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THE HISTORY OF PUBLIC POOR RELIEF
IN MASSACHUSETTS
1620-1920




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THE HISTORY
-OF PUBLIC POOR RELIEF
IN"+ M4ASSACHUSETTS
1620-1920
BY
ROBERT W. KELSO., A.B., LL.B.


BOS0TON AND NEW YORK
HIOUGIHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
(Cbe Jftiber~ibe pre## Camnbri~ge
19~2




COPYRIGHT, I922, BY ROBERT W. KELSO
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
bet Ribtertfbt J3rtl
CAMBRID(;E ~ MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN TlE U. S. A.


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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION                               1
I. THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND                    3
II. SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF NEW ENGLAND        30
III. INHABITANCY AND THE GENESIS OF THE SETTLEMENT LAW                                35
IV. THE MODERN LAW OF LEGAL SETTLEMENT IN
MASSACHUSETTS                           65
V. THE TOWN'S POOR                           91
VI. ABSORPTION OF RELIEF FUNCTIONS BY THE STATE  121
VII. THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE         143
VIII. CHILD CARE AND THE CHILD PLACING SYSTEM IN
MASSACHUSETTS                          165
IX. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION                   189
INDEX                                    197
-.  *.....<.








THE HISTORY OF PUBLIC POOR
RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS
INTRODUCTION
THOUGH their emergence be sometimes quick, the abiding
tenets by which man governs himself do not spring fullarmed from the mind of any one person, king or spiritual
leader though he be: they are the sum total of the feelings
and desires of generations in the mass. They are custom
become law.
Hence it is that the origin of those concepts in law
which together make up the framework of all systems of
government over self-governing peoples is to be found, not
in the debates upon the floor of legislative assemblies,
where imitators of other men's thoughts are wont to repeat
ideas that have long since grown to an adult state-by no
means here; but rather in the crowded little upstairs room
in the village hall, where valiant townsmen, with no claim
to greatness and no title before the world other than that
merely of "inhabitant," gather to do battle over a boundary line, to urge or oppose a victualler's license, to applaud
the candidate who stands for no more wooden awnings on
the main street, or, quite as likely, to express sympathy
and grant succor to the widow Jones. It is out of this
forum of village life that spring the uses and customs of
men.
Observe its evolution closely, and it is possible to see




2     POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


how, here and there, some practice of the village community survives out of all like attempts to meet a problem in village life-lives long and wears well on its basis
of practical common sense. The scope of its application
grows and in time may become coextensive with the problem which it aims to solve. It grows into a custom of the
people; it ends by becoming the law of the land. Wherefore it is that enduring systems of government are treasures brought up from a great depth. Their fountain lies
deep in the genius of the race.
This generalization applies with peculiar force to governmental systems for the relief of poverty and distress.
Whoever, therefore, would analyze and explain the
Massachusetts system of public poor relief, a system
more elaborate, perhaps, than any other in the Western
world, comparable in its complexity with the age-old
development of Europe, must seek its impulses and
determiners in the social life of the early colonies, and
not only there, but in the political philosophy and the
mode of life of the English people, the seed from which
sprang the plantations of Plymouth and the Bay. It
is by this search into the beginnings of things, and by it
alone, that the slender thread of historical growth is to be
traced.
And, first, what was there in the English background
which might have predisposed the minds of our first
colonists in the production of this elaborate system of
poor relief?




CHAPTER I


THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND
PUBLIC poor relief in England grew out of a decaying
economic order, receiving its first impulses from the
menace of vagabondage, the victims and disciples of
which began to appear in ever-increasing numbers like
telltale fungi upon the surface of that decay. The system
that has come to be known as "the English Poor Law"
did not emanate complete from the mind of one theorist or
group of lawmakers; it is part of one great economic order
and represents the specific remedy for the running sore
of mendicancy, and the ever-present supplication of the
lame, the halt, and the blind, who must nevertheless have
bread. It has been the growth of centuries moulded and
shaped exactly to correspond to the course of economic
life in that long lapse of years. Nor is that system peculiar
to England. English industry has pursued in general
the same trend and has been subjected to the same
oscillations and shiftings as the economic experience of
western Europe. Likewise, her methods in the relief of
distress have pursued-in the early stages at least-a
similar and almost identical course. It is to be noted
only that, in the adoption of the earlier steps which established the basis of the Poor Law, England lagged somewhat behind the Continent.'
It is the purpose of this chapter to describe the condi1 Ashley, English Economic History, "The End of the Middle Ages," part ii,
p. $50.




4     POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


tions of living and labor among the English people during
the genesis of the Poor Law; so that the understanding and
the mental attitude of the early settlers of Massachusetts
toward the problem of distress and its relief may become
more apparent, and that the several steps of the system of
public poor relief now established in Massachusetts may
become more intelligible.
England at the end of the Middle Ages was an area
of isolated towns. Each community was self-contained;
as jealous of outside encroachment as the Oriental.
"Foreigners," as all persons who did not dwell within the
town were called, were looked upon with suspicion and
unceremoniously warned away.'
But the forces of nationalization were even then at
work. The increasing tendency toward international
trade was not to be stemmed. The markets of the English towns, in spite of themselves, became sensitive to the
production of the industries of western Europe. Manufactures expanded from that condition in which a master
with the help of one or two apprentices spun the yarn
and wove the cloth from his own shearing, to be sold to
some individual within his own narrow circle, to the condition of the domestic industry in which market was
sought beyond the confines of the town or parish, when
the cloth of Norwich and of Wiltshire became famous
throughout the land. In the sixteenth century the old
town system gave way gradually to an organization of
trade and industry that rested on the wider basis of the
national community.2
1 Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts (Putnam, 1914), p. 45. Ashley,
part in, p. 7.
s Ashley, part I, p. 42.




THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND


5


The decades covering this long metamorphosis were
years of paternalistic legislation. The Statute of Laborers
(1349) had sought to fix the wages of labor and to compel
all laborers to work.' By local regulation and a long series
of enactments by Parliament not only the wages of labor,
but the prices of food and other necessaries were fixed.2
Market was regulated with despotic assumption of authority. In addition it was sought by sumptuary laws to
regulate the dress, diet, and demeanor of all Englishmen.3
The governments of the several towns undertook to
buy corn with money gathered by private subscription
and retail it to the citizens at reasonable rates. Thus the
village granary was one of the public institutions of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England. After
1520 the funds for such purchases were quite generally
raised by taxation. In this manner there were created
the tools of government which at a later time became the
instrumentalities for the application of "the Poor Law."
The two hundred years following the Statute of Laborers brought forth a new epoch in English life. The manner of industry was changing and the mode of living
must needs change also. Men who had tilled the open
fields, and found a competence therein for themselves
and their wives and little ones, began to find themselves
without legal remedy against ruthless eviction. Their
lands were taken from tillage and put into pasture. Where
a hundred cottages had been aforetime, the lone shepherd
now wandered with his flocks, and the cottagers must
123 Edw. III, cap. i. See Pickering, Statutes at Large, vol. ii, p. 26.
23 Edw. III, cap. vi. See Ashley, part II, p. 31.
10 Edw. III, cap. II. See Cunningham, Early and Middle Ages, p. 809.




6     POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


perforce find other lands-not being skilled in a tradeand, failing such, to wander upon the highway. A large
portion of all the open tillage of England was in this manner enclosed for grazing between 1470 and 1530. The
economic system that was passing had presupposed adequate employment for all. Its great problem had been
to find labor to meet the demand. There was no army
of the unemployed. The able-bodied wanderer was by
definition, therefore, a ne'er-do-weel and an impostor.
All that was necessary was to punish him and to encourage the hand of charity in the relief of the sick and the
infirm. But now this one great factor of sufficient employment had fallen: for the first time there was a surplus
of labor; and men who were willing and able to work could
not find it. This maladjustment, together with the added
push of the land enclosures, forced hordes of self-respecting laborers upon the highway to seek work and to beg
bread.
Hardly had this first period of the enclosures drawn
to an end when another conversion of a more rapid sort
began. By 1531 there were in England several hundred
foundations of a religious nature, chiefly under monastic
orders. Some maintained hospitals which ministered to
the sick and provided care for the aged and impotent
as well. These religious houses maintained vast tracts
of land under intensive tillage. In that year all such
establishments below two hundred pounds in annual
rental were abolished and their lands taken over by the
Crown. In 1536 the remaining foundations were taken
over.
Though in this process of confiscation practically all
'those foundations that provided hospital and almshouse




THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND


care were continued in the performance of their functions,
and though historians agree that the transformation augmented the sum total of mendicancy little if at all,' there
was, nevertheless, a vast swarm of retainers and hangerson who found themselves without shelter, forced to the
highway to live by their wits.
Thus entered poverty in very earnest into the lives of
Englishmen and must be taken note of. If there was
work enough for all, it was not within the reach of all.
The laborer might not under the laws of that period
wander from his place of origin. The Statute of Laborers
had sought to supply agricultural labor and to prevent
wandering by providing that a laborer who was out of
work should be required to labor for those that had need
of him. In 1360 it was enacted that runaway artificers
and laborers might be brought back and branded in the
forehead.2 In 1388 a further check was added by the
provision that no apprentice should migrate at the expiration of his term without proof that he had employment
at the place of his destination.s These statutes, enacted
just after the Black Death, remained in force for a century and a half. To summarize their combined object,
they sought to force those to work who were able, and to
compel beggars who could not work to remain at home.
But though the sequel to this effort at staying the flood
of economic change by a statutory process of fixation
might be predicted with some certainty, its perspective
will be clearer if we turn back at this point to review
briefly the history of almsgiving in these same decades.
1 Hallam, Middle Ages (1878), vol. m. Ribton-Turner, Vagabonds and
Vagabondage, p. 85.
34 Edw. III, cap. x.  12 Rich. H. cap. nm




8     POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


In the Middle Ages the relief of the poor was by private
alms. It was not recognized as the business of the government.l It was left, therefore, entirely to the Church and
to private benevolence.' And the motive that universally prompted to the giving was the good of the giver's soul.
To this end it was fashionable to leave large sums in wills
for the foundation of hospitals. Later, in the fifteenth
century, the fashion turned to the establishment of almshouses. As a general comment, it may be said that the
prevailing tendency of charity in the later Middle Ages
was toward the establishment of foundations.
In the sixteenth century we find four major sources of
relief for the indigent, namely, the monasteries, the hospitals, the gilds, and individuals of large means. A brief
review of each of these channels will make clearer the
nature of the relief given and aid in estimating its probable
effect.
The monasteries in all ages gave to the poor. In no age
did their alms, due to the manner of their giving, tend to
reduce dependency. In the fifteenth and the sixteenth
centuries in western Europe and in England it is beyond
question that they fostered mendicancy and made paupers
of those who had been only poor.8
As the distress caused by the enclosures of common
lands forced able-bodied men in greater and greater numbers upon the highway to seek work or bread, the distribution of alms at the abbey gate became more extensive. The indiscriminate dole to all who applied was
I W. A. S. Hewins, Social England, vol. m, p. 365.
' Ashley, part II, p. 338.
s Froude, History of England, vol. I, p. 75. Ges. Ratzinger, Geschichte der
kirchlichen Armenpflege (2d ed. 1884), p. 319. Ribton-Turner, History of Vagrants, p. 85. Eden, State of the Poor, vol. I, p. 94.




THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND


9


never an adequate remedy for the wants of the individual.
At best it but stayed his stomach and warmed his chilled
limbs for the tramp to the next abbey. It was a process
calculated not to reduce mendicancy, but rather to breed
tramps. Whatever else the dissolution of the monasteries
may have accomplished, it did in fact stop up numerous
sources of pauperization.1
The history of the hospitals is similar. Beginning as
foundations for the relief of the sick and the housing of the
impotent poor, they fell by lapse of time under a great
abuse of benefices by those in charge. Whereas certain
stipends were expressed in the original donation to be for
the poor, the accumulation of property in such foundations frequently grew to such an extent as to afford fine
livings for the warden and his favorites, while the poor
went on receiving the groat or pittance originally appointed.2 The evil effect in the community was intensified by the practice of indiscriminate alms at the door.
Common tramps begged from hospital to hospital and
were in this manner passed from town to town in an endless circuit.3 In common with the monasteries, therefore,
these houses became nurseries for dishonest mendicancy.
As Ashley, the historian of English economics, puts it,
"the hospitals, while in one direction they did little good,
in other directions did much harm, and rendered necessary some wiser system."4
All the more important gilds, crafts, and fraternities in
this period maintained what was known as the "box"a fund in common devoted to the relief of poor members.
So usual was this practice that the phrase "to go on the


1 Ashley, part II, p. 317.      ' Froude, vol. I, p. 74.
8 Ribton-Turner, History of Vagrants, p. 81.    4Ashley, part is, p. 824.




10    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


box" was the current expression of the time for appealing
to the gild for charitable assistance.'
It was the custom to grant permission to borrow from
the common box, and in addition it was usual to grant a
small weekly stipend for the indigent member's maintenance. No gifts were large. Moreover, according to the
teaching of the day, the object in these alms was the good
of the giver's soul rather than the rehabilitation of the
member in distress.
Out of the inadequacy of such almsgiving grew the
practice among these companies of providing lodgings in
some sort for their poor; and it was a natural consequence
that these quarters grew steadily till they reached the
proportions of almshouses. They were sometimes known
as hospitals, though the relief afforded appears in the
beginning to have been no more than shelter; in the end
allowances for maintenance became the rule. The hospitals of the great gilds and companies differed scarcely at
all from the extensive religious foundations already mentioned. Their status with regard to mendicancy and the
relief of distress differed not at all.
The fourth major source of alms was the private
benefactions of persons of large means. For the good of
their souls, persons of rank and great wealth were given
to the custom of bequeathing money in their wills to the
poor or to ordering that food should be distributed at the
funeral to all who should come for it: as, for instance, "a
thousand half-penny loaves; a penny to each of a hundred
men; three pence to three hundred, and meat and drink
enough."2 Such alms were indiscriminate in the com

1 Ashley, part xI, p. 229.
2 Sharpe, lifiy Wills, 113, 11, 27; cited in Ashley, part Ii, p. 330.




THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND


11


pletest sense, and, in any true view of the public welfare,
vicious in the extreme. It was estimated that not less
than eight thousand persons claimed the dole at the
funeral of George, Earl of Shrewsbury, at Sheffield in
1591. The Chronicler adds that all of these persons must
have been resident within thirty miles of Sheffield.1
From the testimony of other contemporaries, the practice appears to have been very common among the
nobility of providing food and drink for many persons,
hundreds in some instances, daily: as perfect an incubator
for pauperism as could be devised. Stowe, quoted by
Morley, relates how he himself "in that declining time of
charity had oft seen at the Lord Cromwell's gate in London more than two hundred persons twice every day with
bread, meat and drink sufficient; for he observed that
ancient and charitable custom, as all prelates, noblemen,
or men of honor and worship, his predecessors, had done
before him."2
It is conceivable that alms so given might, nay were
fairly certain, in the course of a few generations to result
in the wholesale pauperization of the nation. There can
be little question that the greatest impelling force operating in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to foster
mendicancy and wilful dependency was not lack of employment; not social oppression of class by class; but this
same charity extended according to the ethical standards
of the day, for the good of the giver's soul, without reference to the true interests of the community.
It was the task of the Elizabethan lawmakers in greatest measure, to grapple with this process of decline, to
1 The Fal of Religiou Houses, Cole MSS. xit, fol. 25.
Survey (ed. Morley), pp. 114, 115; cited in Ashley, part n, p. 328.




12    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


create a system of poor relief which should inject into the
purposes of charity the necessity of fostering independence
in the individual. The result of those long years of effort
is the Poor Law. It grew from the ruins of a group of
customs in the giving of charity that failed: it was made
necessary, not by the enclosure of corn lands, nor yet
by the abolition of the religious houses,-in so far as
abolition for charitable uses did take place,-but rather
by the alarming growth of pauperism and beggary that
sprang up and persisted in spite of the religious houses and
the other instrumentalities for the giving of alms.
How great and how menacing was the extent of this
national decline is eloquently set forth in the laws that
followed each other in rapid succession, seeking, by repression, by persuasion, and finally by constructive charitable
assistance, to stem the tide.
It was not till 1536 that the impotent poor as a class
received recognition in this growing system of the Poor
Law.' Prior to that enactment and beginning with the
Statute of Laborers in 1349, Parliament had dealt solely
with the suppression of vagrancy. This effort was a
necessary part of the paternalistic system by which the
Government sought to protect the individual and to
regulate his conduct. The attitude of the lawmaking
body was not the creation of some means of reducing
mendicancy per se, but rather an effort to control the
welfare of all the subjects of the realm, and as part thereof
to suppress the social and political dangers that must
result from the presence of an ever-increasing horde of
tramps. The relief of the impotent poor was no part of
the plan: that function remained, as before, with the parish.
1 27 Hen. VIII, cap. 25. (1556.)




THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND


13


But it became increasingly apparent, even from the beginning of the overturn in English industry, that tramps,
as a group, would have to be classified. Not all beggars
were "sturdy" and "valiant." In these new days of
unemployment there were those of industrious habit and
worthy intent who were nevertheless dying of want.
Hence it was that the earliest measures touching dependents were confined wholly to the suppression of
beggary. The second phase was the recognition of the
impotent poor as a group apart, entitled to humane care.
The third aspect was the realization of the presence of
able beggars who were nevertheless worthy of relief; a
process which began with stern repression of vagrancy
concluded by evolving a comprehensive system of public
poor relief.
The earliest measures against tramping were severe.
By the Statute of Laborers (1349) it was slavery; in
1535 Henry VIII drew a statute for himself which inflicted death upon the third offence. Milder measures
soon succeeded, and, though stern repression still continued to be the mode of procedure, there soon crept into
the practice a greater humanity and a growing recognition
of the presence of worthy poor within the group who must
receive kindly support.
As we are here concerned with the system as it obtained
in fact in sixteenth and seventeenth century England,
rather than with the vital reasons for the growth of that
system, it is fundamental to note that the system which
later came to be the Poor Law of England grew out of the
practice of leading municipalities, adopted and carried
on by them decades in advance of the steps finally taken
by Parliament. It will suffice here to explain one or two




14    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


of those municipal schemes and thereafter to describe the
evolution of the Poor Law out of them as beginnings.
In London, chief market of the kingdom and therefore
the gathering place for all the wanderers of the land, a
series of measures was adopted between the years 1514
and 1524 for the purpose of reducing the plague of vagrants. All able-bodied tramps were forbidden to beg
and all citizens were forbidden to give alms to unlicensed
beggars. Public disgrace was visited upon the sturdy
vagabond by affixing the letter "V" upon his breast.
With this advertisement he was to be "dryven throughoute all Chepe with a basone rynging afore him." Four
surveyors were appointed to carry out these instructions.
In addition an office was created known as the "master
and cheff avoyder and keeper oute of this citie and the
liberties of the same of all the mighty vagabunds and
beggars, and all other suspecte persons, except all such as
were uppon thym the badge of this city."1
But these elementary provisions did not take care of
the meritorious poor. Hence that which began with the
punishment of vagrants very soon proceeded to measures
for the support of the impotent. This was first accomplished by issuing licenses to all persons entitled to beg.'
The poor were classified into succorless poor children, sick
and impotent persons, and sturdy vagabonds. Christ
Hospital was selected for the care of the children; licenses
were issued to the second group, the sick receiving care
in the hospitals of St. Bartholomew's and St. Thomas's;
while for the vagabonds a plan was devised of gathering
1 Repertories, iv, f. 154 b (City of London); cited in Leonard, Early Historg
of English Poor Relief, p. 25.
2 Idem, in, f. 174 b, and 192, 194.




THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND


15


them together in one place and making them work.
As a headquarters for this industry, the King gave the
city the mansion house of Bridewell.' It was 1553 before
the plan was in operation and still later, before the Bridewell, which was the last stage, was equipped.
The element in this scheme which was most important
in the development of local poor relief was the idea of
classification. From this time on it grew apace. The
beggar as an institution in community life began to be
looked upon as a thing apart from the poor, while the poor
as a large and increasing group in the body politic came to
be recognized more and more as a necessary public burden
instead of the object of sentimental philanthropy or caprice.
But the growth of this concept of community duty was
too slow to save the system in its original form. All
funds for its execution had come from voluntary contributions. They were not enough. The public was unused to being taxed for the relief of the poor; hence the
idea of compulsory poor rates had to grow slowly. As
early as 1547 London had devised a plan for collections
for the poor which contained a definite element of compulsion. Ipswich in 1557 had a compulsory poor rate.
Parliament in the years 1547-69 passed a series of statutes
devoted mainly to methods of securing funds for the relief
of the poor. Direct taxation seemed a last resort and was
come at with great reluctance. Alms were first ordered
to be given into the poor box on Sunday. The pastor was
to exhort delinquents.2 This failing, the bishop was to
admonish. In the end a fine was to be imposed. But,
as Parliament showed in the sequel, alms were not enough;
a poor rate had become essential.
Leonard, p. 84.  2 Se 5 Eliz. cap. 3.  (1563.)




16    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


The plans adopted by the City of London had to contend not only with the necessity of compulsory rates to be
imposed upon an unwilling public, but also upon a still
greater obstacle, which was the fact that the system was
municipal and not national. Whatever, therefore, the
city did to relieve the poor placed a premium upon that
municipality as a resort for beggars, while whatever it
did to drive out the swarms of vagrants and undesirables
resulted in like measures of defence in other towns. The
problem was national; the solution must needs be as broad
as all England.
In 1576 a precept of London ordered that, every fortnight at least, the constables, beadle, and church wardens
were to visit the houses of all the poor people in their
districts and were to order any of the new arrivals who
were unable to support themselves without burdening
the parish to be sent away.L This is the beginning of
the practice of "warning out," of which we shall hear much
in a later chapter.
Toward the end of the sixteenth century the system of
poor relief in London had crystallized into that final form
which became the model in many respects for the national
system which grew observantly in those same decades and
culminated in the comprehensive statute of 1597.2
Vagrants in this city plan were dealt with by the municipal system working through the hospitals. The impotent
were relieved by the parochial officials. All idle youth
were to be sent to the Bridewell, where labor had so far
progressed that in this period as many as twenty-five
occupations were in operation. Parochial officials were


I Journals of the Common Council of London, vol. xx, no. 2, p. 323.
2 39 Eliz. cap. 3.




THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND


17


to exercise strict surveillance over all the poor and were
to provide the impotent with outdoor relief. City officers
were to punish vagrants and find work for the unemployed. As a means of outlet, the governors of the Bridewell were to urge shipmasters to employ their men and a
register was to be kept of the names of employers who
were willing to give employment to the poor.
In general, it may be said that in the period from 1569
to 1597 in London there was great activity, but not a
large measure of success. It was a period of growth of
organization rather than of successful administration.1
What has been said of London might be repeated of
other English municipalities. In a few instances the
idea at the bottom of the London orders may have originated elsewhere. Norwich, especially, was one of the
forward towns in its efforts to solve the problems of poor
relief.
In that community St. Paul's had been established as a
municipal hospital in 1565 and a part of it thereafter used
as a house of correction. In 1570 the city instituted a new
system. A census revealed two thousand beggars within
the municipal limits. It was found also that the poor
were fast increasing and no means taken to reduce
the numbers. Half of all these beggars revealed by the
census were children. Following the census, the mayor
issued an order forbidding begging in the streets and
requiring all strange beggars to depart. Offenders were
to receive six stripes with the whip. A noteworthy part
of the arrangement was the choice of "selectwomen" in
each ward to receive women, maidens, and children
"whose parents are not hable to pay for theyr learninge."
I Leonard, p. 101.




18    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


These were to be so taught "as labore and learninge shall
be easier than idleness." The citizens of Norwich reported
that the estimated saving in money over the old system
of relief was ~2818 10s. 4d. in the year.'
Inhabitancy was guarded with a jealous eye. To the
reader of Massachusetts town records these old entries
have a familiar sound. Thus Jane Thornton is to depart
because she "in summer live in the countrie but in wint'
charge the citie."2 Again, "Richard Birch and his familie
to go to Thorpe though not at this time in receipt of alms."3
We read in the annals of Ipswich4 that searches were
ordered to be made forthwith "for newcommers and servants, retained for less than one yere." This duty was
to be rendered by "searchers for new commers into the
Towne." All newcomers were to be warned to depart.
The practice of warning out was universal. St. Albans
required monthly searches, the searchers "in the limits of
their several wards" to "make search for such new comers
to the town as being poor may be likely to be chargeable
to the same, and if they shall find any such-to give notice
thereof to Mr. Mayor, that order may be taken for their
sending away."6 In this same town of St. Albans the
plan sought to provide training as well as employment for
the tradeless poor, the output of their labor to be marketed
in the usual manner through the company governing that
craft.
It is instructive to note a further instance of the local
practice of guarding against the influx of the poor, as
they represent the original of the universal system of
I Leonard, p. 105.  9 Cited in Leonard, p. 106.  ' Idem.
4 Annals of Ipswich, Nathaniel Bacon, pp. 249, 349.
6 Corporation Records of St. Albans, A. E. Gibbs, p. 14, Oct. 1, 1596; quoted
in Leonard, p. 108.




THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND


19


bonding once prevalent in New England. In the St.
Albans records we read that John Thompson took a poor
woman into his house, who was to become chargeable.
Whereupon she was ordered to quit the borough.' John
Palmer was admitted a free man, a Thomas Browne
undertaking that Palmer's children should not become
chargeable to the borough.2
York in 1578 raised ~400 for "settying the poor of this
citie on worke." One half of this sum was by private
contribution. Lincoln established a technical school at
public expense.8
The most usual method of treatment for vagrants and
unemployed poor throughout the municipalities of England was the establishment of houses of correction.
Out-relief by the parochial authorities varied little in
its method or its nature from parish to parish. It is
possible to trace the growth of a small capital known as the
church stock or store, the income of which was devoted to
out-relief. For the student of New England customs it is
important to note that this capital frequently took the
form of live stock which was let out to the use of needy
parishioners. In the words of Lever,
there were in some towns six, some eight, and some a dozen
kyne, gyven into a stocke, for the reliefe of the poore, and used
in such wyse that the poore cotingers, which coulde make any
provision for fodder, had the milk for a very small hyre; and
then, the number of the stock reserved, all manner of vailes
besydes-both the hyre of the mylke, and the pryces of the
younge veales, and olde fat wares-was disposed to the reliefe
of the poore.4
1 Records of St. Albans, p. 24, April 15, 1588.   Idem, Feb. 5, 1587/8.
8 Lincoln Hast. Man. Corn., Report xiv, App. vII; quoted in Leonard, p. 111.,
4 Lever's Sermon before the King, 1550, in Arber's Reprint, 82; quoted in
Ashley, part II, p. 311.




20    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


Turning once more from these instances of local practice to the question of national development, it may be
stated that in the main the London plan fairly illustrates
that growth of local custom into a body of procedure
which later appeared under the phrasing of Acts of
Parliament as the law of the land.
It was a growth as natural as the concepts of our common law. It was therefore abiding.
The enactment of 1597,1 affirmed and added to slightly
by the Statute of 1601,2 is the culmination of this long
evolution by experimentation. It is a codification of the
successful municipal practices, creating nothing new, but
the nationalization of those customs and their combination into a rational system of poor relief. It remained the
law for two hundred and thirty-five years without material change; and in its fundamentals is still the law of
England. The Act of 1572 had created the office of
Overseer of the Poor. The final codification rendered
that office more specific and placed upon these functionaries the duty of initiating action. With the consent of
the justices they should set poor children and ablebodied dependents to work. They were to raise by taxation sufficient funds with which to buy stock for such
labor and for all other outlays in relieving the indigent.
They were to meet once a month. If the parish should
prove to be unable to raise sufficient funds, the justices
might levy upon other parishes. Imprisonment was
visited upon delinquent taxpayers. The same penalty
was to be visited upon any person who refused to do the
work appointed by the overseer and upon an overseer
who refused to account.
89 Eliz. cap. 8.  43 Eliz. cap. 2.




THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND


21


The overseers, with the consent of the justices, might
apprentice children till the males reached twenty-four
and the females twenty-one. The parents and grandparents and the children of any indigent person were to
be liable to support him, and failing therein were subject
to fine.
Rising as it did in these springs of local custom, the
course of the statute law of charities reflects the same
transition from repression to recognition and from recognition to compulsory relief. The period of repressive
legislation begins with the Statute of Laborers in 1349 and
merges into the stage of recognition in the period between
the Slavery Act of 1547 and the Poor Law of 1572. The
Act of 1547 recognized the impotent poor as worthy of
parochial relief and directed local authorities to provide
them with habitations. The measure of 1572 condemned
the vagrant to death as a felon.
In this first stage of development the lame, the halt, and
the blind were regarded as the proper objects of private
alms, but no concern of the Government; while the vagabond-because honest labor could always find employment and because the highway beggar was also a highway robber on occasion, eligible to the following of any
regenade prince-was looked upon as an enemy of society.
Economic readjustment, in the main, and unwise charity,
to a lesser degree, produced the vagrant. Nevertheless,
the theory of legislation regarding him was that punishment, if made severe, would correct the evil.
How ill-founded was this principle of action is revealed
in a search, instituted throughout the realm by the Privy
Council in 1569, which discovered no less than thirteen
thousand of these "masterless men." In the 22d of Henmy




22    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


VIII (1531) the impotent poor were given license to beg.
The unlicensed beggar was to be whipped at the carttail. A second offence resulted in another whipping and
the loss of part of one ear. A third offence repeated the
whipping and cost him the other ear. This statute took no
account of the fact that beggars must eat, and that there
might be, and in fact undoubtedly were, tramps who would
have worked for their food if work could be had. No
method of relief was afforded.
This omission was supplied in part in the next statute
(27 Henry VIII, cap. 25, 1536), which sought to provide
public employment for able-bodied beggars. It was the
first reaction from the local practice of setting the poor
on work, though its immediate occasion was, no doubt,
the widespread distress which a decade of bad harvests
had brought upon the laboring population.1 This act
forbade alms of any kind to unlicensed beggars.
The Statute of 1547 already referred to, repeated the
principle of the Act of 1536 that the worthy poor are the
proper objects of local public relief, but failed, as formerly,
to provide a method of raising funds. The citizen was
to make his donations to the poor box on a Sunday as
before, and this fund was the sole dependence of the new
burdens imposed by the statute.
It will be recalled that these years from 1547 to 1569
were times of extensive experimentation in poor relief by
the towns of England. The greatest drawback to success
in these enterprises was the inadequacy of contributions
and the unwillingness of the public to assume the burdens
of the poor as an object of taxation. This dilemma was
directly reflected in the Statutes of 1555 and 1563 which
1 Ashley, part ni, p. 356.




THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND


represent the years of groping for some adequate means
of financing the now recognized burden of poor relief.
The Act of 1555 provided that
if any person, being able to further this charitable work, do
obstinately and forwardly refuse to give towards the help of
the poor, the parson, vicar, or curate and churchwardens of
the parish shall gently exhort him.L
It was inevitable that exhortation must give way to compulsion if the wealth of unsympathetic citizens was to be
counted upon to feed and care for the poor, whose needs
were urgent and could not be postponed. The succeeding
Act of 15632 increased the penalty for refusing to serve as
a collector and made contribution to the poor rate obligatory. Prison was to be the punishment for failure.
This was the vital step necessary to a comprehensive
system of poor relief. No programme could be worked
out without a guarantee of sufficient funds with which
to execute it.
In 1572 came the first important constructive statute.'
By this act the overseers of the poor came into being,
though it was not until 1597 that this functionary became
charged with the duty of initiating measures for the relief
of the poor.
The justices of the peace were to make registers of the
names of the poor in each parish and habitations were to
be provided for them. Each month the mayor and high
constable were to make search for indigent strangers and
were to send all such back to their own neighborhood. To
this advance was added the new feature of employment
for able-bodied beggars and a place of detention for the


12 & S Will. & Mary, cap. 5; ~ 5.
814 Eliz. cap. 5.


' 5 Eliz. cap. 8.




24    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


unworthy. With this recognition of the need of employment for the worthy and compulsory labor for the unworthy, the middle stage of development of the Elizabethan poor law may be said to have reached its climax.
The third stage brought greater emphasis upon the
relief of the poor with a consequent remission of the heavy
penalties of the old statutes. The great codifying Act
of 1597, which in its final form (43 Eliz. cap. 2, 1601)
is the text of the great English Poor Law, is the third and
final stage of that growth. It provided for the appointment yearly of overseers of the poor who were made respcnsible for the relief of distress. They were to set -the
children of indigent persons to work, were to provide a
stock and set all the able-bodied poor to work, to relieve
the lame, impotent, old, blind, and such other among
them being poor and not able to work; finally they
were to levy and collect taxes for all such purposes. They
were to meet once a month under penalty of a fine of
twenty shillings for being absent without cause. If any
parish should be found unable to relieve its poor in the
fashion contemplated by the act, the churchwardens and
overseers were empowered to levy upon any or all other
parishes in the same hundred to make up the deficiency.
Failing the hundred, the justices might levy upon any or
all parishes in the county. Failure to pay taxes was punished by confinement in the common jail.
The churchwardens and overseers, with the assent of
two of the justices, might apprentice the children of indigent parents to the ages of twenty-four for males and
twenty-one, or till marriage, for females. They might,
after agreement with the lord of the manor, erect dwellings upon waste or common lands for the impotent poor: in




THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND


25


which house, also, they might quarter more than one family.
By this act, too, "the father and grandfather, and the
mother and grandmother, and the children of every poor,
old, blind, lame, and impotent person, or other poor
person not able to work, being of sufficient ability," was
obliged at his own charge to relieve and maintain such
dependent, the penalty for failure to be twenty shillings
for each month of such neglect. The justices, whose duty
it was to appoint the overseers, were subjected to a fine of
~5 for failure in that duty. They were to fix the rate of
the weekly assessment for the poor, and might levy upon
the property of delinquent taxpayers.
A further logical extension of this relieving process was
the provision that the justices should assign a definite portion of the yearly poor rates for the relief of the prisoners
of the King's Bench and the Marshalsea. All surplus
funds remaining after the execution of all purposes of the
statute were to go to the relief of "the poor hospitals of
that county and of those that shall sustain losses by fire,
water, the sea, or other casualties, and to such other purposes, for the relief of the poor, as to the more part of the
said justices of peace shall seem convenient."
With the opening of the seventeenth century, then,
England had hammered into shape the principles of her
Poor Law. She had defined the relationship of the State
to the individual, in the light of which relationship she
had declared that the citizen who could not help himself
should be helped by the whole community, and that
every citizen enjoying the advantages of government
should be obliged to contribute for the relief of those in
distress in the same way that he should contribute to
maintain Parliament or keep up the Navy. From this




26    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


time on, the problems in English poor relief became problems of administration rather than struggles of a prenatal progress from chaos to order. The reign of Elizabeth was the critical period in the social evolution of
English-speaking peoples. It is not unmindful of the
upward-looking centuries that have followed, to say that
here, in the sixteenth century, fell the great issue of the
citizen and his duties to his fellows and that it was met by
establishing a high standard of moral obligation as a principle of government. Like the establishment of a basic
concept of the common law, it was then fixed and shall
be forever followed.
Not until 1834, two hundred and thirty-five years after
the passage of the great Elizabethan statute, was any
serious question raised as to the efficacy of the Poor Law,
nor were its fundamentals even then disturbed. The
Poor Law Commission of that year dealt with abuses of
administration.
One special point among these problems of administration remains to be noted. It was soon found that, though
the obligations of the citizen had been defined, it was
difficult to maintain an equable apportionment of the
burdens of poor relief among the several communities.
If the wandering poor came always to London, it meant
increasing burdens for that city. The evidence of poor
law practice shows also that the outlying community
was wont to pass its poor along toward this mecca of
vagabonds. The practice of "passing-on" became an
evil unmixed with good, either for the poor or for the
municipality. Numerous regulations had been made
with intent to prevent wandering, but the connivance of
petty officials had nullified their operation. The Cavalier




THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND


Parliament in 1662 passed the Act of Settlement. The
reason as stated in the preamble was that,
by reason of some defects in the law, poor people are not restrained from going from one parish to another, and therefore
do endeavor to settle themselves in those parishes where there
is the best stock, the largest commons or wastes to build cottages, and most woods for them to burn and destroy, and when
they have consumed it, then to another parish, and at last
become rogues and vagabonds, to the great discouragement of
parishes to provide stocks, where it is liable to be devoured by
strangers.
The statute provided that, upon complaint within forty
days after arrival of any person coming into the parish to a
habitation below ~2 in yearly rental, such person might,
on warrant of the justices, be removed to the parish where
he was "last legally settled, either as a native, householder,
sojourner, apprentice or servant, for the space of forty
days at the least."'
This measure was calculated to equalize the parish
burdens, but it set up barriers to the mobility of labor
that offset, in all likelihood, the advantages thus gained.
As Trevelyan puts it:
This unfortunate measure enabled the authorities to prevent
a laborer from moving into a parish, even if he had obtained
employment within its bounds, if they feared that he might
some day in the future come upon its poor rates. The power
granted by this act was frequently and stupidly exercised by
zealous rate-payers, the fluidity of labor was checked, and the
working-class deprived of personal and economic freedom for
over a hundred and thirty years.2
These were the great issues of the first settlement law
'14 Chas. II, cap. 12.
' Trevelyan, Appendix, p. 563. See also Leonard, pp. 132, 274, 277, 296,
297; Cunningham, pp. 563, 570,571.




