Difference between revisions of "Eastern State Hospital Plaque"
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Revision as of 11:36, 13 November 2024
In November, 1769, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed "An Act to make provision for the support and maintenance of ideots, lunatics, and other persons of unsound minds," founding the first public hospital for the mentally ill in the United States. The act appointed a board of trustees which included George Wythe:
WHEREAS several persons of insane and disordered minds have been frequently found wandering in different parts of this colony, and no certain provision having been yet made either towards effecting a cure of those whose cases are not become quite desperate, nor for restraining others who may be dangerous to society: Be it therefore enacted, by the Governor, Council, and Burgesses, of this present General Assembly, and it is hereby enacted, by the authority of the same, That the honourable John Blair, William Nelson, Thomas Nelson, Robert Carter, and Peyton Randolph, esquires, and Robert Carter Nicholas, John Randolph, Benjamin Waller, John Blair, jun. George Wythe, Dudley Digges jun. Lewis Burwell, Thomas Nelson, jun. Thomas Everard, and John Tazewell, esquires, be, and they are hereby constituted trustees for founding and establishing a public hospital, for the reception of such persons as shall, from time to time, according to the rules and orders established by this act, be sent thereto. And the said trustees shall be called and known by the name and style of the court of directors of the public hospital, for persons of insane and disordered minds.[1]
Now known as Eastern State Hospital, the original public hospital was located in what is now downtown Williamsburg, Virginia. Relocated to the outskirts of the city between 1937 and 1960, this memorial to the original directors of the hospital board was erected in 1925.[2]
Memorial text, 1925
See also
References
- ↑ William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, vol. 8 (Richmond: J. & G. Cochran, 1821), pp. 378-81.
- ↑ Travis C. McDonald, Jr., "The Public Hospital: An Architectural History and a Chronicle of Reconstruction." Architectural Research Department, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1986
External links
- Eastern State Hospital, at the The Historical Marker Database.
