This Mental Health Hospital was abandoned in 1995

Salem County Insane Asylum, Mannington New Jersey

Date added: January 22, 2024 Categories:

The Salem County Insane Asylum stood fifteen feet to the west of the Salem County Almshouse at the county farm in rural Mannington Township. The Almshouse (demolished in April 2007) was built in 1845 on the foundation of an earlier poor house that was built in 1808 and destroyed by fire in 1845.

In America, the insane asylum as an institution was part of an overall nineteenth-century trend toward classifying and separating the types of poor people who populated a poor house, and, in particular, to separate mentally disturbed persons from other classes of paupers. From 1796 until 1871, Salem County's poor house at the county farm was the home for the indigent insane as well as other classes of poor people. In the colonial era and during most of the nineteenth century in America, insane paupers were among the undifferentiated poor, who included widows, orphans, the aged, the sick, the insane, and the disabled, anyone who could not care for themselves. In colonial times, the issue of concern was their need, not their specific condition or cause for their need, but colonists did draw a moral distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, and between their own deserving poor and vagrant outsiders. The former received help, the latter, punishment. Authorities minimized disruption by keeping the poor with their own or with neighboring families at public expense. Only the larger colonial cities built almshouses and workhouses to manage the poor population. But after the Revolution, county almshouses were increasingly built to house and control this undifferentiated population of poor, one that also grew to include those who could not find year-round work to sustain themselves. By the mid-nineteenth century, states were rapidly building asylums to remove the insane poor from the almshouses and to afford them modern treatment. In New Jersey, the state did not keep up with the demand, and after the Civil War, some counties found it necessary to build their own insane asylums to house the chronic cases that could not be taken to the state asylum in Trenton. The Salem County Insane Asylum was part of this trend, and was one of six county asylums built by 1880 in New Jersey.

Salem County Poor Relief

In New Jersey, not only was West Jersey the first to set down poor laws, but Salem County, in 1796, was the first county to establish an almshouse. Salem was followed by Burlington in 1798, Gloucester in 1799, Cumberland in 1809 and Cape May by 1818. Salem County was also the first county to appropriate funds for the building of a county poor house, though Gloucester County's was actually built first, in 1803.

The first poor house in Salem County was at Samuel Bassett's former tavern in rural Pilesgrove Township, about seven miles from the town of Salem, the county seat, on the road from Salem to Woodstown. The tavern was a one-and-one-half-story frame house with three bedrooms and a small "card room" upstairs. A series of land purchases for institutional poor relief, beginning with the tavern, began after an act of the state legislature "for the better relief and employment of the poor of the County of Salem" passed on March 12^th, 1796. A corporation called "The Trustees of the Poor of the County of Salem" was formed consisting of a trustee from each township annually appointed by the Freeholder Board and empowered to hold, sell, or use property and to receive donations for the support of the poor. Upon purchasing Bassett's Tavern in 1796 a wing for women "making it L shaped" was added, but in eight years the facility was inadequate. On June 20^th, 1804, the Board of Chosen Freeholders decided to build a new poor house: "John Wistar and Isaiah Shinn were appointed commissioners to provide materials for the purpose of Building a Poor House and they are empowered to draw upon the County Collector for the amount of Expense pursuant to the foregoing Order." It was sited in Mannington Township on the tavern property, a short distance away from the old poor house on a bluff over Major's Run, and first occupied in 1808.

The Problem of Insanity

In 1820, the Trustees of the Poor reported to the Board of Chosen Freeholders the need for new accommodations for the insane at the 1808 Poor-house:

The Trustees of the Poor house of the county afores after mature deliberation and experience beg leave to recommend that an Addition or wing be added to the Poor house of such dimensions as will make five or six cells sufficiently secure and comfortable to confine the Insane and refractory, so as to restrain them from doing Injury to themselves or others.

From the present situation of the house, it is found to be unavoidably necessary to chain such to the floor in apartments where many of the aged and infirm have to occupy, thereby rendering their situation much more uncomfortable adding distress to their many infirmities by their continual moaning, hollowing or rattling of their chains, and other disagreeable nuisances which must necessarily occur.

Despite agreeing to this proposal, the Freeholders put off the project for two years when they ordered that:

an additional building of brick or stone be erected at the poor house for the accommodation of the insane poor of such size and dimensions for convenience as to the trustees of the poor house may direct and that the trustees superintend the building of same.

The concern was about consideration for the non-insane poor, rather than about better treatment of the insane. The solution to a difficult and unpleasant situation was separation. Historian Charles Casper reported that at this time insane inmates were being kept in "damp, underground cells," He was probably referring to cells in the basement, but if this was true, then they were accomplishing separation in the only way they could, absent a separate building.

This act is consistent with an early nineteenth-century trend of increasing segregation of the classes of poor housed in almshouses. In 1845, when the Salem County almshouse burned and debate ensued about its rebuilding, some people wanted social improvement, objecting to "the promiscuous mingling of black and white, male and female," causing such misery that "cleanliness, morality and decency demand the different classes of paupers to be separated." Differences of all kinds lead to physically separate accommodations, from separate buildings on the same site for gender, race, and insane, to separate institutions to take people with disabilities; deaf and dumb, feeble-minded, physically ill, and insane. For insanity, there was a particular urgency to exclude them from the nation's poorhouses over the course of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. The profession of asylum medicine was growing in response to the problem of insanity, and the profession advocated their ability to cure it, and to cure it, to build separate institutions.

In Salem County, despite having an insane asylum, or rather a wing for the insane, the Steward, in 1837, requested that new cells be built "for the accommodation of disorderly and insane persons." His request was turned down, however. Physical restraint of violent inmates to prevent injury to themselves and others was the inevitable practice, as Dorothea Dix's observations inside the Salem County almshouse later illustrated. Salem County's accommodations for the insane were probably much like those at the New Castle, Delaware almshouse in 1843-ells with iron window grates, masonry partitions, heavy doors, and especially thick, board flooring.

