{
  "id": "real-hospicio-de-pobres-de-mexico",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Hospicio de Pobres de México, 1774: a poorhouse built by one man and paid for by a state lottery",
  "summary": "A cathedral dignitary built a poorhouse in Mexico City at his own expense for people too old or too ill to work; it was approved in 1765 and opened in March 1774, and from 1783 the crown paid it a thousand pesos a month out of the royal lottery, raising the lottery's own deduction from fourteen to sixteen per cent to do it. The bando that opened it also ordered every beggar into it within eight days and set watchmen in the districts to collect those who stayed out.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "colonial-institutions",
    "new-spain",
    "social-provision",
    "charity",
    "public-finance",
    "americas",
    "spanish-empire",
    "mexico-city",
    "law"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "monte-de-piedad-de-animas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "montepio-de-viudas-en-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "hospitals-of-the-indies"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "orden-hospitalaria-de-san-juan-de-dios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "pedro-de-san-jose-betancur"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "casa-de-las-amparadas-de-lima"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "hospital-returns-in-print-1787-1794"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "casa-de-ninos-expositos-de-mexico"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "alcaldes-de-barrio-de-oaxaca-1796"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "avisos-para-los-naturales-1769"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "hospicio-real-de-huerfanos-de-oviedo-1752"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "alumbrado-publico-de-la-ciudad-de-mexico"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "gremios-de-artesanos-de-nueva-espana"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "imprenta-de-ninos-expositos-de-buenos-aires"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "renta-de-loteria-de-la-isla-de-cuba"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "real-fabrica-de-puros-y-cigarros-de-mexico"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "soto-deliberacion-causa-de-los-pobres-1545"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "medina-de-la-orden-de-la-limosna-1545"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "colegio-de-san-ignacio-de-loyola-de-mexico"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "ordenanza-de-quarteles-de-queretaro-1796"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "alhondiga-y-posito-de-la-ciudad-de-mexico"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "hospital-de-la-cuna-de-santa-fe"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "colegio-de-san-ignacio-de-loyola-vizcainas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "coliseo-de-mexico"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "division-de-mexico-en-quarteles-1782"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "vives-tratado-del-socorro-de-los-pobres"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "hospicio-de-jesus-maria-y-jose-de-quito"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "razon-anual-de-la-ciudad-de-mexico-1796"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What was the Hospicio de Pobres of Mexico City?",
    "How was poor relief funded in colonial Mexico?",
    "Was begging illegal in colonial Spanish America?",
    "Who founded the Mexico City poorhouse and when did it open?",
    "Did the Spanish crown run a lottery in America?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The origin is registered as auto CCCLXXI in Beleña's compilation of the orders of the Audiencia of New Spain, and it names a private founder and a stated reason. Doctor Fernando Ortiz Cortés, chantre of the cathedral of Mexico, was moved that many persons of both sexes were wholly unable to seek their living by work, \"ó por ser de edad abanzada ó por haber padecido graves enfermedades\", which obliged them to beg in the churches, the houses and the streets; he built at his own expense, with the necessary licences, \"una Casa Hospicio en que se recogiesen todos los Mendigos con el piadoso objeto de que los verdaderos Pobres fuesen asistidos con todo lo correspondiente\".",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The crown approved the private foundation and then took charge of its rules and its income. The same auto records approval by royal cédula of 9 July 1765, particular ordinances drawn up for its direction and government, the opening of the house on 19 March 1774, and that for its subsistence \"tiene aplicados el Rey un mil pesos cada mes sobre los productos de la Lotería, con los que se está acudiendo desde Septiembre de 83, ademas de otras quantiosas limosnas que se colectan\".",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The funding mechanism is printed elsewhere in the same volume, in the abstract of the Real Lotería, and it is unusually explicit about cause and effect. From the lottery's establishment to draw 140 the crown deducted fourteen per cent of each collection; from draw 141 it deducts sixteen, \"en virtud de Real Orden de 26 de Octubre de 1782, con el piadoso objeto de socorrer, como se socorre, al Hospicio de Pobres con mil pesos mensuales\". The same order fixed the draws at fourteen a year on fixed funds. A two-point rise in a gambling levy is the line item that pays for the poorhouse.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The charity and the compulsion are in the same law, eight days apart from the opening. Auto CCCLXXII, the bando of 5 March 1774, orders that all beggars of both sexes present themselves at the Hospicio within eight days, \"en el que serán tratados con caridad, y podrán salir de él siempre que mejore su fortuna por herencia, legado ó proporciones de mantenerse, usando de los oficios en que se les instruirá\"; and that once the term has passed they are not to importune by asking alms, \"porque al que se sepa que lo hace en las calles, plazas, casas ó Iglesias, será recogido por los Zeladores que estarán repartidos por los diferentes Barrios de esta Ciudad\".",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The exit clause is worth reading closely, because it defines who the house was for and how long it held them. A resident could leave when fortune improved by inheritance, by legacy, or by acquiring the means to keep himself — and the house undertook to teach him a trade, which is the third of those routes. Relief, vocational instruction and confinement are one instrument here, and the text does not separate them.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The revenue that paid for it is described by the compilation with its losses attached. The abstract of the lottery records 1,097,516 pesos carried to the Real Hacienda, including 106,065 pesos of lapsed prizes applied to the revenue under chapter 52 of its ordinance because the holders had not come forward within the two years allowed; and that in 158 draws the surplus tickets played on the king's own account came to 733,482 pesos against 654,580 pesos of prizes, a loss of 79,262 pesos. A bando of 13 February 1773 had already forbidden the raffling of lottery tickets in private houses under a penalty of a thousand pesos.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "What this evidence carries and what it does not should be said. Beleña prints numbered abstracts of what was ordered, each with the originating cédula, bando or real orden dated in the margin, which is strong evidence of the rules, the dates and the money assigned. It is not evidence of how many people the house held, how many were brought in by the zeladores rather than walking in, what the trades taught were worth, or whether the thousand pesos a month arrived every month. No claim here should be read as a measure of outcomes.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Poor relief in the Bourbon Indies is usually told either as enlightened benevolence or as the Bourbon war on vagrancy, and the sources cited for either are modern. Both readings are quoted here out of one contemporary legal compilation printed in Mexico in 1787 and opened page by page: the same compiler, in consecutive autos, records a cathedral dignitary building a house at his own cost for the aged and the chronically ill, and the bando that gave every beggar in the city eight days to come in before the watchmen came for him. The funding line is the part nobody quotes — a royal lottery whose deduction was raised from fourteen to sixteen per cent by name, for this house, at a thousand pesos a month, with the crown's lapsed prizes and its own losses printed on the same page.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-12",
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    "name": "Hospicio de Pobres de México, 1774: a poorhouse built by one man and paid for by a state lottery",
    "description": "A cathedral dignitary built a poorhouse in Mexico City at his own expense for people too old or too ill to work; it was approved in 1765 and opened in March 1774, and from 1783 the crown paid it a thousand pesos a month out of the royal lottery, raising the lottery's own deduction from fourteen to sixteen per cent to do it. The bando that opened it also ordered every beggar into it within eight days and set watchmen in the districts to collect those who stayed out.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/real-hospicio-de-pobres-de-mexico",
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    "dateModified": "2026-08-12",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Recopilación sumaria de los autos acordados de la Real Audiencia de esta Nueva España, que desde el año de 1677 hasta el de 1786 han podido recogerse",
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    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Hospicio de Pobres de México, 1774: a poorhouse built by one man and paid for by a state lottery"
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}