Central State Hospital, originally known as the Central Lunatic Asylum, is a

psychiatric hospital Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental health hospitals, behavioral health hospitals, are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, dissociative ...

Petersburg, Virginia Petersburg is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 33,458. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines Petersburg (along with the city of Colonial Heights) with Din ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. It was the first institution in the country for "colored persons of unsound mind". Central State Hospital serves the

Greater Richmond Region The Greater Richmond Region, the Richmond metropolitan area or Central Virginia, is a region and metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Virginia, centered on Richmond. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defines the area as the Richm ...

of Virginia, providing

forensic psychiatry Forensic psychiatry is a subspeciality of psychiatry and is related to criminology. It encompasses the interface between law and psychiatry. According to the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, it is defined as "a subspecialty of psychiat ...

and civil admissions ranging from short-term treatment to long-term intensive treatment for the most seriously

mentally ill A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitt ...

History

Overview

In 1848, slaves in Virginia could be admitted to private asylums if their owners paid for their treatment, but not all owners could afford it, and whites were always given priority admission. It was also believed that when blacks tried to flee captivity, they were suffering from a mental illness called

drapetomania Drapetomania was a supposed mental illness that, in 1851, American physician Samuel A. Cartwright hypothesized as the cause of enslaved Africans fleeing captivity. This hypothesis centered around the belief that slavery was such an improvement u ...

, which

Samuel A. Cartwright Samuel Adolphus Cartwright (November 3, 1793 – May 2, 1863) was an American physician who practiced in Mississippi and Louisiana in the antebellum United States. Cartwright is best known as the inventor of the 'mental illness' of drapetomania ...

stated to be a consequence of masters who "made themselves too familiar with slaves, treating them as equals". The Confederacy established a hospital for wounded soldiers at Howard's Grove in 1862. It was reassigned in 1870 to the treatment of "colored persons of unsound mind" and was the first to offer treatment exclusively to the black population of Virginia.

Dorothea Dix Dorothea Lynde Dix (April 4, 1802July 17, 1887) was an American advocate on behalf of the indigent mentally ill who, through a vigorous and sustained program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, created the first gen ...

visited the hospital in 1875, during her travels for mental health reform, and donated pictures and musical instruments. In 1885, the patients from Howard's Grove were transferred to a newly built red-brick hospital trimmed with gray granite. It had a central four-storey administration building flanked on either side by a three-story wing containing six wards. This arrangement, which is known as the

Kirkbride Plan The Kirkbride Plan was a system of mental asylum design advocated by American psychiatrist Thomas Story Kirkbride (1809–1883) in the mid-19th century. The asylums built in the Kirkbride design, often referred to as Kirkbride Buildings (or si ...

, was a symbol of

moral treatment Moral treatment was an approach to mental disorder based on humane psychosocial care or moral discipline that emerged in the 18th century and came to the fore for much of the 19th century, deriving partly from psychiatry or psychology and partly fr ...

. The East and West Buildings were built on either side of the main building in 1890 and 1892 to treat more severe cases. The Legislature of 1893 changed the title of state "asylums" to state "hospitals" and the

lunatic asylum The lunatic asylum (or insane asylum) was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital. The fall of the lunatic asylum and its eventual replacement by modern psychiatric hospitals explains the rise of organized, institutional psychiatr ...

was renamed a state hospital. In 1896, a two-story brick pavilion was built and the hospital became one of the first to care specifically for

people with epilepsy This is a list of notable people who have, or had, the medical condition epilepsy. Following from that, there is a short list of people who have received a speculative, retrospective diagnosis of epilepsy. Finally there is a substantial list ...

. Patients were classified and assigned to wards for the recent and

acute Acute may refer to: Science and technology * Acute angle ** Acute triangle ** Acute, a leaf shape in the glossary of leaf morphology * Acute (medicine), a disease that it is of short duration and of recent onset. ** Acute toxicity, the adverse eff ...

