Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

THE COUNTY ALMSHOUSES OF ILLINOIS.

The county almshouses of the state of Illinois are far less discreditable to the state than the jails. They number in all eighty-nine; thirteen counties have none. The different counties manage their pauper business very differently. In the first place, counties under township organization are governed by boards of supervisors, while counties under county organization are governed by the county judges. Where there are boards of supervisors, in some instances the board makes a contract directly with the keeper of the county-farm, while in others a committee of one or more members of the board is appointed to take charge, and this committee acts as a board of managers. Sometimes appropriations for the support of the poor-house are made in advance, payable at stated intervals; but more usually, the bills incurred are audited and paid after the creation of the indebtedness. The contracts made with keepers vary; some of them are paid salaries, others are paid so much a week for each pauper kept; in the former case the county furnishes all supplies, but in the latter the county may furnish nothing, or it may furnish specified articles, such as furniture, or clothing, or medical attendance, and the keeper may or may not pay a stipulated rent for the use of the farm. Most of the keepers are under bond, as required by law, but many are not. Some of them make very full and satisfactory reports, showing not only financial but other statistical results, others do not. Where there is a county almshouse, in some instances the pauper expenses are assessed against each township in proportion to the amount of service rendered, i. e., the number of paupers sent from each and the length of their stay; in others the whole expense is borne by the county; in others the towns support their sane paupers, and the county supports all the insane. Again: in the matter of outside relief, the practice varies greatly, some counties preferring to grant as much out-door relief as possible, and not to have the objects of charity go to the almshouse as permanent paupers, while others grant as little as possible and compel all applicants who can do so to go to the poor-house or abandon their applications for aid. In all these respects each county is a law to itself. Some counties, which own no county farm, have one in effect, as they make a contract for the care of all permanent paupers with some farmer, who receives them on his farm and makes provision for housing them suitably, at his own expense, charging the county for the use of the quarters provided.

Where there are farms, they are generally of one hundred and sixty acres, and of land of medium or inferior quality. The buildings erected are for the most part cheap, badly arranged, poorly heated and

ventilated, destitute of conveniences, especially of proper facilities for bathing, often of insufficient size, and not always kept in good repair. The house-keeping is not always what it should be. Nevertheless the condition of the paupers, except of the insane, is rarely such as to afford ground for serious complaint; ordinarily they are as well lodged and fed as the average farming population of the counties in which they reside, at least of the poorer class. There is little or no intentional cruelty in their treatment, and very often they are objects of the greatest possible care. In a number of counties, they eat at the same table with the keeper and his family, the children mingle together, so that they can scarcely be distinguished from each other by any chance visitor, and they share all the comforts of a good country home. These remarks do not apply to all counties alike, as will be seen by an examination of the detailed descriptions which follow; but the almshouses are not by any means the dreadful places which many persons imagine them to be. There are of course some which are very much worse than others, and there are also some which for neatness, system, and efficiency, compare very favorably with the state institutions. Some of them are very large, are well planned, well built, heated by steam, lighted by gas, furnished with engines and machinery, well arranged and well managed; they are also managed with great economy. We make here no classification of these pauper establishments, nor do we single out any for especial praise or blame. The reader may examine the account of each given below, and apportion the due meed of approval.

The special interest of this subject centres in the treatment given, on county farms, to the insane. As to this point there is a word to be said on both sides. The amount of personal liberty allowed to insane inmates of most almshouses is worthy of serious attention, especially on the part of superintendents of hospitals for the insane; they are allowed in all suitable weather to live in the open air; they wander over the farm unrestricted; and if they are able to work in the field, they have useful employment, the want of which is the great bane of hospital life. Where such freedom is enjoyed, the insane man can make his individuality felt more sensibly by those upon whom he depends, and the consciousness that he can do so tends to remove the irritability of his mind. In many almshouses no restraint is employed, and the keepers who have the courage and good sense to dispense with it, express themselves as satisfied that the very instrumentalities resorted to for the suppression of a violent temper aggravate it; and it not unfrequently happens that a patient discharged from a state hospital, where he has been looked upon as unmanageable, if not dangerous, becomes immediately quiet, when removed, and gives his new keeper on the county farm no trouble whatever, or SO little as to be not worthy of mention. The cause of this change in demeanor is partly, no doubt, in the character of individual keepers, and partly in the fact that the numbers associated together on county farms are smaller than in state hospitals for the insane. But no studies in insanity are complete, which do not include the observation of insane persons in a state of unrestricted freedom as well as of compulsory obedience to established rules; and we venture the opinion that the largest amount of freedom practicable is the atmosphere most Lavorable to the well-being of the insane patient.

