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| The Westchester County Almshouse circa 1900 (Harvard University Library) |
For those of you who have been following the long saga that is my journey to the PhD, you might be interested to know that I submitted my Master's thesis on Tuesday. The title is "'A Corpse instead of a Pauper': Graveyards as Sites of Ideological Production in 19th-Century Westchester County, New York." This is the newspaper article from which that title was taken, published in The Mount Kisco Recorder in 1886:
A CORPSE INSTEAD OF A PAUPERAnd here is some of what I wrote about it:
Mrs. Ann Eliza Young, an aged widow, once quite well to do, and residing all her life at Tuckahoe, was taken to the County Almshouse, last Thursday morning, and died of fright and a broken heart in the carriage which landed her at the door. The old lady wept all the way to the almshouse, and prayed that death might overtake her before she became a pauper. When the carriage stopped at the door she looked out of her carriage window, gave a shriek, threw up her hands and fell dead. Mrs. Young’s husband was once a prosperous stonecutter, and they lived in comfort, but about 20 years ago he was drowned, and since that time the widow has maintained herself on what remained of his property. This being all gone and she being childless, she became a county charge. She was buried at the almshouse.
While the story of Ann Eliza Young featured in the Recorder in 1886 may have been colored by some degree of journalistic flourish, the almshouse records attest to its essential truth: that a woman who had "lived in comfort" could easily fall into a state of destitution in her old age ...
Ezra Yerks, a 69-year-old shoemaker and resident of Mount Pleasant, expressed a sentiment similar to that of Ann Eliza Young when he was admitted to the almshouse in 1867, suffering from paralysis: according to his admission record, "[h]e asserted on his arrival here that he would rather die than be obliged to become an inmate of a Poorhouse" (Record No. 159) ...
Despite what the title of the article implied, death had not spared Young the fate she had feared: she was, in death, treated as a pauper. A burial at the almshouse spoke to the same anxieties that surrounded the confinement of a living person: those of anonymity, disgrace, and exclusion from society. Buried in a sterile institutional setting, among strangers, in a grave that, if marked, was given only a minimal slab with a number, the pauper dead were denied the normative 19th-century program of rituals and trappings that served to beautify death and dignify the deceased. The starkness of the paupers’ graves, without an epitaph or icon to mitigate the terror of mortality, recalled the grim Calvinist attitudes of the early colonial era which had long since given way to romanticism.
Furthermore, paupers were not even guaranteed what had come to be considered every person’s fundamental right: that of an eternal resting place. In the 1920s, the Westchester County Almshouse graveyard was destroyed to build the Saw Mill River Parkway. A similar fate befell many other institutional burying grounds in the 20th century.
I'm curious to know what most concerned people about the prospect of going into the almshouse. Was it: a) The sudden drop in status in a society which so values wealth? b) Having to endure poor living standards? c) Both? I suppose this is a difficult question which the simple statement 'I would rather die than go into the almshouse' doesn't answer.
ReplyDeleteIt's also interesting that, in Britain at least, the majority of people are cremated these days and their ashes given to the person who has the greatest right to claim them. What happens to the ashes of those who have no such claimant, I don't know.
But your point is taken: Those lacking material means are treated as detritus in death, as they were in life.
I wrote in one of my posts recently: 'Every life, however badly it has been lived, is sacred, and every death something to be mourned.'
I would say c) Both. To explain why, I'd ask Max Weber. He wrote "The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism," which basically argues that modern capitalism has led to the enshrinement of productivity as an index of social worth. I've read historical accounts that state that poorhouse inmates who were able to "work for their keep" (e.g. by doing domestic or agricultural labor for the institution) felt morally superior to inmates who were unable or unwilling to work. Labor was considered part of one's debt to society.
ReplyDeleteYour reflections reminded me of two recent stories I've read/heard. One is about the ashes of patients at the Oregon State Hospital, which sat in a crematorium unclaimed for nearly a century and have recently received some attention: http://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/health/2014/07/05/longer-forgotten/12205849/
(And speaking of "Cuckoo's Nest," the 1975 movie was filmed at the Oregon State Hospital.)
Another is a story from NPR about a group of teenagers who volunteer as pallbearers for deceased people who have no one else to mourn them: http://www.npr.org/2016/01/25/463567685/today-we-are-his-family-teen-volunteers-mourn-those-who-died-alone?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social
I suppose the concept of labour being part of one's debt to society is not so far removed from the principle in smaller, simpler societies of being expected to contribute to the common good. Where I think it differs (assuming I understand the term 'work ethic' correctly) is that the latter has its roots in practical necessity, whereas the former takes it into the more rarefied realm of moral diktat. That's where I get off, especially since it seems to have been hijacked for the benefit of those in control, rather than the people to whom the principle is applied.
ReplyDeleteI read about the Oregon story, but I will definitely take a look at the other one. I've come to realise in recent years that there's something eminently likeable about teenagers. They don't use 'it's complicated' or 'maybe I won't like it when I get there' as an excuse for stasis. They just go out and do it.