1864 Dutchess County Poor House

Posted on September 19, 2013 by lsstuhler

“The poor house of Dutchess county with a population of one hundred, contains twenty-four lunatics, or about one fourth of the whole number; eight of whom are males and sixteen females. Thirteen are supposed to be native, and eleven of foreign birth. Nothing definite can be obtained relative to the date of their admission, there being no special record or care for such particulars. Six of the number have been at some time under treatment at Utica. Eleven of the cases are mild, eight violent, and two filthy. Three of the males are capable of labor, and five of the females. The remainder have no occupation, amusement or employment. Six are destructive and tear off their clothing, two require constant restraint, either with the straight jacket or with straps for the wrists and belt.

The house has a full supply of water, but no bathing tubs, most of them however, wash hands and face daily. The building is heated by stoves and ventilation is only by the windows, it being of wood two stories high, with seven feet ceilings. The rooms are severally 6 x 6, and 8 x 6 feet. Two sleep in basements with other sane inmates. Iron bedsteads fastened to the floor are used, on each of which only one sleeps. The beds of straw are changed “as often as seems necessary.” The diet is for breakfast, bread, hash of meat and potatoes, coffee; dinner, bread, fresh or salt meat, fish; and for tea, beans and potatoes, and water. Mild patients go to the table with the sane inmates, and others receive the food in their cells.

There are no accommodations for the various grades of the insane, four are confined in some of the cells. A man and his wife care for the female insane, no other than paupers are employed in the care of lunatics. This institution assumes to take charge of recent cases! The lunatics are visited by a physician the same as the other insane paupers, whenever they are known to be sick. There is no attention paid even to recent cases with a view to their recovery. Two were without either shoes or stockings during the winter.

Dr. E.H. Parker, who collected these facts, observes: “It is impossible to ascertain anything concerning them (the pauper lunatics) more definite than is here given viz: that they are fed, clothed and kept tolerably decent. No thought is given to curing them. In fact it is no place for one to attempt to do so, a proper insane asylum is required to effect anything in that way with constant medical attendance. The city of Poughkeepsie and the rest of the county, are about to divide the paupers, insane and others between them, and for this purpose a new building has been erected in the town of Washington. This does not seem to have been very wisely arranged but attached to it is a building 22 x 34 feet, intended for the insane.

It is to contain 18 cells in its two stories (9 in each,) will have a walk (or hall) between the rooms of cells of about four feet, has large windows to be protected I understand by oak bars, and is altogether so far as I can learn, about as unfit a place for the insane, as could be arranged. It involves their continual confinement in small cells, unless they are very mild, it does not admit of a proper separation of the sexes, or of the violent from the mild, or of proper provision for out of door exercise for either. It is about 20 feet from the main building, and is to be heated by the same steam apparatus that warms that. It is incredible that the authorities whoever they are that have had charge of this building, should have consulted any one familiar with the care of the insane, in arranging its plan. Necessity will undoubtedly compel them to build anew or to modify this. I should add that although I have repeatedly visited the county house, I have not had the good fortune at any time to find the superintendent at home, and am indebted for all my information to his assistant.” What language can more explicitly point out an evil, at which common humanity must blush with shame?”

SOURCE: Documents of the Assembly Of The State Of New York, Eighty-Eighth Session, 1865, Volume 6, Nos. 199 to 112 Inclusive, Albany: C. Wendell, Legislative Printer, 1865, Pages 190-191.

New York State County Poor Houses.

1879 Dutchess County Alms-House – Poughkeepsie, NY

Posted on August 30, 2013 by lsstuhler

A DISGRACE TO DUTCHESS COUNTY. MISERABLE CONDITION OF THE ALMS-HOUSE-THE SUPERVISORS AND SUPERINTENDENT AT LOGGERHEADS.

POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y., Dec. 14. – The Board of Supervisors visited the Dutchess County Alms-house on Friday, and found a good many things which common humanity and decency require should be at once remedied. every room and hall in the buildings was examined. A committee appointed by a previous Board of Supervisors spent $700 out of an appropriation of $1,000 in making certain improvements. but they only began a work which ought to be speedily finished. They put new floors in the hallways and 110 pairs of blinds on the windows. Friday’s inspection showed that the floors in every room are worn out, and have been for years. Strips of tin and zinc have been nailed over the cracks here and there to keep the cold out, and in some of the rooms and hallways portions of the walls have fallen. The window-panes are cracked and broken everywhere. The rooms are supplied with dilapidated wooden bedsteads of the commonest sort, which are so unclean that they are fit only to be thrown into a bonfire. Six of these beds are in one room. There are 25 new iron bedsteads stored in the building, with new mattresses, which have never been used. The kitchen is in the basement of the main building, and is so poorly ventilated that the odors from the cooking penetrate everywhere, and often make the atmosphere noisome. The garret of the main building is a miserable death-trap. Across the centre runs a partition, and 17 beds are under the low-peaked roof in the east end. A narrow, ill-contrived stairway furnishes the only exit from this man-hole. Let a fire once break out on the floors below, and the 25 or 30 paupers who usually huddle about the steam-pipes would stand very little chance of getting out alive. In the day-time this miserable room is lighted by one window in the east end. At night the light is furnished by a single candle fastened to the centre of an iron rod, which crosses the room over the heads of the occupants. The partition should be ripped out, three dormer windows should be built on each side, and substantial fire-escapes should be put up at the east and west ends. It is criminal recklessness to house the paupers in the garret as it is now.

