Tag Archives: New York State Poor Houses

1864 Rockland County Poor House

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“The whole population of the Rockland county poor-house is fifty. During the year sixteen insane have been among this number, but the list of lunatics in present confinement is reduced to ten by two deaths, three absconded and never returned. Two of the number had been treated in an asylum. With three exceptions, the cases were generally of a mild character. Six were mentioned as filthy, and six as requiring occasional restraint by confinement. One has been in the poor-house since 1841. Ten were of native, and six foreign birth. Four were males and twelve were females. Only one male is capable of labor. The remaining nine have neither amusement, occupation, nor employment, except “reading and singing.” Five are destructive to clothing. The only mechanical restraint that is resorted to is to lock up the turbulent in cells. The house has not a full supply of water, nor are there any bathing tubs in it. The building is of wood, two stories high, with rooms 6 x 10, the ceilings being 9 and 8 feet respectively. The bedsteads are of wood and fastened to the floor. Straw is used as bedding, and is changed about once a week. “The diet is variable,” and is served out on plates the same as to the other paupers. The sleeping rooms are not heated. The accommodation for the various grades of the insane is as follows: “The mild are allowed the freedom of the house, and the violent are confined in cells,” and only paupers are employed in their care. There is no real accommodation for more than three persons—yet the number on hand is ten. Five is the greatest number ever confined at one time in the cells. Three escaped during the year, who never returned—three insane wanderers, or one-fifth of the whole number—it does not appear what ever became of them. They receive no medical treatment except when sick.”

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, Page 211-212.

New York State County Poor Houses.

1864 Richmond County Poor House

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“In a population of sixty-three in the poor-house of Richmond county eleven are insane. They have all been admitted since 1853, and two of them have received treatment in an asylum. Six are males, five are females, three of the cases are mild, eight are excitable, and six are violent. Two are filthy in their habits, and three require mechanical restraint. Two males are capable of out-of-door labor, for the rest neither occupation nor amusement is afforded. The building which is of stone, two stories high, is supplied with water, though no bath tub has yet been introduced. The patients are required to wash daily. One case, on account of its violence, is confined in a basement cell, and as he is a cripple he cannot get out of it; but attention is paid to the ventilation of the room. The other rooms are variously 9 x 9, 13 x 7, 13 x 16, 9 x 10, &c., each lighted by twelve lights of 8 x 10 glass. Two rooms in the attic do not open out of doors; they are used for confining female patients when violent. The bedsteads are of iron, only one in each room, and one only sleeps on each. There are none who sleep on straw alone. Those who are confined to their rooms are served with their meals by attendants; the others go to a general table which is abundantly supplied—the vegetables coming directly from the farm. The building is heated by furnaces, though no attention is paid to the uniformity of heat by a thermometer. The attendants for the insane are paupers. Their garments are changed every week. The insane are visited by the physician of the establishment as occasion requires.

The building was never constructed with reference to the accommodation of the insane, but in a wing of the building occupied for the purpose they are made as comfortable as in any institution of this class. All have shoes, and none were without them during the winter. The appearance of the rooms is clean and tidy. The restraint used is by hand-cuffs, gloves and belt, confining to the bed and confining to the room.”

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, Page 210-211.

New York State County Poor Houses.

1864 Rensselaer County Poor House

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“Rensselaer county poor house has two hundred paupers; twenty-one of whom are insane. Ten are males, and eleven are females. Only five are native born. About thirteen cases are mild; not one of the whole number have ever received treatment in an asylum, or with reference to recovery. Thirteen of them are filthy. Several of them have been in the poor house so long that it is impossible to ascertain the date of their admission; they have grown demented, idiotic. Four males are capable of moderate labor, and five females. For the others there is nothing to do, nothing to beguile a single hour of long and weary years. Six are destructive to clothing; three require occasional restraint, the means resorted to are hand cuffs and confinement. The house has a full supply of water but no bath tub. The insane are required to bathe “occasionally.”

The building is of brick, two and three stories high, with eight feet ceilings, and with rooms 12 by 18 feet. Iron bedsteads are used, not fastened to the floor; two sleep in one bed sometimes; the straw bedding is changed four times in a year. The diet is very plain, and sent to such as are not able to come to the table. The only convenience for the various grades of insane is separate rooms for the violent; they have only such care as paupers bestow in their daily attendance. Two escaped during the year who were not returned, and two were removed by their friends. The institution receives recent cases, though it never aims to cure one of them. A physician visits the poor house twice in a week, and oftener if necessary.

