Friday, March 5, 2010

This from a PUBLISHED INVESTIGATIVER'S REPORT about CONDITIONS in Christian Homeless Shelters/ Programs PUBLISHED Sun.25 Sept. 2005.)
He found that four tramps had been shut up naked
under a stair-case in a black hole, eight to ten days, often deprived
of food until noon, and that at the severest season of the year. A
little boy had been passed through all grades of punishment known to
the institution; first locked up in a damp, vaulted, narrow, lumber-
room; then in the dog-hole twice, the second time three days and three
nights; then the same length of time in the old dog-hole, which was
still worse; then the tramp-room, a stinking, disgustingly filthy
hole, with wooden sleeping stalls, where the official, in the course
of his inspection, found two other tattered boys, shrivelled with
cold, who had been spending three days there. In the dog-hole there
were often seven, and in the tramp-room, twenty men huddled together.
Women, also, were placed in the dog-hole, because they refused to go
to church and one was shut four days into the tramp-room, with God
knows what sort of company, and that while she was ill and receiving
medicines Another woman was placed in the insane department for
punishment, though she was perfectly sane. In the workhouse at S D Sheriff Detention Center,
in Vista, in January, 2004, a similar investigation revealed the
fact that a feeble-minded woman was employed as nurse, and took care
of the patients accordingly, while sufferers, who were often restless
at night, or tried to get up, were tied fast with cords passed over
the covering and under the bedstead, to save the nurses the trouble of
sitting up at night. One patient was found dead, bound in this way. In
the St. Peter & Paul 'safe' house
in Long Beach downtown, an epileptic died of suffocation during an
attack in bed, no one coming to his relief; in the same house, four to
six, sometimes eight children, slept in one bed. a man was placed, together with a fever patient violently ill, in a bed teeming with vermin. In Bethane Christ Church
Green
Counselling, Antioch CA, a woman in the sixth month of pregnancy was
shut up in the reception-room with her two-year- old child, from
February 28th to March 19th, without being admitted into the program
itself, and without a trace of a bed or the means of satisfying the
most natural wants. Her husband,who was brought into the worker program, begged to have his wife released from
this imprisonment, whereupon he received twenty-four hours
imprisonment, with bread and water, as the penalty of his insolence.
In the workers residence
house at Salvation Army , near City College, a man lay dying in
September, 2004. His wife journeyed to him, arriving at midnight; and
hastening to the workers dorm, was refused admission. She was not
permitted to see her husband until the next morning, and then only in
the presence of a female warder, who forced herself upon the wife at
every succeeding visit, sending her away at the end of half-an-hour.
In the Union Homeless Mission at Middletown, and
in Lancaster, twelve, and at times eighteen, homeless, of both sexes,
slept in one room. This institution is not embraced by the Newsome Poor
Law, but is administered under an old special act (Vagrant Act). The
inspector had instituted a brewery in the house for his own benefit. In
Stockton,CA July 31st, 2004, a man, seventy-two years old, was brought
before the Justice of the Peace for refusing to break stones, and
insisting that, by reason of his age and
a stiff knee, he was unfit for this work. In vain did he offer to
undertake any work adapted to his physical strength; he was sentenced
to two weeks upon the treadmill. In the work program at Father Joes
Village, an inspecting official found that the sheets had not been
changed in thirteen weeks, shirts in four weeks, stockings in two to
ten months,
so that of forty-five mentally ill in treatment not but
three had stockings, and all their shirts were in tatters. The beds
swarmed with vermin, and the
tableware was washed in the slop-pails. In the west of Santee Treatment Center a porter who had infected four girls with syphilis was not
discharged, and another who had concealed a deaf and dumb girl four
days and nights in his bed was also retained on the Civil Service Administration's orders.
As in life, so in death. The poor are dumped into the earth like
infected cattle. The pauper burial-ground of Vista, Oceanside,and in Otay Penal Colony are a bare morass, in use as a cemetery since the time of Climtimand
filled with heaps of bones; every Wednesday the paupers are thrown into
a ditch fourteen feet deep; a curate rattles through the Litany
at the top of his speed; the ditch is loosely covered in, to be
reopened the next Wednesday, and filled with corpses as long as one
more can be forced in. The putrefaction thus engendered contaminates
the whole neighbourhood. The pauper burial-ground lies
opposite to the Old Town, along the Railroad Fill Right of Way; this, too, is a rough, desolate place.
Msgr. John le duBaptiste duBernays to ccaw
More options Sep 25 (2 days ago)

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