Orphans across the colour line
February 28, 2017 10:48 AM   Subscribe

Children were packed like sardines into the miserable dormitories: The Indianapolis Asylum for Friendless Colored Children
posted by Rumple (8 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Thanks for this.

I'm always a little haunted by the names of 19th century benevolent institutions: so many of the "friendless," "wayward," "lost," or, as in Boston, "little wanderers." (That one still exists, but as a modern institution, decent AFAIK.)
posted by Countess Elena at 10:57 AM on February 28, 2017


Offers made by the city play ground authorities to equip the yard for the children were promptly turned down by the superintendent.
I hate everyone.
posted by Etrigan at 10:58 AM on February 28, 2017 [11 favorites]


If it makes you feel any better, Countess Elena, "friendless" didn't literally mean "no friends"--it derives from the legal custom of referring to people who stood in some sort of unofficial guardianship capacity to a child or other legally incompetent person and represented them in a lawsuit as "next friend."
posted by praemunire at 11:45 AM on February 28, 2017


Countess Elena: one of the people I've turned up in researching my family tree spent at least twenty years as an 'inmate' at the Western Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane. Yes indeedy, the 19th century definitely preferred straightforward names and no euphemisms.
posted by easily confused at 11:59 AM on February 28, 2017


Huh, hadn't even considered that it was always the orphanages for white children that made it into the histories I read. But of course, they'd be segregated (were there any states were they weren't, I wonder?) and of course they'd be even more horrible across the color lines. And the white ones were dreadful to start with.
posted by tavella at 12:27 PM on February 28, 2017


I don't know which breaks my heart more, the kids that were put into this hell hole as infants and lived their whole childhood there, or the kids like the Lessenberrys and Edmonds, who had the love of a family and then were abandoned and imprisoned, repeatedly.

I just wonder at how far we've come since then. Kids go hungry today, are abused, fall between the cracks of social services, are denied decent schools and health care.

It's pretty easy to hate everyone, Etrigan.
posted by BlueHorse at 6:49 PM on February 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


one of the people I've turned up in researching my family tree spent at least twenty years as an 'inmate' at the Western Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane.

I've found the word "inmate" was used a bit differently in the turn-of-the-last-century. It can be found referring to the prostitutes in brothels and even for people who lived in regular boarding houses.
posted by RedEmma at 6:57 PM on February 28, 2017


(Also, an inmate can be someone who lives in a nursing home.)
posted by RedEmma at 6:59 PM on February 28, 2017


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