Ep. 51: History of Danvers State Hospital, Part 1 (1878-1912)

This week's episode covers the first four decades of Danvers State Hospital (originally the State Lunatic Asylum at Danvers). Learn why people believed the land the asylum was built on was cursed. Find out what was later discovered in the abandoned hospital that had been preserved from the early days of the pathology lab. We'll also look at the ways in which Danvers was progressive for its time.

The main source for this episode is the Images of America book called Danvers State Hospital by Katherine Anderson and Robert Duffy. All other sources will be listed at the end of the episode transcript.

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Transcript

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Behind the Walls of the World’s Psychiatric Hospitals! I’m your host, Dr. Sarah Gallup, and today we are heading back to the U.S. to discuss one of the asylums that was at the top of my list when I first brainstormed hospitals I wanted to cover. So I’m excited to tell you about this one. We’ll learn not only about the start of the hospital but also some history about a well-known Puritan town.

My primary sources for this episode include the Images of America book on Danvers State Hospital by Katherine Anderson and Robert Duffy and the Danvers State Hospital website.

So come on in and get comfortable as we go behind the walls of Danvers State Hospital…

Today when many people think of Danvers State Hospital in Massachusetts, they remember it as one of the most notorious asylums in history. Some people say it’s haunted; other people say it’s cursed. And some people blame events that occurred long before the asylum ever opened.

It all began in January 1692 when two young girls in Salem Village began convulsing and having “fits” and saying they were possessed by the devil. They had been playing a fortune-telling game at home, which also happened to be the home of the Reverend Samuel Parris, who pastored the church in Salem Village. The reverend couldn’t believe that his daughter and niece could be possessed by Satan himself in his home! He demanded to know who had hexed them. 

What followed was months of accusations by the girls and their friends of other members of the community – outcasts, at first, but then more integral members of society. One by one, the accused were tried and convicted of witchcraft, then hanged. In total, 19 men and women, including one 4-year-old girl, were hanged for witchcraft. One man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death by stones. Just as an aside because it’s a common misconception: accused witches were not burned at the stake in Salem; they only did that in Europe.

When discussing the Salem Witch Trials, there are two main locations that are discussed: Salem Village, where the alleged symptoms and accusations first began, and Salem Town, where the trials were held and executions carried out. Salem Village was home to Reverend Samuel Parris, where the two girls had reported playing with the devil, as well as the judge presiding over the trials, Judge John Hathorne. Judge Hathorne lived in a home high on a hill that overlooked Salem Village. It would later be called Hathorne Hill. And another fun fact: writer Nathaniel Hawthorne was Judge Hathorne’s great-great-grandson. It is believed that Nathaniel Hawthorne, who spelled his name H-A-W-T-H, added the “W” to distance himself from the evils perpetuated by his ancestor. Judge Hathorne had spelled his name H-A-T-H.

Fast forward a few decades to 1752, and Salem Village was renamed Danvers, after settler Danvers Osborn (“Welcome to Danvers”). Salem Town simply became known as Salem.

Fast forward again 120 years to the 1870s. Hathorne Hill was then owned by a farmer and Civil War veteran named Francis Dodge (Brooks). He owns about 200 acres of land, the same site where Judge Hathorne had lived almost two centuries earlier.

If you’ve been listening to the series up to this point, you may remember the general timeline surrounding the emergence of asylums in the U.S. If you’re new to the show, here’s a quick synopsis: prior to the 1840s, anyone deemed a lunatic or mad or poor was locked up in jails. It was believed that they needed to be contained, so they were chained to poles, locked in cold jail cells, and treated very poorly. 

In 1841, schoolteacher Dorothea Dix visited the East Cambridge Jail in Massachusetts to give a Sunday School lesson. In doing so, she witnessed the inhumane conditions that people endured in these local jails. She made it her mission to improve conditions for the insane and poor. She traveled around the eastern United States, visiting almshouses, asylums, jails, and prisons and meticulously documented the conditions she found there. She knew she would need to petition before Congress in order to effect any sort of change. Problem was, she couldn’t attend a session of Congress because she was a woman. So she wrote a powerful petition, gave it to a male friend of hers, and he read it on her behalf. It was decided that lunatic asylums were needed to care for the mentally ill. By 1848, the first Kirkbride style asylum following the advocacy of Dorothea Dix was built in Trenton, New Jersey.

Over the decades, more people were transferred from local jails to the lunatic asylums. By the 1860s in Massachusetts, there were three asylums already established: Worcester Asylum, which had opened in 1833, Taunton Asylum, which had opened in 1851, and Northampton Asylum, which had opened in 1856 (“History”). In only three decades, each of these facilities had become overcrowded with inmates, as they were called, and it became clear that a fourth asylum needed to be built to accommodate them all. 

