Funchal Poorhouse

Several months of 1846 and 1847 became known as the ‘year of hunger’, a time when the island was ravaged by a terrible commercial and agricultural crisis and famine was felt acutely in many parishes of Madeira. The memory of that calamitous period is still vivid in local tradition. A book of 300 pages, published in 1848 under the title Collecção de documentos relativos á crise da fome por que passaram as Ilhas da Madeira e Porto Santo no anno de 1847, gives us a detailed account of the calamity that then struck the archipelago. (See Famine in Madeira in 1847.)

The poor and the beggars swarmed through the most central and busiest streets of the city, a sad and dispiriting sight for Portuguese and foreigners alike. Councillor (conselheiro, honorary title of the royal council) José Silvestre Ribeiro, who had taken over the government of the district in October 1846, found himself confronting this fearful crisis, which little by little took on the most distressing and threatening proportions. What that public-spirited governor then did is eloquently attested by the pages of the book cited above.

One of the means Silvestre Ribeiro used to ease the gravity of the crisis was the creation of an asylum. Happily it still exists, and as one of our most valuable charitable institutions it is also a commemorative pillar (padrão) of undying glory, bearing witness to the benevolence of its founder. On 10 March 1847 the illustrious governor had a considerable number of beggars of both sexes and various ages taken into a warehouse belonging to the National Treasury (Fazenda Nacional), which faces the former Rua do Mosteiro Novo and Rua dos Medinas, after the Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal) had carried out the essential repairs there for a temporary installation. An asylum had been founded which, unlike the similar establishments previously founded here, did not share their fate, and which already counts sixty-two years of fruitful and beneficial existence.

Councillor José Silvestre Ribeiro entrusted the provisional direction and administration of the new asylum to the Committee of the Holy House of Mercy (Santa Casa da Misericórdia), which was also charged with drawing up draft statutes for the internal running of the institution; the public-spirited governor had already secured the means of maintaining the inmates. It soon became clear that the house in Rua do Mosteiro Novo did not serve the purpose for which it had been adapted. Silvestre Ribeiro promptly obtained from the Council the transfer of the suppressed Convent of São Francisco (St Francis of Assisi) and, with astonishing energy, turned the former conventual building within a few days into a house fit to shelter several hundred paupers and beggars.

On 27 March, a few days after the asylum was founded, the civil governor, accompanied by various authorities and other official figures in a splendid procession, personally conducted about 400 inmates to the new premises prepared in the convent of São Francisco. In the former Praça da Constituição (‘Constitution Square’) an abundant dinner was served to all the poor, at which José Silvestre gave a heartfelt and eloquent speech that deeply moved the large audience listening to him. The Administrative Committee (Comissão Administrativa) of the new asylum was then appointed, made up of the diocesan bishop Dom José Xavier de Cerveira e Sousa, Fidelio de Freitas Branco, Severiano Alberto Ferraz, Vicente de Brito Correia, António Machado Cota, Dom Jorge da Câmara Leme and Carlos Blandy.

The asylum remained in the Convent of São Francisco for only a few months. Everything pointed to installing it permanently in the house that the Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal) had had built expressly for that purpose in 1837. The move took place in December 1847, to the great material benefit of the inmates and of the orderly running of all the services of this charitable institution. This is the moment to give a brief account of the history of the building. As we said above, it was built in 1837, but was never put to the use for which it had originally been erected. At a council meeting on 2 July 1841 it was resolved that the Casa das Angústias (‘house of the Sorrows’) should serve as the public gaol, house of correction and law courts, if the central government approved; the government, however, took no decision on the matter. The flash flood (aluvião) of 24 October 1842 caused serious damage to the building in the Largo do Pelourinho (‘pillory square’) that housed the town hall (Paços do Concelho), the municipal library and the Municipal Administration (Administração do Concelho, the government's local civil office). The Council therefore decided to move these offices to the Casa das Angústias once the necessary alterations had been made, and the move took place around the middle of 1843. Barely two years later the Municipal Council took a new decision: to move its offices to the house in the Largo da Sé (‘cathedral square’), where the gaol then was, and to transfer the gaol to the Casa das Angústias. Very substantial works were carried out on the building for this new arrangement, and large sums were spent on them.

As a result of the political events brought about by the Maria da Fonte revolution, the Funchal Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal do Funchal) was dissolved on 25 June 1846 and replaced by an administrative committee. This committee did not abide by the decisions of the previous Council, and in July of the same year it resolved that the Casa das Angústias should be used not as a gaol but to house the town hall, which was moved there for the second time and remained there until November 1847.

On 3 December of that year the Council resolved to cede the Casa das Angústias provisionally to the administrative committee of the Poorhouse (Asilo de Mendicidade), which was installed there permanently on the 8th of the same month and year.

The cession of 1848 was declared definitive at a meeting of the Municipal Council on 29 May 1913, and this decision was confirmed by the District General Council (Junta Geral) in an official letter of 21 June of the same year.

The cholera epidemic of 1856, which killed some ten thousand people in Madeira, left many hundreds of children orphaned and destitute, and suitable shelter and care had to be found for them. Governor Gromicho Couceiro, who rendered such distinguished services to Madeira in that calamitous period, had some outbuildings of the former convent of São Francisco repaired and adapted to house an asylum intended solely for children. Its management was entrusted to the administrative committee of the Poorhouse. The two asylums (Asilos) were later joined, and this is the origin of the name given to the establishment at Angústias (‘sorrows’): the Asilo da Mendicidade e Órfãos do Funchal (Funchal Asylum for Beggars and Orphans).

The two asylums were merged around the middle of 1862, chiefly because there were not enough resources to maintain the two charitable institutions separately.

The asylum owed very distinguished services to the civil governor Jacinto António Perdigão, which make him one of its most illustrious benefactors after Councillor (conselheiro, honorary title of the royal council) Silvestre Ribeiro. This charitable institution had no property of its own and lived solely on public charity, which made its administration difficult and full of dangers for its future existence. By bringing together various revenues of dissolved confraternities and compelling the Council of Funchal to pay a debt owed to the asylum, Governor Perdigão created a permanent fund for it. First, however, it had to be given legal capacity, through the drafting of statutes and their approval by the central government; these were its first organic law and are dated 24 March 1866. This first core of the asylum’s funds, created in 1864 by Perdigão, amounted to five contos (one million réis) de réis in government bonds. Shortly afterwards he added the ownership of a large number of water hours (horas de água, irrigation rights measured in hours of flow) on the Levada da Cruzinha, the Levada da Serra and the Levada de São Jorge. Thanks to the diligent efforts of the same governor, in 1866 the asylum held 7,250,000 réis in bonds, yielding an annual income of 239,250 réis. By 1870 this fund in government bonds had risen to 9,450,000 réis.

The asylum’s revenue for the financial year 1869–1870 was 3,250,000 réis, and for the following year 4,142,000 réis; over the next ten years it did not increase, and at times it fell.

Among the asylum’s great benefactors, the Countess of Ribeiro Real should not be forgotten either. She bequeathed to this charitable institution the Quinta Esmeraldo, in the parish (freguesia) of São Martinho, and part of the furniture of the Palácio de São Pedro (St Peter Palace), amounting in all to some 300 contos. The Countess of Ribeiro Real, daughter of the 2nd Count of Carvalhal (see that entry), died in this city on 29 July 1921.