In the United States, we all assume that we have to pay for care. We pay through our healthcare costs for pretty much everything and rarely have any say in the overall cost of services. But if your doctor was like “yes, I’ll give you a physical, but you have to sterilize all the tools and water the plants in the lobby first,” you’d be like “huh, that's weird.”
Generations of humans have, instead of exchanging labor for money, traded labor for stuff, for other services, or even property. In some systems, it’s expected. Call it sweat equity, call it bartering, call it whatever you want. It’s old-timey! But it was also built into mental healthcare system for **years.** For more than a century, people at Kings Park Insane Asylum in New York were expected to sing for my supper, so to speak. Or I guess to hoe for their health? But just because they were running their own small CrazyTown doesn’t mean they were actually getting the help they needed.
Making Brooms Is Therapy, Right?
At the Kings Park Insane Asylum, the “inmates” didn’t just lay around in crisp white beds, gazing at the ceiling. No, they had to work to keep the place humming — in part because it was essentially its own self-sufficient town.
The idea of a full-on society of mental patients who are in charge of everything from growing the food to changing the linens may sound strange, but it was celebrated in its time. When the Kings Park Psychiatric Center opened open in 1885, it represented a departure from the overcrowded, clinical, and even inhumane state hospital model. Instead, “therapy was administered by having patients work the grounds, growing food and tending livestock.”
“The place was more like a great industrial school,” reads a 1902 article from the New York Tribune. A reporter who visited the sweeping site, located well outside of New York City, stated that he “saw scarcely anything and heard very little to remind him that nearly all of the hundreds of people he met were mentally afflicted.”
“The place was more like a great industrial school with club privileges than like
a hospital for dethroned reason.”
Equipped with its own fire department, water and electrical works, laundry, an “amusement hall,” numerous musical groups and theater troupes, the facility became its own little town. There was a blacksmith, a tailor, and a shoe factory. Mattresses, brooms, and brushes were all made onsite by the patients.
The work that occurred on the “farm” helped the state of New York pay for the facility itself. With tens of thousands of pounds of pork, butter, produce, and baked goods going out the door every year, the patients generated revenue and thus, ensured the continued operation.
Patients were allowed to leave the official campus to go into the nearby town, which meant that many residents encountered them — though they may not have immediately realized it, since so many other the patients were dressed normally and appeared neat.
In 1992, Joan Mary Briton wrote about Kings Park, including her childhood experience as a neighbor of the facility:
“As a child growing up in Kings Park, I remember the town busy with patients, many of whom were "free" for the day to visit local establishments. This was their community as much as it was ours. The interaction between patient and pedestrian was not questioned, nor was it ever seen as threatening. The patient population was a fact of life that the town worked to accommodate. The patients added character and personality to this small LongI sland village.
Their presence was a mere reflection of the history of the town, the institution, and the dedicated residents who cared for them.
The presence of the hospital community was never a deterrent to development or settlement in this area. The Kings Park Psychiatric Center offered opportunities for employment close to home and its campus-like environmentwasveryinviting. Aspatientpopulationgrewandthehospital expanded, so did the surrounding community. Residential development continued along the perimeter of this site through the early 1980's. More importantly, the hospital was never viewed as a separate community, but as an integral part of the Kings Park hamlet.”
In general, people on the outside loved this idea. Not only were they made to feel better that people with mental illness were being put to work and given something to do other than suckling at the government teat. Plus, they were making things that were useful to the “normal” world, like brooms. The hospital’s presence was also an economic boon to the area; it quickly grew the surrounding township of Kings Park by providing jobs and demand for goods and services.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that all of the patients were getting the care they needed, though. The work — which was expected of almost all of the residents in order to continue to receive care and a place to live — comprised the majority of the “therapy” that the patients received. At the time, talk therapy and CBT didn’t really exist. Instead, having a job and breathing in fresh air was prescribed as the priority for mental health.
This is important, since a number of the people there were literal murderers, and were likely not getting the help they needed.
In later years, during the Second World War, Kings Park did end up increasing their treatment regimen — they added ECT onsite. It’s unclear what effect this had, but I can’t imagine it was good!
Anyway, thanks for the Free Labor!
Labor is expected in many residential settings, even when the “residents” have no say in the matter or choice whether or not to be there. Inpatient facilities often expect residents to do chores or take on duties, but that’s more to help instill responsibility than to cover the cost of running the facility. Meanwhile, prison labor generates billions — BILLIONS — every year, most of which does not go back into the services or therapies that incarcerated people receive. Instead, it lines the pockets of private entities and possibly goes back into the tax pool. Which is a whole other fucked up part of our society that we absolutely have to address at a federal, state, and local level (actually banning private prisons would be a good start!).
The term “inmate” was often used to refer to people staying at a place — including brothels — but it didn’t strictly mean “incarcerated person” as we think fo it today. However, a lot of the residents Kings Park were “inmates” in the truest sense. For the most part, they were there against their own will. Many of the thousands of residents were sent there after they were found guilty of violent crimes or when they were believed to be “immoral” (i.e. if they were gay, if they were unmarried women with children, you get it). There are thousands of newspaper articles which describe people being “sentenced” to Kings Park due to their perceived insanity.
For some, living on The Farm was perfect — they received community, support, access to the arts and culture, and were generally productive members of this small community. Many more, though, were toiling in laundries against their. They were learning to farm with exactly zero hope of ever being able to farm on their own, for their own sustenance. They might have learned skills that they could never put to use on the outside work because of cultural divides, industrial gatekeeping, or the whims of the economy.
Others left, having been deemed “sane,” in spite of the lack of actual mental healthcare being provided. Without new coping mechanisms, new tools, and new understandings of the world, many were turned out into the world completely unprepared.
Upon leaving the facility, people could expect to be grilled by “lunacy commissions,” which they had little chance of winning over. That meant that a lot of the patients would end up right back in the system, likely in the kind of less-than-glorious hospital setting that Kings Park was supposed to oppose.
Like so many other issues around mental health and wellness, the last century is paved with decent intentions and not-great execution. Kings Park is an example of that; the idea that letting people work and feel committed to a community was a good one. But in the absence of actual therapeutic treatment, healing is kind of stunted. Still, Kings Park had a hell of a track record and saw tens of thousands of people come through its many doors.
People are still going through its doors now, although it’s considered trespassing. Kings Park closed more than 110 years after it first opened, left abandoned in the 1990s. Now, it’s a favorite spot for ghost-hunters, urban explorers, and other folks who enjoy potentially creepy experiences. I’d be lying if I said I never wanted to go.