USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester > Town annual reports of the several departments for the fiscal year ending December 31, 1884 > Part 19
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ART. 5. Vacations of two weeks each, in the Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, may be allowed, at a time fixed by the Committee. And the regular exercises of the school may be omitted on Saturdays.
ART. 6. It shall be the duty of the teacher to assemble and meet the pupils at other times than the hours of school, and especially on Saturdays and Sun- days, that she may acquaint herself with their character and needs, in order thereby the better to effect their reform.
ART. 7. It shall be the duty of the Superintendent to see that all regula- tions of the school are faithfully enforced.
GENERAL REGULATIONS.
ARTICLE 1. From the 1st of April to the 1st of October, there shall be only one session of the Truant School each day, which shall invariably begin at 8 a. m., and close at 12 m. No boy shall be kept out of the school for any purpose whatever, except in cases of emergency in the busy farming season, and every such case shall be recorded as provided in Sec. 3, Article 1, and reported by the Superintendent at the next meeting of the Board of Overseers of the Poor. It shall also enter into the next quarterly report of the teacher. From the 1st of October to the 1st of April, there shall be two daily sessions of the school, from 9 a. m. to 12 m., and from 2 to 4 p. m. ; and on no account shall a boy be taken from the school during this season, except by permission previously obtained from the Mayor or some member of the Committee on the Truant School.
ART. 2. The use of tobacco, in any form, by the boys, is prohibited, and both the Superintendent and teacher are held responsible for the enforcement of this prohibition.
ART. 3. The teacher shall be employed and salary fixed by the Committee on the School, subject to the approval of the Board, but no teacher shall be engaged without previously passing a satisfactory examination according to the laws of the Commonwealth and the rules of the School Committee of the City of Worcester.
ART. 4. Each pupil, whose deportment and scholarship have been satis- factory for one month, shall be entitled to some privilege or reward not otherwise granted; and continuous good conduct shall be rewarded by a recommendation for pardon one month or more before the expiration of the sentence.
These regulations shall be made known to each boy when he enters the school.
ART. 5. The rate of board per week to be charged by the Superintendent against the teacher and pupils of the Truant School, shall be fixed annually by the Overseers of the Poor at their regular meeting in January, but they
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may change it at any time they deem it necessary, by a vote of a majority of the members of the Board. The price per hour of the services of the boys shall also be fixed at the same time and in the same manner, subject likewise to the same conditions of change.
GEORGE W. GALE, Clerk.
CHAPTER 190-ACTS OF 1878.
AN ACT CONCERNING THE SETTLEMENT OF PAUPERS.
Be it enacted, &c., as follows :-
SECTION 1. Legal settlements may be acquired in any city or town, so as to oblige such place to relieve and support the persons acquiring the same, in case they are poor, and stand in need of relief, in the manner following, and not otherwise, namely :
First. A married woman shall follow and have the settlement of her hus- band, if he has any within the State; otherwise her own at the time of the marriage, if she then had any, shall not be lost or suspended by the marriage.
Second. Legitimate children shall follow and have the settlement of their father, if he has any within the State, until they gain a settlement of their own; but if he has none, they shall in like manner follow and have the settle- ment of their mother, if she has any.
Third. Illegitimate children shall follow and have the settlement of their mother at the time of their birth, if she then has any within the State; but neither legitimate nor illegitimate children shall gain a settlement by birth in the place where they may be born, if neither of the parents then has a settle- ment therein.
Fourth. Any person of the age of twenty-one years, having an estate of inheritance or freehold in any place within the State, and living on the same three years successively, shall thereby gain a settlement in such place. .
Fifth. Any person of the age of twenty-one years, who resides in any place within this State for five years together, and pays all state, county, city or town taxes, duly assessed on his poll or estate, for any three years within that time, shall thereby gain a settlement in such place.
Sixth. Any woman of the age of twenty-one years, who resides in any place within this State for five years together, shall thereby gain a settlement in such place.
Provided, however, that nothing in this section contained shall be construed to give to any person the right to acquire a settlement, or be in process of acquiring a settlement while receiving relief as a pauper, unless within five years from the time of receiving such relief he shall reimburse the cost there- of to the city or town furnishing the same.
