The sent-away traffic, and commitment as law

items 2 and 3 — which state hospitals received this county's committed, and under what law

Those the county home could not keep went downstate on the court's order: Indiana's district system sent northern Indiana's committed to the state hospital at Logansport — the Northern Indiana Hospital at Longcliff, opened in 1888 — which received this county's patients for the system's first two-thirds of a century; the Westville traffic followed when the state opened its northern hospital there in the mid-twentieth century (the Beatty hospital at Westville, opened 1951), shortening the road for Michiana commitments until that hospital's own course ended. Indianapolis, the system's first seat, belongs to the traffic's earliest generation. The route structure closed as the community era opened: after 1963's federal turn and Indiana's community-centre designations, commitment increasingly ran to the designated centre's own beds — for this county, Madison Center's — rather than downstate, and the Logansport road became the exception rather than the course. The law that moved the traffic prints at its frame: commitment was and is a court act — under the modern statute (Indiana Code 12-26) by emergency detention, temporary commitment, and regular commitment, each on petition and hearing, with the committing court's order naming the receiving institution; the nineteenth century's course ran through the same county courts on the era's statutes, the asylum superintendent's reports recording the arrivals. The docket-level course for this township — who was committed, in what years, in what numbers — stands in the county court's commitment docket at South Bend, named as settler; no names are printed here, by this section's own discipline.

Sources:

1. The Indiana state-hospital record (Logansport, opened 1888; the Westville hospital, opened 1951) and the state designation history for the community era.
2. Indiana Code 12-26 (emergency detention; temporary and regular commitment) — the modern frame stated at statute strength.