Central State Hospital — the Unknown Dead In My Backyard, Rethinking Mental Health and The Value of Life
What is left is just a dilapidated asylum where ghost stories abound
Photo Credit: David Scaglione / Flickr (CC)
Years ago, parents in Georgia would threaten their children to send them away to Central State Hospital if they were naughty. That could scare them into behaving. Rumors would trickle out about the asylum about those who were “mad” and “crazy,” but perhaps they were not mad or crazy at all; they were just labeled that way by society.
Maybe Mom was just too depressed, and Dad had a younger lady on the side, and he didn’t know how to get out of the marriage. He could get a diagnosis, and she would go to State Hospital. Uncle Jim had a drinking problem, was out of control, and did not act right in social situations. Perhaps a trip to the State Hospital would clean him up.
The problem with these “assessments” and “trips” is that they were not always given the correct diagnosis, and often, those who became patients never went home. Those were different times, but that doesn’t make it any different or less significant. It doesn’t mean that just since that was “a long time ago,” those people did not suffer any less.
The record of the first patient that came to Georgia’s first insane asylum was on December 15, 1842, chained to a horse-drawn wagon. Tilman Barnett, described as violent and destructive, was diagnosed as a “lunatic” and never left. Like him, many followed in his footsteps, similar to a life sentence, but often, these patients probably didn’t know how long the sentence would be.
Then, there was a record of another Barnett, a 30-year-old farmer from Bibb County. He died six months later of a malady termed “maniacal exhaustion.” He became the first patient and casualty in the long and often dark history of one of the nation’s most notorious mental institutions, now known as Central State Hospital.
At least Barnett had a name, unlike the thousands buried anonymously. The dozens of acres hold the graves of more than 25,000 patients. It is one mass grave. Many had been forgotten or shunned by their families. You may have heard of some of these in your family history. Or there are hidden family secrets.
The hospital ran a mortuary and even employed carpenters whose sole job was building caskets. For over a century, the hospital buried its dead beneath small metal stakes; each was identified with a number corresponding to a patient’s file. Not even a name to mark a life. No dates of birth or death. Nothing. How sad that a life had passed, and nothing remained but a number — in a sense, a mental health holocaust for unknown victims.
In time, thousands of Georgians were shipped to the hospital for unspecified conditions or disabilities that did not warrant classification of mental illness, with little more of a label than “funny.” The hospital outgrew its resources; by the 1950s, the staff-to-patient ratio was an unbelievable one to one hundred. Doctors at that time had complete control and wielded the psychiatric tools of the times. These included lobotomies, insulin shock, and early electroshock therapy.
Some other far less sophisticated techniques included children being confined to metal cages, adults being forced to take steam baths and cold showers, confined in straitjackets, and treated with douches or “nauseants.” “It has witnessed the heights of man’s humanity and the depths of his degradation,” Dr. Peter G. Cranford, the chief clinical psychologist at the hospital in 1952, wrote in his book, But for the Grace of God: The Inside Story of the World’s Largest Insane Asylum. Then, an investigation in 1959 revealed that out of the 48 doctors employed in one of the wards, none were psychiatrists.
We may think of things like this in other countries, but not our country, the United States. How can that be? Experiments and identifying people just with numbers sound similar to Nazi Germany? Worse, the graves became such a nuisance, an inconvenience for the lawn workers; when mowing, they pulled them out and threw them into the woods. Over a thousand markers were later found in the brush; these people, so bothersome for yard workers, found their way into the woods.
The evolution into madness began on November 4, 1834, when the General Assembly convened in Milledgeville. At that time, it was the capital of Georgia. Governor Wilson Lumpkin made an impassioned plea for “the lunatics, idiots, and epileptics.”. “Every government possessing the means should without hesitancy provide suitable asylums for these most distressed and unfortunate of human beings, “ Lumpkin said.
The legislation was approved three years later, and construction took five years. In November of 1842, the Georgia Lunatic Asylum opened in the tiny community of Hardwick on the outskirts of the capital. Six weeks later, a Milledgeville newspaper reported that a “sad procession” had brought the first patient, Tilman Barnett, the patient mentioned, chained to his wagon by his wife and other relatives.
