Slavery in the Asylum
The Georgia Lunatic Asylum was built by the hands of slaves and patients. Their presence as “employees” in the hospital would continue for many decades as the care of patients and hospital success greatly depended on free labor as a means to subsidize costs. With constant overcrowding, understaffing, and lack of adequate resources, state hospitals such as the Georgia Lunatic Asylum found it difficult to care for the mass quantities of patients and their specific needs (housing, food, clothing, bedding etc.) while paying for employees as well.Construction projects of land expansion, buildings and wards, as well as constructing a wall surrounding the hospital campus, were completed by the asylum staff (enslaved attendants), slaves from local plantations, and patients. William B. Moore was the first superintendent of the asylum bringing with him a staff comprising of his wife and a few slaves who served as the dominant attendants for the first few years the hospital was operating and they would hold these primary caregivers of the white patients from 1842 until 1847.
Many southern institutions lacked the necessary amount of funding to adhere to the Kirkbride Plan of providing proper care for patients. The Georgia Lunatic Asylum was built according to Kirkbride’s strict instructions, but lagged far behind northern asylums in the quality of institutional care. The high costs of institutionalization included ground maintenance, salaries, medicine, food, healthcare costs, and basic necessities for sustaining human life.The quality of patient care depended solely on the capacity for a state to provide descent funding for public institutions. The Kirkbride Plan gave strict and explicit guidelines for all aspects of building a ward for patients that would ensure the success of patient recovery which required a hefty budget that the state of Georgia could not afford. The black patient buildings at the Georgia Lunatic Asylum did not receive the quality building precautions and amenities that the white buildings had or the proper amount of rooms for the quantity of patients. Building codes were not enforced in black wards and the living conditions for African Americans were often deplorable.
Many southern institutions lacked the necessary amount of funding to adhere to the Kirkbride Plan of providing proper care for patients. The Georgia Lunatic Asylum was built according to Kirkbride’s strict instructions, but lagged far behind northern asylums in the quality of institutional care. The high costs of institutionalization included ground maintenance, salaries, medicine, food, healthcare costs, and basic necessities for sustaining human life.The quality of patient care depended solely on the capacity for a state to provide descent funding for public institutions. The Kirkbride Plan gave strict and explicit guidelines for all aspects of building a ward for patients that would ensure the success of patient recovery which required a hefty budget that the state of Georgia could not afford. The black patient buildings at the Georgia Lunatic Asylum did not receive the quality building precautions and amenities that the white buildings had or the proper amount of rooms for the quantity of patients. Building codes were not enforced in black wards and the living conditions for African Americans were often deplorable.
Admittance of Freed Blacks as Patients
With the emancipation of slaves, mentally ill southerners began to lose their in-house, enslaved primary caregivers. Families were forced to admit ill family members and the newly freed blacks into the Georgia Lunatic Asylum as patients (most likely pauper/non-pay patients). The sharp increase in white pauper patients and free blacks quickly put the hospital into debt and overcrowded the facilities.Southern asylums had the lowest funding in America so the Board of Trustees and Superintendent Green looked towards the Georgia General Assembly for financial assistance. With no state treasury, Confederate bills no longer legal tender and an institution struggling from the impact of war, federal funding was a necessity. With the state entering Reconstruction, the majority of their economic income would go towards rebuilding a new economic system of capitalism. Despite the necessary funding, trustees of the asylum knew that “humanity demands” proper care for the “unfortunates” and to do so they would need to build “suitable separate quarters from those occupied by the Whites.” Building entirely separate institutions for the races would create more economic problems for the post-war South and would be both uneconomical and unfeasible. The Georgia Lunatic Asylum settled on constructing separate buildings on its campus for black patients since it would be “manifestly improper” to intermingle the races. Section 1295 in the Georgia Lunatic Asylum code states that distinct apartments needed to be built for “them” so that there would be in no instance of a “negro and white be together.” Despite the hesitation to admit and treat mentally ill blacks, the Georgia Lunatic Asylum trustees and superintendent knew that it was their paternalistic duty to provide them with care. However, inequality would continue to be present as new black patient wards would be built.
