Robert Morris letter to the Managers of the Pennsylvania Hospital(1783 November 26)

• MS 2005.11
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Robert Morris, serving in the United States Office of Finance, writes to the Managers of the Pennsylvania Hospital asking that they admit patients who can not be discharged upon the closing of an Army hospital in that city.

Two years after the British surrender at Yorktown and two months after the signing of the formal peace treaty, Robert Morris writes the Managers of the Pennsylvania Hospital that General George Washington has ordered the military hospital in Philadelphia to be closed and requests that the Pennsylvania Hospital “will consent to receive such of the patients as cannot be discharged.”

After Dr. T[homas] Bond, Jr. had spoken to the hospital managers, he reported back to Morris that the managers had refused to accept the “poor unfortunate soldiers.” Morris now puts his appeal in writing, assuring them that they “may depend upon receiving in quarterly payments” to support the invalids. He had prevailed upon the Philadelphia Hospital to help with overflow patients as early as 1781 and to pay the Hospital fifteen shillings per week for each man.

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