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Asylum and Community: Connections Between the Athens Lunatic Asylum and the Village of Athens 1867-1893 A Dissertation Submitted to The Faculty of the College of Education of Ohio University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Katherine K. Ziff June 2004 © 2004 Katherine K. Ziff All Rights Reserved This dissertation entitled ASYLUM AND COMMUNITY: CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE ATHENS LUNATIC ASYLUM AND THE VILLAGE OF ATHENS 1867-1893 BY KATHERINE K. ZIFF has been approved for the Department of Counseling and Higher Education and the College of Education by Patricia M. Beamish Associate Professor of Counseling and Higher Education James Heap Dean, College of Education ZIFF, KATHERINE K. Ph.D. June 2004. Counseling and Higher Education Asylum and Community: Connections Between the Athens Lunatic Asylum and the Village of Athens 1867-1893 (268 pp.) Directors of Dissertation: Patricia M. Beamish and David O. Thomas Abstract The locus of care for mental illness in the United States has traditionally been described as either community based or centralized, asylum based. Most asylum case studies have focused on the inner workings of the institutions. None have studied in asylum in the context of its surrounding community. This research explores the nature of the connections between asylum and community by way of a historical organizational case study of the Athens Lunatic Asylum from 1867 through 1893 as it relates to the Village of Athens, Ohio. Sources consulted include official documents (government reports and records, census data), personal documents (letters and manuscripts), and popular culture documents (newspapers, atlases, and photographs). Between 1867 and 1893, the Asylum was connected with the Village of Athens in five areas: money economy, landscape, political and physical infrastructure, family, and social order. These connections were forged by the asylum’s need for goods and services and by the needs of the Athens community for jobs and cash. They were also sustained by community needs for recreation and entertainment, for humanitarian resources for those with mental illness, and at times for a means of social control. The political and physical infrastructure as well as the formal and informal networks that controlled the commitment process served to make possible the connections that met the needs of both asylum and community. This research documents three aspects of asylum-community affairs receiving received attention from researchers. First, it identifies ways in which the Asylum functioned as customer and employer in the community. Second, it documents how the asylum grounds, as a permeable boundary between asylum and community, functioned as a community resource. Third, it shows how the Athens community used the state and local political infrastructure to advance its interests with regard to the Asylum; it also describes the ways in which the physical infrastructure connected Asylum and community. This study describes an example of a community’s collaboration with an asylum at a time when care has been thought of as situated within the asylum. It suggests areas for constructing or renewing community connections for those with mental illness. Approved: Patricia M. Beamish Associate Professor of Counseling and Higher Education Approved: David O. Thomas Professor of Film Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge the people and organizations that supported my research and made it possible. First, I thank my advisor and co-chair Patricia Beamish for her understanding and patience in guiding me through my program while allowing me the space to pursue my research interests. I thank also my co-chair David Thomas for his unflagging optimism and enthusiasm, the skill with which he directed my research design, and his generous commitment of time. To Luther Haseley I express my warmest thanks for encouraging me for three years as I worked to formulate and complete this project. My very first impression of Luther, as my teacher in Advanced Group Dynamics class, was that he was a dangerous man. I was right: he is fearless in the face of group dynamics and works hard to teach personal authenticity and integrity (as well as punctuality). I now know him to be unfailingly kind as well as expert at conceptualizing research and research committees. I am grateful for his direction in the Reflections chapter. My Dean’s Representative, Butch Hill, did not have to draw on his many skills as a steward of process, but his support, interest, and occasional direction were invaluable to me. I thank the Ohio University College of Education for its support of my research with a grant. Also, I thank Dee Roth of the Ohio Department of Mental Health for supporting this project, arranging permission for my access to the patient archives, and encouraging my work. A community of archivists, historians, and others in Athens and in Columbus, Ohio provided many opportunities and opened many doors. They gave me the privilege of their readiness to provide resources and connections and the gift of their encouragement and