Fifteenth Annual Report Of The Inspector Of Prisons And Public Charities On The Asylums For The Insane And The Asylum For Idiots Of The Province Of Ontario

Excerpt from Fifteenth Annual Report of the Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities on the Asylums for the Insane and the Asylum for Idiots, of the Province of Ontario: Being for the Year Ending 30th September, 1882 Again, in salaries and wages much larger sums are paid to attendants and servants, and there Is always to be found a much larger number of attendants in proportion to the number of patients. In this respect the average of the same Asylums, from which the above was taken, is shown to be $73. 82 per patient, While In Ontario it is $29. 32. The advantage, the Americans derive from this liberal expenditure is a very great one. They get a much superior class of people for attendants, which fact alone contributes largely to the comfort of the patients. In furniture and furnishings I find larger expenditures In the United States Generally their Asylums are much more expensively furnished than ours are. There are also larger sums spent on books, periodicals, newspapers, amuse ments, etc., all of which, while involving larger cost, add so much to the homel'ike character of the Asylums and consequently to the content and well -being of the patients. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the state of asylums, prisons, and public charities in Ontario, Canada, during the late 19th century. It includes statistics, case studies, and recommendations for improving conditions. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The prisons and asylums of Canada and the United States were a popular destination for institutional tourists in the nineteenth-century. Thousands of visitors entered their walls, recording and describing the interiors, inmates, and therapeutic and reformative practices they encountered in letters, diaries, and articles. Surprisingly, the vast majority of these visitors were not members of the medical or legal elite but were ordinary people. Prisons, Asylums, and the Public argues that, rather than existing in isolation, these institutions were closely connected to the communities beyond their walls. Challenging traditional interpretations of public visiting, Janet Miron examines the implications and imperatives of visiting from the perspectives of officials, the public, and the institutionalized. Finding that institutions could be important centres of civic activity, self-edification, and 'scientific' study, Prisons, Asylums, and the Public sheds new light on popular nineteenth-century attitudes towards the insane and the criminal.