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THE ALMSHOUSE
CAPTAIN ROBERT KEAYNE, a philanthropic citizen, and
founder of the “Military Company of the Massachusetts,” afterward known as the
“Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company,” bequeathed to the Town the sum of
one hundred and twenty pounds sterling for the purpose of erecting an Almshouse.
Other bequests of one hundred pounds and forty pounds, to be devoted to this
object, were made by Mr. Henry Webb, a public-spirited merchant, and Deacon
Henry Bridgham, a tanner. At a Town Meeting, March 31, 1662, it was voted that
these legacies be received, and that the Town proceed “to agree and compound
with severall workemen for stones and timber for the erecting and finishing of
the Allmehouse.”
Frequent
allusions to this Institution are to be found in the Selectmen’s Records. For
example, a woman named Elinor Reed is mentioned as having been entertained
there in August, 1708. The first Board of Overseers of the Poor was elected in
1691; and from an early date its members were accustomed to make periodical
visits to all parts of the Town, sometimes at night. They were accompanied on
these occasions by other officials, and it was a part of their duty to observe
carefully economic conditions among the poorer inhabitants. It devolved upon
the constables to report cases of idleness and thriftlessness.
In Bennett’s
“Manuscript History of New England,” 1740, the author stated that the Boston
authorities provided very well for their poor, and were very tender of exposing
those that had lived in a handsome manner. “And for the meaner sort,” he wrote,
“they have a place built on purpose, which is called the Town Alms-house, where
they are kepi in a decent manner.... There are above a hundred poor persons in
this house, and there is no such thing to be seen in town as a strolling
beggar. And it is a rare thing to meet with any drunken people, or to hear an
oath sworn in the streets.” This first almshouse was built in 1662 at or near
the corner of Beacon and Park Streets. It was burned down in 1682, and a new
structure was erected four years after at the head of Park Street, where stands
the large, brick building known as the Amory-Ticknor house. The second
almshouse, of two stories, with a gambrel roof, fronted on Beacon Street. For
some years this was the most pretentious, if not the only building on that
thoroughfare, whereof the easterly portion, from School Street to the site of
the present State House, was laid out in March, 1640. It was officially
described in 1708 as “the way leading from Mrs. Whetcomb’s Corner, by the house
of Captain Fairweather, westerly through the upper side of the Common, and so
down to the sea.” In a Deed of the year 1750, Beacon Street is mentioned as the
“Lane leading to the Almshouse.” In 1702 Francis Thresher was appointed “to
take care in getting the Alms-House yard, Burying Place and Pound well fenced
in and the Almes or Work House repaired; and to procure some Spinning Wheeles
for setting the poor at work.” Although originally intended solely as a home
for the deserving poor, the Almshouse was afterward used also as a place of confinement
for criminals and vagrants, until the erection of a House of Correction or
Bridewell on the adjoining lot in the early part of the eighteenth century. At
a Town Meeting, March 9, 1713, one of the Articles of the Warrant read as
follows: “to see whether the Almshouse ought not to be restored to it’s
primitive and pious design, even for the relief of the necessitous, that they
might lead a quiet, peaceable and godly life there; whereas ‘t is now made a
Bridewell and House of Correction, which obstructs many honest, poor people
from going there.” In 1729 there were eighty-eight inmates, the majority being
strangers; and only one third “town born” children. The Almshouse, as well as
the adjoining Workhouse, was used for the reception of British soldiers who
were wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
During
the strenuous years of the Revolutionary War, the occupants of the Almshouse
were left at times in a deplorable condition. In April, 1781, the Overseers of
the Poor “represented in a most affecting manner the suffering and almost
perishing circumstances of the poor in the Almshouse, and the necessity of an
immediate and adequate supply of money to provide for their support.” A year
later the Overseers reported that they were sorry to be under the disagreeable
necessity of informing the Town regarding the unhappy situation of the
Almshouse inmates, for want of the necessaries of life. In 1790 the building
had nearly three hundred occupants; and a committee reported that the Boston
establishment was probably the only Institution of its kind where persons of
every class were lodged under the same roof. At a Town Meeting, May 25, 1795,
Messrs. Thomas Dawes, Samuel Brown, and George Richards Minot were appointed
agents for and in behalf of the inhabitants of Boston, “to sell at public
auction all that parcel of land occupied for an Almshouse and Workhouse, and
for other purposes, extending from Common to Beacon Streets.”
It was
voted, moreover, to erect at Barton’s Point, on the north side of Leverett
Street, a more commodious structure; and the new Almshouse was completed and
occupied at the close of the year 1800.
“No
More,” wrote Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, in his “Historical Description of Boston,”
“will the staid townsman or the jocund youth, proceeding to the Common on
Election or Independence Days, be interrupted by the diminutive hands thrust
through the holes in the Almshouse fence, or stretched from beneath the gates;
or by the small and forlorn voices of the children of the destitute inmates,
entreating for money. Nor will the cries of the wretched poor in those
miserable habitations be heard calling for bread, which oftentimes the Town had
not to give.”