In 1844, social reformer Dorothea Dix visited Salem County's poor house. Dix agitated for state insane asylums in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey. She toured New Jersey county asylums late in 1844 and delivered a report to the state legislature on January 23^rd, 1845, shaming them for not following up on their own investigation of 1839-1840 which demonstrated a clear need for a state hospital. She reported increased numbers of insane and idiots who were being kept in state prisons, county jails, county poor-houses, and state hospitals in New York and Pennsylvania. She pleaded:

I come to ask justice of the Legislature of New Jersey, for those who, in the Providence of God, are incapable of pleading their own cause, and of claiming redress for their own grievances. Be patient with me - it is for your own citizens I plead; it is for helpless, friendless men and women, in your very midst, I ask succour - into whose broken minds hope and consolation find no entrance - the foul air of whose dreary cells still oppresses my breath - the clanking of whose heavy chains still sounds upon my ear. Have pity on them! have pity on them!

Dix began her journey through New Jersey in Salem County where first of all, she found no insane inmates in the jail. Her description of Salem County's 1808 poor house is the longest of any in her Memorial. It offers a rare and detailed glimpse into the everyday life and operations of the place:

The County Poor-house is several miles from Salem, near Sharptown; attached is a well-managed farm, and the cost for each individual averages about eighty cents per week. The establishment seemed, in general, very well conducted; the inmates, who in November numbered eighty, were comfortably and decently clad, and the food, as far as I could learn, was well prepared and of good quality. It is the custom to bind out the children at a very early age, therefore no school is provided. Religious meetings are seldom holden, and religious counsel or consolation rarely imparted by visitors. There are here, beside several epileptics and persons of infirm minds, eight insane. One woman of middle age has been crazy seventeen years. Two of the patients were in chains; one man, very crazy for nearly thirty years, has been out of his small apartment but "ten times for more than nineteen years." He is considered very dangerous, and is so. No appropriate care can be rendered here to lesson his frenzied excitement, or diminish the terrible horrors of madness. The master said, if he could "take him out daily for exercise in the open air, it would do him good; but with the care of a farm, which he is expected and required to keep under profitable cultivation, with a family of paupers-often exceeding one hundred-to manage and provide for, he has not the time to nurse madmen, or to give them any degree the care they need." The propensities of this poor wretch are homicidal; he is dreaded by all save the master of the house, whose only safety, as he thinks, consists in governing him through the principle of fear. In illustration of this, I give his own account of the manner by which this influence is gained, and, utterly horrible and revolting as it is, I believe it only justice to the keeper to add that in his circumstances, with his limited means, he does not what he approves and wishes, but that to which he considers himself compelled. "Going to his room one day, not long since," said the keeper, "in order to shave him, my hands both being full, as I came near, he suddenly sprang upon me, and dealt a violent blow at my chest; his being chained, alone prevented his killing me. I knew I must master him now or never: I threw down the shaving tools, caught a stick of wood from the entry, and laid upon him until he cried for quarter: I beat him long enough to make him know I was his master, and now he is too much afraid of thrashing to attack me; but you had better stand off, ma'am, for he won't fear you." Brute force is the cruel alternative left for those who are compelled to a charge for which they lack both time, and means, and knowledge. A letter, some time since, reached me from a stranger, relating to this very madman, round whose limbs these, so many long and sorrowful years, have weighed the heavy chain and fetters! "There are many," says my correspondent, "whose sufferings are greatly augmented for want of proper treatment and attention. In our poor-house is a man who has been chained by the leg for more than twenty years; and the only warmth which can be introduced into the cell, is from a small stove-pipe, which passes through one corner of it!" The history neither needs, nor will hear comment.

In one apartment I found an epileptic, bleeding from fresh wounds inflicted by falling, in a fit, his mental faculties much impaired, and his condition very sad. He was placed on the floor for safety, giving already fallen from a raised bed. This class of patients are often peculiarly dangerous; as the fit passes off, becoming highly excited, often malicious and disposed to violence; this terrible and unmanageable disease, so warps the natural dispositions, that, from being mild and gentle, they become irritable and furious.

On a level with the cellar, in a basement room, which was tolerably decent, but bare enough of comforts, lay, upon a small bed, a feeble aged man, whose few gray locks fell tangled upon his pillow. As we entered, he addressed one present, saying, "I am all broken up, all broken up!" "Do you feel much weaker then Judge?" "The mind, the mind is going-almost gone," responded he, in tones of touching sadness: "Yes," he continued, murmuring to himself, "the mind is going." This feeble depressed old man-a pauper, helpless, lonely, and yet conscious of surrounding circumstances, and not now wholly oblivious of the past-the feeble old man-who was he? I answer as I was answered;-but he is not unknown to many of you. In his young and vigorous years he filled various places of honor and trust among you; his ability as a lawyer, raised him to the bench. As a jurist, he was distinguished for uprightness, clearness, and impartiality; he also was judge of the orphan's court. He was for many years a member of the Legislature. His habits were correct, and I could learn, from those who had known him for many years, nothing to his discredit, but much that commends men to honor and respect. The meridian of an active and useful life was passed; the property, honestly acquired, on which he relied for comfortable support during his declining years, was lost through some of those fluctuations which so often produce reverses for thousands. He became insane, and his insanity assumed the form of frenzy; he was chained "for safety;" in fine, he was committed to the county jail for greater security! Time wore away, excitement gave place to a more quiet, but not a rational state; he was after a considerable period, placed in a private family When the little means left of the small remnant of his once sufficient property was consumed, he was removed to the poor-house, receiving his share of that care and attention that must be divided and subdivided among the hundreds of feeble, infirm, and disabled inmates. For such men as Judge S., is not hospital needed? Or if too late for him, hasten-it may be finished only to open its merciful shelter for yourselves of your children.

