Asylum on the Hill: History of a Healing Landscape

Chapter Four: Politics

105 four Politics “Partisan Interests and Personal Place-Seeking” The State of Ohio’s nineteenth-century commitment to free care for its citizens with mental illness resulted in a public investment in Athens to bricks and mortar,staff,families and patients, improvements, land acquisition, infrastructure, oversight, and research. Spending $621,000 in 1868 dollars1 on a building embodying the moral treatment philosophy in the newly emerging field of psychiatry, staffing it at times with leading American alienists , and funding their proposals for innovations in care, the statesupported moral treatment experiment at Athens began under the leadership of Governor Rutherford B. Hayes and ended during the administration of Governor William McKinley. Both governors left office on being elected president of the United States, and each took his experience with the asylum at Athens with him. Built during the post–Civil War years of industrial growth in Ohio, the asylum’s first years were marked by the economic hardshipsoftheLongDepressionof1873 –79,afar-reachingeconomiccalamity in which thousands of American businesses (both urban and rural) failed and unemployment reached 25 percent in some areas.2 Through these grim economic troubles as well as the more prosperous times of the 1880s, the state government continued to pour money and political support into the asylum at Athens, demonstrating a commitment to providing care for Ohioans with mental illness as well as supporting its investment in bricks, mortar, purchasing and jobs. Patients and their families were expected to provide only clothing; beyond that, public asylum care in nineteenth-century Ohio was free.The state supported the entire operations of its asylums and paid for all aspects of patient care. Not until 1893, when the failure of banks and railroads led to another economic collapse, 106 p o l i t i c s did the Board of State Charities propose that payment for care should be the responsibility of patients and families who could afford it. During times of economic contractions and struggles, the operations of the asylum at Athens were marked by tensions and problems produced in part by Ohio’s political spoils system, known as reorganization.The years 1876–80 and 1891–93 saw turnover in trustees, superintendents, and staff. No new initiatives were undertaken except a fruitless and politically naïve quest for an asylum-based gas light plant; the emphasis during these times was on maintaining what had been built. In contrast to the tensions that preceded and followed the decade of the 1880s, the asylum enjoyed the stability of nine years of leadership of Superintendent A. B. Richardson and Steward Robert E. Hamblin from 1881 through 1890. These men successfully negotiated the delicate nature of the reporting structure of steward and superintendent (the steward reported to both the trustees and the superintendent) and survived political party transitions in Columbus . Appointed by the board of trustees and reporting to both the trustees and the superintendent, the steward’s dual reporting structure at times resulted in difficulties. The Ohio Board of State Charities reported to Ohio’s governor in 1879 that the difficulties of the dual reporting line resulted in “a divided responsibility leading to a conflict of authority.”3 The most productive years of the moral treatment experiment were, in fact, during the tenures of three superintendents noted for their contributions to nineteenth-century psychiatry: Richard Gundry set the beginning course (1872–76), A. B. Richardson presided over a long period of harmony and innovation in treatment, and Henly Rutter stepped in for short periods between 1877 and 1880 to hold things together during political and staff turmoil. Consistent leadership was provided by Cincinnati-based landscape gardener Herman Haerlin and Athens landscaping contractor and gardener George Link, who spent his entire thirty-year career overseeing the execution of Haerlin’s landscape plan. Ohio’s governor and legislature supported the asylum’s considerable grounds and landscaping infrastructure projects for its entire twenty years of moral treatment operations. A century of asylum building in America preceded the 1868 groundbreaking for the asylum at Athens. Although the first public asylum in America was erected in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1769, most eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century American asylums were private. Quaker physicians and philanthropists in “Partisan Interests and Personal Place-Seeking” 107 Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut began these private asylums, which featured an eclectic approach to treatment with such measures as warm baths, special diets, opium, force-feeding, bloodletting (at times), recreation, and...