A. Yes, sir. I was down there last week and there was snow on the ground and no able-bodied men about the institution. I asked Superintendent Gile what the men were working at and he said they were at work on the land, and it was at that time not frozen hard, but was sloppy and muddy, and they were working around on the ground. In the room there that would correspond to Loafers' Hall there were only a few men around. The doctor gives a certificate as to what kind of labor a man is qualified to perform whether light work, medium work, or full work. There are very few at Tewksbury, the physician tells me, competent to do a full day's work. They may look it, but they are broken down. There are some few can, but not very many. The physician investigates their case and gives them a certificate and lays out the kind of work they can do, and if there is any question about it, if the pauper thinks he is abused, as he may be apt to sometimes, oue of the consulting physicians when he comes there investigates the case and gives his opinion as to what the condition of the patient is, so as to avoid the trouble of paupers feeling that they are wronged by their physician.

Q. Did you ascertain whether there was any difficulty in enforcing the labor prescribed at Tewksbury?

A. Oh, none. They have a lock-up which is used only occasionally rarely, but the paupers know that it can be used.

Q. Is there anything else you want to say on the subject of compulsory labor?

A. No, I don't think there is.

Q. Then there has been some testimony as to the desirability of introducing some influences at the pauper institutions which would tend to build up character and in a measure to elevate the tone of the inmate. What have you to say on that?

A. Well, of course that is of the very first importance. Those men and women go there because they are broken down, because they are practically unfit almost always on account of their character, sometimes through misfortune, very often through character and misfortune combined to maintain themselves. A large number of them, most of them, are going back to the community again. They are there temporarily and back and forth, and it is surely of the greatest importance that those men and women maintained at the city's expense, who are to go back as citizens and take part in the life of the community, should be fitted to go back better instead of worse than they came there. But, of course, it is a personal matter with the superintendent and the officers to bring to bear those personal influences which will arouse the self-respect, ambition, and stimulate the characters of those people. Getting them into groups where there will be similar people in a group together and treating them accordingly is the first requisite. After that is done it remains with the superintendent, the ministers, the priests who go there, but chiefly with the superintendent and officers, to treat them in such a way as to make them better men and women rather than worse ones.

Q. Are there any practical suggestions that you feel like making on that subject?

A. Well, classifying them in day rooms, as I have said, also keeping the same sets of people together, keeping those who are better than others apart instead of having them mixed with the worst classes in the city, and that is one very important thing, making the rooms habitable, giving them something to occupy them, books, a good kind of literature to occupy themselves while they would be in there, and so on. I was told that the superintendent of the Temporary Home in Boston, who testified here a week or so ago, said that at his Temporary Home they had individual tables where three or four could sit together. That would be beautiful. I didn't think of that, but I should think it would make those people feel more civilized. You could keep the nicer ones from the nasty ones, and you could keep the better ones from being dragged down by the worse.

Q. He spoke also of the desirability of furnishing some entainments, musical and otherwise, which they could attend outside of their working hours?

A. I should think that would be desirable, too, and that would be where the discretion of the superintendent would come in. With the right superintendent every thing could be done. It is a question of adapting means to ends, just to suit this set of people, and you cannot prescribe that at a distance. There is a woman at Long Island if not there now she has been there a great deal an able-bodied woman, able to earn good wages, with a husband who can earn eighteen dollars a week, and each of them live there. They have four or five children at Marcella street Home and one or two at Long Island. They are able-bodied and as well able to work as anybody in the city, and they are simply maintained year after year, themselves and their children by one department after another of the city. If they were put to work, of course, they wouldn't be so comfortable. I have seen that woman at Long Island, sitting there, strong and healthy, with a child in her arms, rocking, simply eating three square meals a day and rocking.