Dix recorded eleven county poor-houses: Salem, Cumberland, Cape May, Gloucester, Burlington, Monmouth, Hudson, Passaic, Morris, Sussex and Warren. Monmouth County also had a township poor house at Shrewsbury. Four counties had only township poor-houses: Middlesex (at North Brunswick, Piscataway and Woodbridge), Essex (at Newark and Elizabethtown), Somerset (at Somerville and Franklin), and Mercer (at Trenton). Dix's emphatic conclusion was that insane people suffered inordinately in jails and poorhouses where special treatment could not reach them. She deplored the cruel restraint and isolation of dangerous inmates in cells and dungeons. A universal problematic experience was mixing insane and other classes of poor, which was disruptive to safety and order in a poor house. Salem County had tried to address this with the 1822 construction of a separate insane department at the Poor-house. A report on the conflagration at the Salem County Almshouse on February 1^st, 1845 illustrated the kind of treatment Dix objected to:

"Among the number taken from the burning building were seven lunatics, several of whom had been in confinement upwards of twenty years, where, from the violence of their ravings, it was found necessary to keep them chained within the closest limits.

The county rebuilt a larger almshouse on the same foundation in 1845, and added new cells between 1847 and 1848.

The legislature, convinced by Dix, authorized the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum in Trenton which opened on May 15^th, 1848. Prior to this, insane persons from Salem County had either been kept in the county poor house or sent to the "Pennsylvania Institute" (the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane in Philadelphia established in 1841) under the care of a special committee appointed by the Freeholders who would visit and report on their condition and progress. Martha Draper and Lewis Elben were sent to the Pennsylvania Institute by order of the Freeholders on 14 May 1845. Two years later the committee "to have the charge of the Lunatics" reported that "the condition of the lunatics sent from this county to Pennsylvania has improved but that there is not the probability of their complete [illegible]--station." One year later, in May 1848 the committee reported that "one lunatic" was still in Pennsylvania, without noting what became of the other. The committee was then authorized to remove Martha Draper to the new state asylum. However, in August they reported that they had found her condition no better and had left her in Philadelphia because there would have been no cost savings in transferring her to New Jersey. In response, nevertheless, the Freeholders ordered her moved to the new facility in Trenton. At the same time the committee reported no lunatics at the Salem County poorhouse.

New Jersey's state asylum served only a minority of mentally disturbed patients; the acute, so-called "curables." Most mentally ill in the state were without any institutional care. The state asylum was designed to house two hundred patients, though there were at least seven hundred afflicted people documented in the state in 1850. Admission was restricted to curable cases, under the then-current philosophy that insanity was curable, and a stay was limited to three years. Though county poorhouses were sending select cases to Trenton, they were compelled to continue to keep insane persons not regarded as "curable"; the chronic, pauper insane. Salem County was sending selected patients away, by 1861, two more persons had been committed to the state asylum. However, typical treatment methods at the Salem Almshouse may be illustrated by an 1861 Trustee order for a set of handcuffs, as well as by Dix's observations in 1844. Restraint was the rule, with no time "to nurse madmen, or to give them any degree the care they need."

Architectural Ideas and Treatment of the Insane

In the nineteenth century, asylum doctors believed in the curability of insanity through "moral treatment," that is, methods that applied to the mind. This idea originated with reformers such as Englishman William Tuke and Frenchman Philippe Pinel who were known for their humane methods of non-restraint in the late eighteenth century. They also believed in environmental determinism, that environment, and therefore the asylum itself, held the cure to insanity. Treatment of the insane in America during the nineteenth century was heavily influenced by the ideas of Thomas Story Kirkbride, the Quaker physician who founded and operated the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane. He advocated an architectural design for insane asylums based on earlier, linear plans that was a bilaterally-symmetrical, shallow-V plan, forming a series of short, setback, linear pavilions in one large building. The design facilitated segregation of patients by type and degree of mental illness, as well as by gender and social class (because, unlike poorhouses, the asylum was inclusive of all classes, not just the poor). His ideas dominated the growing professional field of asylum medicine. By 1866 there were 30 asylums nationwide built on the Kirkbride plan, and there were 70 by 1890. Other architectural plans were also being used, though, such as the radial, the quadrangle, the U-shaped, and the E-shaped. The rules propagated by Kirkbride and the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane in 1851 set a desirable maximum capacity of 250 patients, but by 1877, asylums were being built to house up to 900 patients and had become architecturally extravagant. The size and expense of these institutions caused a growing reaction against large, monolithic asylums, which, combined with a debate on treatment methods, brought about new architectural ideas for the accommodation and treatment of the insane.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the profession of asylum medicine was debating moral treatment methods at national meetings and in journals. The conversation was about "free-air asylums" versus "claustral asylums." The latter were the conventional types which espoused the use of mechanical restraints, such as shackles, chains and straitjackets. The "free-air" concept was fueled by the discovery of an insane colony that spontaneously developed in Gheel, Belgium, first reported on in the 1840s. There, the insane were housed with families in their homes, and had freedom of movement in the community. The approach was variously referred to as "Belgian non-restraint in open asylums," the "Belgian free-air system," or simply, the "free-air system." England and Scotland were experimenting with the idea, such that it was also referred to as "English non-restraint." Dr. John Conolly, a physician in charge of the Middlesex County Lunatic Asylum at Hanwell, England, instituted non-restraint policies beginning in 1839. Conolly had been influenced by such practices that he had seen at the York and Lincoln insane asylums. Moved by humane considerations and scientific theory, he published books about and aroused public sympathy for his ideas. Dr. John M. Galt, an Englishman, and Dr. Julius Parigot, who had served as the physician at Gheel before coming to the U. S., were later advocates of this reform method of treatment in the professional literature of asylum medicine in the 1850s and 1860s.

The old system placed all violent or troublesome patients in the position of dangerous animals. The new system regards them as afflicted persons, whose brain and nerves are diseased, and who are to be restored to health, and comfort, and reason. This simple difference of view it is which influences every particular in the arrangement of every part of an asylum for the insane.