28    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


of England, and, as will appear, they were the issues also
of the settlement laws of New England.
Viewing the analysis of the English system in a sweeping glance, it is of importance for our purpose to observe
that the years of greatest activity in poor law experimentation were years of great economic distress. The Statute
of Laborers followed the years of the Black Death. The
provisions of Henry VIII followed the period of riots
which resulted from the scarcity of corn. Between the
years 1594 and 1597 people starved in the streets due to
scarcity of corn; in 1597 came the comprehensive Poor
Law of Elizabeth.' Beginning with the year 1622 widespread distress due to poor crops created another crisis
which was met in the Poor Law system by the creation of
a Commission for the Poor and the issuance of a book
of orders which prescribed the method of administration
of the Poor Law.
Conversely, years of prosperity were years of softening
and decline in the system of poor relief. When the owners
of property ceased to tremble at the menace of vagabondage, the laws against vagrants failed of enforcement. In
like manner, when work was plentiful and prices of staples
low, the relief of distress ceased to be an object of first
concern. These tendencies were natural, wherefore they
are to be found in the new England as well as in the old.
The foregoing paragraphs seek to show in a hasty
glimpse the determiners and the controlling factors in the
upbuilding of the English system. It was evolved out of
the village habits of Englishmen. It was in fact what
through the lapse of centuries the English cottager had
come to believe ought to be done to keep the individual
1 Leonard, p. 118.




THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND              29
from distress without encouraging dependency. And
since it arose thus intimately out of the daily life of the
people, whoever of those villagers should wander, be it
into the far places of the earth, would carry its principles
with them and would seek to meet the old distress in the
way their fathers knew.
Of a fair morning in September, 1620, there passed down
the harbor of Plymouth and out to the sea a dingy vessel
on whose forward deck crouched a motley group of men,
women, and children. This was the ship Mayflower and
these were the first of the English villagers who founded
the new England in America.




CHAPTER II


SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF NEW ENGLAND
THE first village community of white men in New England
began at Plymouth, in 1620. It was followed by new
centres of growth at Boston, Salem, and other points of
vantage along the shore. All of these establishments
were alike in that basis of their organization which made
each free man a partner in a joint enterprise, whereby
each should benefit to the extent of the common ability,
and for which each must labor. Each planted corn for
the common good and each reaped for "Y0 Generall."
And though joint ownership in the harvest and the stores
of the settlement very soon gave way to individual enterprise and ownership, the joint interest in the common
lands survived, and perpetuated the remarkable solidarity
of the New England town. Rights in common lands have
been jealously guarded and are to this day the basis for
political struggle and the pitting of factional interest
against the ancient rights of the townsmen.'
A necessary corollary to this structure of government
was the grouping of the entire society into family units.
No single person not a free man could remain detached.
If it was a child, there must be a sponsor of some sort to
care for it; if a servant, he or she was bound by rigorous
terms of indenture the breach of which was a grave
offence, and the master in return must support his servant,
saving the community harmless. He was liable also for
1 Witness the history of Boston Common, in particular with regard to its use
for public utilities and the solution of transit problems.




SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF NEW ENGLAND 31


the torts of his indentured servant. In December, 1636,
it was enacted in the Bay Settlement that no servant be
set free before the end of his term, all towns, "To order,
and dispose of all single persons, and inmates within their
town to service, or otherwise."'
The practice in the Plymouth Settlement was similar.
Thus, June 5, 1638, Web Adey,
for disorderly liueinge in idlenesse & nastynes, is censured by
the bench to sitt in the stocks during the pleasure of the bench,
and that if he cannot pcure himself a master that will take him
into his service betwixt this and the next court of Assistants,
that then the goun' & assistante pvide a master for him; and
for the convenient apparelling of him to be fitt for service, either
to lett or sell his house & garden to any that will either take or
purchase the same.2
In like manner John Wakefield (December 4, 1638),
psented for living out of service, hath tyme given him to puide
him a master, after he hath served a month wth Mr. John Howland.3
The laws of the Plymouth Colony crystallized this insistence upon the family unit in enactment, probably in 1670:
Wheras great inconuenience hath arisen by single psons in
this collonie being for themselves and not betaking themselves
to live in wel gourned families It is enacted by the Court that
henceforth noe single pson be suffered to live of himselfe or in
any family but such as the Celectmen of the Towne shall approue of; and if any pson or psons shall refuse or neglect to
attend such order as shall be giuen them by the Celectmen;
That such pson or psons shall be sumoned to the Court to be
proceeded with as the matter shall require.4
1 Ancient Charters and Laws of Massachusetts Bay. Published by order of
General Court, Boston, 1814.
2Records of Plymouth Colony, "Court Orders." Ed. by Nathaniel Shurtleff, 1855. Reprint by order of Commonwealth, vol. I, p. 87.  8 Idem, p. 106.
4 Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, "Laws," 1623-82.
Ed. by David Pulsifer, 1861, vol. xI, p. 223.




32    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


The single young men whose presence was tolerable to
the colonists were described by Bradford as those only
that were of abillity, and free, and able to governe them selvs
with meete discretion, and their affairs, so as to be helpfull in ye
Comone-welth.1
The colonists were poor in worldly goods. Their very
lives depended upon the slender crops they could raise
from a stubborn soil in a short summer, and the industry
with which they built themselves habitations and defences against the natives. There were no fine gentlemen
with retainers among them, nor other of the symptoms
of social decay. They were a horny-handed band of
pioneers working all of the day; devout in their worship;
intolerant of sloth and any sort of privilege. It is small
wonder, therefore, that they should be prone to interpret
the rights of the individual in the light only of the common weal. The stranger was not admitted to inhabit
without proof of his competence to give to the community
as much at least as he might receive. And once admitted,
even though a free man, if he ran an idle and thriftless
course, the court did not hesitate to take his freedom
away. Thus, under date of October 6, 1659, John Barnes,
William Newland, Henery Howland, and Richard Beare
were convicted by law, and sentanced by the court to bee
desfranchised of their freedome of this corporation; the said
John Barnes, for his frequent and abominable drunkenes, and
William Newland and Henery Howland for theire being abettors and entertainers of Quakers, contrary to the aforesaid
order; likewise Richard Beare, of Marshfield, for being a grossly
scandalouse pson, debaughed, haueing bine formerly convicted
of filthy, obseane practises, and for the same by the Court
sentanced... he was likewise sentanced to bee disfranchised
of his freedome of this corporation.2
1 Bradford History, State Print, 1901, p. 258. 2 Shurtleff, vol. in, p. 176.




SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF NEW ENGLAND 33


The head of the family was compelled to support his
dependents, and failing therein was himself frequently
put out to service, his children indented and his family
broken up.
This hard necessity which constituted the driving force
behind the daily lives of the first New Englanders must be
kept clearly in mind when the records of public poor relief
are examined. What seems on the written page like hard
and begrudging charity was, in fact, the even-handed
justice of townsfolk who themselves felt the pinch of
poverty and who extended relief to their less fortunate
neighbors without stint, resorting to the public treasury
only when the burden dragged too heavily.
It should be remembered also that these same townsmen came from village communities in England where
pauperism-that ill-born offspring of poverty and unwise
giving-hung like a millstone about the necks of the ratepayers. The town records of New England amply show
that the early settlers were determined that wilful poverty
should find no lodgment in the new England. The poor
would be helped, but it must be proved that they could
no longer help themselves and had no kin who owed them
support. Vagrancy, as was seen in the last chapter, had
become a scourge in old England. In the new land the
bread that fed the tramp must come from the scanty
store of the laboring man, depriving his little ones.
If these factors of Old-World experience, of present
poverty, of necessity for great individual exertion, are
given due weight in our consideration of the chill and
unsympathetic annals of these first American overseers
of the poor, a flood of understanding will attend our study
of the upgrowth of our present-day system of poor relief




3   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS
with its complicated law of settlement and its long continuance of the town as the primary agent in public
charity. It is the purpose now to trace the development
of the Massachusetts law of settlement, proceeding from
that to the system of public poor relief.




CHAPTER III


INHABITANCY AND THE GENESIS OF
THE SETTLEMENT LAW
A LAW of settlement is a statutory rule for the determination of jurisdictional responsibility for public expenditures
made on account of persons in distress. It is an arbitrary
arrangement, designed to distribute such burdens equitably. As the basis of settlement is the degree of attachment which the citizen has to the town or community in
question, the modern law of settlement grows naturally
out of the early rules of inhabitancy. The attitude of the
town toward the stranger coming within its limits to
dwell, and its unceasing struggles to unload the burdens
of poor relief upon some other jurisdiction, are, therefore,
the circumstances out of which has grown that arbitrary
rule of the present day which we call our law of settlement.
The pioneer town was well-nigh absolute in the sovereignty which it maintained within its boundaries. Its
townsmen expressed their objections to the newcomer with
brutal frankness and refused inhabitance without compunction. The reasons for closing the gates upon the
stranger were various, but may be resolved on the evidence of town records into these two basic requirements,
namely:
1. Incompatibility of religious belief; and
2. Likelihood of early public dependency.
Throughout the first years of the Plymouth and the
Bay Settlements the second of these reasons was the cause




36    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


of constant apprehension, but the first bespoke an essential
requirement for the lack of which the stranger was not
only warned to keep away, but might with even mild
persistence bring himself under active persecution. The
briefest review of the hardships of the congregation at
Scrooby and the religious intolerance which gave birth,
to the first migration readily explain the care with which
these uncompromising thinkers examined the beliefs and
the purposes of the stranger who came among them to
dwell.
It was an age when the forms and symbols of religious
worship were exalted as the essence of faith itself; and
welcome to the newcomer meant welcome to his strict orthodoxy even before it meant appreciation of his worldly
estate. The old records are replete with the evidence
of this spiritual diagnosis made at the landing-slip. Thus,
when the village of Sandwich, one of the first of the New
England towns to suffer the horrid apostasy of the Quaker,
complained to the court that there were persons in that
town of questionable church views who assumed to take
part in town affairs, the old rule of October, 1639, making
approval a requisite to legal inhabitancy, was at once
invoked and nine good householders of that town were
forbidden to act in town meeting.
And for the better carrying on of afaires among them, in
order to the end of the courts granting the Plantation, it is
therefore ordered, that noe man shall hence forth bee admitted
an inhabitant into Sandwich, or injoy the priviledges thereof,
without the approbation of the Church, and Mr Th5 Prence, or
any of the Assistants whoe they shall choose.1
On another occasion, certain persons were summoned


1 1659.  Shurtleff, vol. in, p. 159.




GENESIS OF THE SETTLEMENT LAW


37


before the court at Plymouth for living in the jurisdiction
without leave. As the court expressed it, "lieuing lonely
and in a heathenish way from good socitie, not attending
the public worship of God." They were ordered to attend
worship or depart the government.'
But the jealous watchfulness of the pioneer should not
be judged solely by the cold, unsympathetic wording of
the records. The margin of subsistence was so narrow
that starvation stalked through the dreary months of
more than one chill winter. There was urgent need, therefore, that the settlers guard their hearth-fires against the
indigent and the incompetent.
That the struggling pioneer did deal generously with
those who sought the hospitality of his town is evidenced
many times over in the minutes of selectmen's proceedings
and in the votes taken at town meeting.
William Douglas is allowed to be a townsman, he behaving
himselfe as becometh a Christian man.2
William Baker, of Water Towne, is lycensed to come to
dwell wthin this gouent puided he bring good testy mony of his
good convesacon.3
John Web, Brasier, was admitted to inhabitt in the towne
six months, and if he behave himselfe well, for longer tyme.4
Naturally a tippler was appraised at a low value. Thus,
the selectmen are informed that he has several hundred acres
of land in Connecticut, but that a glass of good liquor stands
a very narrow chance when it lies in his way.5
But the fact that the newcomer had near kin in town
11675. Shurtleff, vol. v, p. 169.
I Boston Town Records, Aug. 31, 1640, 2 Rep. Rec. Cor., vol. i, p. 55.
Plymouth Colony Records, "Court Orders," Nov. 5, 1638, Shurtleff, vol. I,
p. 106.   4 Boston Town Records, 2 Rep. Rec. Comm'rs, vol. I, p. 106.
5 Records of Town of Canton, 1734. See Huntorn, History of Canton, pp. 251,
252.




38    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


aided him little. The Dorchester Records for 1670 afford
an example: notice was given to Henery Merrifield
to dischage the towne of his daughter Funnell which hath
been at his hous about a weeke; unless he gitt a note under the
hands of the Selectmen of Melton that they will receaue her
again if need be and to look at her as an inhabitant of their
towne, notwithstanding her residence at her father's hous for
the prsent.'
Fathers were quite uniformly required to give bond to
save the town harmless against the possible dependency
of sons or daughters by marriage who came to reside
with them or else get the offending stranger out of town.
And apparently, this interdiction applied to both parties to the marriage regardless of previous inhabitancy
of the wife.  Especially severe seems the treatment of
widows. Instances are frequent where inhabitancy has
been refused. Thus, in the Dorchester Records:
William Sumner was desired to speak with the widdow Hims
(who is lately come into this towne) to informe her that she
must returne to the place whence she came.
And if she were admitted, and became a pauper, we shall
see, in the chapter on the town's poor, that her lot was
not much brighter.
If another town were willing to guarantee the return of
a newcomer, it was customary to permit such to dwell
temporarily. Thus, December 12, 1665, the Boston selectmen send a note to the Dorchester selectmen by
the widow Collins requesting that she may be permitted
to pass the winter there and engaging that her reception
shall not disoblige Boston from the duty owed her as an


1 Records of Town of Dorchester, Jan. 1670.




GENESIS OF THE SETTLEMENT LAW


39


inhabitant of that town. In the absence of agreement
the process was simple, direct and purposeful:
January 6, 1698/9. If Belthiah Wilkenson doe corn or be
sent from Salem to this town, the Selectmen of this town atend
ye law jn sending her back again.'
When a person was admitted as an inhabitant, it was
usual to vote in town meeting that he be given a piece of
land for his dwelling. Thus in Cambridge, May 21, 1688:
It was alsoe then votted on the affirmitive that the inhabitants
would give to Thomas Stacy of this town Smith a piece of
ground behind his shop of twenty-six ffoott long, and ninteen
foott broad, to sett a house upon, to continue a settled inhabitant amongst us.2
A newcomer having received a certain concession of the
use of the sidewalk to accommodate his trade, objection
was raised to his presence and
uppon complaint of several inhabitants with reference to a
former grannt and liberty grannted to Mr John Hayman to make
use of the highway from Esaias Read Corner towards the
watter side, Yett notwithstandinge wee see cause to continnue
the same liberty untell the next springe; duringe which time he
is only to make fishing linnes, if not mett incourdgmt, then to
leave the towne betwixt this and the last of Aprill next.3
As early as 1636 Plymouth Colony set up an absolute
rule to regulate the newcomer. Under date of March
7, it was enacted
that no pson coming from other ptes bee alowed an inhabitant
of this jurisdiction but by the approbacon of the gou' and two
of the magistrates att least.4
1 Records of Town of Malden. See D. P. Carey, History of Malden. Maiden,
1899.
2 Town and Selectmen's Records, Newtowne and Cambridge, 1630-1703.
Cambridge, 1901.
3 Boston Town Records, 2 Rep. Rec. Cor., vol. vix, p. 11 (Sept. 29, 1662).
4 Revision of the Colony Laws, 1658; Pulsifer, vol. xi, part II, p. 118.




40    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


And on December 4, 1638, an attempt was made to
check the elusive skipper:
It is enacted by the court that if any master of a Boate shall
bring any passengers or suffer any to be broght in his Boate
into any plantacon wthin the goiument (and not haue leaue so
to doe either from the goiument or Committees of the place)
shall keepe them whilst they stay and recarry them and their
goods to the place from whence they came.'
The Plymouth regulation upon inhabitancy was quickly followed by the Boston town authorities; for under
date of May 9, 1636, appears the following entry in their
records:
Ordered that no townsmen shall entertaine any strangers into
their houses for above 14 dayes without leave from those that
are appointed to order the townes businesses.2
The strangers who came to the new colonies were seldom wealthy. It may be too much to say that communities blessed with worldly goods to the point of
physical contentment never migrate: but certain it is
that in the history of all colonization the poor man, the
rolling stone, the family struggling for bread are the main
reliance for recruits. There were persons of consequence
in the new enterprise-men of substance; but for the
most part those who came at the outset and those who
straggled in on the ships which came for cargo were poor
men often accompanied by their families, with nothing
but the husband's trade to stand between them and
starvation. The towns of the new England could not
prevent these persons from embarking from their homes,
1 Pulsifer, vol. xx, p. 80.
s Boston Town Records, 2 Rep. Rec. Cor., vol. I, p. 3. See also similar orders
in Records of Cambridge, Sept. 11, 1644; Town and Selectmen's Records, Newtowne and Cambridge, 1630-1703. Cambridge, 1901.




GENESIS OF THE SETTLEMENT LAW


41


nor could they prevent debarkation on the American
shore. Many were landed secretly. Many were put
ashore at one port only to be hurried out of that town
in the direction of another. As might be expected, therefore, the requirement-that all newcomers must pass the
approval of the town officials-was not likely to solve
the problem without further machinery to discover the
stranger in his place of hiding and to deal with him, once
his dependent condition became known.
One of these additional safeguards appears to have
been a rule that no owner of property should sell to a
stranger without approval of the authorities. Under date
of May 13, 1636, such a sale was held void:1
We finde that Richard Fairbanke hath sould unto twoe
strangers the twoe houses in Sudbury end that were William
Balstones, contrary to a former order, and therefore the sayle
to bee void, and the said Richard Fairbanke to forfeite for his
breaking thereof XLB.
Similar regulations were repeated by the Plymouth
Court when in 1657 the people of Taunton went to the
court with their complaint against the influx of undesirable strangers. The record is as follows:
Whereas complaint is made to the court by the inhabitants
and townsmen of Taunton, that sundry unworthy and defamed psons have thrust themselves into the said towne to inhabit there, not haveing approbacon of any two magistrates according to an order of the court, and contrary to the minds of
divers of the inhabitants, to their greivance, the court, haueing
taken their condition into seriouse consideration, doth order,1. that noe such pson bee intertained by any inhabitant
of the towne, on the penaltie of forfeiting twenty shillinges
for every weeke that they shall intertaine them without
the approbacon of the five selectmen appointed to order
Boston Town Records, 2 Rep ReRec. Cor., vol. i, p. 4.




42    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


the publicke affaires of the towne; and inspeciall, that
William Paule and his wife bee forthwith expelled the
towne.
2. Likewise, it is ordered, that you give warning to youer
townsmen, that noe pson or psons of youer towne do sell,
hier, or giue house or land to any pson, so as thereby
to bring them in to bee inhabitants amongst them, but
such as haue approbacon of two of the magistrates att
least, according to an ancient order of court, as they
will answare theire contempt in doeing the contrary.'
But a factor yet to be mentioned-greater than the
incompatibility of religious faith or mere poverty of the
otherwise competent-left its indelible mark upon the
minds of the colonial townsmen, and made them ever
suspicious of the stranger. This was the practice followed
by the English Poor Law officials of dumping their undesirables upon the colonies. This custom, unworthy of a
civilized nation, if judged by the standards of to-day,
but not unusual in those times, was too sedulously practiced by the mother country to admit of doubt; and,
though the greatest offences occurred after the colonies
had become free, the groups of paupers and convicts sent
over in colonial times were so numerous as to warrant
the most vigorous measures against them.
Transportation began to be used by the English authorities as a means of disposing of vagrants about the year
1617. The earliest cases were sent to Virginia. Between
the years 1617 and 1619 one hundred dependent children
were shipped from London for Virginia.2
In 1622-and evidence occurs again in 1635-it was the
practice to detain vagrants in the Bridewell at London
1 Shurtleff, vol. in, p. 122.
' See W. A. Bewes, Church Briefs, p. 96 (1617), quoting the Records of St.
Alphage, London Wall.




GENESIS OF THE SETTLEMENT LAW


43


pending their deportation to Virginia.1 The ports of
Massachusetts witnessed such arrivals constantly. A
sample of the watchfulness of the Boston selectmen
appears in their records under date of August 9, 1736,
when, being informed that nineteen transports were
coming over in a brigantine, they summoned the master
and ordered him to take care that none of them escaped
his ship while he should be in this harbor. This consignment had been shipped at Cork and was bound for Virginia, or any other port, in all probability, if the captain
should be so fortunate as to lose them by escape.2 Three
years later they compel a skipper to send to Piscataqua
four convicts imported by him.3 In the following year
they proceed against a ship captain who had imported
thirteen convicts.4 After the Revolution, deportations
to America became a regular business.    In 1833 the
British Poor Law Commissioners recommended "that
parishes be authorized to pay the passages of paupers out
of the country."  An official report of the city of Boston,
made in 1835, assembles much evidence on this point,
indicating that in that decade "the exportation of paupers
had become in England, a well-known and regular business, and certain American vessels were called the 'Workhouse Line.' "6 But the greatest influx of English offscourings was through the Canadian provinces. In our
four principal cities, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore,
and Boston, in 1833, more than half of all the inmates
of the almshouses were foreigners, mostly from England,
I See Leonard, p. 299.
2 Boston Selectmen's Records, Aug. 9, 1736.  3 Idem, Nov. 8, 1739.
4 Idem, Dec. 3, 1740.  5 English Poor Law Report, 1833.
l Beport on Almshonses and Pauperism. Artemis Symonds, Boston, 1835.
Common Council, No. 15, 1835.




44    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


Ireland, and the provinces to the north. Along the
Canadian frontier the proportion of British subjects was
about three to one.'
At the same time that the British paupers from inhospitable Canadian cold were crowding our poorhouses, the
almshouses and hospitals of Canada were empty of dependents from the States. Thus the Montreal General
Hospital reported for 1835 that it cared for 819 inmates
in that year, of whom 51 belonged to Canada; 114 to
England; 54 to Scotland; 588 to Ireland; 7 to Germany;
and but 5 to the United States.2
Some rule to adjust differences between settlements was
soon found necessary. In 1639, but nine years after the
Bay settlement, the court had ordered
that any shire court, or any two magistrates out of court, shall
have power, to determine all differences about the lawful settling
and providing for, poor persons; and to dispose of all unsettled
persons into such towns as they shall judge to be most fit for the
maintenance and employment of such persons and families,
for the ease of the country.3
Plymouth sought as early as 1642 to deal constructively
with the problem of inhabitancy. In that. year she enact1 Report on Almshouses and Pauperism.
Idem, p. 39. "This [sending British paupers to us in order to get rid of
them] is an unjust, wicked attempt on the part of a foreign people to exhonerate
themselves from their own natural burdens by casting them upon us." (Inaugural Address of John Davis, Governor, before the Legislature of Massachusetts,
January, 1835. House No. 3 of 1835, p. 38.) "Perhaps half of the foreign
poor that came into Boston state that they came by land from the British provinces and from New York." (Testimony of Mr. Symonds, Superintendent of
the Boston House of Industry, before a Special Commission of the Massachusetts
Legislature of 1885, appointed toinvestigate the influx of British paupers. House
No. 60 of 1835.) This report contains much evidence of specific instances of
such deportations. See also 5th Report, Board of Health, Lunacy and Charity,
1884, p. x ff.
8 Ancient Charters and Laws of Massachusetts Bay (pub. 1814), p. 178, ch.
lxxv (1839).




GENESIS OF THE SETTLEMENT LAW


45


ed a series of measures which constitute for New Plymouth her first settlement law. The first of this series
repeated in substance the provision of 1636 by forbidding
the bringing into the settlement, without consent, of
persons who were likely to become chargeable; the second
made the importers of persons from foreign parts who
were likely to become chargeable answerable for them
while dependent, and further provided that, if any inhabitant imported a servant, he was to be responsible
for sickness or dependency of such servant during the
contract period even though he released him and he
came, after release, but within the period, on to the public rates. The third created an exception to the rule of
local support by making persons sent from one town to
another for education, health, etc., chargeable to the
town whence they came instead of to the town in which
they fell into distress, and for such as came from outside
the colony, the parties receiving them must take security
or stand responsible to the town for them. The fourth
measure instituted a genuine rule or law of settlement,
by fixing the time during which and the terms under which
a resident might attain inhabitancy.
The essential parts of this series of enactments are as
follows:
If hereafter any inhabitant or inhabitants of any Towne
wthin this gount shall receiue or bring in any pson or psons as
is apparently likely to be chargeable to the Township (against
whom just exception is made at the tyme of his comeing or
wthin a month after) wthout the consent and assent of the townsmen in a lawfull gefiall publike towne meeting the ptie or pties
that so received or brought them shall discharge the towne of
them.'
If any pson or psons comeing out of England or els where
I Pulsifer, vol. xi, p. 40.




46       POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS
bring any pson or psons who by reason of impotency disease or
otherwise is apparently likely to be chargable to the place
where hee shall come to inhabite the pson or psons so bringing
in any such pson or psons shall discharge the township bf them
during the tyme of the diseasede abode there. But in case any
inhite wthin this Colony shall bring over from England or elsewhere or pcure to be sent unto them any servant or servante
WCh by Gods puidance shall fall diseased lame or impotent by
the way or after they come here, they shall be mayntayned and
puided for by their said masters &c during the terme of their
service covenante, although their said masters release them
out of their said service, & afterwards to be releaued by the
township where hee is.Every pson that liveth & is quietly settled in any township and not excepted against wthin the compasse of three
months after his comeing in this case shalbe reputed an inhabit
of that place.2
Thus liability for damage to the community was in some
measure fixed and a first step was taken toward defining
the limits of the town's liability where private sources of
support should fail. But there was a fatal weakness in
these provisions. The authorities were not apprised of
the danger until the damage had been done, and, while it
remained possible to visit penalty upon the wrongdoers,
it was quite another matter to collect the damages and
save the town harmless.
This defect was met in two ways, first, by requiring
notice of new arrivals, and, second, by the expedient of
taking security to save the town from the obligations of
support. It became the practice in the first decades of the
Bay Settlement to require a notice to the town authorities
when a stranger arrived.
The first regulation regarding notice that is contained in


1 Pulsifer, vol. XI, p. 40.
2 Boston Town Records, 2 Rep. Rec. Cor. (1882), vol. I.




GENESIS OF THE SETTLEMENT LAW


47


the Boston Records appears under date of March 29, 1647:
It is ordered that no inhabitant shall entertaine man or
woman from any other towne or countrye as a sojourner or
inmate with an intent to reside here, but shall give notice
thereof to the selectmen of the towne for their approbation
within 8 dayes after their cominge to the towne upon penalty
of twenty shillings.'
There is no similar notice in the Plymouth Records,
but it is highly probable that the practice in the two settlements was identical.2  Samples of these notices from
householders appear in the Plymouth Town Records a
century later, while the practice was still in vogue:
To the selectmen of the town of Plymouth. Gentlemen.
Joseph Crooker and his wife came from Pembroke in ye County
of Plymouth on ye first of March instant and now dwell in my
house in this town. Plymo. 17 March 1753. Theo: Cotton.3
When the householder sent in his notice to the selectmen, he was informed that he must give a bond to save
the town harmless in case the newcomer should fall into
distress and need support. This failing he was ordered
to convey the stranger to the place whence he came. Such
bonds were probably taken in Plymouth before actual
entry of them appears in the Records. Thus, in 1648
appears entry of a bill for the sickness and burial of one
Cooke who seems to have been chargeable to the town
of Marshfield. The court "Ordered yt Josia Winslow shall
defraye the said charges, being ingaged to doe the same."4
1 Boston Town Records, 2 Rep. Rec. Com. (1882), vol. I, p. 95.
2 See Plymouth Colony Records, Dec. 4, 1638 (Shurtleff, vol. I, p. 106), where
eight persons were presented "for receiving strangers and forreners into theire
houses & land; wthout lycence of the gour or assistants, or acquainting the
towne of Scittuate therewth."
3 Records of the Town of Plymouth (pub. 1889), p. 61. See also idem, p. 62.
4 Shurtleff, vol. ii, p. 121.




48    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


It is probable that Winslow was bondsman in this case.
In 1654 one Robert Titus was ordered to convey "Abner
Ordway and a woman, psons of evill fame, with children"
out of the colony "or else give such cecuritie as Mr Browne
shall see meet for the sauing the inhabitants of the town
harmless from any determent that may befall them by
Abner Ordway, or any such as belong unto him..."
The Boston Records show such security taken as early
as 1639.2
The examples, with which the records of the older towns
are replete, vary but slightly. The bond usually ran
from the person who brought the newcomer in, or who
harbored him, and was conditioned in such manner that
if the stranger never came to public dependency then the
bond to be void; otherwise in full force and effect. Few
strangers were allowed to enter the towns of Massachusetts in colonial times without the requirement of such
a bond.
Yet in spite of these several deterrents-notice, approval, security-strangers did enter in ever-increasing
numbers and the burden of supporting those in distress,
in particular the widows of men killed in the several wars,
grew apace. As early as 1642 Plymouth Colony placed
upon each town the obligation to support its own poor.
This was no more than a revoicing of the practice already
established. By the English law, to which the minds of
the colonists were schooled, the support of the poor was
a local burden for which the parish or hamlet was responsible. It was, therefore, an ingrained part of the
theory of New England village life that the town was


1 Shurtleff, vol. II, p. 52.
s Jan. 21, 1639. See Boston Town Records, 2 Rep. Rec. Corn., vol. I, p. 87.




GENESIS OF THE SETTLEMENT LAW


49


liable for the support of those persons who, through sickness, misfortune, or old age, were unable to help themselves. Though the individual has never had the right
to be supported by the community, in the sense that he
might recover such support by action at law, there has
never been question in the whole course of legislation in
New England that the community assumed and was responsible for the support of its poor.' Hence the question disturbing the selectmen of the towns was not
whether the town owed the duty of support for its own
poor: it was the truly perplexing question of identification; Who were the town's poor? When did a sojourner
become an inhabitant? By what acts of his, or of the
town, did the liability for his support descend upon the
townsfolk? By the provision of 1642, already quoted,2
the status of "inhabitant" would attach to any person
who remained quietly settled in any township without
exception taken by the town within three months after
his coming. The proviso of "exception taken" recognized a practice undoubtedly antedating the statute
which probably had its beginning in the refusal of town
authorities to approve the applicant for inhabitancy. At
any rate, it became extended rapidly into the custom,
soon practised universally, of warning undesirables to
depart the town. In many localities such warnings
appear always to have been confined to persons whom the
selectmen considered undesirable, while in others it
embraced at least the majority of the population.
The provision that persons quietly dwelling without
objection would become inhabitants, coupled with the


1 See Benton, Warning Out in New England, p. 9, where this point appears
to be incorrectly stated.   2 Ante, p. 44.




.


50      POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS
further provision that the town was obliged to support
its inhabitants when in distress, pointed unmistakably
to the conclusion that, if the town would avoid liability
to support its new arrivals, it must make the "exception"
or objection recognized in the law. This was most consistently done. Boston warned all persons likely to
become chargeable. Some places, however, warned all
newcomers alike, and some, in order to gain whatever
immunity might be argued from such caution, warned
the entire population. Thus, in a set of rules and regulations governing the duties of the selectmen, adopted by
the town of Newbury, March 14, 1726/7, occurs an article
directing them to "warn out all strangers according to
the directions in ye law & Prosecute all such as do not
depart when so warned."'
On May 18, 1780, the town of Milford voted "to warn
all persons out of the town of Milford that have moved
in since it was a town, or that shall move into said town
hereafter."2 Eleven years later (January 24, 1791) the
same town voted "to warn out of town all persons who
have come to reside in said town since the 10th of April
1767."3 Prior to 1794 this one town warned out about
fifty families comprising not less than two hundred and
twenty-five persons. During the year 1795 the town of
Chelmsford warned two hundred and eleven persons to
depart the town in fifteen days. Many hundreds were
warned out during the eighteenth century.4 In the year
1790 the town of Easton warned one hundred families and
forty-nine single persons to depart. This would have
1 J. J. Currier, History of Newbury, 1635-1902, p. 113.
' A. Ballou, History of Milford (Boston, 1882), p. 96.
Idem.
4 W. Walters, History of Chelmsford.




GENESIS OF THE SETTLEMENT LAW


51


constituted one-third of the entire population.1 Some of
the persons so warned were the foremost citizens of the
town. In such cases the warning was a matter of form.
But where the persons were poor and likely to become
chargeable, the warrant was executed and they were
compelled to move on.
The town of Lancaster, among the one hundred warnings which it issued in the year 1791, included the Honorable John Sprague, sheriff of the county of Worcester,
Merrick Rice, gentleman, and Joseph Wales, gentleman.
The warrant described them as persons "who have lately
come into this town for the purpose of abiding therein,
not having obtained the town's consent therefor," and
admonished them "that they respectfully depart the
limits thereof with their children and all under their care
within fifteen days." Judge Sprague had been a resident
of the town for about twenty years and had been their
representative in the General Court for four years. The
others were frequently in responsible offices.2
Through these accumulating practices of approval,
notice, security, and warning, it becomes clear that the
drift was very gradual toward definite regulations governing inhabitancy and legal settlement for purposes of public poor relief. The Plymouth laws of 1642 were the
standard for many years, yet from the reverberations of
later enactments it is apparent that they failed to define
the rights and the obligations of the several towns with
sufficient clearness. August 20, 1644, the Plymouth
Colony passed another law which provided that the
Inhabitancy Act of 1642


1 Wm. L. Chaffin, History of Easton (Cambridge, 1886), p. 447.
2 A. P. Marvin, History of Lancaster (Lancaster, 1879), p. 346.




52    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


shalbe expounded & construed onely to have relacon to poore
psons &c, and it is also puided that that act shall not any wayes
enable any pson to be reputed an inhabitant in any township
wthin this gouement that shall or doth refuse to take the oath of
fidelity &c although he hath beene there resident for some
tyme.1
But the requirement of approval was not easy of
execution, as appears from the supplementary enactment
of 1658:
Whereas it hath bine an ancient and wholsome order bearing
date March the seauenth 1636 that no pson coming from other
ptes bee alowed an inhabitant of thos jurisdiction but by the
approbabon of the gou' and two of the majestrates att least
and that many Psons contrary to this order of court are crept
into some townshipes of the jurisdiction which are and may
bee a great disturbance of our more peacable proceedings bee
it inacted by the court and the Authoritie thereof that if any
such pson or psons shalbee found that hath not doth not or will
not apply and approue themselves soe as to procure the approbacon of the gour and two of the Assistants that such bee enquired after and if any such psons shalbee found that either
they depart the gourment or else that the Court take some such
course therin as shalbee thought meet.2
This measure and a more drastic one of 1678 were
probably inspired by the presence of the Quaker. The
latter measure closes its injunctions by
hopeing the Court wilbe carefull; that whom they accept off;
are psons orthodox in theire judgments.3
This reason may have been at the bottom also of the
law enacted by the Bay Settlement in 1655:
All townes in this jurisdiction shall haue libertie to pvent
the coming in of such as come from other parts or places of
theise jurisdictions, & that all such psons as shalbe brought
into any such towne without the consent & allowance of the
prudentiall men, shall not be chargeable to the townes where
1 Pulsifer, vol. xi, "Laws," p. 44.  2 Idem, p. 118.  ' Idem, p. 248.




