Remembrance of Patients Past: Patient Life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1870-1940

"Oh that I had wings I would fly like a dove and be at rest I would fly out of this asylum." So wrote Ralph M., a patient at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane from 1889 until his death in 1911. Winston O., another inmate at the Toronto asylum, actually sought to build wings like Ralph so longed for. After crafting violins that he played and building from scratch an automobile he was allowed to drive on the hospital grounds, Winston, who spent his last 58 years in the asylum, was reported to be working on the construction of an aeroplane. Historian Geoffrey Reaume chronicles the daily life of patients at 999 Queen Street West from 1870 to 1940, examining such aspects as diagnosis and admission, daily routine and relationships, leisure, patients' labour, family and community responses, and discharge and death. Mental patients were at times absurd, and they led lives of tedious monotony that could tend to flatten personality, yet many of these women and men worked hard at institutional jobs for years and decades on end, created their own entertainment, and formed meaningful relationships with other patients and staff. Reaume writes that "the varied experiences and perspectives of the people who were patients ...indicate that there is no easy, clear-cut solution to caring for people with mental health problems. As horrific as 999 was in many ways, the total absence of any institutional support ...would have been even worse." He concludes: "the people whose voices and experiences make up this study show later generations that psychiatric patients have a great deal to teach us about what it was like to be confined in a mental institution and to live with the psychological troubles that brought them to 999 Queen Street West". This book is intended for supplementary text for courses in social history and medical history.