In 1857 this institution presented a condition repulsive in itself and revolting to humanity. It may be in a cleaner condition now, and there may be none now among the lunatics who are confined without privilege of coming daily to the open air, and who lie down in straw at night. Such was not the condition then, and doubtless there is yet ample room for improvement in the care which this class of unfortunates should receive.”

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, Page 210.

New York State County Poor Houses.

1864 Queens County Poor House

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“Queens county has but fifty-five pauper inmates in its county house. Eight of this number are lunatics; five are males, and three are females, all are of foreign birth. Seven have been admitted within the last four years. None have received treatment in an asylum. All are mild cases; five are able to do some labor, the rest amuse themselves about the premises without restraint. The house has water, but no bathing tub, and the insane are only required to wash hands and face. There is on the farm a pond of clear water, with sandy bottom, where they bathe in the summer time, if they please, occasionally under supervision. Two and three sleep in one bed; all are comfortably fed and comfortably cared for, and have changes of garments. Recent cases are received, and the county physician, visits the institution daily. They all appear clean and neat, and their treatment aims also at their recovery.”

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, Page 209.

New York State County Poor Houses.

1864 Putnam County Poor House

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“Putnam county has but one insane person in its alms house. This one can do no labor, she is a female and was admitted about 1854. The case is a mild one, but has never received treatment in an asylum, or with reference to ultimate recovery. One case was discharged from the alms house in March, 1864, having been but a short time in confinement. The case confined is not required to wash hands and face daily, and is cared for by the keeper and his wife. The county take recent cases; some are provided for in private families, but the returns do not indicate what number. The county house was not designed for the care of the insane, but can accommodate three or four.”

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, Page 209.

New York State County Poor Houses.

1864 Otsego County Poor House

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“There are sixteen lunatics in the poor house of Otsego county, and it is a remarkable circumstance that fifteen of this number are American born. Four are males and twelve are females. Two of this number have been insane since 1837, and one since 1845. Five have been treated in an asylum and returned to the county poor house; eleven have never had the opportunity for a care that an asylum affords. Five of this number are violent, and three are filthy in their habits; four require mechanical restraint. One male and four females are capable of doing some labor. Their only amusement is to saunter about the grounds when the weather will permit. Though the house has one hundred and thirty inmates, there is not a bathing tub in it. The house is supplied with water, and the insane are washed once each week.

The building is of wood with a stone basement, and is three stories high; each story is eight feet. The rooms are 24 by 14 feet. All sleep on beds and bedsteads. They all eat at one common table, and the fare is plain and nutritious. Occasionally three persons occupy one cell. The sexes are kept separated, but they have only pauper attendants in the immediate care of them. Two had neither shoes or stockings during the winter; five had no shoes. They are kept separated from the sane paupers.

Recent cases are received, but they do not receive care with reference to their ultimate recovery. The sanitary regulations are good, and the system of restraint mild and yet efficient. There is no convenience for the various grades and conditions of the insane. The mild and the violent, the sick and the well, the clean and the filthy, are all confined in the same ward. They are visited by a physician once each week. From 1837 to 1864 is a long and miserable existence in such a place.”

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 208-209.

New York State County Poor Houses.

1864 Oswego County Poor House

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“There are at the Oswego county poor house seventy-two inmates, and twenty-nine of them are lunatics. Twelve are males and seventeen arc females; eighteen are of American birth. The register of the institution does not show the first admittance of these insane. Twenty of these have been treated at the State asylum in various periods from a single month to nine years. Three males and six females are capable of labor; those who cannot work have some light amusement furnished to them, such as playing chequers, light sewing, &.c. Five require occasional restraint and one constant restraint. The means used are a leather cap, leather muffs, occasionally a dark cell, &c. The house is supplied with water and has a bath tub in it, in which the insane are required to bathe every week. There are bedsteads in all of the rooms, and only one sleeps in each bed. The diet table appears sufficient and wholesome. The males are confined in one ward and the females in another, and the superintendent or overseer, his wife and one female assistant take care of the insane. The rooms were clean and well ventilated. The house is designed to accommodate twenty-eight, but thirty-three have at one time been confined in it; but few of the mild cases are put with the sane paupers. The institution received recent cases, but to no considerable extent is the treatment directed to effect their cure. The amount appropriated for the medical care of the insane and the whole number of inmates is but one hundred and fifty dollars, inclusive of medicines. Oswego city cares for a few of its own insane without sending them to the county house.

