Twenty-fourth annual report of the trustees of the State Lunatic Hospital, at Worcester. December, 1856.

  • State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Twenty-fourth annual report of the trustees of the State Lunatic Hospital, at Worcester. December, 1856. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    at an expense of one hundred and twenty-eight dollars and sixty-four cents. November 30, 1855, there were 115 State paupers remaining, supported, during the year ending at that date, at an expense of one hundred and fifty-seven dollars and twenty-nine cents. November 30, 1854, there were 151 of this class remaining, supported, during the year ending at that time, at an expense of one hundred and twenty-three dollars and seventy-seven cents. It will be easy to see that there has been a loss in the last three years of more than $14,000. But this is not lost to the hospital. The Trustees, at their annual meeting, are obliged to estab¬ lish the price of board for the ensuing year. And if in 1855 there was a loss of $6,588.35, the Trustees were obliged, in order to meet the wants of the house, to raise the price of board on all patients sent by their friends, or by the towns. The cost of support being raised, the towns remove their more comfortable insane. Farmers and mechanics, desirous to pay their own bills, and hardly able at the lowest rates, can but poorly bear a heavier burden. And they are obliged often to remove their afflicted ones to their homes, or to the poor-house. Another reason why a larger sum should be paid for the sup¬ port of State paupers, is found in the fact that all comfortable State paupers have been and are being removed, when able to labor, to the State almshouses, leaving only the violent, destruc¬ tive and dangerous, the cost of whose support is much greater than the quiet, demented, and easily controlled. The buildings and apparatus for heating and ventilating by steam, commenced more than a year ago, are now quite com¬ plete, and so far as we are able to judge, will answer our warmest anticipations. These buildings and fixtures are as follows :— First. Directly under the road is a coal cellar, 45 feet square, and 12 feet deep ; the roof being supported by groined arches and pillars of solid brick masonry, laid in cement. In these arches are coal drops from the road.above through the roof to the cellar below. Next north, and adjoining, is the boiler room, 25 feet by 45, and arched overhead. In this room are placed four flue boilers, each 30 feet long, and 42 inches in diameter. From this leads