GENESIS OF THE SETTLEMENT LAW


53


they dwell, but, if necessitie require, shalbe releiued & mayntayned by those that were the cause of their coming in, of
whom ye towne or select men are hereby empowred to requre
securitie at their entrance, or else forbid them entertaynment.1
In 1659 the General Court of the Bay passed an order
which is the unmistakable forerunner of the Massachusetts
law of settlement:
For the avoyding of all future inconvenjencjes referring
to the settling of poore people that may neede releife from the
place where they dwell, itt is ordered by this court and the
authoritje thereof, that where any person wth his family, or in
case he hath no family, shall be resident in any towne or peculjar
of this jurisdiccon for more than three moneths wthout notice
given to such person or persons by the constable, or one of the
selectmen of the sajd place, or theire order, that the towne is
not willing that they should remajne as an inhabitant amongst
them, and in case, after such notice given, such person or
persons shall, notwthstanding remajne in the sajd place, if the
selectmen of the sajd place shall not, by way of complaint,
petition the next County Court of that shiere, euery such person
or persons (as the case may require) shall be provided for &
releived, in case of necessity, by the inhabitants of the sajd
place where he or she is so found.2
When the Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Connecticut
colonies were consolidated under the Articles of Confederation of 1672, an express provision (article 13) was
retained, establishing the three months' rule of inhabitancy and declaring the towns liable to support if they
failed to warn out, or, if having warned, and the stranger
having failed to go, the town did not take the first opportunity to remove him to his rightful place of abode.3
Thus the first great step in the development of a law
of settlement-the determination of inhabitancy-was


1 Records of Massachusetts Bay, vol. Iv, part I.   2 Idem, p. 865.
8 Articles of Confederation, art. 18, Sept. 5, 1672. Hazard, vol. I, p. 525.




54    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


accomplished, and the essential features of the modern
statute brought into being, before the days of the Province. Nevertheless, a century was to roll by before those
varied relationships between town and town and between
town and Province were so far worked out in practice as
to find expression in a law of settlement in which that
term could be used to describe a definitely recognized
legal status rather than to indicate loosely, as theretofore,
the sojourner with a legal right to dwell. This true law
of settlement was enacted in 1794.
At the inauguration of the Provincial Government in
1692 the rule of inhabitancy practised in both colonies
was enacted into the Province laws under the title, "An
Act for regulating of townships, choice of town officers,
and setting forth their powers."'
But with the growth of population and the expansion
of industry, the checking of undesirable immigration was
becoming increasingly difficult. People wanted to move
from town to town, as was natural and consistent with
ordinary pursuits of business or friendship. Again, the
larger the numbers in the community the harder it became
for the group to continue as a sort of mutually acquainted
and informed club or congregation. Finally, and perhaps most fatal of all the reasons for failure to check
newcomers, it was against the feeling of individual liberty
to go and come and make one's living without the consent
of kings or the prohibition of any but the allodial owners
of the land. Hence, strangers came to town in increasing
numbers without securing the necessary approval, and
the town found itself obliged to support them as the law
required whenever they should fall into distress.
1 Acts, Prov. Mass. Bay, ch. 28, sec. 9.  (Nov. 16, 1692.)




GENESIS OF THE SETTLEMENT LAW


55


Within a few years the General Court extended the
three months' adverse sojourn to twelve to enable the
town to find the newcomer and warn him at any time
within the twelve-month.1
This remained the law for four decades, at the end of which
time a supplementary act cleared up two mooted points,
namely, whether assessment of taxes against a resident
who was not an inhabitant, and whether neglect of town
authorities to warn a newcomer out could operate to
relieve the entertainer from the charge of support. Both
points were answered in the negative by declaring in the
new act that "no taxing of a person not admitted as an
inhabitant can operate to make the town liable," and,
further, that "no forbearance of the selectmen to 'warn
the person to depart the town' shall relieve the person by
whom such person was received from the charge of his
support."2
That the stranger kept himself out of the public gaze
during his adverse domicile is readily inferred by the Act
of 1723, revoicing the ancient rule of the Bay Colony that
inhabitants who entertain strangers must notify the town
authorities. The limit within which notice must be given
was set in this act at forty days.3 In the same year
another act was passed requiring shipmasters to give
bond in a sum not over ~200 to save the town harmless
from each passenger who did not bring property with him.4
In 1726 the time limit for notice of the coming of
strangers was reduced to twenty days and a penalty of
forty shillings attached for failure.5 As it was the practice in the legislation of this period to set a definite limit
1 Mass. Prov. Laws, vol. I, p. 453. (March 14, 1700.)  2 Idem, p. 995.
8 Prov. Laws, 1723, ch. 2. (June 30, 1723.)  ' Idem, ch. 5, sec. 1.
6 Prov. Laws, 1726, ch. 6.




56    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


beyond which an act would not run unless reenacted,
opportunity was afforded every five or ten years, as the
case might be, for a review of the statute. This was true
of the rule concerning notice. In 1736 the old rule was
somewhat more elaborately set forth. The time limit
was kept at twenty days and the fine at forty shillings,
but one-half the fine was to go to the use of the overseers
of the poor. The defendant was to bear all costs of
warning out or sending away.1
An issue having arisen some time before 1739 whether
the assessing of taxes to an individual should act as an
approbation of his inhabitancy sufficient to charge the
town for his support, there was passed in that year an
act providing that no town shall have to support any
person resident in town less than the time for acquiring
inhabitancy without approbation, such approbation to be
given in the open town meeting by vote or else by the
selectmen in writing, and no act of the selectmen or
assessors in rating or assessing to make the town liable
for support.2
That the invasion of newcomers did not abate with the
result that public dependency was increasing rapidly is
indicated in an act of 1756, which forbade masters of
ships to land sick or infirm persons not inhabitants without consent of the selectmen in writing, and unless
security be given the town, if demanded, to save the town
harmless from all charges, etc. The penalty was fixed at
~100 for each offence, to go to the use of the poor.8 This
is an old interdiction; its repetition is the important fact.
Thus far in the law of inhabitancy and settlement the


1Prov. Laws, 1736, ch. 16.
2Prov. Laws, 1739, ch. 9.


Prov. Laws, 1756, ch. 4. (June 10, 1756.)




GENESIS OF THE SETTLEMENT LAW


57


issue had been whether the town was liable for support
and which one among the towns making up the Province
should bear the burden. It was uniformly assumed that
some one of the towns must pay. If the stranger was
unfortunate enough to have no legal inhabitancy within
the Province, he was forced on from town to town untilto use a modern phrase-he went out of bounds of the
Province.
But the year 1767 brought a new element into that
group of principles which in the final adjustment have
become the modern law of settlement. This new element
was the recognition of liability in the Province itself for
the relief of the wanderer who could not claim inhabitancy in any town. Chapter 17 of the acts of that year
provided that, whereas persons ordered and conveyed
out of town frequently did not belong to any town in the
Province, and were poor and unable to pay for the
removal, whereby the town moving them had the burden;
it was enacted that, when such was the case, the charge
of conveying such person or persons should be borne and
paid by the Province "in order to their being sent or
conveyed to the province or colony where they last had
a settlement."'
By this same act it was provided that no person should
gain inhabitancy by residence without warning out unless
he notify the selectmen and "obtain the approbation of
the town at a general meeting of the inhabitants, for his
dwelling there," and no town should be otherwise chargeable for relief.2 This act foreshadows that tendency,
constantly strengthening from this time on, to cast the
burdens of the town upon the central government.


I Prov. Laws, 1767, ch. 17. (March 20.)    2 Idem.




58    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


In the troubled period following the Revolution much
thought was given to problems of public relief and that
vital part of its machinery-the determination of settlement. A complete revision of the Inhabitancy and Settlement Law was enacted in 1789. By that enactment any
person who, prior to April 10, 1767, had lived a year in
any town without warning out, or who had obtained a
settlement by birth, marriage, or otherwise, and had not
afterwards gained a settlement somewhere else, was to be
deemed an inhabitant of that town. Likewise all persons
were to be settled who owned an estate of freehold in the
town of the clear annual income of ~3 if they occupied
the premises for two whole years; or who after the age of
twenty-one should reside and pay town tax for five years
successively; or who resided ten years without being
warned out. It was further held that a woman marrying
an inhabitant thereby obtained inhabitancy in his town.
Children born in wedlock were to be deemed inhabitants
at birth and afterwards, but children otherwise born
should follow the inhabitancy of their mother until they
should obtain inhabitancy for themselves. Every settlement was to continue until another should be gained.
The right of the selectmen to warn persons to depart the
town was still retained and the form of warning was set
out with precision.1
No sooner had this more comprehensive statute become
law than it was amended. In the following year the time
1 Acts of 1789, ch. 14. The form of warrant warning citizens to depart was
as follows: "(Seal) ss. to either of the constables of the town of... in
such county, greeting. You are in the name of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts directed to warn, and give notice unto A. B. of... in the county
of... labourer, (or a transient person as the case may be) who has lately
come into this town for the purpose of abiding therein, not having obtained the
town's consent therefor, that he (or she) depart the limits thereof (with their




GENESIS OF THE SETTLEMENT LAW


59


during which the newcomer must dwell without warning
out, in order to become an inhabitant was extended from
two years to three.' In 1791 it was advanced from three
years to four.2  And in 1793 still another year was added,
setting the requirement at five years.3    The effort of the
town to make the State carry its burdens was ill-disguised
in this setting up of barriers against chargeability. At
the same time it is to be remembered that the period
between 1787 and 1794 was a time of vast development
in government in Massachusetts. In the field of public
social service, this period saw the growth of an elaborate
system of dealing with the vagrant and the misdemeanant,
the unfortunate poor and the hopeless pauper. It was a
time when, if ever, the fragmentary practice of towns and
provinces would crystallize into law. As may be expected, therefore, the process of amendment and revision
went on until it culminated in a workable system adequate
to meet the needs of the time.    This culmination in matters of inhabitancy took place in 1794 and embraces what
students are wont to call our first Massachusetts Law of
Settlement. It was entitled "An act ascertaining what
shall constitute a legal settlement of any person in any
town or district within this Commonwealth so as to
entitle him to support therein in case he becomes poor
children and others under their care, if such they have) within fifteen days.
And of this precept with your doings thereon, you are to make return unto the
office of the clerk of the town (or district) within twenty days next coming, that
such further proceedings may be had in the premises as the law directs. Given
under our hand and seal at... aforesaid, this... day of... anno
Domini... Selectmen of..."
The mode of service was by reading or delivering a copy to the person or by
leaving a copy at his last and usual place of abode. The clerk was required to
make a record of the warrant and the return in the town book.
Acts of1790, ch. 39.  s Acts of 1791, ch. 44.
' Acts of 1793, ch. 69,




60    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


and stands in need of relief and for repealing all laws
heretofore made respecting such settlement."' The basic
features of this codification are as follows:
1. A married woman follows and has the settlement of her
husband if he has any: if not, she retains her own at the
time of her marriage.
2. If the unsettled husband of a settled wife requires aid
from the State, he shall receive it in the place of her
settlement, the State reimbursing.
S. Legitimate children follow and have the settlement of
their father, if he has any, until they gain for themselves;
if he has none, then they follow the mother in like manner.
4. Illegitimate children follow the mother's settlement at
the time of their birth if she had any: but no child gains
settlement by birth if neither parent had a settlement in
the place of birth.
5. Any citizen 21 years or over who has an estate of inheritance of ~3 yearly net income, taking the rents and
profits three years in succession, is settled in the town
where he has such estate and so dwells.
6. Any citizen, as above, who has an estate of freehold of
~60 value and pays taxes on same for five years in succession is settled where he has such estate.
7. Any town officer is settled ipsofacto.
8. A settled and ordained minister is settled in the place of
his pastorate.
9. Any person may be admitted to settlement by town vote
after article is placed in the warrant for such consideration.
10. Any minor who serves four years apprenticeship and
actually sets up in business in the town where he has
served within one year after his term, being then 21 years
old and who continues such trade for five years, is settled
in that place.
11. Any citizen 21 years or over who resides in any town for
ten years and pays all taxes duly assessed for any five
years within that time is settled in that town.
12. Every settlement when gained continues till lost or defeated by the gaining of another elsewhere.
Acts of 1795, ch. 84. (Feb. 11, 1794.)




GENESIS OF THE SETTLEMENT LAW


61


This comprehensive law of settlement was adequate,
no doubt, to meet the needs of the time, as no changes
were made during the succeeding twenty-eight years.
Hard times settled down upon the country in 1821, and
a sudden increase in public dependency resulting from
widespread economic distress brought closer scrutiny of
the liability of towns to support their poor. Furthermore, there had been established in 1820 the first metropolitan government under the Commonwealth. Boston
had become a city. And the word "city" nowhere
appeared in the old Law of Settlement.
Consequently in 1822 the word "city" was inserted
wherever the terms "town or district" had occurred
before. At the same time an issue that had occupied the
activities of town authorities for years and had engendered much factional spirit was adjusted by a new section. It was the problem of reimbursements by one town
for aid given by another town. This new section provided that, if any person standing in need of relief were
supported in any place other than that of his settlement,
the place of settlement should not be obligated beyond a
rate of $1.00 a week, provided the place of settlement
removed him within thirty days after notice.l
In 1831 additional defence measures, including a penal
bond, were taken against shipmasters in the clandestine
traffic in immigrants. In lieu of a bond, head money in
a stipulated sum for each passenger was required.2 In
1836 we find the Massachusetts Legislature resolving that
our representatives at Washington use their influence to
obtain the passage of an act to prevent the incoming of


1 Acts of 1822, ch. 94, sec. 3. (Feb. 21, 1822.)
2 Acts of 181l, ch. 150. (March 19, 1831.)




62    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


foreign paupers.' The expense of supporting such alien
poor had grown to be a most serious burden. In 1837 an
act to regulate the incoming of alien passengers was
passed.2 This statute called for a bond of $1,000 from
the shipmaster in the case of each pauper found incompetent to maintain himself. This bond was conditioned
that the passenger should not become a public charge
within ten years. For all other passengers a head tax
of $2.00 was required. This statute carries additional
interest as it was one of the principal sources out of which
the modern United States Immigration Law was developed.
In 1868 the requirement that the person to be settled
must be a citizen of the State or of the United States was
removed.3 In 1870 it was provided that any unmarried
woman twenty-one years old who resides in any place
for ten years together without receiving relief as a pauper
or being convicted of a crime shall thereby gain a settlement.4 This statute further provided that every settlement gained prior to February 11, 1794, except where its
existence prevents a subsequent acquisition, should be
defeated and lost. A subsequent act, in 1874, reduced
the time from ten years to five and broadened the language of the Act of 1870 by the elimination of the word
"unmarried," which made the law then read, "Any
woman of the age of twenty-one," etc. If it was intended
by this amplification to extend this mode of gaining to all
women, regardless of civil status, it failed: for the Supreme Court, in 1876, interpreted the term "any woman"
1 Res. 1836, ch. 100.  (April 16, 1836.)
2 Acts of 1837, ch. 238. (April 20, 1837.)
3 Acts of 1868, ch. 328.  4 Acts of 1870, ch. 392.




GENESIS OF THE SETTLEMENT LAW


63


to mean "any unmarried woman" and no others.1 Notwithstanding this decision, the Revision of 18782 rewrote
the law of 1874 without change in the "any woman"
phrase. In 1879 this mode was revised to include married women and widows without settlement derived from
their husbands.
When the laws were again revised into the General
Statutes in 1878, just referred to, the Settlement Law was
rewritten substantially in the form of 1794 with the subsequent amendments added. The most important change
of those intervening years, perhaps, was the reduction of
the time for giving a settlement from ten years to five.
In 1879 a provision, now considered of far-reaching importance, was added; namely, that no person should be
in process of gaining a settlement while receiving relief as
a pauper, unless within five years he should have reimbursed the city or town rendering the aid.3 But no fundamental change was effected by the several amendments
during the nineteenth century. The Act of 1794 stood
substantially as drawn until 1911, when the last revision
was completed; and this revision did no more that was vital
than to remove the provisions for the payment of taxes.4
Three hundred years of village contentiousness, born of
an abhorrence of pauperism and a narrowness in money
matters that has given the Yankee character a name
throughout America, have hammered out first the rules
of inhabitancy and finally the status known as "legal
settlement." The stranger might come in by popular
acclaim or by license of the selectmen, but he must be
1 Somerville v. Boston (1876), 120 Mass. 574.
2 Acts of 1878, ch. 190, sec. 1, cl. 6.
3 Acts of 1879, ch. 242.   4 Acts of 1911, ch. 669.




64    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


"of good conversation," orthodox, and able to support
both himself and his dependents. As numbers grew, the
person receiving such strangers was required to reimburse for public relief given to the newcomer. Selectmen threatened and courts ordered and decreed. Yet
the stranger came, and in ever-increasing numbers. The
constables roared at him and bade him begone, yet he
did not go. And it was these same penurious villagers
who connived at his failure to go. The warm-heartedness
of the individual householder set at naught the vigorous
efforts of selectmen and overseers of the poor to bar the
stranger of uncertain means.
Finally, with the multiplication of towns and the rapid
growth of these several communities, it became necessary,
in order to equalize the burdens of public poor relief among
them, to develop a thorough-going code of procedure
which should take care of all contingencies.
It has been sought in this chapter to show how this code
or law of settlement grew to its present state. The next
chapter aims to present its legal aspects.




CHAPTER IV


THE MODERN LAW OF LEGAL SETTLEMENT IN
MASSACHUSETTS
LEGAL settlement is a status created by statute for the
purpose of determining territorial responsibility for the
public relief of needy persons in accordance with law.
The statute now in force in Massachusetts grew-as
appears from the preceding chapter-out of the early
regulations established by the several towns to control
the incoming of strangers. It was inseparably bound up
in its development, therefore, with considerations alien to
questions of public dependency, such as protection of the
church, safeguards against political enemies and the
nationals of countries with which the mother country was
at war, and barriers against the influx of criminals hailing
from across the water or from the southward, who had
been systematically unloaded by the European authorities both before and after the development of Botany
Bay.1
But as the rule of inhabitancy advanced to a static
condition, the greatest problem emerging upon the horizon of town government was that of "the town's poor."
The problems of public poor relief were many and the
ways various by which the town might find itself obligated
to support the indigent. The system of defence built up
by each town and the clash of these regulations between


I See Chapter vi, p. 129. Transportation to Botany Bay began in 1788 and
was discontinued in 1840.




66    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


towns resulted, after one hundred and seventy-five years
of ebullition and a succeeding century of solidification, in
a code of practice designed, like an agreement or contract
between bargainers, to bestow the greatest degree of
equity attainable upon all concerned.
That code is the law of legal settlement. It is not concerned with the support of the poor in any technical
sense: that is to say, a law of settlement is not a law of
poor relief. Yet it is the commanding factor in the
operations of selectmen and overseers of the poor, and
must be referred to constantly in tracing the development
of our system of relieving the indigent.
The last chapter traced the history of the settlement
law to its present state: it is the purpose of this chapter
to follow the intricacies of our present law of settlement,
setting forth as far as may be the correct legal interpretation of its many puzzling ramifications. Its provisions,
found in Acts of 1911, Chapter 669, and amendments, are
as follows:
Section 1. Legal settlement may be acquired in any city
or town in the following manner and not otherwise:
First. Any man or woman, including a married woman
whose husband has no settlement within the commonwealth,
of the age of twenty-one years, who hereafter resides in any
city or town within this commonwealth for five consecutive
years, shall thereby acquire a settlement in such place.
Second. A married woman shall follow and have the settlement of her husband if he has any within the commonwealth; otherwise, she shall retain her own at the time of marriage if she then had any.
Third. Legitimate children shall follow and have the settlement of their father if he has any within the commonwealth;
otherwise, they shall follow and have the settlement of their
mother if she has any; if the father dies during the minority of
his children they shall thereafter follow and have the settlement




MODERN LAW OF LEGAL SETTLEMENT               67
of their mother; in the event of the divorce of the parents the
minor children shall follow and have the settlement of the parent
to whom the court awards the custody of said minor children.
Fourth. Illegitimate children shall follow and have the
settlement of their mother if she has any within the commonwealth.
Fifth. (As superseded by 1919 (Gen.) Ch. 333, sec. 5.) A
person who enlisted and was mustered into the military or
naval service of the United States, as a part of the quota of a
city or town in this commonwealth under any call of the president of the United States during the war of the rebellion or any
war between the United States and any foreign power, or who
was assigned as a part of the quota thereof after having enlisted
and been mustered into said service, and his wife or widow and
minor children shall be deemed thereby to have acquired a
settlement in such place, provided that he has served not less
than one year or has died or become disabled from wounds or
disease received or contracted while engaged in such service, or
while a prisoner of the enemy; and any person who would otherwise be entitled to a settlement under this clause, but who was
not a part of the quota of any city or town, shall, if he served as
a part of the quota of the commonwealth, be deemed to have
acquired a settlement in the place where he actually resided at
the time of his enlistment. Any person who was inducted into
the military or naval forces of the United States under the
federal selective service act, or who enlisted in said forces in
time of war between the United States and any foreign power,
whether as a part of the quota of this commonwealth or not,
shall, subject to the same proviso, be deemed to have acquired
a settlement at the time of his induction or enlistment. But
these provisions shall not apply to any person who enlisted
and received a bounty for such enlistment in more than one
place unless the second enlistment was made after an honorable
discharge from the first term of service, nor to any person who
has been proved guilty of wilful desertion, or who left the service
otherwise than by reason of disability or an honorable discharge.
Sixth. Upon the division of a city or town, every person
having a legal settlement therein, but being absent at the time
of such division, and not having acquired a legal settlement
elsewhere, shall have his legal settlement in the city or town




68    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


containing the last dwelling place or home which he had in the
city or town so divided; and, if a new city or town, composed
of a part of one or more other cities or towns, is incorporated,
every person legally settled in any of the places of which such
new city or town is so composed, and who actually dwells and
has his home within the bounds of such new city or town at the
time of its incorporation, and any such person duly qualified as
provided in the fifth clause of this section, who, at the time of
his enlistment, dwelt and had his home within such bounds,
shall thereby acquire a legal settlement in such new city or
town; but no person residing in that part of a city or town which
upon such division is incorporated into a new city or town, and
who then has no legal settlement therein, shall acquire any by
force of the incorporation only; nor shall such incorporation
prevent his acquiring a settlement therein within the time and
by the means by which he would have gained it there if no such
division had been made.
Section 2. No person shall acquire a settlement, or be in
process of acquiring a settlement, while receiving relief as a
pauper, unless, within two years after the time of receiving such
relief, he tenders reimbursement of the cost thereof to the commonwealth, or to the city or town furnishing the same.
Section S. (As amended by 1913, 266.) No person who actually supports himself and his family shall be deemed to be a
pauper by reason of the commitment of his wife, child or other
relative to an insane hospital or other institution of charity,
reform or correction by order of a court or magistrate, and of his
inability to maintain the wife, child, or relative therein; or who,
to the best of his ability, has attempted to provide for himself
and his dependents and has not been a mendicant, and who,
through no crime or misdemeanor of his own, has come into
grievous need and receives aid or assistance given temporarily
or partial support continuously to him or his family: provided,
that nothing in this act shall be construed to affect, directly or
indirectly, settlement, poor or pauper laws, or laws by which
any charity, aid or assistance is furnished by public authority.
Section 4. (As supplemented by 1914, 323, and 1916, 316.)
A person who, after the passage of this act, is absent for five
consecutive years from the city or town in which he had a
settlement shall thereby lose his settlement. But the time
during which a person shall have been an inmate of any public




MODERN LAW OF LEGAL SETTLEMENT               69
hospital, public sanatorium, almshouse, jail, prison, or other
public institution, within the commonwealth or of a soldiers'
or sailors' home whether within or without the commonwealth,
shall not be counted in computing the time either for acquiring
or for losing a settlement, except as provided in section two.
But the settlement existing on August twelfth, nineteen hundred
and sixteen, of soldiers and their dependents eligible to receive
military aid and soldiers' relief under existing laws shall continue in force while said soldiers or dependents are actually
residing in the commonwealth until a new settlement is gained
in another city or town in the manner heretofore prescribed;
and any settlement of such soldier or dependent heretofore lost
under the provisions of this section is hereby revived. In determining the settlement of a person who is or has been an
inmate of a state sanatorium or hospital or other state institution, the time during which he was in the institution, or during
which he was in any manner under the care or direction of such
institution or of any officer connected therewith, shall not be
reckoned in determining the length of his residence in the city
or town in which such institution is situated.
Section 5. All existing settlements shall continue in force
until changed or defeated by the provisions of this act, and no
person who has begun to acquire a settlement by the laws in
force at and before the time when this act takes effect, in any
of the ways in which any period of time is prescribed for a residence or for the continuance or succession of any other act,
shall be prevented or delayed by the provisions hereof, but he
shall acquire a settlement by a continuance or succession of the
same residence or other act, in the same time and manner as if
the former laws had continued in force.
Section 6. Any settlement which was not fully acquired
subsequent to the first day of May in the year eighteen hundred
and sixty is hereby defeated and lost unless such settlement
prevented a subsequent acquisition of settlement in the same
place; but if a settlement acquired by marriage is so defeated,
the former settlement of the wife, if not also defeated, shall be
revived.
By an additional provision enacted in 1917,' no person
shall acquire a settlement or be in process of acquiring a
G General Acts, 1917, ch. 70.




70    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


settlement while receiving aid in consequence of smallpox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, tuberculosis, dog bite requiring anti-rabic treatment, or other disease dangerous
to the public health, nor shall any person be held to have
acquired, or to have been in process of acquiring, a settlement while receiving such aid.
1. Nature of the Law. Legal settlement is an arbitrary
rule imposed only by and existing solely by virtue of
statute, having for its single purpose the equitable distribution of the burdens of public poor relief among the
several local governments which make up the State.
It is to be considered that these rules of settlement were
originally arbitrary, said Chief Justice Parker in an early
decision,1 not founded upon any particular view to their superior natural justice, but established to operate prospectively, so
as to produce future equality among the several towns in the
Commonwealth. They ought therefore to be, and have always
been, construed strictly so as not to throw a burden upon any
town, unless it should manifestly be liable, according to the
principles and regulations adopted by the legislature as the best
general rules which can be devised for the common convenience.
In order to provide for those who may be in need of such
charitable aid as it has been the policy of the State to require
cities and towns to furnish at the public expense, it is within
its (the Legislature's) power at any time to change the law
relating to the settlement of paupers and make such regulations under which relief is to be given as it may deem just
and expedient. And it may make either citizenship or residence
or both the test. Former settlements may be saved or declared
defeated and lost, and the terms under which relief is to be
extended to paupers may be thereby radically changed and
made more onerous.2
1 Paris v. Hiram (1815), 12 Mass. 926, at p. 266.
2 Bradley, J., in Bradford v. Worcester (1904), 184 Mass. 557, 561. Citing
Goshen v. Richmond, 4 Allen 458; Bridgewater v. Plymouth, 97 Mass. 382, 390;
Endicott v. Hopkinton, 125 Mass. 521, 522; Worcester v. Springfield, 127 Mass.
540; Fitchburg v. Ashby, 132 Mass. 495; Dedham v. Milton, 136 Mass. 424; Winchester v. Gt. Barrington, 140 Mass. 243, 244.




MODERN LAW OF LEGAL SETTLEMENT   71


Such arbitrary rules confer no rights on the individual.
The obligation to relieve the poor is directed to the liability of the public authorities and confers no right on
the individual to claim or to compel relief. In like manner, the Law of Settlement is directed solely to the obligation of towns and yields for the individual no right
to claim. He cannot reject a settlement: nor can he
acquire one without strict compliance with the requirements of the statute. If the conditions set forth in the
law be complied with, the settlement follows whether
the citizen, who is the subject matter, wishes it or not.
Such arbitrary rules must necessarily be strictly construed and strictly enforced, "in order that no uncertainty
may exist with respect to the rights and duties of towns,
in regard to the support and maintenance of paupers."'
But it cannot be said that because the rules of settlement are arbitrary, they are therefore not grounded in
true consideration moving to the town. "There is always
supposed to be a consideration, past or present, for the
obligations of towns to rest upon, in the support of paupers. They have received some benefit from their
property, or that of their ancestors, by taxation or otherwise...."   Where a man lays his hearthstone; where
his children are born and receive the parental care which
advances them toward adult competence; where heyields
his citizenship, contributing his share in taxes, in service,
in right behavior: that place is his abode; and that is
the community to which he is attached: consequently
that is the town which, as against all other towns in the
Commonwealth, must relieve him and his legal depend

1 Parker, C. J., in Boylston v. Princeton (1816), 13 Mass. 381, at p. 384.
2 Parker, C. J., in Andovcr v. Canton (1816), 13 Mass. 547, at p. 554.




72    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


ents should he or they fall into distress. To place the
responsibility for his relief, within the reasoning of this
basic principle, it is necessary to define with certainty
that which constitutes an abode or residence.
It should be self-evident in this view of the law that
but one residence or settlement can appertain to one
individual at one and the same time. A settlement may
be lost, and a new settlement may be gained; but two
settlements cannot attach to the same person at the
same time.1
Obviously, settlements gained in Massachusetts are
not affected one way or the other by the gaining or losing
of settlement in a foreign jurisdiction.2 Viewed from the
other extreme a settlement cannot be lost or gained by
removal to a new place of residence within the limits of
the same town.3 And settlements once proved will be
presumed to continue until proof is shown that a new one
has been acquired elsewhere:4 or that the settlement has
been lost within the provisions of section 4.
Perhaps the most difficult feature of the Law of Settlement is the definition of residence. What constitutes
residence for the purpose of legal settlement? It is uniformly held that for this purpose the terms "residence"
and "domicile" are identical.5 Hence a person who
dwells in a given place, satisfying all the requirements of
1 Petersham v. Dana (1815), 12 Mass. 429; Mendon v. Bellingham (1882), 18
Mass. 153.
2 Chelsea v. Maiden (1808), 4 Mass. 131, 133; Canton v. Bentley (1814), 4
Mass. 441; Wilbraham v. Sturbridge (1850), 60 Mass. 61; I Op. A.G. (1896), 383.
3 Princeton v. West Boylston (1818), 15 Mass. 257; Salem v. Ipswich (1852),
64 Mass. (10 Cush.) 517.
4 Worcester v. Wilbraham (1859), 79 Mass. (3 Gray) 586.
5 Wilbraham v. Ludlow (1869), 99 Mass. 587; Borland v. Boston (1882), 132
Mass. 89; Greenfield v. Buckland (1893), 158 Mass. 491; Stoughton v. Cambridge
(1896), 165 Mass. 251.




MODERN LAW OF LEGAL SETTLEMENT


73


domicile therein, is resident there for purposes of settlement. But for purposes of settlement, as for domicile, a
brief absence from the place of abode, even though no
fixed purpose to return is shown, is not sufficient to interrupt the continuing residence.'
A person cannot be said to lose his domicile or residence by
leaving it with an uncertain, indefinite, half-formed.purpose to
take up his residence elsewhere. It would be more correct to
say, that he would not lose his residence until he had gone to a
new one with a fixed purpose to remain there and not to return
to his former home. Until his purpose to remain had become
fixed, he could not be said to have abandoned his former residence.2
Absence for less than one year, but with intention to
return, has been held not to be an interruption of domiciliary residence.3  Imprisonment for four months in a
house of correction was held not to interrupt residence.4
2. The Acquisition of Settlement. In principle, whoever
is of independent citizenship may gain a settlement by his
own act. Though there are many limitations which
appear to qualify this statement, it remains nevertheless
the truth out of which independent acquisition springs.
Thus a minor may under some circumstances acquire a
settlement in his own right, but in general he cannot. A
married woman may, if her coverture does not involve a
settlement in her husband; otherwise, not. A child upon
reaching majority reaches that degree of independence as
a citizen requisite to acquisition and may gain in his own
right, but if he is of unsound mind, no such potentiality
pertains and he cannot gain.
1 Worcester v. Wilbraham, supra.
2 Bigelow, J., in Worcester v. Wilbraham, citing Bullseley v. Williamstown, 3
Gray 493.
3 Lee v. Lenox (1860), 81 Mass. (15 Gray) 496.
4 Whately v. Hatfield (1907), 196 Mass. 393.




74    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


In a normal state of society every person is part of
a family unit, inasmuch as the fundamental process of
society is the propagation and rearing of children. The
grouping of the father, the mother, and their offspring
about the one hearthstone represents the essential
mechanism through which this basic function is discharged. This consideration must be kept in mind in
an appraisal of the Settlement Law. It is necessary to
the proper nurture of children that father, mother, and
children be kept together during the period of infancy.
Consequently it is essential to the correct theory of
public poor relief that in all ways possible the family be
treated as a unit. Translated into terms of the Settlement Law this means that there shall not be divergent
settlements within the family. One settlement means
one source of support; while conversely many settlements
mean many sources of support possibly differing widely
in their respective methods of relief. The effect of divergent settlements would be the application of a centrifugal
force to the solidarity of the family.
It follows from this reasoning that the first axiom of
the Settlement Law must be, "one family, one settlement." It is for this reason that wife and minor children
take the father's settlement wherever possible. Where he
has none, then the mother's settlement is taken as the
family status. But it should not be assumed from the
foregoing statement that there is such a thing as a family
settlement. The status is held always to be individual,
pertaining to the person.
Our statute does not provide that the family shall have the
settlement of its head, but that the children shall have the settlement of the parents. They are no longer children, so as to




MODERN LAW OF LEGAL SETTLEMENT                75
take a new settlement acquired by their parents, when capable
of gaining one for themselves, if they are separated from their
parents by marriage or other legal emancipation.'
In general the settlement of adult males is acquired by
the independent act of the person. So also of adult
females not under coverture. Married      women   and
minors take only by derivation.
A person, in order to be able to gain a settlement, must
be of sound mind. To state it in more exact terms, he
must have sufficient mental capacity to choose a settlement. If he has not the power of choice, he cannot
acquire.2 The power to make choice is the one vital
factor in mental capacity in so far as the acquisition of
settlement is concerned. Thus, under the old law, where
a settlement might be gained by living upon and possessing an estate of freehold, an insane person so dwelling and
possessing would gain regardless of his condition of mind.3
On the other hand, if he becomes non compos after acquiring a settlement, he does not lose it thereby, since the act
of choice has been validly exercised: nor will he lose a
settlement so acquired so long as he remains non compos,
since he has not the mind to acquire a new one.4 Further,
if the settlement be derived through a change of status
such as the act of marriage, which depends upon the
validity of a contract, the absence of sufficient mentality
to contract vitiates the contract and no settlement will
be acquired.6
As to what degree of mental insufficiency may be taken
to establish the state non compos,
z Parker, C. J., in Charlestown v. Boston (1816), 13 Mass. 469, at 472.
2 Townsend v. Pepperell (1868), 99 Mass. 40.
8 Buckland v. Charlemont (1825), 20 Mass. 173.
See Chicopee v. Whately (1863), 88 Mass. (6 Alien) 477.
s Middlcborough v. Rochester (1815), 12 Mass. 363.