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CITY DOCUMENT -No. 39.
Seventh. Any person being chosen, and actually serving one whole year in the office of clerk, treasurer, selectman, overseer of the poor, assessor, con- stable, or collector of taxes, in any place, shall thereby gain a settlement therein. For this purpose, a year shall be considered as including the time between the choice of such officers at one annual meeting and the choice at the next annual meeting, whether more or less than a calendar year.
Eighth. Every settled ordained minister of the gospel shall be deemed to have acquired a settlement in the place wherein he is or may be settled as a minister.
Ninth. A minor who serves an apprenticeship to a lawful trade for the space of four years in any place, and actually sets up such trade therein within one year after the expiration of said term, being then twenty-one years old, and continues there to carry on the same for five years, shall thereby gain a settlement in such place; but being hired as a journeyman shall not be considered as setting up a trade.
Tenth. Any person who shall have been duly enlisted and mustered into the military or naval service of the United States, as a part of the quota of any city or town in this Commonwealth, under any call of the President of the United States during the late civil war, or duly assigned as a part of the quota thereof, after having been enlisted and mustered into said service, and shall have duly served for not less than one year, or shall have died, or become disabled from wounds or disease received or contracted while engaged in such service, or while a prisoner in the hands of the enemy, and the wife or widow and minor children of such person, shall be deemed thereby to have acquired a settlement in suchi place ; and any person who would otherwise be entitled to a settlement under this clause, but who was not a part of the quota of any city or town, shall, if he served as a part of the quota of this Commonwealth, be deemed to have acquired a settlement in the place where he actually resided at the time of his enlistment. But these provisions shall not apply to any person who shall have enlisted and received a bounty for such enlistment in more than one place, unless the second enlistment was made after an honorable discharge from the first term of service, nor to any person who shall have been proved guilty of wilful desertion, or to have left the service otherwise than by reason of disability or an honorable discharge.
Eleventh. Upon the division of a city or town, every person having a legal settlement therein, but being absent at the time of such division, and not hav- ing acquired a legal settlement elsewhere, shall have his legal settlement in that place wherein his last dwelling-place or home happens to fall upon such divisions ; and when a new city or town is incorporated, composed of a part of one or more incorporated places, every person legally settled in the places of which such new city or town is so composed, and who actually dwells and has his home within the bounds of such new city or town at the time of its incorporation, and any person duly qualified as provided in the tenth clause of this section, who, at the time of his enlistment, dwelt and had his home within such bounds, shall thereby acquire a legal settlement in such new
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place ; provided, that no persons residing in that part of a place, which, upon such division, shall be incorporated into a new city or town, having then no legal settlement therein, shall acquire any by force of such incorporation only ; nor shall such incorporation prevent his acquiring a settlement therein within the time and by the means by which he would have gained it there if no such division had been made.
SECT. 2. No person who has begun to acquire a settlement by the laws in force at and before the time when this act takes effect, in any of the ways in which any time is prescribed for a residence, or for the continuance or succes- sion of any other act, shall be prevented or delayed by the provisions of this act : but he shall acquire a settlement by a continuance or succession of the same residence or other act, in the same time and manner as if the former laws had continued in force.
SECT. 3. Except as hereinafter provided, every legal settlement shall con- tinue till it is lost or defeated by acquiring a new one within this State; and upon acquiring such new settlement all former settlements shall be defeated and lost.
SECT. 4. All settlements acquired by virtue of any provision of law in force prior to the eleventh day of February in the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-four, are hereby defeated and lost; provided, this shall not apply where the existence of such settlement prevented a subsequent acquisition of settlement in the same place under the provisions of clauses fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh of the first section of this act, or under the same provisions in other statutes existing prior to the passage of this act; and provided, further, that, whenever a settlement acquired by marriage has been thus defeated, the former settlement of the wife, if not defeated by the same provision, shall be deemed to have been thereby revived.
