Tenth Annual Report of the Board of State Charities of Massachusetts. January 1874. (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1874 Excerpt: ...food is practised. Each inmate is allowed 23 kreutzers a day (about 11 cents) with which at a kitchen or restaurant in the establishment he can buy what he likes, as bread, soup, meat, beer, &c, sold at cost rates--some who are skilled in economy being able to save a part of the per diem allowance. Naturally one asked what would be done if an inmate like Falstaff was disposed to biry "one half-pennyworth of bread" and "an intolerable deal of sack." The answer was that in cases of such excess, which did not appear to be frequent, he would be provided with his rations in kind. There were no children except such as were scrofulous or idiotic, and for the last class there was a school. Other asylums are provided for pauper and orphan children, and there is a school for idiots at Ips. These institutions have no land attached to them except small yards. This is a deficiency which one often notes in connection with foreign almshouses, where the need of keeping paupers as well as the insane as much employed on the land as possible, is not so much appreciated as with us. Those great magazines of poverty at La Salpetriere and Bicetre in Paris ought to be removed to the country. Vienna has, besides the two almshouses named, three others in the country outside, containing in all 1,600 inmates of the vicious kind, as vagrants, beggars, fec. Besides those living in almshouses, 1,500 persons are supported outside. Germany and Austria are comparatively well off in respect to pauperism. The people are thrifty and do not descend to the abject misery of which the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic races are capable. Intemperance in the beer-drinking nations does not inflict the Secretary's Report. scourges of want, debasement and crime which are visited in countri...