User:Aldaros23/sandbox

The Toronto Lunatic Asylum (one of several early Provincial Lunatic Asylums) was the first hospital for people with mental illness in the Province of Ontario, opened on January 26, 1850 on a portion of the Garrison Reserve in Toronto. It was located on Queen Street West, opposite today's Ossington Avenue, where the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health is currently redeveloping the lands with several new buildings for mental health services.

After years of declining standards at the hospital after WW1 and then a brief period of revitalization in the 1950s, the hospital was demolished in 1975-1976. However, the building remains an important part of Toronto's history in treating people with mental illness.

During the hospital's long history in Toronto, it was also known as the Aslyum for the Insane, Toronto (1871-1905), Hospital for the Insane, Toronto (1900s), Ontario Hospital, Toronto (1919), and the Queen Street Mental Health Centre (1966).

History
The original site of the building was located at 999 Queen Street West. The building was designed by architect John George Howard with construction beginning in 1846 on a 50-acre site part of the Garrison Reserves. The asylum received its first patients on January 26, 1850. According to the CAMH archives, 211 patients were admitted that day. The building was designed to be state-of-the-art for the time, in response to Europe's call for housing and treating those with mental illness in hospitals. The building was therefore equipped with central heating, mechanical ventilation, and indoor plumbing. The main cupola over the front entrance contained a water tank. The landscape was also carefully laid out.

In 1860, patients helped build a large brick wall that enclosed most of the property for more than 100 years. On some of the preserved sections there are names, dates, words, and symbols etched into the bricks which allowed some insight into who stayed there and what the conditions were like. The original wall of the asylum, built by inmates, is all that was saved from the original site, mainly due to the efforts of the Psychiatric Survivor Archives of Toronto.

The hospital quickly became overcrowded and another architect, Kivas Tully, designed the wings that were added between 1866 and 1870. From 1888-1889, 23 of the original 50 acres were sold off by the government, leaving 27 acres, the same size it is today. As mental health services continued to expand in Toronto, with buildings at Mimico and Whitby opened, the Queen Street site continued to be utilized well into the 1950s.

The process of deinstitutionlization, which began following WW2, favoured community-based psychiatric programs over long-term confinement of the mentally ill. Large-scale Victorian asylums, which began as places of refuge, were now perceived as antiquated facilities, not suited for more modern, advanced psychiatric care. The first psychiatric drugs were introduced in the 1950s, which also resulted in fewer people seeking institutionalized care. However, many argued that too few community programs materialized and many inpatients became homeless.

In 1954, construction began on the same historic site for a new Queen Street Administration Building. This building was completed in 1956. In 1964, the Ministry of Health announced plans to replace the original Toronto Asylum building and in 1966, the named was changed to Queen Street Mental Health Centre. By 1976, new treatment buildings were constructed and the original building was demolished. Demolished occurred in spite of opposition from heritage advocates, who aimed to bring attention to the building's great architectural merit.

People and Personal Accounts of the Conditions
William Rees in 1841, had been struggling under chaotic administration for nine years and the appointment of Scott, who was untrained in diseases of the mind, met with strong opposition from the city’s Reform press.

In 1908, Ernest Jones, Freud's closest English collaborator, moved from England to become a neuropathologist at the Toronto Lunatic Asylum.

John Scott, 1950, surgeon, medical superintendent.

Dr. Joseph Workman was the medical superintendent from 1853-1875. He directly applied the new wave of "moral management," which was influenced by such intellectuals as Thomas Kirkbride and Philippe Pinel, who emphasized kindness, light restrains, cheerful surroundings, and relaxing domestic tasks as part of therapy.

Dr. Charles Kirk Clarke was the medical superintendent from 1905-1911. He was still dealing with overcrowding during his time, even though several sister locations were opened to help people with mental illness.

The inmates were required to work on the asylum farm without any compensation. It was considered beneficial for them to engage in light labour, even though the farmwork was quite the opposite.

Other Workers: Fred Gardiner

Other Local and Provincial Asylums
The Toronto Lunatic Asylum was the first Provincial Asylum but several other hospitals were opened across the country:
 * Mimico Branch Asylum: Officially opened on January 20, 1890 to deal with overcrowding at the Toronto Asylum. This hospital also has a long list of names including the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital (1964), Ontario Hospital, New Toronto (1934) Mimico Insane Asylum (1894). Dr. Herbert Clayton Moorehouse became the superintendent in 1959. Dr. Donald Ross Gunn, as the research director for many years and later as the superintendent between 1967 and 1972, worked to make the hospital more respectable and prestigious through his research initiatives, which included the discovery of succinylcholine as an effective muscle relaxant administrated to the patient prior to electroconvulsive treatment. The institution, which was renamed as the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital in 1964, closed on September 1, 1979, following the decision of Dennis R. Timbrell, the Minister of Health, to shut it down due to its "substandard facilities." As with the Provincial Lunatic Asylum, large scale-Victorian asylums were seen as inhumane and monstrous, not to mentioned antiquated. It must be noted that the closing was part of the bigger trend of deinstitutionalization, which began after World War II. Although Timbrell did promise that the services provided by the hospital would be replaced by the Lakeshore Division at Queen Street Mental Health Centre, over time they proved to be highly inadequate, and many patients became homeless. Its address was originally 1007 Lakeshore Road, and it became 3131 Lakeshore Blvd. West.
 * The Hamilton Insane Asylum (aka Inebriate Asylum) has stood as a monument overlooking the city's west-end neighborhoods that housed the insane. The asylum is perched close to the edge of the escarpment, as seen in the photo above. It represented a very unsettling landmark for many Hamiltonians over the years. It opened it's doors on March 17th, 1876, when 10 men and 20 women were transferred from the Toronto asylum. Originally the Hamilton Asylum was intended to be a hospital for the accommodation and treatment of alcoholics. Where the hospital sits, even today, sits on one hundred acres of land that was purchased back in 1873. Back in this time it was considered to be an excellent choice to have such a hospital that would be on the Mountain brow, overlooking west Hamilton. Since 1980, the building has been closed and not in use.
 * New Brunswick