CAMDEN COUNTY'S FIRST LUNATIC ASYLUM
The Evolution of Lakeland at Blackwood
The treatment of mental illness in the 18th and 19th centuries was dramatically different from what it is today.
BLACKWOOD, N.J. -- Although Ancora, which opened in 1955 in Winslow Township, may be Camden County's best-known psychiatric hospital, it's not the first.
The first facility for the county's mentally ill was established in the late 1800s along the Timber Creek in Blackwood, at what became known as Lakeland. It was run according to concepts of treatment and mental illness that are shocking to most modern-day people.
Nineteenth-century society largely viewed the mentally ill with fear and annoyance and favored "putting them away" in asylums. Back then, it was then believed that among the many causes of lunacy were disappointed affection; loss of property; fatigue and excitement; domestic trouble; abuse; sudden death of a loved one; imprisonment of a relative; drink; intemperance; masturbation; overwork; long-continued womb trouble; an unhappy marriage; operation for hemorrhoids and suicidal menopause.
In those days, the county poorhouse at Lakeland was the only place for those considered mentally deranged.
Photo: Camden Co. Historical Soc.
|One of the county's earliest facilities for the mental ill was this early 1800s building known as 'the mad house.'Larger|
Its first "inmate" was admitted in 1803. But a dozen years later, county freeholders realized there was sufficient need for a separate facility for the insane poor.
Initially, those unfortunates were housed in a two-story, wood-framed building partitioned into cells that was called "the mad house." In 1839 Dorothea Dix, a tireless advocate for more humane treatment of the mentally ill, described it as "populous with imbecile, insane and epileptic patients -- 25-30 individuals. [It] contains ranges of small cells altogether unfit for the individuals they house."
Squalid ravine cells
First-person accounts of the period describe some of the earliest Blackwood facilities as "barn-like" cells running along the ravine and fitted with small doors; one at the
Photo: Camden Co. Historical Soc.
|Nineteenth-century reformer and pioneer for the rights of the insane, Dorothea Dix railed against conditions in Blackwood's 'mad house.' Larger|
top facilitated the passage of food to the inmate; the one at the bottom was used to clean out debris and replace straw bedding. It's easy to imagine how similiar these crude rooms were to animal pens in a stable. Though the poorhouse itself was enlarged by the county several times, the mad house and its ravine shacks remained the only option for the mentally ill for almost 40 years.
In 1878, freeholders approved construction of a "lunatic asylum" adjoining the poorhouse. The three-story brick structure, designed to house 90 patients would, according to the freeholders, provide "all the best modern appliances for the care of the insane."
Evolving psychiatric science
The most disturbed patients were housed in confinement cages on the ground floor; the second floor was for the less disturbed; and the third floor would house the asylum's steward
Photo: Camden Co. Historical Soc.
|Blackwood's facilities were repeatedly expanded and modernized in the 20th century into what became known as the Camden County Insane Hospital at Lakeland. It was torn down in the 1980s. Larger|
or matron and their families. This was at a time when the superintendent earned $800/year and the weekly cost to house a patient was $1.50. This new facility was known as the Camden County Insane Asylum at Blackwood.
Over the next 47 years, additions and improvements were made to the original brick structure until, by 1925, the asylum had grown to include a nurses' residence; an admission building where new patients were examined and observed; and a service bridge across the ravine connecting the old brick asylum to the new admission building. At the same time, Timber Creek was dammed, providing a scenic lake and giving the facility its new name: The Camden County Insane Hospital at Lakeland.
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