For several years the expense for the maintenance of individuals of the depôt at Hoogstraeten has not amounted to more than 32 centimes per individual, (or 3d. sterling.)
On the 1st January, 1834, the number of persons entertained at the provincial depôt, on account of the city of Antwerp, was 153. The population of this establishment generally amounts to 250 or 300 individuals, all belonging to the province.
The children of the working class or indigent are received, without any distinction, in the public schools established gratis. Those children abandoned to the public charity, or of whom the parents are entirely unable to bring them up, and who request to be relieved of them from inability to maintain them, are sent to an hospital established for that purpose, or else placed in the country under the direction of the civil hospital, or the bureau de bienfaisance.
Impotent through Age.
There are at Antwerp 26 private hospitals, founded and established for many centuries by charitable persons in favour of a stated number of aged persons, of both sexes, and of decent and respectable families; but in preference for the members of the founders’ family, and which persons, without being entirely destitute, have, notwithstanding, no sufficient means to provide for their subsistence. Those persons inhabit a small house in the hospital, where they keep their own household separately, and subsist by what they can earn personally by any hand-work, and by the weekly succour which they receive from the revenue of the foundation. These men and women reside in separate hospitals.
Destitute persons, of both sexes, who are impotent through age, but have not claims to be admitted into the before-mentioned private hospital, are maintained by the administrations of the poor, the sick, incurable, and impotents, in the civil hospital, and the others in the country, where they are boarded with the farmers at the expenses of the public establishment of charity; that is to say, of the administration of the civil hospitals and bureau de bienfaisance. Besides, there is at Antwerp a special establishment as a refuge to the impotent through age, of decent and respectable families, who are without means of procuring a livelihood.
Sick.
In Belgium every town has its civil hospital for the maintenance of destitute sick. That of Antwerp is open to all the unfortunate, without distinction, whenever their social position does not afford them the means of being attended by a physician at their dwellings, who are deemed proper objects for admission.
Are also admitted, in a private room in this hospital (upon payment of a small daily retribution), all individuals who, although not entirely destitute, prefer to be treated in the hospital rather than at their own houses; such as men and female servants, who are commonly sent there by the persons who have them in their employ.