Some of the hospital’s admissions registry shows after this: Samuel Henderson, 47, a farmer from Cobb County driven insane by “religious study, “ spent his final 11 years at Milledgeville. Juliana Mayer, 23, a “pauper, lunatic and epileptic” from Savannah, troubled by “disappointed affection, “ died of consumption after 9 1/2 years. Daniel Ashmore, 30, of Liberty County, arrived “demented” from “intense application to study” and died in his sleep four years later.
Diognisises like this today would sound absurd and criminal, yet in that period, they were familiar. Samual Henderson, “insane by religious study”? Perhaps he was overexcited about religion, and the family didn’t know what to do with him, so they sent him to the asylum to be condemned to death. This may have been an influential preacher or theologian at a different period and in other circumstances.
Juliana Mayer, only 23, a “pauper, lunatic, and epileptic.” Could this be because she was born on the wrong side of the tracks, poor and uneducated, possibly bipolar or suffering from depression or a mental illness, and seizures? She would make it until 32 and then die of consumption locked away. Surely, she probably had a terrible life, considering how mental illness was treated then.
Daniel Ashmore, “demented from intense application to study”… A man who was maybe worn out from his involvement in his studies. So the cure for that is sending him to a lunatic asylum? Perhaps the family that sent him there did not realize this would be the outcome. Or maybe it was his decision, but he did not know what he was getting himself into.
Let’s consider other individuals who, because of their families’ influence and resources, may have easily ended up in a place like Central State Hospital. Individuals like William James, the father of psychology and the founder of pragmatism, or poets like Emily Dickinson.
At one point, James contemplated suicide, which changed his outlook on Life and how he viewed the human condition. Emily Dickinson was a recluse who did not leave her house, but her father was an influential lawyer, and sending her to an institution would not bode well for his reputation. If things had been different, we would not have the masterful and wonderous poetry of Dickenson that we do have.
“To die — without the Dying
And live — without the Life
This is the hardest Miracle
Propounded to Belief.”
There are tens of thousands of tragic stories like the ones I mentioned, tens of thousands of possibilities. Tens of thousands of William James’s and Emily Dickinson’s. Unfortunately, the details and many of the outcomes will go unknown. Like the mass graves containing the remains of patients that once had names, the hospital is also a mass site of injustice and stories of inhumanity.
On another note, it is odd and sadly ironic that we celebrate some people in the United States and often worldwide and forget others. These 25,000 people in the numbered and many unnumbered graves didn’t matter.
There are conditions as to why we remember some people and ignore others. Sometimes, this value system is even distorted and, in a sense, demented, and we should reconsider how we value some people and forget others.
We place value on some of the wrong things and the wrong people. The world knows Ted Bundy. There are reasons to know about him for the causes of forensic pathology, but we may have gone too far to elevate him to the status he holds. To some, he is an icon; books and multiple films have been created for him with little interest in the victims.
Yes, what about his 30 or more victims? No one knows their names. Their dreams, who they were, and what they may have become? Murderers are more popular than their victims all too often. In a sense, these people were just considered throw-aways. They had no value for society in life and now no value in death.
These individuals resemble the victims of this establishment: the discarded, the nameless, the forgotten. We’re not distant from them; recognizing this grants us insight into humanity and empathy, and for some, if we allow ourselves, we can find gratitude in where we are today. No one is merely insignificant. Each person holds significance.
An angel statue is a memorial for the dead with names at Central Hospital. The monument was erected by members of the Georgia Consumer Council and some former patients after working with volunteers to restore the overgrown cemetery beginning in 1997.
What is left is just a dilapidated asylum where ghost stories abound. It is a remnant and a marker of a not-so-distant past when we Americans were silent as our citizens were shipped off and subjected to brutal and inhumane torture.
We should appreciate the fortune of living in this era. If we had the misfortune of being born a century ago, individuals grappling with anxiety, depression, or other challenges might have found themselves in unmarked graves.
References:
“Asylum: Inside Central State Hospital, once the world’s largest mental institution” Doug Monroe February 18, 2015
“But for the Grace of God: The Inside Story of the World’s Largest Insane Asylum” Dr. Peter G. Cranford, 1952
“Asylum’s dark past relived as cycle ends” Alan Judd, 2013
Central State Hospital — the Unknown Dead In My Backyard, Rethinking Mental Health and The Value of was originally published in Invisible Illness on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.