918 CHARLES PICKERING PUTNAM. 



from 1904 until his death. In 1875 he became physician to the 

 Massachusetts Infant Asylum, and from 1898 to 1910 he was also 

 president of the board of trustees. The ordinary death-rate in such 

 institutions was at that time something over ninety per cent a year. 

 The Massachusetts Infant Asylum had already brought the rate 

 down to less than a quarter of that figure when Dr. Putnam became 

 connected with it, and he by his skill and devotion again reduced it 

 by two-thirds or more. He was one of those who in 1879 took part 

 in the movement for establishing the Associated Charities, the second 

 charity organization society in this country; and he was always one 

 of the sustaining members of that society in the real, not the conven- 

 tional, sense, working in many capacities, as president of a conference, 

 as director, as chairman of many committees, including the present 

 important one on inebriety, and, since 1907, as president. 



From 1892 to 1897 Dr. Putnam took a leading part in the very 

 important movement for the reorganization of the Boston Institu- 

 tions for the care of prisoners, of the poor, and of poor, neglected, and 

 delinquent children, being on the special committee appointed by 

 Mayor Matthews in 1892, chairman of the board of visitors of 1893-94, 

 chairman of the standing committee on pauper institutions of the 

 advisory board appointed by Mayor Quincy in 1896, a steady fighter 

 for the reorganization bill of 1897. When the new system of separate 

 unpaid boards of trustees was established he was appointed a member 

 of the Board of Children's Institutions, and was its chairman from 

 1902 to 1911, performing in that capacity a great and harassing, 

 though invisible and unappreciated, service to his fellow-citizens. 



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He was active in the campaign against tuberculosis and a director 

 of the Mental Hygiene Association. He was one of the first to take 

 up broad social questions from the legislative end, was the first 

 experienced charity worker to enlist in the Massachusetts Civic 

 League, and helped secure the establishment of the State Board of 



Insanity. 



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Dr. Putnam was for a generation the backbone of social work in 

 Boston. We have all looked to him to do the hard things, — to take 

 ujj the new line at which the timid balked and which the unimaginative 

 could not see, sustaining the old from which the glamor had worn off, 

 stiffening up the weak places, making the hard decisions. He was 

 here, as in all things, a man to accept responsibility, take the burden 



