MASSACHUSETTS NAUTICAL SCHOOL. General Statistics. These are gleaned from the Superintendent's Report : Number in the School September 30, 1867, . committed during the year, returned from indentures, returned having no other home, etc., Number remaining in the School September 30, 1868,. 157 56 47 19 122 279 The average number during the year was 138, and their average age about 14 years. A small decrease appears in the number of commitments, while the number of indentures is largely in excess of previous years. In consequence of the great demand for help in families, and possibly for other reasons, it was deemed proper to test the practicability of a shorter detention in the Institution, and the result thus far is, that of 168 girls indentured the past two years, about one-third have been returned as unsatisfactory. The financial affairs of the School are managed with prudence and economy. The total expenses of the School for the past year amounted to $21,813.52, against $25,531.11 the previous year. During the year, the farm has been enlarged by the purchase of about fifty acres of adjoining pasture land, which will supply a long existing want of the Institution. With some additional accommodations, for which there is present and growing necessity, a serious obstacle to the proper and profitable cultivation and improvement of the farm would be removed. The Massachusetts Nautical School. The management and discipline of this Institution remain substantially as heretofore, and the results indicated by returns made to this Department, compare favorably with those of former PART IV.] SECRETARY'S REPORT. [CHAP. I. years. During the year, 505 boys have been inmates of the School, including 287 remaining on board the Ships at the close of the preceding year. There were committed the past year, 205 boys, and 13 more were returned from probation, etc., 98 were sent to sea, chiefly in the merchant and whaling service,about 40 of them in the latter,-and 117 were discharged on probation. The number remaining in the School at the close of the year was 281, of whom 151 were on board the "George M. Barnard," and 130 on board the "Massachusetts." The average age of the boys committed during the year was a fraction over fifteen years, and the average time in the Institution of those who left was a little over one year. In no former year has the health of the boys been so uniformly good, very little sickness and only two deaths having occurred,-one resulting from a fall, which proved instantly fatal. A considerable decrease appears in the current expenses, as reported for the year ending September 30, 1868,-the total being $52,397.30, against $57,035.98 the preceding year. The whole number received into the School since its establishment in 1860 is 1,714, of whom, it is believed, a large proportion have been reformed. Aside from the teachings and influences imparted in the School, the work of reformation has been materially aided by the shipment of boys on long voyages, which experience has shown to be of so much greater advantage to them, partly because of their longer and further removal from the scenes of former temptation and vice. The success of the officers of the Institution, in securing such voyages, has been much enhanced by the location of one of the Ships at New Bedford. The School Departments on both Ships are now favored with. the presence and influence of female teachers,-an agency from which good results cannot fail to be realized. The boys are at present graded in four classes, and the studies pursued range from the lowest primary branch to some of the higher mathematics and navigation. Whether, in connection with the ordinary routine of study and service on shipboard, a reasonable amount of industrial occupation in the manufacture of nautical goods might not be of practical benefit to the boys and to the JUVENILE COMMITMENTS. State, is a question not without interest and importance. Many practical and thoughtful observers not only favor the innovation, but earnestly suggest other changes in the administration of the School. Improper Commitments. The attention of your Board is specially invited to this subject, because of some recent developments indicating an apparently increasing abuse of the statute regulating commitments. to the Juvenile Reformatories. The spirit that can procure the sentence of a boy or girl to a penal institution, on some trifling or manufactured charge, for the purpose of saving expense, is criminally mercenary, if not inhuman; yet cases exist in which boys and girls have either been committed for no real crime or sufficient cause, or incarcerated in institutions designed for the more guilty and hardened, simply to avoid the payment of a petty, insignificant stipend. On this point Mr. Ames, the Superintendent of the Industrial School for Girls at Lancaster, makes this remark in his last Annual Report: "There are instances where town authorities have exerted influence to have some other sentence passed by a justice, rather than to commit to the reformatories; and, on the simple ground of expense to the town, youth have been sent to jail, there to mingle with older criminals, instead of being placed where they might receive not only restraining but reforming and saving influences." The small pittance required from cities and towns for the support of their boys and girls in the Reformatories, is undoubtedly in many instances a source of gross fraud upon the Commonwealth, as well as irreparable wrong to those who are thus improperly committed. The Trustees of the Reform School for Boys at Westborough, submit this statement: "The price (fifty cents per week,) now charged by the State to the various cities and towns, for the boys belonging to them in the institution, seems entirely too low; it was fixed when the cost of all articles of food and clothing were less than half their present PART IV.] SECRETARY'S REPORT. [CHAP. II. value, and we respectfully submit whether it would not be wise and just to advance the charge, so as to require cities and towns to pay at least half the cost of supporting them. Boys are frequently sent here with minds so feeble that they more properly should be sent to the almshouses of the places where they belong, and, in some cases, it would be far better for the boys, and we think it would be done did it not cost more than fifty cents per week to support them there." A glaring illustration of the wrong practised under the present system was accidentally discovered by a member of the Suffolk Grand Jury, during a recent visit of that Board to the Westborough Institution. The case was that of a boy committed for no actual crime, but on some trifling charge, because, as it is stated, the town, to whose pauper list he would belong, could save a dollar a week by procuring his admission and support at Westborough for fifty cents. How many boys and girls who should be under other guardianship and discipline, are thus forced into association with the really vicious and criminal, cannot easily be determined; but it is certain that such instances are more numerous than is generally supposed. A modification of the laws relating to the commitment of juvenile offenders, and a proper charge for the support of those belonging to cities and towns, would go far to remedy the evil. CHAPTER II.-INSTITUTIONS AIDED BY THE STATE. THEIR NUMBER AND CHARACTER. The Institutions enumerated under this classification are fourteen in number, three more than last year,―The Clarke Institution for Deaf Mutes, the New England Hospital for Women and Children, and the Soldiers' Employment Bureau. The whole are tabulated for convenient reference in the following form, showing the date of their establishment and the amount appropriated for their benefit in 1868: HARTFORD ASYLUM FOR DEAF-MUTES. (1.) The Massachusetts General Hospital, (3.) The Eye and Ear Infirmary, (5.) N. E. Female Moral Reform Society, (9.) The Discharged Soldiers' Home, (10.) N. E. Hospital for Women and Children, 1862 (11.) The Temporary Asylum for Discharged Female Prisoners,t (12.) The Home for the Friendless,‡ Established. Appropriation. 5,000 00 1829 40,000 00 1840 6,000 00 (1.) The Massachusetts General Hospital. No Report has been required from this Institution, the State having made no recent appropriation for its benefit, and consequently no information can be communicated here relative to the results of its administration. (2.) The Hartford Asylum. Of the 266 pupils under, instruction in this Asylum during the year ending in May last, 112 were from Massachusetts, of whom 103 were supported by the State. For the year ending September 30, 1868, the number of Massachusetts beneficiaries in the Institution during the first term was 102, and during the second term, 100. The cost of board and tuition at $87.50 each per term amounted to $17,675, which, with the additional charge of $768.66 for clothing, made an aggregate of $18,443.66 paid by the State. Of the thirteen classes in which the pupils are arranged, averaging seventeen to each class, eight are taught by hearing * In Hartford, Conn. In Springfield. † In Dedham. § In Northampton. |