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By
James M Whalen
"I think it is my duty toward
God and man to make it known to you the rascality and bad conduct that
is carried on in the said Almshouse. Ever since the rascal got
charge of it as Keeper -- it is not the first,
second or third occasion of the same kind that he has done before
this."
In 1846, Thomas Payton, husband of
Ann Payton -- an almshouse inmate --
alleged that William Craig, the Keeper of
the Saint John County Almshouse, raped
her and that she bore his child. Although
Craig was found not guilty, the unscrup- ulous behavior of
managers as well as
inmates was problematic in poorhouses and one of the reasons why
society scorned them.
The large four-storey brick structure
where the above offences were alleged to
have occurred was the Saint John City and
County Almshouse and Work- house. Built in 1843 on the east side of
Courtenay Bay, the institution was con- structed at an initial cost of
3,330 pounds Sterling. Due to the inferior quality of the
workmanship, an additional 1,170 pounds had to be spent on it over the
next two years.
While all types of poor people were
given shelter in almshouses, the purpose of the workhouse was very
particular. As Bill Wister, in Poor Law Legislation in New
Brunswick, put it:
"The Work Houses were seen as a method of controlling
the outdoor relief [welfare] and providing a deterrent to
those wanting relief from the parish. Also the Work House was seen
as a response to the idle and drunk."
The concept of a workhouse was new to Saint John, but not
an almshouse. Actually, New Brunswick's first poorhouse - not alms or work house - was
established in 1801 in a renovated gristmill located on
the site where the Admiral Beatty Hotel stands today. Oddly
enough, some of the funds used to support the city's poor then came from
a dog tax. In 1819, fire destroyed the poorhouse and,
afterwards, a new one was built at the corner of Carmarthen and King Street east.
It was an anomaly that these institutions were provided for
by Saint John's Royal Charter; most of New Brunswick's alm-
shouses came about by provincial statute.
The story of an almshouse and work-
house to serve both the urban and rural areas of Saint John County began
in the 1830s. Since the City of Saint John was
New Brunswick's major port and indus-
trial centre, it had a disproportionate num-
ber of paupers, and civic officials were
concerned about the high poor rates.
After investigation, Saint John modelled its Almshouse Act
of 1838 on a York County statute passed 16 years earlier.
The new legislation praised the York sys-
tem that "has been found by experience to
be less expensive than the general system
pursued throughout the Province and to
be productive of industrious, sober and
moral habits among that class of people."
Before the Almshouse and Work- house opened in the Parish of
Simonds, poor relief in Saint John County was completely decentralized. Overseers of the poor were
responsible for resident paupers and under
the Poor Law of 1786 they could order "any idle or disorderly person or persons who have no means of support and who are likely to become chargeable to the Town or Parish where they reside, to
labour for any substantial person who may be willing to employ him or
them."
For indigents unable to exist on welfare
payments -- then called "outdoor relief" --
overseers made annual contracts with per-
sons in the community and gave them an allowance to take paupers into
their home at the least expense to the parish, although they were not
adequately protected
against abuse. With the new Almshouse
and Workhouse, the "farming out" of the
keep of paupers ended in Saint John
County, but this questionable practice
continued in some parts of New Brunswick well into the twentieth century.
The employment of the able-bodied
poor was a primary concern of the Board of Almshouse
Commissioners. They
delegated most of their responsibilities to
the Keeper and Matron -- most often
husband and wife. Inmate labour was
intended to pay for the institution's upkeep
and foster good work habits, but some-
times the farm was mismanaged, and not
much work was done. The only inmates excused from work were those whom the physician judged incapable, although some could only do light work.
Usually, the Matron supervised the
cleaning of rooms, the laundry, the making
and mending of clothes, preparing meals and cleaning up afterwards. The
Keeper oversaw the planting and harvesting of vegetables and field crops
and care of the livestock. Moreover, the inmates made minor repairs to buildings and handled the fuel supply. They also performed the grim tasks at the Dead House -- making coffins, shrouds and
interring unclaimed bodies of almshouse inmates and others. For example, in 1871, they attended to five corpses: three from the wreck of the Sarah Sloan, one sent from the hospital and one from the coroner.