Non-restraint as practiced by Conolly at the Hanwell Asylum in England, eschewed mechanical devices and emphasized the use of padded cells, individualized attention, good diet, hygiene, kindness and solitude.

Another aspect of the free air philosophy was the kind of building that should be used to house the insane. John M. Galt had criticized the profession's focus on building monumental, prison-like asylums and promoted the idea of keeping the insane in a farm colony or in groups of cottages, like the colony in Gheel, Belgium, because it was more homelike and the patients would benefit by farm work and freedom of movement. He also proposed that a farm in France that was purchased to employ insane patients, the Farm of St. Anne, serve as a model for the United States. The cottage plan became known as the "segregate system," versus Kirkbride's "congregate system." Physician Edward Jarvis of Massachusetts, who boarded patients in his home, advocated the construction of cottages on the grounds of existing asylums. Traditionalists like Kirkbride opposed these new segregate ideas as impractical, such arrangements would require more supervision than could be economically provided. But the segregate idea opened possibilities for reusing old houses, varying plans, and clustering smaller buildings near existing linear facilities. Cottage-building at insane asylums began around 1860 and became increasingly popular after that, catching on with vigor after Kirkbride's death in 1883.

An Insane Asylum for Salem County

The Trustees of the Poor approached the Freeholders in 1860 "in regard to building a place detached from this house for idiotic persons," and met with them about "erecting of a building for the better accommodation of the insane and idiotic paupers," but the Freeholders deferred the idea "for another year," In the nineteenth century, "idiocy" was considered a category of insanity. However, it was not considered curable, as insanity was. In 1866 the Trustees ordered the insane paupers removed to "warmer quarters" and "to remove the building and convert it to a Bath House for the use of the House," which suggests that they had been separately housed in an unheated outbuilding. This may have been in response to an 1866 inquiry and report on the numbers and treatment of the insane around the state by the newly created state Sanitary Commission. Among the conditions decried in the report was the keeping of the insane in "some dark, unhealthy cell" or "subjected to the gaze and torment of others," and the mingling of the insane and idiotic with each other and with others in the "township and county houses" because of the harmful influences of one class upon the other. This report called for accurate statistics on the numbers of the insane versus idiotic, information on treatment methods appropriate for both classes, measures to differently house these two classes, and the enactment of a general health code that would improve the powers of local health authorities.

The one-year delay in 1860 became a ten-year delay before the idea of a separate insane asylum for Salem County came to fruition. The Freeholders authorized the construction of a standalone asylum at a cost not to exceed $5,000 in May 1870. Dunn, Wistar & Co. of Salem was awarded the construction contract of $4,794. The final cost was $5,180.14. Although the front facade carefully matched the Almshouse in height, stories, rhythm of openings and window proportion, the floor plan was fundamentally different from that of the Almshouse. At 32' wide by 25' deep, it lacked the traditional linear plan of the Almshouse and Kirkbride-inspired insane asylums. Standing fifteen feet to the west of the Almshouse, the three-bay, center hall Italianate-style house has an identical plan on each of three floors, with two large front rooms, a center hall, a small rear room and a rear stair hall. The basement contained five brick-walled rooms, each with a chimney flue for heat. Interior brick walls forming the center hall partitions carried the flues up to the roof.

Its form fits the image of the "three-story cottage" being promoted in alternative ideas of managing the insane, such as what was built at the Williard Asylum for the Chronic Insane in New York State.

Planned in 1866, the Williard Asylum was conceived differently from the conventional single Kirkbride block. Not only was it revolutionary in terms of its mission of care for only the chronically insane, it was a forerunner in utilizing the segregate idea of cottages on a farm colony. A central administrative block had wings for the physically ill and the more agitated patients, but a series of detached cottages were for "harmless, industrious and tranquil" cases, so they could live more independent lives and also work on the associated farm. From Willard's example, other states adopted a modified version of the idea, building detached cottages next to traditional facilities to house the quiet, chronic insane to give them more normal, independent lives.) At Williard and other state asylums, however, the "cottage" assumed rather large proportions in comparison to Salem's-housing up to 200 patients. A New Jersey version of the cottage idea occurred at Marlboro State Hospital, built between 1929 and 1931. A campus of numerous small buildings, including a series of residential cottages, was intended to classify the patients and provide them with more pleasant surroundings. A farm colony at Annandale, Hunterdon County, was established in 1913 to relieve overcrowding at the Morris Plains State Hospital. But this was the only farm colony the state of New Jersey ever established.

The cottage idea was also initiated at Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts after its superintendent, Dr. Merrick Bemis, visited Gheel in 1868. He purchased several houses near the hospital and set up a family-type environment in them. Though he resigned prior to fully carrying out his plan, other reformers picked up on his ideas after 1872. Frederick Wines, secretary of the Illinois State Board of Public Charities, organized a national conference in 1869 that debated the issue of segregate versus congregate systems.

Did word of this conference reach Salem County in 1869? Does the form of the Salem County Insane Asylum suggests a cottage or farm colony, or was it so configured because the projected population was so small, and just happened to be at the county farm? Gloucester County's insane asylum was also small-built to house six patients." But if the capacity was intended to be small, the fact that it was designed as a separate small building only fifteen feet away in lieu of an attached wing suggests the cottage idea. Its distance of only fifteen feet from the Almshouse, versus Gloucester County's one hundred, may point to an administrative concern for efficient operation by a shared staff. The actual idea behind this design is elusive-official records do not indicate the architectural thinking on the county level at this time. Nevertheless, the cottage idea was widespread in the field of asylum medicine by 1870, so it is possible that it influenced Salem County's design through some innovative and well informed local doctor. In any event, it would have facilitated a finer segregation of classes of insane than ever before possible, with four total levels of two or three rooms.

