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Chronicling America is a searchable digital collection of historic newspaper pages through 1963 sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.
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Also, see the Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries, a searchable index to newspapers published in the United States since 1690, which helps researchers identify what titles exist for a specific place and time, and how to access them.
Established as benevolent institutions to cure the insane, lunatic asylums became widespread in the United States throughout the nineteenth century. Accounts of these institutions range from stories of success in curing the insane to tales of abusive caretakers to outbreaks of infectious disease. How successful were these institutions at caring for the insane? Read more about it!
The information in this guide focuses on primary source materials found in the digitized historic newspapers from the digital collection Chronicling America.
The timeline below highlights important dates related to this topic and a section of this guide provides some suggested search strategies for further research in the collection.
| 1840 | Account of a state-run asylum in Vermont professed successfully curing many of the insane. |
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| 1888 | Asylum employees are accused of abuse in New York City. |
| 1900 | Baby is committed to an asylum for showing “murderous tendencies.” |
| 1906 | Woman and daughter are kept in an asylum even though they were sane. |
| 1908 | Infectious diseases such as tuberculosis are reported as threats to the well-being of those interned at the asylum. |
| 1920 | Poisoned candy is sent to an asylum in Tennessee, killing one inmate and injuring several others. |