76    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


it must be such an alienation of intellect as would make it the
duty of the Judge of Probate, upon representation of the facts,
to appoint a guardian, or in other words, the mind must have
so far lost its balance as to render her incapable of making a
valid contract.1
In Townsend v. Pepperell, the court further defined the
state non compos for purposes of settlement by saying:
In order to show such insanity as will prevent the gaining
of a settlement it is not sufficient merely to show mental derangement; since it is not every degree of derangement which
will prevent the gaining of a settlement. The derangement
must be of such a nature as to deprive the subject of his volition, free will, and power of choice, so as to take away his self
control over his mind and himself, leaving him no power to make
choice of a settlement.2
It may be said as a general comment, therefore, that
incipient insanity does not necessarily incapacitate a
person from gaining a settlement.
The statute requires residence in the same city or town
for five years continuously. This does not mean that the
individual may not leave the town temporarily. The rule
of domicile is accepted as the rule of residence for this
purpose. But such domiciliary residence must itself be
without lapse. Thus, where a person lived nine years in
A., after which he absconded, taking up no fixed abode
elsewhere and showing no intention of returning and failing to return, he was held not to have completed the
ten-year period of residence which the statutes then
required.3
The wording of the statute is explicit... The phrase "five
1 Howe, J., in court below, in Buckland v. Charlemont, supra.
9 See Townsend v. Pepperell, supra. Upton v. Northbridge (1815), 15 Mass.
237; Phillips v. Boston (1903), 183 Mass. 314.
a Athol v. Watertown (1828), 24 Mass. 42. See also Southbridge v. Marlborough (1838), 41 Mass. 166.




MODERN LAW OF LEGAL SETTLEMENT                 77
consecutive years" means five full calendar years from the
beginning to the end of the period unaffected by the exceptions
found in the proviso [of section 4].1
Under the former law, which required five years' residence and three taxes in any three years of the five consecutively, the residence for the three years in which the
taxes were assessed was held to be essential.2 This necessity arose from the fact that the citizen might be assessed
at any time during the year and the statute expressly
required the payment of all taxes duly assessed.
The expression in the former law, "all taxes duly assessed," was not construed to mean all that might be
claimed by any assessment; but all that were insisted
upon as duly assessed. An abatement was construed to
mean that the assessment was not duly made. If the
tax were wholly abated, it was as though no assessment
had been made; if partially abated and the residue paid,
then all that was duly assessed was deemed to have
been paid.8
A second qualification upon the process of gaining is
the requirement that the individual shall not during the
period have been in receipt of relief as a pauper. Such
aid if rendered at any time during the five years' period
and not repaid within two years after receipt is an absolute bar as to that part of the period of residence before
and down to the moment of aid. The reasoning upon
which this provision rests is aptly expressed by Shaw,
C. J., in Newbury v. Bradford:4
Whilst receiving relief as a pauper, he is not in a condition to
Braley, J., in Needham v. Fitchburg, 237 Mass., citing Somerville v. Commonwealth, 225 Mass. 589, at 593.
a Taunton v. Wareham (1891), 153 Mass. 192.
Billerica. Chdmnford (1818), 10 Mass. 894.  (1841) 44 Mass. 428.




78


POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


perform those duties of a resident inhabitant and efficient member of the community, which the law contemplates as the ground
of his right to a settlement from ten years' residence and payment of taxes for one-half of those years. The law supposes
an ability to perform municipal duties which are inconsistent
with the dependent condition of a pauper.
And aid to such person's child is as potent as aid for
his own personal use in interrupting the gaining of settlement.1 This arises from the fact that the parent is
legally bound to support his child. And it is immaterial
whether the aid comes from the place of residence or
from another town in which the individual has a settlement,2 or by the State in an institution beyond the
boundaries of the Commonwealth.8 Obviously, such
relief to the wife would have the same effect as aid to
the child or the individual himself.4 But the gaining of
a settlement by a husband who has deserted his wife
and family is not prevented by the fact that she was
aided by the town of her residence without his knowledge
and without any claim upon him therefor.6
A married woman is not, while her husband lives,
legally liable to support her children. Consequently
public relief to her children will not pauperize her nor
prevent the gaining of a settlement by her.6
A mode of gaining, under the former law, upon which
many present-day settlements depend, was the possession
and occupancy of an estate of freehold for a given number
of years. Numerous decisions have been rendered upon
I Taunton v. Middleborough (1846), 58 Mass. 35.
2 Oakham v. Sutton (1846), 53 Mass. 35.
3 Oakham v. Warwick (1866), 95 Mass. (13 Allen) 88.
4 Charestown v. Groveland (1860), 81 Mass. (15 Gray) 15.
s Berkeley. Taunton (1837), 19 Mass. (Pick.) 480; Wareham v. Milford (1870),
105 Mass. 293.
Gleason v. Boston (1887), 144 Mass. 25.




MODERN LAW OF LEGAL SETTLEMENT


79'


what constitutes a freehold for this purpose and what is
the least that will satisfy the requirement of occupancy.
Our rule is here identical with the English law in requiring
that the estate must be such as the party has a right to
occupy.' Thus, an estate in expectancy merely, or in
remainder, with a preceding estate of freehold in some
other person, is not such an estate as will satisfy the
statute.2   Ownership is the essential factor, though the
fact that the title is imperfect is not a bar. It is enough
if he hold undisturbed possession under a bonafide deed.3
"The settlement does not depend upon the question
whether the title is good against all persons; although it
may be defeasible, it is good until defeated."4          If the
tenant is seised of an apparently good title, without a
present right of entry in any other person, it is a sufficient estate of freehold. He need not possess a deed.5
A fortiori, failure to register the deed, would not vitiate
the title.6  Nor would it bar the gaining of settlement if
the estate were mortgaged for its full value, since possession and residence are not interrupted;7 but the rents
and profits must exceed the interest on the mortgage by
at least the total required by the statute.8
A man who builds his house by mistake upon another's
land acquires no estate even though he remains in pos1 Ipswich v. Topsfield (1842), 46 Mass. 350; King v. Ealington, 4 T. R. 177;
King v. Willoughby-with-Sloothby, 10 Barn. & Cres. 62.
2 Ipswich v. Topsficld (1842), 46 Mass. 350.
3 Conway v. Deerfield (1814), 11 Mass. 327; Conway v. Clinton (1854), 67
Mass. (1 Gray) 619.
4 Merrick, J., in Boylston v. Clinton, supra.
s Brewster v. Dennis (1838), 38 Mass. 233; Hopkinton v. Upton (1841), 44
Mass. 165.
6 Belchertown v. Dudley (1863), 88 Mass. (6 Alien) 477.
7 Washington v. Clarksburg (1837), 36 Mass. 294.
8 Conway v. Deerfield (1814), 11 Mass. 327.




80    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


session and has a sufficient estate of freehold next door:
ownership and possession must relate to the same subject
matter.1
A tenancy at will is not sufficient,2 nor is a bond or an
agreement for a deed, even though there has been long
possession and use undisturbed;3 though a bond for a
deed with permission to take the rents and profits will
be construed    as a declaration     of trust of which the
tenant is held to be the cestui que trust of an estate of
inheritance in trust. Such an estate would satisfy the
statute.4   So also an estate of freehold or inheritance in
trust will confer settlement.     So also an equitable estate
for life with remainder over to others, provided the
tenant enters and possesses for the requisite length of
time.6
The requirement that the yearly value of the rents
and profits shall exceed a given amount is interpreted to
mean that it shall so exceed the minimum in each of the
years of the series.7
The period of residence and the period of taking of
the rents and profits must coincide.8
The requirement that the taxes shall have been duly
assessed is satisfied if the assessments are regular, even
though they be not paid.9 but an omission to assess in
1 Wellfleet v. Truro (1862), 87 Mass. (5 Allen) 137.
2 Southbridge v. Warren (1853), 65 Mass. (11 Cush.) 292; Dover v. Brighton
(1854), 68 Mass. (2 Gray) 482.
8 West Cambridge v. Lexington (1824), 19 Mass. 536.
4 Randolph v. Norton (1860), 82 Mass. (16 Gray) 395.
6 Orleans v. Chatham (1823), 19 Mass. (2 Pick.) 29; Scituate v. Hanson (1834),
83 Mass. (16 Pick.) 222.
6 Conway v. Ashfield (1872), 110 Mass. 113.
7 Webster v. Leicester (1825), 20 Mass. (3 Pick.) 198.
8 Boston v. Wells (1817), 14 Mass. 384.
9 Westbrook v. Gorham (1818), 15 Mass. 160.




MODERN LAW OF LEGAL SETTLEMENT                 81
any one year of the series will interrupt the process, and
the assessors may so omit for good reason even though
the pauper was apparently taxable.'
An estate in dower conveys sufficient seisin and is to
be considered in possession for the purposes of legal
settlement from the date of set off even though not yet
confirmed by decree in probate:2 and such an estate is to
be considered still in possession even though the owner
lease it for a part of the prescribed period to satisfy an
execution, but still remains in possession and takes the
rents. It is immaterial whether he applies them to his
debt or not.3 A husband's occupancy of an estate set
off to his wife as dower is sufficient,4 though a husband's
occupancy of an estate held by the wife to her sole and
separate use does not, since the Statutes of 1845, ch. 208,
and 1857, ch. 249, confer upon him the right to take the
rents and profits, and is therefore not such an estate as
will confer settlement. It is not consummated as an
estate of freehold until the wife's death.6
Under a requirement of five years' possession and
occupancy, a tenant under a lease for four years who
holds over a fifth year as tenant at sufferance has not a
sufficient estate.6 As a general comment, it may be said
that nothing less than an estate for years will satisfy the
statute. 7
Two modes of gaining settlement which have disappeared from the Statute of 1911 were that which
conferred settlement upon ordained ministers occupying
1 Reading v. Tewksbury (1824), 19 Mass. 535.
2 Mansfield v. Pembroke (1827), 22 Mass. (5 Pick.) 449.
8 Idem.    4 Canton v. Dorchester (1851), 62 Mass. 524.
6 Leverett v. Deerfield (1863), 88 Mass. (6 Allen) 431.
6 Templeton v. Sterling (1818), 15 Mass. 253.
7 Boylbton v. Groton (1855), 70 Mass. (4 Gray) 282.




82    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


pastorates and that which declared a public officer holding
for one year to be settled in the town in which his service
was rendered. Under the former provision, proof of
ordination must be forthcoming, and in the establishment of that fact the usages of the religious denomination
in question were the basis: thus, in the Baptist denomination where the Church and the Society were required
to concur, the action of both must be shown.1 A minister
ordained in one town, by which he becomes settled there,
has been held to acquire a new settlement in another
town in which he later becomes settled as a minister,
though not newly ordained.2
Under the provision relating to public officers, it was
held requisite that the officer must have been, at all
times during the one-year period, capable of executing
the duties of his office; that is, that no disability should
have fallen upon him by reason of his own acts or in consequence of his own conduct.3
Military settlement has undergone a revival of interest
because of the German War. The amendment of 1919
has extended the scope of the old section to include all
persons who have served in any way. Hence, the decisions which followed each other in rapid succession in the
decade following the Civil War stand out with all the
force of recent decrees.
This mode applies regardless of age: consequently a
minor may gain and his wife and children will take his
settlement.4
The term "quota" includes "every person duly enlisted
I Leicester v. Fitchburg (1863), 89 Mass. (7 Allen) 90.
2 Bellingham v. West Boylston (1849), 57 Mass. 553.
8 Barre v. Greenwich (1822), 18 Mass. 129.
Fall River v. Taunton (1889), 150 Mass. 150.




MODERN LAW OF LEGAL SETTLEMENT   83


and mustered into the service of the United States. The
Legislature intended to include every man who served
and made part of that quota."' It is not fatal, therefore, that a person served under an assumed name, but
it is competent to prove that the person who served is
the same person as he who bears the false name.2 And
a person will be held to be duly assigned even though he
had been mustered into the naval service of the United
States several days prior to the beginning of the war.3
Settlement is gained under this mode immediately upon
the expiration of the year's service. Hence, his dependents will derive from that moment.4 And one military
settlement may be lost by the gaining of another even
though the entire process was completed before the
passage of the military settlement provision.
The enrollment of a person upon the United States
records as having been honorably discharged is probably
conclusive evidence of that fact for purposes of settlement.6 The "wilful desertion" of the statute is that
defined by the Articles of War, U.S. St. 1806, ch. 20,
art. 20.7 "Disability must be such as terminated the
soldier's military service within one year from his enlistment."8 And such disability must have arisen in the
service. There is no presumption that it did.9
Under this mode, also, the soldier may have been
accredited in excess of the quota.
1 Bridgewater v. Plymouth (1867), 97 Mass. 382.
2 Milford v. Uxbridge (1881), 130 Mass. 107.
3 Boston v. Mt. Washington (1885), 139 Mass. 15.
4 Newburyport v. Worthington (1882), 182 Mass. 510.
6 Granville v. Southampton (1885), 138 Mass. 256.  e II Op. A.G. 227.
7Hanson v. South Scituate (1874), 115 Mass. 336.
8 Wayland v. Ware (1870), 104 Mass. 46.
9 Ashland v. Marlboro (1871), 106 Mass. 266.




84    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


One of the most fruitful sources of disagreement between towns in the determination of settlement has been
the effect of the redivision of towns and the reincorporation of old districts into new towns. Does the settlement
of a person actually residing in the reincorporated district
pass to the new town? Does the settlement of those
who derive from him, but who reside in other places, pass
with his? or do they remain settled in the old town?
Before the passage of the Settlement Law of 1794,1
which is the original of the present section, the rule had
been that all persons settled in the original town at the
time of the new incorporation, but then dwelling elsewhere, would continue to be settled in the old town;
and this would be so even though their last abode in the
old town had been within the area newly set off.2 The
statute assigned the settlement to the town including the
last abode. The rule of the general statute may, of
course, be varied by the terms of special acts incorporating new towns. Where they do, the principle that a
new settlement cannot be gained by a new residence
within the limits of the town of the old settlement becomes
doubly important. These statutes, which pro tanto
supersede the general law, are strictly construed. Thus,
where the act provided "that any person, who may have
gained an inhabitancy at any time before the first of
March next (1808) within that part of either of the said
towns, which is by this act incorporated into West
Boylston, and who shall hereafter need to be supported
as a poor person, shall be supported by the town of
I Acts of 1794, ch. 34, 10th mode.
2 Brewster v. Harwich (1808), 4 Mass. 278; Bath v. Bowdoin (1808), 4 Mass.
452; Windham v. Portland (1808), 4 Mass. 384; Harvard v. Boxborough (1842), 45
Mass. (4 Met.) 571.




MODERN LAW OF LEGAL SETTLEMENT


85


West Boylston,"-it was held that a pauper settled in
the old town by residence of his great-grandfather in
that part not set off to the new town remained settled in
the old town even though he had subsequently and
before the new incorporation lived for many years in
the area newly set off.l Again, where the statute provided that "all persons who may hereafter become
chargeable as paupers to the said towns of Bridgewater
and West Bridgewater shall be considered as belonging
to that town on the territory of which they had their
settlement at the time of passing this act..." it was
held that a pauper deriving his settlement from his
father, who in turn derived from his father who had been
an ordained minister settled and residing in the territory
set off to West Bridgewater, and having his legal settlement there in consequence, was settled in West Bridgewater, even though he and his father before him had lived
for many years in the territory of the old town of Bridgewater.2 By such residence in the old part of the same town,
no new settlement could be gained; hence, the pauper's
settlement was the one contemplated in the statute as
having been gained in the district set off to West Bridgewater.
Where the statute was identical with the general law
of 1794, it was held that a pauper, who derived a settlement from his father who acquired by residence in the
district set off, and who, after his father's death, removed
to another part of the town not within said district and
was living there at the time of the new incorporation, was
settled in the old town.3
1 Princeton v. West Boylston (1818), 15 Mass. 257.
2 Bridgewater v. West bridgeuater (1829), 26 Mass. (9 Pick.) 55.
s Sutton v. Dana (1826), 21 Mass. (4 Pick.) 117.




86    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


Boarding paupers on the area set off will not constitute a residence for purposes of an act which declares
that the new town "shall support and maintain all such
persons [paupers] as heretofore have been, now are, or
hereafter may be, inhabitants of those parts of Southbridge, Charleton, and Dana, and have not obtained a
settlement elsewhere therein."'
Marriage emancipates a female minor, not because she
leaves her father's house, but rather because the statute
declares that a married woman shall follow and have the
settlement of her husband, and she cannot have more
than one settlement at the same time. If her husband
is without settlement, then her own, derived from her
father, continues. Marriage does not emancipate a male
minor. So long as he is a minor he takes his settlement,
if at all, by derivation from his father.2
But at the instant he reaches his majority, he ceases to
be capable of taking a settlement from his father, if he
be mentally capable of establishing domicile for himself,
though any settlement which he as a minor had by derivation from his father continues until a new one is gained
by his own act. And this is true even though the child
may continue to live within the same household with his
father all of his life.3
The reasoning upon which this interpretation is based
is best expressed in the words of Parsons, C. J., in Springfield v. Wilbraham, just cited:
When the father ceases to have any control over his children,
or any right to their services, it is not easy to derive any good
1 Southbridge v. Charleton (1818), 15 Mass. 248.
Taunton v. Plymouth (1818), 15 Mass. 203.
a Springfield v. Wilbraham (1808), 4 Mass. 498; Shirley v. Lancaster (1863),
88 Mass. (6 Allen) 31.




MODERN LAW OF LEGAL SETTLEMENT               87
reason why they should not be considered as emancipated,
and as no longer having a derivative settlement with the father
on his acquiring a new settlement. And when the reason ceases,
the law founded on that reason also ceases.l
The son at the moment of reaching his majority becomes potentially the head of a new family and is no longer
to be considered an appendage of the parent group.
Emancipation is not to be presumed, it must be established. Thus, if an illegitimate minor child removes from
the home of her parent and lives for many years in another
town, she will not gain a settlement there as an adult
might do. Mere separate residence is not emancipation.2
Again, if a child, having a settlement derived from her
father, removes during her minority with her mother, after
the father's death, and lives with her mother in another
town whereby the mother gains a new settlement in her
own right, the child retains the former settlement.3 And a
minor, deriving his settlement from  his mother, will
follow her, though she lose her former settlement and gain
a new one by a second marriage, notwithstanding the
minor was living beyond the boundaries of the Commonwealth at the time of such marriage.4
Divorce does not abrogate a settlement derived by
marriage, since divorce is nowhere named in the statute as
a means either for gaining or for losing a settlement. 
Nor is it material whether the marriage ceremony was
performed within or without the Commonwealth, so only
it be such a marriage as would be recognized by our laws
as valid.6 The age of the parties is immaterial, provided
1 4 Mass. 496.  2 Somerset v. Dighton (1815), 12 Mass. 383.
' Scituate v. Hanover (1828), 24 Mass. 140.
4 Great Barrington v. Tyringham (1836), 35 Mass. 264.
1 Dalton v. Bernardston (1812), 9 Mass. 201.
6 Idem.




88    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


they were competent to contract matrimony.1 A decree
of annulment secured in a foreign jurisdiction is not sufficient to defeat the settlement derived through marriage
unless it be such as might have issued upon the same
facts in the courts of this Commonwealth.2
As to the effect of desertion upon the right of a married
woman to gain, it is probable that a married woman, whose
husband never had a domicile in Massachusetts and
who deserts her, may, by her own separate residence,
gain a settlement. The doctrine that a married woman's
domicile is that of her husband has no application to such
a case.8 Her domicile would certainly not be held to
follow that of her deserting husband beyond the boundaries of the State.4
Few sections of the Settlement Law represent so much
conflict in their process of growth as those relating to the
derivation of settlement by the dependents of the person
who has acquired one. Children do not gain for themselves during minority: they follow and have the settlement of their father if he has one; otherwise, that of their
mother.
The fact that a man is a pauper does not prevent the
children of a woman who marries him from taking his
settlement.6
The first rule regarding illegitimate children is found
in the Statute of 1789. The phrase was that such child
"shall be deemed and taken as an inhabitant with his
mother." That is to say, he shall follow and have the
settlement of his mother. If she should change her
1 Dalton v. Bernardston (1812), 9 Mass. 201.
2 Cummington v. Belchertown (1889), 149 Mass. 223.  8 II. Op. A.G. 15.
4 Idem. b Goshen v. Richmond (1862), 86 Mass. (4 Allen) 458.




MODERN LAW OF LEGAL SETTLEMENT


89


settlement during his minority and before emancipation,
he would change his accordingly.' This rule was altered
in the Settlement Act of 1794,2 so that the illegitimate
child should no longer follow his mother's settlement.
He was to have her settlement at the time of his birth.
Hence, this would continue to be his settlement until he
should be able to gain one for himself.3 The modern law
goes back again to the original, which is the more equitable, since the family should be kept together, and in the
case of the illegitimate, if the child have not his mother,
he has nothing. The law should not, by divergent statements, with the consequent likelihood of variance in the
place of support, encourage the separation of the illegitimate child from its mother. The illegitimate is now once
again regarded as one with his mother in this matter of
settlement.
If the parents of an illegitimate child intermarry and the
father acknowledges him as his child, such child becomes
legitimate to all intents and purposes. Consequently, he
follows his father's settlement.4
An adopted child upon adoption takes the settlement of
its adoptive father.6 The former law contained a provision that whoever having a settlement shall be absent
from the Commonwealth for ten years in succession shall
thereby lose his settlement. The court has held this
provision not to be retroactive. The term "shall," said
the court, is to be understood in the Settlement Law to
refer prima facie to the future.6  But a settlement thus
1 Petersham v. Dana (1815), 12 Mass. 429.  A Acts of 1794, ch. 84.
a Boylston v. Princeton (1816), 13 Mass. 381.
4 Monson v. Palmer (1864), 90 Mass. (8 Allen) 551.
6 Washburn v. White (1886), 140 Mass. 568.
Lawrence v. Methuen (1905), 187 Mass. 592; Worcester v. Barre (1884),
138 Mass. 101.




90    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


lost does not void a settlement derived from it. The provision refers solely to the person who is absent. Thus,
where a husband loses his settlement by such absence
from the Commonwealth, his wife who has remained
within the Commonwealth does not lose the settlement
which she has by derivation from him.'
This chapter has expressly avoided recounting the minutiae of the struggle through which the towns of Massachusetts have hammered out the present law of settlement.
In like manner no mention has been made of the process of
notice of settlement and support between towns whereby
a town may by its own negligence or omission be barred
from contesting the settlement. The reader has been
turned from that borderland between the settlement law
and the laws of public poor relief, the intent of the chapter
being rather to relate only those fundamental pronouncements of our courts and of our Legislature which compose
the structure of the scheme of legal settlement. The next
chapter seeks to show how the towns actually relieved
their poor.
1 Treasurer, etc., v. Boston (1918), 229 Mass. 83.




CHAPTER V


THE TOWN S POOR
BARRING Old England, with her debtors' prisons and her
poor law unions, there is probably not another chapter in
the annals of poverty among civilized peoples so drab and
so dry of true sympathy as that of Colonial Massachusetts; nor yet a record so pregnant with the quality of
justice, or so replete with those salient principles, however
slowly developing, which combine in their final stage to
make up a wholesome social programme among a selfgoverning people.
Like the dry, unlovely arms of the century plant, the
practices of those earlier decades embraced within their
harsh outline a flower, coming slowly to bloom, a system of
public social service which is still far short of its ideal,1
but which in these early years of the twentieth century
stands out in American experience as an example before
the world., So great is the contrast between the methods of olden
times and the public opinion of to-day that government is
busy seeking to redefine its nomenclature of poor relief
in milder phrase, and to profess, somehow, a complete
denial of the existence of paupers.2
It is the purpose of this chapter to trace the thread of
historical development in the method of extending public
poor relief by the town, reserving for later chapters, never1 See post, p. 193.
2 See Acts of 1902, ch. 213; 1907, ch. 386; 1910, ch. 412; and 1913, chs.
266 and 763, sec. 1.




92    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


theless, the special topics of child care and the treatment
of mental defectives.
The first axiom of Massachusetts public poor relief is
that the responsibility is local. The philosophy of such
responsibility is that the relief should be given by that
community to which the distressed person is most nearly
attached. There where he has dwelt and had his home;
where he has earned and spent his wages; where his children have gone to school; where the ties of his everyday
life bind him: that is his home, and, should he come to
distress, that is the group of neighbors who should, as
against others more remote, rally about him to set him
on his feet.
As a consequence of the localization of the obligation
the instrument for the application of the system has been
always the smallest unit of government-the town. A
great and growing exception to this decentralized system
is to be noticed in the developments of the past quartercentury; but the town basis of our public relief remains
its most striking feature still.
In the series of statutes of 1642, relating to inhabitancy
and the support of the poor, Plymouth enactedthat euery towneship shall make competent puision for the
mayntenance of their poore according as they shall fynd most
convenyent & suitable for themselues by an order & genall
agreement in a publike towne meeting. And notwthstanding
the prmisss that all such pson & psons as are now resident &
inhabitant & wthin the said townes shalbe mayntaned & puided
for by them.1
This is no doubt the expression of a practice obtaining
from the beginning of the settlement. It was in fact
nothing but the English system of local relief. The town
1 Plyem. Col. Recs. Pulsifer, "Laws," vol. xi, p. 41.




THE TOWN'S POOR


93


was the ultimate sovereign in matters of the daily life and
the contacts of its inhabitants. Consequently the poor
townsman must starve if he be not relieved by his near
neighbor or by all his neighbors acting together. Such
joint action meant town aid.
New England town government is effected through a
committee known as the selectmen.       These officials had
in the first decades the duty of aiding the poor. In later
times the English pattern was followed by electing overseers of the poor. Boston created such a separate body
for the first time in 1691.1 Plymouth selected two overseers in 1779.2   In general, overseers separate from   the
selectmen were not chosen until the duties of caring for
the poor had become so burdensome as to hamper the
usual machinery of town government. Many of the
smaller communities still discharge their obligations to
the poor through the selectmen.
Though the older settlements resorted early to the
expedient of housing their poor under a single roof, it may
be taken as a general statement that almshouse care was
not common till after 1700. Thus, for nearly a century,
it was usual to deal with each case individually as it arose.
And it was usual, also, to present the case to the entire
town in regular town meeting, there to be discussed,
frequently to be haggled over, and finally disposed of by
some temporizing step.3
1 Boston Town Recs., Rep. Rec. Com., vol. 7, p. 206.
2 Recs. Town of Plymouth (pub. 1889), vol. III, p. 365. The question was
raised as early as 1762 when the town refused to remove the duties from the
selectmen. See idem, p. 141.
3 In 1768 at the Amesbury town meeting it was moved that the widow
Merener be proceeded against as a vagabond. Voted in the negative. Voted to
reconsider that vote. Moved that the town support her as one of their poor.
Voted negative. This vote reconsidered. Voted town take care of her as




94    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


The efforts of the Massachusetts overseers of the poor
have been from the outset directed mainly toward avoiding or unloading the financial burden of supporting the
poor. Consequently the records of these three hundred
years are replete with ordinances and warnings and votes
embodying shrewd Yankee bargains aimed at ridding the
town of the family which, through sickness or death or
other misfortune, had come to want.' More astonishing
still, perhaps, is the record of the courts, called upon with
such frequency to decide the question of support between
contending towns where the sum involved was often less
than the costs of the action. Since the passage of the
Act of Settlement in 1793-94, the Supreme Court of the
Commonwealth has passed upon issues of settlement and
support in several hundred cases.
The first years of the Plymouth settlement witnessed
a common pooling of all property; so that each person
shared whether he contributed or not. But though in
such a system the poor are not recorded, they are present
nevertheless. The community of goods very nearly
resulted in the extermination of the colony.2
After the colonists recovered from this folly and started
to plant, each for himself, famine was banished; but much
harm had been done to the stamina of the people. In
town's poor. Adjourned. Next meeting: Voted to reconsider last vote. Voted
that selectmen proceed against her as a vagabond. See Merrill's History of
Amesbury, p. 242.
1 In the warrant for the town meeting of Fitchburg for the year 1813 occurs
this item: "To see what method the town will take to get rid of the support
of Ephraim Farnsworth's family."
2 Under date of 1623 Bradford says:-"And after they began to come
into wants, many sould away their cloathes and bed coverings; others (so base
were they) became servants to ye Indeans, and would cutt them woode &
fetch them water, for a cap full of come: others fell to plaine stealing, both
night & day, from ye Indeans." Bradford History, State edition, 1901, p. 157.




THE TOWN'S POOR


95


1633 we find the court taking vigorous measures to forestall poverty and dependency by directing the conduct of
the individual who is found going a wayward course.
Tho Higgens, having lived an extravagant life, was placed
wth John Jenny for eight years, to serve him as an apprentise,
during wch time the said John competently to pvide for him;
& at thend thereof to give him double appell, 12 bushels of
corne, & 20 acres of land.'
So paternalistic a government did not hesitate to admonish any of its subjects whose conduct foreshadowed
public damage or burden. Thus, September 29, 1658:
Mr Collyare, Mr Alden, and Constant Southworth are requested and appointed by the Court to take some speedy course
to reduce Goodwife Thomas, a Welch woman, liueing att the
North River, to lue more orderly, soe as shee bee not for the
future in dangered to come to missery and extremity, as formerly
shee hath bine.2
And the catabasis of goodwife Thomas, seeming to point
a moral to the court:
The deputies of each towne were requested to enquire in
theire respective towns concerning such psons, and to make
report to the court of sech, if any shallbee found.3
But she did not mend her ways; for two years later the
court ordered Robert Barker to take possession of all her
property and administer it for her; also to take custody of
the woman herself and to permit her to live in her house,
and if ever she should go out of the colony, to turn her
property all over to her.4
There was no compunction in winding up a household,
placing the children with various parties by indenture,
and even putting the parents out to service, in order to
1 Recs. Plym. Col. Shurtleff, "Court Orders," vol. I, p. 21.'
2 Shurtleff, vol. II, p. 144.  3 Idem, p. 149.
4 Idem, p. 197.




96    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


prevent a public expense. Some examples that may be
taken as typical of this forehandedness are the following:
June 9, 1653. Whereas complaint is made of Thomas Brayman, of Taunton, that by reason of a distracted condicon in
which hee is, that both himselfe and wife are out of any imployment which may conduce to their maintainance and subsistance,
the Court has ordered, that suche of the towne of Taunton whoe
are deputed by the said towne to order the especiall affaires
thereof shall despose of the said Brayman as they shall thinke
meet for on in such condicon, and that his wife bee putt forth
to service, beinge younge and fitt for the same, and haueing noe
other way soe likely to procure her mayntanance.'
March 25, 1672. It was ordered that notice begiven to the
seuerall psons underwritten that they within one moneth after
the date hereof dispose of theire seuerall children (herein nominated or mentioned) abroad for servants, to serue by Indentures
for some terme of yeares, accordinge to theire ages and capacities; wch if they refuse or neglegt to doe the majestrates and
selectmen will take theire said children from them, and place
them with such Masters as they shall prouide accordinge as the
law directs. And that they doe accordinge to this ordr dispose
of theire children doe make returne of the names of Mastrs &
children soe put out to service, with theire Indentures to the
Selectmen at their next monethly meetinge being the last
Monday in Aprill next.2
There follow the names of twelve persons with a memorandum of fourteen children, of whom three were boys
and eleven girls, ranging in ages from eight to twenty.
Another example is to be found in an item in the warrant
for Gardner town meeting, January 5, 1789:
To see what method the town will come into to take care
and provide for Oliver Upton and his family; to vendue them
out to the lowest bidder, or to take some other method, as the
town shall think best when met. Voted, To vendue them to
the lowest bidder. Voted, to choose a committee to draw the
condition of sale. The condition of sale of Oliver Upton and
1 Recs. Plym. Col. Shurtleff, "Court Orders," vol. im, p. 87.
2 Boston Town Records. See 7 Rep. Rec. Cor. p. 67.




THE TOWN'S POOR


97


wife are such, that the lowest bidder have them until March
meeting, with their household stuff, and to provide victuals and
drink, convenient for them; and to take care of them. The
Selectmen to take a minute of his household stuff. Also the
children to be let out to the lowest bidder until the selectmen
can provide better for them; and to provide victuals and drink
for them.
Oliver Upton & wife bid off by Simon Gates, at one shilling
per week. Oldest child bid off by Simon Gates, at one shilling
per week. Second child bid off by John Haywood at ten pence
per week. Third child bid off by Andrew Beard, at one shilling, two pence per week. Fourth child bid off by Ebenezer
Bolton, at one shilling, nine pence per week.'
Each individual in the community, if he did not possess
capital, was required to work for a living: and it was by
the most severe and repressive measures that inhabitants
were kept to their several tasks, and under the most
onerous requirements that the strangers-as has been
seen in a previous chapter-were admitted to dwell.
When public relief did become necessary, the chief aim was
to avoid as much of the burden as possible. The recipient was required to make all possible return to the public;
and since it was the invariable practice that minors should
work, to the end that they make their way and keep out
of mischief, parents who were aided by the town and who
had children whom they did not employ, were required to
set them to work or the town would indenture them.
In 1641 Plymouth Colony enacted a provision
that those that haue releefe from the townes and haue children
and doe not ymploy them that then it shalbe lawfull for the
towneship to take order that those children shalbe put to worke
in fitting ymployment according to their strength and abilities,
or placed out by the townes.2
In the revision and codification of 1658 the early pro1 Gardner Town Records, vol. r, p. 100.
2 Dec. 7, 1641. Plym. Col. Recs. Pulsifer, vol. xi, p. 38.




98    POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


visions of the Colony laws relating to public dependents
and the forestalling of dependency were repeated with
some additions born of the intervening experience. Thus:
Ffor the preventing of Idlenes and other euills occationed
thereby It is enacted by the Court that the Grandjurymen of
euery towne shall haue power within theire seuerall townshipes,
to take a speciall view and Notice of all manor of psons married
or single dwelling within theire seuerall townshipes that haue
smale meanes to maintaine themselues and are suspected to
liue Idlely and loosly and to require an account of them how
they liue and such as they find delinquent and cannot giue a
good account with them that they cause the cunstable to bring
them before the majistrate in theire towne if there bee any if
there bee none before the Celect Men appointed for such purpose
that such course may be taken with them as in theire wisdomes shalbee judged just and equal.'
The local practice out of which this statute grew is well
illustrated by the customary "walks" of the justices,
selectmen, and overseers of the poor in the town of Boston,
for the purpose of discovering disorders and condition of
living that might, if not changed, bring the inhabitants to
dependency. Thus, under date of July 28, 1707, the
justices and selectmen agreed to "vissit the families,
dividing themselves wth the Overseers of the Poor, Constables & Tithing men, to the Severall divisions of ye
town."2  Again, in the following year:
The Selectmen do desire the Justices, Overseers of the Poor
& Constables of the town to joyn with them in ye Severall
divisions of this town to vissit the families thereof on Wednesday the 4th of FebrY Currt and to meet at the Town House at
six of the clock on the evening of ye same day to compare the
Remarks yt shall be then made in ye Sd vissits & to consult of
what shall be meedfull furder to be done in Ye Same for the
welfare & good order of this town.3
1 Sept. 29, 1658. Plym. Col. Recs. Pulsifer, "Laws," p. 90.
2 Boston Selectmen's Records, 2 Rep. Rec. Cor. p. 62.
3 Feb. 2, 1708. Idem, p. 68.




THE TOWN'S POOR


99


The object of the visit was declared, in an entry of
1715, to be "to inspect disordely persons, new-comers, and
the circumstances of the Poor & Education of their
Children." This paternalistic survey of the flock continued as a practice till long after the middle of the century
when it gave way to a system of paid agents who, like the
"master and cheff avoyder and keeper oute" employed
by the city of London two centuries earlier,1 were charged
with the duty of searching out strangers and others who
might prove undesirable, warning them to depart, and
bringing about their deportation. They were paid a
stipulated commission per head.2
In these drastic measures for the suppression of idleness
and evil courses leading to public dependency may be
seen the struggle of the settlements against a horde of
incompetents who came into the colonies frequently at
the instance of English authorities who knew them to be
undesirables. As pauperism grew and crime, its firstborn, began to demand more in the way of united action in
defence of the public than the common jail, statutes became more and more emphatic. At the inauguration of
the Provincial Government the colonial laws were again
rewritten. By chapter 28 of 1692, which was a measure
for the regulation of townships, choice of town officers,
and for setting forth their powers, it was provided that
the selectmen and overseers
are hereby empowered and ordered to take effectual care that
all children, youth, and other persons of able body living within
the same town or precincts thereof (not having estates otherwise to maintain themselves) do not live idly or mispend their
time in loitering, but that they be brought up or imployed in


X See Chapter I, p. 16.


