Almshouses originally emerged in Europe in the early 1600s as an extension of the church system in order to assist those individuals and families who were in need of food, employment, or a place to live. Some people stayed for days while others stayed for months. Their goal was to, “teach the poor to help themselves.” These ‘homes’ were then integrated into American society by William Penn, a Quaker.  The first official almshouse in the US was opened in Boston in 1622. In 1736, New York City opened its first almshouse and it fell “under the care and control of the Overseers of the Poor, House of Correction, Workhouse and Poorhouse, headed by two men appointed by the Office of the Mayor.”

 By the late 1800s, there were over 60 almshouses in New York State with over 12,000 residents.

As the need for them grew, many reformists tried to make them solely for poor adults. In response to this reform, other options for the mentally ill, disabled, and children became available. In 1875, a New York State law began requiring almshouses to record details about the individuals in their care. The biggest obstacle for these places was that they were rarely self-sustaining. One solution to this was Philadelphia’s Guardians of the Poor who in the early 1800s, hoped to fix this issue by having the individuals who lived at the almshouse to “labor profitably.” Other houses looked for donors who would support their cause.  Throughout the Diary, Isaac T. Hopper often recommended that formally incarnated people stayed at an almshouse until he found employment for them. This way they had access to many basic needs and were in close proximity to Hopper if he found them a job.

Sources:

“Almshouse Ledgers.” NYC Department of Records and Information.       http://www.archives.nyc/archives

Bourque, Monique. "Women and Work in the Philadelphia Almshouse, 1790-1840." Journal of the Early Republic 32, no. 3 (2012): 383-413, http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=78201337&site= ehost-live.

Newman, Etan. "For Whose Benefit?: Social Control and the Construction of Providence's           Dexter Asylum." Historian 72, no. 1 (2010): 96- 121, http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=48430087&site= ehost-live.

“New York, Census of Inmates in Almshouses and Poorhouses, 1830-1920.” Ancestry. 2018.       Accessed February 17, 2019. https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=1083

“The Almshouse and Workhouse.” Colonial Society of Massachusetts. 2017. Accessed February 17, 2019. https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/3085