State Infirmary Admissions and Discharges

When it was established in 1869 as one of the institutions of the Board of State Charities and Corrections, the state almshouse was responsible for receiving the state's poor. By the first decade of the twentieth century, however, according to the period's annual reports, the almshouse had been functioning for some time less like a poorhouse and more like a place for the "incurable indigent. " It had become "a large hospital having a total of 609 persons needing medical care and supervision." (Rhode Island. Annual Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections. Report of the Resident Physician, 1912.) By this time, the almshouse had become the place to which the other institutions frequently sent their sick for treatment. For this reason, perhaps, the name "State Almshouse" was changed in 1917 to the State Infirmary by legislation establishing the Penal and Charitable Commission. The State Infirmary continued to operate until the early 1960s, when it became one of the several health services to be placed under the purview of the Division of Curative Services witihn the purview of the newly established Rhode Island Medical Center