2 Boston Selectmen's Minutes, March 6, 1765.




100   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


some honest calling, which may be profitable unto themselves
and to the publick.
Any person so idling shall if convicted by two justices
be sent to the House of Correction and
Whipped on the naked back, not exceeding 10 lashes, and be
there kept at hard labour until he or she be descharged by the
Justices, and it may be lawful for the overseer of the poor or
selectmen in each town... and they are hereby ordered with
the assent of two justices of the peace, to bind any poor children
belonging to such towns to be apprentices where they shall see
convenient, a manchild till he shall come to the age of twentyone years; and a womanchild to the age of eighteen years, or
time of marraige.1
From the stern measures taken by the watchful selectmen, first to avoid the burden, and second, when finally
charged, to carry as little of it as possible, it resulted that
the lot of the town's poor was hard. To be relieved at
all, the needy must have been in direct want for the necessaries of life; and relief when given was such merely as
to sustain life. It is hard to assume that comfort in any
measurable degree accompanied the public aid of paupers
in colonial times.
As an illustration of the scant consideration received
by the pauper himself, an early case in Plymouth is
typical. In 1680 Taunton disputed with Plymouth
before the court as to which was liable for the support of
John Harmon, "a decriped man." It was ordered that
he remain at Plymouth till June, 1681, the two towns to
divide the cost, and the case to have final disposition at
that sitting. At a sitting of July 7, 1682, Harmon was
shouldered by the court onto the town of Dartmouth
until they could show cause why he did not belong to


1 Acts of 1692, ch. 28, sec. 7.




THE TOWN'S POOR


101


them. Finally, in 1683 the court disposed of the case
in the following order:
In reference unto John Harmon, an impotent man, concerning whom there hath bin much debate between the towns of
Plymouth and Taunton, which of said towns should maintain
him, the Court in the end have ordered that Plymouth shall
entertaine him untill theire yeer wilbe expired, which wilbe in
October next after the date heerof, and that then the towne of
Taunton shall receive and entertaine him for the space of one
whole year, and Plymouth then to take him one whole yeer;
and soe to be kept from yeer to yeer, one yeer in Plymouth and
the other in Taunton, successively; and that if it can be found
att any time to be just and equall that any other town or townes
should keep him, that it shalbe required of them alsoe to doe
theirepte therin.1
It is difficult to assume that any appreciable degree of
humane care would be accorded under such a disposal.
Harmon's case came up in 1683. In the two hundred
years that followed these primitive times, the people of
Massachusetts passed through five wars, two of them great
conflicts upon the issue of liberty, yet, deeply as men's
hearts must have been stirred, and strengthened as the
impulse of sympathy must have been for the unfortunate,
"out-relief" at the end of the nineteenth century differed
little if at all from the meagre shelter, the coarse food, and
the pine box of the seventeenth. Such differences as did
come about arose more through economic change than
from any variance in the attitude of the overseers of the
poor. Poverty was not differentiated from chronic
pauperism and pauperism was akin to crime. The sturdy
beggar, the idiot, the drunkard, and the widow who was
only poor, were herded together under the same roof, the
chief source of anxiety being the net cost of the establish

I Plym. Col. Recs. Shurtleff, "Court Orders," vol. vi, p. 113.




102   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


ment. If the day of the almshouse had not yet come, still
the problem was, first, how to get rid of the burden, and,
second, if the burden must be borne, how to distribute it
equally upon the townsfolk. One method of such equalization is illustrated in an extract from the records of
Hadley. In 1687 the widow Baldwin came upon the
town, and it was voted in town meeting that she should be
removed from house to house, "to such as are able to
receive her," and remain a fortnight in each family:
"to go from Samuel Parker's, senior, south ward, and
round the town."'
The same town boarded one Thomas Elgarr, "a town's
poor," with a total of thirty-two persons for a total period
of sixty-five weeks prior to January, 1685. He remained
from one to three weeks with each host.2 Frequently, the
poor themselves were employed to look after the poor;
"the poor being sometimes boarded with those who were
in want themselves, it [the outlay] is not lost to the
town."3
Mere consideration for the feelings of the poor was
not recognized officially. The names of those who were
helpless and dependent upon the town, with all the details
of their wretchedness, were paraded in town meeting and
set down upon record for the perusal of all posterity.
Thus, from the records of Easton, for May, 1799:
voted to Abiel Kinsly, nine pounds, four shillings, for shoger
and Rum for David Randall's family. Voted to Thos Manly
foure pounds, ten shillings, for a coffin and diging the grave for
Seth Hogg. Voted to Israel Woodward foure pounds for a
t See History of Hadley, by Sylvester Judd (Springfield, 1905), p. 234.
2 Idem.
I Report of the Town of Chilmark to a Spl. Comm. of the Legislature. See
House No. 46 of 1820.




THE TOWN'S POOR


103


grave cloath for Seth Hogg, and two quarts of Rum expended
about the time of his death.'
In truth, "going on the town" was rated a catastrophe
of the first order, a refinement of poverty exceeded only
by the inevitable hunger and exposure which must otherwise ensue. Much more fortunate were they who, though
in need of some assistance were nevertheless possessed of
such means as would save them from going completely
upon the town. Partial measures were much more
humane. It was common to aid poor inhabitants who
were near to dependency by granting them an abatement
of taxes, by increasing their rights in the common lands,
or even by contributing toward the building of a house
for them. With the exception of votes of money or other
relief to widows, this form of partial help toward selfsupport is by far the most frequent in the first few decades.
From the Boston Records it appears that in the first five
years of that settlement the poorer inhabitants were
privileged to cut wood in a certain section, as a special
concession to their straitened circumstances:
Whereas the wood upon the neck of land towards Roxburie
hath this last winer beene disorderly cutt up and wasted,
whereby many of the poore inhabitants are disappointed of
releife they might have had there in after and needfull tymes,
now it is generally agreed that Mr Treasurer, Mr Bellingham,
and Mr William Hutchinson, with the three Deacons, shall
consider whoe have been faultie therein, and sett downe what
restitution of wood unto the poore.2
A similar grant to the poor appears under date of December 14, 1635, in the Boston Records, where it is stated
1 See History of Towne of Easton, by Wm. L. Chaffin (Cambridge, 1886),
p. 444. Such intimate recognition would have hurt Seth's pride ever so little,
however, could he have lived to see the account; as the record goes on to say
that he was "none come posements"!
2 March 23, 1635. Boston Town Records, Rep. Rec. Cor. vol. I, p. 4.




104   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


that the poorer sort of the Inhabitants, such as are members
or are likely so to be, and have noe Cattell, shall have their
proportion of allotments for planting ground, and other assigned
unto them by the Allotters, and layd out at Muddy River....
Again, under date of January 23, 1636, agreed
that such of the poorer Inhabitants, whose allotments were
other where, should have libertie for 3 years to plant at Muddy
River, where the rest doe plant, upon such part of their allotments as themselves are not able for the present to plant.2
When Concord, in 1654, made a second land division,
it was voted
that all poore men of the Towne that have not Commones to
the number of foure shall be allowed so many as amounts to
foure with what they all ready shall have till they are able to
purchase for them selves and we mean those poore men that at
the present are householders.3
Money was commonly voted to individuals to enable
them to construct or to complete dwellings, the town
holding a sort of interest in the premises. Sometimes
such interest was by bargain at the time of aid. Thus:
Upon the petition of Ann, the wife of Israel Howen to helpe
them in Finishing of a house wch they are building (haueinge
by themselves & Friends purchased a peece of land & a Frame
thereon, but not able to Finish it, It is ordered that if the sd
Israeli will make ouer the deed to the sd land to ye treasurer
of this towne, for the use of the sd Ann and her Children then
the said treasurer shall let them haue tenn or... for ye use
aforesaid.4
The town of Braintree voted ~5 to Nath' Owen to help
build a room for the keeping of his father and mother.5
I Boston Town Records. 2 Rep. Rec. Com. vol. I, p. 6.  ' Idem, p. 8.
8 See A. S. Hudson, History of Concord, vol. I. Concord, 1904.
4 Boston Town Records, March 3, 1674. 7 Rep. Rec. Cor. p. 86. The town
of Amesbury gave aid for many years to one Alice Colby, who lived in a little
house by the burying ground at Bartlett's Corner. When she died the town
sold her house at auction to recoup for the aid given. (1826.) See Merrill's
History of Amesbury, p. 341.  6 Braintree Town Records, Sept. 26, 1701.




THE TOWN'S POOR


105


Chelsea voted ~20 to enable one Dispau, to complete
the erection of a dwelling for himself and family, by the
assistance of his friends.1 In 1753 the town of Harvard
built a small house for Joseph Blood and family who were
the first regular paupers supported by that town.2 Five
years later the town sank a well on the premises and in
1762 purchased a cow for the use of the family. In 1778
appears an entry that, Joseph Blood and family being
dead, the cow was sold pursuant to a vote to that effect
in town meeting.
Ashfield, as late as 1813, built a log hut on town land
for Tim Warren to move on, the selectmen "to oversee
him and see that he gets a living for himself and family."3
In 1673 a committee of citizens of Cambridge reported
to the selectmen recommending aid to help build a house:
These are to certifie our honered captaine and the Rest of
the Selecte men of Cambridge that according to your order we
have bine with Joseph bartlit and wee doe fine him in a very
poore condition having noe house and very bad in Respect of
foode and Rayment and thearfor if you would be pleased to
Allow five pounds it may be A comfortable supply to helpe to
build him a house and A helpe to suppy his present wants.4
In the earlier years when currency was rare, relief was
seldom in cash. Many towns owned milch cows, acquired
usually by gift from citizens to the use of the poor; and
it was not unusual to help a struggling family by assigning to them a town cow for a certain period.
In March, 1624, James Shirley, merchant of London,
sent over in the ship Charity a heifer as a gift, with its
1 See Mellen Chamberlain, History of Chelsea, vol. II, p. 382.
2 See Henry S. Nourse, History of Town of Harvard, p. 125.
3 See F. G. Hawes, History of Ashfield, p. 261.
4 Toun and Selectmen's Records, New Towne and Cambridge, 1630-1703.
Cambridge, 1901.




106   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


increase, for the benefit of the poor of Plymouth. At a
town meeting July 16, 1638, a committee was appointed
to have the power of disposal for four years of the stock,
which began with the heifer and which had by 1638 increased to twelve head of cattle. The next gift of the sort
in the Plymouth Records appears under date of March 5,
1644, where Mr. Andrew Hellot, Sr., gave "a heifer in
calve" for "the benefitt of the poore of the said town of
Yarmouth."' The court, to which the ordering thereof
was referred by the donor, ordered
that the said cowe or heiffer in calve shalbe on May day next
deliuered to Thomas Payne, of Yarmouth, who shall haue her
for three yeares next ensuing, and the milk and thone half of
the increase during that tyme, and after the said three yeares
are expired, the poore of Yarmouth shall haue her & thencrease,
to be disposed of by the townsmen of Yarmouth from tyme to
tyme to the poore persons dwelling in the said towne as they
shall think fitt, and for such terme, reserving the benfitt of the
said stock for the benefitt of their poore, and not to be allienated
to any other use.2
Concord was the recipient of similar gifts and followed
a like practice. In 1645 William Halsted bequeathed
"unto the poore of Concord fyve pound to be laid out in a
Cow which I would have So ordered by the Deacons &
my executors that it may be a continual help to such as
are in need, God giving a blessing thereto."3 Under date
of July 13, 1698, the following entry appears in the Concord Town Records:
the Selectmen being informed of ye great prsent want of Thomas
Pellit they give order unto Stephen Hosmer to deliver a Town
Cow unto sd pellit for his present supply, who accordingly
delivered a cow upon ye account aforsd unto him sd pellit which
cow is of a black couler, a white face with black spotts round
Plym. Col. Recs. Shurtleff, vol. in, p. 70.  2 Idem.
a See Alfred S. Hudson, History of Concord, vol. I.




THE TOWN'S POOR


107


each eye, & sd cow is to continue wth sd pellit so long as sd
selectmen Judge necessary.
As the towns grew older there was no escape from a
steady increase in the number of those who for various
reasons, including their own vicious courses, must be
given food and shelter. Widows were perhaps the most
numerous. An examination of the minutes of these old
town meetings will show that the problem of supporting
the poor was seriously and painfully argued even when
the poor in the given instance were perhaps fewer than
half a dozen. The method of providing for them was
the great point of contention. How should the town's
poor be disposed of? Some said by care in an almshouse,
but, except in the more populous settlements, the numbers were too few to render this plan advisable. The early
law said that the matter should be disposed of in each
case by vote in a town meeting. This method could not
in the nature of things suffice beyond the most primitive
period. The duty was soon delegated to the selectmen:
but the New England town is not quick to refer matters
that lie in its discretion; so that the town meetings for
many decades insisted upon disposing of the problems of
the poor generally, if not of the individuals themselves.
The aim was to dispose of the poor as cheaply as possible. To search out the best conditions for the individual
pauper by some modern system of case work or home
finding was not practicable as the machinery for such
investigation did not exist. It was quite natural, therefore, that the towns fell into the habit of allowing the
public to offer terms. It became the custom, universal
among our Massachusetts communities, to bid off the
support of the town's poor at public auction. The scene




108   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


was usually staged at the village tavern on a Saturday
night just following the annual town meeting. Here,
ranged about the table, sat the fathers of the town and
such of those as by hard living and coarse thinking had
arrived at a place in life where they could speculate upon
the bodily vigor and the probable capacity for hard labor1
of a half-witted boy, a forlorn-looking widow, or a halt
and tottering old man. As they drained their liquor,2
the talk was not upon the sorrows of the poor or the hope
that life, even the most humble, must hold for all men:
it turned, rather, upon the odd shilling, the halfpence, the
danger of the pauper dying whereby the bidder might lose
a part of his equity. In such case the town must forego
some of the contract price and provide the box, the gravecloth  and   the liquor for the funeral.          The undertaker
could not sublet if a stipulation to that effect was included
in the terms.
The Records of Fitchburg afford a fair illustration of
this method of disposing of the poor. It was the custom
1 It was always understood that the contractor would get as much labor
out of the pauper as he could. For example, see Old Records of the Town of
Fitchburg, vol. v, Selectmen's Report for March, 1820.
2 Numerous records attest this custom. See Records of the Town of Harvard,
1797. "For liquor at venduing the poor. 3.13." History of Harvard, by Henry
S. Nourse, p. 127.
Records of Fitchburg, March 4, 1811 (vol. v). "The Selectmen a committee chose to take care of the poor the present year have let them out as
follows:
"Set up Ephraim Smith to the lowest bidder by the week the person who
bids him off is to keep him one year & bid off to Benja Fuller-at 60 cents per
week the town is to clothe him & pay his Doctr bill if any struck off to Levi
Farwell he is to give the town 35 cents per week and keep him one year. Mary
Wares, on the same condition as Smith, bid off to Joel Eaton he is to have
G0Ots per week. Jonas Spalding, on the same condition only the person who
takes him is to give him the privelige of going to school in the winter bid off
to Seth Phillips he is to have 22 cts per week. Edward Goodfellow on the same
condition as Spalding bid off to Joseph Carter he is to have 8 cts per week.
Rebeckah Smith set up, the person who bids her off is pay as long as he keeps
her, bid off Jos. Carter he is to pay the town two mills per week."




THE TOWN'S POOR


109


there to vote at the annual town meeting "that the poor
be let out to the lowest bidder at Isaiah Putnams this
evening."1 The account then relates the name of each
pauper, the name of the successful bidder, and the amount
which the town must pay per week. These rates varied
from nothing to full support, depending upon the bidder's
estimate of the amount of economic return he could get
out of the person set up. At a later time this town let
all its paupers to one single undertaker. Thus, the
Selectmen's Report for 1820 contains the following:
1820 March. Conditions of Supporting the Poor. Conditions on which the Poor of the town of Fitchburg were let out
for one year, from March 9th 1820 to March 9, 1821, viz. the
undertaker to Board, Clothe and Comfortably provide for, in
sickness and health the persons hereafter named... and to
leave their clothes in as good condition as when received,....
and if any of the above named persons should decease within
the course of the year, the town to be at the expense of burying,
and the doctors bill if any of them are sick.
And if any of said Paupers shall elope or run away within said
term the Undertaker is to bring them back at his own expense,
and pay all expenses in consequence thereof.... The children
above named to have the same advantage of schooling as other
children in the destrict where they reside. The undertaker to
have the benefit of the labor of said Paupers; and receive his
pay quarterly....
On the foregoing terms eight adults and five children,
comprising all the paupers of the town, were let out to
Jacob Upton for $309.75. In the year of Upton's control
we find a vote appropriating $33.00 toward his claim of
$48.50 for burying three of his adults, and a second vote
adding $3.00. That the town may not be thought unjust
in their disposal of these wretched individuals, it should
be noted that at this same meeting it was voted
I Rccords of Fitchburg, March 2, 1812, vol. v.




110


POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


that the Clothing and other articles, left by Jonathan Wares
& wife, paupers, deceased, be distributed by the Selectmen,
among their heirs, as, in their judgment, shall be equitable.1
That the auctioned poor would receive care any better
than a self-interested driver out of his unsupervised
thoughtfulness would afford them was out of the question.
The world is awakening to the fact that contract prison
labor is not humane. Humanity is in haste to do away
with the chain gang that is driven for what labor a contractor can make out of the wretches who make up its
human links. Yet it differs little if at all from the old
pauper contract of a century ago. The poor fared ill
under it: and when it is remembered that little children
and aged women were alike appraised, and their capacity
for toil reckoned in dollars, the contract price to be paid
by the town representing the difference between such
capacity and a normal ability for self-support and something besides for their "owner," it must be clear that such
a system could not long survive the awakening conscience
of a fair-minded people. The old books of selectmen's
orders give many a hint of the probable conditions of
these farmed out paupers. Thus, from the selectmen's
book for the town of Milford, "Also one order to Seth
Albee, for cleaning the widow G.... A.... of lice, etc.,
$6.17."  "Also one order to Ruth Albee, of five dollars
and sixty seven cents, for cleaning R.... K.... of lice,
etc., $5.67."2 With such conditions attending the town's
poor, it is not surprising that those who were only poor
strove with all their strength to avoid public dependency.
It is said that many of the recruits who joined the Shakers were the lonely and aged who feared the coming of
Report of the Selectmen, March 1820, Records, vol. v.
2 See Adin Ballow, History of Milford, p. 282.




TIHE TOWN'S POOR


111


poverty and the shame of the annual vendue.1 And the
reader may readily look back in fancy a hundred years and
see the widow Hayden, inhabitant of the town of Easton,
sitting by her window binding straw diligently for the last
months of her life to secure money enough for a burial
that would not be "on the Town."2
Gradually the system of auctioning the poor lost
ground. Protests against its inhumanity forced themselves with ever-greater insistence into town meetings:
and out of the wreck of this brutal practice rose the
almshouse as the lesser evil. To-day, in the three
hundredth year of the settlement, Massachusetts may
be justly proud of her almshouses-clean, homelike
infirmaries for the worthy poor: but this degree of excellence did not always obtain. Behind it is a background so dark and so menacing to the public welfare
that it cannot be passed over without mention.
'The system of auctioning the poor at large, singly or
in families, to whosoever offered the lowest bid, was never
favorably received in the larger communities, because
there, where the poor were numerous, the almshouse
could be administered with economy; hence, it afforded
an ever-present alternative. In the towns, where numbers were small, and where relief was not given in the
dependent's own home, the auction or some similar system was imperative.
The first modification of the simple auction at large
was the grouping of all the town's poor in one contract
bidding them off to a single contractor, who entered into
an agreement, usually with a bond, to take all responsi1 Henry S. Nourse, History of Harvard, p. 127.
2 See Chaffin's History of Easton, p. 448.




112   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


bility for them for a year. Frequently he engaged also
to defend the town or to save it harmless from claims for
poor relief from other towns.
The result was a privately owned and privately
operated almshouse where the profit to the keeper was
the object sought, and where the labor of the inmates
formed a definite and well-understood part of the legal
consideration. Such a system, if corrected at all, must
fall back upon that ultimate force, an outraged sense
of public decency, to curb its excesses. Certainly it
contained nothing inherent that made for the well-being
of the poor or that did aught for the public good than to
safeguard an item of expenditure.
This intermediate step of the lump contract was not
long-lived. If it fell into the hands of a heartless keeper
and the poor fared especially ill, it was usually decided
to go back to the auction at large.' If a good keeper
pleased the town by his humanity and his economy, it
was thereupon assumed that if a private individual
could make a success of the scheme,-the town should be
able to do likewise; and the municipal almshouse carned
into being.
From the point of view of the modern institution, the
earlier almshouses of Massachusetts were indicative of
all that is evil in the eyes of social service. They admitted of slight if any separation of the sexes. They
afforded no classification according to age. They housed
little children with the prostitute, the vagrant, the
drunkard, the idiot, and the maniac.
They offered small opportunities for occupation,
especially for the wandering poor who needed it most.
1 See Smith's History of Dover, p. 245.




THE TOWN'S POOR


113


As a result of these vital omissions, they were schools
for crime-breeders of immorality and chronic pauperism. Much that the community now suffers in the
presence of a horde of degenerate paupers among its
worthier dependents, it owes to that very system by
which it sought to ward'off such a calamity, namely,
its statutory provisions for the giving of relief, and its
almshouse method so innocent of classification and so
frequently lacking in the work test.
For decades in the history of our almshouse system
the jail was the only other institution where individuals
were housed: and it was natural enough, therefore, to
gather together under this single roof for the poor all
manner of persons of what condition soever, who were
either unable or unwilling to do for themselves. Of
the worthy poor, there were the widow who was beyond self-support; the little child left orphan or sired
by the incompetent; the idiot who was the grinning
butt of public ridicule; the maniac; the lame; the halt;
and the blind. They were gathered together in the same
enclosure, sometimes, but not always, with separate
sleeping quarters. It was common to provide a separate
room for the furiously mad, as their ravings made life
intolerable for the rest.
But if this family of strange bedfellows had stopped
with the impotent poor, many of the evils that grew up
might have been prevented. These resulted from the
presence of the vicious. Into the midst of these little
children, these widows, and these helpless cripples were
thrown the vagabond, the prostitute brought to her
lying-in, the drunkard, and the loathsome syphilitic.
The first almshouse at Boston was built in 1660. By




114


POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


1682, at the time the first structure was destroyed by
fire, the need for some separation of the vicious and idle
poor from the worthy dependents had become acute.
A recommendation was made to the town that a workhouse be erected for the idle and able-bodied poor.'
The frugal townsmen did not agree, and the second almshouse was, therefore, like unto the first. In 1700 the
proposal was repeated with no better success.2 By 1712
the almshouse had become a Bridewell and house of
correction where all manner of vicious persons were
congregated to the great detriment of the worthy poor.
A committee appointed by the town in that year to look
into the affairs of the almshouse reported that there was
no sort of classification among the inmates.3 In 1713
a vote passed the town meeting directing the overseers
of the poor "to receive no person into the Alms House
to be subsisted, other than such as are proper objects
of the charity of this town."4
In the following year the overseers were entertaining a
proposal to erect a partition through the almshouse
separating the "sober and aged" people from "those
put in for vice and disorder."
The lack of regular employment in the Boston house
was the cause, no doubt, of the proposal that a workhouse be set up for the able-bodied. This proposal was
not adopted until 1735. An alternative was offered in
1720 to the effect that a spinning school be set up and
maintained at public expense for the training of poor
children.
I Boston Town Records, 1682, 7 Rep. Rec. Com. p. 158.
9 Idem, p. 241.
3 Boston Town Records, 1712, 8 Rep. Rec. Cor. p. 99.
4 Boston Town Records, March 16, 1713, 8 Rep. Rec. Com. p. 101.




THE TOWN'S POOR


115


The numbers of the poor increased rapidly in the next
decade, and the lack of classifi ti[i4'having gone unremedied, some move soon became inrperative. In 1735
the General Court authorized cta town of Boston to
erect a house in which to set the poor to work.l In
1739 this institution was opened.
As the first regulations for its government show, it
was to be a place where the able-bodied poor could be
set to work. Offenders were not to be committed there,
and the decrepit were to remain in the old almshouse.
Persons were to be admitted only upon written order,
and each was to have a bath and a physical examination
upon admittance. The children were to have a woman
attendant, and when they should arrive at a suitable age,
they were "to be placed out into good families as the
law directs." The usual employment was to be picking
oakum. The women, when capable, were to do carding
and spinning. One particular provision is worth quoting:
Whereas the poverty and ruin of many families is often owing
to the Idleness and vicious courses of one of the heads of it, more
particularly of the masters, who may have been bred to some
good trade, that by industry would comfortably support them,
the rest of the family being industrious, and in a capacity of
earning something considerable towards their own support, so
that it may be judged proper to order said persons up to the
house and employ them there; in that case, an account shall be
kept of their earnings, and after a reasonable deduction for
their maintenance in the House, the Overplus shall be applied
to the support of the family in such ways and methods as the
Overseers of their Committee shall direct.2
All well-behaved inmates were to have one penny out
of every shilling which they earned, the same to be dis1 Ch. 4, Acts, Prov. Mass. Bay, 1735.
2 For these regulations see Boston Records, v. 4. Rec. Cor. vol. xn, p. 231.




116   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


posed of by the overseers to their greatest comfort. If
an inmate fell sick, he was to have a physical examination in order to prove the genuineness of his conduct.
No smoking was to be permitted in bed and begging
from visitors was prohibited. Infraction of the rules
might be punished by any one or more of the following
methods: loss of liberty; loss of one meal; a collar
with a wooden clog; standing upon a stool in a public
place; wearing a paper fixed to the breast bearing a
statement of the offence; the dungeon on bread and
water for a period not over forty-eight hours; or additional labor. Extreme cases were removed to the
Bridewell by order of a justice of the peace.
This institution never more than partially met the
need. The almshouse with the Bridewell located next
door remained a resort of all kinds and conditions of
persons. In 1768 an effort was made to establish spinning schools for the employment of the poor who in
increasing numbers were being aided outside the almshouse and the workhouse. These did not succeed, for
in 1773, five years after the experiment started, the
associates who had undertaken the enterprise became
insolvent and the properties were taken by the town
at a substantial loss.'
The almshouse had no grounds in which to provide
labor and was without special hospital facilities. A
committee, appointed in 1790, said of it:
The almshouse in Boston is, perhaps, the only instance known
where persons of every description and disease are lodged under
the same roof and in some instances in the same contagious
apartments, by which means the sick are disturbed by the


I Boston Town Records, 18:135.




THE TOWN'S POOR


117


noise of the healthy, and the infirm rendered liable to the
vices and diseases of the diseased, and profligate.
While the credit reflected by this statement upon other
almshouses was scarcely merited, the disadvantages of
the Boston establishment were in no way overdrawn.
Finally, in 1790, the construction of a new plant was
undertaken, but no adequate provision was. made for
the employment of the able-bodied poor until 1821, when
the House of Industry was established as an institution
separate from the almshouse. And the values of classification were not long retained even by this expedient:
for according to the eleventh annual report of the House
of Industry, rendered in 1834, its population was made
up of 61 persons who were either insane or idiotic, 134
who were sick and infirm, 104 boys and girls of school
age, 28 children at nurse, and an unclassified remainder
of 201 among whom were 64 men who worked at picking
oakum. From an institution for the employment of
the able-bodied poor, it had fallen to the level of the
unclassified almshouse.
The story of almshouse care in Boston is, with due
allowance for the complication due to her location as
the chief port of the region, the story of almshouse care
in other places. Almshouses were shelters where all
classes of dependents were housed, fed, and clothed.
Unclassified grouping tended to level the best down to
the grade of the worst.
It is important in connecting this chapter with the
next to consider briefly the greatest single cause of this
condition of the poorhouses.
In 1675 a special act was passed providing relief out
of the Province treasury for "such as being forced from




118   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


their habitations by the present calamity of the war
do repair unto them [the towns] for succour." This
was the beginning of State aid to the poor. It was
intended to be temporary, but the boon to the towns,
especially to Boston, was so great that the Government
never recovered from the precedent. The law was
never repealed, and though the instances were few at
the outset, there came to be mentioned, toward the year
1720, in the Town Records a distinct class of paupers
who were denominated "the Province poor." These
were persons without legal settlement, wanderers, vagabonds, foreigners, and followers of the sea who came
into the Province impelled by hunger and the habit of
drifting. Hordes of them came from the provinces to
the north. The process was one of relief by the town
with reimbursement by the State for the aid rendered.
As there was at the outset no adequate means of
checking the validity of town claims for reimbursement,
great abuses arose in the treatment of the Province poor.
A careful examination of the system, made by a committee of the Legislature in 1833, describes its evils
with great frankness.
To a great extent [said the committee] they [the State poor]
have been made what they are by the State's provision for
them.... Almshouses are their inns, at which they stop for
refreshment. Here they find rest, when too much worn with
fatigue to travel, and medical aid when they are sick. And as
they choose not to labor, they leave these stopping places, when
they have regained strength to enable them to travel; and pass
from town to town demanding their portion of the State's allowance for them as their right. And from place to place they
receive a portion of this allowance, as the easiest mode of getting rid of them; and they take the allowance as their rations;
and when lodged for a time, from the necessity of the case, with




THE TOWN'S POOR


119


Town's Poor, it is their boast that they, by the State allowance
for them, support the town inmates of the house. These
unhappy fellow-beings often travel with females, sometimes,
but not always, their wives: while yet, in the towns in which
they take up their temporary-abode, they are almost always
recognized, and treated, as sustaining this relation. There are
exceptions, but they are few, of almshouses in which they are
not permitted to live together. In winter, they seek the towns
in which they hope for the best accommodations, and the best
living; and where the smallest returns will be required for what
they receive.... Nearly all of them are able, and if kept from
ardent spirits, and compelled to work, would show themselves
to be able to earn their own subsistence.'
Such a brotherhood of sturdy beggars would wreck any
institution for the poor. Their actual effect upon the
care of the towns' poor may be told by the towns themselves. From their replies to an inquiry sent out by the
same committee of 1833 there is ample evidence to show
that the almshouses at that period were no better than
rendezvous for the idle and schools in which to breed
criminals. The trustees of the Boston House of Industry reported that they were unable to detain the ablebodied poor if they wanted to depart. "Instead of a
House of Industry, the place is a general infirmary, an
asylum for the insane, a refuge for the deserted and
most destitute children of the city. It contains the
aged, the infirm, the sick, the insane, idiots and helpless
children." Newbury, Andover, and several other places
stated that the able-bodied poor performed no labor at
all; and of those which reported a work test the admission was almost universal that ardent spirits were issued
to inmates who performed labor. The evidence is
fairly conclusive that the liquor was looked upon as


House, No. 6 of 1833.




120


POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


one of the privileges of the tramp and that he was induced to perform labor by a virtual bribe of strong drink.
Thus the towns of Massachusetts began with the obligation of relieving all the poor found in distress within
their boundaries. They employed many expedients, the
most important of which have been named in this
chapter. The most economical method which could be
used, but which was in the nature of things open to
such places only as were populous enough to support a
considerable group of dependents, was the almshouse
with the workhouse and farm as a part thereof. This
method was adopted by the towns as they increased
in size, but few almshouses existed before the year 1700.
Finally, the town's process of looking after the poor was
turned upside down by the growth of a populous group
of dependents for whom the State assumed support and
who, therefore, could not be controlled or disposed of
by the town authorities. These flocked into Massachusetts like an invading army. They demanded of
the towns and the towns yielded, knowing that the
State must reimburse them. They came to the almshouse, accepted its bounty, demanded liquor and got it:
refused to work and were not pressed. Classification
in their presence was impossible.
In the next chapters we shall see how these growing
bands of wanderers, while they vitiated the town's
system of indoor care, came in the end to serve as the
vehicle for such changes in the State's system of support
as to bring about that rare and well-executed classification which characterizes the Massachusetts almshouses
of to-day.




CHAPTER VI


ABSORPTION OF RELIEF FUNCTIONS BY THE STATE
THE most fundamental principle of public aid in Massachusetts is that the responsibility for the relief of persons
in distress lies upon the community where the distress is
found. This principle was expressed without reservation in the Act of 16391 and continued without qualification until 1675.
In the interval there had been growing up a system of
equitable distribution of the burden of supporting the
poor. This system was the nascent Settlement Law.
Though complaints in the form of instructions to representatives in the General Court and memorials to that
body came frequently from Boston which was the
gathering point for the drifting population, it is most
probable that the absolute obligation of the village to
support its dependents found therein would have continued without qualification if an emergency had not
arisen.
In 1675 large numbers of refugees, driven from their
homes by the Indians in King Philip's War, sought
refuge in Boston. They were destitute, as a result of
which Boston found herself burdened beyond measure.
Earnest appeals brought forth a concession from the
General Court, already cited,2 in the shape of a special
provision out of the Province treasury for "such as being
forced from their habitations by the present calamity
1 Charters and Gen. Laws of the Col. and Prov. of Mass. Bay. 1814, p. 173.
s Ante, p. 117.




122   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


of the war, do repair unto them [the towns] for succour."
This is the first instance of public poor relief out of the
Province treasury. It was special, intended to tide over
an emergency. It did not intend to relieve the towns
of a certain class of dependents. Yet, once enacted,
it was never repealed, and the narrowness of its scope
was soon forgotten.
In 1701 provision was made for reimbursement to
cities and towns out of the Province treasury for relief
in all cases of unsettled dependent persons ill with
dangerous, infectious, or contagious diseases.'
By 1720 the Town Records identify a well-defined
class of dependents known as "the Province poor."
They were the wanderers-persons out of fortune,
persons of unstable character, vagrants, and individuals
generally good for nothing. In the days when every
town must look to its visitors with jealous eye, fearing
lest it must later support such strangers, it was not so
easy for the outcast from the prisons and poorhouses
of England and the wanderer from other colonies to
find his way into the hospitality of New England. When,
however, the Province was to pay back to the town all
that such a wanderer required for his relief, this strong
spur to inspection was removed: and towns were too
short-sighted-as indeed, they remain to this day-to
see that the Province taxes were their taxes in the end.
The natural outcome of this new fathership of the
wandering poor was a failure of the Massachusetts town
to send undesirables out of its jurisdiction. It took
care to warn them out, thus protecting itself from the
dangers of a legal settlement, but it did not trouble to
1 Ch. 9, Province Laws, 1701. Approved June 25.




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123


provide the policing and the custodial attendance necessary for the escort of such strangers beyond the town
boundaries. To send them away involved expense: at
the same time all expenses incurred for their support, if
they remained, could be collected from the Province
treasury. Indeed, it was possible to collect more than
the relief actually cost, so that a thrifty town could make
money out of the housing of the tramp.'
The great evil of the provision for reimbursement in
unsettled cases was its failure to stipulate conditions
under which relief might be given. The town was
obliged to render aid, but had no statutory requirement
at its back that the recipient should work for his relief
when able-bodied. And not being able to set the Province poor to work, it became impossible, especially where
all the poor, settled and unsettled, were housed together,
to require labor of the town's own poor. This was the
fatal circumstance which turned thrifty almshouses into
rendezvous for the idle, and made the growth of a wholesome classification impossible. As was seen in the preceding chapter, it became the usual custom in the almshouses to bribe the inmates with liquor in order to get
them to do the chores on the farms.
As might be expected, the evils of such a system grew
apace and called so loudly for remedy that the General
Court was forced in the end to regulate it. A resolve
had passed the General Court in 17912 providing that
1 In 1829 the town of Tyringham charged the Commonwealth more for the
support of State paupers therein than it had actually expended, but not more
than the limit allowed by law. The Commonwealth sued to recover the difference, but verdict was rendered for the town. A bill was then filed in the
Legislature appropriating funds with which to reimburse the town for its cost
in defending the action. See House Doe. No. 41, of 1831. See also, 1835. Hi. R.
No. 72; 1835, House Doe. 2d session, Nos. 1 and 2.  2 Res. 1791, ch. 92.




