An act passed by the Pennsylvania Legislature On April 28th, 1854, provided for the establishment in the City of Philadelphia of a "House of Correction and Employment." By the provisions of the act, those sent to the Blockley Almshouse were to be evaluated, and those who were able would be moved to a separate house of employment.

Those liable to be forwarded to the House of Correction were to be classified, generally, as vagrants, able-bodied paupers, habitual drunkards, and other "disorderly persons" who would otherwise have filled the city jails and the almshouse. It was not until 1874, however, that a separate institution was built on the banks of the Delaware River at Holmesburg.

Housing men, women, and children, the House of Correction served to house low-level offenders and the homeless who would be otherwise housed and put to work. Many would be brought up the Delaware and delivered to the institution by tugboat. However, a number of those committed to the institution were sick, and those that died who were not otherwise sent to the Philadelphia medical colleges for anatomical study were interred in an institutional burial ground on a spit of land near the mouth of the Pennypack Creek.

Used for over 20 years, the burial ground fell into disuse as most of its deceased inmates were sent to the State Anatomical Board beginning in the late 1880s and into the 1990s. Though the institution was rebuilt in 1927, the burial ground was not touched.

The burial ground was evidently removed by the late 1950s, replaced by a lagoon used for the disposal of sediment from the nearby water treatment plant in nearby Torresdale.