The shame of ‘going on the town’

The Town Farm, now the Easthampton Lodging House, is a historic “poor farm’’ in Easthampton, Mass. It was established in 1890 as an inexpensive way to provide for the town's indigent population, and is the only locally run facility of its type to survive in the state.

“In a society still under the sway of Calvinist attitudes, as were the rural communities of New England, a degree of disgrace would attach to the condition of being poor….Thus, to “go on the town’’ would be viewed as an ignominy to be avoided if at all possible - and of course it would be a public ignominy, for everyone knew who the poor were and often would he be discussed by name in town meeting.’’

— Perry Westbrook, in The New England Town in Fact and Fiction (1982)