1840: Built of Hallowell granite on 35 acres of land, Maine Insane Hospital opened its doors to 120 patients as a state-of-the-art facility with ventilation, lighting, heating, and water. Patients were brought by family members and overseers of poorhouses, where some were kept in chains or cages (prior to state hospitals, the mentally ill were the responsibility of their families. If their families couldn’t cope, they were either put in poor houses, put out on the streets, or locked away in jail). Treatment methods in that first year included prayer and Bible reading, farm labor, good food and clean living conditions.
1850: Fire guts half of hospital, killing 27 patients and one staff member. New wings, buildings and parcels of land are added through the 1980s, growing the campus to more than 800 acres, including 600 acres of farmland that produced tons of food and employed hundreds of patients.
1950s: Patient population peaks at 1,837 and stays 30 percent beyond capacity despite construction of several new buildings.
1960s: Hospital begins treating substance abuse and addiction. Thorazine and lithium therapy were introduced.
1970s: The De-Institutionalization Era begins and is synonymous with the closing of State Institutions.
1988: Five patients die during summer heat wave; mental health advocates bring class-action lawsuit against hospital and state. The hospital was ordered to address crowding and care problems.
Researchers found 11,647 names of patients who died on the premises. Hospital staff would simply note in a daily journal that a certain patient had “passed away in the night.” Of the estimated 45,000 people who were admitted there from 1840 to 2004, nearly 1/4 died at the hospital, according to a Maine Cemetery Project report. Some of those were returned to their families and buried in hometown cemetery plots. However, the lack of records leaves open the possibility that some were buried in unmarked graves on the hospital campus or in paupers’ graves across Maine.
Its remaining buildings represent the oldest surviving complex of mental care facilities in the US.
Pic #9 are two postcards of the hospital from the early 1900’s.
