Difference between revisions of "Portal:Featured Article Of The Week"

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|Title= Ipswich Hospital for the Insane
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|Title= Boston State Hospital
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|Body= Originally built as a benevolent asylum, the Ipswich site never fulfilled this purpose. Chronic overcrowding at Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum dictated that the new facility at Ipswich could provide a solution to this problem. In July 1878, the first fifty patients arrived at the single story building on top of the hill known as Sandy Gallop. A sandy track had been developed around the hill to train race horses in the very early days of Ipswich and watching the horses train became a popular pastime for many of the local people. The institution which followed was to be known colloquially by this name for most of its existence, but the connotation of the “The Gallop” was not always a happy one.
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|Body= The Boston State Hospital – originally called the Boston Lunatic Asylum – was founded in South Boston in 1839. By the 1880s, new ideas about the care of the mentally ill emphasized the importance of fresh air, hard work, and separation from the adverse influences (both social and environmental) of city life, an approach that was referred to as “moral treatment.” Thus, when the time came to move out of the old and overcrowded facilities in South Boston, the Asylum’s leaders looked to West Roxbury – at that time a semi-rural area that had only recently been incorporated into the city of Boston – as an appropriate setting for a new hospital.
  
The first 50 patients were quickly followed by more and it was not long before plans were made to add another storey and two wings to the original building. This building was known as Male Ward 1, later to become Arthur Pavilion. Ipswich took no direct admissions and only the most chronic cases were sent there, hence very few patients were discharged.
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Beginning in 1884, some Asylum residents were moved to the former almshouse at Austin Farm, just across Morton Street from the present Boston Nature Center, where the Harvard Commons development stands today. In 1892, looking for more room for both buildings and farmland, the City purchased the 35-acre Pierce Farm, along Walk Hill and Canterbury Streets – part of which land is now the western end of the BNC. A few years later, the City bought another parcel of land, adjoining Pierce Farm and Canterbury Street, which now includes much of the Clark Cooper Community Gardens and other areas in the central part of the BNC.
  
The Lunacy Act of 1869, stated that a person had to be committed by a medical practitioner and two Justices of the Peace for a period of no longer than one month at a lunatic reception house. After this period, the person in question was brought before two Justices and if judged to be not in a fit state to be at liberty by two medical practitioners, then they would be committed to the Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum.  [[Ipswich Hospital for the Insane|Click here for more...]]
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It was soon decided that Austin Farm would house women, while Pierce Farm became the “Department for Men” of the recently renamed Boston Insane Hospital. The new buildings at Pierce Farm, designed by city architect Edmund March Wheelwright, opened in 1895, and a few additional farm buildings were added over the following years.  [[Boston State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
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Revision as of 04:21, 25 September 2022

Featured Article Of The Week

Boston State Hospital


BostonSH.png

The Boston State Hospital – originally called the Boston Lunatic Asylum – was founded in South Boston in 1839. By the 1880s, new ideas about the care of the mentally ill emphasized the importance of fresh air, hard work, and separation from the adverse influences (both social and environmental) of city life, an approach that was referred to as “moral treatment.” Thus, when the time came to move out of the old and overcrowded facilities in South Boston, the Asylum’s leaders looked to West Roxbury – at that time a semi-rural area that had only recently been incorporated into the city of Boston – as an appropriate setting for a new hospital.

Beginning in 1884, some Asylum residents were moved to the former almshouse at Austin Farm, just across Morton Street from the present Boston Nature Center, where the Harvard Commons development stands today. In 1892, looking for more room for both buildings and farmland, the City purchased the 35-acre Pierce Farm, along Walk Hill and Canterbury Streets – part of which land is now the western end of the BNC. A few years later, the City bought another parcel of land, adjoining Pierce Farm and Canterbury Street, which now includes much of the Clark Cooper Community Gardens and other areas in the central part of the BNC.

It was soon decided that Austin Farm would house women, while Pierce Farm became the “Department for Men” of the recently renamed Boston Insane Hospital. The new buildings at Pierce Farm, designed by city architect Edmund March Wheelwright, opened in 1895, and a few additional farm buildings were added over the following years. Click here for more...