[Illustration: TRAMPS.]
The excuse for careless and indifferent treatment of the really deserving pauper men who are on Long Island is that every winter the place is crowded with "bummers" who come to Long Island in the winter for free quarters, and as soon as the weather is fine for out-door tramping in the summer, they go away to escape work in the institution, coming back again in cold weather, It would certainly be very easy to devise a law to make this impossible. No able-bodied person who is able to work, ought under any circumstances to be sent to the almshouse. People who are able to work and support themselves, and do not do so under their own direction, ought to be sent to the work-house, and compelled to do so under the direction of a proper officer. This would take away from Long Island a lot of drunken tramps who congregate there in the winter. The same remark applies to women. The intemperate and vicious woman ought not to be sent to the almshouse; it should be sacredly kept as "a refuge and a home where the respectable poor, the sick, and the old—those who have outlived their children, or have broken down in the race of life—may find shelter and care." But the honest cases ought not, and need not, suffer in order to punish these frauds. At Long Island, on one of my visits, there were ninety-two men on the sick-roll, and only one nurse, and he not a trained nurse. I am also satisfied that the food is insufficient either for sick or well. A reporter of the Boston Post managed to interrogate an old man who was able to sit up by the side of his little cot. In answer to a question, this sick old man said they did not get any milk; and yet there is a large farm attached to the institution, and there is no excuse for not having plenty of milk provided at very little expense for these infirm old people. The old man said they had meat three times a week—remember that means three meals out of twenty-one; and when asked by the reporter, "What kind of meat?" he answered pathetically, "It wouldn't do any good for me to tell you, sir, but it's mighty poor stuff." Permit me to quote in full a little article in the Boston Herald of a few weeks since, under the title, "Some Harbor Policemen Overpowered by Long Island Hospitality:"—
"There is a little joke which is causing considerable merriment at the Harbor police station at the present time, and the key to it is contained in the words, 'Long Island hospitality.' A few days ago the police-boat 'Protector' was ordered to take to Long Island a party of surveyors, who were to lay out grounds for the proposed new hospital.
"The work of the boat's passengers occupied an unexpectedly long time, and as no provision had been made for dinner, the party invoked the hospitality of the almshouse on the island. The surveyors and officers of the boat were assigned to one part of the institution, while the crew were invited into the large dining-hall, usually occupied by the inmates. It is this last-named party which is bearing the brunt of the joke. The feast of which they were invited to partake consisted of a lot of potatoes with their jackets on, without the formality of a platter, a plate of what the boys termed 'soup-meat,' a soup-dish minus the soup, knives and forks, and empty mugs. Grace was omitted; the men spent the time in gazing first at the 'feast,' and then at each other. A common thought seemed to occupy the minds of all, for without a word they simultaneously arose from the table and left the room.
"They waited at the boat until the surveyors' work had been completed, and then came back to Boston. It was then time to make the regular afternoon trip, and with empty stomachs they started out again and finished the day. It was the intention of the victims to keep the matter 'shady;' but the joke leaked out, as such things will, and it is worse than shaking a red rag at a bull to say 'Long Island hospitality' to certain blue-coats who labor on the water." And yet they were there at one of the three lucky meals out of twenty-one, when there was "soup-meat."
Among the men in this institution was pointed out to me a marble-cutter, who was a thoroughly respectable, self-supporting workman. He was hurt while at work by the falling of a stone, and so disabled by an injury of the spine that he was unable to continue employment. As soon as sickness had used up what money he had, having no relatives who could help him, there was nothing left for him but to come here. One of the officers spoke of him in the highest terms, and told me how, without direction from any one else, he sought by many daily circuits of the building to strengthen his spine. I was assured by the same officer that many others who were inmates were there purely through misfortune which was from no fault of their own, but from such accidents as are likely to happen to any honest laboring-man. Now I maintain that such men ought to be treated with a decent regard for their self-respect, and given a comfortable home. It is an outrage that this marble-cutter, and others like him, are fed more shabbily than if they had been convicted of a crime.
In addition to the men on Long Island, there is one ward in the hospital used for women. There were fifty-two sick women crowded into this ward at the time of my visit. There was only one nurse, an excellent woman, but with no special education for her duties. The night helper is a woman who is hired for fifty cents a day. For this ward of fifty-two sick women there was no bath-room at all. The nurse's own room was situated at the other end of the building from her ward, and she had to go across the men's ward to get to her patients at night, if she went. There was no place for insane or refractory patients, or for the dying, except in the general ward. Sometimes their cries and groans are very distressing to the other patients. In a recent case of death from mania, the whole ward was disturbed for several nights.
Most of the women are kept at Rainsford Island, and there are many more reasons for criticism there than on Long Island. The only hospital there is an old smallpox hospital, more than three-score years old. This is crowded beyond all thought of the requirements of sanitary science. Think of a room for confinement cases only seven feet wide and less than twelve feet long. In the annual report of Public Institutions for 1889 we find the following statement by the then resident physician: "It is remarkable that a building which was a small-pox hospital fifty-seven years ago, and which since then has undergone no material improvement, should up to the present time be the only hospital connected with our pauper institutions." The doctor might have added that this building was abandoned a quarter of a century ago by the State, as unfit for sick persons. It is certainly no extravagance to say that these arrangements for the care of the sick on Rainsford Island are more than half a century behind the times. The only thing modern I saw was the keen-eyed physician.
There is about the entire institution a lack of careful thoughtfulness for the comfort of the inmates, that is exceedingly painful to a thoughtful observer. For example, the island is very beautifully situated, and there are many fine trees in the shade of which, with comfortable arrangements, it would be a most healthful and delightful experience for hundreds of these infirm and aged women to sit on summer days; but, although I searched carefully throughout the grounds, I found only two benches under the trees anywhere, and a half-dozen more, perhaps, around on the sea-front, and not one of them with a back to it. Think of arranging for the comfort of your own grandmother, eighty years old, in that way!
The food here, too, is insufficient. For instance, the matron told me that only those who worked were allowed butter on their bread. These old women are set down to bread and tea for one meal, and bread and soup for another; they, too, have a little meat of some kind three times a week, and potatoes at dinner. Again I repeat that, with the large farm attached to Long Island, there is no reason why these old women, as well as the old men, should not have an abundant quantity and an appetizing variety of vegetables, as well as plenty of nourishing milk. And I maintain that it is a shame and disgrace that the Boston which less than five years ago could spend more than twenty thousand dollars in feasting and wining a Hawaiian woman who came to visit us, expending four thousand dollars for flowers alone, cannot afford to furnish a little butter to spread on the bread of the helpless old women on Rainsford Island, even if they are unable to work. Think of the stolid indifference, or thoughtlessness—to hunt for charitable words—of an institution having several hundreds of people to care for, and yet making no difference in its hospital diet. No matter what the disease, it is to eat up to the cast-iron programme, or starve. Who that has been ill or has watched anxiously with their own dear ones, but has noticed the capriciousness of a sick person's appetite, the longing for little delicacies, for just a taste of some rare and unusual dish or drink? Such things are not expensive; they only mean that somebody shall invest a little genuine sympathy and thoughtfulness in the matter. Throughout this entire institution, hospital and all, having over four hundred women, there is not a single trained nurse! In this day of enlightenment it ought to be a crime for any hospital to be carried on without trained nurses. There is no night watchman on the whole island, and, after eight o'clock in the evening, nobody who is responsible at all. In the main institution on Rainsford Island the attic is crowded with beds to such an extent as to make a healthful atmosphere impossible.