Last month we considered the southern portion of Ewing Township, an area known as Brookville, but also referred to as Asylum Station, due to the presence of the “State Lunatic Asylum” — today’s Trenton Psychiatric Hospital.
It’s easy to drive along Sullivan Way from New Jersey Manufacturer’s towards Trenton and miss the large State hospital campus on the left. From that vantage, most of the buildings are well away from the road, insulated by woods or wide grassy lawns.
It’s much more difficult to miss the hospital when driving along Stuyvesant Avenue, on the other side of the facility, where the high fences, barbed-wire and elevated security posts suggest a different story. The hospital is definitely not a place that draws casual visitors and tourists, and yet it has a fascinating history that I would guess most people — including Ewing residents — are unaware of.
Trenton Psychiatric Hospital was founded by social reformer Dorothea Dix, and opened in 1848 as the State Lunatic Asylum. It’s “claim to fame” is that it was not only the first “hospital for the insane” in New Jersey, it was also the first hospital for the mentall ill built anywhere according to the Kirkbride Plan.
Historically, the mentally ill were misunderstood and treated horribly, considered little more than animals with no ability to reason or act responsibly, locked into basements, dungeons and madhouses under deplorable conditions, chained and confined with criminals, and mistreated and abused. At best they were confined to poorhouses, or managed poorly at home. This was the case in Europe for centuries, and it was the case here in America during the 18th and part of the 19th centuries.
During the Enlightenment, an emphasis on individual rights and social welfare caused this treatment to be questioned, reconsidered and reformed. In the late 1700s in America, Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia developed novel and more humane treatments for the mentally ill.
But the most prominent reformer of treatment for the mentally ill was Dorothea Dix, born in 1802 in Maine (at that time part of Massachusetts), who was a teacher early in her career. Poor health caused her to stop teaching in 1836 and to travel to Europe, where she became aware of the more humane treatments being offered there to the mentally ill.
She returned to Massachusetts in 1841 and taught Sunday school to female inmates in a prison. The conditions were so horrendous that she immediately began to lobby the state legislature for their improvement. She systematically studied the care of the mentally ill throughout Massachusetts, and eventually prepared a report and strongly convincing argument for the state legislature, which then voted to fund improved conditions.
Dix then came to New Jersey in 1844, where treatment was also being questioned. Dix conducted a similar study of treatment practices in New Jersey, went before the State legislature and successfully convinced them to fund the state’s first mental institution in 1845.
Construction began on farmland purchased just outside of Trenton in Ewing, under the guidance of three commissioners, including Samuel Rush, the son of Benjamin Rush; and Eli F. Cooley, the Ewing Presbyterian Church pastor known for his business acumen and integrity, whose home still stands nearby the hospital on the grounds of the Katzenbach School.
The commissioners chose the designs of Dr. Thomas Kirkbride, a Philadelphia physician and psychiatrist born in Morrisville, who also promoted the “moral treatment” of the mentally ill, and principles which would influence the design and operation of U.S. asylums.
The Kirkbride Plan for asylums included tiered wings for patients which enabled light to shine in each room; a park-like campus for the patients to enjoy; and recreation, games, and chores to foster social skills and purpose. The Trenton facility was the first one completed (1848) of more than 40 nationwide, and still stands today.
Dix ambitiously continued her crusade for the mentally ill, and worked closely with Kirkbride to bring reform to other states. Their reforms remained in place until a better understanding of mental illness began to emerge in the 20th century. Dix moved to an apartment at the Trenton Asylum in 1881, and lived there until her death in 1887.
,
