INSTITUTIONALIZING THE POOR: THE NEW YORK CITY ALMSHOUSE, 1825-1860.
Item
-
Title
-
INSTITUTIONALIZING THE POOR: THE NEW YORK CITY ALMSHOUSE, 1825-1860.
-
Identifier
-
AAI8104103
-
identifier
-
8104103
-
Creator
-
KLIPS, STEPHEN ANTHONY.
-
Contributor
-
Richard C. Wade
-
Date
-
1980
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
History, United States
-
Abstract
-
This dissertation analyzes poverty and public social welfare in New York City from 1825 to 1860. In an era of increasing pauperism, the municipal role was considerable and significant, though it has long been ignored.;Alarmed by a growing class of public dependents, City fathers devised a system of institutions to isolate and remove the poor from the larger urban community. Carefully planned congregate living facilities were expected to provide classification, supervision, forced labor, and moral treatment, as well as maintaining basic physical subsistence at a minimum cost to taxpayers. A complex of almshouses was constructed at Bellevue and on Blackwell's and Randall's Islands. The institutionalization movement coincided with and utilized a rising faith in science and experimentation as a means of solving physical and social problems. The institutions were laboratories for the emerging social sciences, especially medicine.;The dissertation examines in detail the functioning of the institutions and of direct outdoor relief and is divided into two parts. The first five chapters treat the New York City Almshouse Department as a whole in each of its operational aspects. The ideas of public sector poverty reformers are first sketched and the history of institution building is traced. The second chapter examines public welfare politically; unlike private charities the Almshouse was a spoils machine. The third chapter treats the intricacies of welfare economics: costs, accounting, and supply contracting. The fourth chapter introduces the poor themselves within their admissions and discharge situations, samples their numbers, and discusses the increasing immigration of the period and its impact on the Almshouse. Chapter five examines the administration of the Almshouse Department, the City's first executive department, and its large bureaucracy and complex labor relations.;The last eight chapters focus on the specific institutions and their problems. The first treated was the generic model for all: the Almshouse proper. Patterns of life established there were applied in all of the later specialized institutions with appropriate modifications to suit the needs of each class. The seventh chapter examines the central importance of pauper labor in all institutional routine and the culmination of universal concern with inmate industry in the workhouse movement. Chapter eight examines the growth of outdoor or noninstitutional relief despite efforts to restrict or even abolish it. The ninth chapter treats the hospitals: Bellevue, the Penitentiary, Nursery, and Smallpox facilities. Chapter ten examines the Penitentiary and City Prison systems. The Department's efforts to care for its children and lunatics are the subjects of chapters eleven and twelve. Chapter thirteen examines the problems involved in burying the dead and situating and managing Potter's Field.;Hundreds of Ordinances, Council documents, Almshouse reports, and manuscript record entries are assembled and demonstrate the conclusion that the City mismanaged its poverty system grievously and never gave its reforms, faulty as they were in their basic assumptions, a fair test. The details of the failure document a massive human tragedy, as well as the heroic efforts of some to alleviate suffering.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
-
Program
-
History