124   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


the State poor be let out to the lowest bidder; but
nothing resulted, whether from lack of bidders or lack
of legislative intent does not appear.
The first genuine phase of this process of regulation
was a series of notable legislative reports upon the condition of the State's poor and the pauper system in
general. It began with that masterful analysis made
by Josiah Quincy in 18201 and ended in 1854 with the
inauguration of a system of State almshouse farms.
The report of 1820, after reviewing the rapid increase
in State reimbursements, recommended the inauguration
of a system of town or district almshouses "having
reference to placing the whole subject of the poor of the
Commonwealth under the regular and annual superintendance of the Legislature." Ten years later a
legislative committee, handling the same subject-matter,
found conditions rapidly growing worse. They cited
Quincy's report and decried the lack of power to set
the State poor to work.2 In 1792-93 the total State
reimbursements had been $14,000.00. In five years they
had practically doubled, being $27,000.00 in 1798. By
1820 there were 1100 adults and 450 children in receipt
of relief as State poor. In the five-year period ending
with 1831, the State Treasurer paid out a total of $284,584.29 to cities and towns for the relief of the unsettled
poor.3 This committee believed that a radical change
was needed in the entire pauper law system. "It is in
affording to the poor the means of labor," said they,
"instead of a support independent of labor, that your
1 House Doc. No. 46 of 1820; House, No. 39 of 1830; House, No. 51 of 1831;
Senate Doc. No. 13 of 1831; House, No. 41 of 1832; House, No. 6 of 1833.
2 iouse Doc. No. 51 of 1831.  ' See Senate Doc. No. 13 of 1831.




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125


Committee think a judicious change can be made in
the system of State Charity." They recommended two
or more State farms for this purpose, no support to be
given elsewhere except in extreme cases. All persons
falling under the act for repressing rogues, vagabonds,
etc., were to be committed to these farms.
At the same session of 1831 an order passed the Senate
"that the committee on accounts be and they are directed
to consider the expediency of repealing all laws providing
for the support of State paupers." The committee did
not recommend abolishment, but hoped that the reduction in the rate of reimbursement, effective in the previous
year, would save some $20,000.00 annually in the outlays.
It is apparent from the manner in which these committees followed each other in rapid succession that
there were factions in the Legislature, and that the
defeat of the plan of reform could mean only that it
would be renewed at the first opportunity. Early in
the session of 1832 an order passed the House providing
for a committee to examine into "the expediency of
providing a more effectual and economical method of
supporting State paupers than the present." The report of this committee, like former reports, propounded
the district almshouse for the State poor as the right
solution.' They suggested that the State's allowance
to cities and towns be reduced one third in each of the
three succeeding years and thereafter abolished, and all
settlement laws likewise at that time repealed; that
workhouses be set up for the able-bodied poor, the overseers of the poor to have the power of commitment;
1832. House Doc. No. 41, 1833, No. 6.




126


POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


that the State subsidize such counties as set up such
workhouses; that a commission be created to study
means of bettering our jails and houses of correction;
that a penalty be established for passing the poor along
to other towns; that the State Government gather and
study laws of almshouse and workhouse construction
for the benefit of counties and towns; and finally, that
returns of poor persons, criminals, etc., be required of
all cities and towns.
The legislative response to these careful recommendations was of a kind not unusual at the present day; that
is to say, the line of least resistance was followed. The
careful balance revealed in the proposal, whereby the
State would rid itself of the pauperizing system of
State aid, but at the same time would safeguard the
interests of the local counties by setting the wandering
poor to work in what would in all likelihood become selfsupporting workhouses, was ignored. A system of
houses of correction for misdemeanants was established
instead of workhouses for the able-bodied poor; but
the representatives of the towns were unwilling to release
the State from its old-time policy of reimbursement for
State pauper aid.
And the argument favoring the houses of correctionlargely specious if regarded as a cure for mounting State
pauper aid-was compelling. The State paupers were
largely made up of the English or the Irish mendicant
who came to Massachusetts in search of something for
nothing; he was the vagabond, the piper and fiddler,
the common drunkard, the thief. To commit him was
to set him to work: and this the pauper system had
never yet succeeded in doing. Furthermore, to require




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127


the counties to maintain these houses of correction was
to remove the entire burden from the State.
So it was that Chapter 151 of the Acts of 1834 required
each county to erect and maintain a house of correction.
To this institution any justice of the peace or any police
court or court of common pleas might commit
all rogues, vagabonds, and all idle persons going about in any
town or place in the country begging, or persons using any
subtle craft, juggling, or unlawful games or plays, common
pipers, fiddlers, runaways, stuLborn children, common drunkards, common night walkers, pilferers, wanton and lascivious
persons, in speech, conduct or behavior, common railers and
brawlers, such as neglect their callings or employment, misspend
what they earn, and do not provide for themselves or for the
support of their families.
If the county governments had complied with this injunction, imposed upon them by the State Government,
acting through the General Court, which was, in fact,
made up of the representatives of the cities and towns,
there would still have remained a large group of State
paupers who could manage to avoid conviction for a
specific offence against the law. These would make their
rounds as usual, claiming their rations. In fact, the counties were not prompt. In 1840, seven years after the Act
of 1834, authority was given to the western counties to
combine in the erection of a single house.1
In 1834 the total State reimbursement for State paupers
had been $52,122.53. In 1850 this total had risen to
$110,319.70, and this increase must have represented only
a portion of the actual extension of that form of relief,
since the rate of reimbursement had in the interval been
greatly reduced. In 1834 the rate was ten cents a day for
1 Acts of 1841, ch. 110.




128


POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


paupers over twelve years of age and six cents for children under twelve. In 1835 the rate was reduced to seven
cents for persons over twelve and four cents for those
under.' In 1839 State allowances were cut off for the
support of unsettled prisoners in jails and houses of correction;2 for it remained the practice even after the Act
of 1834 to reimburse local governments for all unsettled
prisoners supported in custodial institutions. The improvement in the penal system had, therefore, very little
effect upon the mounting expenses for public dependents.
Neither did it quiet the agitation for reform in the pauper
system.
The legislative committee, to which the commission report of 1833 had been referred, reported a bill providing
for a repeal of all State pauper reimbursements and all
settlement laws. The governor was to appoint three
persons in each county, who, with the county commissioners, were to constitute a board of commissioners with
power to establish workhouses at the expense of the State,
the cities and towns to have the privilege of committing
their settled poor thereto, provided they paid for their
support at cost. The superintendents of the establishments were to have the power to bind out children found
therein.
At the committee's own recommendation, this report
was sent to the next General Court to give ample time for
its consideration.3 The committee also submitted a resolve providing for a special commission to study the
whole system, especially the district poor farm idea.4
The session of 1835 went by without action, though


1 Acts of 1835, ch. 127. Approved April 7.   2 Acts of 1833, ch. 156.
8 See 1834, House Doc. No. 3W.      4 See 1834, House Doc. No. 56.




RELIEF ABSORPTION BY THE STATE


129


the governor in his inaugural devoted a good deal of
plain speech to the subject of foreign paupers and their
introduction into this country by collusion of European
authorities.' A committee, to which this part of the
Governor's address was referred, reported in substance
the same recommendations which the commission of 1833
had made. But this report, as appears from a later document,2 was submitted at such a late day in the session as
to fail of deliberate action. One new feature of this report
of 1835 was a substantial increase in the commutation
money to be taken in lieu of bonds for incoming aliens.3
It was this new feature which raised again that moot
question with which the State had struggled for two decades. What powers has one of the United States to
exclude persons from its territory? The report was referred to a special committee "to consider whether Massachusetts can prevent by law the incoming of alien paupers." The result was a conclusion that the committee
"do not think it possible that this State, or any other
State, individually, can constitutionally make, or carry
into practice, laws, which will 'effectually' attain this
object."
A resolve was passed calling upon our Senators and
Representatives in Congress to use their influence to
obtain the passage of an act to prevent the introduction
of foreign paupers into this country;4 while the principal
recommendations of the first committee upon the pauper
system came to nothing.
Some of the facts brought out by these committees
1 Governor Davis. See 1835, House Doc. No. S.
1836, House Doc. No. 30.
81835, House Doc. No. 32.  Res. 1836, ch. 100.




130   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


of 1836 are cogent to this history. The number of foreigners admitted to the House of Industry at Boston in
1828 was 262. In 1825, 1826, and 1827 the number had
remained constant. In 1834 this number had increased
to 631. In 1835 it was 516. Yet in this interval the whole
number of inmates did not increase. The same situation
was shown by the poorhouse in New York, where in 1826
the number of foreign paupers had been 1159, and in 1834
had jumped to 1754, without a material increase in the
total population of the place.
The committee on foreign paupers found, by a study of
nineteen parishes in eleven different counties of England,
that 631 paupers had emigrated therefrom in 1835. Of
these, 320 went to Prince Edward Island; 261 to upper
Canada, and 50 to the United States. The committee
notes the fact that there were at that time 15,635 parishes
in England. "These paupers," they say, "have no claim
on upper Canada. Indeed nearly all of the host of foreign
paupers who come to us arrive overland from the British
provinces of Canada. It cannot for a moment be supposed that England intended to burden her colonies with
these people, nor that those provinces will supinely receive
and support them."' The process of passing them along
to the States was rendered much easier by the British
regulation that on arrival at the port of debarkation a
sum not less than ~2 must be given to each single person
not being part of a family.2
The failure of the reports of 1834 and 1836 appears to
have dampened the ardor of the reformers, as nothing was
offered to the Legislature in 1838, and a further report


11886, louse Doe. No. 66.
2 First Ann. Rep. Poor Law Corn. England and Wales, pp. 41 and 91.




RELIEF ABSORPTION BY THE STATE


131


recommending repeal of the State pauper aid laws came
to nothing. In 1844 a committee, ordered to consider
repeal of all provisions for the support of State paupers,
reported such a course "inexpedient." Their report being
recommitted, they submitted a bill repealing State pauper
aid, but excepting unsettled lunatics. In 1845 this same
order was repeated with the same negative results. The
proponents, not thus far discouraged, repeated it again
in 1846. The committee in charge reported that in their
opinion repeal was the only remedy. They concluded
their statement in these words:
Impressed by the conviction that the operation of the present
laws, causes an influx of foreign paupers into the Commonwealth, and assured of the fact that placards have been posted
in different places in Europe, urging the poor to emigrate to
this country and, assigning as a reason for so doing, that the
State of Massachusetts makes provision for their support, your
Committee have felt it their duty to report the accompanying
bill, which will, if sustained, prevent Massachusetts from standing longer alone in offering a bounty on vagrancy and indolence.
The bill proposed a repeal of State reimbursements and
increased the obstacles to alien immigration.1 No action
was taken.
These frequent failures of the Legislature to cope with
the problem appear to have given rise in 1847 to the more
threatening method of petition and remonstrance by private citizens. In that year a committee, appointed to
hear twenty-five several petitions signed by 1,840 legal
voters of seventeen towns asking for increase in alien
passenger rates and the repeal of the State pauper aid
laws, and the remonstrances of 141 citizens and the selectmen of Charlestown against such action, stated in their
report that
I 1816, Senate Doc. No. 74.




132   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


the condition of foreigners immigrating to this state, with some
exceptions, is dreadful; and, in many instances, exhibits a state
of destitution and suffering almost inconceivable to a citizen
accustomed to the luxuries of a Massachusetts freeman.
The greater part of them are driven from their native clods
by the tyranny of hunger and famine. Their passages, if not
paid by the authorities of their own government, are generally
pre-paid by some friends or relatives in this country; but it is
not infrequent that they sell the clothing from their persons to
meet the expense of their passage. This, as was testified before
the committee, has often been the case with those arriving at
the port of Boston.
It appears in evidence that many of them have to be taken
from the ship in which they arrive, and carried immediately by
the Overseers of the Poor, or their agents, to the Almshouse for
support; and, were it not for the bountiful provision in our
pauper-houses, our streets, at the times of these arrivals, would
present scenes of beggary and suffering heretofore unknown to
New England citizens.'
The reasons for the procrastination of the Legislature in dealing constructively with the problems of pauperism were not basic. The nature of the problem and the
most likely means of solving it had been pointed out by
the report of 1820 and repeated by subsequent studies with
surprising unanimity. The reason for all this bickering
and delay was local selfishness. Boston feared an unequal
burden if State reimbursements should be discontinued.
Indeed, it was at the earnest supplication of Boston that
the State aid policy had been embarked upon in the beginning. A few towns were losing nothing by caring for
the unsettled poor and were not willing to upset the
affairs of local office-holders by such a radical change as a
transfer of the State's poor to new establishments.
But there was one basic consideration in the problem
of the alien poor which possessed real merit. It was the
1 1847, Senate Doc. No. 109.




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133


obstacle upon which the State's effort to defend itself
against the dumping of foreign paupers finally came to
wreck. This was the problem of constitutional limitation.
By the Federal Constitution the State remained without
authority in the organic law to interfere in foreign commerce or to bar the transit of individuals from one State
to another. The report of the learned committee of 1836
had foreshadowed this constitutional limitation. Nevertheless, the Legislature continued its policy of a capitation
tax upon alien passengers.
The laws of Massachusetts, in 1837, provided that a
bond of $1,000.00 should be required for all aliens arriving
at our ports who upon inspection appeared likely to become charges upon the public. For all others a capitation
tax of $2.00 was to be collected from the shipmaster for
the benefit of the place of landing, the same to be used in
the support of foreign paupers. One Norris, a shipmaster,
was in that year required to pay a sum of money as such
capitation tax for nineteen passengers brought by him
from the Provinces and not found by the inspector to be
lame, sick, or otherwise likely to become public charges.
The sum was paid under protest and suit entered against
the city of Boston to recover. The plaintiff was nonsuited and the Supreme Court of the State, through the
able opinion of Chief Justice Shaw, sustained the court
below. Upon appeal to the Supreme Court of the United
States, however, this decision was reversed and the power
of the Commonwealth to tax immigrants thus precluded.1
But it still lay within the power of the State to require
a bond to safeguard the community against public dependence. The error in the capitation tax law lay in the
I Norris v. City of Boston, Smith v. Turner (1849), 7 Howard (U.S.) 283.




134   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


fact that it was professedly a tax, by which foreign immigration was called upon to pay for the support of foreign
dependents. In 1850, following the Supreme Court decision, the law was changed by abrogating the tax and
requiring a $1,000.00 bond in all cases, but with the right
in the shipmaster to compound his bond for $2.00 each
in cases not apparently likely to become public charges.
This remained the law of Massachusetts, with but slight
changes in the amount and disposition of the funds, until
in 1872 the bonding provision was limited to actual paupers, vagrants, criminals, and diseased persons, thus relieving the shipmasters from paying head tax upon all others
in lieu of such bond. Other seaboard States continued
their indirect head tax provisions until 1876 when the
Supreme Court in an emphatic decision found them to
be unconstitutional.' In the New York cases the court
said:
Whether in the absence of such action [national legislation]
the States can, or how far they can, by appropriate legislation,
protect themselves against actual paupers, vagrants, criminals
and diseased persons arriving in their territory from foreign
countries, we do not decide.
In the California case the court declared:
Such a right [of a State to protect itself against paupers,
criminals, etc.] can only arise from a vital necessity for its
exercise, and cannot be carried beyond the scope of that
necessity. When a state statute, limited to provisions accessary and appropriate to that object alone, shall, in a proper
controversy, come before us, it will be time enough to decide
that question.
The entire problem was placed in the way of right solution, in accordance with our organic law, in 1882, when the


1 Henderson v. Mayor of New York, 92 U.S. 543; Commr. Immigration v. N.
German Lloyd, 92 U.S. 543; Chy Lung v. Freeman et al, 92 U.S. 550.




RELIEF ABSORPTION BY THE STATE           135
first comprehensive federal immigration statute was
enacted. It is needless to add for the reader familiar
with the fact that the several States are paying out millions for the support of incompetent and undesirable
aliens whose condition arose long prior to their arrival in
the United States; while the Federal Government, adopting for itself the method of a capitation tax which by virtue of its constitutional reservations it had denied to the
States, has collected a sum in excess of ten millions of dollars no part of which is reimbursed to the States for their
outlays-to the student of federal immigration law
and practice it is needless to say that the merits of this
problem have not yet been satisfied.
It was, then, the inability of the State-itself a subordinate sovereignty-to exclude undesirable aliens, and
the inability of selfish factional interests to agree, which,
on the one hand, opened the door to a willing nation across
the sea to renovate her almshouses at our expense and,
on the other, rendered the authorities of our government,
state, county, and town, helpless in the face of a burden
of pauperism more rapid and more malignant in its
growth than the like problem in any other civilized country under the sun.
In 1851 a board of commissioners of alien passengers
was created. This board in its first report' recommended
that the State take over the care and treatment of all
State paupers. This was to be accomplished through district almshouses. Rainsford Island was to be a receiving
station for alien dependents and three State almshouses,
with a bed capacity of five hundred each, were to take
care of all the State's poor. It was assumed that these
1852, Senate Doc. No. 14.




POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


136


poorhouse farms would offer too much work for the worst
element among the State's dependents, who would in
consequence move on to easier fields.
The response to this recommendation represents the
first constructive step taken by Massachusetts in the care
of the unsettled poor. On May 1, 1854, three State almshouses, located at Tewksbury, Bridgewater, and Monson,
respectively, were opened; and within a fortnight were
filled to their capacity of five hundred beds each. The
one at Tewksbury received six hundred and sixty-eight
inmates during the first week and within twenty days had
nearly eight hundred enrolled, even though the normal
capacity was but five hundred. In this manner was
ushered in the second phase of the State's process of regulating the support of the unsettled poor-the institutional
phase.
With the institution came problems of financingquestions of admission and discharges and of State supervision. Boards of inspectors for the State almshouses
had been created at the outset, but there was much that
they could not do and which the Legislature therefore
must do for itself.
There was another circumstance which made these
additional burdens especially heavy. This was the rapid
extension of the State's care of the insane. Thus far in
this chapter, the insane have not been considered apart
from other public dependents. It is appropriate at this
point to trace briefly the inception and growth of the
State system of care for idiots and persons insane.
In 1693-94 the new Provincial Government enacted that
where such person (as shall be incapable to provide for him or
her self or... shall fall into distraction and become non




RELIEF ABSORPTION BY THE STATE              137
compos mentis) was born or is by law an inhabitant, the [1]
men or overseers of the poor of the town or peculiar sha
required to take effectual care and make necessary provl ns
for the relief, support, and safety of such incompetent or distracted person, at the charge of the town or place where he
or she of right belongs, if the party has not estate, etc.'
In this manner the insane and the idiotic were cared for
by the cities and towns. Where such persons were without
settlement, they appear to have been lumped with the
other Province poor and cared for merely as public dependents.
In 1797, one hundred and four years after the first
statute, the insane as a special group of dependents came
to legislative attention. In that year it was enacted that
when it appears that a person is "lunatic and so furiously
mad as to render it dangerous to the peace and safety of
the good people, for such lunatic person to go at large,"
he may be committed to the house of correction
there to be detained till he or she be restored to his right mind
or otherwise delivered by due course of law. And every person
so committed shall be kept at his or her own expense, if he or
she have estate, otherwise at the charge of the person or town
upon whom his maintainance was regularly to be charged if he
or she lad not been committed: and he or she shall if able be
put to work during his or her confinement.2
No further legislation appears until 1830 when an
asylum to accommodate one hundred and twenty "lunatics or persons furiously mad" was authorized.3 Down
to this time, and indeed until 1835, the care of the insane,
as such, was not recognized as a function apart from
usual pauper relief. The town, therefore, escaped the
1 Acts and Res. Prov. Mass. Bay, 1693-94, p. 51. Pub. by the State 1869.
s Aclts Pror. Mass. Bay. 1797, ch. 6U.
3 Res. 1830. ch. 83.




138   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


obligation to support the insane who were unsettled by
classing them with the unsettled poor.
In 1811, when the Massachusetts General Hospital
was incorporated, a section was inserted for the benefit of
the State by which the Commonwealth reserved the right
to send "lunaticks" "chargeable to this Commonwealth"
to that institution, not to exceed thirty in number without consent of the trustees, to be supported there at State
expense.1 In this provision apparently the State's responsibility was recognized. The explanation is that the
insane were looked upon at this time as a subclassification
of paupers.
In 1834,2 when the first State lunatic hospital was
established, it was provided that the support of all patients not privately arranged for should be borne "by
the town or city where the patient resided at the time of
the application for commitment." In 18353 this statute
was amended by relieving the cities and towns from the
support of all inmates of the State lunatic hospital who
were without settlement in the Commonwealth. In
these two measures began a movement by which the
State, after the lapse of seventy years, has taken over in
its entirety the care, custody, and treatment of all mental
defectives found within our boundaries, regardless of
residence or legal settlement.4
By 1842 the humanity of segregation in the house of
correction for those insane persons who were not "furiously mad" had found expression in the law. They were required to be housed in buildings apart from other inI Laws of Mass. 1811, ch. 94.  s Laws of Mass. 1834, ch. 150.
8 Laws of Mass. 1835, ch. 129.
See Acts of 1889, ch. 90; Acts of 1900, ch. 451; Acts of 1908, ch. 629.




RELIEF ABSORPTION BY THE STATE


139


mates.' But it would convey a wrong impression as to the
true course of our social history if the humanities be mentioned in connection with our care of the insane and nothing be said of those conditions of local care out of which
the present system, admittedly enlightened, has sprung.
In their treatment of the insane lies a fair index of the
intellectual quality of a people. In a land where the
maniac is bound in chains and confined in a wretched cell,
often a niche in a stone wall; where the public, passing
by, may afford a crust or enough water for lips so parched
as to be able scarcely to form the words of supplication
-in that land may be found intolerance of honest thought,
a religion of forms rather than substance, and superstitious fear supplanting reason. In a land where the
mentally sick are nursed with the same tender care accorded to the sufferer from physical disease, their malady
a result of disease rather than a visitation of devils-in
that land may be found the light of reason, and its consequence, humanity in the relationships of man to man.
In the earlier growth of this colony of thinking people,
that same Old-World intolerance showed itself. The
Salem witchcraft cases stand as an indelible record of the
superstitious ignorance of a people not yet emancipated
from mental serfdom, that bane of the Old World in which
a few there were, chosen by a benevolent God, the lords of
the land, who did all of the thinking; and under them, to
think not, but to work and be thankful, were their serfs,
the multitude of the people.
In the earlier years of Massachusetts town life, and
indeed down to very recent time, the insane were looked
upon as offenders and subjected to restraints scarcely
I Acts of 1842, ch. 100.




140   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


human. The best care given by the town is typified, perhaps, by the confinement of disturbed cases under the
personal care of relatives. The mother, or sister, or child,
giving a life of devotion, the town giving support to provide the necessaries of life: the worst treatment may be
illustrated by the report of Dorothea Dix in her personal
inspection of local treatment of the insane in Massachusetts in 1843. The following extract is the exact
report of personal examination:
Late in December 1842: thermometer 4 degrees above zero;
visited the almshouse, neat and comfortable establishment; two
insane women, one in the house associated with the family, the
other "out of doors."... I asked to see the subject who was
"out of doors"; and following the mistress of the house through
the deep snow, shuddering and benumbed by the piercing cold,
several hundred yards, we came in rear of the barn to a small
building, which might have afforded a degree of comfortable
shelter, but it did not. About two thirds of the interior was
filled with wood and peat; the other third was divided into two
parts, one about six feet square contained a cylinder stove, in
which was no fire.... My companion uttered an exclamation
at finding no fire, and busied herself to light one... "oh, I'm
so cold, so cold," was uttered in plaintive tones by a woman
within the cage; "oh, so cold, so cold!"... Here was a woman
caged and imprisoned without fire or clothes, not naked, indeed,
for one thin cotton garment partly covered her, and part of a
blanket was gathered about the shoulders; there she stood,
shivering in that dreary place, the grey locks falling in disorder
about the face gave a wild expression to the pallid features;
untended and comfortless, she might call aloud, none could
hear; she might die, and there be none to close the eye....
Pretty soon I moved to go away; "Stop, did you walk?" "No."
"Did you ride?" "Yes." "Do take me with you, do, I'm so
cold. Do you know my sisters? They live in this town; I
want to see them so much; do let me go!" and shivering with
eagerness to get out, as with the biting cold, she rapidly tried
the bars of the cage.1
I Legislative pamphlets, Mass. St. Library, vol. 120, No. 1, pp. 19, 20.




RELIEF ABSORPTION BY THE STATE


141


In 1846 the Legislature created a commission to examine into the condition of idiots throughout the State,
and the same was appointed in the following year. In
1848 a small appropriation was made1 for the training and
teaching of ten idiotic children to be selected by the
governor and council from those at public charge or from
the families of indigent persons in different parts of the
State. But no further steps were taken in behalf of this
group apart from the insane-among which they were
always classed-for thirty years, when the State acquired
a recognized share in the affairs of the Massachusetts
School for Idiotic and Feeble-minded Youth, a private
institution.2
It came about, therefore, that by 1858 there were
seven State institutions, three for the insane, and four for
the State's poor; aside from the prison and the two reform
schools for wayward youth, for the general oversight and
direction of which there existed no central governmental
machine other than the Legislature itself. The problem
by its own weight was fast approaching a third phase of
development, namely, the period of central State board
supervision.
In 18583 a special commission was appointed "to investigate the whole system of the public charitable institutions of the Commonwealth, and to recommend such
changes, and such additional provisions, as they may deem
necessary for their economical and efficient administration."
This commission pointed out in its report4 that whereas
the amount of State outlays for charity had in 1839


I Acts of 1848, ch. 65.
3 Res. of 1858, ch. i6.


2 Acts of 1878, ch. 126.
4 1859, Senate Doc. No. 2.




142   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


amounted to $82,399, and $118,034 in 1849, it had by
1859 swollen to more than $300,000. The amount devoted to State pauper aid in 1843 had been $50,000, whereas
in 1858 it had grown to $220,000 annually. Seven of the
nine institutions had been established since 1853. These
institutions had been created without reference to each
other, and consequently were in no degree parts of a uniform system. "Our first recommendation, accordingly,"
said the commission, "looks to the creation by law of a
permanent State Board of Charities, to be intrusted
with the duty of constantly supervising the whole system
of public charities, in order to secure the greatest usefulness, without unnecessary expense." In recommending
this permanent centralization, the commission made it
clear, nevertheless, that they did not approve the principle of State pauper aid. "We have come to the conclusion," said they, "that the State system ought not permanently to be maintained; yet that an immediate and
abrupt return to the town system would be unwise. We
recommend accordingly that the State system be continued for a brief period, with such modifications as we
propose, to increase its efficiency, and reduce its expense,
removing as we hope part of the objections to it; but
always with a view to its abolition at the earliest day that
may be consistent with the public welfare."
On the first day of October, 1863, the proposed Board
of State Charities became a fact. So completely is the
system of public charities identified with the history of
this body that this chronicle is continued under the title
of the Board of State Charities by its present name, the
Department of Public Welfare.




CHAPTER VII


THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE
As appears from the last chapter, the central State
Board grew out of the necessity of assigning to some
permanent body those multifarious and accumulating
tasks under which the Legislature had been laboring.
It was born also of the belief that centralization was
necessary to the conduct of so many institutions and to
the proper audit of so many claims submitted by the
authorities of the three hundred cities and towns of the
Commonwealth. The problem in the minds of the commission which recommended the new board was how to
secure an economical and efficient system without also
centralizing the control of those diverse institutional elements in one set of hands. The plan which they set upon
was that of centralizing policy and decentralizing administrative detail. This is essentially the supervisory system
of public charities which Massachusetts was first among
the States to inaugurate and for which she has become
famous.
In proposing this first American State Board of Public
Charities the committee made it clear that its functions
were to be supervisory. "In other respects" (than power
to transfer inmates), said they, "we do not propose to
confer upon the central board power to interfere in any
manner with the actual management of the several institutions otherwise than by offering counsel and advice;
appealing if need be to the constituted authorities, exec



144   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


utive, judicial or legislative, for aiding the enforcement
of the laws if they are disregarded; but in general, cooperating with the managers of the several institutions,
and (what is equally important) leading them to cooperate with each other."1
The board was unpaid, the details of its work being
transacted through paid agents, and these duties were the
more numerous because, in spite of its supervisory character, it had all the powers of the old board of alien
passengers.
The new board began at once to take stock of the
several State enterprises in public relief. Their early
reports are monumental as careful analyses of conditions and the causes which lay beneath them. The
first secretary was Frank B. Sanborn, later to become a
national figure. Its third chairman was Samuel Gridley
Howe, whose name holds the rare distinction of bearing
fame in the field of statesmanship and of social service
as well. It was he who penned the second of the board's
reports, a document which in many respects remains a
model of what a State report should be.
A short summary of those conditions which surrounded the system of public relief at the time of the
creation of the new board is pertinent to this history.
Public relief took three principal forms, namely, care and
treatment of the insane; schooling and support of the
deaf, dumb, and blind; and support of the dependent
poor. For the first of these enterprises there existed
three State institutions with a total normal bed capacity
of 847 and an average daily population of 1,066. The
total amount expended from public funds down to 1864
1 1859, Senate Doc. No. 2, p. 7.




DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE


145


for the development and the maintenance of these institutions had been upwards of $2,700,000, and they were
in that year being maintained at a total outlay of $250,000.
If an item of $500,000 representing interest on installation cost be added, the total burden down to 1865 would
be not less than $3,200,000 for the public care and treatment of insane dependents.
In 18191 Massachusetts provided by law for the support of deaf, dumb, and blind persons by instituting the
system of boarding selected cases at the Hartford Asylum.
Thereafter the appropriation was always exhausted and
the quota from Massachusetts always filled. Down to
1865 an amount somewhat in excess of $306,000 had been
expended for this class of dependents.
Four institutions represented the State's equipment
for the care of the unsettled poor. Rainsford Island
had been remodelled as a hospital receiving station for
such aliens. It was the depository for foreign paupers
whose voyage was a transit from a poorhouse in the
old country to an almshouse in the new.
The Province had established a small hospital there
in 1736, and the island had fallen to various uses mostly
of a hospital nature until 1852 when the use above
mentioned began.
In that same year a commission had been created for
the construction of three State almshouses. These were
opened May 1, 1854, affording a total bed capacity of
1,500. Soon it became apparent that the number of
sick aliens arriving by sea at the port of Boston would
not be sufficient to keep the beds at Rainsford filled.
Consequently legislative authority was given to send
1 Res. of 1819, ch. 44. See also Res. 1820, ch. 61.




146   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


State paupers there from Boston and other places
throughout the State. In addition, authority was
granted to commit vagrants and drunkards, who were
to be cared for without segregation, in the same buildings
with the honest and invalid poor. Thereafter, and until
1859, when the latter measure was repealed, the number
of sentenced inmates equalled about ten per cent of the
whole.
Down to the time of the board's first report, these
four institutions had received a total of 54,643 cases,
which, with a discount of fifteen per cent to cover second
and subsequent admissions of the same person, represented approximately 47,400 separate individuals. The
pressure for rooms was so great at all three of the State
almshouses that, before they were finally completed,
the commissioners found it necessary to increase the
total bed capacity from 1,500 to 2,000. In the first
seven months of operation there were in the three institutions an average daily population of 1,441. The
next year it rose to 2,012; in 1856 to 2,094; in 1857 to
2,007; and in 1858 to 2,545. That is to say, within
four years of their opening, these three almshouses contained an average of more than one thousand in excess
of the normal capacity contemplated in the law.
In the recommendations of the several commissions
which favored this method of caring for the State poor,
much stress had been laid upon the economies which
would be certain to result. It was the work test which
was the safeguard against so many tramps. In the
matter of economy the public was doomed to a great
disappointment. As for the tramps, they fled the work
test as was certain they would, but the system was too




DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE


147


loose to command them to work or quit the State. Consequently they went their carefree way as usual, while
the State Government poured ever-increasing thousands
into the support of the disabled.
In the first cost and in the ten years of their operation, Rainsford Island and the three almshouses had
cost the State $2,007,486.58.l Of this sum $1,611,458.03
was for maintenance alone. And among the persons
thus supported were very few who had any capacity for
labor. The commission of 1858 found that in May of
that year there were at Bridgewater 710 persons; Monson, 700; Tewksbury, 805; and Rainsford, 200; making
a total of 2,425; and of these 1,716 were little boys and
girls, 483 were on the sick list, 200 were insane or demented, and only 70 were able to do any kind of outdoor labor. Of the general condition of these unfortunates the commission go on to say, "Such a motley
collection of broken-backed, lame-legged, sore-eyed,
helpless, and infirm human beings one would not have
supposed it possible to get together in such numbers;
nor would it be possible if the whole world were not
laid under contribution."2
During the critical stage of growth in the State pauper
system the extension of aid by the towns to persons
without settlement continued as before. From the
returns made by the several cities and towns in the
period, beginning with 1839, and ending with 1863, the
towns extended aid in 621,869 instances, this figure
containing very many cases of second and subsequent
admissions of the same person to relief. In 1829 thirty

1 See First Rep. Bd. St. Char. p. 313.
'1859, Senate Doc. No. 2, p. 27.




148


POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


six per cent of the 14,541 cases of aid were without
legal settlement. In 1845 this percentage had risen to
forty-four. In 1854 it was sixty-six. In 1855, after the
State almshouses had opened their doors, the percentage
fell to fifty-five and in 1856 to fifty-four. By 1863 it
had jumped to sixty-nine. Moreover, during that
same course of years the average number of paupers
relieved by the cities and towns in their local almshouses
had fallen from 4,131 in 1839 to 3,524 in 1854 and to
2,595 in 1855, after the State almshouses had taken over
a part of the unsettled poor. By 1863 this almshouse
population had risen again to 3,233. But the numbers
of those supported outside of the almshouses by the
local communities showed no appreciable abatement by
reason of the State establishments. In 1839 this number
of out-poor was 7,818. In 1852 it had risen to 15,384.
By 1855 it had fallen to 11,756, but, with the exception
of 1861, the year of wholesale war enlistments, it never
faltered in its upward trend. In 1863 it had reached a
total of 35,207.1
Here again, then, is evidence that the State almshouses did little more than to relieve local houses of a
horde of infants and disabled adults. The wandering
poor-the sturdy beggar, the tramp-criminal, who constituted the great menace among the alien pauperswent workless and unscathed. The best that could be
said of the new system was that by 1865 it was maintaining the infirm at a cheaper rate than the towns were
paying in their own houses, and that in those instances
where the town rate was lower the standard of care was
greatly in favor of the State institutions. The basic
1 See First Rep. Bd. St. Char. (1865) pp. 826, 327.




DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE


149


comment must be that in its main object-the discouragement of the unworthy-it had failed completely.
It is probable that the State almshouse system never
could be able as originally intended to assemble the
State poor for indoor care and to control and discourage
the unworthy poor. Such chance as there might have
been for such rejuvenation was removed, by an enactment of 1865.L In that year the Legislature took notice
of the hardship involved in sending persons dangerously
ill to the State almshouse. In order to make possible
the humane care of such persons, it was enacted that no
city or town should henceforth send a person ill with a
disease dangerous to the public health, or so ill with
any disease that removal would endanger his own health,
to the State almshouse, but that such persons should
be cared for locally at the expense of the State. This
was the opening wedge, as subsequent decades have
shown, for a tremendous extension of local care of the
unsettled poor. In 18772 the essentials of the system
of 1820 were reinstated by the extension of such aid to
persons not sick.
The State Board in its second report recommended
a reclassification by which one of the State almshouses
should be used for a workhouse; the segregation of the
insane and the idiotic; and the separation of all children
from contact with adult inmates. To effect this last
purpose, it was suggested that the children be indentured
into family homes at the earliest possible date. In
making their first recommendation the board were
harking back to the original purpose of the institutions.


l Acts of 1865, ch. 162.
2 The "Temporary Aid Law," Acts of 1877, ch. 183.




