Crownsville Hospital Center, formerly known as Crownsville Hospital for the Negro Insane, was founded in 1911 and is the third institution in the United States to be erected for the exclusive admittance of African American residents. It was purchased by the Board of Managers from the Maryland General Assembly for $19,000. They agreed that there had to be something done about the vast amount of homeless and mentally unstable African American population in the Maryland and in particular, Baltimore. They voted that the hospital should not actually be in Baltimore, hence their decision to buy the plot of former tobacco farmland in Crownsville to establish the institution. Starting in 1911, the builders of the first building were actually 12 patients ordered to build their new home. As the months wore on, more patients were transferred to the camps to …show more content…
The men worked by harvesting the tobacco and willow crops that grew on the property and then continued after to work as “hod carriers”. They also worked as assistants to electricians and plumbers while the women knitted and mending the clothing for staff and patients. The patients at Crownsville were exposed to many illnesses throughout the years, most immediately starting with smallpox and scarlet fever. It was reported that the earliest accounts of these two illnesses were relevant near the birth of the institution itself. Tuberculosis, a bacterial disease mostly found in lungs, became the next illness that became a problem at Crownsville and never seemed to go away, as it has been reported several times throughout the years. Syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease that was highly found in the African American population at this time, was also a fatal illness that affected the patients’ wellness. The patients were packed like sardines in this institution which is the reason that so many