THE BACKSTORY
History repeating DARTMOUTH
Victorian Halifax had many institutions to help the poor, yet the wealth gap grew, and many tumbled through the cracks
North End
West End
BY KATIE INGRAM
HALIFAX
M
ary O’Rouark, George W. Sutherland, Samuel Abnel. Today they are names on hundred-year-old paper, tucked carefully away in archival boxes. In life, they were also tucked away, but not with care. “There was a sense that for the poor, the responsibility for being in that state belonged to them,” says Steven Laffoley, author of the Halifax Poor House Fire. But then, as now, there are many reasons people land in poverty, and personal character usually isn’t the big determinant. In 1882, a fire destroyed the Halifax Poor House and killed 31 people. “It was probably the height of that 19th-century wealth gap,” says Laffoley, noting the gap is still very much with us. “That’s why I wrote the book; when you write one of these books you’re actually speaking about the present.” All history records of Mary O’Rouark is she was 20 years old when she died. Samuel Abnel was an inmate of the Halifax County Poor Farm in 1904 (he was listed as “insane” in his order for admission). George W. Sutherland was among those listed as “poor, insane paupers” in the care of the Hospital for the Insane in 1886. Dating back to its founding in 1749, Halifax attempted to fund and build institutions to help people like Rourke, Abnel, and Sutherland. They were of “good intent,” says Laffoley, but their approach was wrongheaded. “It didn’t lose sight of the piece that said (the poor) somehow deserved (it),” says Laffoley. “And if only they worked a little harder. Does it sound familiar? If only they had a little more education, they could lift themselves out. We were very reluctant to ask the big question: Is there something structurally wrong with our system?” Other institutions would also take poor Haligonians, like Mount Hope Asylum, workhouses, and the “Bridewell” on Spring Garden Road. (Bridewell is Victorian
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UNRAVEL
MAY / JUNE 2022
South End
Point Pleasant Park
POTTERS FIELD, WORKHOUSE, AND BRIDEWELL The former Spring Garden Road Memorial Library site is connected to many poor institutions. This includes a potters field, or burial ground for the poor. These graves were unmarked. It was also the site of a Bridewell and workhouse during the 1700 and 1800s, respectively. POOR HOUSE The second and third poor houses were located where the IWK now sits. Thirty (or 31, reports vary) people died when fire destroyed the building in 1882. NORTHWEST ARM PENITENTIARY Located in this general area, the Northwest Arm Penitentiary served as temporary housing for Poor House inmates after the 1882 fire.
