Emily G. Kempshall | Letter to the Rochester Female Charitable Society, 1838

[T]he Board…have asked my reasons for withdrawing my…members[hip]…. I reply…that I look upon the funds of your society, however judiciously distributed, among the destitute sick of our city, as being wholly inadequate to meet their necessities…. I dare not draw a single Dollar, to relieve one poor family, lest in doing this I rob another poorer family, perhaps of what they must have…. I know [also]…that whole Districts are appointed to females as visitors of the S[ociety] where no decent female should go, to look after and try to assist, their vile and degraded inhabitants….

And now were I addressing the…Common Council of this City I would say, “Give the ladies power to point, in their visits of mercy, to a work House, where idle drunken fathers and mothers must go and work.”…[T]his being granted, the idle Drunken inhabitants…Being safely…out of the way of the sick members of their own families…the objection to becoming a visitor…will be lessened at once….

[H]as not the day gone by, when your Flag of Charity may wave over its Lake, River, Canal, and Rail Road, inviting the outcasts of every city in the Union,…to seek…their subsistence from your bounty…. And so while your Banner, whose merciful insignia on the one side is Relief for the destitute sick, has been held up as a beacon of hope, it is painful to tell them to read the other side where want of funds has written Despair of further Relief.

Source: Emily G. Kempshall to President of the Female Charitable Society of Rochester, January 30, 1838, Rochester Female Charitable Society Papers, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York.