SECT. 5. Chapter sixty-nine of the General Statutes, chapter two hundred and eighty-eight of the acts of the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty- six, section one of chapter three hundred and twenty-eight of the acts of the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-eight, chapter three hundred and ninety-two of the acts of the year one thousand eight hundred and seven- ty, chapter three hundred and seventy-nine of the acts of the year one thousand eight hundred and seventy-one, chapter two hundred and eighty of the acts of the year one thousand eight hundred and seventy-two, and chapter two hun- dred and seventy-four of the acts of the year one thousand eight hundred and seventy-four, are hereby repealed, saving all acts done, or rights accruing, accrued, or established, or proceedings, doings, or acts ratified or confirmed, or suits, or proceedings had or commenced, before the repeal takes effect. [Approved April 26, 1878.
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CHAPTER 242.
AN ACT TO AMEND "AN ACT CONCERNING THE SETTLEMENT OF PAUPERS."
Be it enacted, &c., as follows :-
SECTION 1. Section one of chapter one hundred and ninety of the acts of the year eighteen hundred and seventy-eight is hereby amended by striking out, in the sixth clause thereof, the words " without receiving relief as a pauper," and by adding at the end of said section the words following :- " Provided, however, that nothing in this section contained shall be construed to give to any person the right to acquire a settlement, or be in process of acquiring a settlement while receiving relief as a pauper, unless within five years from the time of receiving such relief he shall reimburse the cost thereof to the city or town furnishing the same."
SECT. 2. The provisions of said sixth clause shall be held to apply to mar- ried women who have not a settlement derived by marriage under the pro- visions of the first clause and to widows; and a settlement thereunder shall be deemed to have been gained by any unsettled woman upon the completion of the term of residence therein mentioned, although the whole or a part of the same accrues before the passage of this act. [Approved April 22, 1879.
REPORT OF THE CITY PHYSICIAN.
To his Honor the Mayor,
And Gentlemen of the City Council :
We have been favored during the year that has passed by a reasonable immunity from dangerous diseases.
Infectious throat affections have been prevalent for a consider- able time, but I am happy to say only over limited space. They have not, anywhere, become really epidemic, nor have they been alarmingly fatal. They have, however, stirred the people up to ask the cause of their increase, and have prompted them to adopt more willingly than usual those sanitary measures which have been recommended to them. The result is, that now the city is cleaner and in much better sanitary condition than it was at the beginning of the year, and better prepared to resist the onset of epidemic disease should it attack us in the course of the next twelve months. A clean city is always made cleaner by having the attention of its people turned to matters of health and better ways of living. The spread of disease has been combatted by careful inspection of infected houses and districts, and by prompt notice to the school authorities of the exact location of every case, so that children from these places should not carry the infection into the public schools. The efficient and thorough action of the school authorities in this particular meets with my highest approval.
I have made during the year six hundred and twenty-eight visits to the sick poor at their homes, and have given advice and remedies to three hundred and twenty-eight at my office. I have made thirty-two visits to the City Farm, and twenty to the Police Stations.
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Thirteen individuals upon examination have been pronounced insane, and committed to the State Lunatic Hospital, and three have been sent to their friends.
Twenty-five sick or injured patients without home or friends, or the proper means for their relief have been sent to the City Hospital for treatment. They have all been kindly and tenderly received and cared for, no one has been refused or rejected, and again, I am under lasting obligations for the help and confidence it has shown to me.
Regular hours for vaccination of school children have been held each week. Three hundred and eighty-three children have been successfully protected. The rule has been to persevere until success was obtained, no failures therefore are to be re- ported.
The condition of the City Farm and Almshouse has been in the highest degree commendable, everything about it is clean, comfortable and convenient. The removal of the swine-house to a distant part of the Farm, takes away the last source of insalubrity from foul air around the buildings. The inmates have enjoyed a reasonable amount of health and a great amount of comfort for the whole year. No unusual sickness has pre- vailed there. Age, debility and chronic disease have claimed about the usual number, and fourteen have died mostly from these causes. The following is the record of deaths :
Josephine Maple, aged 37, Epilepsy. Ellen Gallagher, 75, Consumption. Mary McGuiness, 69, Chronic Bronchitis. Charles F. O'Flynn, infant, Debility. James Mackin, 77, Consumption. Mary Hogan, 75, Consumption. Mehitable Cobleigh, 78, Chronic Dementia. James O'Brien, 2d, 45, Consumption. John Murphy, 81, Senile Debility. Mary Ronan, 38, Chronic Dementia. Joseph Pratt, 88, Paralysis. Selina E. Davis, 41, Epilepsy. Peter Mayo, 30, Paralysis. Joannah F. Fitzgerald, 70, Consumption.