Statewide Trend in Asylum Building

Salem County's Insane Asylum appeared on the cusp of public realization that insanity could not always be cured, and that, unlike other states such as New York and Ohio, New Jersey did not adopt a public policy to accommodate every insane citizen in state asylums. By default, the counties had to act. By October 1871 the state asylum, by this time expanded to accommodate five hundred, held seven hundred, and it was refusing new patients the following year. In response to this overcrowding by the chronically insane, and the unwillingness of the state to house all the state's insane, county insane asylums, though custodial rather than curative in purpose, started appearing in the late 1860s and early 1870s. In 1870, this statewide trend for care of the chronically insane is reflected in a Salem newspaper account: "An asylum for insane people who are not dangerous is to be built in Essex County. Ditto in Salem County. Ditto in Cumberland." Three New Jersey counties were building asylums for this class of insane simultaneously. Social welfare historian James Leiby assigned "first" status to Essex County in 1872 followed by Hudson County in 1873, and Camden County's in 1879. However, apparently unbeknownst to him, some southern New Jersey asylums predated these. Gloucester County, again one step ahead of Salem County, had built one by 1867 one hundred feet away from their almshouse and with a capacity for six patients, and Cumberland County also built one in 1870. Salem County was therefore on the leading edge of the post-Civil-War statewide trend to provide local specialized care for the chronically insane in county asylums.

In New Jersey the county asylums came, and stayed. Experts considered them a step backward, because they were frankly custodial and political, more like a specialized almshouse than a hospital. County asylums developed and flourished in New Jersey because they gave shape to what most interested people had really wanted. They provided specialized custodial care for people too difficult to keep at home or in the poorhouse; this was a service to people who had to take care of "lunatics." They were located near where they were needed. They opened new jobs and contracts for local politicians. Withal, they were notably cheaper in the short run (and perhaps in the long run) than the state institutions. In short, they served the sane, rather than curing the insane.

Thus this state trend began with Gloucester, Salem, and Cumberland counties in the southern part of New Jersey. The state began building a second state insane asylum in 1873 at Morris Plains in Morris County, but it did not open until 1876. Though it eased the pressure on the counties, it still left the southern counties with no nearby state facility. By 1880, there were six county asylums (Gloucester, Salem, Cumberland, Camden, Essex, and Hudson) in addition to two state asylums, Trenton and Morris Plains. Overcrowding was still a crisis statewide. Morris Plains was expanded in 1924 and renamed "Greystone Park," and Marlboro State Hospital was built in Monmouth County in 1931. But it was not until 1953 did southern New Jersey get a regional state hospital-Ancora State Hospital, midway between Atlantic City and Camden in Camden County.

New Jersey was slow to act, so the counties provided custodial care for the chronic cases. The survival of Salem County's Insane Asylum is rare in the state and even rarer in the nation as a county insane asylum. In fact, Wisconsin was the only state to adopt an alternative to state-level care, that is, state-supervised county-level management of the insane. There, county asylums were the norm. So it was in New Jersey, but not by design.

Architecture of the Salem County Insane Asylum

Charles Casper described the Salem County Insane Asylum in 1885 as containing "twelve cells and rooms beside halls and bath and tank rooms," "warmed by heaters," and "fairly adapted to its purpose." In 1883 the water closet in it was reconstructed "it being in a very filthy condition, also new zinc has been put in three cells, which was found in a very foul condition, also new bedsteads in four cells and three others need them. Also, the iron doors have been put in much to the comfort of the inmates." The 1884 expense report shows a line item of $333.96 for "Iron doors and Locks for the Asylum." The records, unfortunately, do not indicate what part of the asylum the iron doors were for the basement cells or the upstairs rooms, and it may be that all the bedrooms were referred to as "cells." The records are silent about the method of treating insane inmates in Salem's insane asylum. If "non-restraint" was practiced as the means of treatment, there would have been indications of frames built in the rooms to support padding made of coconut fiber encased in heavy ticking, and wire blinds covering the interior of the windows to prevent injury to violent inmates. However, twentieth-century alterations to the rooms of the first through third stories have obliterated any evidence of padding applied to walls and floors, but evidence does exist for some kind of window barrier.

A 1900 room-by-room inventory noted "cells" without specifying how many or what they contained in the "Insane Department." At the same time, the Almshouse also contained cells-one beside the bathroom on the second floor of the Almshouse, containing two beds, and two cells on the third floor, one with one bed and the other with two beds. No cells are noted in the basement of the Almshouse. The presence of cells in the Almshouse may be a verification of Casper's comment on overcrowding in the insane asylum.

By 1885 the Salem County insane asylum was overcrowded. Insufficiencies in managing the insane and overcrowding must have continued, because in 1906 the Freeholders approved the construction of a new "lunatic asylum" on the recommendation of a committee that had visited several examples. However, though approved, it was not actually carried out. The language is curious, as a state law in 1893 had changed the designation of the state insane asylums to "state hospitals for the insane." This was indicative of a trend away from almshouse-type care by political appointees to hospital-type medical care by trained physicians. The Essex County asylum, unique among the counties due to its size and progressive management, became a "hospital" under a special law of 1894. Evidently the proposed new Salem County asylum was not intended to be a hospital but a custodial-type facility.

Large insane asylums since the eighteenth century had featured "airing courts" or "pleasure gardens" where inmates could go outside and enjoy fresh air, believed to be healing under the ideas of moral treatment and stemming from the concept of environmental determinism. In 1891, Dr. Charles Newton, the attending physician at the Salem Almshouse, "made remarks concerning the better treatment of the inmates of the insane department-and suggested that they be taken out carriage riding or have exercise in the open air-the Board ordered the farm committee to arrange a yard with a high fence where they could be kept secure in the open air with an attendant to have oversight of them." Here is evidence of a knowledgeable staff doctor advocating for the moral treatment of the insane of Salem County, with a positive result.