So much in favor of the almshouses; but it must now be admitted, on the other hand, that these very almshouses are fatally deficient in other conditions also essential in the treatment of insanity, namely: proper supervision by personal attendants and proper medical care. It must also be said that many keepers are afraid of insane persons, and this fear begets restraint, often of a cruel sort--chains, whips, and even the firing of pistols to intimidate the patient, who is often as harmless in fact, if properly handled, as the scare-crow set in the field to frighten away the crows. These extreme measures are not common. But what is common and very objectionable, from every point of view, is the building of so-called receptacles for the insane, or insane departments, in which, where there are a number of insane to be cared for, many of them are imprisoned, some even for life, in solitary cells. If solitary imprisonment will drive a sane man mad, what do you suppose that its effect is on a man already crazy? Imagine what it must be to sit, without occupation, companionship, sympathy, or any of the ordinary comforts of life, day after day, year after year, in a miserable den, seven or eight feet square, with bars at the window and bars on the door, unable to help one's self even to a drink of cold water, unable to step outside to attend to the most ordinary physical impulses, dependent upon the abuse of one's own body for one's only stimulus, all natural emotions turned to bitterness, rendered suspicious, timid, hateful, by the very depth of one's agony of spirit, and without other hope or expectation than the relief which death affords. Many of these insane departments are unfit, physically, for the occupancy of sane men-improperly heated, or not heated at all; not ventilated; often dark; destitute of furniture: sometimes in an outrageously dirty state; filled with the foul odors arising from cess-pools underneath, without outlet, and not flushed by water to carry away the accumulated filth. They are built commonly in the cheapest possible manner, sometimes of weather-boarding, not lined, and open to the weather. Where the partitions between cells are of plank or scantling, which is common, the walls necessarily become infested in time with vermin. In a few of the almshouses we have seen cells for the insane in the form of cages without doors, where the helpless victims are immured beyond the possibility of any entrance of the keeper himself, without tearing down or removing the bars. It is also a common practice to place insane persons of both sexes in cells opening on a common corridor, in hearing of each other's blasphemy and obscenity, and even in some instances in sight of each other; what an outrage upon every sentiment of common decency! what a cruelty to women, not lost to every feminine instinct, who have committed no crime, and are powerless to escape, except by suicide!

Our deliberate judgment, from all that we have seen and know of the treatment of insane persons, both by the state and by the counties, is that the prospect of neglect and ill-treatment on the county-farms is too great, for the state to approve or sanction any system of provision for the insane, which relegates them in any considerable number to the care of the counties. Neither do the county authorities desire this charge; on the contrary it is an irksome task, which they never accept without compulsion; they are well aware of their inability to handle this class of unfortunates in a proper and humane manner. The state should adhere firmly to its policy of making provision itself,

as rapidly as possible, for all insane persons who have no homes of their own, or the character of whose insanity is such, that they cannot live at home, or whose friends are unable to maintain them. This policy is not peculiar to the state of Illinois; it has been adopted by every state in the union, almost without exception, although some of them have carried it out more fully than others. But we also hold, per contra, that in order that the state may successfully maintain this attitude towards her insane population, it is essential that some of the principles and practices of the best almshouses, in the care of the chronic, pauper insane, should be incorporated into the system of management adopted by the state hospitals, particularly that this class of insane should be kept in less expensive quarters, maintained at a cheaper rate, allowed a larger amount of personal liberty, and provided with more occupation of a useful sort, than is usual in these institutions. The character of our state hospitals for the insane has greatly changed, in the last ten years; the proportion of chronic cases retained in them has increased, with the enlargement of their capacity; and it does not need any extended argument to satisfy an unprejudiced per son that the amount proper to be expended upon the recent, curable cases is greater than it is reasonable or right to expend upon demented and imbecile paupers, or that if the latter are to cost the community as much as the former, the aggregate sum necessary for the maintenance of all the insane of the state at public expense will be greater than should be required or raised by taxation for this purpose. It is for this reason that we have favored the trial, at Kankakee, of what we believe will prove to be an improved system of organization and

treatment.

