The East Louisiana State Hospital is a state-operated mental hospital located on Louisiana Highway 10, a short distance east of the town of Jackson, Louisiana in East Feliciana Parish. [1] The Center Building of East Louisiana State Hospital is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (National Register of Historic Places listings in East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana).
The hospital was created by the Louisiana Legislature in 1847 and commenced operations in 1848. The hospital was originally known as the "State Insane Asylum." The location was chosen because Jackson is situated in an upland well-drained location that is relatively free of disease-bearing mosquitos, which plagued asylums in New Orleans. The main building, which was built between 1847 and 1854 is considered to be a particularly fine example of Greek revival architecture. [2]
The United States Census for 1860 lists the names of 98 patients. [3]
Dr. John Welch Jones, a resident of Jackson, was appointed as superintendent in 1874. Jones found the treasury had no funds, the patients had no clothes to wear, and lacked the necessities of life. [4] Jones was forced to dip into his own pocket to provide operating funds for three months. He organized the strongest inmates as farm laborers and had them produce vegetables and field products for consumption in the asylum.
He purchased a brick making machine and had the inmates make bricks. [4] Having produced 3,000,000 bricks of good quality, he was able to persuade the state legislature to appropriate funds for a new building. This was followed by four more buildings. [4]
The capacity of the hospital was increased from 166 to more than 600. The hospital received 130 inmates from New Orleans in one day. [4]
The New Orleans Civil Sheriff transported more than 80 patients to the Insane Asylum in 1895, [5]
The hospital, then known as the East Louisiana Hospital for the Insane, did not participate in the early twentieth century eugenics movement, which called for the sterilization of persons considered to be mental defectives, however such persons were segregated. [6]
Richard Avedon made a series of photographs, depicting the state of patients at the hospital in 1963. [7]
The hospital campus contains a cemetery for patients who died at the asylum. [8]
Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals operates the East Louisiana State Hospital, which provides "mental health evaluation, treatment, and rehabilitation services to adult citizens of Louisiana in a manner that will meet all legal and regulatory standards for patient care, accreditation, and licensing bodies." [9] The hospital now includes a number of separate clusters of buildings known as "colonies". The hospital provides more than 500 psychiatric beds. [9]
The hospital has a forensic unit where people who have committed crimes and been judged insane receive care. [9]
It separately has other units where non-criminals receive care. [9]
East Feliciana Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. At the 2020 census, the population was 19,531. The parish seat is Clinton.
Jackson is a town in East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 3,842 at the 2010 U.S. census, down from 4,130 in 2000; the 2020 population estimates program determined Jackson had a population of 3,707. It is part of the Baton Rouge metropolitan statistical area.
The Eugenics Board of North Carolina (EBNC) was a State Board of the U.S. state of North Carolina formed in July 1933 by the North Carolina State Legislature by the passage of House Bill 1013, entitled "An Act to Amend Chapter 34 of the Public Laws of 1929 of North Carolina Relating to the Sterilization of Persons Mentally Defective". This Bill formally repealed a 1929 law, which had been ruled as unconstitutional by the North Carolina Supreme Court earlier in the year.
Joseph Spencer DeJarnette was the director of Western State Hospital from 1905 to November 15, 1943. He was a vocal proponent of racial segregation and eugenics, specifically, the compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill.
The Utica Psychiatric Center, also known as Utica State Hospital, opened in Utica on January 16, 1843. It was New York's first state-run facility designed to care for the mentally ill, and one of the first such institutions in the United States. It was originally called the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica. The Greek Revival structure was designed by Captain William Clarke and its construction was funded by the state and by contributions from Utica residents.
Oregon State Hospital is a public psychiatric hospital in the U.S. state of Oregon, located in the state's capital city of Salem with a smaller satellite campus in Junction City opened in 2014. Founded in 1862 and constructed in the Kirkbride Plan design in 1883, it is the oldest operating psychiatric hospital in the state of Oregon, and one of the oldest continuously operated hospitals on the West Coast.
Kew Lunatic Asylum is a decommissioned heritage-listed psychiatric hospital located between Princess Street and Yarra Boulevard in Kew, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. Operational from 1871 to 1988, Kew Asylum was one of the largest asylums ever built in Australia. Later known as Willsmere, the complex of buildings were constructed between 1864 and 1872 to the design of architects G.W. Vivian and Frederick Kawerau of the Victorian Public Works Office to house the growing number of "lunatics", "inebriates", and "idiots" in the Colony of Victoria.