In 1863, Massachusetts established the Board of State Charities, which oversaw the project to add a new asylum. Unlike the others, they decided, this one would be a Kirkbride asylum. These were facilities where the intention was curative, not custodial. The Kirkbride model followed several basic tenets – that the asylum would:

1.     Be built “in the country” though accessible at all seasons.

2.     Be set on grounds of at least 100 acres.

3.     House a maximum of 250 patients.

4.     Be built of stone or brick with slate or metal roof and otherwise made as fireproof as possible.

5.     Be composed of 8 wards, separated according to sex, and built according to other specifications as to size, location, and material of accommodations.

6.     Be organized with wings flanking a central administration building.

7.     House the most “excited” patients in the end or outermost wings.

8.     Provide an abundance of “pure fresh air.” (“History”)

Starting in 1868, the state began looking for a location for the new asylum. They considered Nahant, Chelsea, Dorchester, and Roxbury, but eventually landed on Winthrop. Boston architect Nathaniel J. Bradlee was selected to draw up the plans for the Winthrop site (Anderson and Duffy 16), but by the time he had completed them, the state had decided to change to a different location (“History”). I couldn’t find the reasons why – perhaps it wasn’t far enough in the country or didn’t have as much land as they had wanted – but they decided, once again, to change locations.

That’s when they spotted a farm high on a hill in Danvers. They were looking at Hathorne Hill, where Francis Dodge had his farm. By 1873, the commissioners had offered to buy Dodge’s land, and by the following year, 197.25 acres were purchased for $39,542.50. They were swayed by the land’s beauty, privacy, view, and farming potential. And it was in a good location: only 18 miles north of Boston, 2 miles from Danvers proper, and 7 miles from the coal port at Salem, making it easily accessible to visitors and suppliers (“History”).

So, just to connect all the dots, the new asylum is being built on the same land where Judge Hathorne lived during the Salem Witch Trials. For some people, that was a bad omen.

Nathaniel J. Bradlee, the architect tasked with the job of designing the asylum, planned to use a similar design as the one he’d originally made when the asylum was going to be in Winthrop – just with a few changes. He had researched his ideas extensively, looking at asylums in Worcester, MA; Poughkeepsie, NY; Concord, NH; Philadelphia; Trenton; and one under construction in Morristown, NJ. He not only examined their designed but sought to get an estimate of how much construction would cost. Bradlee estimated that the Danvers asylum would cost about $900,000 (“History”), or the equivalent of about $24.3 million dollars today.

But controversy over the plans started right away. Everyone seemed to have something to say about the layout of the asylum or how ornate it was slated to be or the cost. One person said it looked like it would become a “Hospital Palace.” But Bradlee got to work anyway. Construction began on May 1, 1874 (“History”).

There were some difficulties along the way that resulted in additional costs. Since they were building on a steep hill, there was concern about how to get all the needed utilities up to the asylum. So the site had to be graded and a drainage system built (Anderson and Duffy 35). Then, as construction continued, there were several large rain storms that revealed water damage…before the asylum had even opened (Anderson and Duffy 18). So that added on extra costs.

Two years into the construction, in 1876, the Commissioners for the Erection of a State Asylum in Danvers issued a report on the progress. They outlined the extra costs listed above and requested another $600,000 from legislature, which was given to them (Anderson and Duffy 35). They crossed their fingers and hoped that the asylum would be ready in two years.

The asylum was designed in the traditional Kirkbride style, with a large, imposing central administration block. The main façade of this block was called, appropriately, Front Centre. The back side: Rear Centre (Anderson and Duffy 29). The administration building housed the superintendent’s office, the assistant superintendent’s office, the dispensary (or pharmacy), and the business office (21).

The wings on either side of the administration block were configured in a step-like pattern – three wings on one side, three wings on the other. What I didn’t realize before this episode is that each Kirkbride building had at least one unique design feature that the architect brought to the project. So Nathaniel Bradlee’s embellishment was adding two extra wings on the farthest ends of the building but turned at a 45 degree angle. Looking at the asylum from above, it really looked like bat wings. 

As Kirkbride had intended, the most violent patients were housed farthest from the central administration area. So those two wings on either side housed the patients who were “more excited” (Anderson and Duffy 21).

