Tag Archives: St. Elizabeths insane asylum

Insane Affiliations

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Eastern Asylum for the Colored Insane, Goldsboro, NC

Eastern Asylum for the Colored Insane, Goldsboro, NC

Alienists liked to study groups of insane people like immigrants, men, women, ethnic groups, and it seems especially Indians and Negroes.

South Carolina was one of the first states to recognize insanity in people of African descent, and passed an act in 1751 “providing for the subsistence of slaves who may become lunaticks while belonging to persons too poor to care for them.” Otherwise, owners were expected to care for any of their slaves who became insane.

Free blacks were accepted at some insane asylums. The first institution in the U.S. to care for the “colored insane” was the Hospital for the Insane at Williamsburg, VA, which accepted black patients as early as 1744.

The Western State Hospital for the Insane at Staunton, VA accepted impoverished insane people with “no distinction of race.” The Government Hospital for the Insane (St. Elizabeths) treated insane Negroes in a separate building. Most institutions, if they accepted Negroes, segregated them from whites.

Western State Hospital for the Insane

Western State Hospital for the Insane

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St. Elizabeths, A Government Hospital for the Insane

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Center Building at Saint Elizabeths circa 1901-1932

Center Building at Saint Elizabeths circa 1901-1932

The U.S. government already operated an insane asylum, popularly called St. Elizabeths, in Washington, D.C. Its superintendent, W.W. Godding, suggested that any insane Indians be sent there for treatment.

However, South Dakota’s senator, Richard F. Pettigrew, saw a chance to grab both money and jobs for his constituency. He vigorously backed Indian agent Peter Couchman’s suggestion. Politics won out. Congress approved funds for the facility—which just so happened to land in South Dakota.

In the meantime, Pettigrew had drawn in another influential South Dakotan to help with the scheme. Oscar S. Gifford, the former mayor of Canton, was brought on board to handle the legal paperwork involved in buying 100 acres of land (at $30/acre) for the government’s new asylum. The site of the facility just happened to be near…Canton, South Dakota. Gifford, and practically the whole town, expected him to get the plum job of running the asylum after it was built.