ABSTRACT
The essential characteristics of the poor-relief system can be established. Both the records of eighteenth-century overseers of the poor and the early nineteenth-century state wide relief surveys make clear that the colonial community typically cared for its dependents without disrupting their lives. By the end of the eighteenth century, almost four thousand workhouses were scattered through the realm, holding something like one hundred thousand inmates, and philanthropists for three hundred years had been endowing almshouses. The eighteenth-century system of relief at once reflected the colonists' easy acceptance of the poor and itself encouraged this perspective. Few women took to the road alone in the eighteenth century, except for those of dubious character like prostitutes. Patterned after the family, considered a place of last resort, the almshouse was typical of all eighteenth-century service institutions. Eighteenth-century jails in fact closely resembled the household in structure and routine. They lacked a distinct architecture and special procedures.
