Similar associations are being formed in every county of the State. In the City and County of New York the So ciety is accepted by the Commissioners of Public Charities as a valuable auxiliary, and much good has already been accomplished as the result of but one year's experience. It is evident that the citizens of the State are aroused to the importance of this duty, which has long been neglected, and that hereafter the Superintendents of the Poor may rely upon a hearty support and co-operation from the public at large in their endeavors to solve in the most judicious manner the difficult problem of poorhouse management.

The great increase of wealth and population in this county is accompanied by large expenditures for material improvements of all kinds. The present appropriation of about $20,000 per annum for support of the poorhouse is so small in proportion to other expenditures, that an additional sum of, say, five thousand dollars can well be devoted to the claims of the poor.

Assuming that the Superintendents of the Poor of this County would be pleased to introduce some much-needed reforms in their administration of the Poorhouse, for which they have not money at their disposal, your petitioners address themselves directly to the Board of Supervisors, to request additional appropriations for the following purposes:

1. A Resident Physician, who shall be a graduate of a Medical College, in addition to the Visiting Physician now employed.

The number of persons in the buildings averages from three hundred and fifty to four hundred, composed of very old, very young, and mostly infirm persons, beside the sick and insane. It requires the constant supervision of the whole by a competent Resident Physician, to ensure proper conditions of hygiene, not only for the sick, but among those not actually in hospital.

2. Four paid experienced nurses: a man for the men's

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department; a woman for the women's department; a man to take charge of the insane men; a woman to be in charge of the insane women.

The nursing is now done by the pauper inmates. Their want of experience, and often their own infirmities, render them wholly inefficient. This addition to the existing force is absolutely needed to save much suffering, as it is impossible for the keeper's wife, already fully occupied with the care of so large an establishment, to devote much of her time to the very sick.

3. A paid respectable woman to have special charge of the children.

For the want of this appropriation, the Superintendents have been obliged to make use of pauper inmates for this. 'most important duty.

At this time the children are under the immediate charge of an old woman, one of three generations of paupers now in the Poorhouse. This old woman was formerly a drunkard, and her daughter, who assists in the care of the children, has a disease of the eyes, which is apparently communicated to them.

4. Suitable food and clothing for the children.

5. An additional compensation to the Chaplain, so that, in all cases where the funeral services over the dead are not held by others who have been selected, it shall be his duty to see that the dead receive Christian burial.

6. That the order for committing vagrants and criminals to the County Poorhouse be rescinded, as unjust and degrading to those inmates who are victims of poverty and not of crime.

7. That the Superintendents be authorized to expend the small additional sums necessary for a proper classification of the paupers, viz.:

a. Such alterations of the buildings as may be neces

sary to ensure a complete separation of the sexes.

b. Alteration of the cells for the insane, in accordance with the present enlightened treatment of this disease.

c. A separate room for confinements.

d. The virtuous and respectable of the paupers, especially of the women, to be put in separate rooms from the vicious and degraded.

If the inmates of the poorhouse were composed entirely of the known residents of the townships, this last recommendation might not be so important. But, according to the Supplementary Report of the Superintendents of the Poor (1871), it is shown that some towns send seven persons, some six, some five, some four, and one town none at all (in the whole 587), while nearly double this number (1158) are from the county at large, that is, homeless vagrants, many of them of the lowest kind. On the other hand, many of those sent from towns are of respectable Westchester county families, reduced to poverty by sickness or misfortune.

Your petitioners respectfully request that if their petition be referred, as is customary, to the Committee on Superintendents of the Poor, they may be summoned before that Committee to furnish said Committee and your Honorable Board with detailed information on the above subjects, and also to show to what extent this movement has the approval of the tax-payers of the county.

(Signed by about forty members of the Local Visiting Committee for the Westchester County Poorhouse.)

TARRYTOWN. Presented Nov. 26, 1872.