1857 INVESTIGATION:
This house is located in
the vicinity of Canandaigua. The
main building is ninety by forty-five feet, two stories in height; another
twenty-eight by thirty feet, both of brick.
Connected with the house is a farm of 212 acres, yielding an annual
revenue of $4,000. The basement
is occupied for domestic purposes. It
is warmed by furnaces and stoves. No
ventilation except in the insane department; the ceilings, however, are pretty
well raised. No baths are
provided but ample accommodations are furnished
for washing. Seventeen rooms and
twenty-one cells are appropriated to the use of the paupers. From two to twenty-six are placed in a single room. The number of inmates was 120, seventy males and fifty females, eighty
of whom were foreign and forty native born, including thirty-five children. There is a complete separation of the sexes. The house is in (the) charge of one keeper, who has an assistant, aided
by the paupers in the house and on the farm. The supervisors have visited this house twice the past year. The
supplies for the house are purchased by the superintendent, who also
prescribes rules regulating the diet, binds out the children of suitable age,
and jointly with the physician exercises the power of discharging lunatics. The average number of inmates is 136, supported at a weekly cost of
fifty-seven cents each. The house is supplied with Bibles, and preaching is
occasionally enjoyed during the summer. One
of the most interesting features connected with this establishment is the school
house, standing out from the main buildings in a large and beautiful front
yard ornamented with trees. In
this house a school is taught the year round. It was found clean and neat, and its walls decorated with maps,
mottoes, & etc.--an inviting retreat. This school is supported from a fund given by a benevolent individual,
the interest of which is to be perpetually applied to the education of these
pauper children. The intent of
the grantor seems to find a realization. A physician is employed by the year at a salary of $150. There have been four births and eighteen deaths during the year. Among the inmates are twenty-one lunatics, six males and fifteen
females, and all paupers; five of these have been to the Utica Asylum and
returned as incurable. Application
has also been made for the admission of others which have been refused at
Utica. Two have been admitted to
this house this year, and two have recovered and four slightly improved. They are restrained by confinement in cells, and three are confined in
cells constantly. The women are
waited upon by a female attendant. The
insane do not receive any special medical attention. This house admits of the classification of the insane; five are idiots,
one male and four females; two are deaf and dumb, and one blind. Lunatics sometimes escape and are not always heard from. Two-thirds of the whole number are brought here consequent upon habits
of intemperance.
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Transcribed by PHS-Volunteer, Cheramie Breaux in Louisiana
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