Tenth annual report of the trustees of the State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester. December, 1842.

  • State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tenth annual report of the trustees of the State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester. December, 1842. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The revenue of the hospital, for the year, has been derived from charges made to patients for board, clothing, &c. The appropriation of two thousand dollars made by the Legislature for the support of the hospital, has not been used. The price charged for board, has not varied from two dollars and fifty cents a week, since the opening of the hospital. The actual expense has been, some years greater, and some years less, than this sum. The Trustees are happy to be able to re¬ duce the price of board for the ensuing year, from two dollars and fifty, to two dollars and thirty cents per week, and they hope it may never be necessary to raise it above the last sum. There have always been between thirty and forty State paupers in the hospital, for whose support nothing has been paid, except, when the sum received from the other patients has been insufficient to defray the current expenses of the hospital, the Legislature has made an appro¬ priation for the “ general support of the hospital,” to supply this defi¬ ciency. The sum of these appropriations would, probably, be nearly equal to the charges for the support of State paupers. The Trustees recommend that, hereafter, all charges in the treasurer’s books against State paupers for board, clothing, &c., be audited and paid from the State treasury in the same manner that other State pauper accounts are settled. If this be done, no appropriation by the Legislature will be necessary for the general support of the hospital. The hospital is furnished with water from wells dug, at a distance of a mile and a quarter from it, on land of F. W. Paine, Esq. The water is conveyed to the hospital over the land of the intermediate pro¬ prietors, by a leaden aqueduct!, which was laid down in the summer of the year 1833, at an expense of between fifteen and sixteen hundred dollars. It was put down with the knowledge and permission of all the owners of the land over which it passed. The commissioners for building the hospital, believing that, as the aqueduct could do no injury to the land, no one would ever disturb it, obtained no written convey¬ ance of tbe right to have it pass. It remained for nine years without molestation or complaint from any one ; except that two of the proprie¬ tors required the Trustees to give them a memorandum in writing, to prevent their acquiring a title by occupancy. The last board of Trus¬ tees, not satisfied with a title so precarious as that of sufferance, made an unsuccessful attempt to procure conveyances from the various own¬ ers, of the privilege of having the aqueduct remain forever undisturbed. They, therefore, in their last annual report, brought the subject to the consideration of the Legislature, with the hope, that some law might
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