874 



NEW YOKE. 



ones in other States, for the year 1877, gives 

 the following results : 



A consideration of the real estate, grounds, 

 and architecture of the State institutions is 

 presented, with the recommendation of much 

 greater economy. 



In accordance with the views of the lady- 

 members of the Board of State Charities, a bill 

 was introduced in the Assembly to establish a 

 State Reformatory for Women. To show the 

 necessity for such an institution, Mr. E. Brooks, 

 who reported the bill, cited the following facts 

 4rom the report of the Board of State Chari- 

 ties: 



Let me read from the report of the Board of State 

 Charities some facts as to the present condition of the 

 poor-houses of this State. I will not say the jails of 

 this State, for they are, as a whole, bad beyond con- 

 templation or statement ; and yet, as bad as they are, 

 they also arc capable of immense improvements in 

 their administration. In regard to the poor-houses of 

 the State and the jails of the State where women are 

 sent, let me present to this House, not to arouse its 

 sympathy but to excite its attention, with a view of 

 securing the reform contemplated in the proposed law, 

 what are some of the facts in some of the counties of 

 this State as presented by the Board of State Charities. 



birth, and nine years in the United States, who is the 

 mother of seven illegitimate children ; the woman 

 most degraded and debased, and soon again to become 

 a mother. And this county is no worse than the rest, 

 with perhaps here and there an exception. These 

 women are sentenced to jail for a short time or sent 

 for a short period to the poor-house. They are soon 

 discharged, commit the same crimes over and over 

 again, and are sentenced again to the poor-house or 

 jail and discharged, to become again and again a charge 

 upon the county or State. So that this mother, and 

 not the mother alone, but all her illegitimate children, 

 become a tax upon the county. Then there is Chau- 

 tauqua County. In the poor-house is a woman, as I 

 read, fifty-five years old, admitted at the age of twenty- 

 two as a vagrant, said to have been married, but the 

 whereabouts of her husband is unknown. She too 

 has been discharged from the poor-house and returned 

 immediately for the past thirty-three years, during 

 which time she has had six illegitimate children, ail 

 becoming a charge upon the county. Then there is 



Cortland County, with an unmarried woman twenty- 

 seven years old, with an infant child, who has been 

 the mother of four illegitimate children ; and four of 

 her sisters are also in the same dependent condition 

 and with the same number of illegitimate children, all 

 becoming a charge upon the county. My friends, I 

 see some of you looking at this and that county, to 

 this member and that member, as if their own con- 

 stituents were not here. They need not make any ex- 

 ceptions ; for if they will examine their own poor- 

 house records, they will find about each and every one 

 of them very much in the same condition. Here is the 

 Essex County poor-house, with a black woman, a 

 widow, aged forty -five years, with a daughter, single, 

 aged twenty-four years, and her grandson four years 

 old, illegitimate and born in the house. The first has 

 been the mother of ten children, seven of them illegiti- 

 mate : the second has had three illegitimate children : 

 and both mother and daughter are unmarried, and 

 both year after year are returned to this poor-house 

 to be supported, over and over again, by the county. 

 In Greene County a vagrant unmarried woman, forty 

 years old, became an inmate when twenty-one years of 

 age ; that is, this woman has been for nineteen years 

 off and on returned to this poor-house, and without 

 any hope of reform, and, perhaps, because there was 

 no place for reform ; she goes out like the rest from 

 time to tune, but soon returns, and will doubtless con- 

 tinue a public burden for life ; and this woman, too, 

 is the mother of five illegitimate children. In the 

 Herkimer County poor-house a single woman, aged 

 sixty-four years, twenty of which have been spent in 

 the poor-house, has six of these same unfortunate 

 children. In the Montgomery County poor-house a 

 woman twenty years old, illegitimate, uneducated, and 

 vagrant, has two illegitimate children ; and she, to 

 make wretchedness more intolerable, recently married 

 an intemperate, dissolute man, formerly a pauper, and 

 husband, wife, and child have all become a charge 

 upon the county. In the Eockland County poor-house 

 is an unmarried woman, forty-two years of age ; for 

 eleven years she has been an inmate, and she has four 

 illegitimate children, and the mother is unmarried and 

 a vagrant. These, Mr. Chairman, are specimens of 

 the respective county poor-houses of the State relating 

 to females alone. 



The bill passed the Assembly by 80 yeas to 

 7 nays, but failed to become a law. 



The first two years of prison management 

 under the reformed system terminated on 

 March 1, 1879. The results of that period, as 

 compared with the results of the last two years 

 under the inspector system, were as follows : 



MARCH 1, 1875. TO MARCH 1, 1877. LAST TWO YEARS UNDKR 

 INSPECTOR SYSTEM. 



MARCH 1, 1877, TO MARCH 1, 1879, FIRST TWO YEARS UNDER 

 SUPERINTENDENT SYSTEM. 



