The Ingleside records which constitute the basis of the tables that follow were merely admission cards made out by the commanders of camps. They give information with regard to sex, age, marital condition, nativity, occupation, address on April 17, 1906, and the name and address of a relative or friend who should be notified in case of death. The cards were obviously not intended for sociological purposes. They often do not give some of these simple facts, and are not uniform in statement; but they have been supplemented by information taken from the records of an investigator at Camp 6, and from the cases on file in the Associated Charities and the Rehabilitation Committee offices. The records have been further amplified through interviews with a number of employes who were for a long time at Ingleside, and are most of them now employed at the Relief Home. The greatest care has been taken not to draw unwarrantable conclusions from incomplete and uncertain data.
Aside from placing on record a brief history of Ingleside Model Camp, the main purpose of this study has been: first, to find what proportion of the inmates of Ingleside had been self-supporting before the fire of 1906 and what proportion were at that time potential almshouse inmates; second, to examine critically the treatment of those aged and infirm persons who awaited at Ingleside the outcome of their applications for rehabilitation; and third, to determine whether any number of those now dependent upon public relief could have been saved from that fate.
[Tables 113] and [114] show concisely the conjugal condition of the Ingleside population and the extent to which the inmates differed in this respect from the aged, infirm, and incapacitated population in the San Francisco almshouse during the thirty-five years preceding 1906, and from the general population of California.
TABLE 113.—INMATES OF INGLESIDE MODEL CAMP BY CONJUGAL CONDITION AND SEX[262]
| Conjugal condition | PERSONS WHOSE CONJUGAL CONDITION WAS AS SPECIFIED | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Males | Females | Total | |||||
| Number | Per cent | Number | Per cent | Number | Per cent | ||
| Single | 385 | 53.3 | 90 | 20.7 | 475 | 41.1 | |
| Married | 77 | 10.7 | 67 | 15.4 | 144 | 12.5 | |
| Widowed | 166 | 23.0 | 218 | 50.3 | 384 | 33.2 | |
| Divorced, separated or deserted | 13 | 1.8 | 15 | 3.5 | 28 | 2.4 | |
| Unknown | 81 | 11.2 | 44 | 10.1 | 125 | 10.8 | |
| Total | 722 | 100.0 | 434 | 100.0 | 1,156 | [263] | 100.0 |
[262] These figures relating to conjugal condition were taken from the rough admission statements of persons admitted to Ingleside and do not exactly correspond with the figures presented in [Tables 119] and [120], which were take from the files of the Relief Committee and the Associated Charities. The latter probably correspond more nearly to the facts.
[263] The 131 inmates who were transferred to Ingleside from the almshouse, as has been stated, are not included in this study.
The preponderance of men is characteristic of all refuges for the aged and infirm, partly because old women can earn a bare living by petty domestic services long after the age at which old men can maintain themselves at hard labor; partly because relatives, however poor, are more loath to allow an aged woman than an aged man to become dependent on public charity. As regards family ties, the [table] shows further the isolated condition of this group. Two-fifths of them may be assumed to have had no living children; the remainder had had six months to rejoin their children but had failed to do so.
The conjugal condition of the Ingleside population is compared in the following table with that of the inmates of the almshouses of the United States in 1903-04, as well as with the general population of the state in 1900.
TABLE 114.—CONJUGAL CONDITION OF INMATES OF INGLESIDE MODEL CAMP, COMPARED WITH CONJUGAL CONDITION OF INMATES OF ALL ALMSHOUSES OF THE UNITED STATES IN 1903-4 AND OF THE GENERAL POPULATION OF CALIFORNIA 15 YEARS OF AGE AND OVER, IN 1900