THE BENEVOLENT INSTITUTIONS.
The average daily number of inmates in the Hospital for the Insane, during the last fiscal year, was 1,070. The average cost per capita for maintenance, exclusive of clothing, is stated to have been $184,97.
The number of pupils at the Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb, at the end of the last fiscal year, was 344. The average daily attendance is not given in the reports. The cost per capita is stated to have been $156.32,
The number of pupils enrolled at the Institute for the Education of the Blind, during the fiscal year, was 126, The reports do not give the average dally attendance. The cost per capita is stated to have been $216.67.
The number of pupils at the Soldiers' Orphans' Home and the Asylum for Feeble Minded Children, institutions under one roof and one government, is stated in the Superintendent's report to have been as follows: Soldiers' orphans present at the end of the fiscal year, 137. Twenty other orphans are accounted for by the Superintendent's statement that three have "eloped," and that seven teen have failed to return after the summer vacation. Of feeble-minded children, eighty-one pupils are reported as having page: 19[View Page 19] been present at the end of the fiscal year, and fourteen as discharged or away temporarily. The latter fourteen are said, in the Trustees'report, not to have returned from the summer vacation. The cost of maintenance is stated by the Superintendent to have been $125 per capita. The average daily attendance is not specified.
The two last named institutions are not, with respect to the reports required of the Trustees and Superintendent, governed by the statute relating to the other benevolent institutions The statute does not define with the same particularity what the reports shall contain. Nor does the statute relating to any of chem define the mode of determining the cost per capita of maintain their inmates. An examination of the reports of the several institutions will, I think, snow that a uniform rule of ascertainment does not prevail, and that the mode of ascertainment In one or two of them, quite unintentionally no doubt, is untrustworthy.
I recommend that a common requirement be adopted with respect to what shall be shown in the reports of the Trustees and Superintendents of the several institutions, and that the manner in which the cost per capita of maintains the in mates shall be ascertained, shall be specifically defined by law.
Your attention is respectfully invited to the recommendations contained in the report of the Trustees of the Hospital for the Insane, and which are strongly reinforced in the able and instructive report of the Superintendent of that institution.
The capacity of the buildings erected by the State for the care of the insane, spacious and imposing as they are, is sufficient for little more than half of the State's insane. Those who are unable, for lack of room in the State's Hospital, to be admitted as patients, suffer great and often cruel, neglect. They are confined in uncomfortable and sometimes shocking quarters in Poor Houses, where they received insufficient attention, or they are a burden upon poor kindred who are unable to make adequate provision for them, and to whom they are a source of distressing anxiety. and often of danger. Or provision for the insane is so inadequate that it falls quite below the provision made for the same class of sufferers by neighboring States. The mode suggested by the Superintendent for enlarging hospital accommodations is commended to your earnest consideration.
The provision contained in our statues for ascertaining the number of insane, deaf and dumb, blind and idiotic persons is imperfectly executed. Township Assessors are charged with the duty of ascertaining, at the time of assessing personal property, the number of such persons in their respective Townships; but this requirement is so frequently neglected that these lists furnish very imperfect information. A specific penalty should be prescribed for a neglect to perform this important duty.
The clause in the revised code which provides that a summons against an insane person who has no guardian shall, where such person is confined in a Hospital, be served upon the Superintendent, is regarded generally by the legal profession as not being applicable to writs of summons issues in divorce cases, and against administrators and guardians in the course of the settlement of estates. The consequence is that inmates of the Insane Hospital are often greatly excited and their recovery retarded by a personal service upon them of writs. This clause of the statute should, it would seem, be made to include all writs of summons in civil proceedings.
I recommend that in the department for women in this Hospital it shall be required by law that at least one of the physicians shall be a woman. There are now in this State not a few women who bear diplomas from respectable Medical Colleges, and who are qualified by professional attainmen's and experience to fill places as physicians in public institutions with credit and usefulness. It would be peculiarly fit that their services should be sought in cases of insanity among members of their own sex.
Three claims of considerable magnitude are pending against the State for work and materials under contracts entered into the Provisional Board of the Insane Hospital, it being the Board charged by law with the duty of constructing the building for the department for women. Two of the claims have been refused. One has been allowed by a compromise with the contractor, subject to a condition that the Legislature shall make an appropriation for its payment, there being now no appropriation available for that use. The facts relating to the case, briefly stated, are these: The Provisional Board advertised for bids for the brick work of the building, the work to be executed and paid for according to the plans and specifications of the State's Architect. The specifications provided for a measurement of the work in the wall as the work progressed, according to the rule of mason measurement of work in the wall, then in use in Indianapolis. The bid of the claimant, John Martin, was accepted. Before, however, a formal contract had been entered into with him, the State's Superintendent of Construction, himself a member of the Board, desired that what were the rules of mason measurement of brick in the wall at Indianapolis should be precisely defined in the contract, requested the claimant to allow a clause to be inserted providing that the measurement contemplated should be according to the printed rules of the master builders and contractors for brick work in this city. The clause having been inserted, the contract was reported to the Board and signed on behalf of the State by Governor Hendricks, the President, and by every other member. Before the allowance to the claimant was made, for which he will ask an appropriation, the work was carefully measured by the State's architect and by two experts especially appointed by the Board for that purpose, and their several measurements having agreed, the allowance was made in conformity thereto.
It is perhaps due to Mr. Martin to state that in a report made to the Governor by the Superintendent of Construction, when the work was nearly completed, he referred to his work as having been prosecuted diligently, and in the most satisfactory manner, and added that he felt it due to Mr. Martin to make a public record of the fact that he had "from the beginning manifested a constant, active and earnest interest in his work, with evident purpose, that it should be an honest job, creditable to the State as well as to himself."
The capacity of the Institute for the Education of the Blind is now insufficient for the accommodation of more than half of the blind youth, who, by law, are entitled to the benefits of the Institution. The edifice was completed for the admission of blind pupils more than thirty years ago, and has never been enlarged. Applicants are constantly refused admission to the Institution on account of the want of rom. Provision should be made by law for an enlargement of the building.
The Soldiers' Orphans' Home and Asylum for Feeble Minded Children should be regarded, on account of the character of both classes of pupils, with particular favor. It has had to struggle under the difficulty of narrow appropriations, and, during a party of its history, with other difficulties hardly less serious. The instructors have, however been diligent and devoted to duty, and the progress of pupils has been highly satisfactory. The soldiers' orphans have been particularly proficient in their studies, and the success attained in unfolding and strengthening the faculties of the feeble minded children has been most page: 20[View Page 20] encouraging. A sufficient appropriation should be immediately made to provide additional securities against fire. The means of escape in case of a sudden fire are wholly inadequate. Outside stairways at the outer end of the main halls should be erected as soon as possible; and, as the building is already furnished with gas pipe, a gas generator should be erected so as to supply the building with a safe light for illumination, so that the use of oil lamps may be discontinued.
