Nearly every town used to have a workhouse, almshouse, or poor farm to house the poor. A number of these institutions operated well into the 1960s; however, little has been written about them.
A recently released book, The Poorhouse: America's Forgotten Institution, by USM Professor of Social Work and Sociology David Wagner examines these social institutions where the poor, as well as the elderly, widows, orphans, and the physically and mentally ill were housed together.
Professor Wagner's look back at these institutions (which began to disappear after the creation of the Social Security Act of 1935) provides a framework for ongoing discourse about the treatment of the poor and homeless today.
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