, chronic, demented, sick, tubercular, epileptic, criminal and suicidal. The wards for the suicidal were the least furnished. Mayfield Cottage was built in 1750 and was the oldest brick residence in the county. The hospital purchased the farm land on which it was built, and used it as a storehouse for many years. In 1904, a one-and-a-half-story

chapel A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady chapel is a common ty ...

was built as a multi-purpose space for religious services, dances, concerts, and graduation ceremonies for the hospital's nursing students. Its simple 80x50 foot Gothic Revival design was conceived by Dr. William Francis Drewry and constructed by G. B. Keeler & Son. Twenty-four fire hydrants were installed and a fire house was built. Drying machinery was purchased for the laundry and an internal telephone system was installed. Workshops were established for carpentry, shoe repair, broom- and mattress-making. These activities were used as occupational therapy. The building for chronic females was built in 1915 for 160 patients along with one for male patients. In 1925,

hydrotherapy Hydrotherapy, formerly called hydropathy and also called water cure, is a branch of alternative medicine (particularly naturopathy), occupational therapy, and physiotherapy, that involves the use of water for pain relief and treatment. The term ...

tubs were installed on the first floor to provide a new form of treatment. From the opening of the hospital until 1915, the supposed causes of

psychosis Psychosis is a condition of the mind that results in difficulties determining what is real and what is not real. Symptoms may include delusions and hallucinations, among other features. Additional symptoms are incoherent speech and behavior ...

in those admitted included abortion, desertion, emancipation, marriage, masturbation, and typhoid fever. Some of the foods grown on the farm were

alfalfa Alfalfa () (''Medicago sativa''), also called lucerne, is a perennial flowering plant in the legume family Fabaceae. It is cultivated as an important forage crop in many countries around the world. It is used for grazing, hay, and silage, as w ...

peanut The peanut (''Arachis hypogaea''), also known as the groundnut, goober (US), pindar (US) or monkey nut (UK), is a legume crop grown mainly for its edible Seed, seeds. It is widely grown in the tropics and subtropics, important to both small ...

wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologi ...

radish The radish (''Raphanus raphanistrum'' subsp. ''sativus'') is an edible root vegetable of the family Brassicaceae that was domesticated in Asia prior to Roman times. Radishes are grown and consumed throughout the world, being mostly eaten raw ...

es, pumpkins, okra, watermelon, turkey, and milk. The building for delinquent and feeble-minded girls was built in 1929 with a 100-foot barred arcade leading to the central building. In 1930, the new medical building was built for 100 beds. More wings were added to it later. The first floor was used for surgery, examinations, dentistry, lectures, x-rays, laboratories, treatment, and drug therapy. The second and third floors were for bedridden patients, so that they were undisturbed by out-patient and ambulatory services downstairs. In 1938 a State Colony for people with epilepsy was established on the grounds of the state hospital and later admitted the mentally disabled. It was renamed a training school and hospital in 1954 and then a training center in 1971. In the 1950s the patient population reached 4,800 with the construction of a maximum security forensic building and geriatric unit. Overcrowding was an increasing problem: the East View ward had 300 patients in one large room, and patients in the criminals' building were sleeping on the floor. The hospital served only African Americans until the Civil Rights Acts of 1964. From 1967 it accepted all races and nationalities. In 1978 Mayfield Cottage was sold to the Caudle family, who moved the structure a mile away to save it from demolition and opened it as a bed-and-breakfast in 1986.

The Original Kirkbride Building

The massive Kirkbride complex that once formed Central State Hospital's main Building has long since been demolished. There are no traces of where it once might have stood, and no Recorded date of its Demolition. Some Believe that the large abandoned structure on the property is the original building but when you compare it to photos of the real one, they do not match. The other building housed the building for delinquent girls.

Accusations

Sterilization

In 1980, around 1,700 patients were sterilized without their consent. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, four of the 7,205 people sterilized in the state of Virginia filed a class-action lawsuit requiring the state of Virginia to notify every patient sterilized between 1924 and 1973 and to pay for operations to reverse the procedure. In 2010 the Central State Hospital Chapel was registered on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

as a symbol of the state's unequal treatment of African Americans during the period of segregation. The chapel was de-listed in February 2017 after deferred maintenance resulted in structural failure causing the building to collapse.

References

External links

Central State Hospital official website“Endeavor To Restore Them” : Accessing The Records Of Virginia’s State Hospitals
''The UnCommonwealth: Voices from the Library of Virignia'' {{authority control Psychiatric hospitals in Virginia Hospital buildings completed in 1930 Buildings and structures in Petersburg, Virginia