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SCHENECTADY COUNTY POOR HOUSE

This house is built of brick, fifty by thirty feet and two stories in height.  Connected is a farm of 116 acres yielding an annual income of $1,200.00.  The basements are not occupied by paupers.  In the house are twenty-eight rooms, warmed by stoves but not at all ventilated.  These rooms are small and the ceilings not more than seven and a half feet high.  Never more than four paupers are placed in one room.  The number of inmates was fifty-six, thirty-one males and twenty-five females.  Of these one-half are foreign born, and twenty under sixteen years of age.  The sexes are kept separate.  There is but one keeper.  The average number of inmates is seventy-five, supported at a weekly cost of eighty-four cents each.  Able paupers are employed on the farm and about this house.  During the year the supervisors have inspected the house once.  It is supplied with Bibles and on the Sabbath religious services are held.  From eight to nine months of the year a school is taught in the house.  The superintendents of the poor regulate the government of the house and it's system of diet; furnishes the supplies and discharges the insane.  A physician to attend the paupers is employed by the year.  There are no arrangements for bathing.  During the year have occurred one birth and three deaths.  No contagious disease has prevailed.  For such an event a pest house is provided.

Of the inmates three are lunatics, one male and two females, all are paupers.  Two are confined in cells, which is the only means of restraint in use.  None are reported improved or cured.  They receive no different attendance, medical or other, from the sane paupers.  Seven of the inmates are idiots, three males and four females, one a boy, is under sixteen years of age.

No corporal punishment is administered to the paupers.  It is estimated that nine-tenths are brought here directly or indirectly by habits of intemperance.  This house is badly constructed and decidedly unhealthy.

"The poorhouse is located on a farm of 116 acres, on the Albany Road, just e. of the city. It has, on an average, about 75 inmates, and the farm yields a revenue of $1,200." 
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