Near the main building stands what is called the “insane building.” It needs a thorough overhauling. The “rooms” it contains are little better than wooden cells. Sliding doors separate these cells from a narrow corridor, and in each door is a small aperture through which food was formerly passed to the insane inmates. In some of these cells are two and three beds, and all the wood-work is impregnated with foul odors. New floors were put in the cells last season, but the whole affair needs to be rebuilt, and good rooms put where the cells now are. The chapel building is mainly occupied by the keeper and his family. It ought to be converted into a hospital and infirmary. The chapel could be left as it is, and at least 12 good rooms built for the use of the sick paupers. Another greatly needed improvement is a new boiler for the engine. The one now in use was put in 19 years ago, and it was only a second-hand boiler then. In its present condition it is liable to explode at any moment.

To this disgraceful condition of affairs is to be added the present commingling of the sexes. There is nothing to separate them in either the buildings or yards. They ought to be separated, and to do so need not be a difficult task. Proper fencing is all that is required in the yards. The keeper’s quarters should be removed from the chapel building to rooms in the centre of the main building. The male inmates could then be assigned to apartments in one end of the building, and the females placed in the other end. Proper partitions and doors could be easily built to divide the building in this way. The total expense in making all the necessary improvements is estimated at the very small sum of $1.500.

One thing that has helped to bring about the present disgusting state of affairs at the Alms-house is the lack of harmony between Superintendent Ladue and the Board of Supervisors. The committees of 1878 and of this year complain of the Superintendent for his refusal to carry out their suggestions, and say that had he done so many of the present evils would not exist. The committee of 1878 built an additional stairway at the west end of the building, but lath has been nailed across the exit and the stairway closed. The new iron bedsteads purchased this year have not been put in use by the Superintendent, nor have the new mattresses. Some of the latter still remain in the store where they were purchased. Other shortcomings of the same sort are charged against him by the Supervisors, and it is hoped that when the new Superintendent takes office he will make a beneficial change.

There are now 130 inmates in the Alms-house, but cold weather will probably increase the number to 150. At this time last year there were 180 inmates. Only one insane person is among the inmates, 10 incurable cases having been sent to the Willard Asylum during the past season.

SOURCE: The New York Times, Published: December 15, 1879, Copyright @ The New York Times.

Matteawan State Hospital for Insane Criminals & Cemetery

Posted on May 26, 2013 by lsstuhler

Matteawan State Hospital for Insane Criminals – Men & Women.

1916 Matteawan State Hospital.
Beacon, Dutchess County, New York.
Matteawan State Hospital 7 Names – Find A Grave.

1. South Flank Pavilions-Matteawan

2. Administration Building-Matteawan

3. Entrance Hallway-Matteawan

4. South Interior Court-Matteawan

5. Matteawan

6. Public Kitchen-Matteawan

7. Laundry Building-Matteawan

8. Boiler House and Dynamo Building-Matteawan

9. Front View-Matteawan

Twenty-Third Annual Report Of The Medical Superintendent Of The State Asylum For Insane Criminals, Matteawan, N.Y., For the Year Ending September 30, 1892.
[Post-Office, Fishkill-On-The-Hudson.]

OFFICERS OF THE ASYLUM 1892.
Manager:
Hon. AUSTIN LATHROP, Superintendent Of State Prisons.

Resident Officers:
H.E. ALLISON, M.D., Medical Superintendent.
J. ELVIN COURTNEY, M.D., First Assistant Physician.
LUTHER C. JONES, M.D., Second Assistant Physician.
JAMES F. HOWELL, Steward.
R.B. LAMB, M.D., Resident Clinical Assistant.

REPORT.
Hon. Austin Lathrop, Superintendent of State Prisons:

Sir.— The following pages which, in accordance with the statute, I have the honor to submit, constitute the first annual report issued from this new institution, which was created by act of the Legislature for the relief of the overcrowded asylum at Auburn, and is the thirty-third of a series presented annually since the original establishment of the State Asylum for Insane Criminals.

This new hospital structure of modern architecture, commandingly situated and furnished with every convenience for the care of its inmates, was occupied during the latter part of April of the present year; the first patients having been received by transfer from Auburn on the twenty-fifth of that month. The entire population of the Auburn asylum, a total of 261 patients, were moved into their present quarters and the new asylum organized and put in operation within a period of five days. Fortunately the transfer was made safely, without the slightest accident or any attempt at escape. The buildings and grounds at Auburn, which were occupied for more than thirty years, are now entirely relinquished, and the oldest of asylums for insane criminals is domiciled in these new quarters as its permanent abode.

Owing to the increased accommodations afforded by the opening of these new buildings, we have been able to provide for those patients who had, up to this time, been retained in the various State hospitals awaiting transfer to our custody, and who had previously been refused admission to Auburn for the lack of room. Because of this large and rapid influx the total number of admissions has more than doubled that of any previous year. During the year the various courts of the State have also, to a larger extent than heretofore, committed patients to this asylum directly. The practice, however, still exists of sending patients charged with crime to the general hospitals of the insane, where their presence is objectionable, and whence they are transferred to us under the provisions of chapter 515, Laws of 1884; the superintendents of the various State hospitals applying under this law to justices of the Supreme Court for orders permitting such transfers. We hope, when the scope and character of this institution become more widely known, that commitments in the future will be made to us directly in all cases where the plea of insanity prevails as a defense for criminal acts. It is the purpose of this hospital to care for all insane persons competed or unconvicted, who are charged with crime, whether the disease of insanity is known to exist at the time of arraignment or trial, or subsequently develops while undergoing sentence.”

SOURCE: Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York, One Hundred and Sixteenth Session, 1893, Volume I, Nos. 1 to 6, Inclusive, Albany: James B. Lyon, State Printer, 1893. Pages 203-208.

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