CHARITABLE AND PENAL INSTITUTIONS. The State boards of charities, lunacy, and corrections are each appointed by the Governor and Senate. The hoard of charities exercises an advisory supervision over the State and local charitable im,titntions and private institutions to which public charges are committed. It visits and in spects over 500 institutions, containing more than 60,000 inmates. A law of 1902 provides for thq appointment by the Governor and Senate of a fiscal supervisor of State charities; and another law of the same year provides that the Governor. the president of the State Board of Charities, and the State Comptroller act as a commission to approve plans, specifications, and contracts for the construction of State institutions. These in clude an industrial school at Rochester, an asylum for feeble-minded children at Syracuse, one for feeble-minded women at Newark, a custo dial asylum at Rome. an asylum for orphan In dian children at Iroquois, houses of refuge at Hudson and Albion. reformatory for women at Bedford, Craig colony for epileptics at Sonyea, women's relief corps home at Oxford. soldiers' and sailors' home at Bath. school for the blind at Batavia, hospital for crippled and deformed children at Tarrytown. and a hospital for the treatment of incipient pulmonary tuberculosis at Raybrook. There are a number of private insti tutions which receive State appropriations. A total of 15,780 persons were supported in the county alnishon.es during, the year ending Octo ber 1. 1000. and also over 70,001) were supported at the city and town almshouses. In 'addition more than 209.000 persons received temporary relief during that period. The various institu tions under the supervision of the board expended $16.107.000 during the year ending September 30, 11)00.
The board of lunacy has supervision over the State insane hospitals. These are located at
Utica. Poughkeepsie. iddletown, Buffalo, Willard, Binghamton, Ogdensburg, llochester, Wards Isl and, Kings Park, L. I., Flatbush, L. I., Gowanda, Matteawan, and Dannemora. In 1000 their in mates numbered 23,207. There are also 20 insti tutions and private houses authorized to receive the insane. These had in the same year 934 pa tients. The maintenance of the State insane hospitals for the year ending September 30, 1900, cost $3.594,873, or $164.79 per patient. The State penitentiaries are county institutions, of which there are six, located respectively in the counties of New York, Kings, Erie, Albany. Mon roe, and Clinton. These receive short-term con victs committed for minor offenses. Counties not having penitentiaries of their own send this class of convicts by contract to the penitentiary of some other county. Convicts sentenced for terms exceeding one year are sent to the State prisons at Ossining (Sing Sing), Auburn, and Clinton. or to the reformatories at Elmira and Napanock, and to the one for women at Medford. There are also houses of refuge for women at Hudson and Albion. The total prison population in 1902. including that of county jails, the New York City prisons, and workhouses, was 06,032. as against 149.677 in 189S. The more frequent application of the law of suspended sentence and the abolition of the fee system in the various counties are thought to have been largely respon sible for this decrease. The Elmira Reformatory has acquired a widespread reputation because of its system of instruction and trainng. The pris oners committed to it have the advantage of an indeterminate sentence and a parole law. In New York, since 1888, death by electricity has been substituted for hanging as the penalty for mur der.