Difference between revisions of "Portal:Featured Article Of The Week"

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|Title= Westborough State Hospital
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|Title= Ionia State Hospital
|Image= hop017.jpg
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|Image= Ionia.jpg
 
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|Body= The Brigham Farm, later the Peter Farm, was purchased in 1846 for the State Reform School, later the State Hospital (1885). The Westborough State Hospital was established by Chapter 322 of the Acts of 1884 as the Westborough Insane Hospital. In a major departure from other state hospitals, its trustees were not directed to find a new site and make plans for new buildings, but rather to develop a scheme to reuse the structures recently vacated by the State Reform School for Boys. The site, which by then totaled 275 acres, had been developed around the 180-acre former farmstead of Lovett Peters, Esq., and adjacent acreage owned by the Rice family.
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|Body= The building of the Ionia State Hospital was authorized in 1883 and was opened under the name of the Michigan Asylum for Insane Criminals in 1885. It was found that this name was objectionable as not all of the patients in the hospital were criminals, so the name was changed by legislative action to Ionia State Hospital. The patients committed to this hospital were insane felons, criminal sexual psychopaths, insane convicts from other prisons, patients transferred from other state institutions that had developed dangerous or homicidal tendencies and persons charged with a crime but acquitted on the grounds of insanity. Initially the hospital patients were housed at the site of the Michigan Reformatory.
  
George Clough of Boston was engaged to remodel the building which had housed 400-500 boys and had been declared unfit for reform school purposes due to its large size and jail-like appearance. To adapt the building for occupancy by 325 "insane" patients, Clough demolished the center of the existing building, which dated from 1876, and replaced it with a gambrel roof section housing a congregate dining room on its first floor with a chapel above. The alterations began on May 18, 1885, and were apparently complete by December 1, 1886, when a reception was held for Governor George D. Robinson. A few days later, the first 204 patients (almost all chronic cases who were able to pay for their treatment) were received from Worcester, and then Danvers, Taunton, and Northampton. In the meantime, Dr. N. Emmons Paine, formerly assistant physician at the State Homeopathic Asylum for the Insane in Middletown, New York, had been appointed Superintendent and had begun to formulate the hospital's unique program of treatment along with the Board of Trustees. Two years later, Dr. Paine was appointed as lecturer in insanity at the Boston University Medical School.  [[Westborough State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
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The hospital was called the North Branch and the farm located on Riverside Drive was called the South Branch. When a large fire broke out at the hospital, all of the rooms were needed to house prisoners, so all of the hospital patients were sent to the South Branch farm. Since that time, the hospital has been located on the grounds of the Riverside Correctional Facility. The hospital was used to treat the mentally ill as well as the criminally insane until 1972, when civilians were removed from the hospital. In 1977, the Legislature transferred the operation to the Department of Corrections when it began operation as a correctional facility. The facility was closed with the reopening of the Michigan Reformatory.  [[Ionia State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
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Revision as of 04:56, 5 May 2024

Featured Article Of The Week

Ionia State Hospital


Ionia.jpg

The building of the Ionia State Hospital was authorized in 1883 and was opened under the name of the Michigan Asylum for Insane Criminals in 1885. It was found that this name was objectionable as not all of the patients in the hospital were criminals, so the name was changed by legislative action to Ionia State Hospital. The patients committed to this hospital were insane felons, criminal sexual psychopaths, insane convicts from other prisons, patients transferred from other state institutions that had developed dangerous or homicidal tendencies and persons charged with a crime but acquitted on the grounds of insanity. Initially the hospital patients were housed at the site of the Michigan Reformatory.

The hospital was called the North Branch and the farm located on Riverside Drive was called the South Branch. When a large fire broke out at the hospital, all of the rooms were needed to house prisoners, so all of the hospital patients were sent to the South Branch farm. Since that time, the hospital has been located on the grounds of the Riverside Correctional Facility. The hospital was used to treat the mentally ill as well as the criminally insane until 1972, when civilians were removed from the hospital. In 1977, the Legislature transferred the operation to the Department of Corrections when it began operation as a correctional facility. The facility was closed with the reopening of the Michigan Reformatory. Click here for more...