Each ward throughout the building had its own parlor and dining room with shared bathrooms. Many patients got their own room, although there were annex rooms that served as dorms (Anderson and Duffy 20-21). The annexes were modestly decorated, with sheer curtains around the windows, some small framed pictures hanging on the walls. Metal hospital beds with starched linens and several pillows lined the walls. A wooden rocking chair sat next to a small wooden table where patients could place their coffee or tea. Everything looked ready for patients to arrive.

Four years to the day after construction began, on May 1, 1878, the State Lunatic Asylum at Danvers officially opened. Dr. Calvin S. May was appointed as the first superintendent. Dr. May had previously been an assistant physician at the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane (Anderson and Duffy 23), and he seemed eager to get started on making the asylum at Danvers a first-class institution.

The first patient was admitted to Danvers on May 13, 1878 (“History”). Within the first year of the asylum opening, 305 patients were admitted; of those, 71 were discharged not long after admission (Anderson and Duffy 23). So throughout the first year it was open, the average number of patients was approximately 114 at any given time (23). That’s pretty reasonable. Remember that the asylum was built to house about 250 patients.

Dr. May, the superintendent, set out to try and discover the causes of insanity and other mental disorders, with the intent of curing as many patients as possible (Anderson and Duffy 23). The trustees in particular wanted the asylum to be seen as helpful, useful, and charitable in the eyes of the public (23).

To accomplish this, according to Anderson and Duffy, Dr. May established a cutting-edge pathology lab where doctors amassed a collection of brain tissue from each patient autopsied at the asylum (61). Dr. May began taking samples as early as 1879, within the first year of his tenure as superintendent (61). This practice of collecting brain tissues from deceased patients continued for decades, long after Dr. May resigned from his post in 1880 (23).

The State Lunatic Asylum at Danvers was surprisingly progressive in a number of ways. The first woman doctor was hired in 1879, the year after opening (“History”). I think that’s the earliest I’ve read about so far. In one of the episodes on Oregon State Hospital, I mentioned Dr. Clara Davidson, who was hired as a Lady Physician in 1895 (Goeres-Gardner 58). So they were certainly ahead of their time.

Starting in 1880, visitors came to the asylum in droves – about 12,000 visitors each year (“History”). But they weren’t there to see patients; they traveled – sometimes long distances – to see the elaborate gardens that had been added to the asylum grounds. The gardens were designed by Italian landscape gardener Ettore Jassinari, and they were located at the back of each of the male and female wings (Anderson and Duffy 32). According to Anderson and Duffy:

They were comprised of over 100 different beds dotted with grottoes and fountains that fed into pools where more fountains spewed water into the air. Flowers in one bed were laid in the shape of a sundial while another bed formed a calendar in the shape of a scroll. Another was made to announce the weather of the day, while yet another bed marked the four points of a compass. (32)

I don’t even know how a garden can announce the weather of the day, but I love the idea. I’ll add some pictures to the Facebook and Instagram pages, so you can see how ornate these gardens are. I would describe them as “swirly-whirly.” There are wavy walking paths and all sorts of different types of flowers and hedges. It’s really something spectacular – no wonder so many people came out to see!

With fancy gardens and an elaborately constructed building, people once again started to wonder if all this pomp and circumstance was really appropriate for a lunatic asylum. Was there too much ornamentation in the new building? Even Pliny Earle, the superintendent at the Northampton State Hospital, said he “decried the trend to excessive ornamentation in hospital architecture…suggesting that ‘domes, tower, and turrets are very appropriately situated…at universities…but are scarcely appropriate when they stand as monuments over the misfortunes and the miseries of men’” (qtd. in Anderson and Duffy 27).

And this brings up a question I don’t have time to really get into but is important nonetheless: what do the mentally ill deserve for their places of treatment? Many of the critics at this time – not only at Danvers but at other asylums around the world – said there was too much money and too much fanciness going into these facilities. And did the poor and mentally ill deserve to live in a building fancier than a mansion?

For a while, at least, the asylum stood as a symbol of pride and progress and understanding insanity. The elaborate architecture wasn’t for the patients who lived there – it was representative of what others had accomplished. But we’d start to see through the ways that patients were treated what people believed they truly deserved. We’ll get back to that in a moment.

Ten years after it opened, in 1888, Dr. Charles Whitney Page became superintendent. Now, with absolutely no disrespect to Dr. Page, he looks a whole lot like a slightly younger Colonel Sanders. Perhaps between buckets of delicious chicken wings, Dr. Page set out to improve the pathology lab that Dr. May had started. It was Dr. Page that got the lab national recognition. He brought on a regular pathologist, Dr. William Leonard Worcester, in 1895, to examine the brain tissue of deceased patients. And, once again, he showed progress by hiring women to be part of the laboratory staff; this was practically unheard of at other institutions (Anderson and Duffy 60).

