r/Asylums

The Independence State Hospital was built in 1873 as the second asylum in the state of Iowa. It is located in Independence, Iowa. The original plan for patients was to relieve crowding from the hospital at Mount Pleasantand to hold alcoholics, geriatrics, drug addicts, mentally ill, and the criminally insane. The hospital's many names have included: The Independence Lunatic Asylum, The Independence State Asylum, The Independence Asylum for the Insane, The Iowa State Hospital for the Insane, and The Independence Mental Health Institute. There is also a labyrinth of tunnels which connect every building. Like most asylums of its time, it has had a gruesome and dark history. Remnants of this are the graveyard, hydrotherapy tubs, and lobotomy equipment.

Like its sister asylums, the Clarinda State Hospital, and the Cherokee State Hospital, both in Iowa, changes have been made to the building, but the building looks much like it did in early photographs and postcards. It continues to serve as a psychiatric hospital with a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program as well as a training school for nurses. Although some areas of the Kirkbride are now unused, the building has been kept in good shape and has recently undergone some renovations. There is a museum in the hospital which contains relics from its older years. Tours of the institution are open to the public by appointment.

Founded in 1932 by psychiatrist and eugenicist and general racist POS Joseph S. DeJarnette, it operated as a semi-private institution for mental-health treatment and became associated with the Virginia eugenics movement and state sterilization programs. The facility remained active under various names until 1996, when its services were relocated to a new site, leaving the original complex abandoned.

The DeJarnette Sanitarium is frequently cited in discussions of the American eugenics movement and its ethical failures. Scholars identify it as a case study in how medical authority, class distinctions, and pseudoscientific theories of heredity shaped institutional psychiatry in the United States. Public memory of the institution reflects both fascination with abandoned asylums and an evolving reckoning with eugenics in Virginia’s history. The building’s architecture and preservation status have attracted heritage and mental-health historians examining the intersection of architecture, medicine, and social policy.

While as Superintendent of Middletown State Homeopathic Hospital, Dr Seldon H. Talcott began experimenting with treatment of different disorders using a range of physical activities. One of these activities is the American classic baseball. In 1888 the hospital founded a team known as the asylums. The team comprised of patients, staff, and externally drafted semi-pro players. By 1890, the Asylums were playing against regional baseball teams, and winning the vast majority of their games. Some of the patients went on to play professionally after their release. One of the attendants was John Dwight “Happy Jack” Chesbro for the Pittsburgh Pirates (1899–1902), the New York Highlanders (1903–1909) ( the team name name before changing it to the evil empire Ny Yankees), and the Boston Red Sox (1909) of Major League Baseball (MLB). Chesbro finished his career with a 198–132 win–loss record, a 2.68 earned run average, and 1,265 strikeouts. His 41 wins during the 1904 season remains an American League record. He would be inducted into the Baseball hall of fame class of 1946