The task of caring for the mentally ill blacks of Georgia was presented to the legislatures in 1859 as a “small” issue in which the number of insane African Americans, not exceeding thirty to forty people so there would be no need for the addition of a black patient ward.Green suggested re-purposing two one-story buildings for admittance of sixty black patients.Green then established a Minority Committee in 1866 to discuss the needs of the small number of African Americans in the asylum and to make plans and provisions for the minority group.
His committee discovered that the “insane negro problem” had become a “greater issue” as thirty blacks applied to become patients at the asylum. These applicants, however, were denied into the asylum due to a lack of racially segregated wards. “Idiot and epileptics” were incurable and would be wards of the asylum until their demise. Green pleaded with the Freedman’s Bureau to take the African American “idiots and epileptics” for care elsewhere as a cost saving means. The bureau refused because by law, all incurable “lunatics,” “idiots,” and epileptics had to be cared for in the asylum despite the duration of their stay. Freedman’s Bureau officials demanded equal treatment for the black patients. The Trustees agreed to receive these incurable black patients and admit three patients to a ten foot by twelve foot room, only meant to hold one patient, rather than build a new Kirkbride Plan structure. By 1871 there were a total of fifty-one black patients in the hospital, a menial seven percent of the total asylum population. In October of 1871, the asylum Board of Trustees reported to the State of Georgia their need for expansion and repairs. The Georgia General Assembly and the Georgia Lunatic Asylum Board of Trustees had a close relationship through annual reports, letters, and legislation which would prove beneficial for the expansion of the hospital. Since whites were not averse to be housed in an integrated ward and black patient numbers were rising, it was demanded by whites that they build a completely separate facility for the incoming blacks. The assembly funded another “suitable separate quarters” for blacks. The first African American ward (See image 1.1) was erected in 1875 at a “proper distance” from the whites with a brick wall surround that further segregated the black and white patients. Although the amount of black patients in the hospital was still only a small fraction of the total asylum population, one building for African Americans would soon prove to be an insufficient amount of space.
A law was passed in 1877 by the Georgia General Assembly which made mental healthcare free to all citizens of the state, including the black, “disordered, deviant, and discarded” population that continued to grow in the hospital. Asylum trustees and the superintendent needed a solution.By 1880 there were 350 black patients and the numbers continued to increase, yet the housing for the two races were in no sense equal. The state used racial inequality as a cost saving means and overly admitted patients into rooms as the black wards quickly came into disrepair. The state refused to continue funding new wards for African Americans. Dr. Yarbrough, superintendent of the asylum, walked through the halls of black female patient ward and “muttered prayers;” “We can only keep praying that our luck holds out until we can replace these fire-traps with buildings fit for human inhabitance.”
The task of caring for the mentally ill blacks of Georgia was presented to the legislatures in 1859 as a “small” issue in which the number of insane African Americans, not exceeding thirty to forty people so there would be no need for the addition of a black patient ward.Green suggested re-purposing two one-story buildings for admittance of sixty black patients.Green then established a Minority Committee in 1866 to discuss the needs of the small number of African Americans in the asylum and to make plans and provisions for the minority group.
His committee discovered that the “insane negro problem” had become a “greater issue” as thirty blacks applied to become patients at the asylum. These applicants, however, were denied into the asylum due to a lack of racially segregated wards. “Idiot and epileptics” were incurable and would be wards of the asylum until their demise. Green pleaded with the Freedman’s Bureau to take the African American “idiots and epileptics” for care elsewhere as a cost saving means. The bureau refused because by law, all incurable “lunatics,” “idiots,” and epileptics had to be cared for in the asylum despite the duration of their stay. Freedman’s Bureau officials demanded equal treatment for the black patients. The Trustees agreed to receive these incurable black patients and admit three patients to a ten foot by twelve foot room, only meant to hold one patient, rather than build a new Kirkbride Plan structure. By 1871 there were a total of fifty-one black patients in the hospital, a menial seven percent of the total asylum population. In October of 1871, the asylum Board of Trustees reported to the State of Georgia their need for expansion and repairs. The Georgia General Assembly and the Georgia Lunatic Asylum Board of Trustees had a close relationship through annual reports, letters, and legislation which would prove beneficial for the expansion of the hospital. Since whites were not averse to be housed in an integrated ward and black patient numbers were rising, it was demanded by whites that they build a completely separate facility for the incoming blacks. The assembly funded another “suitable separate quarters” for blacks. The first African American ward (See image 1.1) was erected in 1875 at a “proper distance” from the whites with a brick wall surround that further segregated the black and white patients. Although the amount of black patients in the hospital was still only a small fraction of the total asylum population, one building for African Americans would soon prove to be an insufficient amount of space.
