Digitized by Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County
It was once a ubiquitous cliché in your own home or on your favorite TV sitcom: Beleaguered Dad, in the middle of a pile of bills, yells, “You’re sending me to the poorhouse!”
Do fathers still yell that? Does anyone even remember poorhouses? It is long forgotten now, but Cincinnati maintained a poorhouse for more than a century out in Hartwell where today stands the UC Health Daniel Drake Center for Post-Acute Care, known informally as Drake Hospital.
From the earliest days of pioneer settlement, Cincinnati was compelled to care for poor and indigent residents. For the city’s first 60 years, that care was managed by two “overseers of the poor” appointed by the trustees of the now-defunct Cincinnati Township.
Cincinnati made a strict distinction between those people unable to fend for themselves, mostly widows and orphans, and those people who simply had no money or had gotten themselves into debt. The city confined debtors to jail until they settled their financial obligations. The “deserving poor” received allocations of what was termed “outdoor relief.” This involved supplies of food, coal and clothing delivered to the indigent in their own homes. Those unable to care for themselves at all were admitted to the city hospital.
By the 1850s, the city fathers realized that the system was strained to the breaking point and voted to construct a facility out beyond the fringes of town to house the needy and infirm. According to Charles Greve’s “Centennial History of Cincinnati”:
“The City Infirmary was opened for the reception of inmates in the year 1852. Previous to this time the paupers of the city had been provided for at the old Commercial Hospital and by a system of outdoor relief. The institution was located near Hartwell not very far from the County Infirmary near Carthage on property formerly belonging to Maj. Daniel Gano.”
Despite the official name, the facility housed many people who were not infirm, just impoverished. The Infirmary building was surrounded by a quite extensive plot of farmland and those residents capable of at least some minimal exertion were put to work growing food. Other residents assembled brooms, baskets and clothing.
At any given time, there were somewhere between 700 and 1,100 inmates at the poorhouse, and it cost a lot to feed that many people. Every meal required 525 pounds of meat, 65 gallons of soup, 10 bushels of potatoes, 100 pounds of prunes, 100 pounds of rice, and stacks of bread loaves, each weighing 22 pounds. Every man got a tot of whiskey before dinner – for medicinal purposes, of course.
From Cincinnati Enquirer 23 June 1895, Image extracted from microfilm by Greg Hand
Every couple of years, one of the city newspapers would send a reporter out to assemble something like a journalistic freak show, describing the outlandish and often tragic residents of the City Infirmary. The Enquirer [5 July 1885] briefly inventoried some of the people housed there:
“There are many people that it would seem hardly belong here – insane people who require the constant care of experienced nurses, a small army of bastards, abandoned infants, and poor, betrayed women with offspring, who are allowed to remain a year.”
The old Enquirer thrived on sensationalism and the poorhouse surely provided it. The reporter found several formerly wealthy men now reduced to penury and isolation, a mechanical genius who constructed elaborately functional clocks from scraps of wood and bits of bone, and a deluded idiot convinced he was irresistible to women. And then there was Mary Butler:
“Of all the horrid-looking, repulsive creatures that were ever condemned to a miserable existence, perhaps Mary Butler is entitled to the belt. Toothless, nose and chin nearly touching, low forehead, wizen eyes, she squirms around like a snake, and edges up and wants to hug every man who comes within gun-shot. She has no mind, never had any.”
Ten years later [23 June 1895], the Enquirer was back again, and again dredging up oddities for the delight and revulsion of its subscribers:
“Over there on the grass, down on ‘all fours,’ is the most horribly disgusting creature I have ever seen – Mad Sophy – a creature whose 55 years of life have been passed in hunting for vermin. It is her mania. She grovels in the grass all day long in her vain search. They keep her hair cut short, like a man.”
Mixed in among the freaks, the newspaper recounted maudlin tales of lost grandeur like Mme. Sophia Helrigel, born to nobility, wed to a German cavalry officer, and educated at the finest schools. When the Civil War erupted, Mme. Helrigel volunteered as a nurse with the Ninth Ohio Infantry and spent a fortune caring for wounded soldiers only to be denied reimbursement by the government.
From Cincinnati Enquirer 23 June 1895, Image extracted from microfilm by Greg Hand
There was the blind broom-maker, Charles Globig, who manufactured every broom and mop used to sweep the poorhouse. Mr. Globig was worried about the disposition of his earthly remains because, as a matter of course, few inmates were buried when they died. Most bodies were donated to the local medical schools. The superintendent took pity on “Blind Charley” and bought him a plot in Wesleyan Cemetery, where he rests today.
The poorhouse was a sure thing whenever a newspaper needed a “weeper” to attract readers. The Enquirer [12 December 1902] related the story of Anna and James Ghee, who had married in Virginia and moved to Cincinnati, where James thrived as a plasterer. The couple raised several children. And then, one by one, each of their children sickened and died. James fell injured and became an invalid. Anna couldn’t support him, so he was admitted to the poorhouse. After years of trying to make a living for herself, Anna accepted the inevitable. She asked to join her husband so they could live out their days together at the City Infirmary.
The City Infirmary or poorhouse was stuck out in Hartwell intentionally to keep the unfortunate residents out of sight and out of mind. Unfortunately, the management, out of sight and out of mind as well, succumbed to temptation. According to Greve:
“Another very unpleasant incident of the year 1886 was the exposure of the corruption of the officials in charge of the City Infirmary. This was brought about by the Board of Revision and as a result of the investigation 36 indictments were found, followed by a number of convictions.”
Eventually, changes in medicine and social services transformed the old poorhouse into an entirely different sort of institution. The last remaining indigent residents were exported to private nursing care facilities in 1962. The poorhouse survived only in the breadwinner’s futilely metaphorical complaint.
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