Alms Houses

Alms Houses. From the early nineteenth century to the New Deal Era, alms houses dominated the structure of public welfare in America. Once the cutting edge of public policy, by the early twentieth century alms houses (also known as poorhouses) had drifted into the backwaters of social policy. Nonetheless, they still inspired dread among the poor, who used them only as refuges of last resort.

In the Colonial Era, alms houses were one of four ways that public authorities helped persons who could not support themselves. (Authorities also auctioned the care of the poor to the lowest bidder; contracted their care to private individuals; and gave them small amounts of food, fuel, or cash—a practice known as outdoor relief.) Although alms houses existed in a few large cities as early as the seventeenth century, their numbers became significant only in the early nineteenth century when state legislatures required, encouraged, or permitted county governments to construct them. Two influential legislative documents encouraging the spread of alms houses were the Quincy Report (1821) in Massachusetts and the Yates Report (1824) in New York.

The early nineteenth‐century founding of many novel institutions—alms houses, mental hospitals, reformatories, and penitentiaries, for instance—reflected a new faith in the power of formal institutions to reform individuals and ameliorate social problems. In an era of urbanization and immigration, alms houses were thought the least expensive and most effective way to care for the poor. Alms houses would benefit from economies of scale, inmates could be made to earn part of their support, and the threat of institutionalization would deter persons from asking for help.

Alms houses failed to reach any of their goals, and they never eliminated outdoor relief, which continued to serve many more people than alms houses. From the start, alms houses remained crippled by a contradiction in goals between deterrence and compassion. They sought simultaneously to deter poor persons from asking for relief and to provide them with humanitarian care. Alms houses were undercut, too, by insufficient funds, the lack of capable staff, and unrealistic expectations about the capacity of inmates to work. Alms houses proved much more expensive than predicted—far more costly than outdoor relief—and conditions within them deteriorated badly.

Alms house inmates proved a varied lot. At first, families frequently entered together, but with the great Irish immigration of the 1830s and 1840s, alms houses more often served as refuges for unattached or widowed persons, men more than women. Young men temporarily out of work used them as short‐term refuges; poor, single women turned to them as maternity homes; and the destitute elderly ended their lives in alms houses. Throughout the nineteenth century, state governments removed special categories of inmates from alms houses. First came the sick and mentally ill, then, starting in the 1870s, children. By the early twentieth century, most short‐term residents, mainly young men, also were gone. Thus, by World War I most alms houses had acquired their present identity as public old‐age homes.
See also Antebellum Era; Early Republic, Era of the; Irish Americans; Mental Health Institutions; Orphanages; Poverty; Prisons and Penitentiaries.

Bibliography

David J. Rothman, ed., The Almshouse Experience: Collected Reports, 1971.
Michael B. Katz , In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America, 10th anniversary ed., 1996.

Michael B. Katz