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The proposed additions and alterations to the Hospital for contagious diseases will greatly add to its efficiency and useful- ness, and I sincerely hope they will be carried out.
A hospital ward for the proper isolation and care of the sick is greatly needed. I hope the overseers, while the subject of improvements is before them, will see a way to establish one.
The Airing Court for the exercise and open air comfort of the insane, has proved a very important help in the care of these unfortunate people, and it serves also as a good play-ground for the boys.
Thirteen of the city poor have died under my care at their homes, viz :
John Toundra, 70, Pneumonia.
Ellen Murphy, 39, Consumption.
Michael Baker, 21, Consumption.
Eric Longren, 40, Consumption.
Bartley McGinness, 47, Consumption.
Peter S. Dupees, 39, Consumption.
James Redfern, 50, Consumption.
George Bean, 14, Typhoid Fever.
Mary King, 36, Consumption.
Elizabeth Waugh, 65, Chronic Bronchitis.
Margaret Geary, 39, Consumption.
Margaret Haley, 60, Paralysis.
Mary McKierna, 49, Consumption.
Several others who have been attended by me in their last sickness, but who were not under my care at the time of their death, are not reported in this list.
The ambulance has been placed at my disposal by the courtesy of the City Marshal, for the transportation of the sick and injured to the Hospital. The new vehicle is comfortable and easy in all respects, and a great improvement on the old one.
I tender my thanks to the Mayor, to Mr. Gale, to the Superin- tendent and Matron at the Farm, and to the Police for their assistance and uniform kindness to me.
Respectfully submitted.
RUFUS WOODWARD, M. D.,
City Physician.
REPORT
OF THE
BOARD OF HEALTH.
To His Honor the Mayor, and Gentlemen of the City Council :-
The Board of Health herewith submit their annual report.
The registration of contagious diseases commenced on the first of May, in accordance with the new law passed last winter. It is a useful measure, as far as we have tested it, for it gives to the medical officer of this Board absolute knowledge of every case, just where it is, its severity, the danger of contagion from it, and the conditions of the house and the neighborhood where it exists. It also enables us to notify the school authorities of the exact locality of every case, and the name of the family, and renders it impossible for children from infected houses to be in attend- ance at school and thus expose their schoolmates. Each case, it will be seen, is three times reported : once to the Board of Health, once to the Superintendent of Schools, and once to the teacher, or the parents of the child. It also renders the inspec- tion of infected houses or districts easy, for we can know at a glance just where the disease prevails, and where prompt and thorough work is most needed.
It happened at the time the law went into effect, that an unusual prevalence of diphtheria was in the city. We have hitherto been singularly exempt from any wide-spread incursion of this disease. Even when, in former years, the neighboring cities were scourged, we by great good fortune, were compara- tively exempt. But this year, since the first of May, it has pre-
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vailed constantly, and somewhat extensively, but not really as an epidemic, or in an unusually fatal form.
To the beginning of the present official year, February 1st, a period of nine months, three hundred and ninety-eight cases have been reported : a large number it would seem at first sight, but not so large when we reflect that we have a population of seventy thousand, and that the ratio is not two-thirds of one per cent.
Of this number sixty-four have died, thirty of whom were infants of three years of age and under. The disease, in all its history, has always proved especially unmanageable and fatal in children of this tender age. A large proportion of the deaths were in the families of the poor, where good care and nursing, good food, well warmed and ventilated apartments, and proper medical attendance and medicine could not be had.
Diphtheria is preëminently a filth disease. It is infectious; in some degree contagious, and it may easily become epidemic.
