The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
1848–present · INDIANAPOLIS FIRST, THEN LOGANSPORT; THE WESTVILLE LINE TESTED
Before any state hospital existed, this county's insane stayed in the county asylum (art-57-1) or in jail — the Indiana record is plain that incurables were at first returned to counties, a practice discontinued in 1883. The first receiving hospital was Indianapolis: the legislature authorised a hospital for the insane as early as 1827, a tax for a State Lunatic Asylum followed in the Laws of 1844, the West Washington Street site was purchased 29 August 1845, and the Indiana Hospital for the Insane — later Central Indiana Hospital for the Insane (1889), then Central State Hospital — received its first patient on 21 November 1848. For forty years it was the state's only door, taking patients from the whole state, St. Joseph County's committed among them, by commitment papers filed from the county circuit court (the State Archives holds Central State's commitment papers 1848–1950 and admission books 1858–1924, arranged with county-of-residence data).
The northern door opened with the second wave: in 1883 the legislature created three new hospitals, at Logansport, Richmond and Evansville. The Northern Indiana Hospital for the Insane at Logansport — “Longcliff,” on a 1,335-acre bluff over the Wabash — opened in 1888 and serves primarily counties in northern and west-central Indiana; it had admitted 38,498 patients as of June 2008 and still operates as Logansport State Hospital, taking temporary and regular commitments, forensic commitments and guilty-but-mentally-ill cases referred through the community mental health centres. By 1905 the district system had hardened: with Evansville, Logansport, Madison (opened 1910) and Richmond relieving it, Central State treated only its central district of 38 counties — so St. Joseph County's ordinary traffic after 1888 ran to Logansport, not Indianapolis, and the 1940 state table sizes the system it ran in: Central 2,090 patients, Logansport 1,939, Richmond 1,629, Evansville 1,199, Madison 1,576 (30 June 1940). The Westville line, tested: no state psychiatric hospital at Westville appears in the Indiana Archives' state-hospital list reached; Westville's state institution in that record is correctional. No Westville receiving route for this county's committed is asserted — the floor instance's Westville traffic is another city's pattern, and on this county's record the routes are Indianapolis (1848–1888, whole state) and Logansport (1888–present, northern district), printed as such. Individual St. Joseph County admission counts per hospital per year sit in the confidential admission indexes (Indiana Code treats mental-health records as confidential in perpetuity) and are not printed; the routes and their dates are the public record, and they are whole.
Sources: Indiana Archives and Records Administration (IARA), Central State Hospital Collection index and “Other Indiana Hospitals for the Mentally Ill” (Logansport, est. 1888, northern/west-central district; 38,498 admissions to June 2008); Board of State Charities history of Central State (first patient 21 Nov. 1848); Indiana Dept. of Public Welfare, Mental Hygiene in Indiana (1940), Table 4; IARA state-hospital list (no Westville psychiatric hospital).