The Homes for the aged in our cities are many of them established by churches for their dependent members, and in almost all an entrance fee is required. There are Homes for aged married couples in some of our cities, and in many, also, a free Home for old men and women, maintained by the Roman Catholic Little Sisters of the Poor, who receive inmates, however, of every faith.
Of Homes for convalescents and incurables there are very few, comparatively, though it would seem as if the hard lot of these two classes of sufferers would appeal most strongly to tender-hearted women. In no one community, however, have we adequate provision for them, and they languish, unwelcome inmates of hospitals and poorhouses. There is a small Home for Incurables in Boston, founded by a young Roman Catholic Irishwoman, who earned her daily bread by hair-dressing, and who for four years had given all her spare time and money to the care of one dying girl after another, until she was enabled, by the help of friends for whom she worked, to open the Channing Home, which from that time to this (now long after her death) has been a refuge for poor consumptive girls and crippled women.
Reformatories for women are, strangely enough, often established by men. It would seem as if no work could be more appropriate to women, and as if there were no field which they should more quickly have occupied entirely to the exclusion of men; but although there are a number of such institutions for both girls and women in different parts of the country, to whose management good women have devoted themselves, there is still room for many more, in which women (especially young women) who are a danger to themselves and others, ought to be shut away from temptation and the opportunity to tempt.
Women’s work in hospitals and in care for the sick is to be treated elsewhere in this book.
The Homes for children, which abound in almost every part of the country, have all had their growth in less than ninety years, the very first one established being the Boston Female Asylum, opened in 1800, and incorporated in 1803, established by women whose granddaughters and great-granddaughters are now numbered among the managers.
There is a great deal of devoted, earnest work given both by the outside Boards who control these Homes and by the officers who take the daily care of the thousands of children in them; there is the wish to do real good, and, especially among the Sisterhoods, whose whole lives are given up to the work of ministering to these children, there is often absolute self-sacrifice; but it is too frequently open to question whether the real benefit done is equal to the benevolence which prompts the doing. In these institutions the children are generally treated kindly, but the managers, unfortunately, too often fail to see the bad effects of the institution life both upon the child and upon society as a whole; and, though they may suspect their existence, they usually feel helpless to remedy these evils, scarcely having courage to enter on new ways of caring for their charges.
One institution, which for thirty-one years had continued in the old way, was closed under circumstances most creditable to the managers, and the history of the Union Temporary Home of Philadelphia deserves a place in this article as an example to the management of other similar institutions.
At the thirty-first annual meeting in January, 1887, the following resolution was adopted:
Resolved, That in the judgment of this meeting it is advisable that our building be closed at an early day; that all our property be converted into an income-bearing fund; that under the direction of a special executive committee chosen from the Council, or the Board of Managers, or both, said income shall be applied, according to the declared object of our constitution, in paying for the temporary board and care of “children of the poor;” that the term “Home” be construed to include any house or household in which such children are placed; and that the machinery of the Children’s Aid Society be used for obtaining, investigating, and supervising such boarding-homes; that all the rights of parents be duly respected, and they still be held to pay a share, wherever practicable; and that our Board of Managers, or such committees as they may appoint, represent this corporation in carrying out these arrangements, and in the performances of whatever duties may be required to secure the execution of our trust and the welfare of the children.
Some of the reasons for this action are given in the following extracts from a paper submitted by the managers to the meeting: