Byberry Insane Asylum - Philadelphia. Erin Kelly

The Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry was constructed beginning in 1907. The facility grew until it  included over fifty buildings such as male and female dormitories, an infirmary, kitchens, laundry, administration, a chapel, and a morgue. Because of this, the hospital's population also grew rapidly, quickly exceeding its capacity. In fact, the peak patient population was over 7,000 in 1960. The design was not a Kirkbride one; any form of moral treatment did not seem to be in mind when this building was being constructed (Kirkbride actually did in fact design an institution in Philadelphia in the 1850s, but did not contribute to Byberry). 


https://www.americansuburbx.com/2015/05/byberry-mental-hospital-house-of-horrors.html

The hospital was constructed under the belief that while it might be possible for the mentally ill to receive treatment and decrease symptoms, they should be separated from the general public in order to do so. The separation of the mentally ill from the general public was also for the good of that general public.  Byberry was free for patients, so it was mostly the poor or others who could not afford better treatment that ended up there. Patients who were committed at Byberry suffered from a variety of things, spanning from physical disorders that made them "other," as well as the wide range of things that were deemed to be mental disorders at the time. 


https://www.americansuburbx.com/2015/05/byberry-mental-hospital-house-of-horrors.html

Byberry hospital became infamous for its mistreatment of patients. One of the biggest issues was that almost from the minute that the hospital opened, overcrowding became an issue. The depression years also offered its challenges due to lack of funding. Patients were often not fed or fed food with rats in it, and there are pictures of patients completely naked, as the hospital could not afford to clothe them. Aside from not being provided for in the proper way, there were also issues with severe mistreatment, with patients getting severely abused, and there were stories of patients getting raped and even murdered. There are also stories of patients committing suicide while in Byberry, due to the dire condition of the hospital. 

The conditions at the hospital were largely hidden until the 1940s, when two journalist separately took up the issue. In 1946, there was even an expose in Life magazine (https://mn.gov/mnddc/parallels2/prologue/6a-bedlam/bedlam-life1946.pdf), which was aided by photos of a man named Arnold Lord, who was employed at the hospital as an orderly, after he became a conscientious objector for the war. The article said this: 

Thousands spend their days – often for weeks at a stretch – locked in devices euphemistically called ‘restraints’: thick leather handcuffs, great canvas camisoles, ‘muffs,’ ‘mitts,’ wristlets, locks and straps and restraining sheets. Hundreds are confined in ‘lodges’ – bare, bed-less rooms reeking with filth and feces – by day lit only through half-inch holes in steel-plated windows, by night merely black tombs in which the cries of the insane echo unheard from the peeling plaster of the walls.”


Due to this article, there was an outrage at the condition of the hospital, which had previously unknown, except those who lived or worked there. Even Eleanor Roosevelt read the article and demanded change. New state funding funneled in, briefly making things better. However, in the 1950s, there was new tests on the patients, as new psychotropic medicines were beginning to be developed. As recently as the late 1980s, 27-year-old resident William Kirsch was in such restraints for more than 14 months — and possibly as long as three years. The U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania found that Byberry was infringing on Kirsch’s human rights, and demanded his release from the hospital. The hospital was not closed until 2006.


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