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There were always a number of
children in the Saint John almshouse, including some illegitimates and "mentally
defectives." The more alert and healthy
children were often apprenticed -- females
to the age of eighteen and males to age twenty-one. An entry in the
Almshouse
Register for 1843, for example, shows that Terrance McIntyre, aged
10, "was bound to Elisha Fowler of Norton, Kings County. When
of age to get two common suits, one holiday suit and a yoke of two-year
old steers."
Most school-aged children were taught
in the almshouse but, at times, the educa- tional standards were not
very high. The year 1852, however, was most unusual because no
instruction was available at all. The Quarter Sessions - the forerunner
of County Council - condemned this defi- ciency: "the neglect of
this matter must
tend to throw the unfortunate recipients of charity when they arrive at
maturity upon the world to form a new generation of vagrants."
Visiting physicians to the almshouse observed that
the diet was often inadequate. For example, in 1871, Dr. William Bayard,
said: "the food of the pauper is too often reduced to the lowest
standard cap- able of sustaining life."
Four years earlier, Dr. John Baxter remarked that the diet
"is too vegetable
and cannot support life much less restore debilitated nature." Good
food was avail- able such as: cereals, potatoes and other vegetables -
especially in season, soups
and stews, salt pork and beef, dried cod fish, baked beans, bread,
biscuits, tea, cof- fee and milk. Nonetheless, inmates were sometimes
malnourished, especially when managers skimped on food or served spoiled
foodstuffs to save money.
Regular meals were denied for theft and disorderly
conduct and occasion- ally, the prison-like punishment was solitary
confinement for up to a week on bread and water.
From 1870 to1879, for example, there was a daily average of
about 200 in the almshouse. In part, the movement of pau- pers in and
out of the institution may be explained as follows: by law, vagrants
were sent there for up to three months only; it was a temporary refuge
for some homeless and unemployed, some children housed there were
apprenticed and some inmates died. In fact, the death rate was about
forty annually mainly due to the number of eld- erly. By contrast, well
over a dozen infants faced life each year with the stigma of
being born in an almshouse.
The almshouses of New
Brunswick in
the nineteenth century were a "dumping ground" for men, women
and children of
all ages and conditions. Although the indis- criminate mixing of paupers
periodically came under attack, the general mixed alms- house existed
well into the twentieth century.
In 1929, a New Brunswick
Welfare Survey observed: "In many cases aged men and women; the
feebleminded; the senile; crippled and incurable; unmarried mothers;
dependent females; children and infants were all found in the same home,
separated only by one broad classification of sex."
The housing of parish paupers
and
diseased emigrants at the Saint John alms-
house had dreadful consequences espe-
cially during epidemics. At the time of the potato famine, there was
an outbreak of contagious diseases, particularly typhus, and a mass
exodus took place from Ireland. Monica Robertson's states in
Johnson's work on the "The St. John County Alms and Work House
Records" the huge numbers the city faced:
"During the years,
1845 to 1847, a total of over 30.000 Irish emigrants, … disembarked at
the Port of Saint John. It was an overwhelming number when compared to
the total population of the City of Saint John which in 1841 was less
than 20,000."
Although the majority of
able-bodied poor went to the United States, it seems that the most
destitute and debilitated of the newcomers, including some with typhus
fever, remained in or near the city.
At first, they were cared for
in the former city poorhouse, then an infirmary, and in sheds in the
city's south end. Due to the large number with fever, an emigrant
hospital was erected near the Almshouse. Emigrants were housed there,
also in another nearby building and in some partially finished sheds;
all soon filled to overflowing.
Robertson goes on to say that:
"Five to six hundred emigrants were patients in this hospital on a
daily basis in September of 1847, and at peak periods during that year
the number rose to almost seven hundred."
Although the circumstances
were extraordinary, the mortality rate was evidence of the folly of
housing fever patients in close proximity to healthy parish paupers. From
March 1847 to March 1848, the minutes of the Quarter Sessions record a
total of 686 deaths at the almshouse com- pound consisting of 560
emigrants and 126 paupers. Much to the dismay of local officials,
those who survived the ordeal often became a permanent charge on the
county poor rates.
