Travels in the USA: You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here...

I heard about some chap in the UK who pretended to be mad to get off a crime he'd committed - some reasonably violent attack. He was committed, and over twenty years later he's still in Broadmoor. If he'd pleaded guilty and taken his punishment he'd have been out years ago. He says the problem is that he can't prove he's not mad. Whatever he does is seen in the context of madness... We reckon there was a lot of that here...

Our RV is on the left for scale.

We visited a disused lunatic asylum in Weston WV, as you do. They started to build it just as the American Civil War started in 1863, and was finished a few years after hostilities ceased. It's on the Western side of the Allergheny mountains, as the population was spreading out from the East.

Difficult to differentiate this from the Penitentiary.

Interestingly when it was started, stone was hauled from a quarry twelve miles away by horse and cart. After the Civil War, when work was resumed, masons from Europe were employed.

The Europeans obviously...

Their first question was: "Why bring it from twelve miles away when there's perfectly good stone on the banks of the river six hundred yards away?"

...brought their own sense of humour.

Nowadays the river's a lot wider here…

Some people spent over 65 years here.

It is a huge building, nearly a quarter of a mile long. It was built for just 250 patients, which shows just how enlightened things were in those days. In the 1950s it was seriously overcrowded with about 2,500 patients being treated there. It was closed in 1994.

Must have been a pleasant place to start with.

But the downside in the late 1800s were the reasons for committal. Just some of those on record are as follows:

Asthma
Bad Whisky
Death of Sons in War
Deserted by Husband
Domestic Trouble
Egotism

Epileptic Fits
Fighting Fire
Greediness
Grief
Hard Study
Intemperance and Business Trouble
Laziness

Novel Reading
Over Study of Religion
Political Excitement
Superstition
Women Trouble

These are only a select few, but even so nowadays the vast majority of the population would be banged up inside if we used the same criteria.

Looks like any front door - almost.

It was built according to the theories of Thomas Story Kirkbride, who espoused healthy living with lots of fresh air, grass to walk on and free movement wherever possible. This of course was difficult for the most violent patients, who had to be restrained before the "chemical cosh", Thorazine, was invented.

No tools were used in the damaging of this door.

Here was the most atmospheric part of the hospital, where murders were committed. But as the inmates were already declared insane, the law couldn't touch them. One patient in particular knew this well, and dispatched a couple of fellow inmates with impunity - the details too grisly to tell here.

This was used to tie patients hands above the bed after Electro Shock Therapy.

Walter Freeman, pioneer of the infamous transorbital lobotomy also practised his "art" here, and performed 150 operations on one visit. I won't go into details as it's a bit gruesome, but you can look it up here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Jackson_Freeman_II

if you're interested. It's a good example of how the "experts", when left unquestioned, can wreak havoc. After all, it was the "experts" of the time who came up with that list of reasons for committal…

There was an art gallery at the end of the tour, and here there was a chance for the inmates to have a say.