PART VI.]

SECRETARY'S REPORT.

(4.) Insanity.

Another year's experience has tended more strongly than ever to confirm the wisdom of our policy in the care and treatment of the Insane. The better provision made for the chronic and incurable, the humane efforts to relieve the monotony and tedium of hospital life, the watchful introduction of healthful, attractive and varied forms of mental and physical occupation, and the growing tendency to greater improvement in the classification and care of both curables and incurables, are among the acknowledged evidences of progress in the right direction. In regard to the increase of Insanity, of which so much has been said of late, a single fact may be cited here, viz.: that no important difference appears in the aggregate number of patients in 1867 and 1868, and, excluding duplicates, the supposed increase would seem to be apparent rather than real. If the present system of removals is preserved, in the retention of those properly belonging to Massachusetts, and the transfer of those justly chargable to other States, it will doubtless be found that no immediate necessity exists for the erection of an additional Hospital.

CONCLUSION.

In closing his portion of this Report, it only remains for your present Secretary to invite attention to the tabulated statistics given in the Appendix. These have been prepared with great care and labor by the Clerks in this Department, under the supervision of Dr. Henry C. Prentiss, and will be found to contain much valuable and important information.

REPORT OF THE VISITING AGENT.

SUPPLEMENT

TO THE SECRETARY'S REPORT.

CHAPTER I.

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT OF THE VISITING AGENT,

FOR THE YEAR ENDING OCTOBER 1, 1868.

To the Board of State Charities.

GENTLEMEN :—Having completed another year as your Visiting Agent, a Second Annual Report becomes necessary, and is herewith submitted. During four and a half months of this year, viz., from the fifteenth of February to the first of July, the Agency was suspended by your Board for want of means, but carried on by the Board of Inspectors of the State Primary School and Almshouse at Monson, who felt that it could not be discontinued without detriment to the interests and welfare of the children placed out from that institution. My reports to that Board have been placed in your hands, and it is deemed proper that the report for the whole year be made to you.

On resuming the Agency, the first of July, I was instructed to look after the children placed out from all the State institutions. In the three months that have followed, these instructions have been carried out so far as they could be. I have obtained lists of the children placed out from the State Almshouse at Bridgewater and the Reform School at Westborough. Those placed out from the State Almshouse at Tewksbury being looked after by Mr. Elliot, one of the Inspectors, and those from the

REPORT OF THE VISITING AGENT.

Industrial School at Lancaster by the Trustees, no lists of them have been furnished.

As the State Primary School and Almshouse at Monson has placed out, and is placing out, more children than either of the other State institutions, your Agent has given his especial attention to these, calling upon those from other institutions when found in the localities he has visited.

1. Children from the State Primary School and Almshouse at Monson.

At the time of making my report last year, there had been placed out from the Monson institution nine hundred and seventy-seven (977) children, of whom seven hundred and fiftynine (759) were supposed to be in their places; and of these, all but one hundred and sixty-four (164) had been visited, or their condition ascertained.

Since then, one hundred and seventy-nine (179) have been sent out to families, sixty-five (65) of whom were returned or recalled for various reasons, leaving the actual number placed out from October 1, 1867, to October 1, 1868, one hundred and fourteen, (114,) and making the number to be visited, two hundred and seventy-eight, (278.) Of this number, all but sixty-three (63) have been visited or heard from. Some of them are so distant that they could not be visited without great expense, and the condition of such has been ascertained, as well as it could be, by writing. I am satisfied, however, that the only sure way of ascertaining the condition of a child is by a personal visit.

If the child has been out only a short time, the first visit will not answer all purposes. A child "must be summered and wintered" before it can be ascertained how he is to be treatedwhether he is to be properly fed, clothed, schooled and workedand quite as much may be learned from a second visit as from the first.

The child in its growth often develops qualities in striking contrast to those exhibited when first taken, and the family quite as often changes its treatment of a child; hence the need of constant watchfulness and care over these wards of the Commonwealth.

THE MONSON CHILDREN.

Statistics of Children placed out from May 1, 1854, to Oct. 1, 1868.

Number to be visited October 1, 1867,

Placed out from October 1, 1867, to October 1, 1868,

Number of the above visited,

Number of the above heard from,

Number found in the families where first placed,

Number found to have left their places and returned,

Number found to have been legally adopted,

Table showing when the (175) Children visited were placed out.

REPORT OF THE VISITING AGENT.

The children placed out during the past year were distributed

In addition to the above visits, I have made three hundred and eighty-nine re-visits. Some of these have been made at the request of masters; others at the desire of children. Many little difficulties that have sprung up between children and the families in which they live, have by these visits been reconciled. Formerly, the remedy for real or fancied abuse, especially in the case of boys, was for them to run away. Now, they write to your Agent, or, if not able to write, get some neighbor to do it for them. There is, consequently, a large decrease in the number of runaways, and though abuses will occasionally happen, they are not likely to be severe, or of long continuance. In two instances, small boys came distances of eighteen and twenty miles on foot to lay their grievances before me.

In visiting the children, my travels have extended to nearly all parts of the Commonwealth, and into several of the adjoining States, often following them in their removals from one State or town to another, and calling upon them unannounced and unexpected. It has been necessary to make some removals on account of ill-treatment, and to collect penalties in a number of cases of wrong.

In the settlement of twenty-four cases, I have collected over twenty-three hundred dollars, ($2,373.64.) Some of these were bounty cases, where masters had taken the reward paid to their boys for enlisting, and put it in their own pockets. In one instance, where a master had sold his boy to a neighboring town, and refused to give him anything on his return from service, I