“The hospitals were overcrowded for the reason that there was no municipal lodging house. The same condition exists in Chicago today. Charitable hospitals are overcrowded with men because they have been made sick on account of exposure and the lack of nourishing food. The best way to keep a man from getting sick—I mean the poor unfortunate without a home—is to house and feed him properly. New York has solved this problem with its beautiful municipal emergency home, six stories in height and a model in every respect.”
Both Mr. Brown and his wife will soon go to Europe to investigate conditions of the homeless there.
Advocates Drastic Treatment of Criminal Immigrants.—Drastic measures to suppress crime among the foreign population of New York City, and to prevent the further immigration into this country of foreign criminals, are advocated by Judge Lewis L. Fawcett, of the County Court, Brooklyn, who recently sentenced two Italian kidnappers to long terms in prison, and who has in the last four years received at least thirty threatening letters from the friends of accused persons.
The government, said Judge Fawcett in a recent newspaper interview, should demand that every foreigner who lands here produce a certificate of good character from the chief of police of the district from which he comes. Immigrants without such certificate should immediately be deported. If the newcomer has served time for some trivial offense, the fact should be stated on the certificate, and the period of residence in this country required before the immigrant can take out naturalization papers should be lengthened in proportion to the seriousness of this previous offense. When a foreign criminal is convicted here and sentenced, said Judge Fawcett, the judge who administers his punishment should have by law the right to deport him, at his own discretion, when he has served his term.
Chicago Wants a Hospital for Inebriates.—A hospital or reformatory for inebriates is likely to be established in Chicago soon. The scheme contemplates the turning over of the old John Worthy School, adjoining the house of correction, to the police authorities, and the sending of the boys who are there to St. Charles or another suitable institution downstate.
“The thing both Inspector Clancy and I have in mind,” said Chief of Police Steward, “is a sort of a poor man’s sanitarium. At the present time Chicago, the second largest city in the country, has not a single institution to which it can send its destitute ’drunks’ for treatment. The hospitals won’t receive them and the jails are not the proper place for them. We want a place where habitual drunkards can be detained and kept under the care of nurses and physicians. They will be serving a sentence, but all the time they are incarcerated they will be receiving treatment which will send them out into the streets again physically fit to fight their temptations.”
Sing Sing (N. Y.) Prison Called a Death Trap.—The State Commission of Prisons says a long sentence to Sing Sing is often a sentence to slow death because of the prevalence of tuberculosis. Many prisoners are discharged incapacitated to earn a living and frequently on leaving Sing Sing spread tuberculosis. The cell capacity there is 1,200, but the average number of prisoners during the year was 1,850. About 500 are housed in one of the chapels and in the loft of the work shops.