Josephine Shaw Lowell and the State Board of Charities established the New York State Custodial Asylum for Feeble-Minded Women in 1878. The asylum was a response to public concerns that 'feeble-minded' women needed to be housed in a specialized facility. In several reports before the state legislature, Lowell stated that feeble-minded women disregarded moral and sexual restraint when placed in the undisciplined environment of an almshouse and frequently had illegitimate children who, in turn, became dependent on the state for their welfare. Women of child-bearing age, fifteen to forty-five, were admitted into this institution, in order to "prevent them from multiplying their kind" (New York State Board of Charities Report, 1879). Lowell described these women as "promiscuous and criminalistic" carriers of a "deadly poison" which reproduced through successive generations, and charities must not allow "men and women who are diseased and vicious to reproduce their kind."