150   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


Expressed in the terms used by the commission of 1852,
it was this:
That the pauper is bound to do all in his power to remunerate the public for the charity bestowed upon him; to labor for
their benefit so far as he is able; to work as hard and as diligently to repay the favors bestowed upon him as his health
and strength will permit.1
To the helpless infant, the sick, and the aged, this
requirement was inoperative. To the tramp it was an
indictment, but, because he was never arrested thereunder, it was for him but a form of words. The workhouse was assuredly the right place if the able-bodied
poor could be corralled there.
Embodied in the board's second recommendation, the
segregation of the insane and idiotic, was the rapidly
growing desire that the worthy poor and the mildly
insane should not have to share their corner with those
wretches who were furiously mad. Humanity demanded
that their hard lot be made easier.
In their third suggestion-the separation of all children
from contact with adult inmates-they voiced the efforts
of thinking citizens through many decades. That slow
development in child care is considered apart in the
next chapter.
The new board grew rapidly in strength and in reputation. In 1867 the governors of New York and of Ohio
recommended like establishments in those jurisdictions
and the question was beginning to be agitated in Connecticut and Rhode Island. In this third year sufficient
authority was secured to make effective all three of the
recommendations of the previous year. The almshouse
at Bridgewater was transformed into a workhouse,
11852, Senate Doc. No. 127, p. 3.




DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE


151


separate quarters for the insane were set up at Tewksbury, and the almshouse at Monson was made over into
a State primary school for the purpose of placing there
all the unindentured children in the institutions at
Bridgewater and Tewksbury. Three hundred and fortyfive children over three years of age were sent in the
first transfer, and arrangements were immediately made
by which the board could place out in private families
all those found suitable for such care.
A notable recommendation of the third year-itself
a repetition from the first report-was the proposal that
all private charitable agencies and trusts should be
required to submit an annual account to the State.
This is the first announcement of a process of State
supervision of private charities, in the adoption of which
Massachusetts alone among the States has followed the
logical reasoning of the law of charitable trusts. All
such trusts exist for the benefit of the public; are owned
by the indefinite public; and as such are accountable
to the sovereign government. Many States at the
present day hold special groups, such as child-caring
agencies, to such accountability, either by regular returns or by a system of licenses in order to keep revealed
abuses in check, but none other than Massachusetts
establishes the accountability as a primary obligation
arising out of the nature of the trust.1
Another early recommendation of the board deserves
special comment. The conclusion of the survey which
the first members made of the system of public poor
1 The Supreme Court of the State of New York, in the case of People v. N.
Y. Socy. for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 161 N.Y. Rep. 933, appears
to deny the right of the Government to demand such accountability.




152   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


relief was that the State should not extend her institutional system, but should rather subsidize private
charities which would do the work instead. This plan,
if adopted, would have embarked the State upon that
same troubled sea of public subsidies which has left the
States of New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, among
others virtually at the mercy of a swarm of lobbying
directorates, seeking by all means known to politics to
secure a share of the State grants. In this present year
New York and Pennsylvania both witness a condition
of charity subsidies that is without check, and probably
beyond control.
Fate has been kind to Massachusetts. Following a
recommendation of the State Board, it early became the
practice in granting such subsidies to demand a share
in the directorate of such agencies:' in return for the
grant the State appointed a number of trustees upon the
board of managers. And such boards were in consequence required to submit detailed accounts of their
husbandry. Moreover, when State institutional development called for new establishments, it was natural to turn
to these semi-public institutions and transform them
into regular State enterprises. Hence it was that the
State subsidy system of private charities never became
for Massachusetts the graceless scramble which besets
many of her neighbors. When, in 1916, a convention
took up certain proposed amendments to the Massachusetts Constitution, one of the changes effected was a
provision that
no grant... shall be made for the purpose of founding, maintaining or aiding any school... or any college, infirmary,


1 1871, Rep. Bd. St. Char. P. D. 17, p. lxvi.




DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE


153


hospital, institution, or educational, charitable or religious
undertaking which is not publicly owned and under the exclusive control... of public officers... authorized by the
Commonwealth.l
Within narrow qualifications as to the care of certain
sick persons, this is the basic law of the State and establishes the policy of the Commonwealth probably for all
time. It is eminently sound as State policy: public
monies should not go where public control does not
follow.
In 1877 the board began to raise the question whether
the State system of relief, with its numerous boards for
the insane, the dependent, the juvenile delinquent, the
convict, should not be simplified. It was believed that
responsibility was so far dissipated by the multiplicity
of agencies as to reduce greatly the value of the whole.
The Legislature of 1878 considered a form of consolidation, but took no action, even though the smallpox
epidemic of 1874 had created sufficient public criticism
to aid the process materially. In the following year
this contemplated centralization took place, in the form
of an act2 which abolished the State Board of Health,
the Board of State Charities, and the nine several boards
in charge of the State institutions and established a State
Board of Health, Lunacy and Charity; to consist of nine
members; to be unpaid; and to have all the powers and
duties of the agencies which it replaced. Oversight of
institutions for the instruction of the deaf, dumb, and
blind had, meantime, in 1875, been transferred to the
State Board of Education, while in the same readjustment of 1879 the supervision of the correctional institutions went to a Board of Commissioners of Prisons.
1 Constitution of Massachusetts, Art. XLVI.  Statutes of 1879, ch. 29.




154   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


Under the triple burden of caring for the public health,
the insane, and the public charities, the consolidated
board continued for seven years, witnessing in that
period a rapid development of its public health functions.
The point of overload in these multiple duties was
reached in 1886 when a separate State Board of Health
was reestablished, the functions of public relief and the
care of the insane remaining as before. This year,
1886, marks the culmination of a period of unrest in our
public institutional service, which in this instance was
undoubtedly aggravated by the political indiscretions of
a noted if not illustrious governor.
The new Board of Lunacy and Charity had in its list
the two industrial reform schools, the State primary
school, the State almshouse and the State farm, and
seven establishments for the care of mental defectives
not including the extensive department for the insane
at the State almshouse. The insane constituted a great
and growing problem. In his report of 1890, the inspector of State institutions concluded that "there is an
increase of insanity in this State out of proportion to the
increase in the general population." His figures appear
to justify the finding, for, whereas there was an increase
of 36 per cent in the general population of Massachusetts
between the years 1870 and 1889, there was in the
number of recognized insane a corresponding increase
of 135 per cent in the same period. The census of 1885
discovered 8,223 insane persons in the State. On a
basis of the estimated population in successive five-year
periods, the inspector estimated the official census of
the insane to be 5,570 in 1890; 6,500 in 1895; and 7,400
in 1900. I-ad he carried his computations further he




DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE


155


would have estimated the number for 1920 to be 12,500.
Curiously enough, the number of mental defectives
actually identified as being in receipt of public or private
care in 1919 was 19,194 of whom 15,339 were insane.
There appears to be one defective under public care, in
every two hundred of the population. Authentic surveys of typical areas indicate that the actual number of
persons in the total population of Massachusetts who
are either insane, epileptic, or feeble-minded exceeds
2 per cent.1
Rapid strides were being made in these years in the
study and treatment of mental disease. Since the days
when public relief recognized only the "furiously mad,"
the madhouse had become an asylum for humane care;
that is to say, insanity ceased to be a machination of the
devil and became a mysterious disorder of the mind.
Finally, the moon set upon the problem and the word
"lunacy" was stricken from its terminology. The lunatic
asylum became the hospital for the care and treatment
of the insane. The mysterious disorder of the mind
became an ailment of the body, baffling, yet vulnerable
to the attacks of science.
With this growing appreciation of the magnitude of
this great field of medical research came the natural
demand for expert minds to be applied without the
hindrances of a multitude of other duties. The days of
mere institutional care had passed and those of expert
medical treatment had come. And the time was ripe
for the creation of an independent State board charged
with the sole duty of the study of mental defects and the
1See in particular, fd Rep. Indiana Cor. on Mental Defectives. Indianapolis, 1919.




156   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


care, custody, and treatment of its unfortunate victims
who were dependent upon the State.
This final readjustment of the State departments came
about in 1898 when the State Board of Insanity was
created and the remaining functions of the parent board
grouped under the State Board of Charity. Thereafter
and down to the present, the care and treatment of her
mental defectives is a great primary and single function
of the Commonwealth.
It is not the intent in this history to recount the multifarious duties of the State Board of Charity, but
rather to move rapidly through the major changes in
organization to the form under which the department
exists to-day and to close the chapter with a brief sketch
of the more important duties which it now carries.
Under the title of the State Board of Charity, the
department, still an unpaid supervisory body as in the
beginning, continued for thirty-one years after the functions relating to mental diseases were set apart. Those
three decades mark the drawing together of the loose
threads of the State's policy, emerging gradually out of
the chaos of those earlier days already discussed into the
structure of a social programme known to the world as
the Massachusetts system of charities. Continuity of
service through long tenure of office by public-spirited
citizens brought to that long array of social problems
minds as expert in the field of social service as have ever
been concentrated under like circumstances so continuously, perhaps, by any group of public servants anywhere.
The record of the members of this board is approached
in the high quality of its service only by that other great
supervisory body, the Board of State Charities of Indiana.




DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE


157


To-day there keep coming constantly to the author's desk
inquiries from all corners of the earth asking for knowledge and advice from Massachusetts. "How does Massachusetts care for dependent children?" "What do you
do with the incorrigible consumptive?" "What is the
relationship between your State department and the
local almshouses?" "Do you keep delinquent children
in prisons with adult offenders?" "Would you be willing
to draft a proposed statute for our State embodying your
public supervision of private charities?"
These questions are constant. They arise out of the
preeminence of Massachusetts in the field of social
service. And that preeminence, beginning with the
thorough analyses of Samuel Gridley Howe, has been built
up by the unremitting efforts of his successors.
One further reorganization of the State Board has taken
place. Except for the assumption of certain duties relating to housing and town planning, the former functions
are not disturbed. The change is one of internal organization. For ten years American government has experienced
a constant trend toward centralization. In the field of
charities and corrections this tendency has expressed
itself in movements toward a central bureaucratic system
of departments. Illinois exhibits the logical conclusion of
such a trend. Massachusetts, with the looseness of her
unpaid supervisory board system, soon began to feel the
pressure for consolidation. An abortive attempt was
made in 1914 to bring this about, the chief issue being
whether the unpaid board system was to be done away
with entirely. Public-spirited citizens, knowing its value
in the past, opposed its elimination and prevailed in their
contention. In 1916, upon the rewriting of the State




158   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


Constitution, an article, later adopted by the people, was
inserted reducing the number of State departments to
twenty. There followed a consolidating statute, effective on December 1, 1919, reorganizing the public charities into a State Department of Public Welfare, headed
by a single commissioner responsible for its administration to the Governor and to the Legislature, but subject
in his rules and policies to the advice and veto of an unpaid
advisory board of six members.1
Stated in briefest form, the major functions of this
Department are five in number, namely:
1. General supervision of five State institutions, viz.: the
State Infirmary; the Hospital School for crippled and deformed
children; and the three industrial training schools for juvenile
delinquents-Lyman School; the Industrial School for Boys, at
Shirley; and the Industrial School for Girls, at Lancaster.
2. Supervision of local public relief and the audit of city and
town claims for relief extended to the unsettled poor.
3. Supervision of incorporated private charities.
4. Partial supervision of local boards on housing and town
planning.
5. The care, custody, and maintenance of State minor wards.
For the purpose of carrying out these functions the
department is organized in three main divisions, namely,
Aid and Relief, Child Guardianship, and Juvenile Training. Two other divisions-Private Charities, and Housing
and Town Planning-exist, but are not named in the
statute.
The five institutions, which by the new law are made
integral parts of the department, are, nevertheless, administered by boards of trustees who retain the control
of their activities. They are subject to the commissioner
in the development of their policies and methods. The
Acts of 1919, ch. 850, ~~ 87-95.




DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE


159


State Infirmary, at Tewksbury, true to its almshouse
history, remains the great unclassified residence of public
dependents. It contains over seven hundred insane persons; upwards of eight hundred suffering from tuberculosis;
a thousand aged or infirm men and women; and over four
hundred minors. This last element is a cause for public
condemnation. The old State Board has for years pleaded
earnestly with the Legislature for facilities elsewhere
than at Tewksbury for the treatment of sick children.
Only in this present year has a beginning been made.
Meantime, the children at the Infirmary are poorly
housed and in no real sense segregated from adults of all
degrees of physical and moral decrepitude. In normal
times this institution contains over three thousand persons, employees and patients, who are fed and housed
in a plant of more than seventy buildings at a cost of
$885,000 a year.
The State Farm, until the shortage in intoxicating
beverages set in, was one of the most populous prison
farms for drunkards and vagrants to be found in the
United States. In 1913, 4,681 persons were committed
there, of whom 4,136 received a one-year sentence for
drunkenness. In 1919 this total had fallen to 1,273 and
the number of drunkards to 910. The institution has a
tract of 1,420 acres under intensive cultivation. Since
the coming of prohibition the inmate population has not
afforded enough labor to keep the farm tilled: and the
State is already considering the wisdom of converting
this immense plant to other uses.
The three industrial training schools represent the
State's institutional facilities for the care of juvenile delinquents. The Lyman School was established in 1846.




160   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


It affords disciplinary care and vocational training for
boys under fifteen years of age. It has a maximum capacity of five hundred beds and is filled. The department does not contemplate a further expansion in this
plant, as five hundred beds should represent a maximum
limit of development in such a school.
The Industrial School for Boys, at Shirley, corresponds
to the Lyman School for boys over fifteen. No boys over
seventeen are committed there, but those committed
at a younger age may be retained until they are twentyone. This school was established in 1908. The Industrial
School for Girls, at Lancaster, was established in 1854.
It provides for delinquent girls a course of custodial treatment similar to that given in the two schools for the boys.
Girls over seventeen are sent to Sherborn Prison, instead
of to this school, but those committed when below seventeen may be kept until they become twenty-one.
A single board administers these three schools. As
a part of their enterprise-and rated as the more important
part-they employ a field staff of male parole visitors for
the boys and a staff of women for the girls who are placed
out from these three institutions upon parole in foster
family homes. The three schools now contain an average
population of 1,100, while over 2,500 are placed out on
parole, but are still in the custody of the trustees.
The Hospital School, at Canton, provides hospital care
and vocational schooling for children who are so physically
handicapped as to be unable to compete with their normal
fellows in the public schools. Most of the 275 pupils are
the victims of infantile paralysis. Other major causes are
bone tuberculosis and Pott's Disease. This school was
opened in 1907. It enjoys a high reputation for effective



DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE


161


ness and has demonstrated beyond doubt the wisdom
of the institutional boarding-school rather than the
orthopoedic hospital alone for the rehabilitation of such
cases.
Supervision of poor relief given by cities and towns
was the natural corollary to the major premise for which
the Board of State Charities was created. To centralize
the State's enterprises in institutional and in outdoor care
of the unsettled poor, and to oversee the claims of cities
and towns who rendered all such outdoor aid for the
State, meant in the end to exercise watchfulness in the
interests of the public good over all the activities of the
cities and towns in the relief of the poor.
It was natural, therefore, that the State Board soon
came to inspect local almshouses and to find fault where
fault was to be found. Through a half-century of advisory inspection of these institutions, the standard in
these local houses has been brought up to a high degree.
To-day a suggestion from the State Department regarding
any matter of improvement whatever-a new floor in the
bathroom; prevention of smoking in sleeping-rooms; a
guard rail about a stove or more radiation in the sittingroom for the very aged-upon any matter of administration is welcomed and almost invariably acted upon.
The statutes, at the instance of the State Board, soon
demanded that the tramp, if cared for in the almshouse,
must be segregated and made to work for his accommodation; children over three years of age could not be kept
there unless accompanied by a parent or unless in such
condition of health as to make other disposition inadvisable: syphilitics and consumptives must be isolated.
There are 153 of these local houses, containing an average




162


POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


population of 3,784. They are a group of homes for the
poor not to be duplicated for their standard of cleanliness
and intelligent care in any other community in the world.
It was also natural, in the examination of local claims for
reimbursement, that the State should come shortly to
question the value of the service rendered the poor and to
suggest to the local overseers ways and means of betterment. There had already grown up, at the creation of the
State body, a requirement for annual returns of poor
relief by the cities and towns. These returns are now upon
a somewhat elaborate statistical basis and are required
under penalty of one dollar a day for delay in filing.
Again at the recommendation of the State Board, its
agents are required to visit all poor who are boarded by the
overseers in families, and all children indentured or placed
out.
When the American movement for widows' pensions
reached Massachusetts, the scene was completely set for
the development of a mothers' aid law which should be an
integral part of the system of public relief, administered
like all other aid by the local authorities under the supervision of the State. This is the essential nature of the
Massachusetts law, under which 9,278 mothers with
29,884 dependent children under fourteen years of age
have been relieved, and under which the governments of
this State, supreme and municipal combined, are expending over $1,500,000 each year.
These duties of local supervision are executed in the
Division of Aid and Relief through corps of field agents
who examine settlements and carry out all necessary inspections.
Under its duties of supervision of private charities, the




DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE


163


department executes three statutes.   One of these1
requires that it shall investigate all petitions for the incorporation of private charities and shall report its findings to the Secretary of the Commonwealth, who is the
issuing authority. The department has no power of
refusal in unsatisfactory cases, the entire discretion resting
with the Secretary of State. The second statute2 requires every incorporated private charity whose property
is exempt from taxation as a charitable use to make an
annual return to the department in such form as the department may direct. The third provision is a permissive
inspection law.3 It requires the department to inspect
and investigate annually the affairs of all incorporated
private charities which request or consent to such oversight.
The former Homestead Commission was empowered
to purchase land, build houses, and sell to citizens at not
less than cost. It was also authorized to advise local
planning boards in the conduct of their work. These
functions are added to the department in the new reorganization. The former commission had developed a
tract of land in the city of Lowell as a homestead experiment. There are now twelve houses on the tract all in
process of purchase by their occupants on a long-term
payment basis.
The most vital function performed by the department
is the care, custody, and maintenance of such children as
are received by or are committed to its guardianship.
It now has seven thousand such State minor wards. It
1 Acts of 1910, ch. 181.
2R. L. ch. 84, ~ 14. As amended, Acts of 1903, ch. 402, and Acts of 1913,
ch. 82.
a Acts of 1909, ch. 379.




164   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


maintains no orphanages or homes for their care, unless
the small temporary homes which serve as receiving
reservoirs may be counted as such. All children who
are placeable are located in foster family homes. Those
too defective mentally are sent to the institutions for the
feeble-minded, but, because of the lack of room in those
receptacles, may be sent to the State Infirmary to await
reception. This practice, necessary under the circumstances, is incorrect as a classification. The department
has struggled for many years to make a better arrangement possible by urging further institutional facilities
for the care and custody of feeble-minded children
and the establishment of a State hospital for the temporary care and treatment of sick State minor wards.
The total expense of conducting the Division of Child
Guardianship slightly exceeds $1,000,000 a year. The
system thus embodied in a process of investigation, visitation, and endless personal care is known over the world
as the Massachusetts plan of child placement. Though
it is now adopted in most progressive communities, it
had its first unqualified adoption in this State. Its genesis
forms the subject matter of the next chapter.




CHAPTER VIII


CHILD CARE AND THE CHILD PLACING SYSTEM IN
MASSACHUSETTS
THE first child placed out by public authority in Massachusetts was Benjamin Eaton. He was indentured in
1636 by the governor and assistants of Plymouth Colony
"to Bridget Fuller, widow, for 14 years, shee being to keep
him at schoole 2 years, & to imploy him after in shuch
service as she saw good & he should be fitt for; but not to
turne him over to any other, without ye Govr consente."1
At no time since that early day has the method of indenture or placement, as it is now called, fallen in favor
nor has the idea of the public orphanage-that perversion
of sound social policy-ever taken root.
It was the theory of the early community that every
person should be attached to a family and that he should
have some occupation. And this requirement applied to
the children, even of fairly tender years. For instance,
"Itt is agreed upon the complaint against the son of
goodwife Sammon living without a calling, that if shee
dispose nott of him in some way of employ before the
next meeting, that then the townsmen will dispose of
him to some service according to the law."2
When an abandoned child was found, the first quest was
for a family home. As early as 1645 appears such a case.
The infant was left in a Plymouth family by a father who
promised to pay board, but who straightway left the settlement. It was ordered that the child be indentured to


I Rec. Plym. Col. Shurtleff, vol. I, p. 80.
' Records of Town of Boston, 1657. Rep. Rec. Com. p. 133.




166   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


the party with whom it was left until it be twenty-four
years of age; the father to have it if he come and pay all
past board bills.'
In the Bay Colony the attachment of each child to
some family and his continuance there in an occupation
which should become self-sustaining was sought by compulsion of statute as early as 1642. In that year the
selectmen were directed to see to it that all children have
opportunity to learn to read, and to have a vigilant eye
that no citizens
shall suffer so much barbarism in any of their families, as not
to endeavor to teach, by themselves or others, their children
and apprentices, so much learning, as may enable them to read
perfect the English tongue, and knowledge of the capital laws.
And farther, that all parents and masters do breed and bring
up their children and apprentices in some honest lawful calling,
labour or employment, either in husbandry or some other trade,
profitable for themselves and the Commonwealth, if they will
not or cannot train them up in learning, to fit them for higher
employments.2
These injunctions were followed by a further provision
that, the parents or masters failing, the authorities would
place their children out to better advantage.
In the earlier period indenture was the only method of
disposing of dependent children. The plan was extended
also to others who needed correction, but who bad not
brought themselves within the rigid discipline of the
criminal law. When Thomas Lambert, of Barnstable,
complained in 1660 against his son Jedediah that he
"caryed stuburnly against his said father," the court
agreed to release the boy, provided "he dispose himself
1 Rec. Plym. Col. vol. ii, p. 86.
Ancient Charters and Laws of Mass. (Boston, 1814), ch. xxii, p. 73.




CHILD CARE


167


in some honest family which," said they, "if hee shall
neglect to doe the Court haue deputed MI Hinckley to
dispose of him to some honest, Godly family with his and
his fathers consent." This was the first case of a stubborn
child recorded in Plymouth; and it was disposed of with
greater prospects of effective citizenship in Jedediah, perhaps, than can be claimed for thousands of stubborn boys
who are being apprehended and publicly dealt with
throughout the country to-day.
In the uncompromising view taken by the early settlers
that the family was the social unit about which all else
must be builded, there was naturally little tolerance for
the non-support of children. We find the court at Plymouth, in 1672, warning Robert Marshall to support his
two children, "who are now in the custody of Mistris
Jone Barnes," and threatening to dispose of them; and
in the following year, the father having failed to support,
Mr. Saberry and Jonathan Barnes were directed to indenture them.2
The earliest days of the Plymouth Settlement were
times of hardship and famine. Non-support was not always wilful, under such pressure. In 1658 the sufferings
of the children came to public attention as a problem distinct from the individual case. It was then enacted that
whereas it is observed that divers psons in this Gourment are
not able to prouide competent and convenient food and raiment
for theire children, whereby it is that poor children are exposed
unto great want and extremity; It is enacted by the Court and
the Authoritie thereof that two or three men shalbe chosen in
euery township of this gourment that all such as are not able to
prouide necessary and convenient food and clothing for theire
Children and will not dispose of them themseules soe as they may
1 Rec. Plym. Col. vol. in, p. 201.  ' Rec. Plym. Col. vol. v, pp. 85, 116.




168     POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS
bee better prouided for; such said children shalbe disposed of by the said men soe appointed as they shall see meet,
soe as they may bee comfortably prouided for in the prmises
and the seuerall townes shall returne the names of such men as
shalbee deputed and chosen into the Court.L
The sole objects of the first Plymouth authorities were
then to secure right family surroundings and to provide
work for the growing child. But there can be no doubt
that in the minds of the selectmen these purposes had
their birth in the underlying intent to free the settlement
of the burden of support. The evidence of this overseers'
ambition is clearer in the Boston records than in the accounts of Plymouth. Thus:
Christopher Perkins is to pay to Brother Ludkin from this
day for his child keping, and promises to bind his house to the
towne for securitie that it shall be noe farther chargable to the
towne.2
Again:
An order was sent to goodwife Alexander to d'd the child of
the widdow Bushnell under her care and custody to Hope Allen
who desired the same that he might dispose thereof & free the
towne from Charge thereby.3
Cleaning off the account on the treasurer's book by a
long-term indenture, which for practical purposes amounted
to a sale of the child with no guarantee of protection,
save public indignation, against enslavement and abuse,
was the constant effort of the early town authorities. The
decree of 1672, quoted in a previous chapter,4 ordering
certain citizens to indenture their children or the town
would do it for them, is typical of the method.
A wealth of instances occur in the Records of Massachusetts towns showing the attitude of the local officials
P Plymouth Recs. "Laws," Pulsifer, p. 111.
2 Boston Town Records, 2 Rep. Rec. Cor. Boston, p. 107.
Idem, 8 Rep. Rec. Cor. p. 55.  4 See ch. v, p. 91, ante.




CHILD CARE


169


and the process which they carried out in disposing of
dependent children. Ashburnham in 1792, for instance,
after voting to pay for the cow which the town had bought
for a certain pauper, proceeded to vendue a negro boy:
Voted to vendue the negro boy, brought to the selectmen for
the town to maintain, to some suitable man, the lowest bidder,
and to give him for maintaining said boy one 7th part of the
sum yearly until the whole is paid: said boy was struck off to
Mr Jno. Trask at ~24:-voted also that the selectmen should
bind said boy to said Trask to serve him untill he arrives to
the age of 21 years.
Ashfield, in 1818, auctioned several children off to the
lowest bidder, to be bound out until twenty-one years of
age. In 1828 we find the overseers of Amherst advertising
for bidders to take a couple of girls, aged eight and ten,
on indenture until they should become eighteen.
The terms of indenture might vary somewhat, but the
following example from the Records of Malden, 1745, contains all the essentials found elsewhere:'
This indenture witnesseth that Joseph Lynde Tho8 Wait
John Dexter Stephen Pain and Joseph Wilson Select-men,
Overseers of the Poor of the town of Maldon in the County of
Middlesex in New England by and with the consent of two of
his Majesties Justices of the Peace for said County have plac'd
and by these presents do place and bind out John Ramsdell a
poor child, belonging to Maldon aforesd unto Edward Wait of
Maldon in the County of Middlesex Yeoman and to his wife
and Heirs and with them after the manner of an apprentice to
dwell and serve from the day of the date of these Presents until
the fifth day of April which will be in the year of our Lord One
Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty two at which time said
Apprentice if living will arrive at the age of twenty one years
during all which said time or term the said Apprentice his said
Master and Mistress well and faithfully shall Serve their
Secrets he shall keep close their commandments lawful and
1 See D. P. Corey, History of Malden (Malden, 1899). p. 401.




170     POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS
honest everywhere he shall gladly obey he shall do no Damage
to his sd Master &c nor Sufer it to be done by others without
letting or giving Seasonable notice thereof to his sd Master &c
he shall not waste the Goods of his said Master &c nor lend
them unlawfully to any: At Cards Dice or any other unlawful
game or games he shall not play: Fornication he shall not
commit: matrimony he shall not contract: Taverns Ale Houses
or places of gaming he shall not haunt or frequent: From the
service of his sd master &c by Day or night he shall not absent
himself: but in all things and at all times he shall carry and
behave himself towards his sd Master &c and all theirs as a
good and faithful apprentice ought to do to his utmost ability
during all the Time or term aforesd-and the said Master doth
hereby covenant and agree for himself his wife and Heirs to
teach or cause the sd Apprentice to be taught the Art and
Mystery of a Cord wainer and also to read write and cypher.
And also shall and will well and truly find allow unto and provide for the sd Apprentice Sufficient and wholesome meat and
drink, with washing Lodging and apparel and other necessaries
meet and convenient for Such an Apprentice during all the
time or term aforesd: And at the end and Expiration thereof
shall dismiss the sd Apprentice with two good Suits of Apparel
for all parts of his Body one for the Lords-Day the other for
working-Days Suitable to his Quality-In testimony whereof
the sd Parties have to these Indentures inter changeably Set
their Hands and Seals the thirtieth day of April in the twenty
first year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the Second
King of Great Britain &c-Annoq: Domini one Thousand
Seven Hundred and forty eight.
Signed Sealed and Delivered in
the presence of
John Shute           Edward Wait (
John Wilson
It was not until 1679 that the question of some form of
public schooling for the children of the poor came officially to the attention of the town of Boston. In 1677
the Colony had enacted a law' requiring each town which
had fifty families or more to raise a levy of ~12 to main1 See Brigham, Compact and Charter Laws (1836), p. 185.




CHILD CARE


171


tain a grammar school. The article in the warrant for
the'Boston town meeting of 1679 was referred to the
selectmen. No action resulted.1 It was not till 1819
that a system of public schooling for small children was
established. It was to apply to children between four
and seven.2
But though the primary method of public child care
in the colonial period was indenture, it must not be
supposed that there were no children in the almshouses.
Let the public but set up a receptacle and there will
always be dependents to occupy it. This is the history
of all times among all peoples. Boston, Salem, Roxbury, and a few other settlements in these earlier days
had almshouses, and all had children in them. But in
all, the process of indenture was employed as the children grew old enough to labor-usually at ten or twelve
years.3 This practice of keeping the young in almshouses during infancy and early childhood was the worst
sort of child care. Yet it increased with the upgrowth
of the almshouses and became, in the years between
1820 and 1870, a menace so great as to constitute one
of the primary sources of pauperization in the Massachusetts community. At the same time there can be
little doubt that the congregation of many children
without separate grouping in the poorhouses served to
call attention to the need of some positive action by the
public to improve childhood by protecting the health
Boston Town Records, 7 Rep. Rec. Com., Boston, p. 127.
2 Idcm, 37 Rep. Rec. Cor. Boston, p. 120.
' Children became house servants even at tender ages. Thus, in 1766,
"Mr Joshua Loring acquaints the Selectmen [of Boston] that he had taken
into his family as a servant one Mary Woodhouse a girl from Milton about
nine year of age." Boston Town Records, 20 Rep. Rec. Cor. Boston, p. 238.




172   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


and morals of the* young and by giving them mind
training. In this way it became the great impetus to
the development of the free public school.
In 1769 a committee of the town government of Boston studying the problems of pauperism, recommended a
grant of ~500 to inaugurate a series of spinning schools
'"to learn such children to spin (free of charge) as the
overseers shall from time to time certifie are proper
Objects of such Charity." This was a forward-looking
proposal, even though its "charity" was made up of
one part for childhood and two parts for the town
treasury.
In 1820 the Quincy legislative report, mentioned in a
preceding chapter, formulated one of the first public
expressions of that constructive programme for the
betterment of child life of which Massachusetts has become an exponent. Of the children it said:
Those who are poor and in infancy or childhood... have
a right to require from society a distinct attention and more
scrupulous and precise supervision. Their career of existence
has but just commenced. They may be rendered blessings or
scourges to society. Their course may be happy or miserable,
honorable or disgraceful, according to the specific nature of the
provision made for their support and education.1
This statement was directed particularly at the hundreds of children then in the almshouses, for the report
goes on to declare that in the almshouse plants as at that
time arranged it was impossible to remove the children
from constant contact with the vicious. It was impossible to remove begging and thieving children from the
streets because there was no receptacle, other than the
almshouses, in which to put them.
11820, Mass. House Doc. No. 46. Bee ch. v, p. 115, ante.




CIIILD CARE


173


The evil continued to grow, not only in the numbers
of children demanding public support and correction as
the population increased, but also from the economical
plan by which these small communities left their workhouses for the vicious poor to the management of the
selectmen and overseers.  The inevitable result was
that the almshouse as an institution became, by virtue
of the single management, associated with the idea of
punishment for crime and, because of the official proximity, soon filled up with the vicious who claimed almshouse care of the non-correctional sort and received it.
In this manner the children of the poorhouse played and
did chores about the institution in company and in
intimate personal contact with the most degraded
tramps, drunkards, prostitutes, petty criminals, and the
victims of venereal disease.
In 1821 there were in the Boston Almshouse seventyeight sick persons, seventy-seven children, nine maniacs
and idiots, and one hundred and fifty-five unclassified
inmates, mostly old and decrepit. The report containing
these figures went on to state, however, that there were
from one hundred to one hundred and fifty children on the
average in the almshouse, "orphans and others."' Some
attempt was made to classify them in two groups according to sex, and to give them rudimentary schooling.
The accommodation in the House of Industry at the
same period revealed the same unclassified mixture.
There were eighty-seven lodging-rooms for the poor; six
cells for punishment; six dormitories for insane men;
eight for insane women; and a schoolhouse in which the
children were instructed. They lived among the paupers,
Spl. Rep. Dept. Overseers of the Poor of Boston, City papers, 1821.




174   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


the vicious and the insane. Instead of a house of industry, that establishment was in 1821 a general infirmary, an asylum for the insane, and a refuge for the
deserted and most destitute children of the city. Tle
inmates themselves looked after the small children and
the lunatics, while the older children looked after themselves. Of the one hundred and eighty-three children then
resident at the House of Industry ninety-five were of
foreign birth or parentage.
The Beverly House contained about ninety children
ten years of age or younger. Though no accurate census
of all the almshouses exists, it was certain that many
hundreds of children were cared for in this way. In
1852 the overseers of the several cities and towns claimed
reimbursement from the State for aid given to 2,896
children who were without settlement.2 There must
have been at least as many more under care who had
legal settlement. For the most part, such children were
given some sort of instruction. Usually they were sent
to the town school, but in numerous instances were taught
by one of the pauper adults in the House and in a few
cases were kept at labor without schooling.
As might be anticipated, the three State almshouses
quickly became asylums for the children of the unsettled
poor. Tewksbury received 2,193 inmates during the
first year of its existence, among whom were 970 minors.
Monson received 410 children under fifteen years of age
among the total grist of 723 admissions. With respect
to the housing given them they may have received better
care at the State institutions. It is certain that they


11832, Mass. House Doc. No. 41, abstracts.
2 1852, Mass. House Doc. No. 18.




CHILD CARE


175


were very little better off in the matter of segregation.
Among these ill-favored little folk, the illegitimate
was almost certain to appear at the almshouse. The
putative father might be pursued, but that enterprise
depended much upon the mother, and in almost all cases
was futile as a means of support. There remained,
therefore, only indenture; but indenture was practicable
only when the child could render service. Consequently
he went to the almshouse for an education in pauperism
and crime before he gained that relatively happy state
in which he must purge away his poverty and ill-breeding
by hard work.
The law has never accorded to the illegitimate more
than a modicum of his just due. To the churchman and
the laity alike he has been outcast. Innocent of his fatherless condition, born to poverty and neglect, humanity has turned from him like a thing diseased. The
public official has striven to avoid paying out money
for his support. His death has afforded much relief,
to which end his immediate separation from his mother
has become a most encouraging practice. Such disposition was helpful also in concealing the disgrace.
With this general attitude of the public mind, it was
natural that the law should have sought only to adjust
the mother's grievance against the father for the bastardy. To be sure, the penal law dealt severely with the
mother for infanticide; but it dealt gently with the
putative father. And it was two hundred years after
the settlement of the Colony before the child itself could
inherit even from its mother. The Massachusetts law
governing bastardy and the maintenance of illegitimate
children had, down to the year 1913, provided a civil




176   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


cause of action to be effected for the most part through a
criminal proceeding.' The parties in interest were the
mother and the alleged father. The defendant, if found
guilty, might settle his liability with a lump sum, usually
two or three hundred dollars, and thereafter escape
liability, while the father of the legitimate child must
nourish it, give it education, and be responsible for its
support throughout its minority. The mother upon recovering damages has in most cases had enough remaining
from costs and lawyers' fees to pay for care and nursing
at her lying-in and a few weeks' board for the child besides. In 1913 the judges of the Massachusetts courts
joined in drafting a criminal statute which was substituted for the old bastardy law.2 The new statute
compels the father and the mother to support their child.
The new parties in interest are the public and the child.
The excessive use of ardent spirits and the great influx
of vagrants from foreign countries quickly forced the
General Court to seek means of relief from the army of
able-bodied paupers who overran the State. This took
form in 1699 in the first statute "for the suppressing and
punishing of rogues, vagabonds, common beggars, and
other lewd, idle and disorderly persons; and also for
setting the poor to work." The instrument was to be
the house of correction, one of which must be built by
each county. Section 5 of that act contained this
provision:
And when any stubborn children or servants, that are under
the immediate care and government of their parents and masters, shall be committed to said house, the parents or masters
of such children or servants, if able, shall take care to provide
1 R. L. ch. 82. 2 Act of 1913, ch. 563.