1854 was another horrific year
because Saint John faced its most serious outbreak of cholera ever.
Historian, Geoffrey Bilson, concluded that during the epidemic: "at
least one thousand people died and contemporaries estimated that 1,500
of the city's 30,000 residents were killed." |
The
scourge was so dangerous, businesses practically closed down and a number
of terrified residents fled to the countryside. The disease affected all
citizens but it was the poor who suffered the most. Similar to 1847, a
contagious disease once again broke out in the almshouse and put the
health of the county's paupers at risk. Although the number of deaths is
unknown, George E. Fenety, a nineteenth century journalist, wrote:
"in twelve days there were forty-eight cases of cholera in this
institution and twenty- six deaths."
Due to the large number of children at the almshouse and
in various parts of the city, who had lost one or both of their parents,
two orphan asylums - one Protestant and the other Roman Catholic - were
founded. In addition, the city's water supply was improved.
Moreover, the Saint John Board
of Health pressured for better sanitation and for the establishment of a
public hospital - although one was not built until 1865:
"It must be confessed that
our alms- house, the conjoined and condensed charity for the sick and
wounded, and for the pauperized of both sexes and all ages, is an
incompatible combination of Hospital and Poor House, and does not comport
with the progress of philan- thropy or the improvement of the age."
The income for the Saint John
alms- house came from assessments for poor relief, support payments, the
labor of inmates and the sale of produce. The main expenditures were for
provisions and supplies, salaries, the institution's upkeep, new
buildings, outdoor relief, farm operations, and court costs.
Periodically, the almshouse management was criticized for
personal misconduct and for the high costs of running the institution.
As previously mentioned, the first Keeper, William Craig, was found not
guilty of rape but, in 1848, the Quarter Sessions censored him for
assisting inmates with childbirth although he was unqualified as a
mid-wife. The next year, Craig was dismissed and shortly thereafter he
deserted his wife and family and went to Australia.
About ten years later, the
Quarter Sessions were confronted with accusa- tions against the Keeper,
William Cunningham, for buying supplies at inflated prices and
apprenticing children without proper indenture. These charges were
dropped, however, and Cunningham went on to serve as Keeper for over
thirty years. But, complaints of this sort drew unwanted attention to a
place that already had an unsavory
reputation.
In 1883, the Board of Almshouse
Commissioners faced more turmoil when an auditor found a deficit of over
$7000 in the institution's accounts. Although the entire Board was
suspected of irregular- ities, David Tapley, chairman and a member for
over fifteen years, was blamed because he alone handled the almshouse
accounts.
According to County Council,
Tapely naively said, "I cannot account for it in any way… for the
last ten years I have felt something was wrong but I could not
tell."
Nonetheless, the Council refused to authorize further
assessments for poor relief until the Board resigned. In 1885, James
Manchester was appointed chair of a new board. Meanwhile, Tapley agreed to
pay $2000 "out of his own pocket" to the County Treasurer and
all charges against him were withdrawn.
Henceforth, the accounting
practices were overhauled so that the County Treasurer, who collected
monies for the poor, deposited it to the credit of the entire Board and
any withdrawals had to be approved by at least three
members.
While the Saint John almshouse
provided food, shelter and protection to dependent persons little thought
was given to their rehabilitation. It is doubtful that the moral character
of inmates improved during their institutionalization and with
indigents there of all ages and conditions, it was especially unsuitable
for children.
However, it was beneficial to
some inmates because they were supervised, disciplined and, to a degree,
employed in the workhouse.
Besides the almshouse and
work- house, Saint John built more social welfare institutions in the
nineteenth century than anywhere else in the province.
These included orphanages, reformatories, old
aged homes and a mental asylum - the first in British North America. Some
of these institutions accepted indigents from all over the province, but
the people of Saint John benefited the most.
Nonetheless, the burden of
supporting the poor of Saint John City and County was borne most heavily
locally. The provincial government took virtually no responsibility for
the poor although it gave general relief in times of fires and other
disasters and gave grants to some welfare institutions. This
assistance, supplemented by private welfare schemes, helped relieve the
almshouse of a number of paupers but it was not enough to prevent it from
being a sanctuary for all types of poor well into the twentieth century. |