Collection: Taunton Lunatic Asylum casebook | ArchivesSpace Public Interface

Booksellers' description

Patient index included.

240 entries with patients' names, family histories, financial status, and mental state. The records contain detailed information about patients' occupations, whether taxes had ever been paid, original depature sites, ships sailed on, time in America, and extensive genealogies. A number died while in the hospital; many were dispersed to different locations. Occasionally, ship's passage was arranged for people to go home. Some records note the prognosis but in general, qualification for pauperhood was the overriding consideration.

Dates

1854 - 1868

Creator

Taunton Lunatic Hospital (Taunton, Mass.) (Organization)

Biographical / Historical

Taunton State Hospital (originally Taunton Lunatic Asylum) was built in the 1850s to accommodate the overflow of the increasing amount of patients Worcester State Hospital was treating.

The idea of separating mental patients from the general hospital population took shape in the first quarter of the 19th century. For the most part, these places served an indigent and immigrant population.