The Changing Roles of the Almshouse and Insane Asylum

By 1900, across New Jersey, many classes of people; insane, feeble-mined, deaf and dumb, blind and epileptic, were no longer residents of almshouses because specialized state institutions had been established to care for them, and a 1911 law required temporary outdoor poor relief. In 1915 the State Charities Aid and Prison Reform Association reported that the traditional almshouse had practically disappeared, with the twelve county almshouses "well-equipped and making progress." But, the 1918 report of the New Jersey Commission to Investigate State Charitable Institutions (the "Earle Report") listed the following under "County Institutions for the Insane": "Insane Hospitals in the following Counties: Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cumberland, Essex, Gloucester (almshouse), Hudson, Passaic (almshouse), Salem (almshouse)." Therefore nine counties had either a hospital for the insane or an almshouse serving to keep the insane, but Gloucester, Passaic and Salem County's facilities were in actuality, "specialized almshouses" and not hospitals at all. The 1918 report claimed the "the defects in the present system of administering the state's charities are both obvious and serious," because the Commissioner of the State Department of Charities and Corrections had no power to correct any problems in the management of any institution. The boards of county institutions had the prerogative of responding, or not, to recommendations from state inspectors, a situation conducive to perpetuating abuses.

After 1924, almshouse populations were trending more toward the aged and infirm. By 1931, when New Jersey's third state asylum Marlboro State Hospital was built in Monmouth County, the three almshouse asylums referred to in the 1918 Earle Report (which included Salem's) had closed, and the six county hospitals remained. Yet there was no statewide resolution of how the state and counties should manage care of the insane. The state did not enact any control over the county asylums, though it paid for half of the upkeep of indigents in a county or a state asylum. Therefore, by 1931, the Salem County Insane Asylum was no longer being used to house insane persons. Its function as an insane asylum actually ended in 1925, when the Salem County Freeholder Charities and Corrections Committee reported that they had taken over the care and management of the Almshouse and Insane Asylum from the Trustees of the Poor because of the burden of having to care for not only the poor but incurables, insane, and epileptics. Thereafter the insane were to be sent to the State Hospital at Trenton and the epileptics sent to the State Village for Epileptics. So, in 1925 the county gave up trying to house their insane citizens near home. The fact that between the construction of the State Asylum in 1848 and Salem County's decision of 1925 the county persisted in caring for them locally speaks to their strong preference for local care. This may have been more cost-effective, or ease of administration, but was probably not about getting the best care for the insane. The local doctors annually appointed to service the facility were not full-time on-site and probably not experts in treating the insane. "The moral system of treatment can only be properly carried out under the constant superintendence, and by the continuous assistance of the physician." This does not seem to have been the case in Salem County.

The changing role of the county almshouse/asylum is illustrated by a 1927 study of general conditions in almshouses in four northeastern states: Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania by the Women's Department of The National Civic Federation. The visiting committee, with the aid of the state Department of Institutions and Agencies, toured seven county (Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Hudson, Salem, and Sussex) and five municipal (Newark, Paterson, Passaic, Perth Amboy, and Plainfield) almshouses in New Jersey. The report criticized the caliber of the local overseers of the poor, who were empowered to dispense public charity in New Jersey, as unqualified, untrained and often illiterate. Years of the same management, in their view, had "produced an attitude of indifference and irresponsibility and a point of view which frankly declares that the maintenance and standards of the Salem County Almshouse are the personal concern of the people who have the job of running it." Salem and Sussex were alone in not providing an infirmary and Salem had no fire protection. No children were present but there was an insane "negro" woman despite the 1925 order to send all insane patients to Trenton. They reported:

In Salem County, the rooms occupied by the sick are depressing and repellant, and more uncared-for than are the other rooms in that dreary place. Four bedridden men occupy one room, lying on lumpy, uncared-for beds with ragged bedding. All the care they receive comes from other inmates. A bathroom with very old fixtures in poor repair occupies one corner of the sick room.

A paralyzed woman occupies a bed in the women's sitting-room, thus making its use as a recreation room for the other women distinctly unpleasant, while on the floors above are any number of pleasant single rooms with good beds and bedding which are not used at all. One of the well furnished and well kept rooms on the second floor is occupied by a chronic bed case, who is looked after by one of the inmate women in odd moments between her other numerous duties.

The Salem County plant is one of the very old buildings. The walls throughout have always been merely whitewashed. It was stated that that work is no longer done, hence has been no recent application and the walls are streaked, scaling and cracked. The floors, however, are clean, as most of the effort put into housekeeping is expended apparently on scrubbing. The inmate kitchen is a lean-to next to the staff kitchen, miserably equipped and in charge of two young colored girls who serve as cooks for the inmates. A large kitchen with a big range is used for the superintendent's family, and a white woman of responsible years is employed as staff cook.

The officials of the institution regard visits by outsiders as interference in their personal affairs and strongly resent them, being perfectly frank in the declaration that the conduct of the Salem County Almshouse is nobody's business. It is merely a job to them, and everything about the institution reflects that point of view. Neat, habitable rooms on the women's side of the house are unused while the women inmates live huddled together in the old detention cells in the insane asylum. Blue checked gingham is used on the beds for sheets and pillowcases.

Two sick women who could be put in rooms upstairs are housed in the women's sitting room, thus depriving the other women of a day room. Accordingly they crowd into the narrow hall from which their rooms open, sitting just outside the doorways of their tiny cells on straight kitchen chairs, while in the unused rooms above are large and comfortable rockers. Two colored women occupy a room on the third floor, on which floor there is no toilet.

The men's side is wholly neglected. The beds are wretched, with hoarded articles under the straw ticks or blankets. Bedding consists of ragged, dirty quilts and blue sheets.

The room used by four bedfast men is dirty, stifling and immeasurable depressing, and the men themselves are wholly dependent upon their fellows for service and care.

Thus, by 1926, the Salem County insane asylum was being used as a women's wing despite reportedly better quarters in the Almshouse. The report portrayed Salem County's poor facilities as among the worst-managed, if not the worst-managed, in the state. It was not until 1952 that Salem County first provided an actual medical facility for the elderly poor.

