Ingleside Model Camp
A similar case is that of the family in which the Hebrew husband, although seventy-eight years old, had been able before the fire to earn a living for himself and his wife with a little cigar store. They were known as honest, industrious people to a society that recommended them for a grant of $150. Later, $77.50 worth of plumbing and repairs were added to their cottage. They promised to be self-supporting for some time. In case of need the Hebrew Board of Relief stood ready to make a monthly allowance so that they might never go to the Relief Home.
Other cases of which less is known were encouraging. A painter, his wife, and his wife’s sister, who received $50 for furniture, had not again applied for help. An old hunchback and his wife who received $80 for furniture and clothing, were given the use of land on the edge of the city by some friends, and for a while at least were made self-supporting by the proceeds of their chickens and their garden. Another family, exceptional in that both partners were under fifty years of age, received a grant of $250. The husband, a longshoreman, had had both arms broken, but two years after the fire the couple were again self-supporting. As they are exceptional also in having several young male relatives in the city, they are not likely to become dependent.
Another history is differentiated from the varied but generally pitiful struggles of old persons by its ending touched with romance. An old mother with a daughter nearing middle age lost furniture, clothing, piano, and paintings worth $1,000. They had earned a modest living, the mother by taking roomers, the daughter by teaching music. They were given a sewing machine and $300 with which to establish a rooming house. Within a year and a half the mother became so seriously demented as to prevent their keeping lodgers. They fell behind in the rent, the Associated Charities supplied food and after a severe struggle on the daughter’s part to keep her mother out of the insane asylum, the old woman was finally committed in the summer of 1908. Meanwhile a kindly lodger became interested in the younger woman, and after his references had been approved by the Associated Charities, the daughter married him.
A brief review of the circumstances and habits of five of the six families who applied for relief and were refused fully justifies the decision of the Rehabilitation Committee. The first was a woman of fifty whose husband, a man over eighty, had died at Ingleside in the autumn of 1906. She not only was fairly strong but had grown children quite able to give her a home. The second was an old couple by no means incapacitated who had kept a store and been pretty well-to-do before the fire. They were given a cottage and $50 for furniture before coming to Ingleside, but were refused business rehabilitation on the ground that the $500 insurance they had received was sufficient to re-establish them. In 1908 the Associated Charities gave them a stove and had some plumbing done in their cottage, but they were found to be grasping and untrustworthy. Two other couples were of the hard-drinking, intermittently-working, often-sick type, to whom rehabilitation can never be given with any prospect of success. Of these, a comparatively young couple were given $50 for furniture and clothing and were provided with employment. In the following two years husband and wife had been twice to the Associated Charities for help, and had been in and out of the county hospital. When last seen they were “living with friends.” The other couple, the man a drunkard and the woman a fakir, had a charity record, reaching back to 1896, in which they were described as being too incompetent to support themselves. They were forcibly removed from a wretched shack to Ingleside in the winter of 1907 and are now in the Relief Home.
The last of this group was an old mother with an epileptic son of fifty, by occupation a cooper. They had lived on the verge of distress before the fire, and although the son afterward earned good wages for awhile cleaning bricks, it was not believed that he could long support his mother and himself. In the winter of 1907 both were obliged to go to the Relief Home.
2. The seven families at Ingleside who applied first to the Associated Charities for rehabilitation do not differ as a group in any way from the earlier applicants. Two are cases of old people neglected by their grown up children; two, of the chronically unfortunate and inevitably dependent class; and two couples, younger than those we have been considering, were forced to apply for help because the man in each family developed tuberculosis. One case only, foreigners of good birth and education, differs in the details of the struggle and in its solution. Both husband and wife were teachers who had scarcely made a living before the fire and who, being over sixty years of age, could not regain their clientele nor find new work. The Rehabilitation Committee through the Associated Charities sent them back to their native country where they will have a home with relatives.
If we turn from the picturesque, human aspect of the families who applied for rehabilitation or relief, to the financial, the brief summary is: (1) Twenty families of 41 persons, whose estimated total losses amounted to $10,000, asked for relief to the amount of $3,000 and were granted relief to the money value of $2,500. In addition they received shelter and food at Ingleside at a cost of $2,200. (2) After three years seven of the 41 individuals were dead, 10 were in charitable institutions, one was in an insane asylum, one was married, three were with relatives, and 19 were self-supporting.[272] Aside from the comfort afforded to each by the grants received, it may be said to have cost $132 apiece to make the 19 persons self-supporting. It must not be forgotten that while the effort was being made to gain self-support outside of the institution, the institution was spared the cost of maintaining each at a rate of not less than 50 cents a day.
[272] The data for all of the 20 families are not given in the preceding pages. The 19 persons listed as self-supporting, it should be borne in mind, were in several cases believed to be only temporarily independent of charitable aid.
3. The last group of the families of adults to be considered is the 13 families containing 26 persons that did not apply for specific relief other than institutional care. They differ from those that did apply chiefly in being a little more infirm and incompetent and in having no children or relatives, apparently, to fall back upon. It is probable that some of them did not apply for rehabilitation because Ingleside Camp and the Relief Home seemed to be the only natural or desirable relief. Information is available as to the subsequent fate of only 19 of the 26 persons. Of these, four were known to be dead three years after the disaster, eight were in the Relief Home, one was in another home, four were self-supporting, and two had moved to the country.