Q. You feel that work and discipline would drive her out of the city institutions?

A. Drive her out to earn her own living. If she won't leave she ought to be occupied while there, and if the work forces her out so much the better. There is a subsidiary matter, but still one that is very important. There has been talk about the children. not getting out in the winter. Now, unless the ground is sloppy and wet in the winter it is not difficult to get children out. The difficulty in having them go out is not because of the air overhead, but because of the ground underneath. Dr. Cogswell speaks of the matter in his testimony and admitted that they hadn't been out for two months, January and February, and said that if any member of the Committee had been there during the two months he would know why. I was there a great many times during those two months, and there wasn't a day that wasn't fit for the children to be out at noon-time. At Mouson we have a little place without any roof to it, sheltered on one side, and the children can be out there all along. It is sheltered so that they can be kept from the

prevailing wind, and the result is that they are perfectly healthy and are able to get the air. By giving them a chance to be outdoors in that way they grow up in better health, grow up strong and well instead of stunted and sickly.

Q. It appears by a report read in evidence here, in reference to the complaint that the women did get out, the women in the infirmary or nursery department, that they wouldn't go out-of-doors, didn't want to go out of doors?

A. I daresay they don't; I presume likely they don't. They would much prefer to sit and rock. They are so lazy that they don't want to put their things on. But I don't think that is any

reason for keeping the children in. I think the woman with two children at Long Island and five at the Marcella-street Home would be better occupied walking up and down the plank-walk outside instead of sitting doing nothing.

Q. Are there any other practical suggestions, Mrs. Evans, that you wish to make to the committee?

A. I don't see, when the women are all moved to Long Island, how with the women and the men there that place can be kept decent without putting up a yard for the women and men. These people have been accustomed to perfect freedom in going about the island. They don't seem to be able to make the inmates mind and do what they want them to do, and I don't see if they have perfect liberty outside, but what they can do about as they want to. I don't see how they will be able to keep the place decent without having yards, one for the men and one for the women. The question of passes is a very important one. I understand there is no difference of opinion as to the desirability of keeping the inmates from visiting the city at will. There seems to be

some doubt in Dr. Cogswell's mind, and in Mr. Pilsbury's, and Mr. Galvin's minds whether it is possible to prevent the giving of passes. I cannot imagine myself why it is not. The only alternative is that if you refuse to give a man a pass he can take his discharge. But what if he does? A great many of the meu would not take their discharge. It is not true that the paupers are quite so ready to leave. They have that black ball book at Long Island, and while they say every man is allowed to come back, they are not always allowed to come back. There is a little hesitation on the part of some of the people in taking a discharge. I understood Dr. Cogswell to say himself that he bad refused passes refused passes sometimes when a man had had been there a short time and desired a pass. So he has refused it at times, and the inference is that the man did not leave. They don't don't want to be discharged a number of times, and even supposing they were quite reckless about being discharged and coming back again, they could be convicted under the vagrant law. That law is, I think, in Chapter 209 of the Public Statutes, and there have been a very large number of cases where men have been convicted under that law, men who have just gone back from the institutions, the almshouses, wandered around the community, and then have come back to the almshouse again. There have been a large number of convictions

in such cases. There has been one case, I am told, in Boston where a man was brought before the Court under that charge, and the Court refused to convict, but there may have been some special reason why it was not done. But if a man goes out and goes on a drunk and then comes back and then goes out again and repeats the performance, keeping that sort of thing up, because he is refused a pass, I should think there is good reason to believe that that man might be convicted under the vagrant law.

Q. (By Ald. LEE.) For getting drunk?

A. No, for coming back. Of course, he could be convicted for getting drunk, too, Alderman Lee.

Q. Not as a vagrant?

4. Drunk and vagrant combined. Q. (By Mr. BRANDIES.)

Did Dr. Cogswell cite any other instance where he refused passes, except where a man had been there a short time, in that way?