The building at Mexico is 64 by 30 feet, three stories high, with suitable apartments for the insane, and also for culinary purposes. The location is healthy, and the rooms have generally a clean, wholesome look. The building is warmed by a furnace and kept comfortable in winter. The diet was not only sufficient but well cooked. There seems to have been a most commendable effort to send the patients of this county to Utica for treatment. Nearly all of the cases are now of a mild type, which is, perhaps, owing to the modification of the disease by early treatment. These incurables are kindly cared for, and if not all that might be, yet much is done to make them comfortable.”

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 207-208.

New York State County Poor Houses.

1864 Orleans County Poor House

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“The oldest resident of the Orleans county poor house is eighty years old, and was admitted to the poor house in 1841. The whole population is sixty-five, fourteen of which are lunatics; eight are males, six are females; eleven are native and three of foreign birth. Eight are mild cases, three violent; seven filthy; eight have been treated in an asylum. Three are capable of labor; the others have no employment; all are at times destructive to their clothing; one requires restraint by handcuffs. The building has water, but no bath tub. The building is of wood; the sleeping rooms, or cells, 6 x 9 feet, open out of a hall 9 x 36. No arrangement for ventilation. There is a coal stove for heating the hall, but no attention is paid to uniformity of heat or change of air. There are no accommodations for the various grades of insane; the males are in one ward, and the females in another. The attendants are from the sane paupers. In this county recent cases are sent to the asylum at Utica. All have changes of under garments, and all were provided with shoes and stockings during the winter. The house is designed to accommodate seventeen, but, for the last few years, there have been but fourteen, at any one time, in it. The medical treatment differs nothing from that which sane paupers receive, and the moral management is nothing.”

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, Page 207.

New York State County Poor Houses.

1864 Orange County Poor House

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“The total number of the insane poor of the county of Orange is thirty-eight; twenty-five of them are in the poor-house at Goshen, and thirteen are cared for at an asylum in Newburgh. The county supports four at the Marshall Infirmary at Troy. A large majority of the whole number are of American birth. Of those at Goshen eight males and four females are capable of labor; the others are furnished with no amusement; only three are destructive to their clothing; the restraint used is by straight jacket or shutting in the cells. The house is without a bath tub, and all are not required to wash hands and feet daily. The windows may be dropped to obtain ventilation; [are they?] In all the rooms occupied by insane there are bedsteads, and straw bedding is used; the straw is changed once in two or three months. There is no regular system of diet, but ordinarily good fare is furnished, which is served at a common table to a part, and to others it is taken to their cells. No attention is paid to uniformity of temperature, nor are there any accommodations for the various grades of insane. The sexes are kept separated, but the only immediate superintendence is from an inmate of the poor-house. The rooms are kept comfortably clean. “Some of the male inmates are believed to have vermin” on them. The institution receives recent cases—several having been admitted in 1804, but no medical attention is bestowed with reference to the ultimate recovery of each case.

The building at Goshen was erected in 1850, and though adjoining the main building is separated from it. It is two stories high, of stone, and through the center in each story a hall extends, with windows at each end for light and ventilation. The rooms open from each side upon these halls. Each room has a window. Inmates are allowed the free use of the halls and of the yards.

In 1853 the town of Newburgh withdrew its paupers from the county, and provided for their maintenance by the purchase of lands and the erection of suitable buildings; a residence for the superintendent, and sane paupers, and a wing, communicating by a hall with the main building, for the insane. The building for the insane is two stories, of brick, with a hall through the centre, and rooms opening out on either side. Each room has a window, and a ventilation in the hall. There are here eighty-one paupers, of which thirteen are lunatics; six are able to do some labor. There are none who require constant restraint. The house has a supply of water, and three bathing tubs, and the insane are required to bathe their whole bodies once in each week, besides washing hands and face daily. The building is heated with a furnace, the temperature regulated by a thermometer; the inmates are comfortably bedded on husks or straw for bedding—each one having a single bedstead; they are also sufficiently and comfortably fed—the diet being changed every day in the week. There is no accommodation for the various grades of the insane, but in each ward there is an attendant for the males, and one for the females. The condition of the rooms are cleanly and neat. There are rooms for thirty-two, but eighteen is the highest number there confined. The institution does not take recent cases. All are kept comfortable. A physician visits the house about four times a week, but the insane do not receive treatment with reference to recovery.

