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1/ Poorhouses, such as this abandoned one I photographed, were used to provide shelter for the homeless before Social Security, Medicaid, & Section 8 were created to help the poor. Usually they were more like prisons & residents were referred to as inmates https://www.abandonedamerica.us/abandoned-poorhouse
The concept originated in England in the 17th century, where debtors prisons housed the poor and workhouses forced the able-bodied to do prison-like labor while in squalid conditions eating disgusting food, and came over with the colonists to America https://www.history.com/news/in-the-19th-century-the-last-place-you-wanted-to-go-was-the-poorhouse
3/ In the US, towns really didn't want to care for their impoverished citizens and would either banish them or sell them off to people who "paid" them by providing food and board for work - another form of slavery in a country that was pretty fond of it at the time.
4/ Some towns had "poor masters" who would decide whether to use a portion of a town's budget to give food or firewood to the indigent. Over time towns decided creating one central location was more cost effective, so almshouses and poor farms were built. http://appalachianmagazine.com/2019/08/16/americas-poor-farms-poor-houses-of-yesteryear/
5/ Due to the stigma of poverty and the resentment towards having to care for the less fortunate, these facilities were pretty terrible. Helen Keller's teacher Anne Sullivan described her time in one as a “a crime against childhood”, sleeping in iron cots as rats ran freely about
6/ The place I photographed was a poor farm, built in a rural area so people could grow their own food - making them less of a burden and removing them from the town center. The original 1830s building burned in 1923, killing a number of residents, and was rebuilt.
7/ It eventually closed in the 1960s (!!) and was purchased by a woman who used it as an "antiques store" although neither the building nor the antiques were maintained and both were in pretty bad shape by the time I visited. It was absolutely full of odd, decaying bric-a-brac
8/ She kept a few horses on the property and invited me into her home to show me some old photos of the place, and I visited again with my father, prepared for the horses this time with apples to give as gifts. They nearly ate my hand too, but seemed to enjoy them.
9/ It was a peaceful place, a little eerie but quiet and fun to walk around. It was hard not to reflect on how the poor are treated as a subhuman plague on the rest of us, and how the few small advancements we've made in that regard are always under attack
