Fifth annual report of the Trustees of the State Lunatic Hospital, at Northampton : October, 1860.

  • State Lunatic Hospital (Northampton, Mass.)
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fifth annual report of the Trustees of the State Lunatic Hospital, at Northampton : October, 1860. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    have been foreseen or guarded against; once it was from acci¬ dent to the water-wheel which drives the pump, and once from the breaking away of the dam which forms the mill-pond. It was necessary to supply ourselves with water by other means at considerable cost. When, therefore, it became known that the supply would again be interrupted during the dry season of this year, on account of the necessity for further repairs to the water-wheel, your Board directed a steam pump and boiler to be erected near the river. This was accordingly done, and water has been supplied by this means for some weeks. The cost of working the present temporary apparatus, adding interest on the first cost, and something for depreciation and repairs, exceeds somewhat the contract price now paid for the supply, if we leave out of consideration the additional expense of providing for the emergencies mentioned above ; but when this latter expense is added, the means now in use will be found more economical of the two. By these considerations the question of a permanent change in the method of supplying water is suggested, and is, perhaps, worthy of consideration. Whatever may be thought of the expediency of incurring the expense necessary to make such a change, our experience in the past shows the propriety of retaining as a supplement, on which we may rely in emergencies like the present, some¬ thing like the apparatus we are now using. The whole subject is respectfully commended to your careful consideration. Notwithstanding the strictest economy in the expenditures in every department, the Treasurer’s account shows an excess of expenditures over receipts, as was anticipated in the report of last year. While the rate paid for the support of the State paupers is calculated barely to meet the expense of supporting them in the older and crowded institutions, it will fail to do so here, where the whole number of patients is so much less, and where the relative proportion of State paupers paying the lowest rate of board is greater. We have, then, the alternative of continu¬ ing under a debt which will steadily increase until the time when this hospital becomes as densely crowded as the other two, or of asking an additional appropriation to supply the deficiency which each year will show until the institution approaches more nearly in population the condition of those in reference
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