A law was passed in 1877 by the Georgia General Assembly which made mental healthcare free to all citizens of the state, including the black, “disordered, deviant, and discarded” population that continued to grow in the hospital. Asylum trustees and the superintendent needed a solution.By 1880 there were 350 black patients and the numbers continued to increase, yet the housing for the two races were in no sense equal. The state used racial inequality as a cost saving means and overly admitted patients into rooms as the black wards quickly came into disrepair. The state refused to continue funding new wards for African Americans. Dr. Yarbrough, superintendent of the asylum, walked through the halls of black female patient ward and “muttered prayers;” “We can only keep praying that our luck holds out until we can replace these fire-traps with buildings fit for human inhabitance.”
Injustice and Inequality in Care
White patient buildings received modern updates of ventilation, heating, water closets, water distribution, gas lighting, and additional space for one hundred and fifty more patients while the pre-existing “colored building” would only see the addition of heating. Dr. Yarbrough’s fears of fiery devastation came true. During the building repairs the contractor, “a careless tinker who apparently did not give a damn,” set the building on fire. Roughly 600 black patients became homeless and were forced to live in the underground tunnels of the asylum living in chaos, confusion, and with no comforts of a bed, windows, or structure. The disaster forced one third of the asylum population underground sleeping on the same grounds as the vermin that surrounded them.
The “great building for the colored,” the Black Patient Building, was built to house 570 patients, but by 1914 the building was holding roughly 1,000 African Americans.With almost double the amount of patients living in the ward, there were not enough available beds, forcing patients to sleep on the floor, so, in 1915 the Dupree Building was opened adjacent to the previous African American wards. “Colored patients” either slept on old mattresses, broken wooden beds, the floor, and often with mice while the white patients were getting new metal bedding. Visitors to this teeming building wrote accounts of their visit and captured the poor conditions the black women were forced to live in. ) These living conditions and overcrowding often led to the rapid spread of diseases such as tuberculosis and typhoid and a high death rate among black patients.Environments such as these did not fit the service model laid out by Pinel and Kirkbride and went against all morality and humanity in which the institution was founded upon.
“In the 64-year-old building for Negro females at Milledgeville, hundreds of mental patients like these were huddled on benches that lined the black walls or lay on the dirty pallets strewn on the rotting wooden floors. Once we groped our way into a huge, dank, unlit room. A wave of hysterical screeching from unseen patients warned us that this was the ladies’ lavatory. There was not a single graduate nurse in the five-story building at the time of our visit. Here was pandemonium.”
The “great building for the colored,” the Black Patient Building, was built to house 570 patients, but by 1914 the building was holding roughly 1,000 African Americans.With almost double the amount of patients living in the ward, there were not enough available beds, forcing patients to sleep on the floor, so, in 1915 the Dupree Building was opened adjacent to the previous African American wards. “Colored patients” either slept on old mattresses, broken wooden beds, the floor, and often with mice while the white patients were getting new metal bedding. Visitors to this teeming building wrote accounts of their visit and captured the poor conditions the black women were forced to live in. ) These living conditions and overcrowding often led to the rapid spread of diseases such as tuberculosis and typhoid and a high death rate among black patients.Environments such as these did not fit the service model laid out by Pinel and Kirkbride and went against all morality and humanity in which the institution was founded upon.
“In the 64-year-old building for Negro females at Milledgeville, hundreds of mental patients like these were huddled on benches that lined the black walls or lay on the dirty pallets strewn on the rotting wooden floors. Once we groped our way into a huge, dank, unlit room. A wave of hysterical screeching from unseen patients warned us that this was the ladies’ lavatory. There was not a single graduate nurse in the five-story building at the time of our visit. Here was pandemonium.”