The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1867-12-27
REPORT
OF THE
ran Jury,
On the Condition of the
A L NJ S I'll 0 USE AND JAIL.
NOVEMBER TERN, 1867.

w the Honorable the Judges of the
4 Circuit Court for Hartford county:
In accordance with the requirement of
law, the Grand Jury report, that they Wis
tied the Alms-House, superintendent by
Mr.. John Paca, who politely conducted
them through the several apartments, in
which were twenty-seven inmates, viz: if
teen whites and twelve colored, who APP
peared to be as comfortable and as well
cared for as the dilapidated state and I'M
suitable arrangement of the buildings will
allow, except one old white man, who is
insane and requires constant attention, they
would recommend that he be placed in some
Insane Asylum, where better care could
be taken of him.
The Farm, also, looked to be in tolera-
BILE condition, and to be worked in hus-
bandmanlike manner, and the neighbors
agree in saying that the present incumbent
has managed it better than it has been done
for several years. The products of the past
season have been one hundred and sixty
barrels of corn, one hundred and seventy
five bushels of wheat, sixty bushels of po-
tatoes, three hundred and sevcnty-fve
bushels of oats, seventy-6ve bushels of
buckwheat, and some hay and live stock.
They recommend supply of manure,
which would greatly increase the crops,
and if the farm was properly managed it
would become nearly or quite self-suppor-
ting.
In pursuance of an Act of Assembly al
ready obtained, they would urge the sale
of that part of the farm lying on the east
side of the road passing through it, which
is in an unproductive state and would re-
quire much labor and expense to improve,
and appropriate the proceeds thereof and
as much more as may be necessary to erect a
good & substantial building with modern
commodious and suitable to
accommodate more comfortably those
thrown on the charities of the county, one
that would remove the imputation that ours
is the most miserable aims house in the
State except one.
They also visited the Jail, and were po-
litely shown through the same by Mr..
Young, the present efficient Sheriff, and
hope their duty may never call them again
to visit such place. There were twenty
persons in confinement, for various often
ces, one of whom is insane and has been
confined for six years. He is foreigner,
and has not been naturalized, and should
be returned to his friends in his native
country. The condition of the prisoners
was as good as could be expected in such
a contracted and lily ventilated building as
the county has provided and denominated
a Jail.
The Jury would recommend, in order to
enlarge the very small, contracted kitchen
in the Sheriff's house, the erection of a
shed building at the southeast end of the
same, say II by 20 feet, which would give
more room for preparing the food for the
prisoners and make it much more conve-
nient. This should be attended to at once
On examining the Jail, they found the
timbers much decayed, part of the floor
very unsafe, the stairway and passage very
contracted, the cells badly ventilated, the
arrangement for cleansing the conduits We
ry imperfect and calculated to engender
disease. In fine, the whole building is more
suitable for caging wild beasts than keep
ing in custody those awaiting the action of
the law, whether guilty or innocent. A
Jail should not be, entirely, place of cor
poreal punishment, but prison for safely
keeping those arrested for crime until the
character of the offence is ascertained. 1t
is very evident that the present building is
wholly unfit for the purpose intended, and
the Grand Jury would earnestly recon-
mend that the unsightly, unwisely contri-
we'd, ill constructed and badly arranged old
building, be taken down and replaced by a
new one more in accordance with the pro-
gress of the age and better calculated to
promote the comfort and health of those
confined therein.
Shall it be said that our county, which
has been making such wonderful progress
in improvement within the last thirty years
and which, too, entered the sisterhood of
counties so long ago as 1878, has the mea-
nest and most badly arranged Alms-house
and Jail of any county in the State, save
one, and very few inferior in the United
States?
Former Grand Juries have repeatedly
reporteds unfavorably of these buildings,
yet no action has been taken to remedy the
The Jury, therefore, would
respectfully urge your honors, to bring
this matter before the proper authorities,
that these regular semi-annual complaints
may be silenced and this stigma removed,
and our county placed in her proper posi-
ton, and these institutions no longer con-
tinued to aggrayate the sufferings of hu-
manity; but, on the other hand, promote
the comfort and health of those who may
be so unfortunate as to become occupants
of the same.
An early attention to this matter will,
they think, receive the appreciation of
great majority of the tax payers of this
county.
BENZ. SILVER, Foreman
CHENEY HOSKINS,