A. No; I said, Do you ever refuse passes?" He said, "Sometimes," and I said, "In what cases?" He said "If a man has been here a short time and comes and demands a pass as a right, I sometimes refuse it." I said, "You mean because he has come too soon?" He said "Yes." That shows that he feels that he has the right to refuse sometimes. The rule is to give them once a month or once in six weeks. That is their own rule, and they might rule that they should give one every week or every day, but they don't. They have made the rule that they may be given once a month, and certainly the passes would seem to me to be one of the most demoralizing things in connection with the present administration.

Q. Are there any other matters you wish to refer to, Mrs.

Evans?

A. Well, the hospital has been a good deal talked about.
Q. About the board of consulting physicians?

A. There has been some discussion about that matter. Of course I haven't much of any right to an opinion about a hospital, but I know Dr. Putnam felt that a board of consulting physicians was valuable, even if they weren't called upon for consultation very often, because it placed the pauper hospital in communication with other hospitals in the land, and gave it the medical standards prevailing outside. The danger to institutions is that they are isolated from the main currents of life, and the competitions of society, which keep people to the front. They get rusty and old-fashioned, indifferent, not up to the times; and if they had on their staff the best people in the profession in the city they would have ambition, they would become unconsciously to themselves a part of the medical public, that is, the physicians are brought in contact with eminent physicians outside, and in association with the best practitioners of the city, and all this would tend to keep the institutions up to the times. They do come to such institutions as Tewksbury, also very often. I said to Dr. Gile, last week, at Tewksbury that it had been said here on the witness-stand that the consulting physicians there did not come very often. He said,

“Ob, that is all a mistake," and turned to another physician and said, How often should you say they come?" This other physician said, "Perhaps twenty-five times a year.' He said, "Twenty-five! I should have said fifty times, for they are here pretty nearly once a week." It is true that they call very often. I said, "Dr. Richardson says he has only been here once in sevWhy," said he, "he was here a short while ago."

eral years.

"

Mr. PROCTOR.
Mr. BRANDeis.
Mr. PROCTOR.

You claim that this is evidence?

- The same as you put in.

You rely on it?

The WITNESS. I am quite willing to withdraw it. Speaking for Dr. Putnam, because he is ill and cannot come, he felt that a board of consulting physicians was a very nice thing, as tending to bring the institution up to feel itself one of the medical institutions of society and to be in touch with the best learning of the time, and I don't see myself how that proposition can admit of a doubt.

Q. (By Mr. BRANDEIS.) Anything else?

A. It was a great many times said that there were a great many chronic cases and cases of people who were simply old in the hospital, as if that showed that they did not need much nursing. I have had some experience with people dying of old age and I know that they need a great deal of nursing to make them comfortable. The nursing may not make them live, but the difference is that they may die in torture or they may die with a reasonable amount of comfort. There are a good many, quite a number of statements which Dr. Cogswell made in his statement, which were incorrect. I don't know whether the committee care to have them corrected or not.

Q. Anything that you deem to be of sufficient importance I would like to havs you correct?

A. Well, a number of them are not very important; some not at all important in themselves. It simply comes down to a question of veracity. It is only valuable to refer to them for that purpose. He said, for instance, on page 2875, in regard to my second conversation with him, that "I never told Mrs. Evans that I did not remember having a conversation with Dr. Parker on the subject of ordering chicken broth, for I did. Mrs. Evans misunderstood me." Well, Dr. Putnam was with me, and Dr. Cogswell said that, and Dr. Putnam and I have spoken of it a number of times since. He said it distinctly, and I said, "Dr. Cogswell, it is impossible; you must have had the conversation. Dr. Parker wrote to me the next day in regard to it." He said, He said, "No, I didn't." Do you mean to say that you never had any conversation with Dr. Parker on the subject?" He said "No, I may have talked with him at some time about chicken broth, but not in that connection, not last week," and he didn't refer to the conversation as he has here. It was then a week after, and it is now months after, and I daresay that his own memory may have got mixed up. But Dr. Putnam and I distinctly remember his conversation as given to us one week after the conversation occurred with Dr. Parker, and our memory coincides, because we have