Poorhouse

As depicted by Charles Dickens, a workhouse could resemble a reformatory, often housing whole families, or a penal labour regime giving manual work to the indigent and subjecting them to physical punishment.

Poor farms were county- or town-run residences where paupers (mainly elderly and disabled people) were supported at public expense.

Following the 1854 veto of the Bill for the Benefit of the Indigent Insane by Franklin Pierce, the federal government did not participate in social welfare for over 70 years.

[4] The oldest government-supported facility of this type that is still standing (now a museum), is located in the Southwestern-Ontarian hamlet of Aboyne between the larger, nearby communities of Fergus and Elora.

The 60-bed house for inmates was surrounded by a 30-acre industrial farm with a barn for livestock that produced some of the food for the 70 residents and the staff and also provided work for them.

[6] In 1947, the House was converted into a home for the aged and in 1975 the building reopened as the Wellington County Museum and Archives, one of the National Historic Sites of Canada.