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|Title= Terrell State Hospital
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|Title= Bridgewater State Hospital
|Image= Tsh4.jpg
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|Image= Bridgewater.jpg
 
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|Body= In 1883, when word was circulated that the State of Texas was seeking a location for a second major mental facility and that it would be located in Northeast Texas, the competition among cities must have been quite similar to the quest for industry and other major developments that exist today.
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|Body= This hospital has been used as a prison mental hospital for it's entire life. The controversial documentary "Titicut Follies" was filmed at this location as an expose on the treatment of the prisoners located there.
  
Terrell was fortunate at that time to include among the citizens of a still young town a large group of people with the foresight to understand what such a facility could mean to a growing city. But even the farsightedness of legendary rancher and banker Col. Jim Harris, who gave the necessary acreage to the state for a meager return, could not have visualized the proportions to which Terrell State Hospital has grown today nor the immense impact it has had on the local economy for over 100 years.
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From the Massachusetts state archive:
  
A total of $200,000 was appropriated for the purchase of the property and construction of the original facilities. It all began, officially, on February 16, 1883, when the 18th Texas Legislature enacted a statute introduced by Judge John Austin. The word "asylum"--by the original definition--was a place of refuge and safety and that, at best, was the primary service offered by mental facilities in the United States at that time.
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St 1866, c 198 established the State Workhouse at the State Almshouse at Bridgewater, like it under the Board of State Charities. The almshouse itself was abolished by St 1872, c 45. St 1879, c 291, which replaced the Board of State Charities with the State Board of Health, Lunacy, and Charity, gave the workhouse its own board of trustees, replacing a board of inspectors; St 1884, c 297 replaced this by a Board of Trustees of the State Almshouse i.e., at Tewksbury and State Workhouse.
  
Governor John Ireland commissioned the purchase of 672.65 acres of land located east of Terrell and offered by Jim Harris. This would be site for the branch asylum and the new institution was to be known as North Texas Lunatic Asylum. Its stated purpose was to provide treatment and care for the "chronic incurable insane" of the state's northern counties.  [[Terrell State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
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After a fire, St 1883, c 279 authorized removal of the workhouse to quarters at the State Reform School at Westborough; return to Bridgewater was authorized by Resolves 1884, c 76. St 1887, c 264 renamed the institution the State Farm.
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The institution was placed successively under the State Board of Lunacy and Charity (St 1886, c 101, s 5) and the State Board of Charity (St 1898, c 433, s 24) --by 1918 its governing board was called the Board of Trustees of the State Infirmary and State Farm. St 1919, c 199 removed the State Farm from both boards, placing it under the Massachusetts Bureau of Prisons, replaced per St 1919, c 350, s 86 by the Dept. of Correction.  [[Bridgewater State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
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