetery over time. The following chart shows the average life expectancy of people buried at the cemetery between the years 1773 and 1906. The numbers for the early decades (1770s, 1790s, 1800s, and 1810s) are distorted due to the fact that there were so few burials (and none in the 1780s). Beginning in the 1820s, the numbers are more likely to reflect reality.

To shed light on the important factor of child mortality, I made this graph, representing the percentage of children under 10 years who were buried in the cemetery each decade.



Again, the first few decades of this graph are distorted due to the small number of burials, but after 1820 are more accurate. It seems that child mortality was very high in the mid-nineteenth century, averaging around 1/3 of burials between 1830 and 1860, but it dropped off dramatically in 1870.

Below, you can see the numbers I used to create the charts above.

1773-1779
Two burials; average life expectancy: 62.5 years
0% under the age of 10 years
50% over the age of 65 years

1780-1789
No burials.

1790-1799
Nine burials; average life expectancy: 38 years 
33.33% under the age of 10 years

1800-1809
Two burials; average life expectancy: 24 years
0% under the age of 10 years
0% over the age of 65 years

1810-1819
Three burials; average life expectancy: 52 years
None under the age of 10 years
33.33% over the age of 65 years

1820-1829
Twenty burials; average life expectancy: 38.9 years
15% under the age of 10 years
20% over the age of 65 years

1830-1839
Thirty burials; average life expectancy: 31.4 years
33.33% under the age of 10 years
16.67% over the age of 65 years

1840-1849
Forty burials; average life expectancy: 37.9 years
32.5% under the age of 10 years
25% over the age of 65 years

1850-1859
Sixty-eight burials; average life expectancy: 33.7 years
33.8% under the age of 10 years
22% over the age of 65 years

1860-1869
Seventy-five burials; average life expectancy: 31.6 years
33.33% under the age of 10 years
18.7% over the age of 65 years

1870-1879
Sixty-one burials; average life expectancy: 50.6 years
6.6% under the age of 10 years
37.7% over the age of 65 years

1880-1889
Forty-three burials; average life expectancy: 50.8 years
14% under the age of 10 years
37.2% over the age of 65 years

1890-1899
Twenty-eight burials; average life expectancy: 65.2 years
0% under the age of 10 years
60.7% over the age of 65 years

1900-1906
Sixteen burials; average life expectancy: 66 years 
0% under the age of 10 years
56.2% over the age of 65 years

Conclusions
If I were to do a proper scientific study of mortality at the cemetery, I would want to fill in the missing data by transcribing graves erected after 1906 and by conducting research on the 22 individuals who were excluded from these charts in order to determine their ages at death. I would also try to find a way to control for the discrepancies in the number of burials each decade; obviously, the fact that burials were few to begin with and tapered off toward the end is bound to distort these sort of calculations.

There are also historical and cultural factors to consider. How did war, epidemics, immigration, industrialization, religion, familial ties, social class, ethnicity, and interpersonal issues affect who was buried at the cemetery and when? How did the lives of the two churches on the site affect the life of the cemetery?

It's possible to take a guess at the latter question. Burials were few during the years that the first church stood, due to both the low density of people in the area and the Revolution. After the war, the cemetery didn't see a significant rise in burials until the 1820s and 1830s. During this time, the congregation was growing, but the church had been damaged by the war and wasn't used. The second church was built in 1852 to accommodate the growing community, and perhaps because of its construction, the cemetery continued to see more and more burials.

My next step will be to research mortality rates in nineteenth-century New York to see how they compare to the figures I have calculated for the cemetery.

Distribution of Death Dates in the Episcopal Cemetery

This fascinating graph, taken from the Historical Society, shows the distribution of death dates recorded on the gravestones in the Episcopal Cemetery. Just look at how the numbers drop off beginning in the 1870s, when nearby Oakwood Cemetery was established.

Note that this graph reflects only the dates on stones that existed in 1984, when this data was collected. No gravestones survive to mark the graves of the Revolutionary War soldiers who were buried in the cemetery (if such stones ever existed). The earlier the year, the more likely that stones no longer exist and thus were not factored into this graph. Still, it is probably pretty safe to say that the number of burials per year in the 18th century was smaller than that of the 19th century, particularly the mid-19th century, when the community was growing.