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There are to-day forty-four paid employees in the institution for eight hundred and ninety-eight persons on May 1. This was the full number by inventory. I counted persons in different wards as I went, with the help of matrons. Those in both hospitals and insane buildings are exactly correct; the others nearly so. Population there varies from day to day, and is now about nine hundred. There are one hundred and forty-three women and children not sick, with two attendants, one a night watch, one for day, in the wards in the main building, and two hundred and thirty-three men and boys in the opposite wing, with two attendants. The employees are as follows, in full:

Superintendent, head matron, assistant superintendent, clerk, three physicians, one engineer, one baker, seven attendants for insane, two attendants for old men (not sick) and boys (two hundred and thirty-three persons), three cooks for nine hundred inmates, two employees in charge of laundry, five female and three male sick-nurses, two matrons for one hundred and forty-three women, and about forty babies who are not sick, one watchman, one gatekeeper, one teamster, one gardener, six farm-laborers, one carpenter, forty-four employees.

This is about the usual number.

As in private families, days' work are done during the year by masons or other workmen on repairs. The names of such employees even for a day appear in annual reports. So when a nurse or a doctor leaves, and is replaced by another, both names appear on the lists. It would be equally true to say that a private family kept five servants, when they never kept more than one, if, as it sometimes unfortunately happens to be the case, that number of changes occurred during the year, as to say that the State almshouse had sixty-four employees last year; forty-four or forty-five was the actual number. No person of adequate experience or judgment would see any place to reduce this force. True humanity and regard for the interests of the poor at Tewksbury would add seven or eight good attendants, and this I hope to see done. Every inmate I have talked with speaks of Capt. Marsh favorably, some with great affection. Not one admits to me that they ever knew him or Dr. Lathrop to do an unkind thing; though, as I have said, there is some complaint of occasional harshness by male attendants.

Dr. Wilkin thinks Capt. Marsh one of the best and kindest men she ever knew. I believe that he has been maligned, and feel great sympathy for him. This venerable and still active man of seventy-eight years would inspire respect in any one who met him now, having had no previous account of him. He belongs to a past generation, and there are modern ideas and improvements which could be better carried out by a younger man. It would be an advantage to have a professional man of the organizing talent of Dr. Quimby of the Worcester asylum in charge of the State almshouse. While I have confidence in the medical management of Dr. Wilkin, I cannot say the same of the other physicians. There is a slipshod condition of things in the men's hospital which even the small appropriation does not excuse. Dr. Lathrop, though a man of polite manners, and spoken of by all as amiable and gentle, seems to me to lack force and energy, and is by no means thorough in his work; nor is his male assistant wholly satisfactory, so far as I can judge. I recommend a change in both those officers, and if possible, would endeavor to retain Dr. Wilkin, who is, I think, just such a woman as is needed. I examined the hospital bills, and find the apparently large sum of $1,439 for medicines last year. This includes trusses and supporters, infants' food, and flaxseed for poultices, bought in large quantities by the barrel, making up large items, and incorrectly charged as "medicines," because purchased from a druggist.

I made inquiry about the care of the dead (of male inmates of long standing), two or three of whom gave full accounts, not varying. I also asked Dr. Wilkin about this. I asked no other persons. Male patients die and are "laid out" on the beds in open ward, as there are no private rooms for the purpose. Females are, when liable to die, placed in a private room, as the new hospital has separate rooms. They are then placed in a coffin, and taken to the chapel until buried: all seems to be done decently. The men who told me were not likely to state things too favorably, judging from some other things they said. Every dead body is viewed by a physician before being taken out of the bed. Further than this, I know nothing about the subject. It has been my desire to make a most thorough and careful examination of this institution, to satisfy my own mind and other people of the real condition.

To this end I have talked most freely with, and cross-questioned, various inmates, and have given out in the wards, in advance of my coming, that I wished to hear the truth. One nice old Irishwoman said she had been here, "off and on," for twenty or more years. "No, dear," she said, "I never was ill-used, nor see nobody ill-used; but you know there's quare people here, and many things they say." Another woman, smart and intelligent, but a victim of intemperance, said she had been "in and out for eight years;" and Capt. Marsh "has been a father to me, and I was always well used." I heard no complaints from women, except some trivial ones, such as are common in the world, not one of abuse. I have investigated drawers, cupboards, closets, baggage-rooms, etc. All are in first-rate order, trunks marked; few paupers bring trunks or have good clothes, but wear State clothes. Their few effects are done up in bags, ticketed and numbered, and kept on shelves in good order to return to them. Some of the insane women wear their own clothes, nicely marked and of good quality: one had her own sheets and pillow-cases. She has had her own things every time I have been there; in fact, I see no changes, no "fixing up."