New York City’s Public and Private Welfare Systems at the Turn of the 19th Century and 1900 100% Census Data

Kurt Schlichting, Fairfield University

The history of public welfare in the City of New York in the 19th Century was a complicated combination of public almshouses and workhouses for adults and their children. Private charities and churches built and maintained asylums for orphans and “destitute children.” In 1875 New York State passed the “Children’s Law” that forbid sending children between the ages of 3 & 16 to public workhouses. In turn each County in the State would pay for children’s care in private institutions. The children were sent to the “care of institutions in which their religious faith was taught.” In New York City the law provided public funding for religious institutions. The New York City State Charities Aid Association’s Annual Report for 1897 reported that “the number of children in support in the City of New York in 25 private institutions was 15,331.” The City paid the private institutions $ 1,683,847, the equivalent of $ 62 million today. The 1900 Census for New York City included just Manhattan Island and a section of the Bronx across the river. There were 999 EDs; 33 of these are individual EDs for hospitals and asylums. For example: New York Juvenile Asylum, Mt. Sinai Hospital, Colored Home and Hospital, The Hebrew Sheltering Guardian and the Asylum of St. Vincent DePaul. In the East River are three islands: Blackwell’s (now Roosevelt), Randall’s and Ward’s, each is one ED. On all three the City of New York, over time, built numerous hospitals, a penitentiary, and work and alms houses for the poor. In the 1900 Census the three islands had a total population of 13,468 with 11,671 classified by the census as “inmates” in the various institutions. This “big data” offers the opportunity to study the public and private social welfare institutions of the largest city in the country.

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 Presented in Session 107. Inequality and Segregation in US Cities