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Excerpt from:
Twenty-Third Annual Report Of The Inspectors Of The State Almshouse At Tewksbury
Gentlemen: -- In submitting the Twenty-Third Annual Report of this Institution, it is my pleasant duty to congratulate you upon its general condition, and the continued prosperity which has attended it.

As a final retreat for the diseased in mind, whose care, or even relief, has been abandoned by experts, and whose physical state tends only to decay and death, and as the only State Almshouse, which is its true character and designation, for more than a million and a half of people, its population, in ordinary times, must be made up of the infirm, the sick, and defective, of whom many can never be expected to leave its walls....