Fortunately or unfortunately for Dr. Page, 61 patients died at the asylum in the first four months of his tenure (Anderson and Duffy 61). That’s…a lot. Thinking about the hospitals where I’ve worked, there have generally only been a handful at most throughout the year, and most of those deaths have been expected because the patient was aging or very ill. There was an increase, of course, during COVID, but the number has declined again. Sixty-one in four months is…disturbing. Nineteen of those underwent postmortem examinations (61). Now, interestingly, Dr. Page and his team took such meticulous care of their slides of brain tissues that decades later, at least 10 years after the original hospital building had been abandoned altogether, some original slides were discovered. They were surprisingly well-preserved, still in their original state, violet-tinged and hand-labeled (62).

To his credit, Dr. Page wanted to limit the use of restraints and continue housing patients on open wards (Anderson and Duffy 61). He believed this would help improve morale among patients and lead them toward restoration and sanity.

Dr. Page also started a nursing school at the asylum in 1889; this would be the second nursing school in the state of Massachusetts (Anderson and Duffy 43). There was also a nurses’ home built (43). 

Within the next 10 years, by 1898, Danvers was considered a leader in psychiatric treatment. The State Board of Insanity said it was one of “the most advanced institutions of the kind in the country providing all practical means possible for the intelligent treatment of insanity as a disease” (qtd. in Anderson and Duffy 73).

Part of the success at this time was due to changes in who was overseeing the asylum. According to the Danvers State Hospital website:

As originally established, the Danvers hospital was to be run by a resident Superintendent appointed by an unpaid lay Board of Trustees, chosen by the Governor. Central authority lay with the Board of State Charities (after 1879 – the State Board of Health, Lunacy, and Charity). In 1898 the leadership role of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts radically advanced with the information of the State Board of Insanity, the first in the United States. (“History”)

This new piece of legislation made three primary changes to asylums:

1.     Took the poor out of the almshouses and put them under state control. [I can see the benefit of this because almshouses had very little, if any, oversight and regulations, so patient treatment was sketchy at best]

2.     Introduced occupational therapy and social services. [I’m actually surprised it took this long to get occupational therapy introduced at Danvers, since most asylums had jobs available for patients even earlier on]

3.     Emphasized mental hygiene, and called for professional training of nurses and attendants. (“History”)

We know that Danvers had already established a nursing school at this point, but I’m glad to see that legislation was being passed that called for regulated and consistent training. I cringe to think of what was taught by word of mouth in those early years of working at asylums. Part of me wishes there were some sort of handbook left over from this time period about what was expected for attendants and nurses, but another part of me thinks I don’t want to know.

Patients at Danvers had various job opportunities that served as their primary mode of treatment. They worked on the farm and in greenhouses, repaired facilities, dug tunnels between buildings, and built small buildings like the slaughterhouse in 1917. They also made shoes and participated in other crafts and Montessori kindergarten exercises (“History”). I’ll admit I’m curious to know how they participated in kindergarten exercises. I sure hope there was plenty of oversight in that program! Patient crafts were even sold to the public or sometimes exhibited alongside other “therapeutic techniques” to show what was being used at the hospital for treatment (“History”).

Remember that medications like the ones we use today weren’t in use yet at the turn of the 20th century. The primary forms of treatment were work, fresh air, and hydrotherapy (“History”). We’ve discussed hydrotherapy in previous episodes, but if you’re just joining us for the first time, hydrotherapy was not nearly as pleasant as it sounds. I always thought, “Great, a nice bubble bath would do them some good!” But this was not a relaxing bath. Often, they’d have someone sit in a tub with a covering over them to keep the warmth in and prevent them from getting out, and they’d lie there for hours. When they were done, the next patient would come in and get in the tub – the same tub with the same water as the previous patient had used. It just absolutely baffles me that they were able to get away with that for so long. There was no concern for communicable diseases and the whole concept of sterilization had only been introduced a decade prior, and I’m unsure of how widespread sterilization was by the end of the 1890s.

Remember that this entire time, more and more patients are transferring from other asylums, as well as jails in Essex County and Boston. By 1901, the patient population had soared to over 1,000 – in a building built for 258 (Anderson and Duffy 45). The hospital was already outgrowing its original state. In 1902, an additional 100 acres was acquired to expand the farm (56). Construction began around this time, and several buildings were added to the property, mostly to support work on the farm. A residence was also built, called Middleton Colony, and was intended for female chronic patients (56). Just a reminder that “chronic” here refers to patients who won’t see relatively quick improvement in their illness. Many of these so-called chronic cases were actually folks with developmental disorders or severe cases of psychosis.