A major architectural, electrical, and mechanical renovation of both buildings occurred in 1951. The drawings of John A. Fletcher, a Vineland architect, are entitled "Alterations to Almshouse." The title on the drawings indicates that the name of "Almshouse" was still in use. While not mentioned, the old Insane Asylum was part of the project, as the two buildings were considered one complex. But, by proclamation of January 17^th, 1951, the Freeholders officially declared that its name would be "The County Home." The Freeholders also decided at this time that the primary function of the home would be to care for aged persons who were invalids, in light of welfare programs like Old Age Assistance and Social Security that enabled elderly poor people to remain in their homes. By 1952, as a consequence of the major change in operation, the State approved the entire first floor as a public medical institution of 30-bed capacity. The Insane Asylum rooms are referred to on the 1950 drawings as "Nurses Quarters," and the work included two new bathrooms in the house, so it had become a nurses' residence either previously or at that time.

Despite the 1925 decision to send insane patients away, the 1951 renovation called for two new or rebuilt cells in the basement of the Almshouse, but perhaps they were for temporary purposes. These were definitely for restraint purposes. Curiously, and ironically, in 1953, the new officially designated holding place for the insane became the county jail, the very situation that Dorothea Dix had railed against in 1845.

In the 1940s, elderly senile patients swelled the state mental hospitals. In 1953, the year Ancora State Hospital opened, a leader of the New Jersey Association for Mental Health observed that county asylums were persistent in New Jersey due to the failure of the state to comprehensively plan for mental health. By this time, however, Salem County no longer had an asylum per se, but a home for the chronic sick who had no family to care for them.

On June 19^th, 1968, the Public Nursing Home Facilities Study Committee reported that the Salem County Home was inadequate for providing nursing home care for the number of county's elderly and infirm citizens who needed it. May 6^th, 1970 name changed from the "Salem County Home" to "Lakeview Home of Salem County" in light of a "complete transformation both in appearances and personnel. ..a vast diversification of services..." in order to enhance its "beauty and atmosphere" and "add to the betterment of all interested in serving and being served."

The End of the Home

In 1971, there was a move to build a new county home on the county farm, but instead the county purchased the privately owned Salem Nursing Home, Inc. and moved the operation out of the Almshouse/Insane Asylum to that facility just north of the city of Salem. In 1972 the county farm lands were rented out with a public bid, a practice continuing to the present.

Various county offices and non-profits used the Almshouse and Insane Asylum buildings after they no longer served as a nursing home complex. In 1974, the old Insane Asylum housed an addictive disease office on the first floor and bedrooms on the second and third floors. SODAT of New Jersey, Inc., an addiction treatment organization, occupied the Insane Asylum in the 1980s. Public health programs to aid the afflicted continued to occupy the Insane Asylum into the 1990s.

By 1995, the leaking and uncomfortable Almshouse and Insane Asylum were emptied of all tenants. A local non-profit organization, Preservation Salem, Inc. began agitating for their preservation and adaptive reuse. The Salem County Freeholders hired Vitetta Group of Philadelphia in 2004 to plan a stabilization project to be funded under several forms of funding, including a New Jersey Garden State Preservation Trust Fund grant applied for in 2006. In March, 2007, bids were solicited for the work, but none came in. In April the grant was denied. On April 11^th, 2007, part of the rear wall at the third story fell to the ground, and the county initiated demolition of the Almshouse. The Insane Asylum remains.

Building Description

Standing on Salem County's nineteenth-century county farm, the Salem County Insane Asylum is a symmetrical three-story, three-bay brick building in the style of an Italian cubical villa with a wooden belvedere centered upon the roof. It faces north upon a bluff on a 165-acre county-owned parcel called the County Farm next to State Route 45 in rural Mannington Township, Salem County, New Jersey. It stood fifteen feet to the west of the 1845 Salem County Almshouse which was demolished in April 2007. The County Farm was the site of county institutional poor relief between 1796 and 1971. Today the farm is also the site of the county jail, the mosquito commission, the road department, the fire training center, the emergency preparedness center, and the Veterans' cemetery. Parcels of the farm were previously subdivided off for the Vocational-Technical school, a Day Care for developmentally disabled children, and an Agricultural Building.

The Insane Asylum stands on a knoll above and facing an impoundment on Major's Run, the division between Mannington and Pilesgrove Townships. From Route 45, also known as the Salem-Woodstown Road, a driveway leads to and passes in front of the building. The ground slopes down from front to rear, so that the basement is only slightly below ground level in the rear. The ground continues to slope down to the south to a streamlet that drains under the driveway into Major's Run above the Route 45 bridge. Continuing south, the land slopes steeply upward to a tree line at the boundary of the county vocational-technical school.

The historic setting of the Insane Asylum also included the neighboring Almshouse, various outbuildings, farm fields and the pauper cemeteries. Today, the Almshouse is no longer standing though its foundation is extant. A twentieth-century (1931) dairy barn is extant nearby but is no longer being used for its original purpose, it houses the county mosquito commission. A modern brick garage stands between the Almshouse site and the barn and they are surrounded by a paved parking lot. The Almshouse site and the yard behind it are being used as a concrete drainage pipe storage area by the county road department. The area behind the Insane Asylum is grassy and contains one extremely large sycamore tree and two smaller ones. It is likely that a poor house garden and an "airing court" established in 1891 were located in the low areas behind the Almshouse and Insane Asylum. The hill above the streamlet is lawn. Between the Insane Asylum and Route 45 to the northwest is a small sewage treatment plant. Directly in front of the Insane Asylum are the historic driveway and the pond created in 1952. To the northeast are two modern, one-story modular buildings. Beyond the pond is the county veterans' cemetery, and beyond that on Cemetery Road are two pauper burying grounds separated by the county road department facilities and Major's Run. The burying grounds are maintained as mowed lawn. There are no markers. Between the Insane Asylum and the cemetery on the south side of Major's Run are the county fire training school and emergency facilities. Exterior

The Insane Asylum is a plain Italian cubical villa built in a seven- to nine-course common brick bond. The square plan, flat roof, belvedere with pairs of round-arch windows, and wide roof overhang define the Italianate character, even though there are no brackets on the plain frieze board. This style was popular locally when the house was built. The windows above grade are original, six-over-six, double-hung sash over a gray marble sill, while the basement windows are half-size with three-over-three, double-hung wood sash over a wood sill. A steel or iron lintel of an undetermined shape supports the masonry over each opening.