The Fairview Training Center was a state-run facility for people with developmental disabilities in Salem, Oregon, United States. Fairview was established in 1907 as the State Institution for the Feeble-Minded. The hospital opened on December 1, 1908, with 39 patients transferred from the Oregon State Hospital for the Insane. Before its closure in 2000, Fairview was administered by the Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS). DHS continued to operate the Eastern Oregon State Hospital in Pendleton until October 31, 2009.
Compulsory sterilization in Canada is an ongoing practice that has a documented history in the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia.
The Topeka State Hospital was a publicly funded institution for the care and treatment of the mentally ill in Topeka, Kansas, US, It was in operation from 1872 to 1997. Located at 2700 W 6th Street, the hospital opened in 1879, after the Osawatomie State Hospital, once thought to be sufficient, became overcrowded with mentally-ill patients.
The lunatic asylum, insane asylum or mental asylum was an institution where people with mental illness were confined. It was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital.
Central State Hospital, originally known as the Central Lunatic Asylum, is a psychiatric hospital in Petersburg, Virginia, United States. It was the first institution in the country for "colored persons of unsound mind".
Vermont State Hospital, alternately known as the Vermont State Asylum for the Insane and the Waterbury Asylum, was a mental institution built in 1890 in Waterbury, Vermont to help relieve overcrowding at the privately run Vermont Asylum for the Insane in Brattleboro, Vermont, now known as the Brattleboro Retreat. Originally intended to treat the criminally insane, the hospital eventually took in patients with a wide variety of problems, including mild to severe mental disabilities, epilepsy, depression, alcoholism and senility. The hospital campus, much of which now houses other state offices as the Waterbury State Office Complex, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016. Partly as a replacement for this facility, the state currently operates the 25 bed Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital in Berlin, Vermont.
Napa State Hospital is a psychiatric hospital in Napa, California, founded in 1875. It is located along California State Route 221, the Napa-Vallejo Highway, and is one of California's five state mental hospitals. Napa State Hospital holds civil and forensic mental patients in a sprawling 138-acre campus. According to a hospital spokesperson, there were 2,338 people employed at the facility during the 2016 to 2017 fiscal year, making it one of the region's largest employers.
John Welch Jones, (1826–1916) was a medical doctor, Civil War cavalry officer, superintendent of the Insane Asylum of Louisiana, and planter. Jones led the reform of the care of mentally ill people in late nineteenth century Louisiana.
Eugenics in California is a notable part of eugenics in the United States. As an early leading force in the field of eugenics, California became the third state in the United States to enact a sterilization law. By 1921, California had accounted for 80% of sterilizations nationwide. This continued until the Civil Rights Movement, when widespread critiques against society's "total institutions" dismantled popular acceptance for the state's forced sterilizations. There were an estimated 20,000 forced sterilizations in California between 1909 and 1979; however, that number may be an underestimation. In 2021, California enacted a reparations program to compensate the hundreds of still living victims from its eugenics program.
The New Hampshire State Hospital was originally constructed in 1842 in Concord, New Hampshire, as the seventeenth mental institution in the country and the seventh in New England to cater to the state's mentally ill population. Planning for the institution began in 1830, and later the New Hampshire Legislature chartered the New Hampshire Asylum for the Insane in 1838. The name of the institution later changed to the New Hampshire State Hospital.
The Sheboygan County Hospital for the Insane was a former lunatic asylum serving Sheboygan County, Wisconsin. Opened in 1876 in Winooski, it was replaced in 1882 with a larger facility in Sheboygan, which underwent several expansions before closing in 1940. It was succeeded by Sheboygan County Comprehensive Health Care Center in Sheboygan Falls, which operated from 1940 to 2002 and is reputedly haunted, in part because of confusion with the asylum.
Mendocino State Hospital, formally known as Mendocino State Asylum for the Insane, was a psychiatric hospital located in Talmage near Ukiah, California. It was established in 1889 and in operation from July 1893 to 1972. The hospital programs included the rehabilitation of the criminally insane, alcoholic and drug abuse rehabilitation, a psychiatric residency program, industrial therapy, and others. The property now is part of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas community.
William D. Partlow Developmental Center, also known as the Partlow State School and Hospital, was a state school for people with mental disabilities, primarily intellectual and developmental disabilities in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, US. It was operated by the Alabama Department of Mental Health. It was the last such full-sized facility operated by the State of Alabama and closed in 2011.