An almshouse is charitable housing provided to people in a particular community, especially during the Middle Ages. They were often targeted at the poor of a locality, at those from certain forms of previous employment, or their widows, and at elderly people who could no longer pay rent, and are generally maintained by a charity or the trustees of a bequest. Almshouses were originally formed as extensions of the church system and were later adapted by local officials and authorities.
In Britain and Ireland, a workhouse was an institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. In Scotland, they were usually known as poorhouses. The earliest known use of the term workhouse is from 1631, in an account by the mayor of Abingdon reporting that "we have erected wthn [sic] our borough a workhouse to set poorer people to work".
A poorhouse or workhouse is a government-run facility to support and provide housing for the dependent or needy.
The National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers was established on March 3, 1865, in the United States by Congress to provide care for volunteer soldiers who had been disabled through loss of limb, wounds, disease, or injury during service in the Union forces in the American Civil War. Initially, the Asylum, later called the Home, was planned to have three branches: in the Northeast, in the central area north of the Ohio River, and in what was then considered the Northwest, the present upper Midwest.
Norman Bushnell Willey was the second governor of Idaho from 1890 until 1893.
Eloise Psychiatric Hospital was a large complex located in Westland, Michigan. It was named after Eloise Dickerson Davock, the daughter of Detroit's postmaster.
A poor law union was a geographical territory, and early local government unit, in Great Britain and Ireland.
The Andover workhouse scandal of the mid-1840s exposed serious defects in the administration of the English 'New Poor Law'. It led to significant changes in its central supervision and to increased parliamentary scrutiny. The scandal began with the revelation in August 1845 that inmates of the workhouse in Andover, Hampshire, England were driven by hunger to eat the marrow and gristle from bones which they were to crush to make fertilizer. The inmates' rations set by the local Poor Law guardians were less than the subsistence diet decreed by the central Poor Law Commission (PLC), and the master of the workhouse was diverting some of the funds, or the rations, for private gain. The guardians were loath to lose the services of the master, despite this and despite allegations of the master's drunkenness on duty and sexual abuse of female inmates. The commission eventually exercised its power to order dismissal of the master, after ordering two enquiries by an assistant-commissioner subject to a conflict of interest; the conduct of the second led to more public inquiry and drew criticism.
Oak Forest Hospital of Cook County is a defunct 600+ bed hospital located in south suburban Oak Forest, Illinois. It specialized in long-term care, ventilator care, chronic disease and rehabilitation services. It was part of the Cook County Bureau of Health Services, which also includes the more prominent and newer John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County.
From the reign of Elizabeth I until the passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 relief of the poor in England was administered on the basis of a Poor Relief Act 1601. From the start of the nineteenth century the basic concept of providing poor relief was criticised as misguided by leading political economists and in southern agricultural counties the burden of poor-rates was felt to be excessive (especially where poor-rates were used to supplement low wages. Opposition to the Elizabethan Poor Law led to a Royal Commission on poor relief, which recommended that poor relief could not in the short term be abolished; however it should be curtailed, and administered on such terms that none but the desperate would claim it. Relief should only be administered in workhouses, whose inhabitants were to be confined, 'classified' and segregated. The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 allowed these changes to be implemented by a Poor Law Commission largely unaccountable to Parliament. The act was passed by large majorities in Parliament, but the regime it was intended to bring about was denounced by its critics as un-Christian, un-English, unconstitutional, and impracticable for the great manufacturing districts of Northern England. The Act itself did not introduce the regime, but introduced a framework by which it might easily be brought in.
The Rosewood Center was an institution for people with developmental disabilities located on Rosewood Lane in Owings Mills, Maryland.
Ashmore Estates is a historic building outside Ashmore, Illinois, United States. It was built in 1916 as the second almshouse on the property, part of the Coles County Poor Farm. This complex operated until 1959.
The Douglas County Poor Farm was located in the present-day boundaries of Omaha, Nebraska, which lies within Douglas County. Founded in 1859, the farm encompassed 160 acres and was intended for the "paupers" in the area.
The Broome County Alms House, was located in the town of Dickinson, three miles north of Binghamton in Broome county, New York. The red brick building operated as a shelter for the poor, take care of the sick, disabled, mentally unwell, widowed, and orphaned persons in the community until c. 1960. The goal of the almshouse was to both help break the cycle of poverty and to care for members of the community who had no means of caring take of themselves. The building was demolished on February 5, 2010.
The Scottish poorhouse, occasionally referred to as a workhouse, provided accommodation for the destitute and poor in Scotland. The term poorhouse was almost invariably used to describe the institutions in that country, as unlike the regime in their workhouse counterparts in neighbouring England and Wales residents were not usually required to labour in return for their upkeep.
The Bedwellty Union Workhouse was situated in Georgetown, Tredegar. It is 2.9 miles (4.7 km) from the Nanybwtch Junction A465. The building was in existence for approximately 127 years. The workhouse building was also used as a hospital. Today, the site where the building once stood, there is a housing estate known as St James Park.
Wisconsin Industrial School for Girls was a 19th-century American reform school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Industrial School for Girls was the only secular reformatory institution in the state where delinquent and neglected girls could make a home. The school's purpose was the prevention of crime and pauperism of unfortunate girls; and the restoration of those who had fallen into bad habits, or inherited vicious tendencies. The system of discipline and education was adapted to the condition and needs of the pupils. There were several buildings associated with the school, including the Main Building, Russell Cottage, Lynde Cottage, Cottage Annex, Merrill Model Home, Assembly Hall, Steward's Home, Steam Heating Plant and Barn
Bellsdyke Hospital, also known as Stirling District Lunatic Asylum ('SDLA') or Stirling District Asylum, is a former psychiatric hospital at Larbert, Falkirk that was opened in June 1869 and largely closed in 1997. It was an asylum set up by the Stirling District Lunacy Board.
The Wellington County House of Industry and Refuge, located in Fergus, Ontario, is the oldest surviving state-supported poorhouse in Canada. Constructed in 1877, the site operated as a poorhouse and farm until 1947, and as an old age home until 1971. In the 1980s, the building was repurposed to house the Wellington County Museum and Archives. The Wellington County House of Industry and Refuge was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1995 based on its illustration of 19th century attitudes towards poverty and the origins of Canada's social safety net.
Duxhurst Industrial Farm Colony was a British voluntary in-patient residential institution for the treatment and cure of habitual alcoholic women. It was founded in 1895 at Duxhurst, near Reigate, Surrey, England, by Lady Henry Somerset. Lady Henry was the first woman in England to pay attention to the inebriety of women, and she founded, at Duxhurst, the first industrial farm colony for alcoholic women. Using gender-specific religious treatment, Duxhurst was the largest of the retreat institutions in England in its day. It was funded by Lady Henry with contributions from the National British Women's Temperance Association (B.W.T.A.) and the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union (W.WC.T.U.).