It prevails in unhealthy, damp, dirty, and crowded districts, which are deficient in sunshine, pure free air, and proper venti- lation and drainage. Starting from some such locality, it spreads by a poisonous influence it creates around it into other similar places, until it infects the whole district, and finally renders the air of the neighborhood, and even of the town, unhealthy. Such seems to have been the condition of our city within the last year. We had no foci of disease, but cases were continually cropping out in places far remote from each other, and between which no direct communication could possibly have occurred. It entered the houses of the rich, and of the middle classes, and the poor indiscriminately, and was fatal in all. In our visits of inspection we were surprised to find so large a number of the dwellings of the city entirely unprotected, from deficiency in proper ventila- tion and drainage, against the onset of fatal disease. To remedy this great neglect, no way has seemed feasible to us, but to follow up the cases of disease from house to house, and com- pel the owners to introduce the necessary improvements, and this we have done. In sixty-two such houses examined, forty-eight were found, with no attempt even at sanitary conditions : no traps, no water closets, no drains, and no ventilation. In the
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immediate vicinity of these, scores of others were in a bad state, from inadequate or defective plumbing and drainage. The result of this thorough inspection has been this : one hundred and seven houses have been relieved from the evils of bad drainage, ninety-seven have been trapped, thirty-two have had bad plumbing improved, and one hundred and forty-three have been supplied with an adequate amount of water, where it had been shut off, or was not sufficient for the uses of the closets and sinks. Seven hundred and twenty-two houses have been relieved from the bad effects of filthy cellars, yards and out-houses, sewer gas and over- flowing cesspools ; one hundred and eighty-three have been com- pelled to enter the public sewers, by which action one hundred and ninety-six foul privies, and seventy-three foul cesspools have been abolished. This work goes to the very bottom of the subject upon which we are engaged, viz : the making of the houses and homes of the city more cleanly, sanitary and safe.
Scarlet fever has prevailed to a limited extent. The disease has, in the main, been light and easily managed. Seventy-eight cases have been reported, with only two deaths, both infants. And here the Board would speak of the physicians of the city in the highest terms of compliment, for the promptness and thoroughness with which they have made their reports. The law was compulsory and arbitrary, it involved trouble and expense to them, yet but a single individual has rebelled of the whole number, and he was easily brought to his senses. This outbreak of infectious disease has served one other useful pur- pose. It has called the attention of the Board to a large num- ber of houses in dangerous condition, and rendered it possible to have them examined and improved, which could not well have been done, except under the imperative demand of stern necessity.
Within the year, thanks to the Mayor and the Committee on Sewers, the two remaining great sources of insalubrity and disease have been attacked and conquered. For years, this Board, in its annual reports, has urged and prayed that some- thing should be done. Early in the year it at last became evi- dent that the temper of the new City Government had become
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hot and aroused to action. Pine Meadow no longer lies hopeless and forlorn. It has been brought into connection with the great sewer system of the city, and now, almost by the turn of a spade, can be drained and rendered salubrious and safe. It requires no prophet to foresee that it, at once, will be traversed by healthy streets and covered with rows of neat and comfortable dwellings. The Southbridge street swamp has been improved and drained. It no longer lies a mass of festering rottenness, open to the hot summer sun, but invites the cultivator to avail himself of the great stores of rich material which lie there ready composted to his hand. It is surprising how easily these two great works have been accomplished when fairly brought under the energy and enterprise of faithful and experienced business men. Any City Government can in future years point to them and say, This we did while we were in office, and upon this we are willing to rest our fame. The condition of the open sewer from the Boston & Albany R. R. tracks to . Green street has been but half improved. True the cementing of its bottom will give a quicker and easier flow to the foul stream that passes through it, but the flash-boards, which it is thought necessary to maintain, in order to keep the bed covered with water and safe from the action of frost, partly undo the very object it was designed to fulfil, by delaying the flow of the water and allowing the settling of the solid and worst matter, which the scouring of the current would effectually carry away. If these flash-boards were removed and the sewer bed exposed to the action of frost, the concrete, perhaps, would not in the main be disturbed, but it would chip over the surface exposed, and become rough and uneven, making hundreds of little pits where filth would be deposited and retained. A fertile garden of disease germs would here be planted, which, if cholera, or any other infectious disease should visit us, would yield seed a hundred fold to our harm. Sooner or later, as is evident to all, and as this Board has always urged, it must be put under the arch. If that were done, no frost could injure the bed, no pots, pans, boots or dead animals could find their way into it, and the foul, pungent gases which it generates would be effectually shut in. The top of the
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