To return to the question immediately before us, the condition of the almshouses, there is another class of inmates of these establishments, in whose behalf we invoke the sympathy of the public, and that is the children, of whom there are a very large number growing up in the state under the most deleterious influences, and many of them might be saved from pauperism, by the adoption of some method of care, such as has been put in successful operation at Coldwater, in Michigan-an institution worthy of the highest praise, as without an equal in this country for the purpose for which it was created.

We do not care to go at length into a discussion of other improvements in the almshouse system of Illinois, as we have said a good deal upon this subject in former reports, and will have an opportu nity hereafter to treat it more thoroughly than we are prepared to do at the present time.

DESCRIPTION OF ALMSHOUSES..

ADAMS.-Farm of two hundred acres, prairie, eighteen miles northeast of Quincy, (near Coatsburg). Three buildings, all of brick; one for the keeper and paupers, one for old men, and one for the insane; the latter used also as a hospital. The principal building, seventy-five by thirty-two feet, with "L" seventy-three by forty-one feet, contains thirty-two rooms, of which seven are for the keeper's family; the sexes occupy different portions of the building and have separate sitting rooms, but dine together. The insane department is a separate building, recently erected, for about six thousand dollars, and is three sto ries in height; the lower floor is fitted up for a hospital, but is at

present occupied by male paupers; the second story contains eight cells for male insane; and the upper story the same number of cells for female insane, These cells have wooden doors, with heavy slats in upper half and an opening near the centre for passing food; windows with iron gratings and wire screens; heated by steam and by furnace in basement; wooden bunks and iron bedsteads, fastened to floor; privy-seat in each cell, connected with sewer and flushed with water. The stairway leading to the upper floor has been closed up, and the women's department is now entered by outside staircase from second story of main building. This building is in good condition and as clean as the habits of the inmates will allow. One female patient occupies a large wooden box, filled with straw; she will not wear clothing, but is covered with a canvass cloth; is in constant motion, has bruised herself from head to foot and put out her own eyes.

The general appearance of the farm and premises is good; a good garden and large orchard; wind pump for pumping water; steam pump also. Inmates well cared for. Ninety-seven inmates, on day when inspected, of whom twenty-four were insane and sixteen idiotic or demented. The keeper, newly appointed, receives five hundred dollars a year for services of himself and wife; county furnishes everything. In addition to maintaining the almshouse, the cost of outside relief in this county, for year 1878, was about twenty-two thousand dollars, of which nearly sixteen thousand was in Quincy. There are also two private charitable institutions in the county, namely: the Quincy Charitable Aid and Hospital Association and the Woodland Home Orphans' Society.

ALEXANDER.-Farm of one hundred and twenty acres, at Thebes, on Mississippi river, twenty-five miles north of Cairo; forty acres cleared, the rest timber. The keeper and the female paupers occupy a frame house, part two stories and part one story in height, twenty by forty feet, with sixteen rooms. Male paupers live in a log house, twenty by twenty-six feet, thirty feet from the principal building. No special provision for the insane. Twelve inmates; six paupers receiving outdoor relief. The keeper furnishes everything, except medicines and medical attendance; he has the farm free of rent, and is paid seven dollars a month for each pauper over twelve years old, and four dollars a month for each pauper under that age.

BOND.-County bought a farm of seventeen acres, one-half mile south of court-house, in 1876, with comfortable brick house, two stories high; twelve rooms, of which three are occupied by the keeper and his family. No strict classification of sexes; never more than sixteen or eighteen paupers. Two cells six feet square have been built for the insane, by partitioning off a corner, in each of two large rooms, with strong wooden slats. The keeper receives four hundred dollars a year, and the county furnishes everything. The condition of this almshouse, when visited, was good. Six paupers receive out-door relief.

BOONE.-Boone county has no county farm. The care of the paupers is let to the lowest bidder. They are at present kept on a farm seventeen miles north of Belvidere, the county seat. The contractor takes all paupers in the county, for nine hundred and sixty-four dollars, and furnishes everything. The paupers fare as well as his own family; their rooms are clean, the bedding good and they are comfortably

« ZurückWeiter »