There is a wooden house painted yellow and green on Main Street in Hartford. It is the Butler-McCook House. It has been a museum for some time now. I have often walked by the house thinking I should tour it. It turns out this Hartford minister was keenly interested in homelessness. The museum holds a whole collection of this work called the “Social Reform Papers”.
McCook became interested in homelessness when he attended a town meeting in October 1890 and found that too much was being spent on “outdoor alms.” They lowered the amount spent on “outdoor alms” and then called a committee to examine the system of alms. McCook and his committee members exam-ined programs of distributing money to the homeless in 38 cities around the world and 300 industrial cases in the US. McCook was charged with membership of the committee to change state laws that would solve issues with vagrants, chronic criminals, and other de-pendents.
He created forms to fill out for each homeless person he came by. His records are extensive. Also included in his records are documents indicating that alcoholism was almost universal among homeless men. He also kept correspondence between him and a vaga-bond named William Aspinwall. He also found that votes were sometimes purchased from homeless men in exchange for beer or money.
He created forms to fill out for each homeless per-son he came by. His records are extensive. Also in-cluded in his records are documents indicating that alcoholism was almost universal among homeless men. He also kept correspondence between him and a vagabond named William Aspinwall. He also found that votes were sometimes purchased from home-less men in exchange for beer or money. Many of the same struggles found in the homeless community at the beginning of the last century are still problems today. The McCook collection is worth checking out. It is housed at 396 Main Street in Hartford. The museum hours are:
April: Saturday & Sunday 11 am – 4 pm
May – September: Thursday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday 11 am – 4 pm