Founding of the Crownsville State Hospital

Founding of the Crownsville State Hospital. A Hospital Built by Patients (1910s-1930s). In April 1910, Maryland established the "Hospital for the Negro Insane," at the 566-acre Boswell- Garret farm adjacent to the railroad station in Crownsville. This was the first segregated Black mental health facility in the state and admitted patients of all ages with "mental illness"-a blanket term that included chronic conditions, homelessness, and epilepsy.

On March 13, 1911, the first twelve men arrived as patients, transferred from the Spring Grove Asylum in Baltimore. This segregated facility, renamed Crownsville State Hospital in 1912, aspired to be a modern facility for Black patients, and operations reflected what was then 'state-of-the-art' advances in psychiatry, albeit against a backdrop of Jim Crow's separate-but-equal standards.

In the past, mentally ill Black patients had been confined in overcrowded regional almshouses or neglected at all-white state asylums across the State, where they often lived in separate, but squalid conditions and experienced rampant abuse.

Between 1913 and 1930 as the patient population rose, more wards and infrastructure were desperately needed. Patients were essential labor, building nearly a dozen structures on the campus, including the Administration Building, a kitchen, a tuberculosis ward, a children's ward, and the Superintendent's House.

By the 1930s, the population had grown to more than 1,000 patients, and the facility was understaffed and overcrowded, severely affecting care and living conditions. Patients included not just those with legitimate illnesses (both mental and physical) but increasingly, marginalized Black citizens who were of perfectly sound body and mind were admitted because they had challenged authority in an era of segregation.

Under the guise of what was called "industrial therapy," Superintendent Robert Winterode used forced patient labor to run the campus as a self-sufficient plantation throughout his tenure. Patients worked the willow farm and wove baskets, cleared the land and built the very structures where they would soon be confined. Agricultural land was farmed by male patients to feed the hospitals' population, while female patients worked in food service, laundry or sewing. Involuntary patient labor was valued at $3,239.75 in 1911 according to Hospital records, equal to a mere $100,000 in 2024 dollars. This shameful model of treatment set the framework for the first decades of operations at Crownsville.

(Captions):

Crownsville patients bundling willows outside of the temporary farm building where they were housed, ca. 1912. Courtesy Maryland State Archives.

Patients clearing timber for railroad ties on Crownsville property, ca. 1912. Courtesy Maryland State Archives.

Crownsville patients making willow baskets, ca. 1912. Courtesy Maryland State Archives.

Crownsville patients farming (top) and sewing (bottom), ca. 1912. Courtesy Maryland State Archives.