Poughkeepsie, NY Lunatic Asylum

Large public insane asylums were built primarily for people who could not afford private care. Many families, relieved at finding a place for a difficult member, left him or her at an asylum for life. And death. Asylums had to set up cemeteries for patients whose bodies weren’t claimed by families, or who had entered as paupers.

St. Elizabeths in Washington, DC was unusual in that its patients were also military veterans. The institution served as a military hospital during the Civil War, and the grounds contain a separate Civil War cemetery for military patients who died while they were hospitalized. (This time period is when St. Elizabeths got its current name. Civil War soldiers were embarrassed to write home that they were staying at the Government Hospital for the Insane, so they referred to it as St. Elizabeths, the colonial name of the land on which the hospital was located.)

Philadelphia Insane Asylum, circa 1861, where "eighteen raving maniacs were burned to death" in February, 1885

St. Elizabeths Hospital Military Cemeteries

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