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Poorhouse   /pˈurhˌaʊs/   Listen
Poorhouse

noun
1.
An establishment maintained at public expense in order to provide housing for the poor and homeless.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Poorhouse" Quotes from Famous Books



... of it," answered Margaret. "It's a peculiar case. Mrs. Comstock had a great trouble and she let it change her whole life and make a different woman of her. She used to be lovely; now she is forever saving and scared to death for fear they will go to the poorhouse; but there is a big farm, covered with lots of good timber. The taxes are high for women who can't manage to clear and work the land. There ought to be enough to keep two of them in good shape all their lives, if ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... had its effect, and the factor of expense has not been forgotten. Some of the States still permit county commissioners to commit the care of the poor to the lowest bidder. On the other hand the poorhouse has been transformed into a "Home for the Aged and Infirm" in some States, and inspections of public institutions by the grand jury are becoming more than merely cursory. State boards of charities are being established, and men have even attacked members of their own political ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson

... but without the spring or energy necessary to maintain his position, or conduct his business, which declined as rapidly as he did himself. He and his family were once more reduced to absolute beggary, until in the course of events they found a poorhouse to receive them. Art was seldom without a reason to justify his conduct, and it mattered not how feeble that reason might be, he always deemed it sufficiently strong to satisfy himself. For instance, he had often told his wife that if Atty had recovered, sound in body and mind, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... on your second. Havin' been through four, I was well skilled in keepin' my mouth shut, an' I never said a word till we drove into the yard of the most disconsolate-lookin' premises I ever seen since I was took to the poorhouse on a visit. ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed

... origin of the state in which the Irish at home now appear to the eyes of foreign travellers, is the deliberate intention, sternly acted upon for more than a century, to make the island one vast poorhouse. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... for twenty years in the firm conviction that she would die in the poorhouse—as, indeed, seemed not unlikely—before she would ask a favour of Andrew Cameron. And so, in truth, she would have, had it been for herself. But for Sylvia! Could she so far humble ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... went to a garden-party given by the Princess Louise at Kensington Palace, a gloomy-looking edifice, which might be taken for a hospital or a poorhouse. Of all the festive occasions which I attended, the garden-parties were to me the most formidable. They are all very well for young people, and for those who do not mind the nipping and eager air, with which, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... don't forget to give me that tip. You wouldn't want to see a man of my age going to the poorhouse." ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... the Captain of his salvation, he might endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ, without entanglement in the affairs of this life. Aside from this, his stay at the capital had not been unprofitable, for he had preached five times a week in the poorhouse and conversed on the Lord's days with the convicts ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... silks, satins, bonnets, fancy goods, shoes, and all sorts of merchandise. There was no law and there were no officers; there was only confusion, helpless despair on every side. Before sunrise there was a terrific explosion which shook the whole city; the magazine back of the poorhouse was blown up.... At six o'clock in the morning the evacuation was complete, and the railroad bridges ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... resolution of the Board of Commissioners of this City, I have been instructed to communicate with your honorable body in relation to the insane paupers now in Poor-house', (the insane in a poorhouse!) 'and to request that you will adopt the necessary provision for sending them to the Lunatic ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... mental pabulum of these two men consisted of an offended nasal comment extended through the years upon the institution—army, business, or poorhouse—which kept them alive, and toward their immediate superior in that institution. Until that very morning the institution had been the "government" and the immediate superior had been the "Cap'n"—from these two they had glided out and were now in the vaguely ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... of the man's grasping avarice. The Traders' had been a favorite bank for small tradespeople, and in its savings department it had solicited the smallest deposits. People who had thought to be self-supporting to the last found themselves confronting the poorhouse, their two or three hundred dollar savings wiped away. All bank failures have this element, however, and the directors were trying to promise twenty per cent. ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... lodges and acquiring authentic charters. He gave money for the erection of temples and supplemented as far as he could the collection of alms, in regard to which the majority of members were stingy and irregular. He supported almost singlehanded a poorhouse the order had founded ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... this event, he was able to earn a scanty living, and when he failed to do that, he was dependent on the 'world's cold charity,' and died in a poorhouse. Isabella had herself and two children to provide for; her wages were trifling, for at that time the wages of females were at a small advance from nothing; and she doubtless had to learn the first elements of economy-for what slaves, that were never allowed to make any stipulations or calculations ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth

... would land you in the poorhouse. Have you no desire for the things other women like—fine ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... goods to the doors of their warehouses. Its fine situation upon the Mediterranean shore is its one recommendation, forming an entry port connected with Rome, Pisa, and other inland cities of Italy. There are pointed out to us here three special hospitals, an observatory, a poorhouse and a public library, but there is ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... "Dawes.'' Richard, or Dickey, Daw was a fisherman for appearance sake and a smuggler for preference. The question of Sophie's legitimacy anses from the fact that her mother, Jane Callaway, was registered at death as "a spinster.'' Sophie was one of ten children. Dickey Daw drank his family into the poorhouse, an institution which sent Sophie to fend for herself in 1805, procuring her a place as servant at a farm ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... I ought to be ditch-digging to keep her out of the poorhouse, instead of pushing in with respectable boys here. Sometimes I think that myself," added Dan in another tone. "But it wasn't any of that blamed plute's business to knock it ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman

... more?" asked Mary relentlessly, and poor Maggie's eyes grew dark with fright as the conversation abruptly pointed her way. She sometimes waked up in misery in Mrs. Kilpatrick's warm bed, crying for fear that she was going to be sent back to the poorhouse. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... each year, hi made his appearance in the city, tarried a month, perhaps, and then quietly disappeared, and we saw him no more for a twelvemonth. Inoffensive? Decidedly—as mild-mannered a man as ever asked grace at a poorhouse table. ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... living. When I left Burton he was comfortably fixed, with a small farm of his own, and two thousand dollars in bank. Now I hear that he is in trouble. He has lost money, and a knavish neighbor has threatened to foreclose a mortgage on the farm and turn out the old people to die or go to the poorhouse." ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger

... had not abated her malevolence towards the Saints, and had imported at considerable expense her grand-aunt and grand-uncle, who had been enjoying for some years a sequestered retirement in the poorhouse at East Machias. They were indeed very old. By what miracle, even as anatomical specimens, they had been preserved during their long journey was a mystery to the camp. In some respects they had superior memories and reminiscences. ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... benefactor voluntarily offered Mrs. Preston an allowance of five hundred dollars. It cost her pride a great deal to accept this favor from the boy she had looked down upon as "only an Irish boy," but her necessity was greater than her pride, and she saw no other way of escaping the poorhouse. So she ungraciously accepted. But Andy did not care for thanks. He felt that he was doing his duty, and he asked no other reward than that consciousness. Mrs. Preston was allowed to make her home, rent free, in Mrs. ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... singularly successful. We happened to be recreating at Stafford Springs that summer. We rode out one day, for one of the relaxations of that watering-place, to the great Monson Poorhouse. We were passing through one of the large halls, when ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale

... distributed at the discretion of the church-wardens, and are nearly 300 in number. The bread and cheese amounts to 540 quartern loaves and 470 pounds of cheese. The distribution is made on land belonging to the charity, known as the Old Poorhouse. Formerly it used to take place in the Church, immediately after the service in the afternoon, but in consequence of the unseemly disturbance which used to ensue the practice was discontinued. The Church used to be filled with a congregation whose conduct was occasionally so reprehensible ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... the lower regions, down came a red-headed, drunken shoemaker. I can not say that he was drunk at that moment, but I knew the man the moment I saw his carroty poll, and it was drink which had sent him to the poorhouse. ...
— My Terminal Moraine - 1892 • Frank E. Stockton

... creature on earth that's nearest and dearest to you—it makes or breaks us. It's a miserable business, I know well—but your duty is to act for the larger good. You can't afford to send Bob to jail and your people to the poorhouse just because—" ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... sheriff had visited the premises, and carefully considered all the facts, without affording the miserable man a particle of consolation. He groaned from morning till night, forlorn and desolate, declaring that he should come to want, and die in the poorhouse. ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... for what he called "regular schooling," that is the steady discipline of fixed lessons, the companionship of boys of his own age, and the give and take of the average large, busy school. Normal life of any kind was out of the question in the poorhouse where he had spent the first ten years of his life, and after that he had not seen the inside of a schoolroom. He had read whatever books he could pick up while at Bramble Farm, and in the knowledge of current events was remarkably well-posted, thanks to his steady assimilation ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson

... partnership—husband and wife as partners. But if the man knew as little about his part of the job as the woman generally does about hers when she gets married, most married couples would be in the poorhouse in ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart

... Ross. "He expects us to support him, I suppose. He looks as poor as poverty. He ought to have gone to the poorhouse in his ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger

... poorhouse lad, turning round at sound of his master's voice, presented so fair a mark, with his gaping mouth, that, half involuntarily, the snow-ball left Mr. Coffin's hand, and the next instant formed the contents of Nathaniel's open mouth, leaving, however, a liberal surplusage to ornament his cheeks, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... were ringing for evening prayers. The inmates of the poorhouse flocked to the church and sat down in the pews left vacant by their wealthy owners, who had attended to their souls at the principal service of the day, and were now driving in their carriages ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... establishment, and it was doubtful if they had ever received any wages. It was certain that Hucks had not a dollar in the world at the present time, and if turned out of their old home the ancient couple must either starve or go to the poorhouse. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne

... of sincerity. He hobbled off with the wheel, muttering something which may have been blessings, and a fine healthy young fellow came up. "Good mornin', an' 'tis a foin bit of scenery, but we can't ate it, an' we'd die afore we'd go into the poorhouse, an' a thrifle of money for a dhraw at the pipe would be as welkim as the flowers of May, an' 'tis England is the grate counthry, and thim that was in it says that Englishmen is tin per cint. betther ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... week's beard, and recoiled from a figure that was fouler as to shirt and coat and trousers than anything the boy had seen; though the tramps used to swarm through Willoughby Pastures before the Selectmen began to lock them up in the town poorhouse and set them to breaking stone. There was no ferocity in the loathsome face; it was a vagrant swine that looked from it, no worse in its present ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... me rot in the poorhouse," assented Mr. Bingle composedly. "I am not deceiving myself in regard to Geoffrey and Angela and Lizzie—I mean Elizabeth. You won't mention what I have just confided to you, will you, ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... hear the cry of the poor. Behind our flourishing warehouses and shops we see the hovels of the artisan. We watch along our highroads the long procession of labourers deserting their ancestral villages for the cities; we trace them to the slum and the sweater's den; we follow them to the poorhouse and the prison; we see them disappear engulfed in the abyss, while others press at their heels to take their place and share their destiny. And in face of all this we do not think it to be our duty to fold our arms and invoke the principle ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... said I should always have charge of the old toll-gate when he wasn't attendin' to it himself, just the same as when my father was alive and was toll-gate keeper, and I was helpin' him. But I've got to go now, and where I'm goin' to is more'n I know. But I'd rather go to the county poorhouse than stay here, or anywhere else, with Maria Port. She's a regular boa-constrictor, that woman is! She's twisted herself around people before this and squeezed the senses out of them; and that's exactly what she's doin' with the captain. If she could come here to live ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton

... Apostle says that "it is sown in dishonor, but it shall rise in glory." Be men of science, but be not human ghouls. There is such a thing as retribution. But lately a former millionaire died in a poorhouse and left his body as a cadaver for medical students. We cannot afford to ignore the mysterious ways of Divine Justice. Ever handle human remains in a humane manner; and as soon as they have answered the purpose of science, see that they ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens

... forth, O me unhappy, Wandered on, O me unhappy, Wretched on the shores to wander, Toiling on, for ever wretched, Always to the doors of strangers, Always to the gates of strangers, On the beach, with poorest children, Sufferers of the village poorhouse. 830 ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... a bit of gossip of a neighbour who had come in to see Miss Bennett, and was telling her about a family who had lately moved into the place and were in serious trouble. "And they do say she'll have to go to the poorhouse," she ended. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... been bound out in this neighborhood!" said Chase sharply. "If you don't want to do it, don't do it. That's all I've got to say. If you'd rather go to the poorhouse than see your son in steady and honorable employment, in a good home, and learning a business under a man that's made some success of it, that's your lookout, not mine. But that's where you'll land the minute you set your foot out in that road. Then the county court'll take your boy and ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... to do is to crawl to the poorhouse gate. Or to go dig a pit in the graveyard, as it is short till we'll be stretched there with the want ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory

... know what you want to say and keeping on after you have said it lands a merchant in a lawsuit or the poorhouse, and the first is a short cut to the second. I maintain a legal department here, and it costs a lot of money, but it's to keep ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... to the widow. The youngest was only three years old, and Bobby, the oldest, was nine, when his father died. Squire Lee, who had always been a good friend of John Bright, told the widow that she had better go to the poorhouse, and not attempt to struggle along with such fearful odds against her. But the widow nobly refused to become a pauper, and to make paupers of her children, whom she loved quite as much as though she and they had been born in a ducal palace. She told the squire that she had two ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic

... admiration of Howard, and after the model of which several prisons in England and America have been built. There were about twelve hundred prisoners—arrangements wonderful, discipline apparently perfect—kept by twenty-eight men. Visited a poorhouse, a benevolent establishment to assist poor old people; about three hundred inmates; grateful feelings, sympathy. Visited the celebrated convent, containing about eight hundred nuns, who come and remain voluntarily; ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... one of the silent streets of west Chester, S.C., that prolongs itself into a road leading to the Potter's Field and on to the County Poorhouse, sets a whitewashed frame cottage. It has two rooms, the chimney in the center providing each with a fireplace. A porch, supported by red cedar posts, fronts the road side. In this abode lives Jesse Williams ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... seven thousand of these banished people were driven on board ships, and scattered among the British colonies, from New Hampshire to Georgia—one thousand and twenty to South Carolina alone. They were cast ashore without resources, hating the poorhouse as a shelter for their offspring, and abhorring the thought of selling themselves as laborers. Households, too, were separated; the colonial newspapers contained advertisements of members of families seeking their companions, of sons anxious ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... fishing, hunting, or on excursions? Do you think ministers are old fogies—that the Bible belongs to the dark ages? Tell me bow you treat your parents, and I will tell you how your children will treat you. A man was making preparations to send his old father to the poorhouse, when his little ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody

... that—and a whole lot more. Said I've eternally disgraced him and dragged him down and will land him in jail or the poorhouse. And I guess maybe it's so. Only all the time he was talking I kept thinking how he teased me to marry him. I really liked Bud Willis over in Elmwood better, in a way, than I did John. And I meant to marry Bud. He wasn't as good a boy as John, ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... industry, and he ought not to abandon his pursuit. It would even be injuring society for him to do so. And so we see this man, the harsh slave-driver of thousands of men, building almshouses with little gardens two yards square for the workmen broken down in toiling for him, and a bank, and a poorhouse, and a hospital—fully persuaded that he has amply expiated in this way for all the human lives morally and physically ruined by him—and calmly going on with his ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... had!" snapped his wife; "you think that more important than my nerves? I don't more'n half like Janet comin' here. If it hadn't been fur me, I know you'd taken her fur nothin'! No matter if I do have t' go t' the poorhouse on account of yer shiftlessness. I, stricken an' helpless! She can come here fur nothin'! I jest know, David, that it would be a real release fur a great, strong man like you to be rid of a poor stricken wife; but I guess you'll have ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... that nothing could be more cheerful than the approach to this edifice, when, on coming from Paris, one entered it by the poorhouse yard. Thanks to a forward spring, the elms and the lindens were already beginning to shoot forth their leaves; the large plots of grass were of a luxuriant growth; here and there the flower beds were enameled ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... outline of his past history will not be out of place. When he was a wee boy he had been found one day wandering along the railroad tracks outside of the village of Crumville. Nobody knew who he was or where he came from, and consequently he was put in the local poorhouse, there to remain until he was nine years old. Then a broken-down college professor named Caspar Potts, who was doing farming for his health, took the lad to ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer

... replying directly to the offer. "I owe him too much already to hope to pay it back in a single lifetime." "Well, you're a cantankerous, hard-headed fool, that's all I've got to say," burst out Fletcher, swallowing hard, and the sooner you get to the poorhouse along your own road the better it'll be for the rest of us." "You may be sure I'll take care not to go along yours. I'll have honest men about me, at any rate." "Then it's more than you've got a ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... be shaken, Silvia," her friend answered. "Of course everybody in the country knows that you live in daily fear of the poorhouse, and keep an advertising bureau busy trying to find you employment! However, I suspected you would make these silly objections, so I told Frank Earl yesterday that he ought to move heaven and earth to get you to defend his brother. He nearly ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... knowledge of the world rendered him at one time an indispensable appendage to convivial gatherings of a kind; but in his later days he was so entirely neglected as to be obliged to sell gingerbread-nuts at fairs and race-meetings for a subsistance. He died in Coventry poorhouse ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... town, and outside of it, too. I'm head of the parish committee and a member of the National Regular Society. I can't reach your precious ward, maybe, but I can reach the fellow she's after, and if he marries her, I'll drive 'em both to the poorhouse. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... so much charity work for me to do that there will be no time for anything else, and, in a little while, she will have given away all the money we both have. Then when we're sitting together in the sun on the front steps of the poorhouse, we can fittingly lament ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed

... like that, young fellow. You're poorhouse rearing, even though you are a pet. Will he be sitting up here to-night, ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum

... against him, suspicion of such was not wanting. He came of a bad stock, people said sagely, adding that what was bred in the bone was bound to come out in the flesh. His father, old Sam Maybin, had been a shiftless and tricky rascal, as everybody knew, and had ended his days in the poorhouse. Ches's mother had died when he was a baby, and he had come up somehow, in a hand-to-mouth fashion, with all the cloud of heredity hanging over him. He was always looked at askance, and when any mischief came to light in the village, it was generally fastened ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... of weather. I could learn nothing for certain after that. People lie so, you see. Some say poor Moreno shot himself because his daughter left him when she got placed on the stage; others say that he died like a dog in a poorhouse. The only sure thing is that he died and that his daughter went on having a great time all over those countries over there. The way she went it! They even say she had a king or two. As for money! Say, boys, there ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... fever, and measles in their earliest years; slaps in the face and degrading drudgeries up to thirteen years; deceptions by women, sicknesses and infidelity during manhood and, toward the last, infirmities and agonies in a poorhouse or asylum. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... Lucy Braley replied. "Yes, and the poorhouse will end us unless Hosmer has a spark of good feeling. I sent him a postal card to come a long while back, but he hasn't so much as answered. Here, Lucy"—she turned to the child—"run ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... He naturally regards his children as his savings-bank; he expects them to care for him when he gets old, and in some trades old age comes very early. A Jewish tailor was quite lately sent to the Cook County poorhouse, paralyzed beyond recovery at the age of thirty-five. Had his little boy of nine been but a few years older, he might have been spared this sorrow of public charity. He was, in fact, better able to well support a family when he was twenty than when he was thirty-five, ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... secretive Dobbin, what difference does it make to you whether you feel the guiding hand or not? You know when the courtship begins, the brisk drives about town to all points of interest, to the pond, the poorhouse, and the cemetery; you know how the courtship progresses, the long drives in the country, the idling along untravelled roads and woodland ways, the moonlight nights and misty meadows; you know when your stops to nibble by the wayside will not ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... that the poorhouse at Hilltown near by, to which the infant would have gone if he had left it to the care of the county, was at that time being "investigated," with all that the name implies when referring to public matters; the clergy of the neighborhood being active in pushing the charges, Mr. Davis felt that ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... now," he remarked when he came back. "The Merricks took her out of the poorhouse years ago; and if her loyalty would let her, I guess the poor old thing could tell tales that would curdle your blood. She's the mulatto woman who was standing in here a while ago, with her apron to her eyes. The old ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... garment aside. "It's half worn out it is, dragging it back and forth over the counter these six months. Take it or leave it. Hallo! What have we here? Little Finnegan, eh? Your mother not dead yet? It's in the poorhouse ye will be if she lasts ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... be stated, that old folks who are sent over the hill to the poorhouse have invited their fate. And conversely, elderly people who are treated with courtesy, consideration, kindness and respect are those who, in manhood's morning, have sown the seeds of love and kindness. Water rises to the height of its source; results ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... least as large as biscuits. His fame steadily increased with his charity. I did not understand the principle of his manner of life then, and I do not now. By all the laws of my experience he should at this moment be in the poorhouse, but he isn't—he is rich and honored ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... John, laughing at the ludicrous appearance of Fayette upon the ground. "He was born in the poorhouse, an' I've heard his mother died. His father had before then, I ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... farmers-general. They allowed the noblesse none of the exemptions so unfairly enjoyed by them elsewhere. The taille, which was a personal tax in other parts of the kingdom, was in Languedoc an equitable land tax, assessed according to a valuation periodically revised. There was not a poorhouse in the whole province, and such was its prosperity and excellent administration that it enjoyed better credit in the market than the Central Government, and the king used sometimes, in order to get more favourable terms, to borrow on the ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... end in the poorhouse, it wouldn't be so hard after this. He was a totally different man from what he had been, and he would be respected and honoured in a very ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... friendly, and gave them nuts out of their own hoards; but the bees were selfish and rude, justifying themselves on the ground that Tangle and Mossy were not subjects of their queen, and charity must begin at home, though indeed they had not one drone in their poorhouse at the time. Even the blinking moles would fetch them an earth-nut or a truffle now and then, talking as if their mouths, as well as their eyes and ears, were full of cotton wool, or their own velvety fur. By the time they got out of the ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald

... fingers were likely to incur from handling the ropes. But my observation of so many heavier troubles left me very little tenderness for their finger-ends. In time I grew to be reasonably hard-hearted, though it never was quite possible to leave a countryman with no shelter save an English poorhouse, when, as he invariably averred, he had only to set foot on his native soil to be possessed of ample funds. It was my ultimate conclusion, however, that American ingenuity may be pretty safely left to itself, and that, one way or another, a Yankee ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... entered the trust in good faith has spent the money they gave him, and tries to sell the stock he received, it has gone down to seven cents on a dollar, and the trust buys it in, and he cables his family to come home in the steerage of a cattle ship. His old employees have gone to the poorhouse or to selling bananas with a cart, and the former manufacturer who was happy and prosperous has become poor and shabby, and he looks at his closed factory, with its broken windows, and he tries to get a position pushing a scraper on the asphalt pavement, ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck

... couldn't help that," Walter observed. "We're liable to go to the poorhouse the way it is. Well, what's the matter our walkin' to this ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... learned that the taxes do not vary in proportion to land values. Poor lands, if inhabited, must always pay heavy taxes; whereas, large areas of good land carry lighter taxes compared with their earning capacity. You must provide your regular expenses for county officers, county courthouse, jail, and poorhouse, about the same as we do. Your roads and bridges cost as much as ours; and the schools in the South must cost more than ours, for a complete double system of schools ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins

... babe left without the rightful breast to feed it; the mother and her large family suddenly deprived of the breadwinner; old men who had lived like saints, giving their all to their own and to the world, driven to the degradation of the poorhouse in the end—ah, if one did not smile, one would die of weeping, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... name was John Rowlands, was born of poor parents in Wales, in 1840. Being left an orphan at the age of three, he was sent to the poorhouse in his native place. There he remained for ten years, and then shipped as a cabin boy in a vessel bound for America. Soon after his arrival in this country, he found employment in New Orleans with a merchant named Stanley. His intelligence, ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden

... an honorable pauperism. It is no disgrace to be poor or to be in a poorhouse if there is a good reason for it. One may be manly in poverty. But the Jukes were never manly or honorable paupers, they were ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship

... anyone going to the poorhouse, or into bankruptcy," I said, "because of the money spent on a child. I fancy ...
— Making the House a Home • Edgar A. Guest

... Tom remained at the poorhouse precisely twelve hours. It did not enter the minds of the authorities that any one so fortunate as to be admitted into that happy haven would decline to stay there. The unwilling guest disappeared early ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... it, and I took it back with me; and the others being gone, an old woman and I cut the patch off it and put "No. 4"'s stiffening arms into the sleeves. Word was sent to us during the day to say that the city would bury him in the poorhouse grounds. But we told them that arrangements had been made; that he would have a soldier's burial. And he ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page

... The Rommany never do that—they'd sooner stay in the open field (literally, air-field). We would ask the farmer for leave to stop the night in the barn, but we'd sooner sleep under the hedge in the rain than go in the poorhouse. Gipsies are not like tramps, for they have a ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... old woman. "'Tain't me that's done for him. I was a poor lone creeter in the poorhouse when Jabez Potter came and took me out. I know that deep down in his old heart there's a flame of charity. ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson

... defacements manifold, I recognized the head of the man of Marwar Junction. Carnehan rose to go. I attempted to stop him. He was not fit to walk abroad. "Let me take away the whiskey, and give me a little money," he gasped. "I was a King once. I'll go to the Deputy Commissioner and ask to set in the Poorhouse till I get my health. No, thank you, I can't wait till you get a carriage for me. I've urgent private affairs—in ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... "Amen" quite loud, and mebby he duz mean to vote different. He voted license to help Jonesville, most of the bizness men of the town sayin' that it would help bizness dretfully to have license. Well, it has helped the undertaker, the jail and the poorhouse. ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... break of day, having gained many miles, he succeeded in ridding himself of his seaman's clothing, having found some mouldy old rags on the banks of a stagnant pond, nigh a rickety building, which looked like a poorhouse—clothing not improbably, as he surmised, left there on the bank by some pauper suicide. Marvel not that he should with avidity seize these rags; what the suicides abandon, the ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... quite right. She doesn't look like it, but she wrong here," continued Campbell, tapping his forehead. "Why, she fancies herself immensely rich, Mrs. Bradshaw, when, as a matter of fact, she's a penniless cousin of mine, who would have gone to the poorhouse ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger

... selling it by the drink. Only place we can sell brandy is at Storisende spaceport, and we have to take what the trading-ship captains offer. You've been on a rich planet for the last five years, Conn. You've forgotten what it's like to live in a poorhouse. And that's what ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper

... was swimmin' in the cistern last night, too,—if it made the other side safe I 'm all right, but if it drowned there 'll be another bill. It ain't no use your tryin' to cheer me up, Mrs. Lathrop, because I ain't to be cheered. I know I 'm goin' to the poorhouse, 'n' I don't thank you nor no other man for tellin' me to my face as what I know ain't so. Gran'ma Mullins 'n' me is two very sad hearts these days, 'n' Heaven help us both. To hear her talk you 'd think the Siamese twins was the sun ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner

... woman who died in the workhouse of an English village, almost as soon as her babe drew his first breath. The mother's name being unknown, the workhouse officials called the child Oliver Twist, under which title he grew up. For nine years he was farmed out at a branch poorhouse, where with twenty or thirty other children he bore all the miseries consequent on neglect, abuse, and starvation. He was then removed to the workhouse proper to be taught a ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... grandfather in the fifties. It was one of the oldest firms in San Francisco, but she recalled his frequent and bitter allusions to the necessity of sitting up nights these days if a man wanted to keep out of the poorhouse. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... you look at that old clock there; it was one that b'longed to old Peter Thomas. I bought it when he broke up an' went to the poorhouse. Doctor Prescott he foreclosed on him 'bout ten years ago—you don't remember. He had his old house torn down, an' sowed the land down to grass. I s'pose I paid more'n the clock was worth, but I guess it kept the old man in snuff an' terbaccer a while. Now you look at that clock; watch that ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the start, however, who, in their several ways, help her to endure her troubles. One is Aunt Alvirah Boggs, who is nobody's relation but everybody's aunt, and whom Jabez Potter, the miller, has taken from the poorhouse to keep his home tidy and comfortable. Aunt Alvirah sees the good underlying miserly Uncle Jabez's character when nobody else can. She lavishes upon the little orphan girl all the love and affection that she would have given to her own children had ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson

... his good friend, Frank, had learned that the money came through a lawyer in New York, really an uncle of young Allen. Then, later on, it was found that Ralph was only an adopted son of the Wests, who had taken him from a poorhouse. ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes

... dead, ain't they?" was Bert's saturnine comment. "There ain't no difference dyin' in battle or in the poorhouse. The thing is they're deado. I wouldn't care a rap if my father'd been hanged. It's all the same in a thousand years. This braggin' about folks makes me tired. Besides, my father couldn't a-fought. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... the Twelfth Arrondissement, the poorest quarter of Paris, that in which two-thirds of the population lack firing in winter, which leaves most brats at the gate of the Foundling Hospital, which sends most beggars to the poorhouse, most rag-pickers to the street corners, most decrepit old folks to bask against the walls on which the sun shines, most delinquents to ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac

... that for the last few months of her pilgrimage Jess was left alone. Yet I may not say that she was alone. Jamie, who should have been with her, was undergoing his own ordeal far away; where, we did not now even know. But though the poorhouse stands in Thrums, where all may see it, the neighbors did ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... unfortunate natives had been pillaged and robbed mercilessly. Thousands starved to death. When I was at Deli Abbas ghastly bands of ragged skeletons would come through to us begging food and work. Soane turned a large khan on the outskirts of the town into a poorhouse, and here he lodged the starving women and children that drifted in from all over Kurdistan. It was a fearful assemblage of scarecrows. As they got better he selected women from among them to whom he turned over the administration of the khan. They divided the unfortunates in ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... children and we all supposed there was a mother, too. And when they came there was nobody but old Aunt Martha, as they call her. She's a cousin of Mr. Meredith's mother, I believe, and he took her in to save her from the poorhouse. She is seventy-five years old, half blind, and very deaf and ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... worse, though," answered the hut-keeper; "poverty out here can scarcely be said to pinch. I often ask myself what might it have been, or what certainly would it have been, had I remained in London till my last shilling was gone. To rot in a poorhouse or to sweep a crossing would have been my lot, or there might have been a worse alternative. I had enough left to pay my passage out here. It was a wise move—the only wise thing I ever did in my life. My expectations on landing were foolish, and before I ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston

... Marcia, you're not going to be so severe as that, are you?" pleaded Bartley. "A few dollars, more or less, are not going to keep us out of the poorhouse. I just want to stay here three days: that will leave us a clean hundred, and we can start fair." He was half joking, but she ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... mug house; gin mill, gin palace; bar, bar room; barrel house [U.S.], cabaret, chophouse; club, clubhouse; cookshop^, dive [U.S.], exchange [Euph.]; grill room, saloon [U.S.], shebeen^; coffee house, eating house; canteen, restaurant, buffet, cafe, estaminet^, posada^; almshouse^, poorhouse, townhouse [U.S.]. garden, park, pleasure ground, plaisance^, demesne. [quarters for animals] cage, terrarium, doghouse; pen, aviary; barn, stall; zoo. V. take up one's abode &c (locate oneself) 184; inhabit &c (be present) 186. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... became self-conscious; occasionally she was indignant that she should always have to petition him for the money with which to buy his food. She caught herself criticizing his belief that, since his joke about trying to keep her out of the poorhouse had once been accepted as admirable humor, it should continue to be his daily bon mot. It was a nuisance to have to run down the street after him because she had forgotten to ask him ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... Smith, 'when it was clear that he couldn't do nuthin', we ast him if the' wa'n't nobody could put up fer him, an' he said you was his brother, an' well off, an' hadn't ought to let him go t' the poorhouse.' ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott

... conceive of that. We consider the pinch of poverty the highest incentive that a man can have. If our gifted friend here," he said, indicating me, "were not kept like a toad under the harrow, with his nose on the grindstone, and the poorhouse ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells

... said Johnny Coe, who was a sage philosopher. "For there are two kinds of abeelity, don't ye understa-and? There's a scattered abeelity that's of no use! Auld Randie Donaldson was good at fifty different things, and he died in the poorhouse! There's a dour kind of abeelity, though, that has no cleverness, but just gangs tramping on; ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... rang out melodiously or melted to a mellow music that woke a sympathetic thrill in those who listened. Rose glowed with pride as she accompanied her friend, for Phebe was in her own world now a lovely world where no depressing memory of poorhouse or kitchen, ignorance or loneliness, came to trouble her, a happy world where she could be herself and rule others by the magic of her ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... of those who are able and willing to work. There remain still the uncounted thousands who by accident or illness, age or infirmity, are unable to maintain themselves. For these people, under the older dispensation, there was nothing but the poorhouse, the jail or starvation by the roadside. The narrow individualism of the nineteenth century refused to recognize the social duty of supporting somebody else's grandmother. Such charity began, and ended, at home. But even with the passing of the nineteenth century an awakened sense of the ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock

... she was seen beating him and tearing his clothes. Fear for herself—fear of his supernatural gifts—were both merged in the stronger feeling of rage; and at last she, assisted by one Stammers, a carpenter, pushed the old man into a brook. He died at Halsted poorhouse from the effects of the ill-usage. Emma Smith and Stammers were sentenced to six months hard labour for their share in this outrage—the judge excusing the leniency of the punishment on the ground of the woman's state of mental excitement, and of the man's having pulled Dummey ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... policeman on the spot, and a dozen other persons, cab-drivers, haunters of the street by night, and houseless wanderers, casuals who at this season of the year preferred the pavements to the poorhouse wards. They all took part against John Crumb. Why had the big man interfered between the young woman and her young man? Two or three of them wiped Sir Felix's face, and dabbed his eyes, and proposed this and the other remedy. Some thought that he had better be taken straight ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... came back to the bridge at the lower end of the town, and sat himself upon the parapet. The clocks struck the hour, and no Fanny appeared. In fact, at that moment she was being robed in her grave-clothes by two attendants at the Union poorhouse—the first and last tiring-women the gentle creature had ever been honoured with. The quarter went, the half hour. A rush of recollection came upon Troy as he waited: this was the second time she had broken a ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... name, or where he lives. He don't belong in Pleasantville. Oh, dear!" she concluded, with a sigh of deep depression, "I wish Lem would get back on the road in a steady job, instead of scheming at this thing and that. He'll land us all in the poorhouse yet, for he spends all he gets ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman

... to the band playing and mingled with the populace at its distressing and obnoxious pleasures. There were thirteen vehicles belonging to the upper classes, mostly rockaways and old-style barouches, such as the mayor rides in at the unveiling of the new poorhouse at Milledgeville, Alabama. Round and round the desiccated fountain in the middle of the plaza they drove, and lifted their high silk hats to their friends. The common people walked around in barefooted bunches, puffing stogies ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... you would," said Tom. "Well, I'll tell you. You see I live at the poorhouse, having no relations to take care of me, and no place to live. But in the summer I hire out to the farmers around here that want me, and work to earn ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Big Woods • Laura Lee Hope

... of the worn-out labourer is the poorhouse, described in lines of which it is enough to say that Scott and Wordsworth learnt them by heart, and the melancholy deathbed already noticed. Are we reading a poem or a Blue Book done into rhyme? may possibly be the question of some readers. The answer ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... said Robert, laughing. "He takes a great interest in my affairs. He predicts that we shall come to the poorhouse yet." ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... first two of these stories one may see most clearly the principle that underlay almost all of Dickens's work. He was never content merely to tell an interesting story. He wrote with a purpose. In Oliver Twist that purpose was, first, to better the poorhouse system, and second, to show that even in the lowest and wickedest paths of life (the life wherein lived Fagin with his pupils in crime and Bill Sikes the brutal burglar) there could yet be found, as in the case of poor Nancy, real kindness ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... shirt and necktie had been stored in the clothes press for more than a year but they were nevertheless "new" to Aunt Deel. Poor soul! She felt the importance of the day and its duties. It was that ancient, Yankee dread of the poorhouse that filled her heart I suppose. Yet I wonder, often, why she wished us to be so proudly adorned for such ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... himself a name in Oxford, where he was Savilian Professor of Astronomy. But Carey was not a Scotsman, and therefore the university was not for such as he. Like his school-fellows, he seemed born to the English labourer's fate of five shillings a week, and the poorhouse in sickness and old age. From this, in the first instance, he was saved by a disease which affected his face and hands most painfully whenever he was long exposed to the sun. For seven years he had failed to find relief. His attempt at work in the field were for two years followed by distressing ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... could not seem to recover from this latest annoyance, "I don't see how you can be so fond of children. I did hope—for your sake and—on account of Uncle Issachar's offer that I'd like to have one—but I'd rather go to the poorhouse! I'd almost lose your affection rather than ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... primitive state of man to their present state, makes a great, fundamental mistake, the same mistake which one would make in supposing that the pale and decrepit inmates of a city hospital or a country poorhouse represented the lower stage of development from which the strong and healthy men and women in the surrounding country had been evolved. Our evolutionists are in very much the same plight with Mark Twain and his friend, who, having slept all day, rushed from the hotel in scanty ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... suffering, as in the case of the foundlings. So Jonas Hanway summoned his energies to the task. Alone and unassisted he first ascertained by personal inquiry the extent of the evil. He explored the dwellings of the poorest classes in London, and visited the poorhouse sick wards, by which he ascertained the management in detail of every workhouse in and near the metropolis. He next made a journey into France and through Holland, visiting the houses for the reception of the poor, and noting whatever he thought might be adopted at home with ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... might be too late. Alas! alas for that young man! he became a drunkard; he spent the farm left by his father; his wife died; his children were scattered among friends; and years after, when I returned to my native town, I was told that he was a pauper at the poorhouse. ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis

... twenty years, and also a little legacy from Mr. Hardie's father. She now went about the house of her master and debtor, declaring she was sure he would not rob her, and, if he did, she would never go into the poorhouse. "I'll go out on the common and die ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... beside the dinner-table. He ate more heartily than before, for his forenoon's labor made even poorhouse ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger

... and nobody noticed the look anyway. This fashion of the 1.30 luncheon had been one of the earliest of their Yankee innovations which had caused the rising Heths to be viewed with alleged alarm by ante-bellum critics, dear old poorhouse Tories who pretended that they wanted only to live as their grandsires had lived. The Heths, unterrified, and secure from the afternoon torpor inflicted on up-to-date in'ards by slave-time regime, dispatched the exotic meal with ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... Well, she was in the poorhouse afore that. I don't know whether 'twas her poetryin' that got her in there, but I know darned well ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... attached to a big stationary engine at the summit. But it was the herald of the doom of the old-world England. Highways and coaching roads, canals and rivers, were abandoned and deserted. The old coachmen, once lords of the road, ended their days in the poorhouse, and steam, ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... in the bulrushes, Emmy dear," corrected Rebecca laughingly. "Pharaoh's daughter found him there. It wasn't quite as romantic a scene—Squire Bean's wife taking little Abijah Flagg from the poorhouse when his girl-mother died, but, oh, I think Abijah's splendid! Mr. Ladd says Riverboro'll be proud of him yet, and I shouldn't wonder, Emmy dear, if you had a three-story house with a cupola on it, some day; and sitting down at your ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... sometimes I feels bahd, not to be airnin' nothin', and gets some afeard o' the poorhouse; but, bless ye, I can't help thinking ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)

... crossed his legs the other way, an' asked if there was n't anythin' bigger as could be looked into, but every one knows Hiram is the biggest man anywhere around here, so that was no use. He asked then if we did n't have a poorhouse or a insane asylum or a slaughter-house or suthin' as he could show up in red ink. He said somebody must be doin' suthin' as they had n't ought to be doin' somewhere, an' it was both his virtue an' ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner

... the Old Ladies'; yew've got friends over thar, yew'll git erlong splendid. An' I'll git erlong tew. Yer know"—throwing his shoulders back, he assumed the light, bantering tone so familiar to his wife—"the poorhouse doors is always open. I'd jest admire ter go thar. Thar's a rocking-chair in every room, and they say the grub is A No. 1." He winked at her, smiling his broadest smile in ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund

... us! I tell you we'll dodge them now. Why in blazes did I ever bother to take that other brat from the poorhouse where its mother died? It was your plan to substitute one child for the other, Bessie. I wanted to steal Merriwell's kid in the first place. Furies take him! I swore years ago to strike at his heart when the time came. He was responsible for the death ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish

... inestimable gain to the peasantry of Ireland. But allow that all the idle poor of this island could in six months be taught how to earn six pence each per day, the aggregate benefit to the Irish and to mankind would be greater than that of all the gold mines yet discovered. The Poorhouse Unions could be nearly emptied in a year, and this whole population comfortably fed, clad and housed within the next three years. A beginning must be made with the simplest or household manufactures, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... angry, just wonder!" Noyon and Peronne are sacked and ruined. At Chauny 1800 houses out of 2500 were deliberately burned, and at a distance they bombarded the remainder, full of old folks and children whom they had parked there. All the public buildings, churches, hospitals and poorhouse were blown up. Three hundred towns and villages were burning at one time in this small section of the Cradle of France. Hindenburg was at Roisel when they rounded up the populations, went through their pockets for their money (giving "receipts"), took their clothes off their ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... surely they had money enough; surely they were easily pleased. They gathered in crowds to hear crazy Mrs. Green denouncing the city government for sending her to the poorhouse in a wagon instead of a carriage. They thronged to inspect the load of hay that was drawn by the two horses whose harness had been cut to pieces, and then repaired by Denison's Eureka Cement. They all bought whips with that unfailing ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... thought I'd get mended and then be a giddy idler for a year or so. But it's up to me. I have to get into the collar. Otherwise I should have stayed south all winter. You know we've just got home. I had to loaf in the sun for practically a year. Now I have to get busy. I don't mean to say that the poorhouse stares us in the face, you know, but unless a certain amount of revenue is forthcoming, we simply can't afford to keep up ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair



Words linked to "Poorhouse" :   establishment, workhouse



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