Now, to the credit of hospital administration, as early as 1907, there was advocacy for a preventive mental health program at Danvers (“History”). I wish I could have found more information about this, but the fact that it existed as early as 1907 was all I could find on these preventive programs.

You may recall that one of the features of the Kirkbride hospital plan was using brick as a fireproofing method. Hospitals around the country would learn the hard way that this was not an effective way of preventing fires. In fact, most of them remained at extremely high risk of fire. There were reports of small fires here and there over the years, but in 1912, there was one fire that caused a considerable amount of damage to a ventilation tower and part of the roof (Anderson and Duffy 90). I read the original newspaper article from this incident, and it described patients and staff alike as “cool” several times: “The inmates remained cool during the fire and at no time was a panic likely” (“State Hospital for the Insane Scene of Fire”). I find this a lovely juxtaposition of words.

Less cool in 1912 was the introduction of the eugenics fieldworker to the hospital. This person hoped to add to the research efforts put forth at Danvers. Their task was to reach out to and study the families of those committed to the hospital (Anderson and Duffy 91). This is both fascinating and horrifying to me because the families really don’t owe this person any sort of explanation for where their family member’s mental illness “came from.” The eugenics researcher probably sold the idea as finding a way to improve society and progress and blah blah blah. 

I read an article about the “progress of eugenics” from January 24th, 1912 (the same day as the fire, interestingly), and it used a common fear mongering tactic of saying that more and more physically, mentally, and morally weak people were present in society, so it was important that certain groups preserve strong bloodlines. It’s really quite gross. Of course, we know that physical, mental, and most definitely moral weakness is subjective. And my issue is forcing sterilization based upon those subjective beliefs. We’ve discussed this, too, in previous episodes, that a family member’s infidelity or “loose morals” could possibly result in someone being sterilized. So the hospitalized person may not have even committed the so-called sins and still be punished for them. Anyway, I could rant about this for a long time, but I won’t.

As an aside, right next to this painful article on eugenics was one little line that read, “Mr. and Mrs. John Jacob Astor called for Europe today on the Olympic.” Only three months later, in April 1912, they would set sail from Europe on the Titanic, but only Mrs. Astor would make it back to New York.

And you know what? On that strange little note, I think I’m going to pause the history of Danvers State Hospital. I hope to finish the history of the hospital next week, but I think this is a good place to stop because we’re quickly approaching the new and, dare I say, alternative treatments for mental illness? This is where psychiatry began to be emboldened and where treatment of patients took a steep decline. So I hope you’ll come back and listen to part two. Again, I’m very excited for this hospital series because the last episode will have something extra special for you.

As always, thank you so much for listening! If you’re new to the show, welcome! Thank you for being here. I encourage you to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you are listening, but extra bonus points if you rate and review on Apple Podcasts. I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m basically a one-man-band for this show, so I rely on you all to share the show with others and to interact with the show wherever you’re listening so that others have an easier time finding it.

I promise I haven’t forgotten about our Patreon page – yes, we do have a Patreon page! – and I have recordings lined up to post there. I also hope to post our regular episodes ad-free on that page, as well. I think right now I just have a $5/month tier, so if you’d like to support the show and help offset the costs, that would be cool – cool as those patients calmly escaping the fire. I’ve provided a link to the Beacons page and Patreon page in the show notes, so be looking for those there.

And last quick note: I was talking to my patients today about gratitude, and they made a terrific list of all the things, little and big, that they’re grateful for. And I was struck by just how grateful I am that any one of you is listening to my little show. I know I’ve said it before, but I was convinced that only my mom would be listening (Hi, Mom!), but it’s been so fun to see the stats of people listening all around the world. I am so grateful for that. So thank you, thank you, thank you for listening, for checking out the Facebook and Instagram pages, and for coming back week after week!

But as always, remember the words of Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.” Until next time…

Anderson, Katherine, and Robert Duffy. Danvers State Hospital. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2018.

Brooks, Rebecca Beatrice. “History of Danvers State Hospital.” History of Massachusetts Blog, 19 Sept. 1912. https://historyofmassachusetts.org/history-of-danvers-state-hospital/

Goeres-Gardner, Diane L. Inside Oregon State Hospital. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2013.

History.” Danvers State Hospital. https://www.danversstatehospital.org/history

“State Hospital for the Insane Scene of Fire.” The Evening Herald, 24 Jan. 1912, p. 1.

“Welcome to Danvers.” Salem Witch Museum. Salem Witch Museum, 2024. https://salemwitchmuseum.com/locations/welcome-to-danvers/