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Miss Smith Goes to the Insane Asylum

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Female Patient, Bellevue, 1885, courtesy Wellcome Images

Families sometimes committed their relatives to asylums for convenience or spite. In 1910, New York resident Alice Stanton Smith was arrested for carrying a small revolver for protection. She was sent to Bellevue hospital, stripped, forced into a chair, and injected with morphine. Later she was released as sane. Adorned with diamonds and other gems, Smith appeared in the Harlem Police Court to defend herself the following week–not so much against the crime of carrying a revolver, but to plead with the court not to send her back to Bellevue.

The court magistrate called the psychopathic ward at Bellevue to talk with the examining physicians there; they said Smith was only “a little nervous and eccentric.” Her brother sent an agent to court, saying that Smith had been doing “crazy acts” for years. When pressed for an example, he said that Smith had once slapped a guest at a dinner party.

Smith–worth $100,000 in her own right–told the court that her relatives had tried to have her declared insane a number of times. Though Smith did not appear deranged to the reporters in the court nor to the physicians at Bellevue, the magistrate sent her back to the asylum.

Bellevue Hospital Ambulance

Lunacy Law, 1913

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A New Life in Canton

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Three Teepees, courtesy of the Library of Congress

Three Teepees, courtesy of the Library of Congress

Canton Asylum’s first patient, a 33-year-old Sioux man named Andrew Hedges, arrived at the facility on December 31,1902. The entire asylum staff turned out to greet Hedges. They were nearly as excited as the townspeople, who believed that the insane asylum would put the bustling little city of Canton on the map. Both groups were sure that this asylum—new, beautiful, and unique—would be a Mecca for prominent alienists (the early term for mental health professionals) from around the world.

The Land of the Atsina, circa 1908, courtesy of the Library of Congress

The Land of the Atsina, circa 1908, courtesy of the Library of Congress

The facility would have been impressive enough anywhere, but it was especially imposing in such a sparsely populated area. Two stories tall and surrounded by lushly planted trees and bushes, it had all the modern conveniences—electric lights, coal-stoked boilers, and a sewage system. However, no architect or landscaper could dress up the fact that its inmates were hundreds—if not a thousand—miles away from home. The distance was too great to allow relatives and friends to visit.