Asylum Ladies

Today's True Weird Stuff - Asylum Ladies

In the 1800s, women could be placed in mental institutions simply for not behaving the way society believed they should. Mental diagnoses at the time were simple: you were either deemed a lunatic, a moron, an imbecile, or feeble-minded. Like many others, a woman named Josephine Shaw Lowell believed poor women who lived in almshouses were promiscuous and prone to having illegitimate children. That's why in 1878 she created a place to house those women called the New York State Custodial Asylum for Feeble-Minded Women.

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