New York.

By the 1760s immigrants were entering New York in large numbers, overloading the almshouse, and bankrupting the city treasury. In 1776 the Patriot government attempted to employ the poor in industrious pursuits, but when the British threatened to invade the city, Washington had the poor removed to the surrounding countryside so as not to distract the troops with their "shrieks and cries." They were replaced by a flood of Loyalist refugees whom the British occupiers quartered in the almshouse.

Philadelphia's Poor.

Philadelphia, a major clearinghouse for immigrants and refugees, also developed a permanent underclass in the second half of the eighteenth century. Laborers, merchant seamen, and tailors composed the lowest ranks of the working population. Below these groups were widows, the disabled, and the elderly who remained in the grasp of public and private relief. In the...