Ellen,

Contact Shawn Phillips at Indiana State University. He's excavated the cemetery of a poor house in Vigo County, IN, which contains the remains of ca. 200 individuals, about 100 of which have been excavated. The site includes the elderly, disabled and mentally challenged, so you'll have to ask Phillips whether there was much labor performed by the population. But the dates are in line with what you are looking for.

Misty Jackson, Ph.D., RPA
Arbre Croche Cultural Resources
214 South Main Street
Leslie, Michigan 49251

On Mar 26, 2012, at 12:16 PM, Ellen Chapman wrote:

> Hello all,
> 
> I'm a graduate student and bioarchaeologist interested in processes of
> institutionalization in the 19th century, and I'm currently looking for
> available skeletal assemblages for my dissertation research. I'm interested
> in hearing about any collections from institutional contexts (prison,
> almshouse, asylums) where a significant portion of the individuals under
> care were engaged in labor, whether that is labor therapy, convict leases,
> or to pay off their debts. So far I'm aware of the Virginia Penitentiary
> collection housed at the Smithsonian and the Oneida Asylum assemblage as
> two examples. I'm most interested in east coast remains from the mid 19th
> to early 20th century, and smaller collections that could be analyzed
> without employing an extensive sampling strategy.
> If you know of any collections that match some or all of these criteria,
> I'd love to hear from you.
> 
> Thanks very much,
> 
> Ellen Chapman
> [log in to unmask]
> Department of Anthropology
> College of William and Mary
> MSc, Durham University
>