Dr. Wm. P. Townsend, who visited these institutions, in a very able report, remarks “that the selection of persons to superintend these institutions is too often based upon considerations of business capacity to the exclusion of any apparent estimate of moral fitness.” And again, the management of the domestic, dietetic, and other internal arrangements, are most carefully studied, to the neglect or exclusion of the moral, mental, or even humane necessities of the unfortunate persons compelled by want, destitution, or disease to reside therein.

Questions of economy alone explain why such incompetent and morally unfit persons, “selected from the paupers,” are assigned to the immediate care of the insane poor. Even if they possessed sufficient capacity for the position, want of interest in the well-being of the lunatics, coupled with the well known infirmities of temper usually belonging to these individuals, should, except in rare instances, forbid their employment in the capacity of nurse. Dr. Townsend urges, however, that keepers should be exempt from the responsibility, since they have no authority in the selection of capable attendants.

“The asylum at Goshen is sadly deficient in means and appliances for promoting bodily cleanliness in the persons of its inmates.”

The population of Orange county in 1860 was 63,812, giving one insane pauper to every 1,680 of its inhabitants to be treated and provided for in our charitable asylums. These facts may well start the inquiry, what can be done to mitigate or improve their condition, or, if possible, restore to them reason enthroned, and capacity for self support? The moral impossibility of giving the insane proper care, or suitable medical treatment, under the present system of county houses is set forth by Dr. Townsend, the inadequate compensation to physicians, and the necessity of doing something to improve the present state of things, is set forth; and yet, imperative as this necessity appears, the lunatics in Orange are better cared for than in most of the other counties.”

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 205-207.

New York State County Poor Houses.

1864 Ontario County Poor House

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“Dr. John B. Chapin, of Brigham Hall Asylum for the insane, says: “The location of the county house is healthy; the grounds are ample. The department of the county house devoted to the insane comprises the first floor of two wings adjoining the main building. There are two day rooms for females, and one for males. The increased demand for females has caused the erection of additional accommodations for their care. The day rooms arc about 33 by 10 feet. The sleeping rooms are partitioned from these day rooms by open upright bars; the sleeping rooms are 6 by 7 feet; windows on one side of the room in two wards furnish the means of ventilation. The windows are intended to be out of reach, and too high for observation out of doors. They evidently afford ample means of escape. There are no means for classifying patients. The attendants seem to be superannuated paupers. There are no means for properly treating recent and curable eases. The means of escape are abundant, and the disparity of the sexes may be owing to this circumstance. The class of insane now confined are mostly demented persons, who have occasional paroxysms of excitement; they sit with their feet crouched under them, and bent over in the appearance of hopeless dementia. During the summer ventilation is good; in the winter there is probably lack of fresh air and heat. The floors were clean; the walls needed abundance of whitewash. The general appearance of the insane and of the department was cleanly, and there was a disposition on the part of the keeper to do what his means permitted for the comfort of his charge. More efficient means should be adopted to prevent escapes. A suitable attendant should be employed for the care of the insane; a daily inspection by the keeper should be made, and a bath room prepared for more frequent ablution.”

The population of the poor-house is one hundred and seventy; twenty-nine are lunatics—the ratio being one in six; twenty-one are females, and eight are males. The dates of their admission are not to be obtained. Five are filthy; a large number are demented; only two have been treated in the State asylum; five are capable of labor; those who do not work have no amusement; the violent are restrained by a leather muff and by seclusion. The building has a full supply of water for domestic purposes, but not for bathing. The rooms are heated by a coal stove in the hall, and ventilated from windows on the side of the building opposite the cells; all have bedsteads and bedding, and are apparently comfortably fed. There are no accommodations for the various grades of the insane; pauper attendants are employed to take care of the lunatics. The condition of the rooms for cleanliness and ventilation in summer is fair. But two or three had shoes in the summer; [how many were without them in the winter?] The county receives recent cases. Five have escaped during the year who were not returned. There is no sufficient provision for medical treatment, and none is directed to each case with reference to its ultimate recovery.”

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, Page 204-205.

New York State County Poor Houses.