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NEW YORK ASYLUM FOR IDIOTS,
SYRACUSE, N.Y., October 11, 1882.

We certify that we have examined the above statement, with tables annexed; have compared it with the treasurer's books and with the various books kept at the asylum, and the bank-book, as also the vouchers for the moneys expended; and find the same correct.

E.W. LEAVENWORTH,
N.F. GRAVES,
ALFRED WILKINSON,
Executive Committee.

SUPERINTENDENT'S REPORT.

To the Trustees of the New York Asylum for Idiots:

GENTLEMEN -- I herewith submit a report of the affairs of the institution of which I have immediate charge, for the year ending September 30, 1882:

MOVEMENT OF POPULATION.

CAUSES OF DEATH OF THE PUPILS WHO DIED DURING THE YEAR.

This is less than two per cent on the number of pupils. The average death-rate for the thirty-one years of the history of the asylum has been less than two per cent on the average population.

The past year has been in the main an uneventful one in the history of the asylum. The usual amount of educational work has been done, and on the part of the pupils as a body, satisfactory progress has been made. It may he left to the Board of State Charities and to the Commissioner of Lunacy, the official visitors on the part of the State, to report upon these points. If there has been any change in manner, or in methods, on the part of those engaged in the work, it is an increasing attention to the development of industrial capacity in the pupils.

During the last year the new pupils admitted have, in the main, been quite young. This is a favorable circumstance, as it affords greater opportunity for their radical improvement. It is a gratifying fact, also, because it shows a more wide-spread knowledge and an increasing confidence in the purpose of the institution and in its mode of management. Otherwise, parents would be unwilling to submit their young or helpless children to its care.

In accordance with the spirit of our State institutions generally, no distinction is made in the care or instruction between the few pay cases and the many who are a State charge. The friends of the former hare been frankly told that no special privileges can be accorded; that the whole educational scheme of the asylum aims at fitting the pupils for some form of employment, because this is the prevailing need of the class for whom it was designed; that the pupils while in the institution are graded according to their intelligence and habits and not socially. And yet the announcement of this policy has been cordially accepted, almost without exception, by those who have committed children to its care.

But a good deal of attention has always been given to adopting such a system of classification as would prevent any pupils from suffering by association with those mentally of a lower grade. The growth of the asylum itself -- originally constructed for the accommodation of 140 inmates, but now capable of housing 350 -- aids in this work of classification. A series of buildings, of modified form, the outcome of varying needs, each for a special department, with convenient connection by covered ways, to admit unity of organization, has some advantages over a more compact structure, built at one time and however well devised.

As in past years, so in the present, the aim of the officers has been to keep down the expenses of the asylum to the lowest limit practicable with effective work. The public, who provide the means for its support, have a right to demand this. The new departure of last year, by which the asylum has acquired a farm, where the labor of the older boys can be utilized, encourages the expectation that the annual cost of maintenance may be in the future somewhat diminished. The institution will furnish a ready market for all its farm products. It will, of course, take a little time to get the new farm into the most productive condition and to perfect the working arrangements.

The expense of maintenance and clothing of the inmates of the custodial branch of idiotic females, now no more than that of the average cost of support in the county poor-houses of the State, also warrants the presumption that the new farm will reduce the per capita cost of maintenance in our own establishment.

There are now very few idiots of a teachable age or condition remaining in the county poor-houses. Those classed as idiots in their statistics are, in the main, old or helplessly crippled, or bedridden cases. From the information I have many of them are also not idiots but persons who have once been insane and then become demented.