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New Jersey State Hospital At Trenton




Founded by Dorothea Lynde Dix The Trenton Psychiatric Hospital, (originally named the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum) the first public mental hospital in the state of New Jersey opened on May 15 , 1848 .

Under the Hospital's first superintendent Dr. Horace A. Buttolph , the hospital admitted and treated 86 patients.

In 1907 Dr. Henry Cotton became the medical director.

Cotton's legacy of hundreds of fatalities and thousands of maimed and mutilated patients didn't end with his leaving Trenton in 1930 or his death in 1933 , in fact removal of patients' teeth at the Trenton asylum was still the norm until 1960 .

The image of a mental hospital as a filthy house of horrors, suitable for the setting of many horror movies (though this motif dates back to Bedlam ) was influenced greatly in America by the New Jersey State Hospital at Trenton.


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EXTERNAL LINKS

  • http://www.rootsweb.com/~asylums/trenton_nj/

  • http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/156/12/1982