The three-story, three-bay symmetrical front facade faces north. The central front doorway contains a boarded-over single-leaf door with sidelights and a transom. The front stoop consists of six stone treads and a stone landing on a foundation of brick. One tread is broken in half. There was never a porch. Steel pipe railings are of recent origin. A brick basement bulkhead entrance, in ruins, is centered in the south wall. The east side has one central bay with a window in each story and a doorway that was cut into the southeast corner to connect to the "breezeway" that was built to the Almshouse in 1951. The connector was removed in the 2007 demolition of the Almshouse. The opening is covered with plywood. The south (rear) elevation has three bays and a fire escape in the center bay. Fire escape doors were created out of the second and third-story center windows. A steel fire escape tower is attached to the center of the facade and predates 1950. Paint lines on the wall ghost a former set of steps to a landing at the first-floor door. The west side has one central bay with a window at each level.

The belvedere on the roof is flush-wood-sided and painted white. It has a wide, overhanging, corniced eave. The north and south elevations each contain a pair of round-arch window openings; the east and west contain a single round-arched window. The original window sashes have been replaced with a single piece of clear glazing. The low-slope hipped roof is covered with standing seam metal painted silver, and is possibly the original roofing. The eaves form gutters and downspouts once penetrated the eaves. No chimneys are visible.

The basement contains five brick-walled rooms flanking a central hall on a north-south axis. Each room contains one exterior window that is a short, three-over-three double-hung sash. All original windows are in place and in Room 006 modern chain link mesh covers the window on the inside. There are three chimneys embedded in the central basement hall (Room 003) walls. In the east wall one chimney protrudes into Rooms 001 and 002. In the west wall, a small chimney of one flue protrudes into Room 006. A double chimney protrudes into Rooms 004 and 005 and its east wall has been taken down, exposing the interior of the chimney. All chimney flues open into the hall, not the rooms. There are no doors or door casings on the room doorways, but there are three dovetail-shaped nailing blocks in both walls of each doorway. It is not clear whether or not anything was ever attached to these blocks. A tilting wood stairway to the first floor in the southeast corner has an old stringer with replacement treads and risers. A historic, grain-painted four-panel door with ogee panel moldings is extant in the exterior doorway in the south wall. A beaded board and batten door hangs in the doorway of Room 001.

The first, second and third floors had identical original floor plans. A center hall and connected stair hall created an L-shaped space, two front rooms, each two-thirds the depth of the house, were placed aside the center hall and a small room with hall access occupied the southwest corner adjacent to the stair hall. The center hall walls, continuous with the basement walls, are load bearing brick masonry, contain the chimney flues, and reach the third floor. No chimneys or flue openings are visible above the basement from the interior. The stair hall interior wall is also load-bearing brick masonry.

The first floor contains a center hall (Room 102), two parlors aside it, a bathroom in the southwest corner (Room 104) and a stair hall in the southeast corner (Room 105,). The original open staircase winds in dog-leg fashion to the third floor. The opening to the east parlor (Room 101) was modified in 1951 into a wide plaster arch. All other door and all window openings have entablature wood casings and a plinth-and-cap baseboard. All doors are the modern flush type. The center hall (Room 102) was converted into a kitchen in 1951 with a new partition at the stair hall and a counter with sink. The historic front door was replaced. Rooms 103 and 104 became a bedroom with a new closet and bathroom at that time. An original doorway from Room 104 into the stair hall (Room 105) was closed off at that time. The floors were covered with linoleum in 1951; the present covering is carpet. The bathroom tile floor and walls and pulpboard tile ceiling are consistent with 1951 construction.

The second floor is laid out the same as the first floor, with two rooms on the east and west sides of a central hall. Room 204 is a tiled bathroom constructed in 1951. It has a door into the hall (Room 206). Two closets were constructed in Room 201 in the north corners. Their entablature door casings match the rest in the house, but the baseboard cap molding differs. The number and colors of paint layers on the closet door casings and the hall door casings indicate that the closet door casings are newer but replicated the old. On the window casings in this room are putty-filled holes about 4 inches in diameter, spaced at 2½ inches, 3 inches, or 5 inches. One hole contains the remains of a threaded stud. These holes may be evidence of iron grate placed over the window as would be expected in an insane asylum. Deteriorating plaster on the north wall and elsewhere indicates that the walls were gutted and replaced with a wet-plastered, papered gypsum wallboard. Plaster lines on exposed ceiling joists indicate the prior presence of 19th-century lath and plaster. The 1950 drawings do not account for this work, but this type of construction could very well date to that time. In the stair hall (Room 205) a partition was added in 1951 to separate the fire exit (Room 206). In the ceiling of Room 203 is a plaster-covered beam spanning east-west at the midpoint of the room. The wood floor framing consists of 3-inch x 10-inch joists spaced 16 inches apart.

The third floor mimics the second-floor plan. The floors are covered with linoleum. A partition built around 1980 divided Room 303 in half (over the beam observed below). The finishes are consistent with the floors below. At the stair landing between the second and third floor is a ledge where the exterior wall thickness diminishes. Above the central hall (Room 302), the belvedere is open above, without a floor or stair to it. This appears to have been altered, probably after 1951.

The original spaces are largely intact. Significant historic features such as window sashes, belvedere, roof eaves, staircase, exterior doors, stone steps and window sills, and interior window and door trim survive. Losses include plaster finishes and the rear stoop. Alterations include the fire escape and associated doors and partitions, modern bathrooms, some interior doorway alterations, and replacement interior doors.