Having lived such a privileged life, Alice was not at all prepared for the fate awaiting her in her final years. The once substantial income from the capital left by her grandfather had dwindled to a modest sum by the 1920's. Then, when the stock market crashed in 1929 Alice, at sixty-three years of age, lost everything. From then on life was a desperate struggle to survive.

She opened a Tea Room on the lawn for a few years but it never yielded enough profit to support the household. As it became harder and harder to meet the expenses of daily living Alice began to sell the silver, art works and furniture that filled "Clear Comfort". She also mortgaged and re-mortgaged the house but finally lost it in 1945. In a final desperate act, Alice sold the remaining contents of her home for $600.00 to a dealer from New Jersey. However, before he came Alice called an old friend from the Staten Island Historical Society for help. It was Loring McMillen who came across a stack of dusty cardboard boxes full of glass plate negatives. With Alice's permission he loaded as many as he could into two cars and took them to the basement of the restored old court house in Richmondtown for safekeeping.

Alice Austen moved to a small apartment at first but as she became increasingly crippled with arthritis she was forced to enter a series of nursing homes. Finally, on June 24,1950 she took an oath declaring herself a pauper and was admitted to the local poor house, the Staten Island Farm Colony.

Unbeknownst to Alice, a small publishing company called Picture Press was planning to do a book on the history of American women. One of the two partners, Oliver Jensen, sent out a routine letter of inquiry to various institutions concerning suitable photographs. C. Copes Brinley of the S.I. historical society responded by inviting him to look at those dusty boxes containing 3,500 of Alice Austen's glass plate negatives. So, on a cold dark night in October 1950, Constance Foulk Robert, a young researcher, met with Brinley and McMillen to go through the negatives. Realizing that she had stumbled on the work of a great woman photographer, she brought Oliver Jensen with her on a return trip. Signing an agreement with the

Oliver Jensen visits 85-year-old Alice Austen at the poor house, the Staten Island Farm Colony, in the early summer of 1951. (Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt, Time-Life Picture Agency, © Time Inc.)

Historical Society, Oliver Jensen then published many of Alice's photos in the Revolt of Women. He also placed an eight-page story (with later sequels) in Life, and six pages of Alice's travel photos in Holiday, raising more than $4,000. Miss Austen's third of the proceeds was enough to move her out of the Farm Colony and into a private nursing home.

On October 9, 1951 Alice Austen was driven to see an exhibition of her pictures in the Richmondtown museum and to meet the three hundred guests who had been invited there to celebrate Alice Austen Day. She is quoted as having said, "I am happy that what was once so much pleasure for me turns out now to be a pleasure for other people."

Alice lived the next eight months in the nursing home, where she died peacefully in her sleep on June 9, 1952. A simple funeral service was conducted beside the Austen family plot in the Moravian Cemetery.