interest in the research. Thank you to George Bain, Janet Carleton, Judy Connick, Karen Jones, Bill Kimok, and Doug McCabe of the Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections at Ohio University’s Alden Library. Thanks also to Jo Prisley, Jo Johnson, and the crew of volunteers at the Athens County Historical Society and Museum; Marjorie Stone; Pam Callahan of Ohio University; and George Eberts of Appalachian Behavioral Healthcare A special thank you to Beth Graham. I would not have been able to complete this project on time without the resources she arranged for me and the encouragement she provided. Finally, thank you to my husband Matthew Ziff and my son Benjamin, who have supported my pursuit of a doctoral degree one hundred percent, cheered me on, encouraged me when I needed it, and are the warmth and light in my life. 8 Table of Contents Page Abstract……………………………………………………………….4 Acknowledgements…………………………………………………...6 Chapter 1. Introduction………………………………………………10 Chapter 2. Review of the Literature………………………………....19 Chapter 3. Methodology……………………………………………..50 Chapter 4. Connections: Asylum and Community…………………. 60 Chapter 5. Conclusions and Implications………………………….. 143 Chapter 6. Reflections ………………………………………………168 References………………………………………………………….. 184 Appendix A: Phenomena Template: Proposal…………………… 203 Appendix B: Phenomena Template: Analysis…………………… 205 Appendix C: Researcher Generated Charts………………………. 207 Appendix D: Architectural Drawings of Building……………….. 225 Appendix E: Patient Dining Rooms……………………………… 226 Appendix F: Asylum Landscape: 1893………………………….. 228 Appendix G: Site Plan……………………………………………. 230 Appendix H: View of Asylum from Downtown Athens…………. 231 Appendix I: Walk to Town……………………………………… 232 Appendix J: Map Showing Hospital St.…………………………. 233 Appendix K-W: Commitment Documents………………………….234 9 Appendix X: Mandalas 1…………………………………………. 267 Appendix Y: Mandalas 2…………………………………………..268 10 Chapter One: Introduction Background The laying of the cornerstone of the Athens Lunatic Asylum in Athens, Ohio was celebrated on Thursday, November 5, 1868 with a parade of 1,000 Masons, a brass band, two church choirs, judges, the mayor, the village council, and hundreds of townsmen (Laying the cornerstone, 1868). Beginning uptown in Athens, Ohio on Washington Street at two o'clock in the afternoon, the assemblage of townspeople, dignitaries, and Masons marched down what is now Richland Avenue, across the Hocking River on the old South Bridge, and up the great hill to the Asylum grounds (Beatty & Stone, 1984). A year earlier, the Ohio General Assembly had enacted legislation funding the construction of an asylum in Southeastern Ohio. The citizens of Athens had quickly raised money for the purchase of the 150 acre Arthur Coates farm, which they offered to the State of Ohio for the Asylum site. The State, prodded by Athens politicians, accepted the site and let contracts for construction of the asylum. The asylum was built to the sturdy and exacting specifications adopted in 1851 by the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane (Kirkbride, 1973). The Athens Lunatic Asylum opened on January 1, 1874, and within six years, it housed 633 patients. Historians of the period have described the Athens Lunatic Asylum as a significant contributor to the growth of Athens in the period 1870-1900 (Daniel, 1997). Clearly, asylum and community were linked in Athens in a variety of ways. Community response to mental illness has varied across time and place. Foucault (1965) argued that madness as an identified social problem arose in Western Europe at the end of the Middle Ages, and mental illness or unreason acquired stigma. During the 11 Renaissance the insane were contained aboard ships ("ships of fools") and set afloat. The Poor Laws of the 17th century forced the indigent and mentally ill to work in state-run poor houses. The asylum movement began in the eighteenth century, with the establishment of facilities such as the Quaker Tuke's retreat at York in England and with actions such as Pinel's liberation of the insane inmates at the prison of Bicetre in Paris. (Shorter, 1997). The nineteenth century was a time of building asylums to the specifications of the prevailing psychiatric treatment theme of the age, moral treatment. Moral treatment, meaning compassionate and supportive treatment of those with mental illness, was the first effort made to provide systematic care for numbers of persons with mental illness (Bockoven, 1972). It placed great emphasis on the curative possibilities offered by the physical setting and social influences of the asylum. The locus of care for mental illness in the United States has traditionally been described as either community-based or centralized, asylum-based. The conventional view of the history of the locus of care asserts that there have been three distinct eras of care. These eras are (a) community-based care in the 17th and 18th centuries, followed by (b) 150 years of asylum-based care, and (c) the period of deinstitutionalization beginning in the 1960's which moved the locus of care back to the community.

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