Monthly Archives: September 2011

We are about to finish up the copy editing for Asylum on the Hill. With 323 end notes, 6 tables, 73 figures, and an album of photographs there are a lot of details to check. The book is scheduled to … Continue reading →

This morning I ran across among my files the record of the Athens State Hospital fiscal year 1951-52  fruit and vegetable harvest. This is roughly 75 years after the asylum put in its first kitchen garden which was by the … Continue reading →

This evening I took a walk on the old asylum grounds, up to Radar Hill, where I spied this grocery bag neatly tied with a note attached: Do not Disturb!!!! This been left here for a reason!!! 9/20/11 Of course … Continue reading →

Yesterday I heard from Charlene Hoeflich, General Manager/Editor of The Daily Sentinel in Pomeroy, Ohio,  about her experience growing up in Athens near the asylum (lower left quadrant of this 1995 map, courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries). She … Continue reading →

For years I studied over the puzzle of mangoes at the Athens asylum. In the nineteenth century the asylum’s gardens provided produce for the making of “mango pickles” in the asylum’s kitchens.  In 1892 the steward noted that  95 gallons … Continue reading →

What did the Athens Lunatic Asylum purchase in the fall in the nineteenth century? Apples. In September of 1882 steward Robert E. Hamblin bought 30 bushels of apples, at 30 cents a bushel, from local growers Emily Morrison, James Dorr, … Continue reading →

This month is the second anniversary of the publication of Christopher Payne’s book Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals, by MIT Press. Payne spent six years photographing 70 asylums in 30 states, including the Athens Lunatic Asylum. … Continue reading →

The grounds of the former Athens Lunatic Asylum no longer support orchards and vegetable gardens, but they are beautiful in their hundreds of acres of wildness. Perfect for hiking right about now with wildflowers, berries and ripening pawpaws everywhere.  During … Continue reading →

Labor Day, a federal holiday since 1894, reminds me of the evolution of the job of an asylum attendant. With a ratio of one physician to 200 patients in 1893-94, a cadre of about 50 mostly untrained attendants provided the … Continue reading →