The public institutions on Blackwell’s Island, committed to the charge of the Commissioners of Public Charities and Correction, form the subject to our illustrations on page 92. We propose to give a brief description of those institutions, with some facts and suggestions derived from the last published Report of the Commissioners – that for 1867.

The Small-pox Hospital, at the southern extremity of the Island, is sometimes entirely vacant. Advantage was taken of such a vacancy in 1867 to repair and paint the building throughout, and to introduce gas for lighting from the Charity Hospital. Of the 209 patients under treatment that year fifteen died.

The Charity Hospital in 1867, subsisted 6855 patients, of whom 505 died. This institution, though open to patients suffering from every variety of disease, is largely devoted to the treatment of syphilis. More than 2000 cases of this description were admitted in 1867. It will soon be necessary to erect a separate hospital for patients of this class.

No applicants are admitted to the Alms-house except those who, from old age or chronic infirmity, are incapable of earning a livelihood; for it is found that inmates, after a brief residence, lose all self-reliance and become a public charge during life. The able-bodied, who may be suffering from want, are either granted temporary relief by the Superintendent of the Outdoor Poor, or they are committed to the Workhouse. Under the present regulations the Alms-house is, as it should be, a shelter for the old and infirm rather than as formerly the abode of the vagrant and slothful. Hospital rules have been established, thorough cleanliness is enforced, and a more generous diet has been provided.

The prisoners committed to the Penitentiary, numbering 2311 in 1867, are divided into three classes, according to the gravity of their crimes, and, though subject to the same rules in respect to labor and discipline, they work in separate gangs and eat at separate tables, and each prisoner occupies a separate cell. Only those guilty of felony wear the distinctive dress of the Penitentiary. "There are," say the Commissioners, "about 30,000 children in this city growing up in ignorance and idleness. They have no occupation but to beg, and learn no art but to steal. Hordes of children are sent out every morning to beg or pilfer among the piers and bulkheads of the city, to snatch up, unobserved, a few grains of coffee, or handfuls of cotton, or scraps of iron; and their progress from the first act of pilfering to burglary is as regular as the progress of a school-boy from class to class. At the age of fifteen the girls are prostitutes and the boys professed thieves. The brevity of their lives, shortened by syphilitic disease, is the only check upon the increase of their numbers." The measures recently adopted to break up this career of crime among our youth by arresting children found begging or peddling nick-nacks in the streets promise to secure good results.

The Juvenile Asylum of this city, which is authorized to receive children on the warrant of a magistrate, has been the means of saving from destruction man children of the classes referred to, and its managers are entitled to warm thanks of the community for their zeal and devotion to the great work of philanthropy in which they are engaged. The Children’s Aid Society and the Reformatory, with other charities of a like character, have, without coercive powers been instrumental in rescuing annually large numbers of children from ruin, by gathering them from the streets, clothing them, and securing for them comfortable and reputable homes.

To the Work-houses are committed drunkards, vagabonds, and disorderly persons, the terms of imprisonment varying from ten days to six months. As a house of correction it well fulfills the purposes of its establishment. Of the persons committed a considerable proportion are newly-arrived emigrants. In order to protect the counties of the State from the maintenance of foreign vagrants and criminals, the Legislature has imposed a tax upon each emigrant arriving at the port of New York. The Commissioners of Emigration collect the money thus raised, which they disburse under regulations which they have framed for their own government.

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