Context

People that were thought to be mad were stuck in their homes with only their family caring for them. Once their family couldn’t care for them anymore, they would be sent to hospitals or even just left on the streets.

“Early asylums are known for their use of harsh treatment methods and terrible living conditions. Some of these include: Chaining patients to walls, Twenty-four-hour restraints in beds, Electroshock treatment, Sedating patients by spraying them with water, Using patients as exhibits for the public's entertainment, Sending women to institutions because they were "trouble" for their husbands and families, Icebaths, Forced drugging, Isolation” (“Insane Asylums in the 1800s | History & Famous Mental Hospital”).

“In many small towns, it was not unusual to have a ‘village idiot’ who wandered through the community and received handouts. As long as communities remained very small, an insane person or two roaming about the town was not seen as a problem. Unless they became violent, they were tolerated. If they became too difficult for their families, they might be jailed or sent to an almshouse” (Jacks).

The hospital resembled the starting of a new US state and helped resolve the local crowded conditions.

“Downdall said that by examining statistics from the late nineteenth century on causes of hospitalization and lengths of stay, he could see no relationship between length of stay and class, sex, or ethnicity” (Jacks).

The people who ran the mental hospital didn’t split people up depending on what/how they were. They didn’t care if they were black, white, girl, boy, rich, or poor.

Because the government wanted to really focus on the Civil War, they shut down any non-Civil War projects, including building the asylum, slowing construction.