CHILD CARE


177


such things as may be necessary for the keeping of them to
work and labor during their abode in said house.
The still earlier provision of 1692,1 by which idle and
ill-behaved children might be sent to the house of correction or bound out by the selectmen was thus soon in
need of a buttress in the form of a guarantee that, when
idle youth were committed to the house of correction,
they would be kept at work.
These legal provisions were exceedingly broad, giving
paternal authority to the selectmen and overseers of the
poor. But it was not long until their interpretation had
become unwarrantably narrow. In 1703 a third Act
was passed reciting that
Whereas the law for binding out poor children apprentice is
misconstrued by some to extend only to such children whose
parents receive alms [the selectmen and overseers of the poor
should be impowered] to set to work or bind out apprentice as
they shall think convenient, all such children whose parents
shall by the Selectmen or Overseers of the Poor or the greater
part of them, be thought unable to maintain them (whether
they receive almes or are chargeable to the place or not), so
as they be not sessed to publick taxes or assessments, for the
province or town charges;... provision therein [the indenture] to be made for the instructing of children so bound out,
to read and write, as they may be capable. And the Selectmen
and Overseers of the Poor shall inquire into the usages of children bound out by themselves or their predecessors, and
endeavor to defend them from any wrongs or injuries.2
This act further declared that
no single person of either sex, under the age of twenty-one
years, shall be suffered to live at their own hand, but under
some orderly family government.3
The series is important as evidence of the truth thus
early discovered in Massachusetts that juvenile correc1 Quoted at p. 100, ch. v.  2 Acts of 1703, ch. 14.  3 Idem, sec. 2.




178   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


tion is essentially child care. Mere repression will not
hold back the irrepressible; and child life, which seeks
expression, will have it even though the form be evil.
The earlier attempts at legislation had threatened dire
consequences to the stubborn child. In 1671 a provision was enacted that
If a man have a stubborn or rebellious son, of sufficient years
and understanding (viz.)-sixteen years of age-and testifies
that the son is stubborn and rebellious, and will not obey their
voice and chastisement, but lives in sundry notorious crimes;
such a son shall be put to death or otherwise severely punished.1
It is not to be supposed that a self-governing people
would hang boys for stubbornness, nor is there any record
of such a tragedy resulting from this statute. It is to
be looked upon, therefore, as a statutory scolding administered for the good of wayward youth, chiefly those
not yet apprehended.
In earlier times, as at the present day, the overseer
found himself compelled to witness the downward
progress of the spendthrift or the drunkard without being
able to take control until public dependency had become
a fact. In the present state of the public mind there
are so many rights of the individual which are deemed
paramount to the public welfare that it is impracticable
for government to step in before the carelessness or the
weakness of the citizen brings him to a state of penury
and distress. In the earlier days a struggle was made
to forestall such public burdens, but it was an unequal
contest from the start and the outcome has never been
in doubt. In 1722 the overseers of the poor were empowered by law to deal with the idle who had estates


I Revision of 1671, ch. 2. 14 Brigham, p. 245.




CHILD CARE


179


just as with the idle who were indigent, and to treat
children in the same way. They were to
put out into orderly families their children, if any they have,
and improve their estates to the best advantage, and apply
the produce and income thereof towards the support of them
and their families.l
The neglected child, where he could not be indentured,
was lumped with the delinquent, while the orphan, or
the child who had no means of support, was in no way
differentiated from either. If they were not bound out,
they were sent to the institution, where they lived among
all the worst elements of human wreckage. Between
eighty and ninety per cent of all the foundlings sent to
the almshouse at Tewksbury died there.2 Barring the
unusual, therefore, the admission paper for one of these
little waifs was also his death-warrant. Finally, however, attention became attracted more and more to the
absurdity of forming or re-forming character by such a
process. The Report of 1820 is probably responsible for
having set the public to thinking, especially about the
pauper system. By 1825 a well-defined movement was
afoot to segregate the children from the adults in public
institutions. In that year Boston was authorized to use
its House of Industry or to establish a House of Reformation for the custody and care of "all children who live
an idle or dissolute life, whose parents are dead, or, if
living, from drunkenness or other vices, neglect to provide
any suitable employment, or exercise any salutary control
over said children." Males might be kept till twentyone; females till eighteen. The master was to have power


1 Province Laws, 1722, ch. 2. ' See Third Rep. Bd. St. Char. (1867), p. Ixix.




180   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


to bind out. In this manner originated the Boston
House of Reformation.
But this provision was restricted to the city of Boston.
For the rest of the State, the dependent and the neglected must go to the almshouse, while the stubborn
child was consigned to the house of correction or the
common jail. By the Act of 1834,1 the courts might
commit to the house of correction
all rogues, vagabonds, and all idle persons going about in any
town or place in the country begging, or persons using any
subtle craft, juggling, or unlawful games or plays, common
pipers, fiddlers, runaways, stubborn children, common drunkards, common night walkers, pilferers, wanton and lascivious
persons, in speech, conduct or behavior, common railers and
brawlers, such as neglect their callings or employment, misspend what they earn, and do not provide for themselves or
for the support of their families.
It is as though the law had gathered about these children
-already the victims of bad environment-the entire
faculty of crime and degeneracy in an effort to make
them better!
Such conditions could not long obtain. In 1843 Boston
was authorized to segregate the female children at the
House of Reformation.2 The first real fruit of this
movement, however, was the establishment of the State
Reform School for Boys, now known as the Lyman
School. This was created in 18473 and went into operation the following year. To this institution might be
sent any male under sixteen convicted of any offence
other than one calling for imprisonment for life. The
trustees had power to bind out.
Hardly was the Reform School launched when the
1 Acs of 1834. ch. 151, 1.  s Act of 184, ch. 2.
s Acts of 1847, ch. 165.




CHILD CARE


181


question of separate institutional care for girls was
brought forward. A commission of 1850 looked into
the matter, and the State Reform School for Girls was
established, in 1855,1 at Lancaster. Girls between seven
and sixteen, convicted of offence not punishable by imprisonment for life, might be committed. Committable
persons were declared to include persons charged with
"leading an idle, vagrant, or vicious life, or has been
found in any street or highway in this Commonwealth
in circumstances of want and suffering, or of neglect,
exposure or abandonment, or of beggary." Thus the
female children were withdrawn in a measure from the
sordid surroundings of the jail and house of correction,
but the destitute and neglected were still left with the
incorrigibles. Enlightenment upon this latter need was
to follow only after many years of experience in child care.
Another step, more important for its ultimate consequences than for its immediate effect, was taken in
1855. At that time each of the three State almshouses
had its large quota of children. In an effort to segregate
the almshouse children, the institution at Monson was
set apart as a State pauper school into which were to be
gathered all the pauper children in the State almshouses,
excepting such only as were non compos mentis.2 The
act itself was not enforced and was repealed within a
few years. But the new State Board took up the idea
and carried it through to completion.
This, generally speaking, was the State development
of the public system of correction and care of children
when Massachusetts entered that new phase in her social
history in which a central State Board became the
1 Acts of 1855. ch. 442.  Acts of 1855, ch. 412.




182   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


dominating factor. The year 1864, which was the first
year of activity of the new Board of State Charities,
stands as the great landmark in the history of child care,
for it was then that the various threads of the practice
of earlier years were sorted out and woven by the State
Board into the fabric of State policy. That which had
been done blindly before, without consistent plan, was
now subjected to analysis and such experiments as seemed
clearly advisable were adopted as part of a social programme.
This first board immediately recommended the removal
of the children from the State almshouses, for which
purpose they turned to the Act of 1855 providing for the
concentration of the State almshouse children in the
institution at Monson. That act had fallen into disfavor and had been repealed. The superintendents of
the houses at Tewksbury and Bridgewater objected to
losing their children, contending that they should be
kept and schooled to various trades. The result of the
board's efforts, however, was the establishment of
Monson as the State Primary School.' As intended by
the State Board, this statute did not contemplate the
permanent housing of dependent children in an institution. It provided expressly that
It shall be the duty of the Superintendent, inspectors and other
officers to use all diligence to provide suitable places in good
families for all such pupils as have received an elementary
education; and any other pupils may be placed in good families,
on condition that their education shall be provided for in the
public schools of the town or city where they may reside.
Here, then, was a great improvement in the old system
of indiscriminate herding of children in the almshouses.
Acts of 1806, ch. 209.




CHILD CARE


183


But it failed signally in one important respect: it still
insisted upon concentrating little children at the most
impressionable age in a large institutional group where
the virtues of the best must struggle and lose against the
vices of the worst. Nor was the State Board ignorant
of this great defect; for in their Second Report, they
declared that "the children who are to become citizens
of the State should be removed from the morbid influence
of a pauper establishment, and submitted to the healthful influences of ordinary country life, as early as possible."' To effect this object, they advocated a bureau
or department which should have the power to find homes
and to place children in them; which should have persons
trained to visit and supervise the children in these foster
homes; and to use the almshouses only as a temporary
receptacle or home pending placement at the earliest
possible time.
One difficulty stood in the way of this course: the
children, if placed out, must go into free homes, as there
was no authority to pay board for them. The almshouses existed for pauper care, and the placing-out
method was applicable only to the child who was capable
of self-support or such labor as would induce a contractor
to take him. The infant or the child of tender years
must be taken, if at all, therefore, for reasons of affection
or compassion. Where the power to pay board does not
exist, the care given in any child-placing system has
been found to tend downward below a right standard.
In this dilemma it became necessary to vary the poorrelief system by the important step of subsidizing housewives in their foster care of children who were dependent
1 Second Rep. Bd. St. Char. p. xcix.




184   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


upon the State. For years the State Board in its annual
reports preached the philosophy of the family home as
the great remedial agent for social ills, and urged a
thorough-going use of the system of family placements
for all dependent children. In 1882 an act was passed
providing for the commitment of indigent and neglected
children to the State Board and authorizing the payment
of board for them in family homes.' If the revolt
against the warehousing of children in institutions with
the vicious and the defective was the first great step in
the history of child care, the extension of the placingout system to all children, through the medium of the
State Board as a child-placing agency, was undoubtedly
the second.
The effect of the new extension was immediate and
far-reaching. When the State Department itself had
been set up as a receptacle for indigent and neglected
children, the sources of supply of the State almshouse
children, and in particular for the inmate body of the
State Primary School, began to dry up. At the same
time the number of foundlings under State care began to
increase rapidly. The explanation for this increase was
the reduced mortality. In its Report for 1883 the State
Board called attention to the fact that, of 569 infants
cared for in the four-year period then closing, only 180
were known to have died, a percentage slightly below
thirty. The number of deaths in this group which
would certainly have resulted from the old State almshouse care would have exceeded five hundred. While
this process of life-saving was going on through the
medium of individual placement, the death-rate in St.
Acts of 1882, ch. 181, ~~ 1, 2.  See also Acts of 1880, ch. 86, ~~ 45, 40.




CHILD CARE


185


Mary's Infant Asylum, a carefully managed institution,
was revealing some improvement, but did not fall below
seventy per cent. Where the old almshouse system
might have saved one hundred of this group, the new
method of placement had saved more than three hundred.
In 1919 the percentage of deaths among all the infants
under one year of age, in charge of the Department,
was 10.32; while the percentage for children of all ages
under care was 4.59 plus. This represents a clear saving
of eighty per cent of the lives over the worst days of the
old system.
At the State Primary School there were in 1884 but
one fourth of the number of children who had been there
seven years before; and a goodly proportion of these
were children who had been placed there temporarily by
the State Board pending placement in family homes.
Ten years later, the hospital for epileptics sprang up on
the Monson site and the Primary School ceased to be.1
The mechanism was now established for a continuing
study of the problems of child care. Each year added
something to a social programme already developing in
a wholesome way. All unsettled children were assured
of the State's best efforts to secure for them the advantages of family up-bringing-the birthright of every child,
however lowly. In addition, all wayward and practically all neglected children, committed to the State
Board by the courts, were maintained by the State and
controlled exclusively by the State Board regardless of
settlement. In 1900 these powers were extended to
cover dependent children as well.2
The movement against institutional concentration of
1 Acts, 1895, ch. 428; ch. 483.  Acts of 1900, ch. 397.




186     POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS
normal children had already begun to affect the local
almshouses. With the State's policy in the hands of a
powerful central board, the limitations within which children might be retained in the almshouses were ever more
tightly drawn. In 1887 it was provided1 that the overseers of each city and town must place their dependent
children above two years of age in private families. In
1905, the law having met with ignorant oversight and
evasion, it was further provided that, if the overseers of
any place except Boston fail for two months to place such
children, the State Board should place them at the town's
expense.
The Act of 1887 had provided also that no such dependent child who could be cared for in a private family
without inordinate expense should be retained in an almshouse unless he be a State pauper or an idiot, or otherwise
so defective in body or mind as to make his retention in an
almshouse desirable, unless he be under eight years of
age and his mother be an inmate and a fit person to aid in
taking care of him. The Act of 1905 reduced this age
limit from eight to five. Finally in 1913,2 it was set at
three years. This series of acts, the result of the efforts
of the State Board, has practically eliminated the normal
child from the Massachusetts almshouses.
But intelligent care of dependent and neglected children
after they had reached the Board's care in safety was not
enough to satisfy a thorough-going policy in child care.
It was necessary to protect friendless children from abuse.
Baby-farming, which is essentially the bribing of unprincipled traffickers in childhood to dispose of a little
one for a fee without further responsibility to the princi1 Act of 1887, ch. 401.  ' Acts of 1913, ch. 112.




CHILD CARE


187


pal, has flourished in the highest states of civilization.
Indeed, the greater the degree of crowding and activity in
urban communities, the greater becomes the tendency to
break over the bounds of domestic conventions, with
the result that there are more illegitimates and, what is
still worse, more little waifs legitimately born, disposed of
because of poverty or the morbid love of social pleasure
of their parents. Such little folk have few friends; and
but slight opportunity to acquire them, unless the public
in its own defence takes up with them and fosters them
for future citizenship.
Massachusetts, at the suggestion of its State Board,
began in 1889 to legislate for the protection of infants.  It
was then declared that "whoever for hire, gain or reward
has in his custody or control at one time two or more infants under the age of two years unattended by a parent
or guardian, except infants related to him by blood or
marriage, for the purpose of providing them with care,
food and lodging," should be deemed to maintain a boarding-house for infants. Such boarding-houses were to be
licensed and supervised by the State Board.
It was then made a crime-the crime of abandonment
-to give "to any person an infant under two years of
age for the purpose of placing it for hire, gain or reward
under the permanent control of another person."2 All
persons placing or receiving children must notify the
State Board.
Still another step has been taken to foster our potential
citizens. In 1910 the State Board secured authority to
license all lying-in hospitals and to make rules and regulaI Acts of 1889, ch. 416.
' Acts of 1892, ch. 318. See R. L. ch. 83, for the modern law.




188


POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


tions for the government of the same.1 At the present
time 231 licenses are in operation, showing a yearly record
in excess of ten thousand births. Wherever a child is
born, in other than the parents' own home, there the
watchfulness of the State follows. Among the rules and
regulations is one requiring the use of a prophylactic in
the baby's eyes, and another requiring the marking of the
infant's clothing. Due in great measure, no doubt, to the
first of these requirements, the cases of ophthalmia reported during the past five years have dropped from 5.50
per cent in 1915 to 2.54 per cent in 1919. Through the
hospital mark upon the infant's clothing, the parentage
of many foundlings has been established.
In the thirty years which have gone by since the inauguration of the attack upon baby-farming, hundreds of
infants have been given protection-in many cases saved
from death by neglect or ill-will. Taken in connection
with other salutary provisions in the statutes referred to,
the Massachusetts method constitutes one of the best
safeguards against the exploitation and destruction of
child life that is known in our American practice.2 Its
cost is approximately one third of the outlays usually
made for institutional care of such children, but its savings are not to be reckoned in money or money's worth: it
conserves to society those human values without which
childhood cannot develop into vigorous and effective
citizenship.
A Acts of 1910, ch. 569; Acts of 1911, ch. 264.
2 The rules and regulations, as now adopted for the Division of Child Guardianship of the Department of Public Welfare, reveal the far-reaching system
and the elaborate care with which the State ward is protected from conditions
unfavorable to his development, at the same time that he is given foster family
care.




CHAPTER IX
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
WHEREVER in the operation of systems of public relief
of the poor the responsibility for development and execution is allowed to rest with small local units of government, there will be found an excessive degree of activity
on the part of officials aimed solely at the satisfaction of
local self-interest. Wherever the responsibility for such
relief has been removed from the small local community,
there will be discovered a dangerous tendency in legislation which seeks to redistribute the wealth of the community by taking from the thrifty citizen who has, and
giving to him who has not. It is a dilemma.
When the price of independence and the shame of
losing social place, however lowly, are removed from the
receipt of public bounty, the inevitable result, born of
human nature itself, is a clamor for aid-a demand as of
right-a shameless scramble for that which should come
only by the toil and initiative of the citizen himself. To
remove the burden of relieving the poor from the small
neighborhood circle in which each inhabitant and his daily
affairs are known to every one else is to screen him from
the eye of his mentors and to free him from that fear of
ridicule which is the greatest spur to self-support.
To administer poor relief by an authority beyond the
horizon of such small neighborhoods, out of funds not
directly extracted from the pockets of its residents, is to
give this impersonal caste to relief which encourages




190


POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


pauperism. The centralization of administration in the
State Government is a plan which is pregnant with the
dangers of pauperization. It is unsafe.
How, then, shall poor relief be administered? In
Massachusetts there are three hundred and fifty-four
cities and towns. In spite of long-continued and gradual
absorption of relief functions by the State Government,
each local community remains at this day an independent
sovereignty for purposes of relieving the poor. The history of the past three hundred years of poor relief by these
municipalities is a record of endless bickering and sharp
practice, indulged in by officials of small outlook, conscientiously defending their towns from public burdens.
To the social worker engaged in private charity the term
"overseer of the poor" is a byword for inadequate, unthinking doles. In the overseer's hands relief has seldom
been adequate to the need; and rarely has it betrayed a
constructive plan looking to the return of the pauper to
self-support. Relieving the town's poor has in all decades
been a crude piece of work. If State administration is
unsafe, independent local administration does not function, and is unsound.
Students of social welfare have variously asserted
that public outdoor relief can never be administered without pauperization and therefore should be abolished;
that the State should perform all public relief functions,
excluding the counties and towns, because the centralized plan affords a comprehensive system; that the State
should have no share in it, because problems of poverty,
like problems of crime, are local and must be locally met.
None of these proposals would provide the solution.
The evolution of the Massachusetts system is itself the




SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION


191


demonstration of the right method. Essentially the
system now in operation decentralizes the administration
of public poor relief by leaving it to the smallest unit of
government, the town; and centralizes the development
of the right method-the social programme-in the State
Government. This, then, is the answer: centralized
policy; decentralized administration.
In the beginnings of the New England settlement each
village was a law unto itself. It must work out its own
salvation: and this it did with justice if not with a great
show of charity. As the Colony grew, the town yielded a
portion of its sovereignty to the Colonial Government
which came to be the arbiter between conflicting rights.
Thus developed the Law of Settlement.
And as the Colony and the Province were but the expression of the towns viewed collectively, it was natural
that constant pressure from Boston, which was in all
times the rendezvous of the idle and the necessitous, should
result in the assumption by the general government of
some of that burden of poor relief directly. From this
beginning sprang the system of State pauper aid, that
monumental error in Massachusetts poor relief through
which this Commonwealth became a mecca for tramps and
a shipping point for the contents of English and European
poorhouses.
But State aid, by its stupendous failure, was itself responsible for those conditions, crying loudly for remedy,
which brought into being the Board of State Charities,
designed to reduce the numbers of sturdy beggars and to
safeguard the State Government from imposition by the
towns. The establishment of this board was an epochmaking step in Massachusetts charities; for upon its




192


POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


erection the State's policy in poor relief became a fact.
That which before had been chaos and strife, born of
local jealousy, became first a groping and then a steady
progress toward a social programme looking to the welfare of the community in the large. Warfare was immediately waged upon the absurd practice of herding dependent children with hardened criminals. First, children
were to be housed in buildings apart; then they were to
be placed in institutions entirely separated from adults;
finally, they were to be taken from the institutions altogether and given foster family care wherever there was
not discovered such abnormality as to call for special
treatment and custody.
The insane were to be separated from inmates of
normal mind, and the furiously mad were to be given
asylum by themselves. Finally, the State was to care for
the insane as a special problem of the central government.
And it was not enough to relieve the towns of their
unsolved problems: a proper State system called for
oversight of the local administration of outdoor and indoor
relief. The State, in a series of wise statutes, took supervision of the town almshouses, eliminating the children
who could be cared for elsewhere, requiring isolation of
consumptives and syphilitics, and inspecting the plant
and all its facilities in minute detail. In like manner the
State assumed authority to visit all children and all
adults placed out by the overseers. To-day its recommendations to local authorities in all these matters are
given respectful consideration and are almost invariably
carried out.
So successful has been the supervisory method that no
jurisdiction to an equal degree, perhaps, shows such great




SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION


193


advance in the humane and rehabilitating treatment of
broken citizenship. No system is more flexible and none
more economical in its administration.
Yet that must be said of the Massachusetts system
which may be said of all other systems in the nation, namely, that it is essentially remedial rather than preventive.
It is humane, but it is unscientific. It is vast in extent, but
it tends to increase the numbers of the dependent whom
it was designed to relieve. Its process is remedial: it
follows after the fact of dependency. It does not aim in
the main to forestall dependency by preventive measures.
In Massachusetts to-day are thirteen State institutions
for the care and treatment of the insane and three establishments for the care of the feeble-minded. The average
number of mental defectives cared for throughout the
year 1919 was 18,483. Five State and twenty-four local
institutions for consumptives housed 4,069 throughout the
year. Three State industrial schools cared for 2,939
juvenile delinquents. The State Department of Public
Welfare had in its charge 7,519 children mostly placed out
in foster homes. Altogether the State and the cities and
towns aided a total of 131,094 persons during 1919, at a
cost, including the care of law-breakers, of $15,610,418.54
a year. In the same space of time the incorporated
private charities of the State reported expenditures for
all purposes of $23,392,675.79. Their instances of aidcontaining many duplicates-totalled over 1,000,000.
In this tercentenary of the New England settlement,
therefore,-after three hundred years of experience,a new and serious meaning may be read into that eulogistic
phrase in which the Commission of 1834 essayed to laud
our legislative beneficences: "Public Charities may be




194   POOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS


compared to a noble river, rolling on in majesty to the
Sea, and bearing on its bosom the wealth of the State."
Public relief which seeks only to relieve distress ends
by creating the pauperism which it was designed to remove. Outlays so great betray a fatal weakness in our
social structure-a weakness to be coped with only by
striking at its causes. Pauperism is due in greatest measure to a lack of mental capacity in the individual to support himself and his dependents. His trouble is largely
hereditary. He is brindle stock. To relieve him, that
he may propagate more of his strain, is to perpetuate the
problem of pauperism as far as he is concerned. In
Kentucky, where until recently the law has provided a
subsidy for families which contained feeble-minded children, leaving the parents free to propagate more, it is
said that a fool has long been at a premium. When
Massachusetts followed the practice of taking a drab to
the almshouse for her lying-in, thereafter relieving her of
her child and sending her out again to the roadside to get
another, it was thereby placing a premium upon the birth
of the handicapped and in great measure fostering the
fool.
Hereditary mental defect is the great menace to modern
society. Existing systems of poor relief foster it: the
system of the future must combat it. So long as the ratio
of increase among the incompetent is allowed to exceed
the ratio among normals, just so long will appropriations
for the poor multiply themselves, adding heavily to the
burdens of an already complex citizenship. Under any
form of government the utmost to be expected of the
individual in the long run is self-interest decently pursued. Let this self-interest be taken for granted and




SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION             195
self-support required by all means within the power of the
normal citizen. Let him be obliged to guard himself
against disease for the sake of the public health. For
the unfit, let him be given kindly care; and the obvious
hereditary mental defective prevented from propagating
his kind. The history of public relief in Massachusetts is
warning enough that the system of the future must be
scientific; not less sympathetic, but more purposeful.
THE END




I




INDEX


Abandonment of infants, 187.
Able-bodied poor, 114.
Absorption of relief functions by the
State, 121.
Adoption, effect of, upon legal settlement, 89.
Alien passengers, commissioners of,
135.
Aliens, undesirable, efforts to exclude,
129, 133.
Alms, in England, 8, 9, 10.
Almshouse, Boston, 115, 116.
Almshouses, English, 8.
Almshouses, Massachusetts, 93, 112,
161.
Almshouses, dangerous diseases in,
161; lack of classification in, 112,
146; liquor for inmates of, 120, 123;
State, 136; State supervision of local,
161.
Annual returns of local poor relief, 162.
Apprentices in England, wandering, 7.
Asylum for the insane, first, established, 138.
Auctioning the poor, 107, 108, 110, 111.


Canton, Massachusetts Hospital School
at, 160.
Cattle as a form of poor relief, 105, 106.
Charitable aid, sources of in England,
8.
Charity, as a pauperizing force in England, 11; State Board of, 142; State
Board of Health, Lunacy and, 153;
State outlays for, 141, 142, 144, 145,
193.
Child-placing system in Massachusetts, 165, 183, 184.
Children, apprenticing of, in England,
21, 24; crippled and deformed in
State institutions, 159, 160; illegitimate, in State almshouses, 175; in
almshouses, 171, 179; in the Boston
Almshouse, 173; indenture of, 33,
95, 96, 166, 169; in the State Infirmary, 159; legal settlement of, 66, 67;
medical care for State, 158; public
schooling for poor, 178; segregation
from adults in almshouses, 179;
spinning school for, in Boston, 178;
State care and custody of, 163, 164.
church alms in England, 7, 8.
Chy Lung v. Freeman, 134.
Classification, the lack of, in early
almshouses, 112, 146.
Commissioners of alien passengers, 135.
Common lands, enclosures of, in England, 6, 7; rights in, as a form of poor
relief, 103.
Conclusion, 189 et seq.
Confederation of the Colonies, 1672,
53.
Corn, public granary in England, 5.
Correction, houses of, in England, 19;
in Massachusetts, 176, 177.
Jost of public poor relief in 1919, 193.
Courts as arbiters of settlement in
early times, 44.
Cromwell, private alms given by, 11.
)angerous diseases, persons aided for,
not deemed paupers, 68.
)eaf, State care of the, 145.
)eath penalty for vagrancy, in England, 21.


Beggars. (See Vagrants.)
Benefices, abuse of, in early England, 9.
Beverly Almshouse, children in, 174.
Blind, State care of, 145.
Boarding-houses for infants, 187.
Bond, for incoming aliens, 133, 134;
requirement of, against dependency,
38, 47, 48; shipmasters required to
give, 55, 62.
Boston Almshouse, 115, 116; children
in, 173.
Boston House of Industry, 117, 179.
Boston House of Reformation, 180.
'"Box," use of, by gilds and fraternities in England, 9, 10.
Branding of runaway artificers in England, 7.
Bridewell, the, origin of, 15.
Bridgewater, State Almshouse at, 136;
State Farm at, 159.
Canada, as a channel for importation
of paupers, 43.


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198


INDEX


Department of Public Welfare, 143,
158.
Desertion, effect of, upon legal settlement, 88.
Division of cities and towns, effect
upon legal settlement, 67, 84.
Divorce, effect of, upon legal settlement, 87, 88.
Dix, Dorothea, report on care of the
insane, 140.
Domicile, in the law of settlement, 72,
73.
Drunkards in almshouses, 113, 114,
146.
Dwellings for the poor, practice of
building, 103, 104, 105.
Elizabeth, statute of, on charities, 20.
Emancipation, in the law of legal settlement, 86, 87.
Enclosures of grazing lands in England, 5.
Family, solidarity of the, essential to
society, 74.
Foreign paupers, 42, 61; efforts to exclude, 129, 133.
Foundations, charitable, in England, 7,
8.
Foundlings in the State almshouses,
179.
Free homes for State wards, 183, 184.
Freeman, Chy Lung v., 134.
Gilds as sources of poor relief in England, 8, 9, 10.
Girls, State Industrial School for, 159,
160, 180, 181.
Granary, public, in England, 5.
Health, Lunacy and Charity, State
Board of, 153.
Henderson v. Mayor of New York, 134.
Henry VIII, Statute of, 13.
Homestead Commission, duties of,
taken over, 163.
Hospitals as sources of poor relief in
England, 8.
Hospital School, at Canton, 160.
House of Industry, at Boston, 117, 179.
House of Reformation, at Boston, 180.
Houses of correction, in England, 19;
in Massachusetts, 176, 177.
Howe, Samuel Gridley, 144, 167.
Idiots, 136, 137.


Idleness, drastic measures for the suppression of, 95, 96.
Illegitimate children, legal settlement
of, 66, 67.
Immigration, efforts to regulate, 129,
133.
Imprisonment, effect of, upon legal
settlement, 73.
Indenture, early practice of, 96, 166.
Industrial Reform School, the State,
154, 159, 160.
Industrial School for Boys, at Shirley,
160, 180; for Girls, at Lancaster,
160, 180, 181.
Industry, Boston House of, 117, 179.
Infants, abandonment of, 187; boarding-houses for, 187; protection of, by
the State, 187.
Inhabitancy, in English town practice,
18; in Plymouth Colony, first laws,
44, 45.
Insane, in almshouses, 112; State care
of the, 136, 138, 141, 153, 154.
Insanity, effect of, upon acquisition of
settlement, 75, 76; State Board of,
156.
Inspectors, Boards of, for State institutions, 136.
Ipswich, England, Relief of the poor in,
15.
Juvenile correction, 177, 178.
Laborers, Statute of, 5, 6, 12, 13, 21.
Lancaster, Industrial School for Girls,
at, 159, 160, 180, 181.
Land grants to new inhabitants, early
practice of, 39.
Legal settlement, acquisition of, 73;
adoption, effect of, upon, 89; desertion, effect of, upon, 88; division of
cities and towns, effect of, upon, 67,
84; domicile, 72, 73; effect of relief
upon acquisition of, 78; emancipation, in the law of, 86, 87; of illegitimate children, 66, 67; the law of, in
England, 27; the law of, in Massachusetts, 65; mental capacity to
choose, essential, 75; one only to
each individual, 72.
Licensing beggars in England, 14, 22.
Licensing boarding-houses for infants,
187; lying-in hospitals, 187.
Liquor, at public expense, for almshouse inmates, 120, 123; for funerals, 108.




INDEX


199


Live stock for the poor, in England, 19;
as a means of aiding the poor, 105,
106.
Loans to the poor, as a form of poor
relief, 104.
London, poor relief in, 14, 16, 17.
Lunacy, State Board of Health, and
Charity, 153.
Lunatics, 138.
Lying-in hospitals, 187.
Lyman School, 159, 160, 180.
Marriage, effect of, upon legal settlement, 86.
Married woman, settlement of, 66.
Massachusetts Hospital School, at
Canton, 160.
Mendicancy in Early England, 8, 9.
Mental defect, the great source of
pauperism, 194.
Military settlement, 67, 82, 83.
Minister, legal settlement of ordained,
81, 82.
Minors, legal settlement of, 66, 67.
Monasteries as relief agencies in early
England, 8.
Monson, State Almshouse at, 136;
State Primary School at, 151, 181.
Mortality among infants in public
care, 179, 184.
Mothers' aid in Massachusetts, 162.
North German Lloyd, Commissioner
of Immigration v., 134.
Norwich, England, poor relief in, 18.
Notice of new arrivals in towns, 46.
Oakum picking in workhouses, 115.
Overseers of the Poor, attitude of,
toward poor relief, 91; origin of the
office of, 20, 21, 24.
Parish, the, as the unit of poor relief in
England, 12, 16, 17, 19, 24.
Paupers, effect of relief to, upon settlement, 77; who not to be deemed, 68.
Persons under public care, 193.
Plymouth, community of goods during
first years, 94; first settlement law,
44, 45.
Poor children in London, 14.
Poor Law, the English, 13, 14.
Poor persons, auctioning the support
of, 107, 108, 110, 111; obligation of
towns to support, 48, 65; obligation
of relatives to support, 78; practice


of building dwellings for, 103, 104,
105; province, 57, 118, 121; support
of, by relatives in England, 21;
town's, 91, 92; unsettled, State care
of the, 145; vicious in almshouses,
113, 114; workhouses for, 115.
Poverty in the early settlements, 32.
Private almsgiving in England, 8.
Private charities, annual inspection of,
163; annual returns of, 163; investigation of petitions to be incorporate,
163; proposal to subsidize, 152.
Protection of infants by the State, 187.
Public institutions, residence in, as
affecting settlement, 68.
Public officer, legal settlement of, 82.
Public schooling for children, 178.
Public Welfare, department of, 143,
158.
Punishment in workhouses, 115.
Quakers, 52.
Quincy, Josiah, legislative report by,
124, 178.
Rainsford Island, 136, 146.
Reformation, Boston House of, 180.
Reimbursements for State poor, 127,
128.
Relatives, liability of, to support poor
persons, 78.
Relief, sources of, in England, 7, 8.
Religious houses, fall of, in England, 7.
Residence, definition of, for purposes
of settlement, 72, 73.
Sanborn, Frank B., first secretary of
the State Board, 144.
Selectwomen, in Norwich, England, 17.
Servants not to live out of service, 30,
31.
Settlement law, defined, 35; in England, 26, 27; extension of period of
residence, 55, 59; forerunner of the
present statute, 53; revision of 1789,
58; revision of 1794, 59, 60; revision
of 1911, 63, 66.
Settlement of unmarried women, 62, 66.
Shirley, Industrial School for Boys, at,
160, 180.
Shipmasters, required to give bond for
newcomers, 55, 62.
Soldiers and Sailors, legal settlement
of, 67.
Spinning schools for children, in Boston, 178.




200


INDEX


State Almshouses, 136; children in, 175.
State Board of Charity, 142; reorganization into Board of Health, Lunacy
and Charity, 153; supervisory nature of, 143.
State Farm, at Bridgewater, 159.
State Industrial School for Girls, at
Lancaster, 159, 160, 180, 182.
State Infirmary at Tewksbury, 136;
minors at, 159.
State minor wards, care and custody
of, 163, 164; medical care of, 158.
State poor, 57, 118, 121; efforts to
abolish law, 125, 128, 131; extent of
reimbursements for, 127, 128; local
care of, 148, 149.
State Primary School, at Monson, 151,
181.
State Reform School, at Westborough,
180.
Strangers, attitude of the early towns
toward, 36; notice of arrival of, 46;
penalty for entertaining, without
leave, 41, 42; sale of property to,
without leave, forbidden, 41; search
for, in English towns, 16, 23, 24; sick
and infirm, not to be landed without
consent, 56.
Subsidies to private charities proposed,
152; forbidden, 152, 153.
Summary of the Massachusetts system, 190, 191.
Sumptuary laws in England, 5.
Taxation for relief of the poor, in England, 15, 23.
Taxes, assessment for, as affecting
legal settlement, 77, 78.


Tewksbury, State almshouse at, 136.
Town, the, as the unit of local government, 90; as the unit of poor relief,
89.
Towns, annual returns of local poor relief, 162; division of, as affecting
legal settlement, 67, 84.
Tramps and vagrants, in almshouses,
113, 146; in England, 12, 13; work
test for, avoided, 146.
Transportation of tramps and paupers
from England, 42.
Unmarried women, settlement of, 62,
66.
Vagrancy, in England, 12, 13, 16, 18,
21.
Vagrants, in almshouses, 113, 146.
Visitation of the poor in their homes,
early New England practice, 98, 99;
English practice, 16, 23.
Walks, of the justices and overseers,
94, 95; early English practice, 16,
23.
Warning out, in England, 4, 16; in
New England, 50.
Welfare, Department of Public, 143.
Widows' pensions. (See Mothers' Aid
in Massachusetts.)
Wills, early, in English Charities, 8, 80.
Work, in the almshouses, 112.
Workhouse, the, 113, 114.
Work test, 146.
Youth, idle, in London, to go to the
Bridewell, 16, 17.


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